Mississippi - Day 24 - Jim Henson and food

Delta Village Mobile Home and RV Park
Friday, 24 January 2020

today's route

I went first to visit what's billed as Jim Henson's Boyhood Home And The Birthplace of Kermit The Frog.

Jim Henson Museum
This building actually has no connection with Jim Henson (or with Kermit) except that it sits on Deer Creek a little way upriver from Jim Henson's home (also on Deer Creek) for his first 12 years.  Jim used to hang out by the creek, sometimes with his pal Kermit Scott.  He had a fertile imagination and saw life in Nature's creatures around him.

Kermit was originally conceived of as a lizard.

the original Kermit is on the right

Jim Henson's bio

Kermit from The Muppet Movie
singing Rainbow Connection

I confess to knowing almost nothing about the Muppets.  I've heard Kermit sing Rainbow Connection from 1979's The Muppet Movie and know that it was nominated for Best Original Song for an Academy Award.  I've watched Miss Piggy as she said, "Moi?"  I've watched only a few seconds of any Sesame Street program and don't know the characters.  I've never seen any of Jim Henson's movies.

But somehow I knew I had to visit this place.  For one thing, it's free.  And it's only a few miles from the RV park.

Mostly what they have are donations of collectibles dating back to the beginning of the Muppets' fame.  I'm sure those bring back memories for long-time fans.  They have a small gift shop and a library with many many children's books and a DVD/VCR player (unfortunately on the fritz when I was there) for their small TV, so they can show various Muppet programs and movies.

For this poor person with no foundation for nostalgia, I found the information on various aspects of Jim Henson's life and career to be helpful in appreciating him and his talent.  He was only 57 when he died.  I found this link to the memorials that were held for him that show how deeply he was loved by his coworkers which, when you think about it, is one of the best indications of character.   https://muppet.fandom.com/Jim-Henson-Memorial

While I was finding that link, I stumbled across these quotes from Miss Piggy which are worth taking a look at.   https://thoughtcatalog.com/flawlessly-fierce-miss-piggy-quotes-that-remind-us-shes-top-bad-btch/

Indianola
Not many miles east of Leland, this town is the home of the BB King Museum, which I'd sort of intended to go to.  But I'd already seen personal memorabilia of multiple Blues artists at the Clarksdale museum, including things of BB King's, so decided not to go.  I ended up going by it, I think - and I say that hesitantly because it didn't look open.  A sign says they're doing an expansion, but I couldn't tell if it was open or closed during construction.  I didn't see any cars, but maybe I was on the wrong side of the building?

I'd been hearing on public radio that one of the best places to get fried chicken in MS is at convenience stores - I guess like that really good barbecue I had near Hattiesburg.  Several of the Double Quick stores had been mentioned as good places to go - Double Quick turns out to be a chain of gas stations + convenience stores that I didn't start seeing until I got to the Delta, and they're all over here.  Anyway, there's one a few blocks from the BB King place so I stopped there for a couple of thighs.  I didn't take a photo because they looked just like ordinary greasy fried chicken - and they were really good.  I wouldn't go out of my way to come here to eat, but it was absolutely worth the $2 apiece they charged me.

Indianola also has an eatery called the Crown Restaurant which is purported to serve good Mud Pie.  When in Mississippi, one should eat Mississippi Mud Pie, I thought.

Sorry - I took a bite before I thought about a photo.  It was really really good pie and I'm very sorry I bought only 1 piece.  They charged me $3.50 for this, which I'd thought was a little steep, but I changed my mind after tasting it.

Indianola is clearly an old town, and doesn't seem all that prosperous.  Actually, the whole area seems a little tired.

The drive back west
Not far out of Indianola, I noticed a sizable industrial plant that was surrounded by a formidable fence and had a gate and a guard - and didn't have a sign of any kind.  No ID at all.  So I looked it up online - looked at a Google aerial map and found that the building belongs to Indi-Bel/Delta Western Research Center.  They say they make animal feed, but I think that means they do research into better food for farmed catfish, which I actually thought was interesting.  Farming fish of any species begets all kinds of problems, from the environmental damage done by fish swimming around in a small enclosed area with uneaten food and bodily wastes dropping to the bottom of the pond, to diseases the fish themselves get while they grow to the right size in a small enclosed area swimming above wastes.  Apparently this research company is trying to solve those problems, and I'm all for that.  So odd, though, all the high security measures if this is what they're doing.

I passed a Mennonite church, which surprised me because I think of them as having settled almost entirely in the northern half of the US.

The roads continue to be straight and flat along vast acres of fields - probably cotton.

That flatness allowed me to see a long way ahead on the road, so I could easily see in the distance the blue flashing lights of a state trooper's car.  I noticed how effective that "move over for flashing lights" campaign has been when the truck in front of me and the 2 cars behind me all pulled into the far lane well before the stopped cop car.  Ten years ago, most drivers wouldn't have bothered; now it's close to 100%.

I've been seeing lots of egrets all over.  Some are obviously Great Egrets that are 39" tall.  But lots of them are much smaller and I'm not getting a good enough look at them to try and tell which species they are.  Both Snowy Egrets and juvenile Little Blue Herons are 24" tall and both might be in this general area.

juvenile Little Blue Heron

Snowy Egret

An adult Little Blue Heron is all purpley-blue, but the young ones are often whiter than this photo shows.

The Snowy Egret can fluff up its head feathers to an impressive display, but when not in breeding season often looks a little ordinary.  You can see their legs are different colors, and that's usually what I use to tell them apart.  But when they're standing out in a field or flying away from the RV, it's not so easy to see those details.  Whatever they are, I sure see a lot of them around here.

I'm starting to see blooming japonica and realized it is, in fact, January when it starts blooming in Texas too.

I drove back into Greenville to a grocery store and liquor store and stumbled on a surprising historical marker titled First Legal Liquor Store.  It's on a busy road and would have been hard to take a photo of, and there aren't any uncopyrighted ones online.  But you can see it at this link - check out the date of the store.  Apparently even Utah allowed public sales before Mississippi, which makes it surprising they even allow beer to be sold in grocery stores now.   https://www.hmdb.org  Close to half of MS's counties are still dry, and MS is one of 3 US states where all counties are dry unless they actively choose to become wet.  You know, a state's liquor laws may be one of the clearest factors showing that state's individuality and identity.  This is such an odd country we live in.

I'd planned to stop on the way back to the RV park and pick up some hot tamales from Hot Tamale Heaven which, I heard on NPR last year, has some of the state's best.  But by the time I got in the neighborhood, it was only 2:00, I was still full from lunch, dinner was hours away, and I knew the tamales wouldn't taste the same a few hours from now, so I missed my chance.  A reason to come back to the area.

Mississippi - Day 23

Delta Village Mobile Home and RV Park
Thursday, 23 January 2020

We spent the day in the "campground" along with torrential rains for much of the day.  The ground was already really waterlogged, and after a few hours of this weather we were nearly floating.  There was standing water everywhere.

This establishment is, as its name says, primarily a mobile home park.  It's quite large and well-kept.  They insist on no noise and low speeds.  The mobile home part of it is gated, so I guess they take security seriously.  At the gate there's an electronic sign that flashes constantly: to refer others and get $100; to keep the water connection dripping because of frost forecasts; to drive 12 mph; to remember that Jesus loves you and that God accepts trade-ins (I swear).  I know what it says because my site is at the end of the RV park row which is just before the gate, so that sign flashes into my living room day and night.

The entire park runs off a single road that runs like a spine into the park, though with bones branching off only on one side - the other side is a wild field.  So all the mobile homes sit along 1st St., 2nd St., 3rd St., and so forth, maybe 10 to a road, with each of those roads dead-ending at a mobile home.  There's no sidewalk along any of these roads, so walking the dogs is a challenge.

There's no shoulder on any road, which are just barely 2 lanes wide.  To keep the dogs out of the way of oncoming traffic, I have no choice but to step off the road - and on to the extremely soggy muddy ground.  The dogs say it's unpleasant for them, and even with my rubber boots I don't care for it much. 

The folks who live here actually live here, and they all leave for work spread over a couple of hours in the morning.  Five school buses come through the gate morning and afternoon to pick up and drop off schoolkids.  It's an extremely busy road at almost any hour of the day.

The alternative is to walk away from the gate toward the office and a few efficiencies and a "laundry mat" and large gravel area they rent out for trucks to park in.  That would normally be a fine alternative except with this weather, almost the whole area is underwater.  The puddles are so big they're nearly ponds and are several inches deep.

They're charging me $25/night cash or check only.  I didn't waste time trying to find another place to go, though, because I already know from when I found this place that there's almost nothing else in this area.  I guess campers don't want to come to the Mississippi Delta.

But there are lots of Robins that are all singing like it's Spring, so that's really nice.

I don't know if the campground has a wifi signal - they didn't tell me about one - but my hotspot gets a good strong signal so that's fine.  And I've only seen maybe 3 other dogs while I've been here, which is also fine.

But it's a weird place.

Mississippi - Day 22 - to Clarksdale (Blues Museum) and Greenville

Delta Village Mobile Home and RV Park, Leland
Wednesday, 22 January 2020

today's route

As you can see from the map, I drove across most of MS and down close to half of it, stopping partway along in Clarksdale to visit the Delta Blues Museum.

Along the drive
At 9:00 on Wednesday mornings on MS Public Broadcasting, there's a program called Fix It 101, with a local amateur handyman and a professional contractor answering people's questions about home repairs.  Today I learned that before a slab foundation is poured, after the ground is prepared for the pouring, termite treatment is spread across the whole area the foundation will go on.  It's got a green color added to make it easy for the building inspectors to see that the treatment's been spread.  The reason for it is that termites can work their way through the concrete slab and cause trouble with the rest of the building.  Did you know this?  It would never have occurred to me to be possible.

I also heard that MS's DeSoto County has just declared itself a safe haven for Second Amendment rights.  This is the Mississippi county that's immediately south of Memphis, and I'm sure it makes Memphis a little nervous.  They wanted to use the word "sanctuary" but decided it would sound too much like they were encouraging illegal aliens so they went with "safe haven."  They were inspired to act by the Virginia legislature considering new laws that: (1) require universal background checks on gun sales, (2) limit people to 1 handgun purchase per month, and (3) allow localities to ban guns in certain public areas.  In DeSoto County, as in other places that have passed similar measures, they see VA's measures as being a step away from confiscating guns.  I heard this news as I was driving through DeSoto County and was glad my visit here would be brief; universal possession of firearms doesn't make me feel safe.

I passed through Senatobia ("The 5 Star City") and Looxahoma.  MS has lots of towns with names like these.

I passed a sign saying I was in the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area.  Having no idea what that sign meant, I looked it up and wish I'd known about it before I came to the area.  This website says it's one of 49 such sites designated by Congress to preserve the landscape, culture and history of the region.   http://www.msdeltaheritage.com

you can see the blue water even in the distance

The part of the MS landscape I'm seeing here looks like it has a really bad drainage problem.  I'd heard that the soil in the Delta is particularly fertile, which means to me it drains water well enough to keep plants healthy.  If that's the case, then either the soil has changed or they've had way way too much rain, because there's standing water everywhere, particularly in the crop fields.  I saw several crop fields that were actually covered by a lake of standing rainwater.  At first I thought there really was a pond there, until I saw rows of crops disappearing into a large pond of water.

looks like a lake in the middle of the fields, right?

I passed acres and acres of crop fields, which I'm guessing will mostly have cotton in them, and I saw a lot of cotton still on the plants here and there.

I saw a fairly sudden shift from the hill country of the northeastern part to flat flat land in the northwest.  I'm assuming it's flat because of the Mississippi River.

I passed a row of largish brick houses all built at the same time.  Only one had a big fenced front yard - and that's the only one where the yard was inches deep in rainwater.  I guess the other yards sloped down to that one, but it almost looked like a fenced-in lake.

I spent all day dodging various critters: a squirrel that froze in my lane; a buzzard that didn't want to move; people crossing the road to their mailboxes; a Great Blue Heron that flew up out of a roadside pond and into the roadway; several dogs.  At one spot 2 dogs crossed the road and one of them stopped in my lane and looked back where he'd come from and I was really glad I'd slowed down far enough away to not have to screech my tires for him.

I must have passed by a town called Little Texas (wasn't there one in Alabama too?) because I saw the Little Texas Baptist Church.

I passed one of those irrigation systems that rolls around crop fields to spread water (clearly unnecessary right now) and this one was lying on its side.  It was an unusually long one so I passed maybe 20 legs with wheels sticking up into the air, like a centipede lying on its side.

Clarksdale

what's at the crossroads (online photo)

Of course I had to go by the Blues Crossroads, the place that commemorates the myth that legendary blues guitarist Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his talent.  If so, the Devil didn't wait very long for payback because Johnson died at the incredibly young age of 27, possibly by poisoning in connection with the affair he was having.   Here's some explanation.   https://clarkhouse.info/crossroads

I'd intended to stop at Hicks Famous Hot Tamales on the way to the blues museum - hot tamales seem to be a big deal in the MS Delta so I thought I should try them - but the directions Google gave me took me to a deserted building, so I went on.

Those same directions next insisted I go down 2nd Street, and maybe there is a 2nd Street somewhere in Clarksdale, but it's sure not where Google said it would be.  There's a 1st St. and a 3rd St. but I promise there's no 2nd St. anywhere in that neighborhood.  So I had to drive around a bit trying to figure out how to get where I wanted to go.

Delta Blues Museum

Delta Blues Museum

front of sign

It was a cold gray windy day when we were there so I had a hard time making myself give the dogs a reasonable amount of walking time.

The museum charges seniors $8 admission, and I guess I'd describe it more as a hall of fame than an explanation for the Blues music, which was what I'd been hoping for.  And they too insisted on no photos, so I was stuck taking pages of notes.

back of sign

Fortunately they did provide some background for where the Blues came from and what distinguishes it.  After the Civil War, this part of the country had rich land that sold for low prices; it produced a valuable crop that had a ready market; it had easy access to transportation via the Mississippi River; it was a pre-industrial area of the country with jobs not only in agriculture, but also in timber and in levee-building.  As a result of these conditions, newly freed blacks poured into the area in overwhelming numbers.  But the white landowners continued to dominate the area and imposed a rigid segregation between blacks and whites.

In addition to this segregation, the Delta wasn't on anybody's way to anywhere and few people traveled through the area from other parts of the country.  It became culturally isolated and the music it developed was uniquely its own.  It was free of the outside influences that blacks living in - say - Chicago might experience.  For instance, outside the Delta, African traditions were becoming passé, while in this area those traditions were kept alive.

Then in 1914, the city of Clarksdale instituted a curfew targeted at blacks - no alcohol, gambling or noise after the curfew time.  So blacks just moved their parties out of the city, either to a black-owned home or to the laborers' section of a plantation, further intensifying the isolation. 

Little of this music was recorded or even written down for decades.  In 1941-42, John Work, music director at Fisk Univ. (Nashville) and Alan Lomax, folklorist at the Library of Congress, met after learning they were both - separately - studying Delta music and culture; they became the first interracial field study in MS, recording many classic artists like Muddy Waters.

The museum gave brief profiles for a long list of Blues musicians: Johnnie Billington, RL Burnside, "Little" Milton Campbell, Gus Cannon, Sam Carr, Sam Chatmon, Eddie "The Chief" Clearwater, Sam Cook, Cedell Davis, EB Davis, David "Honeyboy" Edwards, WC Handy, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Jimmy "Duck" Holmes, Eddie "Son" House, Robert Johnson, Paul "Wine" Jones, BB King, Charlie Musselwhite, Samuel Joseph Myers, Don Nix, Charley Patton, Joe Willie "Pinetop" Perkins, Otis Rush, Koko Taylor, James "Son" Thomas, Big Mama Thornton, Artie "Blues Boy" White, "Big Joe" Williams, Johnny Winter and more.

They had a lot of information about Muddy Waters (born McKinley Morganfield) and a long quote, some of which went:

You don't have to have a white face to be a gentleman and up to date with what you're doing.  You can be ... any color, but you've got to carry yourself in a way that people know that you're it.  They might say I can't play or can't sing, but damn it, they'll say I'm a gentleman.  

I'm an intelligent blues singer.  People should hear the pure blues - the blues we used to have when we had no money.

This Wikipedia site gives a lot of information about the Blues that wasn't in the museum.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Blues   On the other hand, the museum has several videos playing in different areas at the same time that tell stories about what life was like for some of the folks who started the Blues back before the turn of the 20th century, so there're a lot of stories, a lot of local culture, and a lot of really good music.  They even had an exhibit about King Biscuit Time, the longest running daily radio show in history, that pioneered black radio and created and spread the reputations of black musicians.

I was glad I went though, as I said, it was a struggle for me to understand a lot of what they were talking about, since I have little history with this music.  But to me, it's like Bluegrass in that it's often a pure expression of a time and place.  Two people who came in when I did and left when I did were foreigners and were speaking maybe Polish?  Some language that sounds a little like Russian but wasn't.  I thought how amazing it is that the Blues can reach around the world.

Over to the Great River Road
I was cautious about driving this road because of the predictions of mild flooding along the river south of here, but there was no sign saying "Road Closed," so I kept going and the road was open all the way to Greenville.

I continued to pass huge crop fields, with some being dead brown and others a brilliant green.  I drove miles and miles on straight flat roadway, passing acres and acres of straight flat fields.

Most of the way I was following the levee along the river, though the river flowed sometimes nearer and others farther from the road.  I saw cows grazing right on the side of one section of levee.

I passed a sign for Bunge North America Hurricane Point and remembered that the National Weather Service warnings of imminent flooding included a note that one of the Bunge shipping yards or docks or something has been mildly flooded for the last week.

I saw chinaberry trees and an acre of white birds that I think were gulls and a huge flock of Red-winged Blackbirds.

I passed a house with a front yard that was completely outlined with dozens of old discarded tricycles.  I passed a tractor with a flat tire - for some reason I didn't think those tires went flat.

I passed Gunnison - A Small Town With A Bright Future.  I went through the fairly sizable town of Rosedale, where most houses had many windows and likely great cross-ventilation, having all been built long before air conditioning was invented.  Rosedale is the home of the Great River Road State Park, that is now open only for day use because its campground was under 6' of water during the terrible MS River flooding in 2011.

The forecast rain was starting up at this point, making me hope the Greenville area wasn't going to be dealing with flooding this year.

I suddenly discovered a desperate need to pull off the road because Dexter had vomited on both Gracie and the dog bed she was lying on.  Fortunately, less than a mile away I came across the Visitor Center for Winterville Mounds and spent 20 minutes or so using up a lot of patience and paper towels trying to clean up the mess on both the dog and the bed.

By the time I could notice where I was, it seemed too late to pay the site a visit.  It's only 8 miles north of Greenville, though, and I hope I'm able to get back over here before leaving the area.  There were originally 23 mounds, and almost half of them have been leveled in farming and road building.  The site still has 12, though, one of them as tall as a 5-story building and among the 10 tallest in the US.  They're thought to date back as far as 1000 AD.  For more information, here's a link about them.   http://www.mdah.ms.gov/winterville-mounds

I passed a sign saying Greenville is a Certified Mississippi Team City but have no idea what that's about.

I passed a billboard advertising Dickey's "Legit. Texas. Barbecue."

I passed a motel called the Country Inn, with a sign saying it's a place "for nicer people."

All along Route 1, which is what I'd been driving since Clarksdale, I saw the levee lining the Mississippi River.  I was reminded that I'd heard it called the Great Wall of Mississippi because of being higher and longer than the Great Wall of China.  In fact, some think it might be the biggest thing man ever made.  It was built in response to the devastating flood of 1927, intended to reduce future flooding; unfortunately, it seems to have increased flooding.  This Wikipedia article is pretty interesting and includes not just information about the levee but also about the stunning discrimination shown to the black residents of the area and the odd political results of these events.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Great-Mississippi-Flood-of-1927

And then I turned inland a few miles east of Greenville to the town of Leland, where I have reservations for a few nights.

Mississippi - Day 21 - Oxford and Holly Springs

Wall Doxey State Park
Tuesday, 21 January 2020

I had more maintenance work to do today - this time on the RV - and I wanted to go by the Ida B. Wells Museum that I'd missed yesterday.

today's route

The drive south
I crossed the Tallahatchie River, of Ode to Billy Joe fame.  This bridge isn't the one in Bobbie Gentry's song, though.  That one (until vandals burned it) was farther downriver near the tiny town of Money, where Emmett Till was lynched in 1955, helping spark the Civil Rights movement. The bridge I crossed has a historical marker that says it's where the Southern army retreating from Corinth set up a line of defense, intending to take on Grant's army again.  But when Union cavalry coming from Arkansas surprised them on their west flank, they retreated still farther.  (There's a lot of American history hanging around the rural state of Mississippi.)

At the village of Abbeville (pop. 412), I saw a large sign declaring it the home of Peggie and Jennifer Gillom.  I had to look them up and learned that they were sisters who practically created the women's basketball program at Ole Miss in the mid-80s.  This link gives a little more information on why the town's so proud of them and why Ole Miss named a gym after them.   https://hottytoddy.com/gillom-sisters  That "hotty toddy" business, by the way, is something unique to Ole Miss and apparently is used a little like "Hook 'Em Horns" or "Gig 'Em Aggies" is used.  I saw references to it all over Oxford.

Oxford
I'd noticed my memory stirring when I heard the name of this town, and it turns out there are several reasons.  It was the hometown of William Faulkner; it's currently the home of John Grisham; and most notably for football fans, it's the location of the University of Mississippi, known as "Ole Miss."

That school is itself memorable as being the place where in 1962, in defiance of a federal court ruling, the school refused to enroll James Meredith because he was black.  When JFK secretly negotiated a deal with the governor to allow Meredith in, a race riot ensued.  Three thousand white folks attacked the federal marshals and state highway patrol officers who were escorting Meredith to the school, pelting them with rocks, bricks, and gunfire.  Two people were killed before the US Army and federalized MS National Guardsmen restored order.

The town is apparently much more peaceful and orderly today.  There are about 24,000 residents here, and as far as I can tell this is 100% a college town.  The little bit of the campus I saw is attractive - I'd have liked to drive around a bit but there were students everywhere and I really didn't know enough about the school to appreciate what I'd have seen and (more importantly) to not get lost.

Oxford City Hall

I can tell you, though, that the Righteous Brothers will be in town soon.  I didn't realize they were still performing, or that college-age folks appreciated their music.

I stumbled across the city hall and was surprised at the way it looks.  In person it actually looks a lot older than this internet photo shows - very Gothic-looking.  It's right across the street from a very unimpressive county courthouse.

After driving around town a bit, I went to the only place in the area that I found to sell me propane.  It was a tiny business buried behind a Chevron station, that did auto repairs, rented out U-Hauls, and sold propane.  There were 3 fat white guys sitting around an inner office and a thin black guy sitting in the outer office, and guess which one pumped the propane for me.  Nice guy, though.

I drove back up the road, past the campground, to Holly Springs.

Holly Springs
A town of about 8,000, Holly Springs looks like a place of early prosperity that time has since passed on by.  Rust College (since 1866), affiliated with the Methodist Church, is one of the oldest historically black colleges in the country.  Tyson Drug (since 1857) and JC Levy (since 1858), "Store of Quality," are both located on the courthouse square.

Marshall County Courthouse

To the right is the courthouse itself that sits in the center of the town square.  I can't find any information about when it was built, but I'm guessing in the 1850s because that's when Spires Boling, the architect, did most of his work in MS.  (See below for information about his house.)  From the courthouse you can see there was once, at least, some grandeur about this town.

Not without difficulty, I located the only place in the area that said they could change the oil in my RV (everybody else said their doors were too low to fit us inside).  This place said no problem, they'd do it outside.  I said did you notice it's not far above freezing? and they said they did a lot of their work outside anyway so I wouldn't be any different.  And they did my oil change in the alley beside their office.  An active alley, too, because while I sat there, several cars squeaked by me.

One man about my age stopped as his car passed us to ask about my Texas license plate and where I was going next.  He told me he'd lived in Holly Springs all his life and in recent years he's been watching the nice old houses slowly sink into the ground, because it's so soggy here now.  He told me the MS Delta, where I'm going next, is even soggier and that I'd find whole towns boarded up and half abandoned.  Cheerful fellow with an uncheerful batch of information.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett Museum
I can't remember now where I'd heard about her, but she seems to have been a remarkable woman and I wanted to find out more.  The museum is in what's called the Spires Bolling House, built before the Civil War - possibly by Ida's father who was a carpenter for Spires Boling (different spelling is per Wikipedia), the owner of both the house and Mr. Wells and his family.

Spires Bolling House

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Ms. Wells was born into slavery in 1862, orphaned at 16 by the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878, and grew up to be an investigative journalist and a well-known advocate for the rights of African-Americans.

This photo, which is the one most commonly used for her, gives no hint of the fire inside her for justice and equality.  Her tongue was as sharp as her spirit, which cost her leadership positions and almost cost her her life.  This link gives some detail about her life.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Ida-B.-Wells

Not long after her parents died, she moved to Memphis, where she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the train; she won her lawsuit against the railroad only to have the TN Supreme Court overturn it.  She taught public school until authorities discovered she'd written critical newspaper articles about the black schools in the segregated school system; they fired her.

In 1892, a friend of hers was lynched for not much more than being the black owner of a grocery store that the white owner of another grocery store believed was competition.  Ms. Wells began investigating other lynchings and learned they often had an equally spurious rationale.  She found one where a white father insisted that a white mob lynch a black man who was having a consensual sexual relationship with the man's daughter; he said it was to save his daughter's reputation.  In response, Ms. Wells wrote an editorial for the paper she worked for that said:

Nobody ... believes the old threadbare lie that Negro men assault white women.  If Southern white men are not careful they will over-reach themselves and a conclusion will be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women.

She was out of town when a white mob burned the newspaper office, and she instantly moved from Memphis to Chicago.  The main Memphis newspaper ran the incident as a front page story and demanded "the black wretch who had written that foul lie" should be tied to a stake and publicly burned.

She challenged the claim by Southern whites that the only people who were lynched were criminals, and she did it with facts she uncovered by investigation.  She saw lynching (correctly) as attempting to complete what the Civil War had tried to enshrine: the subjugation of black people to white people.

Throughout the 1920s she continued to campaign for the rights of blacks and of women, several times running unsuccessfully for political office; she continued these activities right up to her death by kidney cancer in 1931 at age 68 - and given her unpopular activities, it's remarkable she managed to live that long.

The museum also had an exhibit about slavery, explaining that all the cotton gin did was separate the seeds from the fiber.  Farmers still needed a person to clear the fields, plant the cotton, tend the plants and pick the crop.  By 1860, although most Southern farmers grew cotton, only 25% owned black people; most of that 25% owned as few as 2-4 people; only about 2,000 farmers in the South owned 100 or more enslaved people.  Unsurprisingly, these elite were the ones with the most power and influence.

There was also an exhibit about the 1878 Yellow Fever Epidemic that had taken Ms. Wells's parents and a brother.  At that time no one knew the disease was spread by mosquitoes, which is how it became an epidemic.

More than 400 residents of Holly Springs died - far too many to dig separate graves for them.  They were buried in 4 mass graves.  Oddly, sometime during the 1970s a groundskeeper got tired of mowing up and down the mounds and leveled them.  (I'm assuming doing that would have uncovered bones and it sounds a grisly process.  And I'd say that groundskeeper needed a vacation.)

The museum's executive director, Rev. Leona Harris, and a volunteer were working at the museum when I was there, getting exhibits ready for an upcoming show, I think she said.  In addition to the exhibits about Ms. Wells, the museum has a gallery of African and African-American art, a rotating display of art works by featured artists, and a genealogy room with information about local families.  They have an annual festival and offer a number of other services to the area.  It sounds like they're kept very busy.

I was frustrated because they don't allow photography there, and I mostly use photos as a supplement to my increasingly leaky memory.  But when I said something to Rev. Harris about not being able to remember things any more, she corrected me - said it wasn't that I couldn't do something but that I found it challenging to do it.  She said looking at things that way had been a big help to her and hoped it would be for me as well.  Good idea.

I hadn't been able to fit the RV into their tiny parking area and there was no street parking, but I found a park behind the house and, after I left the museum, the dogs and I walked around there for a bit.  Nice older part of town.

Mississippi - Day 20 - Corinth and west

Wall Doxey State Park, Holly Springs
Monday, 20 January 2020

today's route

Today being Martin Luther King Day, many places were closed, but I was surprised that the National Park Service facility in Corinth was open, so that's where I went.

it was quite cool this morning

On the road
Between Tupelo and Corinth, I passed the town of Saltillo, which I'd thought was in northern Mexico, not northern Mississippi.  And it turns out that the MS version was named for the Mexico version, though I don't know why.  The town's slogan: Where "Away From It All" Is Closer Than You Think!"

I also passed a town named Guntown, which they think was named for an early settler named Gunn, but if that's so, why do they spell it with only 1 "n"?  So many things I'll never know.

I passed a Euclatubba Road, which I thought an odd combination of ideas.  And I passed a road called Suitor's Crossing, which conjures all kinds of images.

I passed lots of cotton fields and a sod farm.

On the radio I heard the Pun of the Day: "Did you hear about the guy who fell into the Infinity Pool?  It took him forever to get out."

Google's bizarre instructions took me out of my way by about half the town, so I got to drive around a bit (old town, looks like it's seen better days, but maybe I just didn't see the nice section).  If I'd followed the town's signs, I'd have gotten to the NPS site in about 3 blocks.

Corinth Civil War Interpretive Center
Since I don't seem to retain information for very long any more, I hadn't realized until I saw their literature that I'd already learned a lot about this place when I was in Tennessee, at the Shiloh National Battlefield.  I've looked back at what I posted about that visit, and I'm actually impressed with what an accurate job I did describing what was happening both at Shiloh and here at Corinth, 22 miles away.

That post was on 27 November 2019, and it's so complete I won't bother repeating much of that information here but instead suggest you go back and take a look to understand what I saw there and here as well.

Probably the main difference is that the focus here was on Corinth and the war from the perspective of the town.  They also have a fairly decent summation of the background of the Civil War that I didn't put in my November post, so I'll put a little of that here.

Where the US stood in 1860:

the North had a paid workforce and a diversified economy;
the South had slave workers and an economy based on cotton, sugarcane & rice

transportation & freight: the North had a vast interconnected system;
the South had independent lines from agricultural centers to nearby ports

population: the North was far more urban than the South (still is)

With all these stark differences, and the resulting differing social and political structures, it's unsurprising the North and South would, by 1860, have developed different ideas about what the United States should be like.  Those differences are best encapsulated in their ideas about slavery.

The United States in 1860

Another reason the South wanted to expand slavery to new states was to keep the balance of power between the North and South; they expected the North to abolish slavery if they ever had a majority in Congress (and they may have been right).

compromises dating back to the Constitution

no 1860 presidential candidate had nationwide support

When Lincoln won the election, the South believed (wrongly at the time) that he'd abolish slavery and refused to have him as president.

The beginning of MS's declaration of secession explains the thinking.

The siege of Corinth:
After the staggering loss of life at Shiloh (23,700+ including dead, wounded, missing on both sides), Union troops under Maj. Gen. Halleck advanced the 22 miles from Shiloh toward Corinth (where Southern troops had retreated).  They built miles of corduroy roads, dug many tiers of trenches, established communication systems, and moved supplies.  The result was a month-long siege of Corinth.

By May 28th, CSA Gen. Beauregard noted his supply lines had been cut, 3 Union armies were about 1,000 yards away with cannons, and he was seriously outnumbered: the Union  had brought in 111,000 men while he had 70,000 and no hope of reinforcements.  He ordered his army to retreat to Tupelo, leaving the critical rail crossing at Corinth in Union hands.

The battle of Corinth:
The following October, CSA Maj. Gen. VanDorn decided to retake Corinth.

his rationale

the 2 days of battle

7,200 casualties from this battle, following the 23,700 in Shiloh

The result of the Union's decisive hold on Corinth:
With the Confederate army seriously weakened in MS and the transportation hub of Corinth firmly in the Union's grasp, Gen. Grant was free to take aim at Vicksburg, where the South commanded the Mississippi River.  It took 9 months and a vicious siege of the town, but in July 1863, Vicksburg too fell to the Union.  Five days later, the last Southern hold on the Mississippi River at Port Hudson, LA, surrendered and the river was controlled by the Union.

Gen. VanDorn counted the cost of winning, but not that of losing, and the decisive loss of Corinth was a turning point of the war.

Other thoughts:
In early 1862, Gen. Braxton Bragg apparently believed the Union army was composed of mercenaries and slaves or indentured men, unable to choose whether to fight for the North.

"the mercenary invader who pollutes the sacred soil of our beloved country"

If this belief was widely held among Southerners, I find it less surprising that they'd expect a quick victory from the Civil War.  Without wishing to take away for a second the bravery and spirit of those fighting for the Confederacy, they still seemed to place inordinate faith in the superiority of Southern aristocracy and to scorn what they believed to be lack of skill and enthusiasm in the Union troops.

The South was relying, with reason, on their troops to defend their homes, but they were so quick to tear the Union apart, they seemed unable to believe that Northerners passionately wanted to keep the Union together.

And yet again I'm appalled at the utter waste of life to support a system that relied entirely on the enslavement of human beings.

I'll go to the Visitor Center at Vicksburg to see the end of this campaign, and then I think I'll have seen enough carnage and futility to last me a lifetime.

Back on the road
Southeast of Corinth is a town named Iuka, which I've been thinking is a mistake or a typo or a joke.  That's capital I, u-k-a.  Today I learned that it's pronounced, logically, eye-OO-kah.

From Corinth I went due west for a while along Route 72, where I mostly saw 2 small herds of horses, low hills and straight road.

I'd intended to stop at the Ida B. Wells Museum in Holly Springs, but I just wasn't up to it today.  Just walking the dogs is a challenge in this very cold, windy weather, and that Civil War museum took a lot out of me.  I'll see about Ms. Wells tomorrow.

Tonight's campground is in a state park 7 miles south of Holly Springs.

Mississippi - Days 17 & 18 & 19

Campground at Barnes Crossing
Friday, 17 and Saturday, 18 and Sunday, 19 January 2020

I've been finding myself increasingly desperate to have some catch-up time, time to do laundry and deal with being a week behind in my blog and just generally regroup.

It's remarkable how long it takes to figure out where to go next.  A number of the attractions I wanted to visit turn out to be permanently closed or too expensive or not nearly as interesting (according to their online information) as I'd thought.  And then there's the problem of finding places to stay.  Given that MS is in the Deep South, I'd have thought snowbirds would be wanting to stay here so there'd be plenty of campgrounds.

Campgrounds
What I've found is that there are plenty of state campgrounds, and plenty of private places along the coast, but there are few private places in the rest of the state.  The state campgrounds have been fine but their remote locations make me think they're unlikely to have wifi access, which I need.  And most campgrounds of either type are quite small.  This one I'm in is relatively large - with only 54 sites.  It's hard for my dogs in a small campground because there's simply no place for them to walk - except maybe around and around in a circle (not likely to keep their interest), so that's limited my choices.

For these reasons, I've found myself staying here an extra night beyond the three I'd already planned.  This place has laundry facilities (2 washers & 2 dryers) and really good showers.  But they've only got 2 bathrooms for the entire campground and, though each one contains 2 toilet stalls and 2 shower stalls, one of those bathrooms is out of order.  Leaving only 1 bathroom for everybody to use.  The campground warns people in bold letters to lock the door for privacy - so exactly one person in the campground can use the facilities at a time.  Every time I've thought about taking a shower I look over and see a line of folks waiting to pee.  Screwy.

And unusually, they don't accept credit cards - cash or check only.  But they'll take checks from anywhere in the US, so I didn't have to use up my dwindling stash of cash, which I can't replenish until Louisiana.

Still, their wifi signal is strong, their sites are mostly level, and it's big enough for us to walk maybe a quarter mile at a time - if we cover every part of the campground.  No fenced-in dog park so they have to have leashes on always.

On top of which, the campground is right next to a field of horses that often spend hours standing near the fence staring into the campground.  I have to be really careful to walk the dogs in such a way that they can't see the horses, which is tricky.

They have a huge number of bird feeders around the campground, and they keep them filled.  Mostly I've seen sparrows and chickadees - Carolina Chickadees are the only ones that should be here, according to the bird book.  These are definitely Southern chickadees - they use contractions.  Lots of them don't bother to say all of chick-a-dee-dee-dee, which the bird book says this type says.  Instead, these often say just dee-dee-dee-dee-dee: just because they're using contractions doesn't mean they're not chatterboxes.

Near the office they also have a very large number of wind chimes of various kinds.  My site is right across from the office and, because of all the wind we've had lately, these chimes have actually kept me awake at night.

They have several of these made from bottles with a clapper made of the lid of a can.  I thought it was a nice change from the usual wind chime types, and probably easy to make if you have something to cut off the bottom of a bottle.

License Plate

This is the current official state license plate.  Mississippi comes out with a new design every 5 years and, unlike most states, they seem to replace the old ones quickly.  In many states - Texas is one - you'll see designs being used that haven't been current for years, though the plates are still valid.  This MS plate design came out only a year ago and already it's very nearly the only one I've seen - the previous version is almost all out of use.

MS has plenty of specialty plates, but most folks are using the regular state plate.

While we've been here
Yesterday I saw first a fire truck, then an ambulance leave the campground.  I hadn't noticed them come, but they left right in front of us so we all saw them.  I hope whichever camper had the medical problem is okay.  It's odd that this is the 3rd time in about 3 weeks I've seen emergency workers come into a campground for a medical situation.  The first was that strange place in Alabama that I left without using all I'd paid for - an ambulance followed me into that campground when I first got there; then there was that place on the MS coast where 4 police cars came for one of the campers; now here.  I'm really sorry others are having problems and very glad it's not me.  I suppose I should have expected to see them before now since so many campers are older folks, likely with more health problems than the average population sample.

We had a couple of days of rain - sometimes quite heavy - and I started finding leaks in the RV's cabin.  I've forgotten how many months it's been since I discovered I no longer have a TV antenna, but I've been counting my blessings that it's never leaked.  Well, I guess it finally reached its saturation point because it was definitely dripping with this very hard rain.  And I can't tell you how sorry I am about that because now I'll have to do something about it.  And the window in the ceiling in the bathroom has a very slow drip, though I haven't figured out where that's coming from.  Bad enough that the dogs wait until they come inside to shake all the rain off - especially Gracie, who's a sponge.  But to add to that, rain coming inside on its own?  Not so great.

And starting last night, we're having plummeting temperatures - only past freezing last night but expected into the low 20s for the next couple of nights.  I've been a little worried about road conditions because I'm planning to go farther north in the morning, but the owner here assured me that the roads would have dried up by then so there wouldn't be any ice on them tomorrow.

But all this weather is bringing uncertainty to my travel plans.  I intended to spend all next week traveling in the Mississippi Delta region, but on the weather report yesterday, the National Weather Service started showing warnings of flooding along the Mississippi River.  I'd wanted to drive along the Great River Road, which I've done in every river-bordering state since Wisconsin, but now I'm wondering if the river will be coming to meet me instead.  Worse still is the fact that most campgrounds in that area are on the river.  I can't make reservations until I call to see how likely they think it is that the campground will be flooded - and they've been closed all weekend.

I'm really glad I took the extra day here in the campground.  Usually I tell myself I'll take the time to get things caught up and then kick myself because I didn't get everything done, and it turns out I just hadn't allowed myself enough time.  This time, I did.  And I've finally done everything I wanted to do.  I did the laundry and swept the floors and caught up my blog posts and figured out where I want to go for the next several days and washed the dishes - just stuff.  But stuff I've never allowed myself time to do all of.  It's a novel feeling.

Mississippi - Day 16 - to Tupelo

Campground at Barnes Crossing, Tupelo
Thursday, 16 January 2020

I was getting really tired and more than a little upset about being so far behind in my blog.  I could pick up a wifi signal here and, given the low price, thought seriously about staying here another night.  But after walking the dogs this morning I realized there's just not enough room here for us.  I'd thought I could take them down that access road between the campground and the highway, but even though it's a dead-end road and I saw almost nothing past this campground, there's traffic on it.  The cars I saw move quickly and there's no place at all to get off the road - both sides of the road slope down sharply into drainage ditches.

But after I spent an hour trying to find a larger campground likely to have wifi access near Corinth, which is where I want to go next, or Holly Springs or Oxford (where I want to go after Corinth), I realized there isn't anything like that past Tupelo, about halfway between here and Corinth.  And the one I found charges $40 a night, which is more than I wanted to pay.  But I walked the dogs around the campground once again and realized we couldn't possibly stay there another 24 hours - there just wasn't room enough for them - so I called up Tupelo for a reservation.

today's route

On the road
On Thursdays at 10 AM, MS Public Broadcasting airs a program called "Auto Correct," featuring a "lady auto mechanic."  Every time they say that - and they say it often - my teeth just grate.  It's an interesting program, she seems generally knowledgeable about auto mechanics, and lots of people - men and women - call in from all over to ask questions about their cars.

Later on Thursdays, they air a program called "Southern Remedy - Kids and Teens."  This is hosted by Dr. Morgan McLeod, an internist in adolescent medicine and pediatrician in Jackson.   Her voice is a high little-girl sort of voice, which made me question her expertise for the first half-hour I listened to her program, but she seems very knowledgeable and does a good job of handling the callers she gets.  Today's program was generally about headaches and I actually heard a caller say, "Queen Elizabeth showed me how to cure my headache - take off my crown and put an ice pack on my head."  He really said that.

As you can tell by me talking about these radio programs, there's not a whole lot to look at while driving through Mississippi, even on regular highways and not interstates or the Natchez Trace Parkway.  I'm seeing a lot of cropland in this part of the state but have no idea what crops they'll be planting here.  I think MS is still primarily an agricultural state; even Wikipedia mentions only a few car factories under "industrialization."

This fact seems to be at least partly a result of the state constitution the then-Democrats (now Republicans) passed in 1890 when Reconstruction troops pulled out: among other things, it discouraged corporate industrial development and encouraged rural agriculture.  Operating under this system for decades, MS hasn't had much chance to pull itself out.

Putting all their eggs in one basket became a serious problem during repeated flooding events over the course of subsequent decades, followed by severe drought during the Depression.  On top of that was the boll weevil wreaking havoc with cotton crops across the South.  I can't tell that MS ever thought about diversifying into - say - peanuts as Alabama and Georgia farmers did.

All of that is a long way of saying these croplands are probably planted with cotton in the spring.  And in fact I've been passing several large cotton fields with lots of cotton still in them.

I passed by the town of Egypt which, it turns out, is one of 2 towns in MS named Egypt.  The other is over south of Greenwood, a ways north of Jackson.  When I looked them up I found that Wikipedia has no information at all about the 2nd one, other than that it exists, and the only thing they say about the one I encountered is that it was devastated by several major tornadoes in 2011.

Having just said MS doesn't have much manufacturing, I'll say I passed a plant labeled HSM Solutions, which turns out to manufacture plastic stuff - packaging and toys and things.

A little farther along I passed Morgan Fabrics, a fabric maker with offices in Los Angeles, Shanghai and (drum roll!) tiny Shannon, MS.  And in Tupelo I saw Gum Tree Fabrics, a wholesale fabric distributor worldwide.

Tupelo area
My first stop in town was to a recycling center.  This time I'd taken the precaution of calling the city ahead of time, and the young woman assured me I could take recycling to this address.  And she was right.  Still no place for glass, but at least I got rid of the rest of my accumulation.  If it's true that Louisiana has places that accept glass, they're going to get quite a range from me next month - everything from tiny mustard jars to wine bottles.  They've been stacking up for a month now, since Dec. 15th in Auburn, AL, and there's still 2 weeks left in this month.  But I felt lighter getting rid of milk jugs and papers.

Then I went back over to the Natchez Trace Parkway, because the Visitor Center has some information about the Old Natchez Trace.  I'll put that information at the bottom of this post.*

From there I went down the road a mile to a grocery store, and then on to my campground for the next 3 nights.  It seems a pleasant place, though more than I'd like to pay.  But the $40 they're asking is a long way lower than the $55 the KOA near Starkville wanted, so I guess it's all relative.

* Old Natchez Trace
The Parkway itself is 444 miles long and crosses 3 states and 4 ecosystems.  It was created in 1938 to commemorate the historic Old Trace.

The Old Trace, though, was longer and much much older.  It likely started as animal trails used for migration and to get to water and salt licks.  It's likely humans began arriving across the land bridge thousands of years ago, eventually migrating down here, but what's known for sure is that Native Americans were in this area by 700 AD. 

First the Woodlands Native culture, then the Mississippian culture, lived in this area, leaving behind Choctaw, Chickasaw and Natchez descendants.  Natives used the animal trails here, as elsewhere, and developed settlements along them.  They began using the by-then clearly marked Trace for hunting and trading among tribes.  By the time Europeans arrived in the late 1500s, the Old Trace was practically a highway.

Natchez was established in 1716 and New Orleans in 1718; they quickly became major international ports.  Farmers in the Ohio River Valley from as far away as Pennsylvania and Ohio began taking their goods down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers by flatboat.  There they'd sell not only their goods but also their boats for lumber, and then walk back home - they sure didn't want to try to pole those boats back up those powerful rivers.    These farmers were called Kaintucks, the folks in the southern ports having a mistaken impression that they were all from Kentucky.  The walk home along the Trace would take them about 4 months.

In 1800, the Trace was designated an official US Post Road.

This designation allowed mail delivery from the East Coast down to what they called "Old Southwest."  "Stands" began to appear along the route - usually rough cabins where travelers could get supplies or find food or a place to stay.  These places weren't always safe, though - in fact, traveling along the Old Trace could be dangerous because of robbers and such.  Travelers tended to go in groups for safety.

Not only was it a long walk back North, but it was a hard one - the damp heat of a Southern summer, the flies and mosquitoes, and into TN there were the foothills of the Appalachians, which only got higher as they traveled North.

Meriweather Lewis followed the Old Trace when he traveled to Washington, DC, in 1809.  Sadly, he died at one of the stands along the way, and historians are still debating whether he was a victim of suicide or murder.

Gen. Andrew Jackson used the Old Trace often himself, and used it in 1813 to march his troops from TN down to Natchez in the War of 1812, then back again to TN that same year, and again in 1815 to return home after the Battle of New Orleans.

Use of the Old Trace changed by 1830 because of the invention of the steamboat, which could take Kaintucks back upriver in a fraction of the time with much less effort.  The Trail became increasingly abandoned.

It was still used though and in 1863 Gen. Ulysses Grant, making his second attempt to secure Vicksburg, led his 40,000 troops across the MS River and along the Old Trace to come at the city from a different angle.  The subsequent siege of Vicksburg was ultimately successful.

But by the 1900s, the Old Trace was being swallowed by woodlands and wetlands.  A lengthy effort by history-minded citizens resulted in the Trace's preservation, which became official in 1938. 

It now contains 4 ecosystems and 8 major watersheds and is one of America's most diverse national parks.

I know these are had to see, but if you're interested in environmental information maybe you can enlarge them.  The photos, though, show examples of the changing terrain along the Old Trace.