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“We have 8,800 slots! What’s Your Hot Seat?”
“Come Check Out Our New Sports Books Collection! Just Down The Road!”
Once I get past the casinos and resorts of Tunica, Highway 61 just has the occasional county limit and CHURCH signs lining the road. Driving in Mississippi is a rare treat. Some say the state is boring, few say it’s beautiful. I’m the latter.
I’ve been down this road before. Several times. Once in a tour bus full of smelly dudes heading to the casino for a show, and another in a semi-truck barreling down, bound for Arkansas, in the pouring rain. Today, it’s winter. It’s windy as my tiny car blows around the road. Years of rough wind blowing through the flatlands have made the electric wires stand crooked. Mud-clad cotton lines the sides of the highway. The crops are out of season and all that’s left are barren coffee-colored fields which have recently flooded. The farmlands flow into the occasional swamp; the water covered in a soft layer of mysterious pink moss envelope around the cypress trees. The winter sun shines onto the highway, making everything vibrant and bright.
x
It’s been a long drive from Nashville. I collapse onto the ancient bedspread to rest my eyes. I couldn’t hear a thing except the wind blowing across the field, a flag whipping wildly in the wind. I curl up and close my eyes. Pop. I open one of my eyes. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. I guess being awoken by a shotgun is one way to be welcomed to Mississippi. Barred from possibly ever sleeping again, I sit and stare at the poster up on the wall.
“The Good Lord must love the blues, or else He wouldn’t have made life so damn hard. Can I get an Amen?”
There are 13 light bulbs in this room, but only 7 of them work. It’s dark but cozy. I’ve already ruined the tattered curtain haphazardly draped across the window and I’m thinking of how to steal the musty old floral couch. There's a small patch of cotton outside that I'm sure is only for tourists. As the rube I am, I eat it up anyway. I only have a few passing pangs of guilt. I saw the actual shacks along the road, the only home that many people will experience. Am I just capitalizing on other's misfortunes in a boutique hotel? At the very least, it’s bringing tourism and money into the state. Or at least that’s what I tell myself.
I flip through the guest book. Messages from across the globe written in one beat up notebook. Adventurous Europeans thanking the Shack Up Inn for such a grand stay while they make their way through the American south. Notes from newlyweds who spent their first days of wedded bliss in rural Mississippi. There are also quite a few Nashville residents who have visited. I roll my eyes. You’re not that bold coming here, it’s just Nashville, you dweebs. I jot down my name in the book, the first of 2019. I hesitate to say where I’m from. I don’t want to put Nashville like those other fools. I put down Ohio. Yes, everyone look at me! So adventurous! I came all they way here from Ohio! I guess in some way, I did.
x
It’s a blustery afternoon in downtown Clarksdale. You’ll cross an average 5 railroad crossings yet won’t see a train. There are giant meat smokers on every block made of wood, tin, and metal. Some are new, most are old, but I haven’t seen one yet that’s in use. Regardless, there’s a distinct aroma wafting through the air of a slab of meat roasting somewhere. Clarksdale is transitional; half-way between gentrification and poverty. I’m not sure there’s a middle. Worn down houses encircle the downtown area but there’s no shortage of guitar and record shops. There is a new-ish looking coffee shop with the typical calligraphy writing you see in almost every hipster shop in the country. Yet this one is benefitting the youths of the city. I meet a man from Dayton, Ohio. He's talking to two others who definitely don’t sound like they’re from around here either. What brought them to this place? An absolute love of blues music? To be a part of the enigmatic Delta? Selling their souls to the devil?
Every artist is familiar with the golden hour- that sweet time of day when the sun is setting and creates a warm glow. It’s a fleeting moment, but seems to last much longer here in the Deep South. How many painters and photographers have experienced a golden hour in Mississippi? There’s nothing to block the sun except a silo or two and the occasional broken down factory. Clarksdale has seen better days. Once vibrant and functioning companies are now limited to dilapidated architectures. The buildings are slowly consumed by nature; monstrous vines and kudzu devouring old bricks, creeping in and out of broken windows. The streets are littered with potholes and dips, which makes for a rough ride even at 35mph. Yet, as I tumble down Tallahatchie Street, the sun peaks out from behind the abandoned train cars and makes even the long-forgotten buildings charmingly exquisite . The sun shed a honeyed light on the barren fields and rusty cars. I love this time of day, but being here in this wonderful land makes it magical. I never want this light to disappear. Yet, the hour reaches its end, and the sky turns a sweet shade of pink and purple before everything went dark.
x
Mississippi is the poorest state in the union. It’s full of broken systems and economies, a declining population, and an ever present existence of racism. With a culturally difficult history since the Civil War, it’s easy to make assumptions about it based on statistics, without even stepping into the state. But there’s so much more to this little slice of America. An innate love for hearing and telling stories. Birthplace of Jim Henson and Kermit the Frog, William Faulkner, and BB King and America’s music. A state full of mythology as it’s where Robert Johnson traded his eternal soul for musical talent. An ethereal landscape that’s so unlike the rest of the country that it almost feels foreign.
Stars shine bright above the fields. It's bitterly cold for the south and there are no sounds except for the occasional car passing by. I sit out on the porch and think to myself of how great this is. 'I wish everyone loved Mississippi like I love Mississippi’. But then again, maybe I’ll keep it to myself; America’s best kept secret.
Good night, Mississippi.
