Down in the Delta

Okay, so I had culture shock when I first got to Natchez, Mississippi last summer, because it seemed like a totally foreign place compared to Utah, but today I went up through the Mississippi Delta, and it seems like a totally foreign place compared to Natchez and Vicksburg! It was like a whole different country up there--different landscape, different living conditions, and even a different dialect. I have finally gotten so I could understand people in Natchez, but today when I ate lunch at the Huddle House (it's like the Waffle House restaurant), the guy at the cash register asked me something, and I couldn't understand a word. I said, "Ummm, sorry, what was that?" So he repeated himself, but I still couldn't even pick out a single word. So I just smiled and acted like I knew what he was asking me and said, "Yeah, I'm from Utah." Then he nodded and asked me something else that I couldn't understand, so I just kept up my own little conversation that I thought we were having and said, "Well, I'm working down in Natchez, so I'm just visiting up here for the day." He seemed happy about the whole conversation, so maybe I guessed right on what we were talking about.

Anyway, there's not a whole lot of stuff happening up in the Delta region. When you leave Vicksburg, you drive down a big hill, and then you can definitely tell the difference in the landscape. It's like you've crossed the threshold into a new place. Vicksburg is a wooded city with a lot of green hills and kudzu vine, but when you head into the Delta, it's completely flat, and there are cotton and corn fields as far as you can see. My first stop today was in a little town called Rolling Fork. I have a book about something called the "Rolling Fork Tragedy" about when a big cotton business caught fire back in the 1890s and killed five people. Since reading the book I've been curious to see Rolling Fork, so I drove through town today. There really wasn't much to see there--except the water tower, so I took my picture by the water tower. :-) (I'll put my pictures up tomorrow night.) Then I headed on up to Greenville. The living conditions in the Delta are incredibly poor. In some areas it was almost like what I would imagine a third-world country to look like! All of the businesses in Greenville had bars on the windows, and many of the homes too. There were policemen driving everywhere, so I'm guessing that they have a bit of a crime problem. Luckily I have my handy dandy GPS system in the car, so she helped me get to all of the places I wanted to go. I browsed around a couple of bookstores, then went driving along the Mississippi River. I was driving along at the base of the town's levee, but then I kind of got lost (despite the GPS's best efforts), and ended up on this levee maintenance road. I thought to myself, "Oh great! I'm lost on the levee!" There were all of theses "Maintenance Only! No Public Vehicles Aloud" signs along the road, but I needed to keep driving on it to get off of it, so I decided that if someone pulled me over, since I still had my ranger uniform hanging in the back of the car, I could just tell them that I'm with the National Park Service and I'm just checking up on the levee situation. :-) Luckily no one pulled me over, and I made it safely back to the paved roads of civilization.

After my levee adventures, I went over to the Winterville Mounds State Historic Site. There are a lot of Indian mounds around Mississippi--gigantic hills built by the Indians (using baskets to haul the dirt!) that were used for ceremonial purposes, and often for burials. My favorite part of the archaeology class that I took at BYU in the winter was when we talked about the Natchez Indians and the Indian mounds down near Natchez. I've been to Emerald Mound, along the Natchez Trace, as well as the Grand Village of the Natchez Indians in downtown Natchez. So, I thought it would be cool to visit the Winterville Mounds near Greenville. It was cool to walk around out there, and I wanted to climb up the main temple mound so I could have a view of the entire countryside, but the steps going up to the top (which was quite a climb) were totally overgrown with weeds and grasses that were taller than me. I realized that there could be any number of things hanging out in those grasses (snakes, swamp spiders, swamp men, chiggers, etc., etc., so I decided to forgo the journey to the top of the mound. I've been to the top of Emerald Mound, and it's bigger than any of the Winterville Mounds, so I'm good. I was glad I went out there though--it was a cool place. Then I went back into downtown Greenville and did a little antique shopping, then I headed for home. (Side note: Leland, Mississippi, which is about 10 miles from Greenville, is the birthplace of Kermit the Frog!) On my way back to Vicksburg, I went through this tiny speck of a town called Onward. Onward, Mississippi is known as the "Birthplace of the Teddy Bear" because, as legend has it, Teddy Roosevelt was on a hunting expedition in Onward, when he came upon a chained black bear and requested that the bear be freed. Somehow that started the ball rolling for the evolution of the teddy bear, and voila--the teddy bear was born! I stopped at the little Onward Country Store for dinner, and I had some of the best tamales I've ever had! I guess that this particular place is famous for its tamales--it was even featured in Esquire magazine because of its tasty tamales. I also had some sweet potato fries, and, of course, I had to try the bread pudding. I liked the bread pudding, but the sauce was really, really rich. After I was done, the waitress asked me if I liked it. I said I did, and she said, "I made it, and I put a whole half-liter of rum into the sauce!" Oh dear, that explains a lot of things. Luckily alcohol gets burned out of things when it is cooked, or else I may have gotten a DUI on the way back to the Burg! Stopping at the Onward Country Store was one of those fun eating experiences that you always remember--good food at a little po-dunk place out in the middle of nowhere. I think I'm a little bread-puddinged-out though. :-) No more of that for a while.

As I was heading towards Vicksburg, I saw this plane flying around, and it was going really fast, heading straight for the ground. I thought it was going to crash, because it had what appeared to be smoke coming out of the back of it, but then it pulled up, and I realized that it was a crop duster. Now I'm here hanging out with the kitties for the evening. Mosby has warmed up to me, so she is in here at the computer with me. She now insists that anytime she eats, I stand next to her and scratch her back while she's eating. :-) It's been a fun day, and I now feel a lot more knowledgeable about Mississippi--since I have seen a whole new side of the state. A lot of famous writers are from the Delta--Shelby Foote, Richard Wright, Walker Percy, etc. Some big Blues stars are also from the area, so it was a good cultural experience to visit the Delta.