Trip: Day 2 (Full version)

Locations: Winona, MS; Carrollton, MS; Greenwood, MS; Money, MS

Today was our first sightseeing day and what a day it was!! Started off with breakfast in the hotel, it was perfectly fine for something that was free. We then hit the road for our first stop in Carrollton, MS. Our teacher's mother just happened to be on a trip herself and was there this morning, so we stopped by so he could see her. The town of Carrollton is VERY small and is another one of those towns that's stuck in the 1800s. Didn't really get a lot of pics, at least nothing real special, but I'll make a photobucket album or something that's linked from here so you the reader can see everything.

After leaving Carrollton, we got back on US 82, which I have to say is probably the longest road I've ever been on in my LIFE. And there is N-O-T-H-I-N-G on it except cotton, cotton, some more cotton, and some corn. It's something to see....

Cotton cotton everywhere!

Yep. All of it. Cotton. Not much has changed in the past 150 years. Except maybe that the roads are paved now and they use more machines than they do men to cultivate this land?

We continued back into Greenwood, but we went to a completely different side of Greenwood, I think we were actually in North Greenwood. And yes, there is a definite difference. Historic Downtown Greenwood was absolutely charming. We really just drove through at first, because we had two destinations outside of Greenwood. The first being Robert Johnson's grave.

Blues Trail Marker at Little Zion Church where Johnson is buried

Now, who is Robert Johnson and why did we drive almost halfway across the country to see his grave site? Well the man is really more myth and legend than he is truth. He's one of the pioneers of Delta Blues music, mixing the traditional with the outside and influencing others beyond his generation. Now here comes the myth/legend part. When he first started out, he apparently wasn't very good at playing the blues, so legend says he met the Devil at the crossroads in the Delta at midnight one night, and the Devil tuned his guitar, played a few songs for him, and returned the guitar with the assurance that he only had eight more years to live. Of course, this is complete hogwash, but Johnson did leave this area for a year and came back a completely different musician. Johnson would not live to see his music go very far, dying at the age of 27 after drinking what many think to be a poisoned bottle of whiskey from a jealous husband of a woman he had gotten a little too friendly with. I posted a video of my favorite Johnson tune back at the beginning of the blog, so go back and listen! His grave site is located in the church yard of this tiny church in the middle of nowhere and people come from all over the world to pay their respects, and to leave various tokens...

Our class left guitar picks

Our next stop was just down the road a bit, in a blip on the map named Money, Mississippi. There really isn't physically a lot to this town, but it's emotional meaning outweighs all. Money, Mississippi is the site of the Emmett Till murder in 1955. Till was a 14 year old black kid visiting family from Chicago where he had been born and raised. One day, he and his friends went into Bryant's Grocery Store, where Carolyn Bryant, wife of owner Roy Bryant was working. Till either wolf-whistled or called her "baby" and left the store. When Mr. Bryant heard of this later on, he and his brother-in-law J.W. Milam took Till from his uncle's house, beat him, shot him, then threw his body in the Tallahatchie River. Three days later, the body was found, in almost unrecognizable shape. Till's mother even left his casket open at the funeral so everyone could see what had happened to her son. Not surprisingly, the two men were acquitted, but later sold their story to a magazine, making a full confession. Till's murder was one of the catalysts for the civil rights movement in the south, where drastic changes would be made. Not much is left of the store, and the only reminder of the tragedy is a marker on a desolate road in the Mississippi Delta.

What's left of Bryant's Grocery

Marker in front of the store

This takes us up to lunch time.We headed back into Greenwood for lunch at Delta Bistro. I had the smoked chicken panini sandwich with potato salad. Can I just say right here that this place is AWESOME!! I love the decor inside, very funky, but in a classy sort of way. Oh, and the potato salad had bacon in it so YEAH that was pretty much awesome.

On a side note: they grow their herbs and greens in the alley down the side of the building, I thought this was VERY cool!

 After lunch we did some shopping around town. This is when I discovered that Viking is based out of Greenwood, primarily because the founder of Viking is from Greenwood. It's amazing that such an incredible product is based out of such a small town in the South. I've spoken with the rep for the Consumer Foods major at UGA previously, and she's mentioned that companies like this have people who test their equipment....definitely keeping that in mind....

We loaded back in the van and headed to Indianola, MS next. Our first stop was at the BB King Museum. I thought the place was great! It's housed in an old cotton gin that he used to work in when he was young. I don't have a whole lot of pictures, mainly because we couldn't take any inside the museum, but it was a really great place! Wont go into history, I'm sure most know about him, but if not, google is your friend!

I thought the museum was very well put together, and of course I don't have pictures from inside because they didn't allow them. Any blues fan should definitely make the trip!

Once we were finished there, we loaded back in the van and headed out to Charley Patton's grave. I have to admit, I'm astonished that these guys that were so important to blues music, and really to the development of American music as a whole are buried out in the middle of nowhere.

The field where Charley Patton is buried

It's amazing to me that the normal passerby (and trust me, there aren't many people that pass by these places to begin with) would know nothing about who is buried in this field. I'd call it a cemetery, but the idea of a cemetery brings to mind a little more dignity than a cotton field, don't you think? I know these guys were poor and couldn't afford anything, but it just seems strange to me.

No one would know if not for these signs

This was the end of our sightseeing for the day, so we went back to the hotel for a while to rest (Dr. Wynne had done a HUGE amount of driving by this time so he needed all the rest he could have gotten) and then back to Greenwood for supper. We ate at the Crystal Grill in Greenwood, a place that had been featured on The Best Thing I Ever Ate for its lemon ice box pie. I had my first tamale there, apparently the Delta is a big place for tamales. If this seems like a strange thing to you, it was to me too, but here is where you can read about its history in the Delta. It was fantastic!! I also had grilled shrimp, rice, lima beans, and creamed potatoes. It was all very delicious!! Our waitress was another story lol. Her name is Rivers Coleman, and she has been working at the Crystal Grill for 50 years. She was saucy, lets just put it that way.

Needless to say, after we all ate ourselves in to a food coma, we made our way back to the hotel. It was pretty late by this time, and I have to say one thing. The Delta is DARK at night. Where we were was about 3 hours from Jackson one way, and Memphis the other, so there was NO ambient light from either one. The Delta is a looooong way from suburbia that most of us are used to, no cookie cutter houses, no neighborhoods. On this night, there was little to no moon, so it was VERY dark out there. Kinda creepy, if you think about it. Who in their right mind would want to meet the Devil on a lonely Delta crossroad that late at night in that kind of darkness and quiet? All I gotta say is thank God someone did...

Trip: Day 1

I know I haven't posted much, but I really wanted to save the bulk of my writing for the trip itself, plus I wanted to go ahead and get my work done for the class before we went on the trip.

Day 1
Location(s): Gainesville, GA; Irondale, Alabama; Columbus, MS; Winona, MS; Greenwood, MS

We left out this morning around 9:15, our two faculty "chaperones" (Dr. Wynne and Dr. Elfenbein) and us four ladies, myself, Kathleen (my roommate), Summer, and Emily. I won't bore anyone with details of the driving in Georgia, I've seen all of what we drove in Georgia already.

I've never been further west in Alabama than Birmingham, so I got to see quite a few new areas of Alabama. We stopped to eat lunch in Irondale, at the Irondale Cafe (clever, I know.) Irondale is one of those towns that really hasn't moved forward much in the history of the country. It sits right on the Amtrak Crescent line, which runs from New York to New Orleans (okay, add one more item to the bucket list!) This town is so quaint, pretty much all within a one square mile area, with just one row of shops, where our restaurant was located. You walk in, and its one of those places with all the pictures of celebrities on the wall that have visited (I didn't get to see all of them, but Bear Bryant and the Eagles I did see, quite a range of famous folks) and of course, it's the original Whistle Stop Cafe. I wont go into the history, but if you wish, you can read it here. My lunch consisted of baked chicken, dressing and gravy, green beans, corn, a fluffy yeast roll, and strawberry shortcake. Only think I can think to say is WOW.

My first new area was Tuscaloosa, and yes they really are kinda crazy about some Bama football around there, including Bear Bryant. To each their own I guess. On a more serious note, the scars of the T-Town Tornado that came through over a year ago are still very visible. On the main route through town, US 82, many buildings are still being rebuilt and the landscape around that area is still trying to regrow. I can't imagine the horror those people faced that day, and I couldn't help but think of those that died that day or lost someone they knew and loved.

Once we got past Tuscaloosa, the western part of Alabama is pretty plain, at least it was to me. We did a whole lot of riding until we got to Columbus, Mississippi, which is home to Tennessee Williams' first home. It was a cute little house right in the middle of Columbus, its been turned into the visitor's center, but it's still pretty cool.

My first impression of Mississippi is....well....kind of amazed. Not that its anything special or extraordinary. Its the fact that it lacks anything special or extraordinary is what makes it amazing. I've just gotten this overwhelming feeling of being frozen in time ever since we got to Winona, even more in Greenwood. Just fields and fields of cotton (one day I'll have to come back during the fall to see it all in bloom, I bet it's amazing) and roads that just go on and on and on (that desperately need to be paved.) Along US 82, there are just random houses, most of them pretty nice, but nothing spectacular. It just seems like over all, this place has missed the last 50 years or so.

We ate at Yianni's tonight, which was pretty good. I had peel and eat shrimp (they weren't bad, but I've had much better) and a Monte Cristo burger (HUGE hamburger, Swiss cheese, and a slice of ham all on Texas toast.) Yianni's is kind of a strange place, the walls in the room we ate in were painted to look like the bayou, which was kind of cool. The place was old, but like 1980s old, so not quite cool yet. I must say I'm certainly glad we're staying where we are because Greenwood is definitely not a nice looking place to live (sorry to those that do, just my opinion) and definitely not a place to be in after dark. Lots and lots of public housing, run down industrial areas, and fences around all the clusters of houses. Kinda tells ya something, huh?

We did a lot of driving today, so there isn't much more to say other than my first thoughts of Mississippi. Tomorrow we start the actual sightseeing, so I'll have much more to say and lots more pictures. Right now, I'm very tired and ready to go to bed. Thanks for reading!

Day 2 of class

I have to admit I fall in love with this class more and more as time goes on! We mostly studied the origins of blues music today, starting with the slave trade in the southern United States. We talked about the music they would use in the fields to make the work go by faster and also to create a steady rhythm between all the workers. While the following is a recording of a chain gang in the 30s, it's believed that the slave songs in the fields sounded much like this:

We also talked about "gandy dancers" which were the black railroad workers that would manually move the tracks. I had some knowledge of them because my father has told me about watching them in South Carolina when he lived there back in the 50s and 60s. It went a little like this:

We also touched on the music in the church, since church was one of the few times the slave community could come together and congregate outside of the cotton fields and plantation houses. Here's what we listened to:

We discussed the geography of the Mississippi Delta, which actually is an incorrect name for it, since a "delta" refers to the area around the mouth of a river. It's more of a flood plain with very rich, fertile soil, which was perfect for all the cotton grown there.

We did get into the Civil War and Reconstruction, which was a good discussion. Mainly focused on post Civil War southern culture. Monday we'll start on Jim Crow laws and go into the actual time period when the blues developed.

First Day Thoughts....

Okay, I've only got one class under my belt, but I do have to say this will probably be the most incredible class I've ever taken. I wish more classes were like this, small, informal, more like a study group than anything else. There are three other ladies in the class with me, two being younger than I and one older. Kinda feel bad for the professor, he's going to be stuck in a minivan for 8 hours with a bunch of women lol. We watched two really cool video clips today, I'll try and find them and put them on here. We really didn't get into the bulk of the class today, we'll start on that tomorrow. We mainly talked in brief about the places we were going, what we would see, what we're studying in class, that sort of first-day-at-camp kind of stuff. I'm sure I'll have much more to add tomorrow!

First Day of Class!!

I am SO excited!! Could hardly sleep last night and woke up SUPER early this morning and couldn't go back to sleep, but that may have more to do with me leaving the window open and it was quite chilly last night and I was cold. I think I'm mainly this excited because I'm not really sure what to expect with this class. I haven't seen the syllabus yet, I'm assuming we'll get that in class this morning. I'll be leaving in about an hour, so I don't have a whole lot to talk about yet, but I'll have more this afternoon!

On the day before...

I know the description says trip, but I'm going to start this during the 7 days of classroom instruction before.

Not a whole lot to say today, since the class doesn't start until tomorrow. Just got this thing set up, wanted to share a few tunes to set the mood...