Tag Archives: Mississippi

Juke

Posted on January 30, 2011 | Comments Off on Juke

GG_web_Murphy_main_1They say the juke joint was a black Mississippi invention. Howsomever that may be, Poor Monkey Lounge in Merigold in the Delta seems to fit the bill.

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Posted in Library, Scribbles

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The Time of Eddie Noel

Posted on June 17, 2010 | Comments Off on The Time of Eddie Noel

Lexington is another of Faulkner’s “little postage-stamps,” a microcosm of humanity which just happens to be in Mississippi. The time of the title was the mid 1950s when Jim Crow oppressed everyone, putting the trash on top of all, black and white. The blacks suffered the visible injustice, the whites got theirs behind the scenes, until one night, one young black fellow had enough and gunned down six white men, three to death.

How he managed to elude capture and courts (though he suffered incarceration) and Mississippi’s then-traveling electric chair, is a saga worthy of myth.  Oxford, MS corporate lawyer Allie Povall, a Lexington native who was twelve at the time, makes the most of it. Almost too much, with his atmospherics, making the clouds, the rain and wind stand-in for what another age would have expressed as divine judgement. His conclusions about why Eddie Noel not only was not executed for premeditated murder but lived into old age a free man, i.e. that blood will tell and prominent white blood could get even a black man off, isn’t very creditable. But it’s certainly worth considering.

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Posted in Library, Scribbles

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Grandmother’s house

Posted on March 14, 2008 | Comments Off on Grandmother’s house

Grandmothers.JPG

I suppose it was inevitable. Neglect to buy your grandmother’s 100-year-old house in Mississippi and someone else will turn it into a business–or, in this case, a government-funded rehab center for the emotionally-disturbed. Hence the added railing on the front porch and the wheelchair access ramp there on the left. But since my late father, who was said to have been born in the front bedroom on the left-hand side, didn’t see any need to keep it, I couldn’t decide why I should. Sentiment inevitably collides with money, I suppose, especially when the sentimental aren’t rich to begin with.

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Posted in Genealogy, Rancho Roly Poly

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Off to Mississippi

Posted on March 10, 2008 | Comments Off on Off to Mississippi

Heading out to Mississippi via Southwest Airlines late this morning to visit relatives during part of Mr. B.’s spring break from elementary school. As I have no glittering stable of substitute writers, like Instapundit and other blogging stars, there will be no posts until we get back on Thursday. Have a pleasant week, y’all.

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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly

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Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929-1968

Posted on January 15, 2007 | Comments Off on Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929-1968

When I was fourteen, in 1958, my father and I rode a train to Mississippi and stopped at a depot near the little county seat where he grew up. I can still hear him shouting at the elderly black porter as we got down: "Boy! Boy!" And I still see the old man shuffling towards us to carry our bags. Today, practically every public office in that town is held by a black person. Courtesy and a lot more besides also has changed since Dr. King said these words the day before he was assassinated:

"Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

Via Power Line 

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Posted in Blogosphere, Scribbles

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Majesty in every countryside

Posted on November 11, 2006 | Comments Off on Majesty in every countryside

I admit I paid no attention to loudmouth Dem Charles B. Rangel rapping my father’s home state of Mississippi. Rangel’s just a New York yankee, so what the hell would he know? But the Dem’s slur on the Magnolia state brought out some poetry in a political rival, Mississippi Rep Charles W. Pickering.

“From the coast to the Delta to the Pine Belt to the hills and across Mississippi,” he said, “there is beauty in every city, charity in every heart, love in every church, and majesty in every countryside.”

Couldn’t have said it better. 

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Posted in Scribbles

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Bottle Trees

Posted on September 30, 2006 | Comments Off on Bottle Trees

BottleTree1.jpg

Now here’s something every Southern garden needs, and probably some Northern ones as well, although it’s more of a Southern, particularly a Mississippi, thing. Indeed, so Mississippi that a company there in Sunflower, a real town in the famous Delta, sells this unique African-American yard art in Bottle Tree kits on the Web, with welded "tree" stand and all the bottles you need, including the traditional cobalt blue. For roughly $100 you can start trapping evil spirits like the old Africans did. The rancho’s order is in.

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Posted in Scribbles

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