Vicksburg to Clarksdale, Mississippi

Nothing keeping us in Vicksburg, we drove north on Hwy 61 then 1 up the Mississippi delta, wide and flat as far as the eye could see, and much of it cotton, already harvested or ready, most of the the land subject to heavy industrial agriculture.

The Mississippi is bordered by a high and wide levee  - maybe 50 feet high by a couple of hundred feet wide, keeping the big river from spreading across the delta. The levee was built and is maintained by the US government, yet another example of  conservative folks bot acknowledging just how much they need government, in this case, directly providing their livelihoods and sparing their lives from the river.  We drove over the levee into a wildlife preserve, but not much to see.

Back on hwy 1, many old buildings, floks living in trailer houses and worse, many signs of poverty among ever larger fields, farm machinery, grain bins (soybeans, I think).

Just north of Greenville, we saw an unusual, large mound off the road which turned out to be the largest, at 55 feet high, of a complex of eleven Indian mounds protected in a state park.

The park was the result of hard work by a few local women, who helped the state acquire the property and prevent further damage to the mounds.

We climbed to the top of the largest mound and had a fine view of the delta.

The park includes a visitor center constructed to fit into the landscape, with some nice photos, including one of the 1927 flood when the Mississippi River filled the delta all the way to Greenwood, some seventy mikes to the east. Big river indeed.

Still driving north, looking for the world of Son House and Charlie Patton, but those days seem long gone, for better and worse.  Much of the delta is a grey landscape, many old buildings, some nicer houses, much poverty, black folks somehow getting by.

In Rosedale, we drove off the highway a few blocks to one of the many blues highway signs in the delta.  The town, like so many, seems a collection of shacks and burned out or just empty buildings, people hanging around doing not much, or not much you would want to know about, but a colorful church.  Good place to look for the devil, if you wanted to learn to play the blues.

On up the highway, more of the same.

These are the compactors that make the loaves of cotton.  The round bales come out of the back of a dung beetle like combine.

And into Clarksdale, where Son House, Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and so many others played the blues.  Back in their day, Clarksdale was a thriving town, now the downtown is hanging on, living off blues tourists, but barely.

We had fried catfish and listened to a decent blues band at one of the handful of clubs in town, this one owned by a local lawyer who lost in a runoff for governor a few years back.  It was fine but not what I had hoped for, but then I guess although the music lives on, the days of Son, Charlie, Robert and all the rest are long gone.