Delta Magazine July/August 2019 by Delta Magazine

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VOLUME 17, NUMBER 1

Delta

JULY/AUGUST 2019

DELTA MAGAZINE

Play Houses and Lay Houses A Delta Girl in New York

Summer Grilling JULY/AUGUST 2019

$5.95US

25274 24724

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AUG

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KANSA KANSAS AS

Sponsored by b Needle Spec cialty Products

KOOL & THE GANG

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BEAUTIF FUL: THE MAR CAROLE CAROLE E KING MUSIC CAL AL

Sponsored e by Ca annon Motors

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FEB

THE SNOWY Y DA AY Y AND OTHER STORIES

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DREW W HOLCOMB & THE E NEIGHBORS

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Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t le et heartb burn ruin n your life. Aciid reflux disease affects ap pproximately 30% of the American A population, cau using daily heartburn symp ptoms â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but heartburn is on nly one sign that you ma ay have gastroesophageal reflux e disease, or GERD, a se erious condition that has s been linked to esophagea al cancer. Baptist Heartburn Treatment Center at Bap ptist North Mississippi can n diagnose GERD and offerrs minimally invasive treatment that can help stop reflux. Please go to baptistonline.org/heartburn to learn l more and take our sho ort online quiz to find out if you might have GERD.

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DELTA M

Publisher: J. Scott Coopwood Editor: Cindy Coopwood Managing Editor: Pam Parker Contributing Editors: Hank Burdine, Maude Schuyler Clay, Noel Workman, Roger Stolle Digital Editor: Phil Schank Consultant: Samir Husni, Ph.D. Special Projects Coordinator: Stacye Trout Graphic Designers: Sandra K. Goff, Cailee Conrad, Maggi Mosco, Isabella Horn Contributing Writers: Bill DeJournett, Brenda Ware Jones, Sherry Lucas, Susan Marquez, James McCafferty, Chris Pepple, Angela Rogalski, Andrew Ross, Tom Speed, Boyce Upholt Photography: Tom Beck, Charles Coleman, Blake Crocker, Rory Doyle, Karen Focht, Will Jacks, Reeves Smith, Caroline Stuckey Account Executives: Joy Bateman, Cristen Hemmins, Kristy Kitchings, Wendy Mize, Ann Nestler, Cadey True Circulation: Holly Tharp Accounting Manager: Emma Jean Thompson POSTMASTER: Send all address changes to Delta Magazine, PO Box 117, Cleveland, MS 38732

ADVERTISING: For advertising information, please call (662) 843-2700 or email Delta Magazine accepts no responsibility for unsolicited materials or photos and in general does not return them to sender. Photography obtained for editorial usage is owned by Delta Magazine and may not be released for commercial use such as in advertisements and may not be purchased from the magazine for any reason. All editorial and advertising information is taken from sources considered to be authoritative, but the publication cannot guarantee their accuracy. Neither that information nor any opinion expressed on the pages of Delta Magazine in any way constitutes a solicitation for the sale or purchase of securities mentioned. No material in Delta Magazine may be reproduced in any form without the written consent of the publication. Delta Magazine is published bimonthly by Coopwood Magazines, Inc., 125 South Court St., Cleveland, MS 38732-2626. Periodicals postage paid at Cleveland, MS and additional mailing office. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Delta Magazine, PO Box 117, Cleveland, MS 38732-0117. Delta Magazine (USPS#022-954)

Delta Magazine is published six times a year by Coopwood Magazines, Inc. EDITORIAL & BUSINESS OFFICE ADDRESSES: Mailing Address: PO Box 117, Cleveland, MS 38732 Shipping Address: 125 South Court Street, Cleveland, MS 38732 E-mail: publisher@deltamagazine.com editor@deltamagazine.com

deltamagazine.com Subscriptions: $28 per year 6 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

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from the editor

Good Things: An Ode to Martha recently had a flashback to my and Scott’s first apartment. Life was good. I was only twenty-two, already married, and trying to decorate on a budget. Heavily influenced by Martha Stewart, I remember making a round, blue tablecloth for a small three-legged plywood table that came in a box, and the square floral topper that matched it. I used that same floral fabric to create “swags” for the window treatments in our small den, cleverly tying it all together. Just like Martha suggested. I also took Martha’s advice and scoured flea markets, which I loved to do anyway, looking specifically for vintage hem-stitched napkins, the edges of which I promptly painted with gold fabric paint. I proudly used these gold-edged, vintage napkins at Scott’s thirtieth birthday party— one of the first big events we hosted in our apartment––and felt very chic. Just like Martha. Later, in our first home, I sponge painted, faux finished and stenciled many pieces of furniture and rooms and even made the awning stripe and floral (remember those??) bumper pads and roman shades for our first nursery. When the long awaited Mary Scott turned out to be Thomas, I wasn’t about to change the decor after all that work, so he and our second son, Jordan, were both surrounded by flowers and stripes from day one—and are no worse for the wear. They can thank Martha for that one. It’s fun, although sometimes cringe-worthy, to think back to those early years, being young and married and still figuring out my sense of style. (Full disclosure: I was also influenced by Julia Roberts and got a perm.) I’m grateful that my mother taught me not only to cook, but even more, My beloved and well-used collection instilled in me a comfort in the kitchen that made preparing of Martha Stewart books. meals and trying new recipes come easily for me. She and my junior high home economics teacher, Mrs. Ann Howell, also taught me to sew and to take care of a home. Mrs. Howell is the one who taught me that mayonnaise is the best treatment for wooden furniture. It’s true. So between the three of them––Mama, Martha, and Mrs. Howell— I had a pretty good start. This brings me to the New York apartment of Clarksdale native Kate Hayes. Nothing cringe-worthy here, I can assure you. Kate’s sense of style, which she attributes largely to the influence of her mother, Paige Hayes, and the ease with which she has assembled her eclectic collection of furniture and art is evident in her 250-square-foot West Village stunner (page 66). I love the story of how this Delta girl came to find her niche in the Big Apple and think you will too. Back home, it’s no secret that summer in the Delta can be brutal. Somehow, the smallest among us don’t seem to notice, as nothing announces the season more than the sounds of kids running and playing in the yard––except possibly chickens pecking and roosters crowing. And they all need a place to call their own, such as the fanciful chicken coops and playhouses featured in this issue (page 78). These backyard retreats, some with hammocks, swings, and ziplines just may inspire you to build one of your own. Suffice it to say, a chicken house complete with a rainbow of fresh eggs would also be Martha-approved. Speaking of hammocks, I encourage you to find one, or a porch, or a beach, and relax a little. Find your perfect spot, perhaps sip a Bourbon Arnold Palmer (recipe page 95), try to stay cool, and enjoy reading our summer issue cover to cover. As Martha would say, “It’s a good thing.” DM

Cindy Coopwood Behind the scenes at our summer grilling photo shoot with photographer Will Jacks, stylist Erica Eason Hall, and grillmaster Cordelia Capps.

8 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

Editor @cindycoopwood cindy@deltamagazine.com

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12 0 0 E A S T OV E R D R I V E

coming soon: Sophomore Spanish Club

T H E D I S T R I C TAT E A S T OV E R . C O M

| Jackson

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contents Volume 17 No. 1

JULY/AUGUST

departments 30 BOOKS Reviews of new releases and 34

ART

MUSIC

HOME

FOOD

RECOLLECTIONS

what Deltans are reading now

66 features

44 52

A MOST UNUSUAL COLLECTOR

102

Benny Melton: Telling stories through his art Kris Wilkinson Hughes: A musical journey from the Delta to England

From the Deep South to the West Village: A Q & A with Kate Hayes Chilling & Grilling: Simple recipes and tips for your next summer cookout Just Sam: Adventurer, life-saver, Renaissance man

HISTORY

Davis Island: Untamed by history and lost to the river

in every issue

BAKING MEMORIES

14 Letters 20 On the Road

THOMPSON FAMILY TALES

22 Off the Beaten Path

PLAYFUL PLACES TO ROOST

The forgotten story of Julius Augustus Davies How Greenville’s David Mosow started a bakery powerhouse in Nashville

With roots in Bentonia, this family of writers shares stories inspired by food, fun and sports Kids and chicks need a retreat of their own

Where we’ve been, where we’re going next Roaming the Real and Rustic Delta

26 Hot Topics 108 Events A listing of events including concerts, festivals, book signings

112 Delta Seen Snapshots from area fundraisers, art openings and social events

ON THE COVER: One of Cricket Brown’s roosters proudly posing in his Carroll County chicken coop. Photo by Tom Beck. 10 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

120 The Final Word by James T. McCafferty

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NEW LISTING

1200 Jefferson Unit 302 " č/ " t " č/ " t " č/ " t £ Li`À V ` >` >Vi Ì Ì ÃµÕ>Àit Listed for $285,000

> 7 `Þ Èä£ xx £Ç Ç

NEW LISTING

107 N 13th Street Unit C/ “the Monroe” 6iÀÞ *, 6č/ V ` Ì i ÃµÕ>Àit " Þ {t ÓÉÓ] £{ää ÃµÕ>Ài vÌ° U č >â } Ã iÃt Listed for $630,000 Call John 601-594-3774

REDUCED

311 Russell Drive/ Russelin’ Leaves Tree shaded private gated area! 3 bedroom 3 ½ bath unit! A MUST SEE! Listed For $195,000

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105 Williamsburg Cove/Williamsburg Ài>Ì Ài`ÕVÌ t 6iÀÞ µÕ iÌ `iÛi « i Ìt

Ü ÃÌ> ÀÃ >ÃÌiÀt U " i >À >À>}it A MUST SEE! Listed for $259,900 Call Julie 601-906-2828

149 Northpointe/Northpointe Super private lakefront setting! "«i À * > U "vw Vi > ` >ÃÌiÀ Ü ÃÌ> ÀÃt 4 bedroom, 2 ½ baths Listed for $257,400 Call John 601-594-3774

610 Hathorn Drive/ Cedar Ridge ON CAMPUS! Walk to the games! Small 2 bedroom, 1 bath • Great for Weekenders Listed for $109,000 Call John 601-594-3774

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NEW LISTING

£ÎÇ Õ LiÀÀÞÉ"Ýv À` Ã ,i`ÕVi`t i iÜ it -« Ì ÎÉÓ « > * > Ì>Ì Ã ÕÌÌiÀÃ Ì À Õ} ÕÌt >V « ÀV t Listed for $325,000 Call Julie 601-906-2828

214 S 17th Unit 5/Chateau Belle Court

Ü Ì Ü čÀi> ` t - ÀÌ 7> Ì -µÕ>Àit Î Li`À Î¤ L>Ì Ã U ÃiV Õ`i`É«À Û>Ìi ÃiÌÌ }t Listed for $465,000 601-594-3774 Call John REDUCED

1994 West Wellsgate/Wellsgate č1/ 1 č ," / " t " 6 t {ÉÎ i iÜt č iÜ «> Ìt Listed for $465,800 Call Julie 601-906-2828 REDUCED

405 Lark Run/ Audubon Park *i>VivÕ U č Ì v /ÀiiÃ U 6iÀÞ *À Û>Ìi E >Ìi`t { Li`À Ó ¤ L>Ì ] ÃVÀii i` « ÀV t for Listed $329,500 Call Meta 662-202-2964

Julie Sample

Woody Sample

Meta Poole Ginn

John Albriton

Broker/Owner

REALTOR®

Broker Associate

601-906-2828

601-955-1797

662-202-2964

601-594-3774

428 North Lamar, Suite 102 • Oxford, MS 662-234-0808 • www.sampleandpoole.com

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LETTERS

Thank you for featuring the DIY project with champagne glasses from our store, Consign for a Cause in the (May/June) issue! I was tickled when I saw it and read the Mother’s Day brunch article and thought the painted gold champagne flutes were adorable. The DIY article has already brought in customers who didn’t know about us before. Thank you for remembering to include antique and resale stores in your layouts! Adrienne Hood Perthshire, Mississippi I see this statement in just about every issue: “I love your magazine and I can’t wait until my next issue arrives!” Well, you can put it down one more time! A dear friend of mine gave me a subscription to Delta Magazine two years ago and I must admit that the line is not cliche’; it is real! I read Delta from cover to cover and it is just so heartwarming to see all the pictures

of Delta life, especially in the Delta Seen section. That Christmas present was one of the best I have ever received. In closing, I repeat, “I love your magazine and I can’t wait until my next issue arrives!” Bethany Willis Corpus Christi, Texas Having a small business is a daily struggle. Some days are better than others, but yet you never give up because it’s your customers that you get to see, you get to know and it’s the friends I’ve made along the way. I have so many children I get hugs from and more pretend children/grandchildren than my heart could ever imagine. One day Ann Nestler from Delta Magazine walked in and asked if I would like to advertise. I thought to myself, “How can

you afford this?” The Delta Magazine is my favorite and yet I could actually be a part of it, there’s no way. Well, yes there was a way and I took a small ad for McCall & Company and it was a hit. I keep a picture of that ad on our wall to this day and thank Delta Magazine for helping my business grow. It’s not just the advertising, it’s also the special items they feature for you throughout the magazine. I’ve had people call from as far as South Carolina to see if I would ship an item they saw in Delta Magazine. They say there is no place like the Delta. Well, there is no place better to grow your business than Delta Magazine. Tonya Moore Greenville, Mississippi I enjoyed the wedding issue of Delta Magazine so much. As a former Delta resident (long ago), I always love seeing wedding photos from the past. The ones of Delta stalwarts that were just beginning their journey 40 to 50 years ago (March/April 2017). That was very special to see as well as the beautiful photos of couples just beginning their journey. I just wanted to plant that seed to include the past nuptial pictures for next year’s wedding edition. We love Delta. Megan Morrisey Chicago, Illinois MAY/JUNE 2019

brunch for mom & dinner before the prom

Appalachian Trailblazers Fly Fishing the Norrffork TTaailwater

SEND COMMENTS AND LETTERS TO: editor@deltamagazine.com or Delta Magazine, PO Box 117, Cleveland, MS 38732

We’re “buzzed” about our exclusive linen hand towels, $22 each

Cocktail Chic

Find nostalgia in every item of the

Delta Magazine Gift Collection Call or come by our office to shop our gift collection at 125 South Court Street, Cleveland, 662.843.2700. Like our official Delta Magazine Page Twitter @Delta_Mag

Instagram @deltamagazine

To subscribe, call (662) 843-2700 or visit deltamagazine.com 14 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

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Y’all Said SOCIAL MEDIA COMMENTS @deltamagazine

We Asked... How many readers kept their DM issues over the years, and many responded they kept every issue. Bob and Amanda Bailey of Yazoo City answered and sent us a photo!

“We have every copy from Volume 1, Number 1: (July/August 2003) when the magazine was ⅛-inch thick and featured Lee and Pup McCarty on the cover.” – BOB AND AMANDA BAILEY

What’s the best advice your mom ever gave you? The Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” @moonlake59 No matter what the fashion is, if it doesn’t look good on you—don’t wear it. I think I heard this during the bell bottom years. @maryleighward Good taste is a blessing and a curse. @mary_straton Are you humbly grateful or grumbly hateful? @rmeyer130

It’s better to not have something you want than have something you don’t want. @southerngirlsoapery

Southerners are notorious for unique family nicknames. What terms of endearment do your grandparents go by? Big Daddy and Ganny – Russell Kearney, Jr. My husband’s grandmother was called “Two-Mama.” As in your second mom. – Betty Britt Eya (pronounced E-Ah) and Daddoo – Caitlyn Thompson Mine is unique - Goochie Goo! – Mary Williams I am a relocated Texan living in Leland, but Texans have a long German heritage and my grandparents were from the old land. We called them Opa (grandfather) and Oma (grandmother). Had to put in it on the headstones! – Don-Michael Bradford

DELTA MAGAZINE 2019

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Staying hydrated

PHOTO BY BRITTNEY TURNER

This spring many Delta farmers experienced heavy rains and a rising Mississippi River, resulting in flooding across thousands of acres. This caused them to delay planting much later than usual. Even so, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s now time for the crops to have another drink of water, as depicted below in this bean field that is currently being irrigated. DM

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Three bedrrooms o ms. ooms Tw T wo baaths t s. ths Unlimi n mited snuggle s uggles es. A mortgage is much more tha han a loan, becaus because use a home is more than th a ho ouse. It’’s where you leave your mark and create memories th thatt last la t fo or generations. tions. ns. s That’s why Trustmar Th tmark works with each cu customer to fin nd a morrtga g ge op option that hat works forr them. em Explor xp e your our mortga g ge opt ptions att trustm mark.com m//m mortga age e

MEMBER FDIC

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YOU WANT A BETTER COMMERCIAL BANKER. REGIONS IS WHERE YOU’LL FIND ONE. EXPECT BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE THAT GOES BEYOND THE BALANCE SHEET. There will come a moment when you realize your Regions Commercial Relationship Manager is someone who will bring you a lot more than just ways to raise capital. You’ll see we’re here to demonstrate our value to you as local, knowledgeable business consultants. You’ll find we ask smart questions, listen to your answers and deliver smart solutions for your business. You’ll know we’re true partners. In that moment, you’ll realize you made the right choice.

LET’S START THE CONVERSATION TODAY. Alan Sims | Commercial Banking 662.227.4044 | alan.sims@regions.com

Commercial Banking | Treasury Management | Capital Markets | Wealth Management © 2019 Regions Bank. All loans and lines subject to credit approval, terms and conditions. | Regions and the Regions logo are registered trademarks of Regions Bank. The LifeGreen color is a trademark of Regions Bank.

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ON THE ROAD

where we’ve been, where to go next

MEMPHIS

MISSISSIPPI DELTA

Big View

The Air Force refueling a plane over the Delta. – W. HACKNEY

Sunset over the Mississippi River Bridge at Memphis. – MATT TAYLOR

SHAW

CLARKSDALE

Farming is underway throughout the region. – MECHELLE WILSON

PHOTO OPS & WAYSIDE Libations and fizz, Delta Supper Club. – DELTA MAGAZINE

SHELBY

All along the Blues Trail in Shelby. – DELTA MAGAZINE

20 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

Guest house behind Belmont Plantation. – DUDE KLUTTS

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Passing time

SOUTH DELTA

GUNNISON

Frozen in time—a snapshot of the past. – MARTY KITTRELL

CLARKSDALE Lazy afternoon on the riverside. – DELTA MAGAZINE

FUNKY STOPS Roaming the real and rustic Delta Dressing it up in the Delta’s blues capital. – MARK BENSON

RAYMOND

Line ‘em up

CARY

Ready to come out of retirement when needed. – MARTY KITTRELL St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Main Street. – KELLEY SHOWS Instagram users, follow @deltamagazine and see #DMphotoops

DELTA MAGAZINE 2019

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OFF THE BEATEN PATH roaming the real and rustic Delta

LOST DOG COFFEE & PARALLEL SOAPS & MERCANTILE A funky place for a cup of jo and a tucked-away soap shop

ost Dog Coffee is a specialty coffee house located in the Plein Air neighborhood in Taylor. Owned and operated by Leighton McCool, Lost Dog is the only coffee purveyor in Mississippi to serve Onyx coffee, which is grown and roasted in Northern Arkansas. Lost Dog is also the first coffee shop in Mississippi to feature the ModBar espresso system which is all the rage in coffee shops in Seattle, New York, and other metro areas. “We think we are serving a better cup of coffee and we know we’ve got the most unique atmosphere in the Oxford area,” said McCool. “We want our customers to come, stay, relax, and visit.” In addition to free wi-fi and funky, vintage mid-century furniture, Lost Dog makes available frisbees, footballs, and nerf balls for customers to burn off some of that caffeine-fueled energy outside the shop on Plein Air’s two-acre lawn. There is also an occasional corn-hole throwing competition for good measure. 4 Town Square Lane, Taylor @lostdogcoffee on Instagram A modern coffee shop in the small community of Taylor. Below, a specialty shop in Hernando.

ndrew and Lauren Parks opened Parallel in Hernando in July 2018. Specializing in allnatural soaps and body care products, the items are made in small batches with natural vegetable oils, natural colorants, and essential oils—nothing synthetic ever. The Parks’s came up with the idea of Parallel from their other business, So Fresh and So Green, an all-natural housekeeping company based in Memphis. While the shop is small and tucked away on East Center Street, visitors will find the owners to be mindful and the products to be intentional—not to mention the incredible aroma as you walk through the door. For those looking for simple, pure products to use, take a quick trip to Hernando. At Parallel Soaps & Mercantile, fifteen different types of soaps, bath soaks, salves, face masks, facial serums, and facial rollers are offered. 180 East Center Street, Hernando 662.426.8042 or visit parallelhernando.com

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OFF THE BEATEN PATH

roaming the real and rustic Delta

THE IDEA SHOP & MARY ANN’S VARIETY STORE An entrepreneurial space and a one-stop shop on the blues trail

owntown Starkville has a new space that’s part retail shop, art studio, and business incubator. The Idea Shop is a partnership between the Mississippi State University Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach in the College of Business and the city of Starkville. It includes a makers studio that consists of design workstations, 3-D printers, electronic workbenches, and advanced woodworking tools not commonly available—all to help people build anything imaginable. Membership is available to the general public, and various workshops are regularly hosted for newcomers to the “maker movement.” In a nutshell, it provides a way for entrepreneurs, students, and local artists to make and test their products in a retail environment. “The response has been beyond our expectations,” says Jeffery Rupp, Director of Outreach for the MSU School of Business. “We already have over thirty-five paying monthly members.” The Idea Shop is open Wednesday through Friday, 1 pm to 9 pm, and from 8 am to 5 pm on Saturday and Sunday. 114 East Main Street, Starkville 662.325.3521 or visit ideashopmsu.com The Idea Shop in Starkville. Below, an old-school general store in Alligator.

ocated just off of the historic Highway 61 in Alligator, Mary Ann’s Variety Store is a family owned and operated business. What began in 1988 as a small store that sold items such as hand dipped ice-cream cones, has now grown into a full-service general store for the community. It is owned and operated by Mary Ann Fava and her son Bob, and carries a wide range of products that provide locals with the simple everyday necessities, as well as various specialty items. Tourists are always welcome and can purchase souvenirs such as bottle openers, t-shirts, and post cards that showcase both the Mississippi Delta and the town of Alligator. Mary Ann’s Variety store is open every day from 10 am to 4 pm except for Wednesday and Sunday. 12 Lake Street, Alligator 662.627.5343 DELTA MAGAZINE 2019

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ZZZ E F E V PV F R P %O X H &U R V V %O X H 6 K L H O G R I 0L V V L V V L S S L $ 0X W X D O , Q V X U D Q F H &R PS D Q \ L V D Q L Q G H S H Q G H Q W O L F H Q V H H R I W K H %O X H &U R V V D Q G %O X H 6 K L H O G $V V R F L D W L R Q Â&#x160; 5H J L V W H U H G 0D U N V R I W K H %O X H &U R V V D Q G %O X H 6 K L H O G $V V R F L D W L R Q D Q $V V R F L D W L R Q R I , Q G H S H Q G H Q W %O X H &U R V V D Q G %O X H 6 K L H O G 3O D Q V

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CHASE AWAY T HE BL U E S When the sun goes down, the fun heats up in the Birthplace of America’s Music. Don’t miss out on your next musical adventure in Mississippi – sure to chase away the blues.

VI S I T MI S S I S S I P P I .OR G/ D ON T MI S S O U T

JESSE ROBINSON R I D G E L A N D F I N E A R T S F E S T I VA L - R I D G E L A N D , M I S S I S S I P P I

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HOT TOPICS MUST READ DELTA BOOKS A Page by Page History Lesson Referred to by many as the “Father of the Delta Blues,” Charley Patton’s inimitable music style makes him one of the most important musicians of the 20th century. Charley Patton: Voice of the Mississippi Delta compiles nine presentation transcriptions from a forum of scholars that was held in 1984 at the Liège University in Belgium to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Patton’s passing. The International Conference on Charley Patton marked this auspicious occasion. Each transcript, some revised or amended, explores the man who brought us “Pony Blues,” and “High Water Everywhere,” as well as the shrouds of Blues heritage that surround him. John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival fame has compared Patton’s body of work to the Dead Sea Scrolls, and it is significant that Charley Patton is the earliest Delta Blues musician with a known history. Charley Patton: Voice of the Mississippi Delta can be purchased at amazon.com and other online outlets. Mary Carol Miller is a Greenwood native, a physician, a lover of

history and an author. Her fourteenth and latest book, Star of the West, is about the American civilian steamship that was launched in 1852 and intentionally sank by Confederate forces in 1863. Today, the boat lies at the bottom of the Tallahatchie River at Greenwood and has become somewhat of a legend when it comes to the course of the Civil War. “If you grew up in Greenwood, you know about the Star of the West,” says Miller. “But no one had ever really put the whole story together.” That is, until Miller decided it was time. So, with Greenwood businessman, Allan Hammons as graphic designer, she set out to make it happen. Before the Civil War, Star of the West drew cannon fire in Charleston Harbor, lending an ominous portent of what was to come. Two years later, it was allowed to sink quietly into the waters of the Tallahatchie River. This is one stranger than fiction story you won’t want to miss. Available only at Turnrow Books in Greenwood or online at their website turnrowbooks.com.

DELTA DRAGON BOAT RACES Team Water Sport Fundraiser The Dragon Boat Festival is a traditional holiday originating in China occurring near the summer solstice. But, Deltans won’t have to travel far to see these colorful vessels when the Delta Dragon Boat Races are held September 7 on the Lake Ferguson waterfront at Schelben Park. Initiated by Dr. Brunswick R. Wong, this event is the culmination of much hard work by the Delta Dragon Boat Steering Committee and many volunteers. It consists of

local teams racing against each other to raise funds to support nonprofit organizations that produce significant and meaningful work in the area of youth programming in Washington County. The Dragon Boats are brought in from Tampa, Florida and hold ten rowers with one drummer for each eleven-member team. A fund affiliated with the Community Foundation of Washington County has been established as a means to assist in financing the family oriented event. In appreciation of their dedication and service, two of the boats will be provided at no cost to first responders, consisting of team members from the Greenville Police Department, Washington County Sheriff ’s Department, and the Greenville Fire Department. This is the perfect opportunity for the Delta to engage in healthy and goodhearted competition, while having a great time. deltadragonboatraces.com

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HOT TOPICS DAVID BROOKINGS AND THE AVERAGE LOOKINGS Scorpio Monologue – Modern & Classic David Brookings grew up in Virginia, but his musical journey took him to Memphis. Brookings fell in love with the city and its culture and decided to settle there to write music. His day gig was at the famous Sun Studios where he guided tours. As fate would have it, one night Brookings gave a private tour of the facility to Steve Jobs, founder and creator of Apple computers and the Apple dynasty. Jobs lived in Memphis for a few months recuperating from a liver transplant, and while there he and Brookings became good friends. After Jobs returned to his home in California, he called Brookings and offered him a job at iTunes. Brookings accepted and moved his family and his music to northern California. In the Golden State, Brookings started a band called The Average Lookings and the band has just released their latest CD, Scorpio Monologue. Scorpio Monologue combines a retro, British Invasion feel and sound alongside a modern take on Alternative Pop/Rock, with big guitars, lots of harmonies, and memorable choruses woven through each of the album’s thirteen tracks. Brookings has been at this music game for a while now and this is his eighth album overall and second with The Average Lookings.

PATRIC CARVER

He has garnered praise from the power pop community over the years; and Brookings has emerged as a prolific songwriter and performer since arriving in California ten years ago. Perhaps Apple Music Essentials said it best, “Brookings always brings a succinctly modern, alt-rock edge to his music, situating himself as a contemporary songsmith with a fine taste for the classics.” davidbrookings.net

FILM TO BE SHOT IN THE DELTA Azar to Direct Debut Feature Film Strack Azar’s journey has come full circle. Born and raised in Nashville, Azar’s family eventually moved back to Greenville where he graduated from high school and then moved to Los Angeles to study at Chapman University’s film school. Having recently graduated, Strack is returning to the Delta to direct his debut feature film inspired by the region’s lush scenery and based on an award-winning short film he directed in Greenville last summer. Filming is set to begin in late July. “The Banality,” written and Azar directed by Azar and Michael Stevantoni, is a supernatural drama about a small town priest who attempts to console a couple whose son was killed under suspicious circumstances, all the while struggling to decipher a series of inexplicable visions. Actor Chris Mulkey, of Twin Peaks fame will play the lead role, Father Moss, along with a cast of both local and L.A-based talent.

The photogenic nature of the region was a factor in Azar’s choice of location for the film. But, there was more. “The decision to shoot in the Delta came down to the fact that people simply aren’t cynical about filmmaking like they are in an entertainment mecca like L.A. We couldn’t make this movie without the interest and generosity of the local community, friends, and strangers alike. There’s still a kind of honesty to a production in a place like this, and that’s how it should be,” says Azar. Mulkey

thebanality.com.

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FUN FILLED EXCURSION

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New from University Press of Mississippi

Dick Waterman A Life in Blues By Tammy L. Turner Foreword by Edward Komara

The Beautiful Mysterious The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston By University of Mississippi Museum and Historic Houses Edited by Ann J. Abadie

Available at your local bookseller.

Life Between the Levees America’s Riverboat Pilots By Melody Golding

Photographs By Eudora Welty Foreword by Reynolds Price New foreword by Natasha Trethewey

upress.state.ms.us | 800.737.7788 DELTA MAGAZINE 2019

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BOOKS

Buzzworthy Comments

Leading Men by Christopher Castellani (Penguin Random House) Tennessee Williams fans should not miss Leading Men by Christopher Castellani. This glamorous novel carefully blends historical fact with fiction and is a touching portrait of artistic life and all the fame, fortune, desire, and loneliness that comes with it. It begins with an encounter in glittering 1953 Italy. At a party thrown by Truman Capote in Portofino, Williams and his longtime partner-assistant, Frank Merlo, meet aspiring actress Anja Bloom. This chance meeting changes the course of her life. Alternating between the peak of Williams’ career in 1950s Italy and the end of their lives in New York, this story beautifully explores identity and relationship in the midst of fame and freefall. Castellani puts it all out there on the line: love, friendship, loyalty, ambition, age, and what’s left after everything has been spent. (Liza Jones)

The Gone Dead by Chanelle Benz (Harper Collins) In The Gone Dead by Chanelle Benz, the Delta acts as not just the setting, but also as a haunting force that pulls the reader into the story. Benz’s well-executed debut novel takes place in a town called Greendale, and many would agree this fictional town seems a lot like Greenwood. Benz did a wonderful job utilizing the Delta’s rich civil rights history and the present day context it created. Billie James returns to the shack in the Mississippi Delta where her father, renowned poet Cliff James, died suddenly one night thirty years prior. She was there on the night of the supposed accident, but has no memory of it. As she gets to know the suspicious characters of the story, she discovers she was reported missing that night. But, things aren’t adding up. Following Billie around town and country as she dangerously pieces together the mystery of what happened to both her and her father on that fateful night is both exhilarating and emotional in this haunting, gripping story. (Liza Jones) A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself by William Boyle (Penguin Random House) William Boyle’s third novel, A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself has it all: nonstop action, a rich setting in the boroughs and suburbs of New York City, and most exquisitely of all, unforgettable characters the reader will be sad to leave. This hilarious noir begins in Brooklyn when Rena Ruggiero, a mob widow, hits her neighbor in the head with a heavy ashtray and thinks she’s killed him. She flees in his car to her estranged daughter’s house in the Bronx. But, her daughter, who’s involved with a mobster herself, won’t speak to her. Or, let Rena see her granddaughter, Lucia. Lacey Wolfstein, her daughter’s neighbor who is a retired porn star, drug addict and cheat, takes her in and so begins an unrelenting, zany voyage. Trouble is on its way. The women in this novel are crazy fun and addictive, and their relationships are authentically touching. The dialogue is so good, it’s hard not to get completely lost in this action-packed story and its people. (Liza Jones)

Christopher Castellani

We asked Facebook friends and Delta Magazine Fan Page Group members to give us their favorite summertime read. o Laurie Parker, Writer Starkville, Mississippi

One that comes to mind for me is The Finishing School by novelist Gail Godwin. I read this during the summer of 1987, and it is about the summer when a girl turns fourteen and meets an eccentric, free-spirited woman who lives by a lake and teaches her a lot of practical (and somewhat magical) lessons on life. o Suzanne Smith Barnette, Dental Hygienist Madison, Mississippi

The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher. It is over thirty years old, but came highly recommended by a friend! Chanelle Benz

o Renee Dantone Hits, Paralegal Greenville, Mississippi

Gently Scattered Intentions by Laurie Parker. The majority of the book is set in Greenville and Laurie did an amazing job researching our heritage, our staples, our noted locations, down to what would have been showing at the local theater during the story’s time period. I laughed, cried, cheered and I reminisced. I had a lot of emotions reading this book. o Margaret Shelton, Homemaker Pittsburg, Pennsylvania

William Boyle

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Even though it’s not all set in the summer, it does have an un-air-conditioned feel about it. Plus, it’s just an amazing book.

For the Record Books Delta Magazine fans are currently reading o John Cox Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep

o Leslie McEachern Pearman The Girl Before by Rena Olsen

o Lanny Greenberg Birds of Louisiana and Mississippi by Stan Tekiela 30 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

o Suzanne Smith Barnette The Other Woman by Sandie Jones

o Joyce Kennedy Team of Vipers by Cliff Sims

o Deborah Burnley Westbrook Dark Tribute by Iris Johansen

o Dena Webb

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington

o Vernell Price Sowell The Ditch Digger’s Daughters by Yvonne Thornton

o Charles Everett

Witch of Yazoo by Willie Morris

o Lamar Benson

Cemetery Road by Greg Iles

o Kenneth McEachern Pandora’s Clock by John Nance

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Life Between the Levees America’s Riverboat Pilots by Melody Golding (University Press) Life Between the Levees is a chronicle of first-person reflections and folklore from pilots who have dedicated their lives to the river. The stories are as diverse as the storytellers themselves, and the volume is full of drama, suspense, and a way of life a “landlubber” could never imagine. Although waterways and ports in the Mississippi corridor move billions of dollars of products throughout the U.S. and foreign markets, in today’s world those who live and work on land have little knowledge of the river and the people who work there. In ten years of interviewing, Melody Golding collected over one hundred personal narratives from men and women who worked and lived on “brown water,” our inland waterways. As photographer, she has taken thousands of photos, of which 130 are included of the people and boats and the rivers where they spend their time. The book spans generations of river life—the oldest pilot was born in 1917 and the youngest in 1987—and includes stories from the 1920s to today. (Special/DM Staff)

Texas Flood The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan by Alan Paul and Andy Aledort (St. Martin’s Press) A clean and sober Stevie Ray Vaughan, made one of his early groundbreaking performances at the Delta Blues Festival, near Greenville. He seemed poised for a new, limitless chapter of his life and career just a few years after struggling with his severe addiction. His last album had been his most successful, both critically and commercially. Instead, it all came screeching to a sudden end when Vaughan was killed in a helicopter crash on August 27, 1990 after that evening’s dynamic performance with Eric Clapton. He was only thirty-five years old. In the ensuing twenty-eight years, Vaughan’s legend and acclaim have grown; he is an international musical icon. Despite the cinematic scope of Vaughan’s life and death, there has never been a proper accounting of his story. Until now. Texas Flood provides the unadulterated facts about Stevie Ray Vaughan from those who were with him throughout every stage of his life and career and who knew him best. (Special/DM Staff) Blues Musicians of the Mississippi Delta by Steven Manneim (Arcadia Publishing) The Mississippi Delta blues run as deep and mysterious as the beautiful land from where the music originates. Blues legends B.B. King, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, Robert Johnson and countless other greats came from this region. The Delta blues, born as work songs in Mississippi cotton fields, was played on city street corners and in rural juke joints. With the Great Migration of African Americans in the first half of the 20th century, the Delta blues also made its way from Mississippi to Chicago. The sound of the blues would become the blueprint for the birth of rock and roll in Memphis in the 1950s. The era of the great Delta blues musicians is over, but their legacy remains an important chapter in American music. This book contains images of these important performers and the rich Delta landscapes that influenced their music. (Special/DM Staff) DELTA MAGAZINE 2019

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A world of discovery begins with Mississippi State University’s Cobb Institute of Archaeology, one of only a few endowed archaeological research institutes in the United States. Beyond U.S field work, archaeology teams from the College of Arts and Sciences have unearthed evidence in Israel corresponding to the time of biblical kings David and Solomon. Join our Infinite Impact Campaign and create possibilities for students and faculty in the Department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures to spark discovery and engage children through the institute’s programs.

©SteveGulledgePhotography.Net

infiniteimpactmsu.com

The Cobb Institute pioneers pathways as it inspires current and future students to delve into the past to understand the present.

MSU is an AA/EEO university.

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Touching lives. Powering the future. At Entergy Mississippi, the communities we serve are the communities we call home. That’s why we stay active and involved – because we know our responsibility reaches beyond the power grid. So, we invest in education and industry, while developing new solutions to power tomorrow. As a community, our successes fuel each other. We’re all on a circuit. And together, we power life. entergybrightfuture.com

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ART

Benny Melton Telling Stories Through His Art BY SUSAN MARQUEZ â&#x20AC;¢ PHOTOGRAPHY BY TOM BECK

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enny Melton may have been born in the northern reaches of South Dakota, but he grew up in the deep South. “My

father, a Mississippi native, was stationed in the military in Rapid City, South Dakota, where he met my mom. I was raised in Holmes County and spent a lot of time at my aunt’s house in Sumner, which is in Tallahatchie County. She actually lived in a place called Brazil, on Pennington Farms, between a railroad track and a bayou.” Melton’s aunt had once lived in New Orleans, and the first real art he ever saw were pastel portraits of his cousins done by an artist on Jackson Square.

His family moved to Yazoo City when Melton was a teenager, but it wasn’t until he attended Delta State University that he became serious about art. “I was registering for classes, and they asked me what I was interested in, and I told them I had always been interested in art. I had a humble background and had never taken art classes outside of school. But I knew I liked it. The advisor signed me up for a three-hour art class that met each Monday and Wednesday night. He said no one who wasn’t interested in art would take that class. I went to class early each evening and stayed late. I loved it. Sammy Britt was my teacher, and I knew I belonged in that class.”

The problem was that art was all Melton wanted to do. He didn’t want to attend his other classes, which didn’t bode well for his education. After DSU, Melton went to Mississippi College, where he studied under Sam Gore. “I went to school with Albert Smathers and Wyatt Waters. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I ended up dropping out of school, again, and going to work. By that time, I had gotten married and had children, so I needed the benefits a real job would afford me.” Melton continued to dabble in art, painting signs on the side. He went back to school later in life and got a business degree. “I got a job in Sioux City, Iowa, but when

the company downsized from nine people to two, I was left trying to figure out what to do next. But for me tragedy is always sprinkled with blessings.” Melton said that the week before his sales division was “reorganized,” he was given a thirty-year service award. “That happened on a Monday. As part of my award, I selected a nice plein air painting kit and supplies.

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Then, on the Friday of the same week, I was given the news about the coming transition. At first it was difficult to accept, but my former manager and the new company were very generous to me in providing a retention bonus and a severance agreement.” He headed back home to Mississippi with a financial windfall and the momentum to return to school as a full-time student. “What a blessing that turned out to be. Instead of dropping out of school like I did in 1980 to go to work, I was dropping out of work to go to school. Talk about a paradigm shift!” Melton completed his master’s in art at the University of Mississippi in May 2014. While there, he studied under Philip Jackson. “Jackson brought in a portrait artist from Cleveland that really made an impression on me. It was facinating to watch him work. He

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looked like Errol Flynn having a sword battle with a paint brush.” The central theme of Melton’s thesis was working-class people. “The political environment was just

starting to heat up in 2011, and I felt that working-class people are so often overlooked. I thought there was something wrong in devaluing people, so my work

reflects that.” His thesis show was called “A Working Life” and features everyday working-class people doing their jobs. He has a series called “On the Grid,” which is done in shades of red and uses a pixilated technique to portray his subjects. His figures and landscapes series of oil on canvas and panels portray common Southern scenes of people and places. A continuation of that body of work is Melton’s miniature series of oil paintings. “I try to do stuff that’s inspiring to me. I’m drawn to content and stories. I’m a big fan of literature and biographies, especially biographies of artists. I think about what it is I want to say and will make it mine through my art. The narrative aspect of art is interesting, and I am often inspired by a line from a poem or song. My pieces often have titles that suggest a theme, but are not overly

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informative. I want to let the viewer decide what a piece means to them.” Even though Melton considers himself a full-time artist, he has a full-time job as the training coordinator in the chemical business. “I work at the CF Industries Nitrogen facility in Yazoo City. But when I’m not working, I’m in my studio at home, stretching canvas, building frames, and painting.” One thing Melton stresses is that he loves all forms of art, and doesn’t want to be pegged as only an oil artist. “I paint in all mediums. More recently, I’ve discovered printmaking, and wish I had gotten into making prints much earlier in life. I also love pottery and sculpting. I like all of it!” Melton considers himself to be a lifelong learner, still taking classes from time to time. “I took art from Myra Green in Jackson back in the day, and really enjoy studying the work of other artists. Ellen Langford’s work is very powerful with strong positive and negative space. Peggi Kroll-Roberts, an artist from the Midwest, is another favorite of mine. I also study the painters from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and follow artists I admire on Instagram.” He continues, “The different views from artists affect my work. I am constantly learning, and trying new things all the time, which means I must sometimes unlearn. At one time my color palette was very vibrant. Now I use a more subdued color palette.” Melton says that one of his great joys is promoting other artists. “Promoting art is a passion of mine.” Melton has converted his home’s dining room into an art studio, with the full approval of his wife, Jennifer. “It was the room in our home with the best light,” he explains. While Melton used to do a lot of commission work, he now spends his time painting what he wants to paint. His work is sold at Oxford’s Treehouse Gallery and can also be seen on display at the Chancellor’s House. When he’s not working at his day job, or creating a new piece of art, Melton spends time with his children and grandchildren. “We have two daughters, who gave me seven grandchildren: five boys and two girls. We spend our summers traveling to baseball games on the weekends to see the boys play. I wouldn’t give that up for anything.” DM

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MUSIC

KRIS WILKINSON HUGHES

A Musical Journey from the Delta to England BY TOM SPEED

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CHRISTINA JANSEN

t is said that Mississippi is the birthplace of America’s music. It’s the home of the blues of course, but it’s also home to the father of country music and the King of Rock ‘n Roll. However, being the birthplace of music can mean more. It can mean cutting your teeth in the music world by soaking up the sounds around you, finding your voice, and crafting your own brand and path. And it can mean following that muse decades into the future and even across the Atlantic Ocean to Bedford, England. at was the case with musician Kris Wilkinson Hughes who grew up moving between the North and the South before eventually settling in Greenville and graduating from Delta State. “My mother is a Southerner, and my dad is a Northerner,” Hughes says. “Whenever my mother would grow homesick, we would move back down South to be near her family. We moved a lot, which made it tricky to find and keep friends, but I just got on with it. I feel at home in the South.” Growing up, Hughes was influenced by her mother’s and uncle’s record collections. “I used to listen to my uncle’s albums—all ‘70s rock,” she says. “It was Yes, Chicago, Pink Floyd, and e Beatles, of course. My mom’s Patsy Cline and Barbra Streisand albums made a big impact on me. One Christmas when I was six, I got Neil Diamond and Captain and Tennille albums.” Quite an eclectic taste for a six year old. Hughes’s interest in playing music was rooted early too. In grade school music class, her teacher introduced the class to the classical guitar. Hughes jumped right in, learning to play right-handed even though she is left-handed. “We all learned three chords,” she says. “I absolutely loved my guitar. I was hooked. I would play my three chords and make up my own songs. I slowly started moving my fingers around a little bit to get different sounds. Of course these chords all had names, but I didn’t take any more lessons, so I was just doing my own thing.” After stops in South Bend, Indiana, and Covington, Louisiana, Hughes found herself moving with her family to Greenville just in time to enroll at nearby Delta State University. ere, at house parties around town, she found herself not only enjoying the live music jam sessions, but wanting to participate in them as well. One night, she grabbed the microphone and began singing improvised lyrics and melodies. at was the spark that led her to be the lyricist and vocalist for her first band—Perfect Strangers. After graduating from Delta State with a degree in art, she moved to Jackson where the band was formed. Hughes and the guitarist turned out to be prolific songwriters, writing and recording songs on a weekly basis. Perfect Strangers then started playing live gigs around Jackson at the popular venues of the day like W.C. Don’s and e Dock. ey played at DSU’s Springfest and the Firehouse Tavern and also played in Memphis and Nashville.

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Supporting Suzanne Vega at Cadogan Hall in 2016. For Kate’s Sake original lineup in Nashville 1989. Chris Hall, Jay Lawrence, Hughes, and Deanna Verragona.

Perfect Strangers released one album, Protected in America, on an independent label in Jackson called N-Beat Records. It sold well for an indie and received rave reviews from the music press around the U.S. e record was also played heavily on independent and college radio stations, and it was even listed as number one on a radio station in Rohan, France. All of that buzz caught the attention of record companies, and Perfect Strangers received interest from the famed I.R.S. Records with the founder, Miles Copeland, calling on the band himself. (Copeland managed the artist Sting, and his brother Stewart was the drummer for e Police.) e band eventually signed with JEM Records out of South Plainﬁeld, New Jersey, and the moment they recorded their ﬁrst record for JEM, the label took bankruptcy, and the trajectory of Perfect Strangers stalled.

For Kate’s Sake

e Exit/In, 12th and Porter, 328 Performance Hall, e Cannery, e Bluebird. e band’s touring radius extended to Atlanta, and they even played a showcase at CBGB’s in New York. During this time, the band recorded demos hoping to ﬁnd a record deal. “Locally we were doing pretty good,” she says. “After several years I saved up and had a small investment from a friend. I met a guitar player by the name of George Marinelli, Bonnie Raitt’s guitar player, who oﬀered to produce the For Kate’s Sake’s debut album. We recorded an ‘A’ side and a ‘B’ side, mimicking the vinyl layout. New songs were recorded for the ‘A’ side, and a ‘greatest hits’ was collected from our demos for the ‘B’ side.” e album was called Goodiebag. For Kate’s Sake became a staple of the Nashville scene for much of the 1990s until one fateful night when another chance encounter altered the course of Hughes’s music and her life.

Stymied by the stall and tired of waiting tables, Hughes embraced her nomadic spirit, Above, Kris with Brian May, guitarist of Cicero Buck and My Girl The River It was 1998, and Hughes was at a gig at the packed up her pickup, and, along with her cat the rock band Queen. Below, with Tony Exit/In in Nashville. Years earlier, while in college, Scruﬀy, moved to Washington, D.C. It was too Bennett. she’d worked summers at Camelot Records in expensive even with four roommates. She was Greenville. ere she would pour over the newtired of waiting tables day and night, and, worse, wave records of the times, but especially the she wasn’t playing any music. en one day, she British imports. At the Exit/In, a friend who was and Scruﬀy took a road trip to visit some friends in the music business introduced her to an in Nashville. English songwriting duo and explained to “We went to see Billy Bragg,” she recalls. “I Hughes their song, “No More I Love Yous,” was loved him. Just him up there, hitting people written for Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics. between the eyes with his words and his music. Lennox had a hit with the song on her 1995 So powerful. I returned to D.C., saw Billy again, album Medusa. But, thanks to her days scouring and decided to pile everything in my truck and the import bin at Camelot, Hughes knew better. move to Nashville. It felt like coming home.” And she called them on it, saying: “No they is time, her stay “up North” had lasted a didn’t! ey recorded it as their own band, e mere three months. Back down South, she Lover Speaks, back in the ‘80s.” knew people, and she met even more. One of “ey were stunned I knew who they were!” says Hughes. the most fortuitous meetings was with guitarist and Jackson native One member of the British duo was Joe Hughes, and the two felt Jay Lawrence. Along with Lawrence and multi-instrumentalist a spark. After a few more visits, they quickly fell into a long-distance Deanna Verragona, they formed the band For Kate’s Sake. romance. By the time the eve of the millennium rolled around, e band landed gigs at some of Nashville’s most famed clubs— 40 | JULY/AUGUSt 2019

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For Kate’s Sake with World Party 1998.

Kris with daughter Ruby and husband, Joe.

Hughes ﬂew to England to ring in the new year. at night they got engaged and were soon married. From the outset, their romantic partnership was intertwined with their musical partnership. How could it not be? “Joe and I had started sharing music ideas while I was still in Nashville,” she says. ey’d recorded a few songs together. ey sounded good. So once they were married in England, they decided to properly consummate their musical partnership as well. ey formed the duo Cicero Buck. e name of the band was inspired by a ride down a country road one day in the Mississippi Delta, when Hughes misunderstood a friend as saying the house he was pointing out was built by “Cicero Buck.” Instead, the friend had been saying “Sears and Roebuck,” referring to the popular mail-order house kits that Sears sold in the early twentieth century. What had been an inside joke had become the name of a band. Cicero Buck released the album Delicate Shades of Grey in 2002. Hughes wasn’t a fan of the pop-country music of the 1990s while she lived in Nashville, and rejected the pleas of industry friends to “just go country.” But, the music of Cicero Buck ﬁt nicely in the burgeoning Americana scene which focused on the earnest songwriting of folk music with an appreciation for roots rock instrumentation. at earned them positive reviews in the magazines Alt-Country and No Depression. ey had radio play from legendary British DJ Bob Harris. ey toured extensively on the success of the album and recorded a new album to capture the momentum. eir sophomore release Humbucky (which included their own version of “No More I Love Yous”) came out in 2004 and with it plans to tour the US. But fate had other plans, and Hughes decided to stay home with her daughter Ruby, who was born soon after Humbucky was released. It was an easy decision. “Joe and I agreed that if we started a family I would stay at home for as long as I could. And I did,” she says. However, motherhood duties didn’t mean her music career had

to take a back seat, though it did take yet another turn. She trained to be a “Giggle Doctor,” a specialist clown who visits sick children in hospitals. She plays the ukulele, sings songs, and goes by the name of “Dr. Fab.” And she teaches young children how to sing and enjoy music. But Cicero Buck didn’t go away. Neither did the songwriting. By 2014, the band released the album, e Birth of Swagger, which was a collection of songs they’d written over the intervening decade. At about that time, Hughes found herself writing songs that didn’t quite fit the Cicero Buck songs. ey were songs about growing up in the South—in Covington and Greenville. She collected them and released them under the moniker My Girl e River on the album is Ain’t No Fairytale. “is Ain’t No Fairytale turned into a homage to my roots, my beloved South,” she says. “e memories I have as a child, a woman, a person living in the Deep South. Songs about Covington, Hurricane Katrina, wearing my mother’s wedding dress, my family, my love of the Southern food and music, and missing my family.” e album received good reviews, including an eight star review from Paste comparing the writing to Lucinda Williams and Jason Isbell. ey were invited to tour with Suzanne Vega. So while the journey of a restless spirit continues, it seems to have come full circle to the place where she first grabbed a microphone at a house party. “I love driving through the Delta now and appreciate the blues and history,” she says. “It’s something I didn’t appreciate when I was living there. Being so far from home, the music and memories help me; I write because it helps me. I express myself through my songs— I didn’t appreciate what I had on my doorstep until it was five thousand miles away. I have a lyric from the song ‘Covington’ that goes, ‘like all good seeds on the breeze we leave, one day we all blow back.’” Kris is still writing and creating. Where will the seeds take root next? DM To listen to Kris’s music or find out more, visit mygirltheriver.com or @mygirltheriver on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

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A MOST UNUSUAL COLLECTOR The Forgotten Story of Julius Augustus Davies

BY ANDREW ROSS • PHOTOS COURTESY OF DAVIES MANOR ASSOCIATION RESEARCH ASSISTANT KIM FLEISCHHAUER

The writer David Cohn may have pinpointed a figurative truth when he famously claimed the Mississippi Delta begins in the Peabody’s lobby. Literally, of course, he was about ﬁfteen miles oﬀ. Head south from Memphis on Highway 61, and the Delta’s true starting point becomes readily apparent just over the state line at a spot where the roadway, after winding down lazily through the ancient Loess Hills, suddenly intersects with the northern-most crest of the Yazoo-Mississippi-Delta levee system. 44 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

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This photo, one of two surviving shots taken inside Dr. Davies’s home in Walls, reveals just how haphazardly he stored the vessels (and human remains) that he uncovered on his digs.

aze out from here upon the region’s signature horizon of sprawling flatland and sky. I personally find this stretch of countryside a bit hypnotic. I think it’s the particular way the landscape morphs before one’s eyes—hills, flatland, levee, and river all colliding at once in the very shadows of South Memphis’s cityscape. ere’s also something mesmerizing about the Loess Hills themselves. Formed during the last ice age from deposits of wind-blown silt, these hills, lined with kudzu-choked ravines and pockets of towering oaks, seem to hum with an energy that’s primordial and mysterious and not a little dark. Such were the odd sorts of associations on my mind one recent afternoon as I dropped into Mississippi from Memphis and, almost immediately, pulled into the tiny town of Walls. I’d come to this place “where the Delta meets the bluff” to learn more about a long-forgotten resident named Julius Augustus Davies. Known simply as Gus to his family and friends, Davies lived and worked in Walls as an ophthalmologist in the late 1800s until his death 1924. Along with practicing Dr. Julius Augustus “Gus” medicine, he became moderately Davies seen here in the late wealthy purchasing cotton-rich land that 1800s, around the time he he leased to African-American began his digs at the Walls Site. sharecroppers. But these weren’t the real reasons I’d become so interested in the man. What gripped me instead had to do with his intimate relationship with the North Delta itself—specifically, his compulsion to unearth the land’s oldest human secrets. Beyond simple curiosity, it is unclear what exactly drove Dr. Davies to spend a good chunk of his adult life digging in the dirt around Walls for prehistoric artifacts. It certainly wasn’t money; he did not sell the Mississippian Period materials that he unearthed, and, just before his death in 1924, donated the entirety of his collection to the University of Mississippi. Public recognition wasn’t a factor either: Never did he publish or formally catalogue his finds. Instead,

Gus’s childhood home at Davies Plantation, photographed here in 1875. The house, which dates to 1830, is preserved today as a museum by the Davies Manor Association.

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From left to right, a globular jar designed in the shape of a frog, a shell tempered opossum vessel, and a “Horned Monster” effigy bowl.

Gus, a lifelong bachelor, chose to live alone with his discoveries in mentioned article correctly noted, Gus was a “most unusual the manner of a hoarder, haphazardly stacking ancient pottery and collector” whose “fame, unfortunately, is not commensurate with tools (and yes, even human remains) in every available space of his his contribution.” simple, four-room home. Eventually, according to one account, all that remained were “narrow pathways…for essential routes.” But ulius Augustus Davies was born in 1855 on a slave-powered cotton and regardless of Gus’s eccentricities, the impact this unassuming doctor livestock plantation some twenty miles east of Memphis. ough his had on the Mid-South’s archeological record is undeniable: today the parents were economically secure, his childhood was far from carefree. collection that bears his name is considered one of the largest and Gus’s mother, Almeda, died of unknown causes when he was four. A most intact assemblages of Mississippi vessels ever found. few years later, his father, James, headed off to the Civil War as a In the decades following Ole Miss’s Confederate infantry solider, leaving Gus acquisition of the nearly 400 objects in and his younger brother Will in the care the Davies Collection, a handful of of an uncle and aunt. Although James One of the collection’s scholars and students studied the vessels’ Davies would survive more than three most in-tact examples of a human effigy bowl. exceptional iconography. Occasionally, years of harrowing combat, he returned the university collaborated with small home a psychologically tortured man. museums on exhibits. Mostly though, Verbal abuse and threats of violence the collection remained in storage inside toward his new wife, Pauline (Almeda’s the Department of Sociology and sister as it happens), became common. So Anthropology. at’s been changing in too did talk of suicide. It all came to a recent years. In 2016, an exhibit at Ole head one afternoon in the spring of Miss’s Barnard Observatory significantly 1867, when James, in a “fit of raised the profile of the collection. e excitement,” pulled a loaded gun on Davies Collection: Mississippian Pauline as she was sitting on the porch of Iconographic Vessels, was so well received their home. With the help of one of her it led to a follow-up display in the step-sons (the accounts don’t clarify but campus library. Two years later, another sampling of the collection’s it was most likely Gus), Pauline managed to wrestle the gun away. effigy vessels was loaned to the Historic New Orleans Collection. Minutes later, James pulled a razor from his pocket, and, in Going forward, plans for a new exhibit are in the works with a “desperation of his frenzy,” partially slit his own throat. A neighbor’s certain art museum on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. For all the last minute intervention was all that prevented James from finishing renewed interest in the artifacts themselves, however, the man the job. responsible for the collection’s existence continues to remain an One can only guess at the emotional scars Gus and Will suffered enigma. With the exception of a brief 1991 article in Mississippi from that traumatic event (ere were others too, according to Archeology and a few scattered references in books, nothing at all divorce proceedings filed by Gus’s mother-in-law). While James has been written on Dr. Davies. As the authors of the abovemanaged to live on until 1904, he continued to deal with what we’d

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This highly unique Davies Collection effigy vessel features eight hands —four on the upper portion of the bottle that reach downward, and four on the bottom portion that reach upwards.

Though heavily damaged, the surviving portions of this bottle reveal distinctive Mississippian engravings.

now call post traumatic stress disorder. e experience of living with diameter, one end of the rod attached to wooden handle while the a mentally disturbed father probably impacted Gus’s and Will’s other end tapered into a sharp point that could easily penetrate the decision to pursue careers in medicine. e brothers studied under soft Delta soil. Oftentimes, Gus would select a particular section of a local doctor through their teens then earned medical degrees from ground, then head off on his day’s rounds, leaving Mose to probe Vanderbilt University—Will in 1878 and Gus the following year. until he made contact with objects that felt promising enough to Both also pursued post-graduate work at New York University. excavate. Returning in the afternoon, Davies would examine the Afterwards, Will moved home to help care for his father and set up discoveries, determining what to keep and what to discard. practice as a general doctor. Gus, however, was ready to break out Judging by first-hand accounts and a few surviving pictures of his on his own. He briefly practiced in Memphis before permanently pottery-cluttered home, Davies did not discard much. Strangely moving to Walls, known at the time as Alpika. though, his desire to amass does not seem to have translated to Nothing Davies left behind in his reverence for the artifacts. According to Dr. business records or correspondence indicates Calvin Brown, an Ole Miss professor and exactly when he began to dig around Walls fellow collector who befriended Gus toward nor how early in life he’d developed his the end of his life, Davies “never looked at interest in prehistory. According to an [his finds] once he had found a place for account from one of his younger cousins, them on the floor.” Whatever Brown may Gus collected Native American artifacts have thought about such habits, it did not even as child—a claim that’s not unlikely hinder the mutually-beneficial relationship considering the Chickasaw hunting trails he and Davies formed. It was through that had once passed through his family’s Brown’s encouragement that Davies decided land. Regardless how it happened, by at least to gift his collection to Ole Miss. It would the early 1900s, he’d become an active also be through Brown that Davies’s name, digger and collector, focusing much of his albeit posthumously, received wider attention on a particular Mississippian recognition. Just a few years after Gus’s burial site just a mile or so from his home in death, Brown published Archeology of Walls. ough the “Walls site” burial fields This exceptionally well-preserved effigy bottle is Mississippi. e book, which is still would later be destroyed by levee decorated with a swastika engraving, and four considered a classic, included a sizable alternating images of a human head and hand. Each construction, the nearby Edgefield Mounds hand contains an eye within the palm. section on the artifacts from Walls. are designated today as part of the Mississippi Mound Trail. early all of the artifacts that Gus and Mose unearthed from the Walls e excavations that Gus carried out at the Walls site relied heavily site in the early twentieth century were grave goods that had been on the physical labor of Mose Frazier, a sharecropper who leased a buried sometime between 1200-1400 AD. ese years were the apex of portion of Davies land. Another local sharecropper whose name has the Mississippian Period, a time when thriving chiefdoms of been lost is also believed to have been a member of Gus’s “field crew.” indigenous people could be found up and down the Mississippi e particular digging method they employed, known as “probe and Valley. e people living in these chiefdoms were masters of largepit,” would be considered crude by modern standards. But in their scale corn cultivation. ey built elaborate earthen mounds and day, before professional archeological practices were commonplace, established trade networks that extended as far as the Rockies and such a technique was accepted, if not considered innovative. e key Great Lakes. ey also had distinct religious beliefs. eir most tool was steel rod that Gus special ordered from a machine shop in fundamental religious concept was that of the “cosmos,” a threeMemphis. Roughly four and a half feet long by 3/16 of an inch in tiered system of worlds (Above, Middle, and Below) populated by a

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In the decades following Ole Miss’s acquisition of Gus’s finds, the Davies Collection underwent periods of notable scholarly research.

combination of deities, humans, animals, and supernatural halfpieces of pottery, the collection features specialized tools and domestic human, half-animal creatures among other anomalous beings. For items, including mortars, pipes, ear-plugs, gorgets, discoidals, and the Mississippians, the interactions between these specific entities knives. “I’ve never seen a collection that’s this size and in this good and worlds represented notions of order and security on one end of shape,” Meyers says. “And it’s passed down through other the spectrum and chaos and uncertainty on archeologists over how many years.” the other. Sadly, the later notions would soon Yet that’s not all that makes the Davies come to dominate their civilization after the Collection so special. Quite a few of the vessels fateful arrival of the Spanish explorer feature complex anthropological clues that Hernando de Soto in 1541. appear in the form of iconographic engravings Today, beyond surviving physical artifacts and effigy figures. e engravings and designs and the remnants of mounds they left behind, are “extraordinary works of art,” says all evidence of this once mighty civilization Boudreaux. Furthermore, they are all united by has vanished. And yet, that’s not entirely a particular religious theme: the Below World true—not really. Recently, when I spoke with of the Cosmos. It’s on this point that the the Ole Miss anthropology professors Tony professors become especially animated, Boudreaux and Maureen Meyers, it became describing how vessels shaped like fish and apparent that the Mississippians’ more frogs and snakes all connect to Mississippian intangible contributions—things like their beliefs in the underworld. “e rough symbols, rituals, and, yes, feelings about the Mose Frazier Circa 1959: As the lead member comparison might be a case where you had a world they inhabited—are quite alive in of Dr. Davies’s “field crew,” Mose Frazier whole Christian pottery collection that only had modern research. Objects from this lost performed much of the day-to-day excavations symbols of the pearly gates,” she explains. “It’s civilization, in other words, even ones that were at the Walls Site. And should be credited for clearly tied to a specific belief system.” Myers unearthing so many vessels in-tact. relatively ordinary in their design and purpose, notes that one of the most oft-repeated are much more than objects in and of themselves; oftentimes, they engravings depicts the Uktena—a mythical monster that lived in the are direct portals into deeper layers of human understanding. water but was actually associated with all three worlds. “It has the wings When it comes to the Davies Collection in particular, Boudreaux of a bird, so it’s in the upper world, and horns of a deer, which represent and Meyers make one thing clear: What they have in their this world, and scales of a snake for the underworld.” Myers pauses department’s possession is far from ordinary. In Meyer’s view, the before adding a few words of semi-serious caution. “You’re not collection is the “shining star” of the university’s overall collection of supposed to look directly at it,” she says, “or bad things can happen.” 1,300 boxes of prehistoric materials. Along with the hundreds of DM 48 | jUlY/AUgUST 2019

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BAKING Memories HOW GREENVILLE’S DAVID MOSOW STARTED A BAKERY POWERHOUSE IN NASHVILLE BY BILL DEJOURNETT • PHOTOGRAPHY BY REEVES SMITH

David Mosow can hardly be described as a “country boy,” but his formative years growing up in Greenville in the 1960s provided the basis for his current success. Owner of Nashville’s Charpier’s Bakery, Mosow provides bread products to over two hundred Nashville restaurants, caterers, food trucks, and universities.

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David Mosow of Charpier’s stands with the fresh bounty of the day.

osow’s family moved to Greenville from Waukegan, Illinois, in 1958, when his father’s factory moved there. “I had a wonderful time growing up in Greenville,” Mosow says. “People say to me ‘how could you grow up in a little town in Mississippi?’ I think to myself, ‘because it was just wonderful. You could leave your keys in the car. It was interesting.’” Mosow recalls some of the hijinks he and his siblings got into— “We moved out in Bowmanor, which was a new subdivision when I was growing up. My father built another house there, and you could look all the way from my house in Bowmanor to Terrace Gardens, and I could see my mother driving down the road. We had a little storage room next to the garage, and we would take my little sister who would climb the ladder and sit up on the roof to be the lookout to make sure my mother didn’t see whatever trouble we were getting into, and we would be ready for my mother by the time she got home.” The Mosow children soon earned quite the reputation in Greenville growing up. “I remember my father being at the

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Dough is weighed by hand on a scale for consistency in each loaf.

Marble Rye bread, one of the many varieties made at Charpier’s Bakery.

go in and get us what we wanted. For him doing that, we had to buy him half a pint of Kentucky Beau. When he got out to the car, the first thing he would do was swig it down. Then he’d break out in this big sweat, so you didn’t want to be sitting behind him in his big convertible.” Mosow waxes nostalgic about his later years in Greenville— “The great thing about Greenville is that when I lived there, there were a lot of authors. It had a lot of mystique to it. I worked briefly for Hodding Carter III at the Delta Democrat Times. I was a disc jockey at the radio station. Hodding Carter had a caricature that my wife drew of Jimmy Carter in his office for years. There were a lot of personalities in Greenville.” Following college, Mosow married his wife Carol in 1971 and eventually moved back to Greenville to work for his father. One day, Mosow’s mother asked him to stop by Brown’s bakery for a loaf of bread. Finding it was closed, he talked with the children of Bill Jefferson, the owner, to see if Jefferson would consider selling it. After purchasing the bakery for $2,500, Mosow originally intended to re-sell the bakery equipment. The original owner, German Brown, contacted Mosow and eventually convinced him to re-open the bakery in 1973, with Brown acting as Mosow’s tutor and mentor. “He came down and helped me for two years, and when he left, I never looked back. I was smitten,” Mosow says.

Mosow with daughter Erin, who manages the bakery.

synagogue at the temple in Greenville, and a lady was talking to him about building a house,” says Mosow. “She didn’t introduce herself or anything. He said, ‘Well, why don’t you build a house in Bowmanor?’ She said, ‘Well, I lived in Wilzin Park. It’s too expensive. Bowmanor, I just don’t know if I could live there.’ He said, ‘Why not?’ She said, ‘Well that’s where those wild Mosow kids live.’” Later on, when Mosow was in high school, shenanigans of a bit more serious nature occurred. “We did things that weren’t legal. Nothing that would hurt anybody,” Mosow says. “A woman named Willie Mae Brady worked for our family. She had a husband named Little Buddy. He had a red Cadillac with a white interior. He used to take us out to the bootlegger, a local liquor joint. It would be in the middle of the summer, and the dust would be flying. He would 54 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

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Hundreds of loaves of bread are baked every day.

Eventually, the Mosow family outgrew Greenville. “My wife and I went to Memphis with my oldest daughter Julie to Goldsmith’s department store,” says Mosow. “She was mesmerized by the escalators. She would ride up and down, up and down, and my wife said to me, ‘We’ve got to get out of Greenville.’” Mosow relocated to New Orleans, where he worked for various bakeries for three and a half years. After receiving a job offer, he relocated once more to Aspen, Colorado. Mosow recalls having a difficult time adjusting to the different culture of the West. “That was an unusual experience,” Mosow says. “Aspen was like a foreign country to me. It was a totally different world.” After almost four years living in Colorado, he was fired from his job. Mosow turned to his father for guidance. “When I talked to my dad, he said, ‘You’re in your thirties now, maybe you should go back into business for yourself. You’re like me—you don’t want to work for anybody.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s probably true. I don’t want to go to

corporate meetings.’ He said, ‘Why don’t you figure out a place to put a bakery, and I’ll help you get it started.’” After considering Nashville and Charlotte, he settled on Nashville as the location for his new bakery due to the robust economy, health care system, government, and religion. Initially, Mosow opened Charpier’s Bakery (an homage to his mother’s maiden name) in the back of a Sunflower grocery store. Two years later the store was bought out by another chain and refused to let Mosow run his bakery there. After his father helped secure a loan for Mosow, he purchased a property in West Nashville in 1986. He moved to his present location at 109 Duluth Avenue in 1989 and added an extension to that property in 1995. Mosow has tried tweaking his process over the years with mixed results. “I’ve certainly tried a lot of things I shouldn’t have,” says Mosow. “I went through a period where I tried to speed up the process of the bread. And I forgot what Brown had taught me—‘Not to take the bread until it’s time.’ It turned out to be true, and I’m still doing that today. It’s been successful for me.” Charpier’s Bakery produces many varieties of bread, including rye, pumpernickel, marble rye, sourdough, Tuscan, white bread, challah, multi-grain, and wheat among others. Charpier’s most popular product is gourmet hamburger buns, which are a big hit with restaurants and the booming food truck business in Nashville. They also specialize in par-baked French bread loaves. “For a customer who doesn’t do French bread every day, we can make a bread and half-bake it, and they can put it in the oven. They can keep it for two to four days. The great thing about it is when it comes out of the oven, it’s just like fresh-baked bread,” says Mosow. Though Mosow has undeniably conquered the Nashville bread market, he still makes time to come back to Greenville on occasion. “The only thing I can tell you is that when I’m down there in the summer and I walk outside in the morning, there’s this big fog, ninety percent humidity, and I know I’m back home. There’s a certain amount of comfort when you’re down there. You just feel very comfortable.” DM DELTA MAGAZINE 2019

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WOMEN’S · CHILDREN’S · HOME

100 FRONT STREET SUITE A INDIANOLA, MS (662) 452-5131

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Michael Thompson

THOMPSON FA M I LY TA L E S With roots in Bentonia, this family of writers shares stories inspired by food, fun and sports

KAREN FOCHT

BY CHRIS PEPPLE

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Wright Thompson

THE THOMPSON FAMILY stories start and continue around the table. Stories about shared meals and family gatherings. Stories about life in the Delta and living on the edge of it and trips away. The tales deepen when their family gets together to cook and laugh, and then the stories become the foundation for so much more. Like Wright Thompson’s new TV show, TrueSouth, which is about food and restaurants across the region. Perhaps the best storyteller of the entire clan was Wright’s late father, Walter Wright Thompson. Many people throughout Mississippi remember Walter as a master storyteller. He could hold a crowd in suspense for hours. And although his stories were told as verbal hand-me-downs, the trait seems to have been passed down, presenting itself in written form through Wright. The narratives that started in the Thompson’s Southern kitchens and dining rooms have led several members of their family to tap into their storytelling skills to launch their careers as writers. The creativity that flows through many generations has seen four Thompson-family men use their writing talents to take on the worlds of

sports, music, marketing, and fiction. The eldest of these writers is Michael Hicks Thompson, born on a farm in Yazoo County. The youngest of the original Thompson brothers, he has three nephews, Wright, John William, and Puffer, who are also full-time writers. But let’s start with Michael. He enjoyed a long career in marketing, but twelve years ago moved into the world of murder mysteries—Christian fiction writing. When speaking of his second career, Michael always remembers his roots. “As for my family, we’re a clan, and we fight for each other,” Michael claims. “For some odd reason, our family ties are bound through the experience of God and food.

Our family has always enjoyed discussing Him and our cooking, grilling, experimenting with food. We love to gather around the table and share a good meal and a buzzing good story. It has to be true, though; no fiction is allowed around our table, or you’ll get called down for it. Shyness does not exist in our households.” The Thompson “Super Bowl” of feasts is Thanksgiving, with the location alternating between Yazoo City, Clarksdale, Oxford, and Memphis. According to Michael, the family’s creativity is easily traced. “We all know where we came from. Small town Mississippi. And guess what? We all have very creative mothers in our genes. My

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John William Thompson

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mother was a self-taught artist. She painted and sculpted whenever she could. My father built a kiln in our back yard for her to fire her clay works.” Michael grew up in a rough and tumble, male hormone-laden environment. “I got caught up in twenty-three serious fist fights and I remember each one,” he laughs. To his career credit, he used his creativity to start a one-person advertising agency that expanded to two cities—Memphis and Nashville—and eventually employed eightyseven team members. His firm, Thompson & Company, won numerous national and international creative awards. After selling the firm in 2011, Michael knew he couldn’t walk away from his passion of writing; he just changed what he wrote. He first novel used his fascination with the biblical story of David to write and publish a two-volume graphic novel titled DAVID—The Illustrated Novel. His new career proved successful as he brought home various awards including best graphic novel and best interior design from the International Book Awards. “Then I sold my advertising agency, and knew I was ready for another career,” Michael acknowledges. “I turned to fulltime writing. After my graphic novels, I moved into murder mysteries. The first novel, The Rector, came to me in a dream. I’ve completed two books in this solo series and now writing the third. The Rector has caught the attention of Hollywood and will hopefully soon be made into a movie.” Michael brings his own style to his books as he blends his theology with his love for a good mystery. His novels delight his readers with the intensity of a psychological thriller that has hidden references and twists that draw the readers into each chapter. “I try to write cinematically—scenes that move at the same pace a movie would. I loathe novels that over-describe characters or scenes, ones that can go on for pages. Too much. Let the reader use their own imagination a bit. I like to have my reader participate with me in the story. Every scene, every paragraph needs a little conflict. I don’t want my reader to put the novel down. I’ve learned some secrets to keep them reading.” For now, he’s leaving his fans waiting for the filming of the movie and the release of his next book in the series. Still, he concedes that his nephews are more talented writers than him.

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Three generations: Puffer Thompson with his father and son.

“

There’s a lot going on in our family. People find something profound to say and use their talents to express it whether it’s through art or music or advertising or writing.”– WrighT ThomPson

Michael’s nephew, Wright Thompson, also knows the thrill of having fans waiting for his next project, such as his new TV show, TrueSouth. “If there’s a Thompson that reminds us of Hemingway, it’s Wright,” exclaims, Michael. A senior writer for ESPN, Wright recently released his book titled The Cost of These Dreams: Sports Stories and Other Serious Business. When being interviewed on his book tour, Wright admitted, “This may be one of the most memorable moments of my career. I just spoke to a packed crowd in New York—Gelf Magazine’s Varsity Letters at the Gallery at (Le) Poisson Rouge. I’m on the road headed to some other wonderful venues to talk about something that I truly love doing.” As of this writing, Wright’s book is fourth on the New York Times Best Seller list. Needless to say, it’s quite an accomplishment. Although Wright currently makes his home in Oxford, his career actually began Clarksdale where he grew up. While in elementary school, he started a neighborhood newspaper, and he never looked back from there. In college, he

joined the newspaper staff and was randomly assigned to write a sports column. He’s stuck with that field and has become one of America’s best-known sportswriters, bringing fans the stories of athletes and their journeys through courage and conflict, through hardships and overcoming them. He looks beyond the stats and gets to the hearts of the athletes, letting fans know what drives them in their personal and professional lives. Wright doesn’t just stick to sports topics. He also admits that he has a passion for food like his other family members. “I’m thrilled that ESPN asked me to develop a show that tells the stories of restaurants of the South. As executive producer of TrueSouth, I can say credit goes to me only for being smart enough to ask John Edge to work on this. He’s phenomenal and does most of the work. I get to go around eating at all these fantastic off-the-grid places. It’s my second passion.” Wright also gives credit to his family for encouraging him to embrace his creativity and use it to follow his passions in life. “My mother was a creative writing teacher.

There’s a lot going on in our family. People find something profound to say and use their talents to express it whether it’s through art or music or advertising or writing.” Wright believes, like all the other Thompson writers, that their mothers played a huge roll in their creative development. Even with his writing, producing, and book tour, Wright still finds time to return to his Mississippi home to share a good meal and more stories with family. “One thing I know, though, is that when I retire, I’m going for that sailboat. No second or third career for me. I’m going to enjoy my time without a schedule to follow.” John William Thompson, another nephew of Michael, isn’t even thinking about slowing down. He uses music to tell the stories that come from his life in the South. He grew up in Bentonia. “Mama says that as young child I would write what she called my ‘sing songs.’ That seems to be the first evidence that melody was the particular way I wanted to express myself. I was just drawn to music from then on. As a young kid, it was spinning Elvis and country classics like “Teddy Bear” by Red DELTA MAGAZINE 2019

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318 Howard Street • Greenwood, Mississippi 662.453. 2114 • thealluvian.com

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Sovine and “Wabash Cannon Ball” by Roy Acuff. As I moved into teen years, I am sure my family grew tired of my habit because I would carry my jam box everywhere I went. I didn’t have headphones, so I would hold this huge box up to my ear and keep the volume low so I didn’t disturb everyone else in the car.” What may have seemed like a disturbance then has turned into a career as an award-winning singer/songwriter and led him to the stages of Nashville and around the world to perform for American service personnel on active duty. “I didn’t pursue avenues of performing as a young writer. I didn’t perform publicly until my wedding at the age of twenty-nine. I am not sure how I got through that because I suffered tremendously with stage fright. For the most part, I have conquered that, but it is still evident at times.” One of the most memorable times in his career came when playing for active duty military at Guantanamo when his brother was stationed there as the FBI’s agent-in-charge. With 450 songs already written, John isn’t slowing down any time soon. “There are some songs that reflect the events of my life in the last couple of years that I need to get in the studio and get them recorded— songs like ‘Papa I’ which is truly one of my favorites to play. It’s is a song speaking to my father and telling him that I have heard what I think was his most profound message to his children: don’t give up, whatever it is you are doing.” Uncle Michael vouches for John William’s song-writing ability, “His way with words is haunting yet uplifting at the same time, if that’s possible.” At the end of a long day, John cherishes his time around the table with family members. “If it’s one thing my family takes seriously, it’s food. My cousin Wright has written often on our family’s Thanksgiving feasts and the approval process of dishes that are accepted. It’s not that you are told not to bring something, but if the platter isn’t bare at the end of the day, that’s a pretty good hint. Papa loved to smoke meat, and my brother and I have certainly acquired that passion along with cooking up a batch of his famous barbecue sauce.” Puffer Thompson, last but not least of the Thompson writers, takes his creativity into the world of marketing as a copywriter, though he also thought of becoming a chef

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and sharing his love of food with others outside of the family. “When I graduated from Ole Miss, I knew I needed to choose a direction for a career. I got my love of cooking from my dad, but I decided to follow my Uncle Michael into advertising. Now I can come home from a day at the office and cook as my hobby.” Puffer, who resides in the fair town of Fairhope, Alabama, but grew up in Yazoo City, runs his own agency, traveling frequently to work face-to-face with clients. “Though I’m a writer, in my field, visuals can be more powerful than words. I work with graphic designers and art directors to make sure that we are telling a memorable story— we are making someone’s brain click when we present an ad or content for a website.” With an English teacher as a mother, Puffer learned early that he needed to make every word he wrote count. “I used to fear the blank page, but it’s a great feeling when you push through and the project’s done and you and the client both love it.” One piece of his writing that thousands of people see each fall came through a request from a first cousin who works at Ole Miss. “Michael Jr. asked me to write something for their staff retreat that defines what Hotty Toddy means to Ole Miss alumni and fans. I had no idea at the time that it would end up on a plaque at the Walk of Champions beside VaughtHemingway Stadium. It’s my favorite piece of writing, but I would have stressed over it more had I known where it would hang.” Puffer Thompson sums up the life that holds these four writers together. “It’s about the simple pleasures that we share. We all come together to cook or share a meal, and the stories just come. The Delta is known for its storytellers. We can be proud of it. Michael tells intriguing stories through his novels. Wright tells insightful stories of people in the sports and the food world. John moves people through his songs. I tell stories of companies or clients. Even our other family members decorate with their floral arrangements or write blogs or teach English or Sunday School. We all laugh together a lot. But we believe in one Savior. We could fill more than a few books with our own stories.” Maybe writing their own stories, their memoirs, will be the next career move for one of them. DM DELTA MAGAZINE 2019

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HOME

from the

DEEP SOUTH West Village to the

BY BRENDA WARE JONES PHOTOGRAPHY BY RORY DOYLE

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What the English would call a “bed-sit:” an intimate seating area blends cozily with the sleeping quarters, all illumined by sunlight pouring in from the street-level window.

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Q&A with Kate Hayes Fresh out of college, this Clarksdale gal made the big move to New York, taking lots of the Delta with her. She loves to talk about how she got from here to there, and how she has brought touches of home to her tiny but elegant apartment in Greenwich Village. So, tell us what led you to move to the Big Apple? My mom, Paige Hayes, studied interior design and lived in New York for a year after she graduated from Ole Miss. She migrated back south and married my dad, but the number of stories she tells about living up here make it seem like she was here at least ten years! Her passion for the Big Apple quickly spread to my sisters and me at young ages. We were lucky enough to take trips to New York, going to Broadway shows and playing in Central Park. I definitely credit my mom with giving me the confidence and desire to experience New York for myself. I spent a summer at Parsons School of Design, after my freshman year of college, and I knew I wanted to come back.

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What is your background? As we say down here, “Where are you from, and who are your people?” I’m originally from Clarksdale, born and raised there. My dad,Tripp, took over my grandfather’s farm; he grows primarily cotton, soybeans, and corn. I love the small town life and appreciate it even more now when I visit home. It’s an amazing feeling to know you are in a town full of family and friends who care about you. I relish both the laid-back lifestyle and social atmosphere that characterizes the Delta. And when I come back during spring and summer months, I thoroughly annoy anyone around me by proclaiming, “It’s all so green and beautiful!!”—having grown used to the lack of foliage up here!

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Pale walls and crisp white textiles visually expand the small space, while Hayden Hallâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Delta landscape provides a color pop over the sofa. Opposite page: A vintage French demi-lune console and a unique bulletin board elevated with an antique gilt frame on the rustic brick wall are surrounded by framed artwork, drawing the eye upward to the tall ceiling.

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Kate enjoying a morning cup of coffee before a busy day.

Were you an Interior Design major? I majored in Integrated Marketing Communications at Ole Miss, and was always interested in the visual side of any project. This led me to specialize my degree in Magazine Service Journalism, and I wrote my senior thesis on the graphic design approaches of interior design magazines. When I moved to New York, I was hoping for a job that would further develop my visual skills and attention to detail, and was lucky to land an internship with a small but respected residential interior design firm based in Manhattan, Christina Murphy Interiors. Having grown up in a large family that loved homes and entertaining, it was a natural fit to take the knowledge I’d acquired of interior design and build on it. I took night classes further studying the field and got my certification in Interior Design and Architecture Studies from Parsons. Are you still with the same firm? The internship eventually became a full-time position. I now manage and oversee projects in Manhattan and surrounding areas like the Hamptons, Connecticut, and Martha’s Vineyard. We just wrapped up a job in the Bahamas. It’s such a treat to spend time in our clients’ beautiful homes and help customize the spaces for their lifestyle. I’ve learned so much about people through this job. It’s very rewarding to walk away from a project knowing that you’ve helped create a beautiful home where a family will make countless memories with the pieces you put together. It takes a lot of thought and scheduling and patience to make it happen, but it’s so worth it in the end. What is the style you prefer in your own space? I would describe my personal style as eclectic. I like to blend antiques with modern pieces, and mix different textures and materials to give an overall bohemian mood. I love and respect so many different styles that it’s hard for me to pinpoint my own at this stage of my career. 70 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

Just minutes from bustling Midtown, the West Village “feels like a small town,” she says.

Where is your apartment? What do you love about it? I actually found this apartment on Craigslist. When I walked up to the front door for the first time, its location in the West Village was persuasive enough. Once inside, I totally fell in love with the tall ceilings, large street-facing window, and the recessed brick wall. I met the broker there with a tape measure already in hand and immediately began measuring every square inch. Right away I could see myself and my things living there and knew it was going to be home. I began drawing furniture layouts, trying to see just how much I could physically squeeze in this little studio and it still be livable. It’s been a challenge, but so rewarding adjusting to life in a small space. Once you begin paring down, it actually becomes

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Below, Kate reupholstered Nate Berkus for Target chairs in basil green velvet with a contrasting striped linen on the backs.

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ITâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S ALL IN THE DETAILS: Blending antiques, mid-century finds, and thoroughly modern pieces with carefully edited accessories makes for a visually stimulating, and deeply comfortable city retreat.

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With only 250 square feet of floor space, every inch must do double duty. Kate blended the tiny kitchen into the living area, making it visually appealing with slate-colored cabinetry, baskets, and artwork.

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SPOTTED ON INSTAGRAM

I SPY: Clarksdale artist Hayden Hall’s Insta-worthy artwork adorns hip apartments across the country. From left to right: A Delta Cotton Field hangs in Elliot Tenhet’s Nashville apartment, the Sunset in Hayes’ NYC apartment, and Cloud hangs in Strohm Gaston’s chic McCarty-filled apartment in Chicago.

refreshing to live without all the extraneous stuff we acquire. The groups at my apartment to show friends both my personal style and scale of furniture is a major factor that makes it possible to make give them a little taste of the south. While New York is full of the most of limited square footage. Even though it’s only about 250 amazing restaurants, bars, shopping, and such, it’s important to me square feet, I think it’s so important to make the to have a place that feels like my own. most of the space you call home and enjoy it. My mom definitely instilled in me the notion Talk a bit about your furniture and the layout of living in a beautiful space and loving what of the place, how you made choices on utilizing you look at every day. a small space? The West Village of New York is so different I knew I needed to have a seating area to have from what most people imagine when they friends over and visit over a glass of wine think of Manhattan. Since it was one of the first before venturing out into the city. So, first I residential areas settled in the city, it is filled with arranged a small sitting area to promote narrow streets lined with townhouses and conversation. I placed my poster bed in front dotted with stop signs. Aesthetically, it is of the window, to maximize the light the gorgeous and reminiscent of Europe. While you window brings in and to help make the space can still sometimes feel the subway rattling seem more open. I also found a reclaimed below if you’re close enough to Seventh or demi-lune table that hangs on the wall Eighth Avenue, the village is a totally quiet opposite my bed and serves as a place where I escape from the bustle of Manhattan. It has a can pull up a chair to sit and work. Hanging long-established local lifestyle of mom-and-pop BIRDS OF A FEATHER: Hayes with fellow Delta art in the kitchen behind the stove and on the restaurants, barber shops, and corner stores. It sojourners William Dossett, from Cleveland fridge helps the apartment feel unified and and Watson Turnipseed, from Sumner ice truly feels like a neighborhood, and I couldn’t skating in Central Park. cozy, rather than easily feeling cramped with love it more. a stove six feet away from a bed! I added a faux painted mantle to bring an architectural anchor to the space and How did you bring a sense of your roots to this small living space? painted it off-white, for a little contrast on the white brick wall. I’ve slowly collected lots of art and little treasures that make me happy. They remind me of the places I’ve traveled or of my I know there are many Southerners, and Deltans in particular, who have Mississippi roots as I look at them every day. I have a large Hayden made New York their home. Do you socialize with many of them? Hall painting of a cotton field under a hot pink and dark blue I’m so thankful to have the network that comes with being a sunset. It brings me joy every day, as Delta sunsets are one of the Southerner in the city. Southerners are always fast friends, and it’s main things I miss about home. I also have a watercolor treeline so lovely to hang with friendly people and compare stories of our landscape by Chelsea Fly that I love––it reminds me of driving down upbringing and how it has translated to life in the city. But it’s also flat roads and looking out at the blurred turnrows that pass––and a amazing to meet all the new people I’m exposed to—learning about watercolor by Martha Winters of the New Roxy—my favorite juke their cultures and teaching them about mine. DM joint in downtown Clarksdale. I love to host and entertain small 74 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

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Stan Spealman

662-887-4700

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Indianola, MS

Keith Spealman

662-207-2298

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playful places to roost

Kids and chicks need a retreat of their own

BY SHERRY LUCAS • PHOTOGRAPHY BY RORY DOYLE AND TOM BECK

IT WAS A COLD MORNING AT CHRISTMASTIME. Clive Pratt, then six, couldn’t wait to check out the playhouse his grandad, Guy Ray, built in their Greenwood back yard. He ran to the door, cried, “Wow!” and dashed out, barefoot in his jammies with his grandmother, Charlot Ray, also in pajamas, hot on his heels, “No, no, no! We’ve got to put shoes and a coat on you!” Such is the pull of a playhouse. It’s designed for kids, of course, but there’s play potential for adults, too, when nostalgia fuels the fun.

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Richard and Leigh Macy of Carrollton, called on Richard Elliot to build a playhouse for their grandchildren which features porches with a zipline, a sleeping loft inside, a slide, and swings.

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CHARLOT RAY

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Charlot and Guy Ray built a raised, split-level playhouse for their grandson Clive with a climbing wall entrance and lots of space underneath that shades a hammock and sandbox.

“I think my husband wanted to build the playhouse that he never had,” Charlot says. That’s what works for playhouses. It works for lay houses too as the backyard chicken craze nudges a creative wave in cute coops. Consider the kids first. A getaway at the grandparents’ or a backyard retreat at home is a win-win. It was grandson John Franklin Rogers, then seven or eight, who came up with the treehouse notion for Richard and Leigh Macy of Carrollton. Inspired by TV’s Treehouse Masters, he’d broached the subject first with his mom, their daughter, Elizabeth. “There’s just one thing wrong with that—we don’t have any trees in our 80 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

backyard,” his mom told him. John Franklin piped back up, “Well, Grandmama does!” The Macys had just put in a zipline for the grandkids and needed a platform. Why not combine it all—“just make all our dreams come true?” Leigh says. Richard Elliott handled the construction, recommending against trees in the interior because of grandkids’ allergies. The resulting playhouse, with front and back porches, a sleeping loft for air mattresses, stained glass window, big slide, hammocks, swings, and more, is a hit with their four grandchildren—two in Ocean Springs and two in San Marcos, Texas. “It’s a real attraction to get them here in the first place,” Leigh says.

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No vacations necessary for Asa and Lydia Bennett in Greenwood who have converted their yard into the perfect “stay-cation” spot including their sons’ treehouse overlooking the Tallahatchie River.

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The Bennett’s well-appointed cabana and their home’s open-air porch offer multiple spaces for outdoor enjoyment.

There’s a table and chairs, comfy sofa, fridge and microwave, ceiling fan, and porch fans. It doesn’t have running water, but a little camp toilet accommodates for overnights. The charm isn’t lost on adults; dinner party friends find it a tranquil spot for appetizers. The playhouse came in handy too when the Macys returned from a four-week trip to Italy only to discover their house keys were in Oxford—with the fellow who’d taken them to the airport. “We couldn’t get in our house,” Leigh says, “but we could get in the treehouse!” In the decor, meaningful items draw on the past—the stained glass window from an old church on the farm where Leigh grew up, her own grandmother’s wooden stool that now holds a flowerpot— or celebrate the present. A finger painting young grandson Daniel Schepis, who just turned five, hangs alongside a balloon painting (think water balloons, only filled with paint) that her other three grandkids, Caroline and John Franklin Rogers and William Schepis, had a blast creating. There’s a radio for music but no electronic screens allowed. “That keeps it perfect for reading, drawing, games, and creative fun,” Leigh says. At the Rays’ home in Greenwood, a raised, split-level playhouse shades a hammock and sandbox (plus provides covered parking for Clive’s wagon) and boasts a climbing wall entrance on one side and steps on the other. A bunk with an air mattress and sleeping bag can accommodate an overnight, and it’s wired for electricity for a fan in summer and portable heater in the winter, plus internet. Shotgun shell Christmas lights put a real boy stamp on the inside. Over spring break, Clive, now seven, took advantage of palm tree prunings to cover the outside in trimmed fronds. “It kind of looked like something out of the Vietnam War,” Charlot says, laughing. “He had a good time—it really is a place that fosters the imagination. That’s what we love about it too. It doesn’t need to be fancy. It just needs to 82 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

be a place that’s theirs. And then they go from there,” she says. For Dr. Asa and Lydia Bennett in Greenwood, the kids’ treehouse overlooking the Tallahatchie River is just one of several spaces for outdoor indulgence. The cypress board-and-batten structure originated on a beach vacation to Gulf Shores about eight years ago, when cold weather kept the crew—including three boys, two small and one teen at the time—inside. Their treehouse pictures provided the base for the plans. “It wasn’t my vision because it looked like a big deer stand,” Lydia concedes. But “it’s all worked out.” Son Bay’s old football poster, shed antlers, bunks and a futon, table and chairs, and a TV big enough to suit the single room make it a cozy, masculine retreat. It still sees plenty of use, such as when Bay, twenty-three, comes home from rock climbing in Arkansas with a big group or when Bobby, seventeen, tutors math there. “My house is not that large—all the bedrooms are right close together,” she says. “My son (Hayes, fifteen) is like, ‘Can I have suchand-such spend the night? We’ll sleep in the treehouse,’ and then I don’t have to hear ’em.” Ditto for the Xbox games and stereo. “I told them, ‘Now if y’all don’t use it, I’m just telling you, it’s going to be a she shed. You either use it or you lose it!’” It’s always been the boys’ domain; her eldest, daughter Lasa, isn’t a huge fan of the outdoors, she says. Lydia is, though, and she has her favorite spots. “I’m just making my backyard like a vacation,” she says of renovations to the cabana and their home’s expanded open-air porch, where McCartys Pottery wind chimes furnish the music and brick floors and cypress beams provide a breezy vibe that even their cat, Dots, can’t resist. When the subject swings back to two-legged creatures, comfort, safety, visual appeal, and backyard whimsy fly there, too.

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Signe and Jim Adamsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s backyard chicken coop is painted a deep red that matches their historic brick home near downtown Cleveland.

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Located in rural Carroll County, Cricket Brown’s coop was built to be predator-proof with ¼-inch welded wire mesh and wire along the perimeter to prevent diggers.

Hobby chicken owners often regard their charges as pets—pets with dividends, as Signe Adams of Cleveland puts it—and enjoy the birds’ antics as much as they do the eggs. She and husband Jim bought the plans for their chicken coop, which looks like a little barn thanks to red paint that complements their red brick home. “I liked the shape and thought, if it didn’t work out, we could turn it into a playhouse for the grandchildren,” she says. A couple years in, the chicken thing is working out, with several different breeds and plenty of fresh eggs and entertainment. “Every chicken phrase you can think of is true,” Signe says. “They do have a pecking order, and it’s just fun to watch them.” They flock to the Adams’ feet the second they walk out the door. “I try to give them vegetables, but we’ve spoiled them with oatmeal,” she says. “On a really good day, my husband will give them pistachios. They still have a memory of that.” When Jim played his banjo outside recently, Rainbow Sparkle (the grandkids named several hens) hopped up on the instrument’s neck and slid a smidge on its slippery strings. “Didn’t faze her a bit.” Cricket Brown has her own brood of characters near Greenwood, with names like Mary Ann and Ginger, Lucy and Ethel. With her coop’s construction by Richard Elliott, predator-proof was the priority, with ¼-inch welded wire mesh and wire along the perimeter to prevent diggers. Made of natural wood and wire, it sports a tin roof over half and includes an open area for the hens to peck around.

“They hear that door open, and they’ll come running, thinking they’re going to get a treat.” One even used to jump on her fourwheeler for a ride. “They just make you laugh.” Daily, her cat Penguin comes along when she locks up the hens. Cricket gives the cat an older egg for a snack and tosses the shell into the flowerbed. And every time she lets the brood out, one hen makes a beeline across the yard for that eggshell to eat it (laying hens need the calcium). Erik Kegler designed Brad and Julie Chism’s charmer of a chicken coop in Madison. “We wanted something nice, but we also wanted something that five, six, ten years from now if we have grandkids, it could be converted to a playhouse if we got too tired of chickens,” Brad says. Now he suspects Kegler will be designing a playhouse. “We’ve become very attached.” The old-school board-and-batten shed, for all its whimsy, is also practical; plus it adds an architectural element that’s the start of several yard projects. In addition to a regular front door, there’s a little chicken door set to rise and fall in conjunction with sunup and sundown and a chicken run in the back. A remote-controlled camera keeps an eye on the hen house door. Their hens all have names, inspired by Brad’s mom’s seven sisters, famous red-headed women for the red ones, ladies at church, and more. “They’re not terribly affectionate creatures,” Brad says, but when they eat out of Julie’s hand or nestle beside her, there’s a warmth there. DELTA MAGAZINE 2019

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF BRAD AND JULIE CHISM

Designed by Jackson’s Erik Kegler, the whimsical board and batten chicken coop features a vintage fowl-themed light fixture that occasionally serves as a perch for its inhabitants.

The Chisms enjoy the colorful bounty of their chickens and often share the eggs as gifts.

86 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

And the eggs—“just so fresh, they’re perkier,” Julie says—are a joy for breakfast and gifts. She’s also had fun buying tiny bonnets discovered on Instagram and snapping pics of her hens in them. Several decorate the inside of the coop like family photos. “It’s kind of epically awesome; I’m not going to lie,” Kegler says. Shutters, laid horizontally, form ramps, and old antique bed posts make good perches. There’s a rooster weather vane cupola, and, inside, a vintage fowl-themed light fixture fits right in. “We hung it up,” Julie says, “and got a chicken, one or two times, swinging on the chandelier.” “They are such good sports about building, like, the Martha Stewart of chicken coops,” Kegler says of his first-ever coop project. “It’s sort of like working on a kids’ room—there’s no moment that you’ve kind of gone a little too far.” A fanciful abode is the perfect retreat for creatures who run and scamper or flit and flutter—and for those who simply relish the view. DM

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FOOD

Chilling& Grilling Simple RECIPES and TIPS for your Next Summer Cookout

STYLED BY ERICA EASON HALL • PHOTOGRAPHY BY WILL JACKS BY CINDY COOPWOOD AND CORDELIA CAPPS

hen it comes to summer grilling the possibilities are absolutely endless. And the added bonus of dining al fresco with family and friends (mosquitos permitting) makes every event more festive—so start planning your menus now. We can help you get started with recipes for shish-ke-babs and grilled vegetables. The season’s best produce is at the ready so choose what is fresh and available near you and get cooking!

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MARINATED TERIYAKI BEEF KEBABS ¼ 3 2 2 ½ 1

1 1 1 4

GRILLED CILANTRO LIME SHRIMP KEBABS When you want to grill out but don’t want to slave away over the grill for hours in the heat, quick cooking shish kebabs are the answer. 32 jumbo raw shrimp, peeled and deveined 3 cloves garlic, crushed 3 large limes, sliced into 24 thin rounds olive oil cooking spray 1 teaspoon salt 1½ teaspoons ground cumin ¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro, divided 16 metal or bamboo skewers soaked in water 1 hour additional lime wedges

Light grill and bring to medium heat. In a medium bowl season shrimp with garlic, cumin, salt and half of the cilantro. Thread the shrimp and folded lime slices onto skewers beginning and ending with shrimp. Grill the shrimp, turning occasionally, until shrimp is opaque and with light grill marks throughout, about 1 to 2 minutes on each side. Top with remaining cilantro and fresh squeezed lime juice before serving. 90 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

cup packed light brown sugar tablespoons teriyaki sauce large garlic cloves, crushed teaspoons sesame oil teaspoon ground ginger pound boneless beef top sirloin, cut into bite sized cubes multi-colored cherry tomatoes red onion, cut into large chunks red bell pepper, cut into large chunks yellow pepper, cut into large chunks skewers

Whisk brown sugar, soy sauce, garlic, sesame oil, and ground ginger together in a bowl; pour into a gallon-sized sealable plastic bag. Add beef, coating with the marinade, and seal the bag. Leave in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours, flipping the bag several times to marinate. Preheat an outdoor grill to high heat, and lightly oil the grate. Discarding the remaining marinade, thread beef, bell peppers, tomatoes and onions onto skewers. Season assembled kebabs with salt and pepper. Cook the kebabs on the preheated grill, turning frequently until nicely browned on all sides, and the meat is no longer pink in the center, 10 to 15 minutes.

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Styling Tips: We set the outdoor buﬀet table with blue and white ticking accented with natural wood and pottery serving containers. Organic arrangements of fresh and dried greenery mixed with thistle, Honey Bracelet, Weeping Podocarpas, Pampas fronds, and Curly Willow are perfect for late summer. – eriCa easOn HALL

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BAREFOOT CONTESSA’S PANZANELLA SALAD

Tip: Grill similar vegetables together to keep cook time similar. For example, zucchini, yellow squash and eggplant, all take about the same amount of time.

GRILLED SUMMER VEGETABLES Grilled vegetables are the quintessential summer side––and nothing is simpler. The only trick is to grill like vegetables together. 4 to 6 cups sliced vegetables 3 to 4 tablespoons olive oil ¼ cups balsamic vinegar salt and pepper to taste

Clean and cut vegetables of your choice into approximately 2-inch pieces, depending on the vegetable. Cut softer vegetables such as zucchini, squash, eggplant, onions about ½-inch thick so they don’t fall apart. If grilling asparagus leave spears whole after removing the tough end and place crosswise on the grill. Toss the cut vegetables in a large bowl, drizzling with 3 to 4 tablespoons olive oil, 2 to 3 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste. Place the ‘meatier’ vegetables, such as carrots or sweet potatoes on the grill first. Turn them every 3 to 5 minutes to prevent burning. After about 10 minutes add the softer zucchini, squash, eggplant, onions. These cook in about 5 to 8 minutes (depending on the heat of your grill).

3 tablespoons olive oil 1 small French bread, cut into 1-inch cubes (6 cups) 1 teaspoon kosher salt 2 large firm ripe tomatoes, cut into 1-inch cubes 1 English cucumber, unpeeled, seeded, and sliced ½-inch thick 1 red bell pepper, seeded and cut into 1-inch cubes 1 yellow bell pepper, seeded and cut into 1-inch cubes ½ red onion, cut in ½ and thinly sliced 20 large basil leaves, coarsely chopped 3 tablespoons capers, drained

Vinaigrette 1 ½ 3 ½ ½ ¼

teaspoon garlic, finely minced teaspoon dijon mustard tablespoons champagne vinegar cup olive oil teaspoon kosher salt teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

Whisk all the ingredients together. Heat the oil in a large saute pan. Add the bread and salt; cook over low to medium heat, tossing frequently, for 10 minutes, or until nicely browned. Add more oil as needed. In a large bowl, mix the tomatoes, cucumber, red pepper, yellow pepper, red onion, basil, and capers. Add the bread cubes and toss with the vinaigrette. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Serve, or allow the salad to sit for about half an hour for the flavors to blend. Recipe from Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Parties!

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When making whipped cream, use a chilled bowl and very cold cream for best results.

BANANA CARAMEL PIE This recipe is a Coopwood family favorite any time of the year. Graham Cracker Crust

12 whole graham crackers ⅓ cup sugar 6 tablespoons butter, melted

Filling 1 8-ounce can sweetened condensed milk 5 to 6 sliced fresh bananas 2 cups whipping cream ½ cup confectioners sugar

Place unopened can on its side in a large pot, completely covering can with water, bring to a rolling boil. Leave can on a low boil for about 3 hours, making sure to top off with water as needed so the water doesn’t cook out. When it is time to remove from heat, do not open the hot can. It is important to allow can to cool thoroughly before opening, as it will be under pressure. When cool, open can and stir caramel to smooth out any lumps. Condensed milk should be thick and a deep caramel color. To whip cream, pour cold cream into a large chilled bowl, and using an electric mixer, beat the cream with the confectioners sugar until soft peaks form. Keep chilled. Assemble pie by spreading sliced bananas over cooled crust and pouring caramel evenly over the bananas. Mound the whipped cream on top of the bananas. Refrigerate till ready to serve. Garnish with extra bananas and cracker crumbs if desired.

Tip: Caramel can be made days in advance

and left in unopened can till ready to use.

TWO BOURBON COCKTAILS TO TRY THIS SUMMER

ROBYN LEE

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Crumble the graham crackers by using a food processor or by placing all the crackers in a ziploc bag and crush with a rolling pin until broken into fine crumbs. This should make about 1½ cups of crumbs. In a bowl, mix crumbs with melted butter and sugar until evenly blended. Pour mixture into a 9-inch pie pan press evenly along bottom and sides. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, till just brown.

KENTUCKY BUCK

BOURBON ARNOLD PALMER

2 to 3 dashes of Angostura bitters ¾ ounce fresh lemon juice 2 ounces bourbon Ginger beer, chilled

2 ounces bourbon 2 to 3 ounces of lemonade 2 to 3 ounces of iced tea

Fill a shaker with ice, then add bitters, lemon juice and bourbon. Shake well. Top off with ginger beer, give an extra stir and pour.

Fill a highball glass with ice, pour in ingredients and stir. Enjoy!

Tip: Use a copper mug to keep drinks super cold. Copper is also thought to enhance the taste of ginger beer.

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RECOLLECTIONS

Sam on top of Six-Shooter in Indian Creek, Utah.

JUST SAM ADVENTURER, LIFE-SAVER, RENAISSANCE MAN BY HANK BURDINE • PHOTOS COURTESY OF SAM RUSHING

SAM RUSHING grew up in the Delta, in Greenville and on his Uncle Tom’s farm outside of Merigold, on the banks of the Sunflower River. Like some of us who are fortunate enough to have been raised on or around a family farm, Sam grew to love the outdoors, always outside, hunting, fishing, and exploring the woods and waters. Sam was pulled to a life of adventure and intrigue. 96 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

hen Sam was fifteen years old, he and a buddy took some old fruit thrown out by a neighborhood grocery store and made a batch of homemade wine called “spodio” (“drinking wine, spodio-dee, drinking wine” Jerry Lee Lewis). When his daddy, Dutch, found out about the venture into wine making, Sam didn’t get a reprimand, but he got encouragement to continue! (Must have been some good spodio-dee!) When Sam enrolled at Mississippi State, he continued to make wine, in his room—lots of it. He didn’t get any extra credit for his intuitiveness, but he did get kicked out of

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his dormitory. “When I was over at “Moo U,” I had too much fun and made too much wine, so I flunked out,” he recently recalled. It was not long after leaving State that another uncle came calling, whose name was also Sam, Uncle Sam. Sam’s draft number had been called. Before Sam was to be shipped out, he had a mission to complete, one that has served him well and has given him a life partner; Sam got married. He and Diane Paul were married in June of 1973. They were twenty years old and heading to Germany under the care of the United States Army. Sam and Di left three days after saying “I DO.” Germany was only a stepping and developing stone in Sam and Di’s life as the supplemental income from Di’s job at a Mercedes Benz plant in Ansbach allowed them to travel and spend considerable time touring the Rhine, a world-famous wine producing region. Sam knew what he wanted to do. He was already good at it; he just needed to get home and get focused. Returning home, Sam re-enrolled at Mississippi State, earning a degree in soil science while Di got her teacher’s degree; afterward they moved to his Uncle Tom’s farm on the Sunflower River. “I didn’t know how I was going to make a living; farming wasn’t too good back then. But I always liked making wine, so I decided to start myself a winery!” The State of Mississippi had just passed the Native Wine Law of 1976 making it feasible to open a legal winery. Sam and Di

Di Rushing, along with all the family, took part in chores at the Rushing Winery.

Di and Sam Rushing pictured with their award winning Estate Bottled Muscadine wines.

converted an old dairy on the farm and planted about twenty-eight acres of native Southern muscadines on the banks of the river. On September 16, 1977, the Rushing Winery was permitted as the first winery in Mississippi since Prohibition. Hybrid French and other varietals would not live in

In 1981, the Rushing Winery hosted “A Day at the Winery.” The crowd enjoyed crawfish and good music along the rolling banks of the Sunflower River in the middle of acres and acres of muscadines.

the Delta’s climate. However, muscadines have long been a sought after and natural growing grape, used in jellies, jams, marmalades, and homemade wine. Sam decided “not to use any pesticides, herbicides, or any other -cides” commonly used to keep critters and weeds from destroying a crop. He even got his neighboring farmers to keep their aerial poison applications away from his vineyard. That first year they produced about two thousand cases of muscadine wine, bumping their production up steadily each year. Sam didn’t stop there, as he was instrumental in 1984 to get the entire Mississippi Delta declared a viticulture region. Sam could now put “Estate Bottled” and “Mississippi Delta” on his labels. At that time, the Delta was the only official wine producing region in the Southeast and the second largest in the country, covering over six thousand square miles. By this time, Rushing Estate Bottled Mississippi Delta Magnolia and Mississippi Delta Muscadine White were winning national and international taste testing awards. Sam was producing about four tons of grapes per acre and selling over twenty-four thousand bottles of muscadine wine each year. The Rushing Winery was a total family affair and soon an old farmhouse was moved onto the property where they opened Top of the Cellar Tea Room. It was filled with antiques and good food, and guests were treated to a complimentary glass of Rushing wine; the Tea Room was a hit

Operating the Top of the Cellar Tea Room was a true family affair. DELTA MAGAZINE 2019

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The Tangents, Mississippi’s house band, performing at the Winery just outside of Merigold, 1981. Sam and his son Matt address the crowd, with Fish Michie on keyboards, Charlie “Love” Jacobs on sax, and Duff Durrough on lead guitar.

Sam blows his first bubble of glass at Ouray Glassworks, eventually becoming a master at his craft.

attraction, pulling in on average fifty to one hundred customers daily. Soon they were producing a line of gourmet food items including muscadine jelly, wine muffin mixes, oyster mushroom soup mix, and cornbread and hushpuppy mixes which were sold at the winery gift shop and specialty stores across the country. Their two young children, Lizzie and Matt, made tiedyed tee-shirts to sell in the gift shop. “Our whole concept was to promote the Delta and to be a magnet for people.” With all the busyness of having a winery, Sam still managed to adjust his work around his other passions—hunting and fishing. Normally grape harvest in other regions hits right in the middle of dove season. Sam said, “Here in the Delta, grape harvest begins when your freezer is full of doves—about the middle of September!” Sam’s harvesting protocol was quite sophisticated as he would tap the trellis wires with a baseball bat until the grapes fell off. The harvester, which Sam built from an old grain auger and a hydraulic system off an old dump truck, would collect about ten tons of muscadines a day. Harvest normally took two to three weeks, just in time for bow season to open for whitetail deer, the first week or so in October. The grapes were then run through the crusher, (with a little ceremonial foot stomping included), and then pressed, which removed the pulp and the seeds before going into the fermentation tanks. Most wineries got their wine harvested, fermented, and bottled before

businesses and with help from their friends Vernon and Sally Pleasant, moved away from the Delta. Their destination was Ouray, Colorado, and an entirely new and different life. Sam was forty years old, and he certainly wasn’t going to slow down now. Sam and Di had vacationed in Telluride, Colorado, on ski and summer vacations and fell in love with the area and the people. Once the decision was made to pack up shop and leave the Delta, their sights were set on the West Slope of the Colorado Rockies. Ouray was a small hip town in an area known as the American Swiss Alps. The mountains and vistas were stunning and seemed to pull at them. Once settled into a house with a shop in the small town, while Di started teaching in the local school, Sam taught himself the age-old art of blowing glass. “I love fires. And each piece is totally unique—no two are alike.” Sam brought his knowledge of business and marketing, along with a strong desire to create beautiful pieces of art, to the small historic San Juan mining town. An excerpt from an article by Elaine Jones in the local Ouray newspaper explained Sam’s philosophy, “The relationship between client and artist is very important to me. Colors are a personal statement. It takes just a small amount of color (oxide) to create a unique pattern or “swirl” typical of much of his artwork. Red is made from pure gold, blue from cobalt, green from copper, and purple from manganese. The spectrum is as infinite as nature.” Sam became a master glassblower,

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Christmas but not Sam; Christmastime was the peak of the deer rut, and he was busy in the woods. However, Sam had to get busy once his freezer was also full of venison as he had to filter, bottle, and case all his wine before the middle of March as that was when turkey season started! “We could usually bottle anywhere between seventy-five and one hundred cases each half-day, depending on how fast the music was playing on the

With all the busyness of having a winery, Sam still managed to adjust his work around his other passions— hunting and fishing. bottling line. Any wine not bottled by the middle of March had to wait until I got my limit of turkeys. After that we could finish up bottling, do some vineyard work, and, of course, do a little fishing too.” And that’s how the national and international awardwinning wines from Rushing Winery came about. “It was winemaking Delta style, pretty much as winemaking elsewhere in the world, but we were just a little bit better at keeping our priorities straight!” However, in 1990, after a very successful run at the Rushing Winery and hosting thousands of guests at their Top of the Cellar Tea Room, Sam and Di closed both

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displaying some of his work at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. His art includes Christmas tree ornaments, goblets, pitchers, stand-alone pieces of vibrant stunningly colored table art, and even a seven-foot aspen tree. Ouray Glassworks was open year-round and was considered a must-see and very unique experience. Di, a fifth-generation teacher and daughter and granddaughter to newspaper editors, started teaching English, literature, journalism, speech, and social studies. She progressed all the way to dean of students before she retired recently. Both of their children have gone on to become successful in their own careers. While not blowing glass, Sam, as usual, was deeply involved in the outdoors. In the mountains surrounding Ouray there was much adventure to be had. An expert skier, Sam was interested in extreme skiing techniques and became a prolific backcountry snowboarder. He also was highly involved with mountain rescue, and since selling his Ouray Glassworks a few years ago, he has somewhat dedicated his time now to that effort. Sam has been on the Ouray Mountain Rescue Team for twenty-five years. A totally volunteer service, this team averages twenty callouts a year to search for and rescue people and their animals that have gotten into trouble in the mountains while hiking, climbing, or driving the mountain trails. Sam joined the team in March of 1992 when an avalanche killed a snowplow driver. In 2017, the rescue responses required 546 rescuer hours. When asked why he serves, Sam responds, “I want to help and make a difference in the lives of people who get in over their heads through circumstances they hadn’t anticipated.” What was his hardest rescue? “Those whom we had to recover, instead of rescue.” And what is his most gratifying rescue? “There were many, but they all involved being able to give a child or young person back to their family.” Sam Rushing, Delta expatriate, a man of many talents, nationally and internationally recognized in several arenas, is an adventurer, life-saver, and a family man, but to those that know and love him, he is—Just Sam. DM

True to his roots, Sam sculpts an ice replica of a piece of McCartys Pottery.

Sam’s specialty with The Ouray Mountain Rescue Team is ropes and rigging in extremely rugged terrain.

Each piece of blown glass is a totally unique and different work of art.

Rescues can be treacherous and many are in extremely dangerous and remote locations. DELTA MAGAZINE 2019

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Davis Island

A 1863 photograph of the library at Hurricane Plantation which adjoined Brierfield that was home to Jefferson Davis. Union soldiers burned Hurricane and descendants of Davis lived in the library until it burned circa 1900.

Untamed by history and lost to the river BY BOYCE UPHOLT

Benjamin T. Montgomery watched the Mississippi River rise. February 1867 was part of a long and wet winter, and now a series of storms added more water still. Already the river sat just three feet below the banks at Montgomeryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s plantationsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;threatening his tenuous dreams. 102 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

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MARTY KITTRELL

OLD COURT HOUSE MUSEUM IN VICKSBURG

Books from the Brierfield Library. (Old Court House Museum in Vicksburg) Below, the Davis Family cemetery contains more graves than markers. Repeated flooding has toppled, eroded, and swept away stones. (Brian Hamilton)

Mural (on the flood wall protecting downtown Vicksburg from the Mississippi River) depicting the Brierfield Plantation home on Davis Island. DELTA MAGAZINE 2019

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What remains of the headstone marking the grave of Joseph Davis, who purchased an immense tract of rich Mississippi bottomland with abundant river frontage in 1818. He sold thousands of acres off to friends and gifted what would become Brierfield to his youngest brother, Jefferson. Benjamin Montgomery, who managed Joseph’s plantation while enslaved and bought and ran both plantations for twelve years after the war, is also buried on Davis Island, but his grave has not been located. (Brian Hamilton)

ontgomery, a black man—who just four years prior had been enslaved—had bought this plantation from his former master, Joseph Davis, the older brother (and stand-in father) of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. Montgomery had a vision for his new property: he would launch an all-black community of hard-working farmers, showing the world what freed slaves could do. For that dream to live, though, Montgomery had to keep the farmland dry. His own levees were holding, but farther down the river on the land of a white neighbor, Montgomery visited the levees and found them “a den of crayfish & filled with rotten roots which allows a free passage of water through.” By late March, nearly every man from every farm was in the vicinity at work on those levees. But it was hopeless: in April, the river seized Davis Bend, as this stretch of river was known. Its inhabitants sought refuge in churches and in a plantation hospital, raised above the floodplain. After the water drained, they found their cattle drowned and whole homes washed away. But the worst discovery was yet to come: the flood had carved a new, permanent channel through the Bend’s thinnest point. Davis Bend had become Davis Island, cut loose from the Mississippi shore. There seems to be something special about this little strip of land. Davis Island has been the site of many experiments, the home of utopian dreams. All of them, though, have run up against the same obstacle: this river is a hard thing to control. Davis Island sits a dozen miles downstream from what is now Vicksburg. In Montgomery’s day it was a peninsula of eleven 104 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

MISSISSIPPI RIVER LANDOWNERS ALLIANCE

Remaining structure of the mansion. The first floor was ten feet off the ground in order to avoid the Mississippi River floods.

thousand acres, surrounded by the river on three sides and attached by a thin neck to its east bank. The first recorded white resident was William Selkrig, a British Loyalist whose greatest dream seemed to be peace and quiet. Perhaps he thought he’d found it here, when he was given a land grant by the British crown, and built a cabin in 1777. This was as remote a place as you could find on the continent, far from the Revolution flaring back east. Within a year, though, a passing American warship seized Selkrig. By the time he escaped and returned, his cabin had been ransacked, likely by the Indian tribes who still had their own claims on the land. Selkrig gave up on wilderness living, and a few years later, when he petitioned the new American government to

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recognize his old land grant, his claim was refused. The land was from the new tenants. Though Davis had allowed his slaves to hold recorded as the property of the squatters who had shown up in the property, under U.S. law, slaves owned nothing. Still, the project had years since Selkrig had left. It’s a lesson that will be repeated many some success; after the first year, lessees had made as much as $2,500. times on Davis Island: no matter what you think you own, it’s the On Earth Day, I happened to paddle onto Davis Island. I was folks with power who will decide. canoeing downstream from Vicksburg, and it was time for a snack Within a few decades, investors, including Joseph Davis, began break. The trees along the river bank were posted—this land is still to purchase the land. Davis’s young wife recalled its splendor: there private property—so I stayed on the sandbar, but I peered back into were “wild geese in great flocks,” she said, and “wild ducks by the the thick woods atop the island. thousand, and white and blue cranes adorned almost every slough, Today, it is only by boat that one can reach this land, which now standing on one leg among the immense lily pads.” But there were sits on the Louisiana side of the Mississippi River’s main channel. gators, too, which would seize and slaughter cattle. Some investors Joseph Davis’s great mansion at Hurricane was burned by Union refused to fund farms in such riverine bottomlands, since their troops in 1861, and the columned garden cottage burned, too, in an swamps were known to harbor disease. accident in 1913. A flood in 1922 damaged (Joseph Davis’s first wife, it is worth noting, the house at Brierfield, and it too burned likely died of malaria.) in 1931. Joseph Davis, a Natchez lawyer, bought Floods, really, have been the obstacle to his first parcel here in 1818. Soon enough every Davis Island dream. They were he’d bought the peninsula. Over the next certainly Joseph Davis’s biggest worry in thirty years, Davis made real the Southern the first years of the Civil War—his records aristocratic dream: he had a brick mansion, discuss such floods much more extensively Hurricane, and a garden cottage built like than any of the Union gunboats floating a Greek temple, both of which were nearby. Joseph, then seventy-seven years approached from the river by a walkway old, oversaw repairs to his neighbor’s levee lined with oaks and pecan trees. Behind the that year, knowing that failure of the levee house stood a twenty-five-acre garden even on another man’s property would supervised by an English expert. In 1835, doom his own schemes. Davis told his younger brother, Jefferson, Benjamin Montgomery, too, recognized that he could farm a tract, a second that the Bend’s residents must work plantation that became known as Brierfield. together against floods. When he bought Inspired by philosophies then reforming the land in 1867, he set a fifty-cent-per-acre BENJAMIN’S SON European industry, Davis aimed to produce tax that would be used to build levees. But Isaiah T. Montgomery (May 21, 1847 – March 5, 1924) was the son of Benjamin Montgomery. a new kind of farm—humanitarian and when his neighbor’s levees failed, he had to Isaiah was the founder of Mound Bayou, an allprofitable at once. His slaves were well-fed divert labor from his own fields and direct black town located in the Delta. The younger and kept in clean quarters. They could own the repairs himself. Three years later, tired Montgomery learned to read and write because property and some collected firewood or of shoring up someone else’s property, of his father's influential position on the Davis chicken eggs to sell to passing steamships. Montgomery and his family bought the Bend plantation under Joseph Davis, older brother of Jefferson. Following the end of the Slaves were encouraged, too, to develop neighboring plantation themselves. Civil War, Isaiah began a business with his father skills. Benjamin Montgomery was a prime Soon, the family’s finances were on Davis Island and after his father’s death in example: though he was the property of overextended; cotton prices were in decline. 1877, along with his cousin Benjamin T. Green, Joseph Davis, he learned land surveyorship Then, in 1874, Jefferson Davis sued the Isaiah bought property in the northwest frontier and architectural drawing; he invented a Montgomerys, claiming he still owned of the Mississippi Delta and founded Mound Bayou in 1887 in Bolivar County. novel form of boat propeller. Montgomery Brierfield (though he’d never held a written was not a laborer but manager of the farm. title). In 1877, after suffering injuries in an Still, Montgomery was a slave—he was denied a patent for his accident—and watching his finances dissolve—Benjamin propeller design, as slaves could not hold patents. Montgomery died, just forty-eight years old. His property was Joseph Davis, despite his novel ideas, remained devoted to the foreclosed; the Davis family bought their old land at auction and institutions of the South; there is no record that he freed any of retained it until 1953. Today, the island is semi-wild, and no one tries his slaves. And his younger brother was elected to the presidency to farm it anymore. Instead it hosts hunters and timbermen— of the Confederate States. (Jefferson had earlier served as a U.S. industry that does not get destroyed in a flood. Senator and as Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce.) If there is a lesson in all this, it’s that it does us no good to dream In 1861, the younger Davis left the Bend for his presidential post; on our own. The world is big and interconnected; you can build a a year later, the elder Davis left, too, after New Orleans fell to utopia on your small parcel, but it does no good if there is a flood Union troops. upstream. So many times this patch of land has changed hands— Its owners gone, the peninsula was quickly seized by the Union from government to government, from family to family. With each army. General Ulysses S. Grant had his own scheme: here, on the change came new ideas about who could own what. But every dream former home of the Confederate president, he would launch a “negro has been defeated—though perhaps with cooperation some of the paradise”—one of a few experimental farms along the river where best ideas might have thrived. DM freedmen were given leases to work the land. Reporting for this story was supported in part by the Lower Mississippi River Foundation The experiment had a bitter start: troops seized animals and tools and the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area, a division of the National Park Service. DELTA MAGAZINE 2019

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Save v Ro o m Fo r D ess e rt For 50 years, The Crystal G Grill has been serving Delta classics to generations of families milies for lunch and dinner. The Crystal Grill is known for or its generous portions and legendary desserts. Locals know ow to save room for dessert. What will you try? OPEN TUESDAY - THURSDAY, SUND S AY 11 11:00 00 AM - 99:00 00 PM SATURDAY - SUNDAY 11:00 AM - 9:30 PM 662.453.6530 423 CARROLLTON AVENUE GREENWOOD, MISSISSIPPI facebook.com m/TheCry stalGrill

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EVENTS

Amy Grant, Tunica Resorts

Lionel Richie, Memphis

Backstreet Boys, FedEx Forum

Hamilton, Memphis

FESTIVALS, MUSIC & FUN THINGS TO DO July 3, 7 pm

Vicksburg

July 13

Civil War Symposium

The Isley Brothers

The Strand Theater

Gold Strike Casino Resorts

July 4

Greenville

July 13

7th Annual Firecracker 5K & Family Run

The Doobie Brothers

Historic Downtown Greenville at dusk

Memphis Botanical Gardens liveatthgarden.com

July 4-6

Tunica Resorts

Memphis Water Valley Watermelon Carnival

Yazoo City

July 27

Yaz Summer Blast

July 18

Main Street Live music, food vendors, fireworks

Chris Young

Horseshoe Casino’s Bluesville

BankPlus Amphitheater at Snowden Grove Park bankplusamphitheater.com

July 31, 7 pm

July 5

Greenville

First Friday Hollandale Jam

Ron White Horseshoe Casino’s Bluesville

July 5-6

Clarksdale

Oh Brother Fiddler and Fried Green Tomatoes Fest

Air Supply Gold Strike Casino Resort

July 6, 10 am-4 pm

Oxford

Oxford Maker’s Market Courthouse Lawn at the Historic Square Featuring thirty plus vendors with handmade and homegrown goods. Live music begins at noon. oxfordmakersmarket.org

July 9-28

Memphis

Hamilton

Amy Grant Horseshoe Casino’s Bluesville 108 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

July 19

August 1, 7-9 pm

Tunica Resorts

Daughtry

Tunica Resorts

Greenville

Peter Pan Delta Center Stage

Indianola

Jazz Persuasion The Cotton Gin at B.B. King Museum

Brandon

Luke Bryan

August 2-3

Water Valley

Water Valley Watermelon Carnival

Brandon Amphitheater brandonamphitheater.com

watervalleychamber.com

July 26, 7 pm

Memphis

Jake Owen & Hunter Hayes Benefiting St. Jude

August 2

Memphis

Lionel Richie Memphis Botanical Garden liveatthegarden.com

FedEx Forum

August 3 July 26

Philadelphia

Neshoba County Fair

Greenwood

Bikes, Blues & Bayous Downtown Greenwood bikesbluesbayous.com

neshobacountyfair.org

July 27

Orpheum Theatre orpheum-memphis.com

July 12

August 1

July 21, 7:30 pm Tunica Resorts

Brandon

Brandon Amphitheater brandonamphitheater.com

Vicksburg Convention Center “Havana Nights” themed event featuring 12 South Band

Horseshoe Casino’s Bluesville

Downtown Clarksdale

July 6

Vicksburg

6th Annual Ritz on the River Tunica Resorts

Tunica Resorts

Seether

Tedeschi Trucks Band

July 18

Downtown Hollandale

July 5

Southaven

Jackson

August 3, 10 am-4 pm

Oxford

We Are One Jackson Music Fest

Oxford Maker’s Market

Mississippi Coliseum Featuring Monica, Joe, and Dru Hill

Courthouse Lawn at the Historic Square Featuring thirty plus vendors with handmade and homegrown goods. Live music begins at noon. oxfordmakersmarket.org

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August 8-11

Oxford

Art-er Limits Fringe Festival oxfordarts.com

August 9

Memphis

Judah and The Lion Memphis Botanical Garden liveatthegarden.com

August 9-10

Clarksdale

Sunflower River Blues & Gospel Festival Downtown Clarksdale sunflowerfest.org

August 9-17

Memphis

Elvis Week Graceland graceland.com

August 10

Tunica Resorts

Cameo Horseshoe Casinoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bluesville

August 15, 8 pm

Brandon

Little Big Town Brandon Amphitheater brandonamphitheater.com

August 16

Southaven

Thomas Rhett: Very Hot Summer Tour 2019 BankPlus Amphitheater at Snowden Grove Park bankplusamphitheater.com

August 16, 7 pm

Brandon

Kidz Bop World Tour Brandon Amphitheater brandonamphitheater.com

August 17

Jackson

Mississippi Book Festival State Capitol msbookfestival.com

August 17, 8 pm

Memphis

Jim Gaffigan: Secrets and Pies FedEx Forum

August 17

Southaven

17th Annual Tri-State Blues Festival Landers Center

August 19, 7:30 pm

Brandon

Pentatonix Brandon Amphitheater brandonamphitheater.com

August 22. 7:30 pm

Cleveland

Kansas Bologna Performing Arts Center balognapac.com

August 23

Greenville

Ferguson on Fire Lake Ferguson, Schelben Park Boat races, vendors, and live music

DELTA MAGAZINE 2019

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August 24

Greenville

2nd Annual Roll’n on the River Car Show Warfield Point Park

August 24-25

Waterford

MiSSiHiPPi Music and Arts Festival Foxfire Ranch

August 27

Memphis

Backstreet Boys

EXPERIENCE THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA through prehistoric fossils, Native American pottery, Civil War history, cotton farming and regional art. • 12,000-year-old Mastodon • 14th Century Pottery • Spanish Colonial Beads • World War II • Civil War • Swamp Room • Art Gallery • and more

FedEx Forum Fedexforum.com

August 31

Toby Keith Memphis Botanical Garden liveatthegarden.com

BOOK SIGNINGS Ace Atkins

The Shameless July 9, 5:30 pm: Square Books, Oxford Shelby Harriel

1608 Highway 82 West Greenwood, Mississippi Mon - Sat 9a.m. - 5p.m. Phone: 662-453-0925 museumofthemississippidelta.com

Behind the Rifle: Women Soldiers in Civil War Mississippi July 10, 5:30 pm: Square Books, Oxford Kenyatta D. Berry

The Family Tree Toolkit July 25, 5:30 pm: Square Books, Oxford Janet Ferguson

The Art of Rivers July 27, 2 pm: Lemuria Books, Jackson Lisa Howorth

Summerlings August 6, 5:30 pm: Square Books, Oxford August 7, 5 pm: Lemuria Books, Jackson Erin A. Craig

House of Salt and Sorrows August 9, 5 pm: Square Books Jr., Oxford Karl Marlantes

Deep River August 14, 5 pm: Lemuria Books, Jackson August 15, 5:30 pm: Square Books, Oxford Martin Clark

The Substitution Order August 15, 5 pm: Lemuria Books, Jackson August 16, 5:30 pm: Square Books, Oxford

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Memphis

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2019 Summer and Fall

FESTIVAL CALENDAR (NOT A COMPREHENSIVE LISTING)

JULY

12 Slugburger Festival, Corinth, facebook.com/slugburgerfestival 18-20 Johnson County Peach Festival, Clarksville, Arkansas, jocopeachfest.com July 26- Neshoba County Fair, Philadelphia, neshobacountyfair.org August 6 27 Square Alliance Summer Fest, Oxford, oxfordsquarems.com 2-3 3 8-11 9-11 9-17 17 17 24-25

AUGUST

Watermelon Carnival, Water Valley, watervalleychamber.com Bikes, Blues & Bayous, Greenwood, bikesbluesbayous.com Art-er Fringe Festival, Oxford, oxfordarts.com Sunflower River Blues and Gospel Festival, Clarksdale, sunflowerfest.org Elvis Week, Memphis, graceland.com Memphis Tri-State Blues Festival, Southaven, landercenter.com Mississippi Book Festival, Jackson, msbookfestival.com MiSSiHiPPi Music & Arts Festival, Waterford, missihippi.com

SEPTEMBER

6-8 Hummingbird Migration Celebration and Nature Festival, Holly Springs, strawberry.audubon.org 7 Delta Dragon Boat Races, Greenville, deltadragonboatraces.com 19-22 Mississippi Songwriters Festival, Ocean Springs, mssongwritersfestival.com 19-29 Mid-South Fair, Southaven, midsouthfair.com 20 Bulldog Bash, Starkville, msubulldogbash.com 21 Mississippi Delta Blues and Heritage Festival, Greenville, deltabluesms.org 26-28 Tallahatchie Riverfest Weekend, New Albany, newalbanymainstreet.com 28 Grenada Downtown Jubilee, Grenada, grenadamississippi.com 28 Natchez Biscuit Festival, Downtown Natchez, visitnatchez.org 28 Water Tower Festival, Hernando, hernandoms.org

OCTOBER 2-14 Mississippi State Fair, Jackson, mdac.ms.gov

4-5 Pilgrimage and Pioneer Day, Carrollton, visitcarrolltonms.com 4-6 Mistletoe Merchants, Memphis, themarketshows.com

6-13 Cruisinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; the Coast, Ocean Springs, cruisinthecoast.com

9-12 King Biscuit Blues Festival, Helena, Arkansas, kingbiscuitfestival.com

10-12 Renaissance Euro Fest, Ridgeland, euro-fest.net/ridgeland

11-12 UM Film Festival, Oxford, theatreandfilm.olemiss.edu

11-12 Oktoberfest, Cleveland, octoberfestms.com

11-13 Grenada Afterglow Film Festival, Grenada, grenadaafterglow.com

12 Gateway to the Delta Festival, Charleston, charlestongatewayfestival.org

12 Memphis Food & Wine Festival, Memphis, memphisfoodwinefestival.org

17-19 Delta Hot Tamale Festival, Greenville, mainstreetgreenville.com

17-20 Deep Blues Festival, Clarksdale, deepbluesfest.com

18-20 Great Mississippi River Balloon Race, Natchez, natchezballoonrace.com

19-20 Fat Tire Festival and McGee Lungbuster, Ridgeland, tricountymtb.org

19-20 Memphis Comic Expo, Memphis, memphiscomicexpo.com

19-20 Mempho Fest, Memphis, memphofest.com

24-27 Hambone Festival, Clarksdale, hambonefestival.com

25-27 Holiday Market, Memphis, themarketshows.com 26 Leland Frogfest, Leland, lelandchamber.com

26 Great Delta Bear Affair, Rolling Fork, greatdeltabearaffair.org

26-27 Spooky â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Cross Cyclocross Festival, Ridgeland, mscxcup.com

26-27 River Arts Fest, Memphis, riverartsmemphis.org

NOVEMBER 2-3 Peter Anderson Arts & Crafts Festival, Ocean Springs, peterandersonfestival.com

6-9 Mistletoe Marketplace, Jackson, mistletoemarketplace.com

23-24 Ridgeland Cyclocross Festival, Ridgeland, mscxcup.com

DELTA MAGAZINE 2019

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DELTA SEEN

Sheryll Murtagh, Allyn Evans, Ned Mitchell and Suzanne Bailey

Karen and Ronnie Mayers

Photos by Blake Crocker

Bettye and Ned Mitchell

Don Allen Mitchell, Ned Mitchell and Shelley Collins

Becky and Billy Nowell with Corinne Casanova

Mike Dean, Ned Mitchell and Brenda Dean 112 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

Luncheon honoring Ned Mitchell, DSU Honorary Doctoral recipient, at the Cleveland Country Club on May 3

Lem and Alice Mitchell

Katrena Eley and Allyn Evans

Janice Wyatt, Caroline Gaines and Bob Wilbanks

Jean Denton, Ned Mitchell, Marlee Caston, Bob Ragan, and Amber Kincaid

Butler Denton, Mike Sanders and Kent Wyatt

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DELTA SEEN

Que on the Yazoo in Greenwood on May 4 Photos by Caroline Stuckey

Amy Tackett and Natalie Huckleberry

Doss Pantin and Molly Freeland

Kassie Scates and Shannon Steen

Chris Cascio, Palmer Brock, Jim Quinn, Matthew Hicks and Lee Pruett

Michael Nix, Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Wayne Jordan, Jason Singh and Jeff Hardin

Jonbob and Whitney Wise with Lauren and Brad Tackett

Chad and Amanda Wiltshire

Kennon Litton, Robert Litton and Louis Brown

Keith Raby and Wade Evans

Yash Malhatra, Owen Hodges, Hartley Kittle and Bailey Overstreet Ragan Brown and Taylor Thach DELTA MAGAZINE 2019

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DELTA SEEN

Weldon and Corynne Pless

Larry Heard

Cassidy Bayou Gallery Spring Art Show in Sumner on May 11 Photos by Charles Coleman

A selection of photos by Delta Magazine readers

Carolyn Norris

Three Mississippi artists dropped by McCartys in Merigold. Pictured with Stephen Smith (second from left) are Chesley Peter Frampton and Edwin Vickery Pearman, Wyatt Waters and John Meek

Winn Roark, William Worthington, Clay Horton, Taylor Boggs, John Martin Frankel, Justin Purvis, Gib Ellis, Rex Livingston, Lisa and Mari Micci Bramuchi Parker Livingston, Martin Frankel and Blake Whatley

Trip LaFoe, Reed Darby and Axton Westmoreland 114 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

John and Mona Whitten

Shirley Anne Stringfellow, Carlene Noone, Merrill Greenlee. Back row: Robin Reed, Janet Webb, Brenda Thames, enjoying B.B. King weekend in Indianola

Macon, Casey, Trip and Macey LaFoe

Jim, Jack, Kingsley and Wesley Anne Warrington Beverly Trout with Ole Miss baseball players

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Belmont Beers, Blues & BBQ at Belmont Plantation on May 25 Photos by Blake Crocker

DELTA SEEN

April and Jimmy Martin with Margaret Towles and Micheal Thomas

Mike Bruce, Sharon Gault, Searcy Cunningham and Bill Walker

Connie Staten, Connee Lutrell and Paula Jean Lambert

Lindsey and Rob Mortimer with Hampton and Kelly McCorckle

Donna Shirley and Randall Lauderdale Will and Missy Coppage

Max Wellman and April Francis

Chris and Marcie Orr

Madeline Pieroni, Walker Cingolani with Kerry and Mike Potter

Guy Hall, Anne Corrigan and Jack Jackson

Sarah Taylor, Joe Paul Deangelo and Kyle Oakes

Lisa Cocilova and Amy Manning

Shearra Hardwick and Cedric Williams

David Morgan with Caroline and Cody Ruth DELTA MAGAZINE 2019

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DELTA SEEN

Brooke Tims, Mary Tatum Ellis and Kristen Crow

Charlie Capps and Chesley Pearman

Sean Wessel, Brooke and Micheal Tims

Delta Arts Alliance, A Night in the Arts at the Ellis Theater on June 1 Photos by Blake Crocker

Mount and Monique Burns

Kate Gluckman and Michael Stanley

Elizabeth Shannon and Linda Wyant

Kelsey Buquet and Lindsey Anna Pardue

Suellen Williams, Lauren Caston and Georgia Tindall

Katrena Eley, Carlton Lindsey, Elizabeth and Price Rosson, Lauren and Ben Powell and Ryan Rosson Jack Coleman 116 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

Eric and Haley Kelly

Beverly Fiorinelli and Cindy Bassie

Ashley Laurenzo, Pete Horne and Jamai Gonzalez

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Delta Soul Celebrity Golf & Charity Event at the Greenville Country Club on June 7 Photos by Blake Crocker

DELTA SEEN

Mark and Linda Maranto, Pete and Kathy Ballard with Bart and Cora Freeland with Sarah Ashley Chris Luckett

Front row, from left, Jack Jackson, Nadine Hayek, Jackie Valentine and Mamie Causey; back row, from left, Elisabeth Steele, Brayden Black, Paige Suares, Rose Smith, Cindy Abide, Gayden Metcalf, Gwen Azar and Hank Burdine

Charisse and Danny Oberle

David and Meribeth Crews

Tom Puensing and Kristen Frerichs

Drew Newsom and Lacey Stevens

Mike and Patti Collier

Scott and Jacqueline Strasburger

Charlie and Jan Brock with Barry Bays Michaela and Tyler Morgan with Drew Jeffrey and Carol Cashion Doolittle Carlile Koestler, Lacey Brozovich and and Schyler Cannatella Virginia Ellison with Paige and Neal Suares

Evelyn Brown with Stacey Springer

Mark

and Taylor and Jennie Henderson, Jennifer Breanna and Scott Horton Spencer with Robert and Dana Lyles

Amy Walker, Renia Dotson and Kim Delley

DELTA MAGAZINE 2019

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DELTA SEEN

Tom Gresham and Robert Royal

Delta Council Annual Meeting at Delta State University in Cleveland on June 7 Photos by Rory Doyle, Mike McCall, Robin Britton, and attendee submissions

Dick Hall, Meriweather Johnson and Ahdis Beruk Lynn Fitch, Delbert Hosemann, Gov. Phil Bryant, Bill LaForge and Errick Simmons

Tom Gresham, David Abney, Chairman and CEO of UPS, Michael Guest, Governor Phil Bryant, Philip Gunn, Bailey Runnels, Woods Eastland, Hal Parker, Jr. and Lieutenant Governor Tate Reeves Jordan and Scott Coopwood

Woods and Lynn Eastland with Louise and Tom Gresham

Lynn Cox with Hilda and Kirkham Povall

Lynn Eastland, Paula Clarke and Patricia Brashier Hank Reichle, Lynn Eastland and Merritt Reichle 118 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

Kirk and Bridget Satterfield

Anne Hall Brashier and Pete Hunter

Betty Lynn Cameron, Bob Sharmon and Lily Kate Sexton

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DELTA SEEN

Merlin Richardson and Robin Britton

Austin and Andy Jones

Orlando Paden, Eva Connell and Jen Waller

Traditional Delta Council fried catfish luncheon on the DSU Quadrangle.

David Abney with Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann

Bill Allen and Steve Osso

Les Torrans and Archie Tucker

2019 Miss Catfish Lily Kate Sexton Bubba Simmons with Drew and and former Miss Catfish Leah Ferretti Heather Gholson

Tom Gresham, David Abney, Woods Eastland and Archie Tucker

Errick Simmons and Everett Chinn

Bruce Levingston

Michael Watson and Frank Howell

Suzette Matthews and Sam Britton DELTA MAGAZINE 2019

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Thefinalword

Trout Fishing in the Delta

Jim McCafferty, author of The Bear Hunter: the Life and Times of Robert Eager Bobo in the Canebrakes of the Old South, writes frequently on hunting and fishing in the 19th century Delta.

eaders of 19th century sporting literature may be surprised to find Delta settlers telling of catching trout in local lakes and streams. Its lands not yet greatly disturbed by the ax or plow, the Delta’s bayous and oxbows then suffered little from silty run-off, and, during the dry, low-water months of late summer and fall, exhibited a clarity rarely seen today. Early writers described them as ranging from “semi-transparent” to “as pure and clear as though they gurgled through the gorges of the Catskill Mountains.” One sportsman using the pseudonym Raven in 1866 called his favorite trout water—the Bogue Phalia—“clear and pellucid” with waters “silvery and sparkling....” From one of the Bogue’s bright sandbars, he told the readers of the Turf, Field and Farm, “you can see, deep down, the crafty trout.” Another known today only by his pen name “Yazoo” caught his trout in the Bayou

120 | JULY/AUGUST 2019

BY JAMES T. MCCAFFERTY

Tokeba, a small stream joining the Yazoo River to Wolf Lake in Yazoo County. In an 1843 article for the Spirit of the Times he discussed the respective merits of artificial flies and live bait as lures for Delta trout. “Artificial flies are very pretty things when well made,” Yazoo conceded, “and like all imitations do very well when the real article cannot be procured.” Natural bait worked best though, Yazoo contended, with the “topwater” minnow (typically caught on site) in his estimation being “the best bait for trout.” Delta trout anglers preferred the “native cane” for rod stock. Yazoo cut his “from a neighboring brake” and found it “straight as an arrow and as supple as whalebone.” Raven owned two such rods, one sixteen feet in length and the other seventeen. Both, he bragged, were “straight as a needle, though used for several seasons.” Simplicity ruled when it came to rigging the cane rods for trout. The standard line was of plaited silk about the same length as the cane with a gut tippet attached to a No. 1 to No. 3 sized hook. Neither Raven nor Yazoo used a sinker, but Raven did recommend attaching “three feet above the hook—a float of such size that it cannot be carried under by the minnow....” That completed the outfit, for, according to Raven, “[o]n account of the hidden snags and sunken logs, it [was] impossible to use the reel and running line.” Coahoma County pioneer Lyman Webster sometimes used no hook at all according to an 1882 article in American Field magazine. Spotting his quarry in the clear waters of Hushpuckena Creek, Webster would lower a wire loop with a cane pole, gently draw the noose over the fish’s head, and with a quick jerk “rope” it so securely “it was impossible for it to get a way.”

Not all Delta trout fisherman were men. Women, who felt the sometime boredom of backwoods life especially hard, were often the most avid anglers. The 1840s Coahoma County pioneer, Hector McNeill admitted that his wife, Caroline, a Connecticut educated Acadienne belle from Louisiana’s Bayou Teche country, was the angler in his family. When they fished, Caroline tended to the tackle, and, if Mr. McNeill caught anything, it was due entirely to her efforts. Elizabeth McNutt Fall, widow of Governor Alexander Gallatin McNutt (1802-1848), was, as memoirist A. J. Paxton put it, “[a] fisher-woman persistent beyond the men of Gallilee.” Called Aunt Bettie by her Washington County neighbors, she was known for her reluctance to leave a good fishing hole. “Come, Aunty Bettie,” pleaded one of her male fishing buddies on one occasion, “I am hungry.” Aunt Bettie, unmoved, replied: “I have got just one more worm. Let me fish him.” The Delta trout, as our friend Raven noted and you may have suspected, was “no trout...nor any kin to one,” but “a thorough black bass,” of either the largemouth or spotted variety, which, for some reason, many early Deltans insisted on calling “trout”—especially if the bass was caught in a stream. Raven, though, like most fishermen, was a practical man. Thus, as he considered his morning’s catch of two dozen Bouge Phalia fish averaging two pounds each, he worried not whether to call them trout or bass. Rather, he opted to “congratulate [him]self as among those ‘whose lines have fallen in pleasant places.’” Delta waters may not be as clear as they were in the 1860s, but the Delta’s trout remain plentiful and willing. Good fishing! DM

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5TH ANNIVERSARY FUNDER

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