Delta Magazine July/August 2020

Delta

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Lake Living at Moon Lake • • •

4th of July at Pier 332 3 Family Lake houses Kathryn’s Restaurant

Boards & Batches

Summer inspired charcuterie boards and large batch cocktails

HAUTE COUTURE AT EVERHOPE

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mississippi is worth ghting for.

At C Spire, we don’t do anything halfway, especially for our home state. When AT&T sued to stop us from providing reliable service for public institutions and saving taxpayers millions, we kept on fighting. Spoiler alert: We won.

We were the first to bring fiber to Mississippi homes, and we’re adding more every month.

We’re even delivering expanded network capacity now for faster data when you need it most.

SO YOU BET WE’RE DOING MORE FOR MISSISSIPPI. THAT’S JUST WHAT WE DO.

cspire.com ©2020 C Spire. All rights reserved.

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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. Graphic Designers: Sandra Goff, Maggi Mosco Contributing Writers: Jack Criss, Hobson Gary, Sherry Lucas, Susan Marquez, Fish Michie, Anne Cunningham O’Neill, Aimee Robinette, Katie Tims, Cal Trout, Abby Vance Thompson, Amile Wilson Photography: Rory Doyle, Greg Campbell, Dwayne Bratcher, Natasha Kertes, Tindall Stephens Account Executives: Joy Bateman, Janice Fullen, 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

CLASSIC AMERICAN QUALITY.

Spicy Cornmeal Crusted Simmons Catfish

By Chef Steven Goff at the Delta Supper Club at Hopson Plantation - Clarksdale, MS.

FRESH FROM THE POND TO YOUR PLATE. SIM M ONSCAT F ISH .COM 8 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

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 Š2020 Coopwood Magazines, Inc.

from the editor

Hello Summer any of our collective memories revolve around summers or weekends “at the lake.”

For those fortunate enough to own a boat or lake house or to be the friend of someone who owns a boat or lake house there’s no need to wonder about weekend plans—languid lake days are just a given.

In this issue you’ll read about Moon Lake, a treasured place not only geographically, but also in the hearts of those who live there, and even those who only visit occasionally. It’s that special, you can just feel it. There are permanent residences, weekend homes and second homes—cottages that provide a respite from the “real” world. Three families shared their lake houses and the stories that go along with them—the memories, the celebrations, and the renovations as their families have grown. you’ll wish you had been at one of Rhodes and Rhett Shaffett’s legendary 4th of July, Cochon de Lait pig roasts, page 84. And there’s no better way to wrap a weekend at Moon Lake than a meal at Kathryn’s—the onion rings alone are worth the trip by car or boat!

For summer entertaining, whether 4th of July, or gatherings with family and friends, make it easy on yourself. Everyone loves charcuterie boards and Rhett and Ben Shaffett prepare the pigs we bring you lots of tips and two great options— for roasting at the 10th Annual Cochon de Lait, as Bo Armstrong and baby Tripp one with mediterranean flavors and one with look on. fruits, berries, and and lighter fare, page 98. Also, we highly recommend mixing up a large batch cocktail the next time you have guests. No need to play bartender when you’ve got pitchers of frosty beverages at the ready for guests to serve themselves.

Nothing shocks me anymore about the allure of the Delta. I’ve finally learned how pervasive it really is. So when Hank Burdine told me he’d been asked to scout locations for a fashion photo shoot for designer Ema Savahl with Russian photographer Natasha Kertes, I really wasn’t that surprised. That could only happen here, and honestly, only to Hank. you’ll see that the end result is stunning, page 44. The contrast of the raw Delta landscape and her exquisite designs is, as Kertes exclaimed, magical.

This issue has so much to take in from cover to cover. With it we wish you the best of all summer has to offer—time with family, good food, days outdoors and hopefully some weekends at the lake! DM GREG CAMPBELL

RORY DOYLE

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Cindy Coopwood Editor

RORY DOYLE

@cindycoopwood | cindy@deltamagazine.com

Oh, to what lengths photographers will go to get the perfect shot. Always a pleasure to work with the talented Rory Doyle who captured our stunning food shots!

Natasha Kertes’ photos of haute couture in the cotton fields of the Delta were seen on magazine covers worldwide.

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E ATAT W I L S O N .CO M

Small town, big ambitions.

FRESH FRUIT • VEGETABLES • FLOWERS

FA R M E RS M A R K E T EVERY WEDNESDAY THROUGH THE SUMMER

wilsonarkansas.com

Follow us on Social Media.

facebook.com/VisitWilson

@VisitWilson

contents JULy/AUGUST Volume 18 No. 1

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96

RORY DOYLE

departments

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28 Reviews BOOKS of new releases and 32 ART Leslie Barron: Memphis artist’s what Deltans are reading

38 MUSIC Jake and the Pearl Street Jumpers: work is a study in contrasts

Making joyous sounds for 45 years and counting

features

44 50 56 62

EVERHOPE AND WHITE GOLD

RORY DOYLE

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RORY DOYLE

94 FOOD Big Crowd? Large Batch!

THE VOLUME OF A LIFE WELL LIVED

A Haute Couture photo shoot in the Delta

WATERSHED HIGH-WATER MARKS

Born of immigrants, Clarksdale native shares life lessons in new book

Cal Trout’s tribute to his father and grandfather

LAKE LIVING AT MOON LAKE

Pier 332, home of Rhodes and Rhett Shaffett, page 64 Laid-back living with Claire and Dudley Barnes, page 70 A weekend destination for Cherie and Curt Robinson, page 78 Chocon de Lait at the Shaffett’s, page 84 Kathryn’s Restaurant, a Delta Classic, page 88

ON THE COVER: Zoe Imes and Matt Burdine in the Cypress Cathedral of Lake Washington.

Photographed by Natasha Kertes.

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Three recipes for large batch cocktails, pages 95, 96, 97 Summer Charcuterie & Cheese boards, page 98 Mediterranean inspired Charcuterie board, page 100 Summer cheese board with stone fruits and berries, page 103

in every issue 14 Letters 18 On the Road Where we’ve been, where we’re going next

22 Off the Beaten Path Roaming the Real and Rustic Delta

24 Hot Topics 112 Events 116 Delta Seen Pages of snapshots from area fundraisers, art openings and social events

120 The Final Word

by Hobson Gary

Hardin County TENNESSEE

CatďŹ sh to Cannonballs

The Good Life Just Got Be er Savannah | Pickwick | Shiloh | Crump | Sal llo

Great Place to Re re!

tourhardincounty.org

LETTERS D

ART

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.

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Church on Brooks Plantation at Drew, Miss. August, 1971

GRANDMAeDelta MOSES of th “I wouldn’t live anywhere in the world but Mississippi.” -

JLG

BY HANK BURDINE

randma Moses, the American folk painter known for her documentation of rural life, painted scenes she remembered from growing up as a child during the first half of the last century in upstate New York and Virginia. She did not start

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painting until her seventies and continued on until her death at 101. Her nostalgic scenes of rural America, which she originally sold at country fairs along with her prize-winning pickles, gained her national recognition.

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My great thanks to Hank Burdine on his very good article about my aunt, Jennie Lee Gorton. Doy Gorton was my mother’s oldest brother—the first of nine children. I would spend several wonderful summer weeks with Doy and Jennie in Greenville and their granddaughter, Honey Hammond, was just a little younger than I; we would spend some great times together.

I remember when Jennie began painting. Her sister-in-law, Dale Gorton from Marks, had been painting landscapes for years and I remember she and Jennie talking about painting.

When Doy and Jennie lived in Ruleville, they were next door to my great aunt, Lillian Stigler with whom my dad and uncle lived.

One day when my mom was visiting Doy and Jennie, my dad (next door) saw her in their yard, and decided that was to be his wife. Worked well for me!

I always look forward to Delta Magazine arriving in my mailbox. I read every article and love the recipes, which my Nebraskaborn wife is getting good at preparing! The Delta Scene is always fun because sometimes I will spot old friends.

I’ve been away from the Delta since I joined the Air Force in 1967, but I guess you just can’t get the Delta mud out of my toes.

Thank you for keeping me in touch with home. And thank you, Hank Burdine, for your article on Jennie Lee Gorton.

Gorton Smith Las Cruces, New Mexico Having read and enjoyed Max Wellman’s article, “From the mountains to the Delta” in the current Delta Magazine, I felt compelled to write a letter.

I came to the Delta in late 1956 to basic flight school in the USAF after growing up in a small coal mining town in northeastern Pennsylvania, graduating from Penn State

University, and receiving my commission in the Air Force.

The many similarities in Wellman’s and my experiences compelled me to write!

Let me list a few—I met my love in Greenville while in training, we married in Greenwood in 1957 at her home, spent many evenings at Lillo’s in Leland while courting her, have a daughter who is married to a professor at Montana State, have a home in Big Sky where we’ve enjoyed 4 or 5 months each year since the early ‘90s—need I say more!

We’ve called Memphis home for more than 60 years and occasionally drive back to the Delta to reminisce, stay at the Alluvian Hotel in Greenwood and visit Greenville and places in between.

Thanks to Mr. Wellman for a wonderful trip down memory lane and be sure to keep the A/C running this summer!

Ray Schultz Memphis, Tennessee

Delta

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Paddling the Swamplands Treasure troves for 4 Delta outdoor enthusiasts

Cr Crum Cru Crumb C Cr Cru Crus Crust Crusts

3 Chilled pies to try this month

Gardening Wisdom 3 Rules for Success

I just wanted you to know what a colorful and beautiful cover you have on this issue. Delta Magazine is our favorite.

We have lived in Metro area of Birmingham since 1950 but still enjoy reading and learning about the Delta. There are so many great pictures and info in each issue.Thanks for being such a great editor.

Dorothy W. Ramsey Birmingham, Alabama Really enjoy this magazine. I left the Delta in 1975 and boy has it changed. My friends really enjoy the wedding issue as they have never seen such large bridal parties! I would love to see a story on the grand old homes down Grand Boulevard in Greenwood.

Sandy Hoagland Naples, Florida

Y’all Said SOCIAL MEDIA COMMENTS @deltamagazine

We Asked...

Pink, blue or any color in between, hydrangeas are stunning and are blooming across the Delta. We want to know— what’s your favorite color?

Mississippi-made to share Our gourmet pecan products made here in the Mississippi Delta are a great way to show your pride with both corporate and personal gift giving. This year we’re offering a Mississippi-shaped cutting board that can be ordered with pre-selected items, and of course you’re free to choose other products to be included. Our sampler tins are always popular for office gifts as well. Call, come by, or visit our website to see just how expansive our selections are, and remember that we’ll be glad to ship for you.

©2020 IPH

1013 Highway 82, Indianola, MS • 662-887-5420 • 800-541-6252 • pecanhouse.com

My momma’s favorite flower! @howardthdrue Love them!! Blue! @sewing5 Blue, because they remind me of my Grannie Beasley’s house in Houston, MS years ago. @thecakelady__

Many of us have family or friends who served in the armed forces to protect our freedom…whose memory did you honor on Memorial Day? We honored my father, Fred Williams, Sr. who served two tours in the Korean War, as a Sgt. in the Army. He went from that to a 40-year career in law enforcement retiring as a Lt. from the Detroit Police Department. – Renee Moore

SEND COMMENTS AND LETTERS TO: editor@deltamagazine.com or Delta Magazine, PO Box 117, Cleveland, MS 38732 DELTA MAGAzINE 2020

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Journey to Ports Unknown

PHOTO BY MARTY KITTRELL

A familiar site to all who live in river towns along the Mississippi are marine vessels of all sorts, sternwheeler excursion boats, fishing boats, and the everpresent towboats pushing barges. Towboats, such as the one pictured here passing under the Mississippi River bridge at Vicksburg, tend to evoke a nostalgic familiarity, but they are actually a vital part of commerce in the U.S. where commodities are still shipped by truck, rail or barge. The barges we see may be loaded with fertilizer, petroleum products, aggregate or grain. Therein lies the mystery that will remain unknown to those watching from the banks and enjoying the gentle rumble of the engines, always wondering about the destination of every barge that passes by. DM

ON THE ROAD

where we’ve been, where to go next

DUNCAN

ENID

Still standing...Bethany Baptist Church. – JEFF SEZNAK

MEMPHIS The old Terra Chemical shop in Duncan. – LEANNA MILLER

PHOTO OPS & MERIGOLD Another “King” graces Beale Street. – JIM HENDRIX

RODNEY

Beautiful skies behind the old Cedar Hill Cemetery. – MARSHA HUGHS

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Four years gone, blues lovers still come by to leave mementos at the Po’ Monkey’s marker. – DELTA MAGAZINE

MOUND BAYOU GREENWOOD

Built in 1910, the endangered home of founder Isaiah T. Montgomery awaits renovations. – DELTA MAGAZINE

FRIARS POINT Unique treasures nearly hidden in plain sight. – DELTA MAGAZINE

FUNKY STOPS Roaming the real and rustic Delta

CLEVELAND

Home of the Delta’s own Conway Twitty on the country music trial. – VISITCLARKSDALE

JACKSON

Capitol city vibes await road-trippers at iconic Hal & Mal’s restaurant. – MALCOLM WHITE A preserved segment of the original railroad tracks are a nod to days gone by. – DELTA MAGAZINE Instagram users, follow @deltamagazine and see #DMphotoops

DELTA MAGAzINE 2020

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OFF THE BEATEN PATH roaming the real and rustic Delta

MURALS IN ALLIGATOR AND MISSISSIPPI AQUARIUM Urban Art in Alligator and New Freshwater Aquarium in Gulfport

BY AIMEE ROBINETTE

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HE DELTA CONTINUES TO AMAZE RESIDENTS and tourists alike with awe-

inspiring art. Small communities like Alligator, population 187, inspire artists of all levels to create out of thin air, utilizing urban canvases in rural areas. Delta State University Art Professor Cetin Oguz is one such person who painted a mural of a large alligator. “I was invited to paint the mural by the community,” says Cetin. To make the art a part of the people, he enlisted the help of residents to help with the process. “I received help from the community members for priming the walls and setting up scaffolds,” he adds. “The Wallace family and their children: Amana, Shalom and Raja and the mayor were very instrumental in helping me throughout.”

The project caught on as locals continued painting a mural of the Alligator River along with a bluesman on another side of the building. Murals on another building feature Roger Walker and Johnny Drummer, both respected bluesmen.

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ISSISSIPPI IS KNOWN AS THE HOSPITALITY STATE, but it is equally known for its

abundance of freshwater and marine life. Those specimens vary from the muddy, fresh water Mississippi River, marshes and bayous, all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico and the brackish waters of coastal estuaries. The Mississippi Aquarium, which will soon open, is located in Gulfport and will couple both hospitality and the great outdoors to create an experience that is sure to delight and dazzle bringing aquatic ecosystems to life for attendees. The aquarium will provide community outreach through beach clean ups, recycling initiatives and conservation events.

The $90 million aquarium will be teaming with native fish and animals, giving visitors a glimpse into life under the water. The aquarium will focus on education, conservation and community, giving even the youngest of visitors the inspiration to keep the local ecosystems clean for generations to come.

2100 East Beach Boulevard, Gulfport msaquarium.org 22 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

The small town of Alligator, Mississippi, a few miles south of Clarksdale on Highway 61 is becoming known for its rustic murals. Below, exciting things to come on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

LEE HONG COMPANY GROCERY STORE A third-generation grocery store deep in the Delta

BY AMILE WILSON

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INCE 1917 LEE HONG COMPANY GROCERY HAS BEEN THE ONE-STOP SOURCE FOR GROCERIES, dry goods, and

Above, the Lee Hong Company Grocery store, run by the third-generation of their family.

anything else the people of Louise, MS, might need.

Now run by Hong Lee’s grandchildren, the general store continues to be a bedrock of downtown Louise and a landmark to the history of Chinese-owned groceries throughout the Delta. It also has developed a reputation for serving some of the best homemade sauce around.

Hong first arrived in the United States from the Woo village in China. Like so many Chinese immigrants of the era, he came to work on the intercontinental railroad in the early 1900s. Later, when many of his fellow laborers were heading to Chicago, Hong and other immigrant families settled throughout the Mississippi Delta opening grocery stores.

“Everyone worked in the store,” said Shari Lee, Hong’s granddaughter. “Mom, Dad; people tell me they can remember me at five years old restocking shelves and working the cash register standing on a Coke box.”

When Hong’s son Hoover returned from the Army in 1957, he and his wife began working in the store. He even built a residence attached to the back.

“In the very back of the store where the meat market is, there’s a door and you open it up and you’re in the house,” said Shari.

Hoover’s sauce was a homemade family recipe until one day his friend Ronny stopped by the store asking to buy a bottle.

Now, Hoover’s sauce has garnered a national reputation.

Hoover also served on the Board of Alderman and spent eighteen years as Mayor of Louise.

In the late 1990s Hoover transitioned the family business to his children. Brothers Stan and Tim continue to run the Delta icon and, of course, still make their secret sauce.

1294 Main Street, Louise 662.836.5131

Items of all varieties stock the shelves of this grocery store, but the speciaity is their Hoover Sauce.

DELTA MAGAzINE 2020

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HOT TOPICS THE ALLMAN BETTS BAND Rescheduled show set for August 5 at BPAC Many productions and festivals across the Delta have either been canceled or rescheduled.

This holds true for some of the Bologna Performing Arts Center shows at Delta State University. One of the shows Deltans are looking forward to is The Allman Betts Band which has been rescheduled at the BPAC for Wednesday, August 5 at 7:30 p.m.

The Allman Betts Band has become popular over the course of the past couple of years and many may be familiar with these last names. The group is led by Devon Allman and Duane Betts. Devon Allman is son of the late Greg Allman, founding member of one of rock’s most iconic bands, The Allman Brothers. Duane Betts, is the son of Dickey Betts also of The Allman Brothers Band fame who wrote the band’s first major hit, “Ramblin’ Man.” Several years ago, Devon and Duane joined forces and formed The Allman Betts Band.

They kicked off their World Tour in March, 2019 and have sold out most of the venues they have played.

Both Devon and Duane were members of other bands along the way and have both released solo albums.Their shows consist of music

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from their previous records and plenty of Allman Brothers songs to keep people on their feet.

For more information on the show, visit bolognapac.com or call the main office at 662.846.4625 or the ticket office at 662.846.4626.

THE STORY BEHIND THE SAUCE Versatile and “perfect on everything”

BY ABBY VANCE THOMPSON

Tucked away in the small community of Teasdale near Enid, Mississippi, sits a country home and a husband and wife who turned a hobby into a business venture. zane Alford and his wife, Kathy Jo, have decided to take a risk at turning a personal table sauce into a worldwide business.

Sherin sauce, named for their two daughters, Shelby and Erin, was originally birthed when zane was in college cooking for his friends. He couldn’t find a sauce he liked, so he created one himself. But Alford gives much credit for the business to Kathy Jo. “She’s just as much a part of this as I am,” he said.

In the beginning, sales were small. “We would sell three cases on a Saturday, and we thought that was a good day’s work,” Alford said. Now, they are selling many times that amount, and this little sauce is making itself known all across Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina, Washington, and even Germany in specialty shops, boutiques and grocery stores.

The unique thing about Sherin Sauce is its versatility. It has been used as a marinade for Boston Butts, chicken and pork chops; a dip with sour cream on tacos; a sauce on sandwiches, pizza and omelettes; and as a dressing on salads. “We just want people to love and enjoy and share the sauce the way we do,” Alford said. Sherin Sauce can be found on Facebook by searching “Sherin Sauce,” where Kathy Jo posts many of her favorite recipes with the sauce, as well as Grocery Basket, Jewelry Etc., Umpy’s and Cotton Row Uniques in Memphis.

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662.934.0401 or facebook.com/sherinsauce/ 24 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

BROWN WATER BOOKS OPENS IN GREENVILLE The literary town once again has a book store housed in it’s oldest home

BY HANK BURDINE

It has been lightheartedly said that the reason there are so many writers from Greenville is there was something in the brown water that’s so prevalent in the area. The town’s well-known independent bookstore, McCormick’s Book Inn, ten years closed, even went so far as to bottle the water, with the faces of notable local authors on the label. The oak tannin tinted brown water hasn’t really changed, and is now becoming recognized as the name of the Delta’s newest independent bookstore, Brown Water Books, owned and operated

by Greenville’s acclaimed writer and hostess Julia Reed.

The Wetherbee House, the oldest house in Greenville, just seems to be the proper place for Brown Water Books to call home. Notable local authors, all brown water drinkers, include David Cohn, William Alexander Percy, Walker Percy, Shelby Foote, Ben Wasson, Hodding Carter II, III, IV, Beverly Lowry, Charles Bell, Ellen Douglas, Bern Keating, Julia Reed, Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays, with regional authors William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, John Grisham, Richard Grant, Martha Foose and Elizabeth Heiskell. Many composers, artists, photographers and sculptors like Kenneth Haxton, Leon Koury, Bill Beckwith, Jane Rule Burdine, Maude Schuyler Clay and Melody Golding have all drunk the water and walked the sidewalks in downtown Greenville adjacent to the old house.

With its wide gallery across the front, opening into a central hall with soaring ceilings and tall windows, the time-honored building serves perfectly for the works of literary and artistic giants to be nestled in the bookshelves, stacked on tables and hanging on the walls. With volumes of local, regional and nationally acclaimed writers, artists and photographers in stock, Brown Water Books has a very special aura about it. Julia recently stated, “For Greenville, a town with such an astonishingly rich literary and artistic history, to be without a bookstore just felt wrong and weird, especially since we have long been home to loads of writers and artists.

I’d been thinking about opening a bookstore ever since McCormick’s closed. When the Wetherbee House, which is such an architectural gem, became available, I just had to do it. It was also important to me to be part of the downtown renaissance of Greenville that Bill Boykin has started with such bravery and foresight. I love being at the end of the block with all his gorgeous properties. Growing up, the books Mrs. McCormick would press into my hands, literally changed my life. I hope we can do the same. Greenville’s unique and remarkable culture needs perpetuating. It is our strongest heritage.”

Beyond the back porch, and behind the Greenville Master Gardeners flowerbeds is the old original carriage house which

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contains the 1927 Flood Museum. Surrounded by books, history and artifacts, one can almost spend an entire afternoon lounging around, browsing books, looking at artwork, walking through the gardens and learning about the Great Flood of 1927 which helped shape the America we know and live in today. The brilliant and talented Everrett Bexley is on hand to help customers find the books they need or to make suggestions from the everexpanding inventory of books such as The Chiffon Trenches: Memoir of Andre’ Leon Talley, Jessica Lange’s photographic book Highway 61, High on the Hog by noted food writer Dr. Jessica B. Harris and volumes of Jamie Lee Burke and his Dave Robichaux series.

Come by Brown Water Books in the old Wetherbee House in downtown Greenville, hang out in history, spend time amongst literary and artistic giants, past and present and sip a little of the brown water. you never know, you may just go home, sit down and write a line or two. “It is never a disaster when you learn among masters…”

503 Washington Avenue, Greenville, Mississippi

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BOOKS How to Be an Artist by Jerry Saltz (Ilex Press) Jerry Saltz discusses creativity in How to Be an Artist, a profound title and extremely large subject, but it’s simply a fun guidebook for artists of all genres, including but not limited to visual art.

Pictures of beautiful, stimulating works of art fill the book, along with sixty-three wise but also humorously light and pithy lessons. These lessons are more like humble observations on how to move upward and onward in a creative life, which can often be a confusing and difficult one.

Suggested exercises throughout stir the mind and emotions to inspire and to encourage any artist. Read this in a couple of hours or stretch it out over a month or two. Either way, it’s uplifting and hopeful for anyone endeavoring to make something. (Liza Jones) How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam Zhang (Riverhead Books) How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam zhang is an original story and compelling debut. A gritty adventure story, historically set in California during and after the Gold Rush, it’s full of dazzling language and strange beauty.

Two very different siblings, Lucy and Sam, are orphaned at the beginning of this novel. After their father dies, they must strike out on their own, carrying the corpse of their father in an effort to bury him properly. The novel centers around the relationship between the two siblings and the experience of their father who was a Chinese immigrant looking for a better life in the American West with his family, but instead ended up living a migrant life of poverty working in coal mines.

This story is striking in its landscape descriptions and the way it weaves belonging, survival, race, and history. (Liza Jones)

Buzzworthy Comments

Jerry Saltz

We asked Facebook friends and Delta Magazine Fan Page Group members to share with us their favorite book about sports or sports icons. o Jim Moore, Retired Oxford, Mississippi

Boo a Life in Baseball Well Lived by Rick Cleveland. Boo was a true Mississippi legend. o Margaret Shelton, Homemaker Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Playing Pizza by John Grisham. I love Ole Miss football so I loved this book. The characters played football in a little town in Italy for the love of the game and then eat giant Italian meals. It is a very run read.

C Pam Zhang

o John Cox, Attorney Cleveland, Mississippi

All Adults Here by Emma Straub (Riverhead Books) Emma Straub’s latest novel, All Adults Here, is a character-driven story of family and the power of telling the truth. It’s wonderfully peopled with interesting personalities and the moments that define them.

Astrid Strick sees a woman she knows get run over by a bus on the way to her hair appointment. This inspires her to tell a big secret about her life to her adult children who all have their own issues in life. In terms of plot, the Strick family is the story, with all their complications and imperfections. Dysfunction is normal. It’s human.

Straub’s writing is always cozy, appealing, and friendly. She excels at writing about relationships, and this novel, filled with tenderness and modern issues, is as delightful as her other novels, which seem to always offer humor and humanity in the same breath. (Liza Jones)

The Courting of Marcus Dupree by Willie Morris. Willie spins a fascinating story about Mississippi’s past and future through the prism of the recruitment of a high school football legend from Philadelphia, Mississippi. I go back and re-read it before every football season. o Vernon Shelton, Retired Oxford, Mississippi

Emma Straub

For the Record Books Delta Magazine fans are currently reading

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by Sue Bell Cobb

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The Woman in the Window

by A.J. Finn

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by Delia Owens

o Brucie McKamy Mintz Emma

by Jane Austin

28 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

o Mary Steele Failing Lawler Pamela

by Samuel Richardson

o Anna Marie Swimming Studies

by Leanne Shapton

o Bill Bobbs Denmark Vesey’s Garden

by Blain Roberts and Ethan J. Kytle

o Melissa Thomas

Crooked Snake

by Lovejoy Boteler

Crazy ‘08 by Cait Murphy. It’s about the Cubs World Series win in 1908.

The world was different then but baseball is baseball.

o Anne Wynn Weissinger Love in the Time of Cholera

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

o David Malatesta

Not in a Tuscan Villa

by John Petralia

o Penny Oliver Stettinius 25 Years in Provence

by Peter Mayle

o Lori Fitzgerald Dickens Jesus Calling by Sarah Young

o Pam Shipp Lewis

Cilka’s Journey by Heather Morris

Merchants on Issaquena: Avenue of the Blues in Mississippi

by Margery Kerstine (Kerstine’s Enterprises) Twenty-Three Buildings Eighty-Eight years, Who Knew One Street Had So Many Stories? Everyone who has ever lived in Clarksdale, Mississippi, undoubtedly, has an Issaquena story, but failed to record it perhaps because it seemed unimportant.

Merchants on Issaquena: Avenue of the Blues in Mississippi, a comprehensive history of Issaquena Avenue unveils “those who did share their memories paint a vivid cultural and economic view of this commercial street nested in Clarksdale during the twentieth century.”

Margery Kerstine’s Deep South history, resplendent with illustrations and maps depicts a building tour which shows one of the many hidden worlds you can find traveling the southern United States. Her detailed written history of the area makes one of the best southern memoirs of minority communities who found a home together over a century ago. Kerstine takes you back to bustling Saturday night crowds, bluesy Issaquena musicians, and crowded stores and cafés. (Special/DM Staff )

Modern Cast Iron by Ashley L. Jones (Red Lightning Books) Warm, crumbly cornbread. Chicken sizzling in the pan.

Childhood memories filled with delicious, home-cooked dishes and your family there to enjoy it with you. Cast iron’s popularity faded in the ‘70s―replaced by chemically processed cookware― but today’s cooks are reigniting a passion for wholesome cast-iron-cooked meals.

This ain’t your grandma’s kitchen―caring for and cooking with cast iron is easy, healthy, and totally Pinterest worthy.

In Modern Cast Iron, self-proclaimed cast-iron connoisseur Ashley L. Jones recaptures the ease and joy of cooking with cast-iron cookware. Jones introduces readers to the best brands and types of cast-iron cookware to fulfill any cook’s needs. She offers detailed tips and tricks for rescuing old, rusted pans and keeping them properly seasoned, and she shares recommendations for the best cooking oil for every recipe.

With Jones’s help, both experienced and beginner cooks will be able to rival grandma’s cooking. (Special/DM Staff )

The Rising Place by Eric Van Lustbader (The Wild Rose Press, Inc.) If you found a box of letters written during World War II—would you read them? And what if you did and discovered an amazing story about unrequited love, betrayal, and murder in a small southern town?

A young lawyer meets Emily Hodge, a 75year-old spinster shunned by her hometown society, and can’t understand why she lives such a solitary and seemingly forgotten life. But the letters she leaves for him reveal how her choices caused her to be ostracized—but definitely not forgotten by those who loved her.

(Special/DM Staff) DM DELTA MAGAzINE 2020

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ART

Leslie Barron

a study incontrasts

Equally inspired by seashells and Chagall, the work of Memphis artist Leslie Barron incorporates serious formality with a generous dose of whimsy

BY ANNE CUNNINGHAM O’NEILL • PHOTOGRAPHY BY TINDALL FARMER 32 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

Examples of Barron’s playful art featuring formal ladies, animals, and whimsical birds.

As I sat down with Memphis artist Leslie Barron and talked about her life, I was reminded of the hilarious book by British author Allison Pearson, I Don’t Know How She Does It, which was later made into a popular movie. The book is about the hectic roller-coaster ride of being a working mother in today’s world, and, believe me, Barron is the embodiment of just such a mother.

She is an incredibly successful artist, painting huge canvasses which can take several weeks to complete, and at this very moment twenty-two commissions are awaiting her deft, creative hand. At the same time, sons Buzz and Wiley, husband Doug, and beloved dog, Agatha, all depend on her, and, by the way, she plays a lot of tennis in her “free” time.

Barron hails from a family of artists, so it can be said that she comes by her talent honestly. Dating back to the 1920s, her great-grandfather painted covers for the Staley Journal published in Decatur, Illinois, as well as backdrops for vaudeville shows. Her father’s uncle produced pen and inks with watercolor washes; her father

himself can draw, and her mother is a folk artist. As for herself, she says “I have been creating art for as long as I can remember.”

Barron was raised in Memphis and attended Germantown High School where she thrived in famed teacher Norma Early’s AP art classes. Upon graduation, it was a toss-up between law school and art school, and, fortunately, Barron chose the University of Memphis for her BFA as a painting major and art history minor. It was a world-class art department where she was blessed to study with the likes of the late Dick Knowles and the late Steve Langdon as art professors.

Barron is gracious in her praise for all those who helped her along the way; “her first real break” was showing with DELTA MAGAzINE 2020

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Rodgers Menzies and Keith Headley at their interior design month and then one or two paintings she wants to paint “that shop. It was then she realized “she could paint for a living.” pop up in her mind.” Due to her profile on Instagram, there is This success was followed by showing with Diane Laurenzi at a lot of interest in her work. She is backed up, but people “are her store near Overton Park. Contributing to the “Hall of thankfully patient and willing to wait up to two years.” Barron Unity” at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital with seven paintings, has to pinch herself when people love her work and says, “I still including a series of five houses of worship, was a dream can’t believe it.” With so many wonderful working artists in the commission for Barron. She is world, she feels blessed and eternally grateful to Linda Hill, grateful for this success. director of art at the hospital and Barron’s paintings are large, her committee including Linda and that is because she just gets so Ross, Dianne Papasan, Elizabeth excited about all the elements she Farrar, and Brenda Wiseman for wants to include. It is hard to pin giving her this opportunity which down an artist to explain his or her “skyrocketed her career.” works; whimsical, playful art Barron has always chosen to features women and animals, and show with galleries “if I like the birds, lots of birds. She has been artists they represent.” Here in quoted as saying, “I am trying to Memphis she has shown many create an environment within each times at the L Ross Gallery and also piece that stirs up some emotion points to wonderful galleries in New or curiosity in the viewer.” There Orleans, Nashville, and Dallas. She is a folk art quality to her creations, has shown as far afield as a gallery and in the “lady portraits,” the in Edgartown, Massachusetts, on Using found objects such as vintage jewelry, fabrics, and women form a structure onto Martha’s Vineyard which led to beads, Barron incorporates a collage-like feel to her work. which she can incorporate all the some international interest. elements she loves—both painted However, she is not taking on new galleries for solo or duo and sometimes found objects. These could be vintage jewelry shows at the moment as it is hard to provide all the content they or fabrics, flowers and birds, all of which give a collage-like feel require. She has been run ragged by deadlines that often to her work. One interesting aspect of Barron’s creative process necessitate working fifteen hours a day with everything else in is that she doesn’t do sketches in advance of a painting; instead her life being put on hold. she writes her ideas down.

Her usual timetable is to try to paint two commissions a It is no surprise that two of her favorite artists are Matisse 34 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

Family dog Agatha is a constant companion.

and Chagall, and like Matisse she uses a lot of color and pattern. At the same time, her ladies have serious faces—a certain stiff formality which, in a way, takes its inspiration from the portraiture of English and Dutch paintings of the Renaissance. you might be surprised to learn that Barron also loves Jackson Pollack, the major abstract expressionist. She tells me that as her work has evolved, she is leaning more and more toward abstract art, feeling it “lets loose her creativity in a different and less detailed way” than the lady portraits that are her bread and butter.

I asked where some of her inspiration comes from, and Barron quickly responded, “the beach.” She is obsessed with the colors and shapes of shells, and, in fact, when we met, she had just returned from a getaway trip to Orange Beach, Alabama, where she had found the shelling to be incredible.

She employs the full gamut of mixed media—acrylics, papers, graphite, colored pencils, and oil-based washes—in her paintings. One day she would love a detached studio, but for now she uses the downstairs master bedroom in her Germantown home as her studio.

Barron says sometimes “she just has to put down the brush.”

Her son, Wiley, is a top-ranked young tennis player, and she travels with him to tournaments. Her husband, Doug, is a pro golfer on the PGA Tour, and after a hiatus, she is proud of his comeback win last year in the Dick’s Sporting Goods Open in Endicott, New york. Last but not least, Barron’s other passion is rescuing dogs, and she is in the process of adopting yet another one. In this connection she points to the great work being done in Clarksdale, Mississippi, by the Clarksdale Animal Rescue Effort and Shelter. Now I think you will agree with me in saying, “I don’t know how she does it,” but aren’t we glad she does.DM

The artist carefully places each gemstone and bead, adding a folk-art element to otherwise formal Renaissance inspired portraits.

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MUSIC

Calvin Brown, otherwise known as “Jake” grew up on Pearl Street in Cleveland.

JAKE and the Pearl Street Jumpers From the BB King Museum to Dockery to the Delta Supper Club, these Cleveland originals have brought their joyous sounds to iconic venues and events across the Delta for forty-five years and counting

BY SUSAN MARQUEZ • PHOTOGRAPHY BY RORY DOYLE

38 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

Above and right: The band consists of Jake as the lead singer, Larry Morgan, guitarist and background singer, “Little Bud” Fortness on drums, Robert Williams on keyboard, and “Tito” on bass.

hether it’s in a smoky club, on a flatbed trailer, at a festival, or at a wedding reception, when Jake and the Pearl Street Jumpers take the stage, it’s a sure bet that the dance floor will be crowded. For over fortyfive years, the band has played Motown and rhythm and blues tunes for thousands of people across the Delta and as far away as Chicago.

W

“We love what we do, and we always do it with a smile,” says Jake, whose real name is Calvin Brown. “For as long as I can remember, and as long as my mama can remember, they’ve called me Jake. No one really knows why. One day a guy came to the house asking for Calvin Brown, and my mama said there was no one there by that name. She didn’t recognize her own son’s real name! We got a good laugh from that.”

Jake and the Pearl Street Jumpers got their band’s name from the street they grew up on in Cleveland. “When I was in elementary school, in about the fifth grade, my friends and I were trying to do music. The majority of us lived on Pearl Street. I was the leader of the group, so we called ourselves Jake and the Pearl Street Jumpers.

It turns out there was a basketball team years ago at Eastside High School who came off of Pearl Street who called themselves the Pearl Street Jumpers. I guess that’s a pretty good name!”

The name of the band was changed, briefly, when they were booked to play at Edna’s Lounge in Cleveland. “It was a white lounge that played mostly country music. The Oak Ridge Boys were big at that time, and the song “Elvira” was always on the radio. Miss Edna asked us if we could do that song. It doesn’t take me but a few minutes to listen to a song and figure out how to play it. We practiced a little while that afternoon, and we were ready to perform

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the song that night. Miss Edna gave us all cowboy hats to wear, and she introduced us as Jake and the Pearl Street Cowboys. We must have played that song about five times that night and everyone loved it!”

With access to music lessons in school and the exposure to music in the Pentecostal church he attended, Jake got a good background in music to help get a band started. “And we listened to the radio every chance we had,” Jake says. “We listened to every song by every artist, over and over again.”

The little band began meeting up in the neighborhood and playing whenever they could. “It started out with me and my brother Chuck and a few other guys. Our drummer, Clyde Glenn, is a minister now, but we still get together to play whenever he is in town. Larry Morgan, our background singer, has also been with us since the beginning.”

The band now consists of Jake as the lead singer and guitarist, Larry Morgan as background singer, “Little Bud” Fortness on drums, Robert Williams on keyboard, and “Tito” on bass. “Honestly, Tito’s

40 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

been with us for five years and don’t nobody know his last name,” laughs Jake. “One thing about this band is we run a clean stage. We are upbeat and we have fun, but there is no drinking or swearing on my stage. We have the cleanest band and the best attitude and stage presence of any band I’ve ever seen, and that’s the reason we have been going for so long. People know when they hire us they are going to get a great show and they don’t have to worry about anything.”

Jake says the band began playing for private parties around town, and they were invited to play at Delta State University, which was very exciting when they were first starting out. “We still play a lot of parties, and we do a few wedding receptions each year,” Jake says.

“We have played a big conference at Delta State for nurses who came from around the world. We have also played several times at the October Festival in Cleveland, and Mr. Bill (Lester) has us out to Dockery Farms from time to time to play for parties and receptions.”

The band has also played at the GRAMMy® Museum several times.

“We were there when Bobby Rush did a speech, and we had the pleasure of opening for him. We love that the GRAMMy® Museum

The band playing at one of many daytime events at Dockery.

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There’s always a crowded dance floor with Jake and the Pearl Street Jumpers, shown here at a Delta Supper Club event.

is in Cleveland. It’s an honor to play there every time.”

Jake says the most regular gig they have is playing for the Blues Museum in Indianola. “We do all the tours that come in from the American Queen. We do that two to three times a week. They do the tour of the museum then come over to the Ebony Club where we give them a little history lesson then play some music for them. We’ll have them dancing all the way back to their bus!” Sadly, the tours are at a standstill due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so the band’s museum gig has been sidelined for the time being.

“This has been a tough time for musicians,” says Jake. “I also play at church every Sunday, and that has been cancelled for now as well.

We’ve been going online doing a few FaceTime shows, and we’ve had a good response to that. We just need to figure out how to set up PayPal or something so that we can get some tips from people watching!”

As many musicians often do, Jake has another job that provides a steady income. “I am an upholsterer by trade,” he says. “I do both furniture and automotive. I’ve been doing that for over thirty years.

I have been interested in furniture almost as long as I’ve been interested in music.” Jake says that with his upholstery work, he always tries to do a good job. “I know when I’m done that others will see my work, so I always want it to be excellent. I carry that same philosophy over to the band. We put our best foot forward every time we step onto the stage.”

Firmly rooted in Cleveland, Jake says he’s never thought of living anywhere else. “I’ve lived here all my life, and I’ve only left to go to places like Chicago to sing. I think Cleveland is the most wonderful place on earth. The people here are friendly, and it’s just beautiful.

I’m so proud that I live here and so grateful that we have been able to entertain people in these parts for as long as we have.” DM

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Haute Couture in the Delta

Everhope and White Gold

BY HANK BURDINE • PHOTOGRAPHY BY NATASHA KERTES

44 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

“Can you host a high fashion dress designer from Albania, a photographer from Russia and a California model one weekend for a photo shoot?” my sister Jane Rule Burdine asked me over the phone one hot July day a couple of summers ago. “Why, you KNOW I can!!” That call was the beginning of an absolutely wonderful adventure into the depths of haute couture for this Delta boy, not to mention the beginning of a deep and blossoming friendship.

Through a mutual German friend, Jane Rule had been contacted about the possibility of finding locations for a photo spread for two collections by Miami based fashion designer Ema Savahl. One series was a solid white collection based on cotton, while the other featured dresses and gowns of earthy tones, subtle and unsophisticated, yet very elegant. I was to supply housing and scout for locations, while also agreeing on my own to provide night-time entertainment! Excitement raced through my head as I envisioned galavanting from location to location squiring a bevy of beautiful ladies.

It was summer and HOT and soon the visions of cool fashion grandeur were melted away by the blasting heat and sweat of the Mississippi Delta. I forgot about my mission.

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By the first week or so in October, the corn had been cut and most of the beans were harvested. The cotton around Grace, Mississippi was rapidly being picked and life was good. Jane Rule called again and exclaimed, “Oh, my goodness, the designer and photographer are on the way! It may be best to book them a suite of rooms at Roy’s Store on Lake Washington and y’all can base out of there. I’ve already got plans and can’t be there for a few days. Can you handle it?”

“When is the California model getting in?” I hastily asked.

“She canceled and I don’t know who they have found,” she replied. Oh boy.

Thank goodness the weather was good and 46 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

I hadn’t made any plans for the weekend.

They were due into Chatham the next morning! I have never before been a location scout for a high fashion photo shoot, but I do know every turn road, cypress tree and stretch of the Mississippi River Levee for miles and miles—I would just have to do the best I could.

By noon the next day, two of the most vivacious and energetic women I have ever met, Ema Koja and Russian photographer Natasha Kertes arrived. They were busily unloading boxes of cameras and flashlamps, flash umbrellas and stands, trunks full of gowns and sashes of fabric, cases of film and props. I looked around for their support

Model Zoe Imes atop the sawhorses as designer Ema Savahl makes last minute touch-ups.

team and the model, but t’was just them and me. Once the boxes and cases were stashed away in their suite, I fixed them both a big Pimm’s Royale and told them to load up— we were fixing to “ride the Delta” and find us a place to take some pictures! (scouting a location in fashion parlance!)

Ema told me about her two collections and what they consisted of. Were there any cotton fields that we could go and see if

they would be suitable for what she had envisioned? Ema had created an entire collection of gowns of and about cotton yet, she had never even seen a cotton field nor been in a cotton gin. That was about to change.

I called on my old standby and friend George Mahalitc and told him I was coming by his Issaquena-South Washington County Gin. George is used to me stopping by during picking time with visitors who have never seen nor even understood what a gin is and what it does.

One such guest was actress Jessica Lange on one of her many photographic trips up and down Highway 61.

George said, “Come on, Hank, I can’t wait to see who you have this time!”

George and Russell welcomed us into their gin, taking Ema and Natasha through the entire process and giving them bags of fresh picked cotton still loaded with

seed and picker trash as well as bags of seedless cotton, fresh from the gin saws. He even gave each of them a bag of cotton seed.

They were delighted! Now, where could we find a nice two and a half bale, solid white cotton field, not yet picked, with a good background for a photo shoot? George pulled on his chin, winked and said, “There’s a nice field right off Highway 1 on the side of the road that leads to our shop. But you better hurry up, those pickers ain’t gone wait on you!”

After looking at the field of white gold, we rushed back to my house for a patch on the Pimm’s Cup, I hooked up my wide beamed flat-bottomed riverboat, Lil’ ITHAKA and into Lake Washington we went. Understanding now what Ema had in mind for locations, we slipped into a long narrow opening on the submerged island of Everhope Plantation, a 500-acre bottom slash of towering bald cypress trees I call the

“Cypress Cathedral.” Natasha grabbed her chest and exclaimed breathlessly, “MAGIC!” And magical it was with the emerald green water, deep blue sky, wispy white puff clouds scurrying past the majestic trees standing sentinel among the fairyland carpet of cypress knees. The breathtaking scene was not only magical, but somewhat reverential, as the beauty and quietness enveloped us. Ema whispered in my ear, “I can hardly wait!”

I still wasn’t sure as to how I was going to set this whole shoot up and make it happen, but, as I turned into my drive, my son Matt had just pulled in with his deep green Wenonah river canoe atop his Tahoe.

Natasha, with her professionally trained eye cried out loud, “There it is! Can we use that boat in the shoot, in the cypresses?” Why of course we can! And fortunately, Matt was there to guide the canoe as I would be captaining my boat full of cameras and DELTA MAGAzINE 2020

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lighting equipment. This was getting really exciting, but there was one thing missing.

“Uh, I don’t want to sound like a dummy, but do we have a model?” “yes,” replied Ema, “she will be here in the morning. We have a beautiful girl coming over from Mississippi State.”

That night, gathered around my dinner table with Raymond Longoria and his guitar and Matt with his bongos, we all really got to know one another.

Ema Koja was born and raised in the ancient city of Tirana, Albania under a repressive communist regime. Her two aunts were skilled seamstresses who passed on to her the ability to sew and an inherent sense of style. Her father was a nationally renowned volleyball coach that instilled in her a relentless work ethic and fierce independence. After the collapse of communism, Ema moved to Italy where she became a professional volleyball player. Her

48 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

athletic frame caught the eye of fashion industry insiders and she became a very svelte model for international brands Blue Marine, PARAH and Off Limit.

A shoulder injury ended her volleyball career and she plunged headlong into fashion, studying pattern making, fabrics, and artistic design. Ema then took a year off to travel, taking in art, culture and beauty all around the world. She landed in the vibrant, multi-cultural melting pot of Miami. The city’s exotic colors, culture and fervent artistry inspired her to stay. It is there that she created the concept and technology for which she is known— strategically hand painting artwork onto garments producing three dimensional textures that manipulate body shapes with optical illusion. Ema had created a unique identity in the fashion world. And as the creator and designer behind Ema Savahl Couture, her goal was and is to make the

world more beautiful one dress at a time.

Celebrities such as Katy Perry and Jennifer Lopez adore and wear her creations.

Eventually, Ema met the Russian photographer Natasha Kertes. Raised outside of Moscow, Natasha graduated in 2008 from the Fort Lauderdale Art Institute.

Known for her work in international fashion magazines and advertising campaigns, Natasha’s work is described as bold, glamorous, alluring and exotic, with nods to high art and mythology. She is intrigued by work that conjures up a sense of mystery and ethereal beauty. Needless to say the cypress swamp at Everhope was perfect.

The Shoots I showed up at Roy’s Store in my boat about 8:30 the next morning. Upon walking into the suite, I was taken aback at all the props, equipment, cases, and clothes lying around. And there, in the middle of the room, being tended to by a make-up artist who was applying make-up and coifing her hair, was one of the most stunning young women you could imagine. I was introduced to her and all she could do was move her head slightly and wink. The model was zoe Imes, a Mississippi State coed from Florida; it was to be her first modeling job.

I looked at a long rack of beautiful earth toned gowns and asked Ema if those were the gowns to be worn for the shoot and with another wink and a smile she said, “yes!”, to which I replied, “Ema, there are no changing rooms out in the swamp!” “Oh, yes there is...your boat.” Uh-oh, I thought, as I turned

Natasha Kertes, Russell Mahalitc and Ema Savahl in the Issaquena-South Washington County Gin.

and went to Roy’s for another cup of coffee.

Once in the middle of the Cypress Cathedral, they started the shoot. It was fascinating to watch Natasha’s trained eye and Ema’s acute instructions mesh perfectly, as Matt, having paddled over, maneuvered and placed his canoe expertly to present the desired shot. The cameras whirred and flashes popped and as each new scene and gown came out, puffy white clouds scurried overhead as Natasha looked at me with an astonished look of disbelief.

I said, “The Lord provides.” And as we moved to different locations within the Cypress Cathedral, Natasha would sigh loudly and exclaim, “Thank you, Lord!” It was a truly enchanting experience amongst the majestic cypresses.

The next morning cotton was everywhere. The huge behemoth looking mechanical pickers, gobbling up six rows of cotton at a time, hadn’t quite made it to the Mahalitc Shop Road right off of busy Highway 1. Remembering Stanley Gaines’ photo of Rogers Varner, dressed in ski clothes and strapped into snow skis, schusshing across a cotton field in the iconic “Ski Mississippi” photo, I grabbed two sawhorses and two long planks for zoe to stand on in the cotton field. Truckers blew their horns long and loud as they passed by, marveling at the beauty standing atop the rows of cotton. And the clouds skittered about, and the flash cams popped as more surreal images were captured.

At the end of the day, when boxes were packed and cameras put away, Ema Savahl could not stop smiling and Natasha could not quit exclaiming, “Thank you, Lord, it was magical! Thank you, Lord.” DM DELTA MAGAzINE 2020

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TheVolume of a

LIFE WELL LIVED C Delta native reflects, critiques, and challenges in new book larksdale native and first-time author, William Alias Jr. recalls the very first items he ever sold as a young man growing up in the Delta. “Watermelons came first,” he says, “and then I moved on to turnip greens.” These simple acts of trade can now be seen, in retrospect, as harbingers of a successful career in business.

BY JACK CRISS • PHOTOS COURTESY OF WILLIAM ALIAS JR.

50 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

TIMOTHY IVY

Now making his home in Oxford, Alias has published his first book, My America (BookLogix, Atlanta, Georgia). The book is an autobiography and a collection of timeless truisms, quotes and wisdom. And, it’s a history of both sides of Alias’s immigrant families and the values they passed on to him as well as a compelling timeline of events that shaped America as a nation.

Throughout the two-hundred-page hardbound volume, Alias shares his thoughts and outlook on topics ranging from equality to politics to business. Of particular significance in the book, which is divided into four parts, is the final section, “Business, Money and Wealth.” It is here where one learns just how far Alias has come in a successful career beginning with starting and running some of the nation’s most iconic companies and brands. Throughout this section of the book, he also shares the many lessons learned from his Lebanese and Italian family heritages which aided him in his quest for success.

“I was raised by Italian and Lebanese immigrants who came to the United States in 1905 and went on to survive not only the Great Depression but also World War II,” Alias says. “These immigrants, my family among them, shared many common beliefs, especially those regarding value systems. Both sides of my family were devout Catholics and extremely hard workers and their lives were centered around family and faith: family, the Catholic Church, money and education in that order. Both my Italian and Lebanese family members settled in the Mississippi Delta, the Italian side in Clarksdale and the Lebanese side in yazoo City. Neither one of our families ever allowed us to speak Italian or Arabic. The minute we would start to do so, we were sternly corrected that ‘you are an American and you speak English.’ Under no circumstances were we

Above, William Alias Jr., holding his book My America. Below, his Italian grandparents in 1905 the day they left Milan, Italy to come to America. Bottom left, his parents William and Aline Alias. Bottom photo, William’s grandparents and mother.

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The original Alias Cash Grocery store and living quarters in Yazoo City.

ever allowed to say we were Italian-Americans or LebaneseAmericans. We were Americans.”

Alias’s grandparents did not attend school in the United States.

“Mother and Daddy both had a high school education, could have gone to college but didn’t, and regretted their decision their entire lives. However, when Mother was sixty-five years old, she went to Delta State and made straight A’s!” he says.

“Our family valued education, but they valued money more, as you couldn’t get an education without money because there weren’t any student loans or scholarships at the time. Both families knew that work and time spent wisely on money and education were the great equalizers; as immigrants, they were often discriminated against. But neither side of the family let that bother them.

Everyone realized the greatest civil rights bill ever passed was the dollar bill.”

Alias said his family focused on two traits to be successful in business.

“The Lebanese people on my father’s side were born traders and the Italians on my mother’s were extremely hard workers,” says Alias. “It’s a great combination and I grew up seeing these characteristics in action. I have William Alias Sr. worked with some brilliant and extremely successful business leaders and entrepreneurs. But, without a doubt, the lessons I learned as a child and young man from my family served and guided me well throughout my career.”

After leaving the Delta and graduating from Ole Miss, Alias spent one year in Columbus, Georgia before moving to Los Angeles where he lived on Manhattan Beach for several years. “When I was there in LA, everybody I knew called me ‘Mississippi Bill’ because I often wore my Ole Miss t-shirts around town,” he laughs. “I was pretty easy to spot.”

Alias later lived in Oklahoma City (where he started a restaurant 52 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

The Alias Cash Grocery store on the corner of Fourth Street and Issaquena in Clarksdale, Mississippi. William’s father built this store after returning from WWII in 1945. Fourth Street has been renamed Martin Luther King Boulevard, but back in its day, it was an eight-block area of stores owned by people of many ethnicities such as Jewish, Italian, Syrian, African American, Lebanese, Greek, and Chinese.

chain, building up forty locations) and in Dallas before deciding to return to the South at the age of twenty-nine. Alias had a plan to pinpoint where he wanted to live in the South.

“I devised a ranking of all the major Southern cities using criteria such as growth, image, economy, and so forth,” he says. “I narrowed my list down to Atlanta, Charlotte, and Nashville. Then—I got a basic Sheaffer ink pen, bought some nice stationery, and mailed ten handwritten twoparagraph notes to some of the top CEOs in these cities.”

One of those notes led to a meeting that had a profound impact on his future.

“It’s a long story, but I met with a successful and wealthy businessman in his Atlanta office which was enormous,” says Alias. “It was so big and well-appointed that the first thing I did was joke with the gentleman about how well he’d done without me so far!

That initial meeting landed him in Atlanta and led to a ten-year relationship with this particular CEO and his companies, “and we still are very close,” he adds.

Alias says that when he started out in the business world and rose through the ranks, he always wanted to spend time with and learn from those who were successful and knowledgeable.

“I had done pretty well in my twenties,” he says. “But, I always tried to glean advice and pick up habits and traits from older, wellestablished business people along the way. I convey this in the business section of My America through stories, quotes, and anecdotes.”

When asked what prompted him to write My America, Alias says the idea came to him after he and his wife Lysa attended the Republican National Convention held in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2016.

“Governor Phil Bryant had made me a delegate to the

William as president of Rollins Protective Services.

convention, which was a great honor,” he says. “It was then that I decided to write My America as not only, in part, a story of what I and my parents who came here in 1906 accomplished, but also as a recitation and recounting of American values, philosophies, and core beliefs. I also have, for whatever reason, a really great memory. So in the book, I wanted to reprint some of the great quotes of sage wisdom I had heard or come across and always remembered; I think they are worth passing on.”

To belie Alias’s point, quotes from disparate thinkers such as Booker T. Washington, Vince Lombardi, and even the leader of the China Republic Revolution, Dr. Sun yat-sen.

Alias says he got the idea for title My America from acclaimed Mississippi son and writer, Willie Morris.

“I had read and greatly admired his book My Mississippi,” he says. “So, I took an obvious cue for the title of my book.”

My America, despite its beautiful layout and design, should not be considered as just another pretty coffee-table book. In it Alias mixes his narrative of family and personal history along with his favorite speeches, quotes, and sayings with strong and well-reasoned opinion and criticism of topics such as capitalism and communism, money and wealth and issues facing his beloved America today. Love of country and the freedoms it has allowed and celebrated—most particularly in business—illuminate the vast majority of My America’s pages.

With that in mind, does Alias think that the vaunted American dream is still as alive as it was to his immigrant parents and in-laws— and to him?

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly upon reflection. “There are so many burdensome rules, regulations, and red tape out there today in the business world that are just simply unbelievable—hoops to jump through that didn’t always exist—and they seem to be growing and getting more difficult to abide by. I laugh about it, although it’s

William and Lysa Alias at one of their annual dove hunts.

not a joking matter, but these days it would probably take several years to open an ice cream stand let alone a major new business. The beauty of capitalism, though, is that success breeds success: those who do, in fact, have the aptitude to make it create opportunities for literally scores of other people.”

Born three days after the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, Alias is now seventy-eight, but says he has no plans to slow down or “take it easy” in life. He loves the town of Oxford with a passion, and he and Lysa plan to stay there.

“I adopted Lysa’s three children—all Ole Miss grads with one being a doctor—and, along with my son, William III, are currently working in Oxford for the foreseeable future.”

Alias hopes his book strikes a chord with readers. “My intention was not to write a bestseller or make any profit off the book at all,” he says. “I just wanted to get the many messages in the book out there.” In fact, he plans to give the first two hundred copies away at no charge for those who request a copy. (see note below) “I believe the lessons contained within the pages can be valuable to young people, and I think the older reader will enjoy the stories I wrote. At least, I hope they do,” Alias laughs. “I’ve gotten so many kind and wonderful letters from people all over the country who have relayed to me how much they liked My America—and nothing can be more gratifying to a writer than that.”DM

Without a doubt, the lessons I learned as a child and young man from my family served and guided me well throughout my career.

As noted, Alias initially printed two hundred copies of My America for those who wish to receive a personal copy. Alias asks that a donation be made to Saint Elizabeth Catholic Church in Clarksdale or the Saint John’s Catholic Church in Oxford, and he will personally send the donor a signed copy of his book. A fifty dollar value, a copy of My America will be sent to anyone for any amount donated. Please send your donation, along with the name of the particular church you wish to receive it, to William Alias, PO Box 1544, Oxford, Mississippi 38655.

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CLARKSDALE

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“e heart of the Mississippi Delta”

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Watershed

High-Water Marks IN HONOR OF BUD TROUT

| IN MEMORY OF L.W. ROBINSON AND G.C. TROUT

Memory believes before knowing remembers.

Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders. – WILLIAM FAULKNER

BY CAL TROUT • PHOTOGRAPHY BY DWAYNE BRATCHER

mong myriad methods for landing largemouth bass, the nonpareils of fly fishing persist. The cast. The strike. The fight. There are few endeavors in this life offering greater satisfaction than netting a warm-water carnivore of, say, five pounds on a flimsy five-weight fly rod. The strike is a shock. A thrill. It’s a fight to which you are barely equal—a joy unsurpassed in success.

I’ve been fishing the watershed lakes in Tallahatchie County since I was a child. From then until now, I’ve haunted the waters of the Hubbard-Murphee Drainage District. Lakes carrying such names as Hubbard-Murphee’s, Lowery’s, and Poor House.

Poor House, where I have vivid memories of fishing as a child with my brother on one half of the front boat seat while I sat on the other as our father motored us across lily-strewn waters towards a fishless day. We were alone, aside from a local coach, who showed us a tremendous stringer-full of bass and crappie. He was rumored to be mostly Native American. I recall the way the light worked on his red and ruddy skin, cerise in the boozy and florid light of sundown.

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Cal and Bud Trout fly-fishing around an island of aquatic smartweed.

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An hour later we returned home with nothing, save the memory of a happy day spent with my father and my brother.

In these lakes live leviathans, though. In the last few years, I know of a twelve-and-a-half-pound bass and a thirteen-and-a-half-pound bass caught out of them; and more seven- to nine- pound bass than we can record. But, at some point, the numbers become superfluous.

Fishing is about catching fish, yes. But it’s mostly about unwinding, spending time with loved ones, problem solving. There’s perhaps nothing more contemplative than a body of water.

Located high in the loess bluffs that skirt its eastern edge, watershed lakes provide a vital service to the Delta. There are possibly hundreds of these lakes throughout thirty or so such districts.

Hubbard-Murphee was organized in the late 1950s by my grandfather, G.C. Trout, and two other landowners, A.A. Mabus and N.C. Shook, who saw the need for more localized control of the flooding that plagued their farms. The primary result is thousands of acres of land with improved drainage and reduced flooding. This led to farmable and inhabitable land where it didn’t previously exist.

The greatest collateral benefit is they tend to be terrifyingly fine fishing lakes. The fact that my paternal grandfather, who passed away when I was a baby, was not only a founder and the first president of this drainage district but also enough of a fly fisherman to own a nice split-cane bamboo fly rod my father allows me to use occasionally makes the connection all the more special.

I learned to fish from my father, Bud Trout, and my maternal grandfather, L.W. Robinson, a man who told me much in the sixteen years I knew him. Three things come to mind regarding who he was and his philosophical worldview.

Once, I asked him what he was—where his people came from. He replied, “I’m Dutch, Irish, and Devil, son.” And left it at that.

Another time, as we drove by a golf course, he half-snorted/half-chuckled, “Golf...that’s what people do when they get too old to fish. I want to live a good long life, but I don’t want to live so long I have to take up golf!”

Later in his life, when I was fifteen, he told me, “you should get up every morning and watch the sun rise. No two are the same.

Every one is beautiful. you never know which one will be the start of your last day on earth. Two years ago the doctors gave me six months to live . . .” he trailed off, staring into the sun. I like to think he was ruminating on a perfect day on a nearby lake with his wife, Mary Agnes, hauling in crappie.

One of my earliest memories fishing is with him and my brother, Daniel, in a lake near Teasdale. I remember catching two catfish before Grandaddy baited his hook. I was certain I was going to outfish him. But I didn’t then, nor did I ever.

I don’t believe Grandaddy knew how to fly fish. But he taught me the finer nuances of catching crappie, bream, and catfish with livers, worms, and crickets. This angling craft is indispensable. In some ways it’s like learning scales in music, or perhaps “Fur Elise” compared to fly fishing’s “Fifth Symphony.” Or, maybe, more simply, if you’re looking to put fish in a skillet, Grandaddy’s method works every time.

My parents gave me a 5/6 weight L.L. Bean fly rod for my sixteenth birthday, about two weeks before Grandaddy passed away. It came with a reel, line, and small piece of scarlet yarn tied to the end of the leader. My heart flickered. I looked at it all with the curiosity and excitement of ancient man first beholding a red and blazing flame.

Later that day, under the cherry, oak, and sweet gum trees that punctuated our backyard, my father taught me to fly cast. He showed me the basics. Then, as is his fashion, left me to fail again and fail better every time I cast that yarn at a certain sweet gum leaf some twenty feet away. I was antsy and aggravated. Ready to tie on a fly and go fishing, he simply said, “No. you’re not ready.” And that was my first lesson.

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Watershed, Hubbard-Murphee Lake sitting high and peaceful above the Delta.

Trout with his grandfather, L.W. Robinson, after their last time fishing together.

Fly fishing, if anything, encourages the long labor of learning to patient the mind. Practice, work, discipline, skill, art. yes, before anything artistic occurs, there are countless hours spent in practice.

These are the steps to becoming proficient at fly fishing. Well, those cover the technical requirements, anyway. One must also develop a body of knowledge that includes learning what fish live where, what they are eating at any given time, how to read water and weather patterns, etc.

Norman MacLean in A River Runs Through It says his father, Rev. MacLean, insisted that in a perfect world, “No one who did not know how to fish would be allowed to disgrace a fish by catching him.” He also notes, at length, that fly fishing is an art, and that “art does not come easy.” It’s fairly impossible to try it, want to excel at it, yet not realize these things are true. It is not the simple task of hooking a worm and tossing it into likely water. Fly fishing both 58 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

demands and allows the body to come into harmony with your thoughts, desires, and the world around you as you work towards one singular purpose: to fool a fish.

It sounds silly, but it isn’t.

It doesn’t take too much of a romantic to see the art in such an ecosystem. A watershed lake thrums with biodiversity: snakes, frogs, insects, fish, humans. Each connected to the other in a divine economy of violence and peace—of song and noise and quiet.

Blustery wind. Perfect stillness. It sings. It sways. It thumps. It’s almost as though God is wrestling with what He’s created. In the center is a man wrestling a big bass, and his own conscience, regarding its fate. He wants to land it. He wants to show it off. A part of him convinces another part of him he actually wants to eat it. Latent pride, justified hardly. Crappie are, of course, another matter.

These lakes are holy fonts writ large: stoups of water where a thousand kelsons of creation are evident every second. They are a microcosm of God’s will. On display, ample opportunity to exercise his greatest hope: mercy. We see our own place in it, replete with choices we must also make. The Creator’s imagination beheld a perfect

Father and son fly-casting in hopes of a good bass.

Trout handles a five pound bass he caught using his father’s 8 weight fly rod.

context: water, a hook, a line, hope.

Here, I’m reminded, every moment, it is up to each of us to decide if we will prove Him correct.

Work. Practice. Discipline. Skill.

Art. Also mercy, employed towards its highest purpose. This is not only the way to become a fly fisherman, at some point, it becomes the place you occupy as one.

And yet for years I suffered from clumsiness. While my father fished, I untied knots, dislodged hooks, or fumbled around with gear while trying to tell a story. From time to time Daddy would say, “Hold on, son. I need to catch this fish.” Inevitably there would be one headed to the net.

Whenever he hooked one that splashed around the surface in protest, he would throw his head back and yell in pure joy, “SPEAK!” The noise of the fight would persist until he brought it in hand—more often than not towards a show of tender clemency, released back into the water.

They say a human is about sixty percent water, which seems like a lot. Some evolutionary biologists believe life itself emanates from water. Verily, man’s earliest ground-bound predecessors crawled out of the ooze of a primordial swamp in some amphibious form before spending the next 350 million years developing into the beautiful creatures we are today.

Ever seen a bass hit a frog pattern on a fly line? It’s violent.

Archaic. Primal.

Perhaps the joy we feel catching fish, that innate urge we have

to pursue them, emanates itself from a genetically encoded, primigenial revenge mechanism in return for our primeval ancestors being fish-food.

Ah, but our fascination with fishing isn’t confined to evolutionary science. In the Bible, Christ himself is a master angler, as were seven of the apostles, whom he enjoined, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

Among the first to answer His call is James, who teaches us that action is where thought marries belief and redemption is born.

Though Rev. MacLean insists that James’s brother, John, is the “favorite and a dry-fly fisherman,” I’m reminded the reference to the beloved disciple occurs nowhere except in the Book of John itself.

For an angler taking an angler’s advice, I say James, writing about love-in-action, had it in the net. As did Grandaddy, who loved a big smile and had a big laugh whenever the opportunity for a good laugh presented itself. And, a fish for the grease, whenever one felt wanton enough to strike. As does my father, whom I see in a still-frame of animated exuberance when playing a good fish, skimming like Jesus across the water’s surface— suspended, unsinkable. I think, also, of his father’s old split-cane bamboo rod, and the times he must have had with it. I am grateful for him and Mr. Mabus and Mr. Shook for wanting to improve their land thus building these lakes.

At times, fly-fishing here late in the evening, after the whirling aubade of tanager, frog croak, and grosbeak, when all movement ceases, a breeze sighs across the rippling water. I remember these things, these lessons, these men.

Whatever else has been lost, I am at peace. DM DELTA MAGAzINE 2020

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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

A message from Entergy Mississippi, LLC ©2018 Entergy Services, LLC All Rights Reserved.

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HOMES

Lake Living that’s OVER THE MOON Enjoyed by permanent residents and weekend warriors alike, there is a special community at Moon Lake that feels like family—and they all agree that summer weekends there are unmatched! Three families share their homes, summer ready and decked out for the 4th of July!

BY SHERRY LUCAS • PHOTOGRAPHY BY GREG CAMPBELL

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he Mississippi River meandered away and left Moon Lake behind centuries ago. The flow of traffic these days? Definitely toward that peaceful, storied setting. A powerful lure for fun-seekers and fishermen, the crescent-shaped lake has also inspired key Mississippi creatives.

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A 1926 Elks Lodge at the lake was sold and became Moon Lake Club in the 1930s, a Prohibition era hub for high living at the time. Moon Lake Casino’s dance floor swirled in the reminisces of Blanche du Bois in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, and William Faulkner referenced Moon Lake Hotel in one of his novels. The spot became Uncle Henry’s Place in the 1940s. Country music star Conway Twitty’s parents, Floyd and Velma Jenkins, operated the popular supper club Conway’s on Moon Lake, starting in the early 1960s, where Sam Carr, Frank Frost’s Jelly Roll Kings, and Twitty himself entertained.

Now Kathryn’s is a favorite with locals and the lake house set, who’ll boat over from Paradise Point for the pleasure.

Lake houses and second homes dot the shores, and whether the air is filled with the lively chatter of a weekend celebration or the relaxing sounds of life on the water, a breezy ambiance prevails. Moon Lake living is a tonic for the soul.

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Ruling the Roast

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A decade of 4th of July celebrations has made Pier 332, home of Rhodes and Rhett Shaffett at Moon Lake, synonymous with good food, good times and family fun he annual patriotic pig-out at Rhodes and Rhett Shaffett’s Pier 332 at Moon Lake came to a fitting finale in summer 2019. Their Cochon de Lait wrapped a decade of Fourth of July fun with another whole hog to feed the masses and signature watermelon margaritas to slake their thirst.

The party proved irresistible from the start, its invitation arriving as a little box of goodies: Kim’s barbecue pork cracklings, confetti poppers, stars, flags, pigs, and party details with an arty flourish.

The spread hailed Southern summer favorites and the Fourth. Corn salad, brownie s’mores, blueberry muffins, and iced cookies—stars to pigs to a U.S. outline

by Virginia Peacock Douglas—brightened the table. A red, white, and blue balloon arch greeted guests, and a patriotic Pier 332

backdrop made a fun pic stop. “July 4th” embroidered on gingham-edged denim napkins scored at a second-hand shop in Helena signaled a celebratory salute.

The Shaffetts’ Cochon de Lait has fed the holiday appetites of hundreds over the years as music from the likes of Marshall Drew, Bruce Brewer, or Haggard Collins filtered from their backyard and guests soaked up holiday fun. “When the kids were college age, half of Ole Miss would be here for the party,” Rhodes says. “It would be crazy!”

As befits a Fourth of July shindig, Cochon de Lait went out with a bang. And while the Shaffetts are taking a break for now, Rhodes doesn’t bar its return as a possible pop-up party down the line.

Framed invitations from over the years hold a place of honor at Pier 332, and a metal pig

The Shaffett’s back porch lives like a big den and serves as a welcoming entrance to their comfortable home-away-from-home.

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Rhodes and Rhett Shaffett

Hungry guests coming in from the lake can help themselves to hotdogs and popcorn, fresh and hot from the commercial cookers Rhodes had installed on the porch.

Bloody Marys are a staple on lake weekends.

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The cabin has a cozy and collected feel. Everything from the drapes to the furniture is a thriftstore or auction find, repurposed and reupholstered.

bench, a birthday gift to Rhett from her parents early on, is a lasting reminder of the tradition.

Moon Lake’s pull is generational in her family. “My daddy was out on Moon Lake a lot growing up.” For Louisiana native Rhett, Moon Lake is a reminder of the oxbow lake, False River, near his Baton Rouge hometown.

Rhett designed the screened-in cookhouse out back based on memories of Grand Isle fishing trips, and their kids— daughter Taylor and son Ben—cemented their names in the concrete. That’s where the Cajun microwave—a roasting box perfect for whole hogs—creates its magic to feed the masses. The cookhouse, hub for boiled peanuts, crawfish boils, and fish fries, 66 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

is the perfect counter to the little kitchen inside, where open aqua cabinets echo the lake’s pretty hues and informal vibe.

A popcorn maker and a hotdog cooker, both commercial grade, serve day-to-day summer snacking needs on the screened-in back porch. “That goes on every weekend—the popcorn’s popping and the hot dogs are cooking. It got to where I was cooking all the time, and I thought, something’s got to give here!” Rhodes says.

They spend as much time as they can at Pier 332, a quick trip from home in Clarksdale, where Rhodes is a court reporter for county and youth court in Coahoma County and Rhett co-owns Mid-South Waste Disposal with his two brothers inlaw.

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“We just thought it’d be a great place for the kids to grow up and to be out on the water,” says Rhodes. Between the deck boat for water sports and fishing off the pier, that’s spot on; chest drawers inside hold beach towels rolled and ready for action.

Decorative touches suit the scene.

Curtains hang from old oars, and antique buoys are slung over bunk bed posts. Recovered sofas that came with the lake house are still known as “Brady Bunch furniture” in family lingo. The curtains covered windows at Clarksdale First United Methodist’s Fellowship Hall in a former life; Rhodes rescued them when they were tossed in a redo.

“It’s cozy. … Everything comes from the thrift store or an auction,” she says. “It’s just laid-back and fun, and the kids just love it.”

Taylor, wed to Bo Armstrong, lives in Clarksdale with their twenty-month-old son, Tripp, and Ben lives in Taylor, Mississippi.

A busy summer retreat, Pier 332 also hosts family Thanksgiving feasts and plenty more parties. “We’re friends with everybody up and down the street,” says Rhodes, cherishing the family-oriented, neighborhood feel of Moon Lake’s Paradise Point side.

The bunk room and guest rooms provide easy accommodations for lots of weekend guests. Nods to the lake include vintage skies on the ceiling, and antique buoys and oars.

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Rhett’s cookhouse boasts a Cajun microwave for pig roasting, and is ground zero for boiled peanuts, crawfish boils and fish fries.

A gallery of framed invitations from years past.

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Laid-back Living

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The Lakeside cottage of Claire and Dudley Barnes has grown along with their family, becoming the hub for summer fun from fishing to waterskiing to kayaking laire and Dudley Barnes’s little cottage on Moon Lake sits a scant twenty-minute drive from home proper, “So it’s perfect,” Claire says. “you can go for the weekend or, if you just need a break, for one night.” And that makes it just the right fit for Dudley, a financial advisor with Barnes Pettey Financial Advisors in Clarksdale.

“My husband calls it his happy place,” she says. They can hop in the car, grab dinner from the Clarksdale Country Club, and head to the picturesque lake to de-stress with dinner on the boat. “It’s just so relaxing and so soothing and just wonderful. We have great neighbors and great friends out there.”

Grilling, fishing, water skiing, wake

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surfing, kayaking—all are magnets for Moon Lake fun with generations of family. Their siblings, their children Ryan and Brook, and six grandchildren gather for the Fourth of July with its bicycle parade for kids and boat parade and fireworks for all.

The Barnes’s dive into Moon Lake living was gradual, from boat-parking at their friends’ pier to splitting the little cottage with close friends and adding a screened porch and another bathroom to then eventually becoming sole owners.

The arrival of grandkids signaled the need for more sleepover space about four years back, prompting two additional bedrooms, one more bath, and an overall update.

Claire and Dudley Barnes

When feeding her large crowd over the holiday weekend, Claire sets multiple tabletops around the home and on the deck with festive dinnerware.

A welcoming front porch provides a spot of shade to sit and rock in comfortable chairs in the late afternoon.

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The large family room crowned with a stunning vaulted cypress ceiling, provides a fantastic view of the lake and lots of room to relax with their children, Ryan and Brook, and six grandchildren who are often there.

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The comfortable living room proudly boasts a wall adorned with local blues-themed artwork.

Dudley’s uncle, an architect, helped.

“John Barnes, at eighty-six, gets the credit for the design,” Dudley says. “He had done about five napkin drawings over the dinner table for us. He did a go-up, a goback, a go-sideways,” and more. Included were a front porch where crisp white rockers while away the hours, a new room, 74 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

Neutral tones and crisp bedding create a welcome serenity in the bedroom. Pillows and artwork provide a pop of color.

An outdated bathroom is freshened up with new flooring and a modern and vanity.

The vintage Brookshire’s Ice Cream sign pays homage to Claire’s grandfather who started the company in 1912.

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The deck and pier provide plentiful outdoor seating and dining areas.

and a raised roof for the vaulted ceilings in cypress that bring such a fresh, airy feel to the sunroom and den. Now there’s room for a dozen to sleep over.

A Brookshire’s Ice Cream sign hangs over the bunk beds, an homage to Claire’s grandfather who started that company in 1912. Neutrals in soft gray, breezy beige, and more offer a crisp backdrop for dashes of color and the necessary ease for laidback lake house living.

“I want my grandchildren to be able to come out here, kick off their shoes, and put their feet up.... Everything is washable and strippable,” from durable canvas upholstery to furniture slipcovers. A tankless water heater, cute tub, new flooring, and vanity turned an eyesore bathroom into a charmer. Blues-musicthemed artwork mixes in with family photos, radiating Delta pride and closeknit ties.

A white picket fence winds around the side and back of the cottage for a homey touch and safety measure for smaller grandkids. Gathering spots just outside the sunroom and over the water make the most of the multilevel deck, and Dudley’s lake garden blooms with periwinkle, daylilies, and Knock Out roses. Rosie, Claire’s teacup Pomeranian, loves it just as much as the rest of the gang, boat rides included.

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Cherie and Curt Robinson

Family History, Weekend Destination Self-described ‘lake people’, Cherie and Curt Robinson remodeled the small house next-door to his parents creating a perfect get-away

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herie and Curt Robinson had their eye on the little Moon Lake getaway from the get-go, nestled as it was right next door to his grandfather’s (now his dad’s) house on the lake.

The Robinsons now live in Nesbit, a convenient spot for her work as a pharmacist with Accredo in Memphis and his with J.R. Simplot (previously Sanders Seed) in Tunica. Moon Lake “is just kind of a retreat for both of us on the weekends,” she says. “It’s relaxing. We enjoy that great porch, we cook out, we sleep in. . . . It’s a great place to get away, summer and winter. In fall, we go watch football; in winter we build a fire. And summer has really been great for the kids (now practically all grown) to still want to hang out with us,” she adds with a laugh.

Curt grew up in Memphis, with Moon Lake a weekend destination to visit grandparents. “That was our draw,” says Cherie, who grew up in Hollandale with 78 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

Lake Ferguson and Lake Washington as frequent fun spots.

“We just both are lake people.

“We knew we wanted a place at Moon Lake from the moment we started dating,” back in 2007. They’d spend weekends there with Curt’s dad, yerger “yogi” Robinson, and stepmom, Regina. Cherie and Curt wed in 2013, bringing her three, Hannah, Andrew and Ben, and his daughter, Mary, into a blended family.

They bought and remodeled the little Moon Lake house next door to his folks that same year.

Their total renovation preserved its cottage feel with an update. Last year they added two more bedrooms and an extra bathroom. “Prior to that, it was one giant bedroom—a queen bed and two sets of bunk beds—and it was just like The Waltons,” Cherie says, laughing. “It’s like summer camp, but it’s the lake, and the more, the merrier,” whether that means pulling out air mattresses to accommodate

The open-design keeping room and adjacent kitchen are the center of the newly renovated home.

The keeping room mantel is made of wood salvaged from the original porch.

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thirteen at a bachelorette party or a crowd for the Fourth of July.

In the small house, “Everything has a purpose,” Cherie says. The little kitchen has concrete countertops, a big copper sink, and the farmhouse table her mom had built to fit. There’s the inviting screened-in back porch—a hangout hub—with its bed swing, party bar, and table with chairs. A folk-art fish anchors the lake fun feel, and the wagon wheel chandelier of colored glass votives, bought

by Curt at a fundraising auction, twinkles prettily at night when lit.

“That porch was original to the house, and—back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, that’s all they had. They only ate out on the porch, and that’s kind of how we use it,” Cherie says. A screened-in outdoor cooking shed serves up crawfish boils in spring and gumbo in the fall.

They salvaged materials where they could. The bar top, keeping room mantel, and bathroom mirror frame are made of wood from the original porch. A once exterior paned door is now an inside one in the bar. Cherie loves her little room in

The new kitchen has concrete countertops and a big copper sink.

Cherie’s mom had the generous farmhouse table built to fit the space.

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An original room of the house, now used as a bedroom is freshened with an inviting coat of blue paint, antique collectibles and quilts.

The master bedroom is decorated in tones of whites and creams with blue accents.

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The screened-in back porch is a popular hub.

There is a bed swing, bar, and a table and chairs anchored by a wagon-wheel chandelier of colored glass votives. The wood for the bartop was repurposed from the home’s original porch.

The pass-thru room is a favorite spot of Cheries’ to enjoy her morning coffee looking out at the water.

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back where double glass doors open to the deck. There she curls up on the bench with morning coffee to watch the hummingbirds buzz and the water ripple.

“In the life of our house, we cook and then we’re always outside. The interior of the house is really for sleeping. The rest of the time, we’re all outside and on the water.”

A speedboat and an old pontoon boat they call Bessie are vehicles for summer fun, where the kids gravitate to wake surfing, but Cherie likes sticking to her ski.

“I’ve got to slalom every year, just to prove I can still do it.” When her kids have friends over, they say, “you’ve got to ski and show ‘em!”

The neighborhood is tight-knit. “Every weekend it’s like our Moon Lake family.

We’re all so close,” with friends ending up at one house or another, often on spur of the moment on their side of the lake.

And the Fourth of July? That, Cherie says, “is the best weekend of the world over there.”

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Cochon de Lait at the Shaffett’s

A party like no other—10 years of pig roasting and celebrating friends, family, and freedom at Pier 332!

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The Cochon de Lait party invitation arrived as a box of curated goodies!

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RHETT’S PIG RUB 17 11 32 1

ounces Tony’s Original Creole Seasoning ounces garlic salt ounce bottle Louisiana Hot Sauce jar Tony’s Injectable Creole Butter

Add 2 tablespoons of the hot sauce plus 2 tablespoons of both dry seasonings to the injectable Creole butter. Stir and inject pig.

Rub outside of pig with remaining hot sauce. In a separate bowl, mix remaining Creole seasoning and salt together use this mixture to coat the pig inside and out.

RHODES’S CORN SALAD 3 2 1 4 4 2

cans petite kernel corn cans shoe peg corn pint fresh cherry tomatoes, halved chopped green onions tablespoons of mayonnaise teaspoons Italian dressing salt and pepper to taste

Drain corn and mix together in a large bowl. Add remaining ingredients, adjusting seasoning to taste. Keep chilled until ready to serve.

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S’MORES BROWNIES Crust: 6 tablespoons butter, melted 1½ cups crushed graham crackers 2 tablespoons sugar Pinch of salt

Brownies: 8 tablespoons butter 4 ounces unsweetened chocolate (chopped) 1 cup packed light brown sugar ¾ cups white sugar 1½ teaspoon vanilla ½ teaspoon salt 4 large eggs 1 cup flour 4 cups large marshmallows

Preheat over to 325 degrees. Line an 8x8 square pan with foil that hangs over edges.

Lightly butter the foil with a small amount of the melted butter. In a separate bowl, stir melted butter with graham cracker crumbs, sugar and salt. Press firmly into bottom of the pan. Bake about 20 minutes.

For brownies, melt butter and chocolate in microwave long enough to soften. Then continue to heat and stir until melted. Mix the sugars, vanilla, salt, into the melted chocolate. Add eggs and beat well until batter is thick and glossy. Add flour and stir until in-corporated. Pour batter into pan and bake till top is crispy and toothpick inserted is mostly clean, about 40 to 45 minutes. Top with marshmallows and carefully broil till golden. Allow to cool.

Lift brownies out of pan by the foil onto a flat surface, cut into squares, and serve!

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Kathryn’s

at Moon Lake

BY KATIE TIMS • PHOTOS BY GREG CAMPBELL AND RORY DOYLE

RORY DOYLE

THE BUCKLED FLOORS GIVE IT AWAY.

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The restaurant’s worn oak planks exude nothing new and everything genuine, holding close almost a hundred years’ worth of Mississippi backwater notes.

Kathryn’s Restaurant on Moon Lake began as family home.

Then it became a restaurant, speakeasy, abandoned building, and probably a couple more things no one knows about.

Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner were once regulars at this place, their creativity flowing alongside the swirling tobacco smoke, whiskey, brandy, steak, salad, and Kathryn’s “world famous” onion rings. Perhaps the spirits of Blanche DuBois and Corporal Stephan still imbibe at the corner table in the restaurant’s dimly lit dining room.

Doesn’t take much imagination to make it so.

RORY DOYLE

RORY DOYLE

Crazy Idea Located on Moon Lake Road where it meets Moon Lake, Kathryn’s is on the right—just south of the missing bridge that used to span the yazoo Pass waterway.

There’s no official town at this particular spot, though the restaurant lists its base as Dundee, a small community fifteen minutes north. Kathryn’s is easier to find than to tell, and it’s become a favorite destination for locals and out-of-area foodies who appreciate a fine meal served with generous helpings of history and Southern authenticity.

Kathryn’s was established in 1937. Times

were tough, and Frank Rossi, an Italian immigrant, and his wife, Kathryn, who emigrated from Ireland, needed another way to make money. So they consulted family recipes, set up a few tables, and opened a restaurant inside their house on the shore of Moon Lake. Guests rang a buzzer at the front door, and Kathryn peeked out. If she knew you and you were dressed appropriately, you came in. If she didn’t and you weren’t, well, you found another place to eat (and drink).

And this was precisely what was on John Mohead’s mind eighty years later.

He’d been a successful musician for a couple of decades, but by 2011 he was in the middle of, in his words, “a more respectable career of selling real estate.”

That’s when Kathryn’s restaurant came on the market.

“It had been closed for a couple of years and was dilapidated,” John recalls. “But I remembered as a kid we used to come here.

The restaurant meant something to me.

The bank was selling it, and I bought it for the real estate. I thought I’d build rental houses, condos, or something like that.”

Granted, the building’s floors were torn up, the ceiling sagging, and the wall panels long past redemption. But even without her mascara, eye shadow, and rouge, Kathryn’s was still Kathryn’s.

“I got in here, and I just felt something,” John says about what happened next. “I told my wife, Jennifer, that I wanted to re-open DELTA MAGAzINE 2020

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the restaurant. She thought I was crazy! But I told her, ‘Just trust me; trust me it’ll work.

Trust me.’ you know famous last words.”

In 2012 Kathryn’s officially re-opened its front door (minus the infamous buzzer).

And John was right—it worked.

Getting The Favorites Right Natalie McCollum was John’s assistant when he worked in real estate, and he brought her in as a co-owner of Kathryn’s restaurant. On paper, John is chef and handles the kitchen; Natalie is general manager and takes care of the dining room.

In actuality, John and Natalie are everyone and everything it takes to run a restaurant, from the back to the front of the house and all points in between.

Kathryn’s infamous front door has long since disappeared. But the door that separated the original kitchen from the Rossis’ dining room now hangs on the wall.

The restaurant’s original glasses line the shelves above the front counter. With these and other little hints, it’s as though tradition keeps a stern watch over today’s operations, making sure Kathryn’s stays true to her past.

John came in with no experience as a chef. He knew next to nothing about running a restaurant. Plus, all the family recipes were long gone. In order to please the locals, John understood, he’d have to recreate the magic.

“The onion rings and the salad dressing were what Kathryn’s was known for,” John explains. “We had to get those right. We could build everything else around those.”

Easier said than done.

“We found one girl who happened to be a dishwasher when the Rossis had the 90 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

restaurant,” John says. “She remembered how they did it. We started with that, and from there it was a total science experiment.”

Local retired farmer Roland Jones was a Kathryn’s regular from almost the start.

Always dressed impeccably and wearing a dinner jacket, Roland had a standing reservation. He’d bring his own bib and sit at the table in the north corner of the restaurant.

“It was always the same order,” John recalls. “Roland started with a shrimp cocktail, which we didn’t even have it on the menu, but we did it for him. Then he’d have a New york strip (extra rare) and, of course, Kathryn’s salad and onion rings to start off with.”

According to John, Roland was ninetyeight when he tried the new version of Kathryn’s salad the first time.

“He said, ‘The dressing needs to be a little bit more vinegary.’ So we tweaked it, and I think we got it right.”

Charlie and Sue Craig, who live in Friars Point, have been regular customers of Kathryn’s since the 1960s. John’s version of the dressing, Charlie says, passes muster.

“John’s done a great job of keeping the salad like it’s always been.”

Kathryn’s onion rings evolved the same way, thanks to John’s friend Randall Andrews, a Clarksdale resident who worked as a personal chef for Hollywood celebrities.

John describes him as Hunter Thompsonesque.

“One afternoon, about two weeks after we opened, he stopped by while I was prepping,” John recalls. “‘Randall,’ I said, ‘I can’t quite get these onion rings right.’”

“Get me a beer,” Randall said coolly.

“Randall, you don’t drink beer,” John responded. “I’m asking you a serious question. What does this need?”

“Give me a beer,” Randall repeated.

So John handed over a can of Budweiser and watched as Randall dumped the beer into the onion ring batter. “Mix it up,” Randall instructed.

“That was it!” John recalls happily. “It just needed some active yeast.”

And then there was the candy bowl.

Locals George and Goldie Hirsberg dined at Kathryn’s the first weekend after it reopened. Toward the end of the evening, John asked about their dinner.

“Well, it was wonderful,” Goldie answered. “But where’s the candy bowl?”

Turns out, Frank and Kathryn Rossi always kept a candy bowl on the front counter. After dinner, patrons were welcome to help themselves. John had no idea, but from that evening forward, there’s been a filled candy bowl at the counter at Kathryn’s.

Help yourself.

A Delta Classic With its tattered pages taped back into place, Kathryn’s has been operating for eight years now. Locals are thrilled to have back their favorite restaurant.

“Listen, I am tickled to death that Kathryn’s is open again,” Charlie Craig says, adding that he and Sue plan to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary there. “It’s a great place to go; the food is good, and they’re just really nice people.”

John, Natalie, and their small staff keep the restaurant humming. They live close by, on Moon Lake: John with his wife, Jennifer, and two children; and Natalie with her husband, Derrick, and their two kids.

Jennifer works for Teach For America in Clarksdale and Derrick installs low-voltage cable in Memphis.

Kathryn’s is open and busy from April through New year’s Eve, with reservations strongly advised—especially during the holidays. The schedule allows John to work on his music (he has another new album coming out) and Natalie to homeschool her children.

The menu is pretty much set and changes only when ingredient availability is an issue. (Kathryn’s does not have a liquor license, but beer is served, and customers are invited to carry in their own beverages.) It’s tough to pinpoint customer favorites because, alongside Kathryn’s salad and the onion rings, everything is pretty popular.

John deliberately mentions the steaks, skillet shrimp, and pesto. But there are also pastas, salads, seafood, pork chops, catfish, and burgers, in addition to a selection of homemade sides.

“Nearly everything we do here, we make it from scratch,” John says, adding that many of the herbs he uses come from his garden. “That’s why we’re open just Thursday through Sunday. There is a lot of prep and it takes a long time to do all this stuff from scratch.”

As for desserts, there is the double Dutch sundae made with a triple chocolate fudge brownie and the Kentucky Alexander, which is basically a milkshake with just a little touch of “Kentucky.”

John mans the grill, and he inspects every plate as it comes out of the kitchen.

He compares his kitchen work to putting on a live musical performance.

“When you get the first couple of orders, the adrenaline kicks in, and it’s show time,” John explains. “When you’re on, you’re on!

It’s really, really strange how that adrenaline thing works and how similar it is to show business.”

There’s also a creative side.

“I love coming up with recipes and dishes,” John says. “I like it when the right brain hits on all cylinders—that’s why I love the studio, too. In the studio, when we’re working on an album, we get in the room, hash over a few ideas, and then we just jump into it. The result just evolves organically.

It’s the same when I’m working on new ideas in the kitchen.”

And that, John believes, is why Kathryn’s is the perfect place for him right now (plus, he gets to drive his boat to work).

“I think that’s the beauty of life— something evolving organically, whether it’s food or it’s music,” he concludes. “That’s the best of each.”DM For more information about Kathryn’s or to make reservations, please visit kathrynsonmoonlake.com or call 662.337.0022.

July Fourth On Moon Lake Kathryn’s is the place to register for those planning to join the Fourth of July boat parade on Moon Lake.

It’s probably one of the most patriotic and humorous summertime events in the Mississippi Delta.

“On a whim, Moon Lake Improvement Club started the parade a few years ago,” John says. “They needed a fun way to raise money for the no-kill animal shelter in Clarksdale. They’ve been doing it for four or five

years now, and it’s been real successful.”

The day begins with a kids’ bike parade in the morning. Then the adults get busy with decorated boats that they parade by all the docks, one of which has the judges.

For more information about the July 4th parade, please visit moonlakems.com.

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FOOD

BIG Crowd?

Large BATCH! Batched cocktails are the answer for your next party.

Whether you’re hosting a few friends or a crowd, you can mix a large quantity ahead of time, keep chilled, and serve it stress-free. Guests will be happy to serve themselves from frosty pitchers or punch bowls filled with made-ahead beverages—and you will be happy because you get to relax and enjoy your own party. Try one of these three cool, summery cocktails for your next gathering!

BY CINDY COOPWOOD AND CORDELIA CAPPS PHOTOGRAPHY BY RORY DOYLE

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PINEAPPLE PROSECCO PUNCH 3 3 1 1

cups pineapple juice cups seltzer water (750-ml) bottle Prosecco cup vodka

2 cups pineapple chunks Âź cup fresh mint 3 cups ice Additional mint for garnish

Combine pineapple juice, seltzer, Prosecco, vodka, pineapple chunks, and mint in a punch bowl. Add ice and stir to combine.

Using ladle, fill glasses with punch, making sure to include pineapple. Add fresh mint leaves on top for garnish.

Yields 10

Tip The day before, pour additional pineapple juice into ice trays to make frozen cubes.

Use these to replace the ice in the recipe to prevent diluting when ice melts.

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Acrylic stemmed glasses look sharp and are perfect for outdoor entertaining. Available at The Pantry, Greenville, @thepantryinc

ROSE’ ALL DAY PUNCH 1 ½ 3 1 2 1 ½ ½ ½

(750-ml) bottle of your favorite rosé cup vodka cups sparkling water cup cranberry juice Juice of 1 lime teaspoons honey lime, sliced cup blackberries, plus more for garnish cup pineapple, plus more for garnish cup sliced strawberries Ice

Combine all ingredients in a large pitcher and stir to combine. Serve over ice and garnish with fruit and berries as desired.

Yields 6

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Tip

Keep your favorite large batch cocktail mixed and chilled in the fridge, always ready, for your own signature summer cocktail.

WHISKEY SOUR PARTY PUNCH 2 ½ ½ 2 1

cups lemonade cup sugar cup water cups orange juice cup water juice from 2 limes (about ¼ cup) 2 cups bourbon 2 cups club soda sliced lemons, oranges and maraschino cherries for garnish

The day before, pour lemonade into ice cube trays and freeze.

Prepare a simple syrup by bringing water and sugar to a boil in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir until sugar has dissolved and syrup has thickened slightly. Allow to cool.

Pour the syrup, orange juice, water, lime juice and bourbon into a large pitcher and stir. Chill until ready to serve.

When ready to serve, add soda to base mix and stir. Fill glasses with lemonade ice cubes. Top with punch and garnish with citrus slices and maraschino cherries.

Yields 10

Tip Batched cocktails are more economical because less expensive spirits may be used, and no one will know the difference—and no bartender needed!

Guys will love this easy riff on a classic Whiskey Sour.

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Charcuterie &Cheese SUMMER

BOARDS

harcuterie boards are the perfect way to feed a crowd especially for summer entertaining, when it’s too hot to cook. Not having

C

to agonize over a menu is a huge plus as meat and cheese boards allow your guests to choose from the many options available.

The eye-candy factor is high as these boards are piled with beautiful and colorful components—particularly this time of year when gardens and farmer’s markets are abundant with seasonal produce. Although there are no hard and fast rules, we’ve gathered lots of tips for which ingredients to include, how to arrange the board, and some recipes that will complement your boards beautifully.

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Before grilling vegetables we simply brushed wit h olive oil and seasoned swit h salt and pepper.

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Mediterranean Charcuterie Board Briny olives and tasty marinades give a nod to the flavors of the Mediterranean. Summer vegetables and skewers are grilled and served with sharp cheeses and flavorful spreads, making this abundant array hearty enough to be a meal. ● Grilled summer vegetables such as eggplant, yellow squash and zucchini ● Jars of pepperoncini, roasted red peppers, artichoke hearts and olives ● Fresh cherry tomatoes ● Variety of hard and soft cheeses such as aged cheddar, gorgonzola, brie and pecorino ● Sauteed shrimp ● Marinated steak skewers ● Red grapes ● Cashews, almonds ● Parmesan crisps ● Eggplant Caponota ● White bean spread ● Naan ● Gourmet crackers

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Tip

Caponata is also delicious served over pasta and topped wit h parmesan cheese.

HERBED OLIVES ¼ 2 1 1 1 1 1 2

cup extra virgin olive oil tablespoons red wine vinegar teaspoon lemon zest large garlic clove minced tablespoon fresh thyme leaves, coarsely chopped teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary teaspoon chopped fresh oregano cups olives of your choice (kalamata, green, black or a mix)

Combine the olive oil, vinegar, herbs and garlic in a small bowl. Place the drained olives in a wide mouthed jar and pour in the herb mixture. Gently shake the jar to coat the olives. Refrigerate for two hours before serving. Olives will keep up to two weeks. Occasionally shaking the jar to keep the seasonings distributed.

CLASSIC EGGPLANT CAPONATA This easy summer appetizer can be made a day or two ahead and chilled.

5 1 1 3 1 3 2 ½ ⅓

tablespoons olive oil 1½-pound eggplant, unpeeled, cut into ½-inch cubes medium onion, cubed teaspoons chopped garlic 14½-ounce can diced tomatoes undrained tablespoons red wine vinegar tablespoons drained capers teaspoon dried Italian herbs cup chopped fresh basil Salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in heavy large pot over medium heat. Add eggplant, onion, and garlic cloves. Sauté until eggplant is soft and brown, about 15 minutes. Add diced tomatoes with juice, then red wine vinegar, capers and herbs. Cover and simmer until eggplant and onion are tender, stirring occasionally, about 10 to 12 minutes. Season caponata to taste with salt and pepper. Mix in fresh basil. Transfer caponata to serving bowl. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Tip

If fresh herbs aren’t readily available 2 tablespoons of dried Italian herbs may be substituted.

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SIMPLE SAUTÉED SHRIMP A great addition to a summer charcuterie board, offering a lighter protein option.

1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 tablespoon butter Salt and pepper Smoked paprika

With a paper towel, pat shrimp dry.

Place shrimp on a tray and season to taste with salt, pepper and smoked paprika. Put butter and olive oil into a non-stick skillet.

Preheat the skillet over medium-high heat until the butter fully melts.

Put the shrimp in the skillet. Flip them over after a couple of minutes and move them around for about 3 to 4 minutes over medium-high heat until they are firm and opaque.

Adjust seasonings, pile on the board and serve with cocktail picks!

WHITE BEAN DIP This spread is delicious with naan and grilled baguette slices, but sugar snap peas, red peppers or carrot sticks would be a great crunchy alternative.

MARINATED SKIRT STEAK SKEWERS 1 pound skirt steak ½ cup olive oil 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons minced garlic 1 teaspoon dried oregano 1 teaspoon paprika

Soak wooden skewers in water for at least an hour or overnight to prevent burning. Slice the skirt steak into slender strips. Mix all marinade ingredients together in a small bowl and pour over steak strips. Allow to marinate at least 4 hours refrigerator.

Heat grill on high heat. Once the grill is ready, thread the strips of steak onto the skewers. Cook over a high heat grill for about 4 minutes per side.

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1 (15-ounce) can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed 2 cloves garlic 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice ⅓ cup olive oil Salt Coarse ground black pepper ⅓ cup olive oil in the work bowl of a food

Place the beans, garlic, lemon juice and

processor. Pulse until the mixture is coarsely chopped. Season with salt and pepper, to taste and give a few more pulses. Transfer the bean puree to a small bowl. Garnish with olives or fresh herbs.

Summer Cheese Board with Stone fruits and Berries Summer sweetened fruits paired with soft cheeses make this board all about the mix of sweet and savory. A perfect light offering with a glass of wine.

Grilled peach slices with mozzarella • Fresh Plums • Dried apricots Fresh cherries • Blackberries • Strawberries • Cantaloupe Goat cheese with local honey • Ricotta • Prosciutto • Gourmet crackers

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Tip To grill peach slices brush lightly with olive oil and quickly char both sides on a hot grill or grill pan. This adds a rich and unexpected flavor. Layer with fresh mozzarella, give a drizzle of oil and sprinkle with fresh basil.

What you’ll need:

● Select a board or boards. This will depend on the number of guests you’re expecting. For a large crowd two smaller boards may be used and placed beside each other. Cutting boards, shallow baskets and even ceramic platters may be used ● Party picks or small skewers

● Small bowls for spreads and dips ● Cheese knives and spreaders

● Fresh herbs or greenery to add little color and fill in the empty spaces

Tip

⤵

Honest Roots, handcrafted boards available at Cotton Row Uniques in Memphis. cottonrowuniques.com

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⤵

For a savory complement to the summer fruits, lightly stir the ricotta to a spreadable consistency, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and several generous dashes of ground pepper. This really brings out the sweetness of the fruits with which it is served.

Disposable cheese boards are convenient for serving outdoors or taking to a gathering. Available at The Pantry, Greenville, @thepantryinc

Tip On the goat cheese we simply drizzled local honey and sprinkled with coarse black pepper. A stir of pepper in the honey works well too!

Tips for arranging your board:

● Allow cheese to come to room temperature to enhance its flavor. Remove the cheese from the fridge about 30 minutes or so before serving. ● Set cheese on board first, spreading out or grouping as desired. Then begin to fill in with other ingredients, considering which components complement each other.

● Keep the board looking balanced. Be sure not to make a really large pile of one ingredient, such as crackers or nuts. Instead, spread them out in smaller amounts around the board.

● Fill the empty spaces. You want your board to look overflowing and abundant. Keep extra fruit, berries, nuts, crackers and herbs on hand to fill in every inch of space! ● Always have extras of everything available to replenish and freshen as the needed. DM

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HISTORY

Merigold High School Class of 1957 in front of the Capitol. The trip was partially funded by Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins’ concert in Merigold. Far right, is Larry Speakes, who would become president Ronald Reagan’s press secretary. Below, the autographs of Perkins and others.

Rockabilly in Merigold Elvis didn’t work out, so Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins rocked Bolivar County

BY FISH MICHIE

On a warm, humid evening in 1955, the small town of Merigold, Mississippi, played host to two musical performers who would change the face of popular music with their own individual styles.

Merigold high school closed in 1957.

The junior class, the upcoming class of ‘57, was planning a senior trip the next year to Washington, DC, to tour the capitol. But the trip needed funding. Larry Speakes, a junior and upcoming member of the ‘57 class, had met Elvis Presley the year before at a show in Clarksdale, Mississippi, thirty miles north on Highway 61. He talked to 108 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

him backstage and had a photo made with him. And so Larry called Bob Neal, Elvis’s manager at the time (Colonel T. Parker had yet to enter Elvis’s career), and Neal quoted him a price. It was a bit steep for the Merigold class. But Neal told Larry that for fifty dollars less, he would send Carl Perkins, a rising rock-and-roll star, and Johnny Cash, whose career was also about to escalate. They

both had hits, and when Larry presented the deal to the fundraising committee, it was approved. Larry called Neal once more to finalize the deal and set a date.

The town was abuzz on the evening of the show. It was to be held at the auditorium in the “new” school in Merigold (the previous high school had burned to ground in 1952) Gwen Smith Daves of Brandon— Merigold Class of ‘58—said that although the show was sold out, the event didn’t meet the approval of many of the students’ parents. “Momma couldn’t believe that I was going to hear such tacky music,” Gwen says.

Eunice Anne Howell Fowler, who lives in Shalimar, Florida, agreed: “Some folks in the area considered this music sinful and didn’t approve, but the show was packed! The first row was reserved for senior girls, and they wore matching white blouses and black skirts.”

To illustrate Fowler’s passion for rock-’n’roll royalty, when Elvis appeared in Clarksdale earlier that year and traveled Highway 61 to dine at Michael’s Fine Foods in Cleveland, Eunice and Gwen followed them into Michael’s. When Elvis and the band paid and left, Eunice ran to the table and gathered Elvis’s chicken bones and took them home with her. “I still have them,” she says proudly, “and I also have the ticket that shows he paid eighty-five cents for that meal!”

Her sister Florence, homecoming queen of the class of 1957, also attended the show.

Ticket stub from the show.

“Well all my friends are boppin the blues, It must be goin round...”

Carl Perkins hit the stage with what would become a huge blues anthem, duckwalking, sweating, and working the crowd as a seasoned pro: “Well, it’s a one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready...Now go cat go...”

Perkins slid into what would become the most familiar rock-and-roll intro of the era.

Perkins’s “Blue Suede Shoes” was easing up the charts, but it skyrocketed when Elvis released it later that year.

The front row senior girls were clapping in unison, with huge grins and giggles.

Perkins was well received by the entire crowd with roaring applause after his set.

The thick blue velvet curtains closed

Merigold High Cheerleaders: Back row: Mary Belle Howell, Gerry Hunt, Betty Jean Jennings, Eunice Anne Howell; front row: Mary Nell Bailey, Florence Howell, Tootsie Prewitt.

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Johnny Cash autographed this picture for Eunice Fowler after his performance in Merigold.

The last Merigold High School Homecoming Queen in 1957, Florence Howell Crow, escorted

by Win Scrivner.

quickly, with the crowd cooling themselves with hand-held funeral home cardboard fans. Even though the windows were opened as wide as possible, it was still stuffy and warm, but the crowd didn’t seem to mind when the curtains slowly opened and they heard the words from a deep baritone voice that would become famous: “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.”

“I taught the weepin willow how to cry, cry, cry...”

Johnny and the Tennessee Two (Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant) slid effortlessly into “Hey Porter!” and continued to work the crowd. Gwen and her two friends were “up in our chairs, screaming and clapping.

I know we made that short little barber behind us mad, but it was so much fun we just stayed up and kept clapping and screaming.”

When Cash ended his set, the crowd roared with unbridled enthusiasm, and the curtains closed. Minutes later, Cash, Perkins, and the accompanying musicians 110 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

came from backstage to sign autographs, shake hands, and socialize with the crowd.

Eunice Anne Fowler said, “Johnny Cash was the nicest man. He and Carl were both nice. They weren’t in a hurry and signed autographs for everybody. I got everybody’s autograph! Several years later, we ran into Johnny and his first wife at the fairgrounds in Memphis. He was cordial and so friendly to us. We took his kids on several rides with us.”

The show raised $113, and Speakes said in his book Speaking Out that with that show and other fundraising efforts, they made the $400 that was needed. Florence Howell Crow, Merigold High School’s final homecoming queen (‘57) stated emphatically, “For the record, if it had not been for Larry Speakes, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins would not have played in Merigold, and we would not have gone on our trip to Washington, DC, when we became seniors. He made that show happen.”

Larry Speakes went to work after high

Elvis with Larry Speakes and Larry’s first wife Janelle in Clarksdale.

school as a journalist. After time in the Delta with various newspapers, he was aide to Senator James O. Eastland. Later, he landed a job as deputy press secretary to President Reagan. When the assassination attempt was made on Reagan and Speakes’s boss, Jim Brady, was injured, Speakes took on duties as chief press secretary to the president of the United States. Johnny Cash appeared at the White House during the Reagan era, and Speakes joked with him that he helped springboard Cash’s career with the show in Merigold twenty-five years earlier.

The Merigold school is now in ruins and overgrown with vines and weeds.

After Speakes retired from press secretary duties, he went to work as a consultant for a brokerage firm. That performance in Merigold wasn’t a turning point in either Cash’s or Perkins’s careers, but it was one of the many stops in small-town America that they made, paying their dues on their rise to rock-and-roll and country music stardom. DM

EVENTS LeAnn Rimes

Double Decker Arts Festival

FESTIVALS, MUSIC & FUN THINGS TO DO July 2, 9 pm

Cleveland

August 7-9

Fireworks Show

Clarksdale

33rd Sunflower River Blues & Gospel Festival

Statesman Park Delta State University

July 7, 5:30-6:30 pm

Allman Betts Band

sunflowerfest.org

Oxford

August 8

Oxford

Asian Fusion Tasting

Destination Oxford Cruise & Car Show

The Sipp Visitoxfordms.com

visitoxfordms.com

July 10-11

Clarksdale

Fiddler & Fried Green Tomatoes Festival Hank Burdine & Friends Shack Up Inn Visitclarksdale.com

July 11, 7 pm

Tunica

Oxford

Tacos & Tequila Tasting

Hernando

Hernando Courthouse Square visitdesotocounty.com

Horseshoe Casino ww.caesars.com/tunica

August 1-2

Memphis

Elvis Week 2020

Repticon Memphis Reptile & Exotic Animal Show

Graceland graceland.com

Landers Center visitdesotocounty.com

August 9

Clarksdale

Cat Head 18th Anniversary August 5, 7:30-9 pm

Tunica Resorts

August 7, 6 pm

Cleveland

cathead.biz

August 12, 7 pm

Southaven

Brandon Amphitheater brandonamphitheater.com

August 14-15, 7-10 pm

Landers Center visitdesotocounty.com

visitoxfordms.com

August 7, 7 pm

Kane Brown

Brandon

Kidz Bop Live

Blackberry Smoke “Spirit of the South” Tour

Brandon Amphitheater brandonamphitheater.com 112 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

Southaven

The Bologna Performing Arts Center balognapac.com

Hernando’s Summer Sidewalk Sale

Chris D’Elia

Horseshoe Casino tunicatravel.com

Allman Betts Band

The Sipp visitoxfordms.com

July 18

Jeff Dunham

Tunica

Brian McKnight

August 8

Gold Strike Casino Resort tunicatravel.com

July 16-18

Tunica

Horseshoe Casino tunicatravel.com

LeeAnn Rimes

July 14, 5:30-6:30 pm

August 8 July 23

Oxford

Double Decker Arts Festival Brandon

August 15-16

Southern Flea Market Landers Center visitdesotocounty.com DM

Southaven

Natchez WALKING TRAILS WITH OUR STORY EXPLORE THE RICH MUSIC HISTORY OF NATCHEZ!

WWW.VISITNATCHEZ.ORG

114 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

DELTA MAGAzINE 2020

| 115

DELTA SEEN

Farmers Market in Greenwood on June 13 Photos by Johnny Jennings

Lester Smith, Johnny and Shirley Griffin

Roy C. Hobson and Susan Hobson

JJ and Kayla Story, Jacob, Jordan, Kinsley and Baby Avie

Grady Black 116 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

James Brewer and T.C. McCaskill

Kackie Kornfeld and Gail Self

Quinn Zepponi

DELTA SEEN

Farmers Market in Greenwood continued A selection of photos by Delta Magazine readers

Lt. Lonnie MaGee, Carla Walls, Hallie Streeter and Earl Crain

Louise T. Ivey and Gwen Binion

Beth and Glen Stevens hiking in the Tetons in Moose, Wyoming

Phyllis and Douglas Skelton

Eric Miller, Maggie Miller, Holly Miller Ellen Miller and Yolande Van Heerden

The MDJC (now MDCC) classes of 1964-1968 recently held their Annual Football reunion dinner at Vito’s Marketplace in Leland. Seated: Left to right, Fulton Young, Jr., Coach Carl Grubb, and Ricky Lee; Standing: Left to right, Joel Henderson, Guy Hall Jr., Tommy Fava, Hal Bridges, Neal Berryhill, Jesse Bingham, Phil Greco, Paul (Snake) Walker (basketball), Mike Domino (basketball), Frank Dantone, Larry Copeland, Curtis Hood, James Strickland, Reagan Ford and Butch Berry DELTA MAGAzINE 2020

| 117

DELTA SEEN

Blair Campbell, Beth Joel, Ann Nowell (front row) and Christie Sledge, Heather Sledge, Merideth Van Namen, Amber Smith, and Megan Wicker recently gathered at Uncle Jo’s in Cleveland to celebrate Beth Joel’s birthday

A selection of photos by Delta Magazine readers

Skip Durham with Bill and Candy Coker for their 50th wedding anniversary hot air balloon ride with Bluff City Balloons

Ford and Cadey True, Jennifer and Brandon Walton, and Brooke and Taylor Flemming enjoying a getaway to Destin.

Roane and Libbi Logan at the beach

Managing Editor Pam Parker and her daughter Cross, Beth, David and Gracie Crow in the Alex in Orange Beach, Alabama Badlands National park near Interior, South Dakota 118 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

Draper and Doug Mauldin with Mary Ashely Mauldin McNeely and Douglas Mauldin

Megan Knighten, Brittany Rabren, Eden Travis, Mary Beth Smith and Morgan McCain celebrating Morgan’s birthday at Benoit Outing Club

A selection of photos by Delta Magazine readers

DELTA SEEN

Front row: Howard Hyneman, Amanda Hyneman, Patty Lewis (honoree), Carter Myers and Avery Lewis, middle row; William Lewis, Angie Avery, Will Lewis, Lydia Myers, Carter Myers and Henry Hyneman, back row; Goodloe Lewis and Brian Hyneman recently gathered in Oxford to celebrate Patti’s 80th birthday! Photo by Bruce Newman

Candy Myles and Kim Ryan on the Intracoastal waterway in Jupiter, Florida

Thomas Coopwood and Emma Bond celebrate with Maddy Rials and Mason Mahaffey at a recent party honoring their engagement Juke Joint kings with Roger Stolle (middle): Red Paden, David Kimbrough Jr., Henry “Gip” Gipson and Teddy Johnson

Josh and Sally Quong, Cal and Stacy Trout with Lloyd Caulfield, celebrating Cal’s birthday at The Sipp in Oxford Henry Mosco, Jacob Mosco, Jack Westerfield, Samuel Davis, Jon Westerfield, and Louie Cole

Brigitt Hutchison, Meredith Mosley and Abbey Bufkin at the Rials-Mahaffey engagement party in Canton Maxene Harlow, Victoria Hamil, Wes Hamil and Richard Bolen DELTA MAGAzINE 2020

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Thefinalword

A sense of place I

Hobson “Doc” Gary spent his formative years on a family farm near Schlater. After graduating from Mississippi State University he returned to farm for some years with his father. His life long love affair with aviation eventually brought him to leave the farm and accept a position as a pilot with FedEx. He now lives in Memphis with his wife Jaime and their dog Knox.

120 | JULy/AUGUST 2020

had the great fortune to have been born and raised in the Mississippi Delta on a farm near Schlater in Leflore County. As an only child raised in a rural setting, I learned at an early age to entertain myself; this talent was greatly enhanced by an error in judgement in which I said to my mom, “I’m bored.” is only happened once as a dump truck showed up the next day and deposited a large pile of cow manure behind the back fence. My mother gave me a shovel and a wheelbarrow instructing me to spread “fertilizer” around each flower bed, bush, and tree in our rather substantial yard. Mom’s comment upon handing me the shovel, “is should keep you from being bored.” Afterwards, if I even appeared to be idle, my mom would mention that remaining manure pile still needed spreading. is always inspired me to be out of the house, out of sight, and hopefully out of mom’s mind.

Growing up on a farm offered much freedom; there were always chores around the house, along with the farm work, but also ample time to pursue the many outdoor activities available in the Delta.

Summer discretionary time was spent exploring, fishing, and frog gigging in McNutt Lake and a nearby swamp, Ashland Break. Winters were spent afield pursuing the abundant duck and deer populations, all activities easily accessible by my young self via foot, an ATV, or my canoe.

Comparable, in youthful influence, to coming of age in this sportsman’s paradise would be the social climate. Delta life is synonymous with parties, often attended by everyone from grandparents to grandchildren. It’s my theory that this age-inclusive tradition assists young Deltonians in honing their social skills at a much earlier age.

Add to this mix that the finer points of storytelling seem to be an integral part of Southern DNA, and this is true in spades for the Delta.

Perspective should be a constantly evolving part of life and mostly only comes with age and life lessons; though, from my experience, travel can also be a big perspective enhancer. Not being a deep thinker early in life, I just assumed the Delta was “representative” of the rest of the world. My first indication that my homeland was unique occurred

BY HOBSON GARY

when I attended Mississippi State University. In hindsight I realized that we Delta raised college kids just naturally gravitated to one another. Many of us had never met, and grew up many miles distant, but at college we seemed to instinctively come together. We were products of a unique culture which loved to have fun. Over time, however, our group grew to include many that weren’t Delta born as, simply stated, Delta people just know how to have a good time. Being good story tellers, and having many tales to tell, we spread the mystique of our beloved Mississippi Delta.

Some years back I read an article in the Wall Street Journal written by Peggy Noonan entitled “e End of Placeness.” In this article she writes of being at a gathering which featured mostly people from the Mississippi Delta. She says of the other people attending, “Even as an outsider, you knew them. ey were Mississippi Delta people... . you would be able to know them, pick up who they are, with your American antenna. you grow up, move on, and bring the Delta with you.” In a single paragraph she had personified my Delta.

After the loss of the family farm, I turned to my most marketable skill and was fortunate to get hired as a pilot with FedEx. is job took me far afield, and in doing so I carried my Delta stories with me. Part of this FedEx experience was to get based overseas, in Germany, for several years. I was on a midnight flight to Tel Aviv, Israel, with a former military young man as my first officer. He had grown up in a military family; thus, he grew up in varied locales. As we had flown together many times, he had, likely, heard most of my stories; I fear some more than once. We had flown along without talking for a few minutes, and he seemed to be in deep thought as he looked out the window. He said, to no one in particular but more just voicing what he was thinking, “It must be nice to be from somewhere.”

With this young man’s simple utterance, a chord was struck with me. While I had long embraced, in general, my Southern roots and, more specifically, a love for my Delta upbringing, I had never considered the bigger picture—that of having a “sense of place,” of being from somewhere. DM