Delta Magazine May/June 2024

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An Art-filled Home ● Retro Jello Recipes & $5.95US

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Mother’s Day Memories ● Delta String Band

PLUS: Delta Wind Birds

A legacy exhibition reimagined.

OPENS JUNE 28

RIGHT: Letitia Huckaby, (Augsburg, Germany), 1972 - , Ms. Woods (detail), 2022, pigment print on fabric with embroidery, 71 x 41 x 1 7/8 in., Courtesy of the artist and Talley Dunn Gallery

Delta Triennial is presented by Anne and Merritt Dyke.

Additional support is provided by Friday, Eldredge & Clark, LLP and the Andre Simon Memorial Trust Fund in memory of everyone who has died of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).

501 East Ninth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas 72202 arkmfa.org / Open Tuesday to Sunday / 501.372.4000

Admission is always free.

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You can celebrate every milestone with the peace of mind that life insurance brings. Talk with your local Farm Bureau® agent to learn how life insurance can secure your loved ones’ financial future.

SOUTHERN FARM BUREAU® LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY

WWW.SFBLI.COM

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Publisher: J. Scott Coopwood Editor in Chief: Cindy Coopwood Managing Editor: Taylor Armstrong Director of Special Projects: Kelli Williams Director of Production: Pam Parker Contributing Editors: Maude Schuyler Clay, Lea Margaret Hamilton, Jim “Fish” Michie, Brantley Snipes, Roger Stolle Digital Editor: Phil Schank Consultant: Samir Husni, Ph.D. Graphic Designers: Sandra Goff, Maggi Mosco, Denton Reed Copy Editor: Suzanne Durfey, Camille Walker

visitcarroll.org

Contributing Writers: Jim Beaugez, Terri Glazer, Billy Howell, Jerry Hyer, Joey Lee, Susan Marquez, Jim “Fish” Michie, Richard Nemec, Kelli Williams Photography: Rory Doyle, Abe Draper, Beth Giachelli, Andy Lo, William Powell Account Executives: Joy Bateman, Melanie Dupree, Cristen Hemmins, Kristy Kitchings, Wendy Mize, Ann Nestler, Cadey True Circulation: Lyndsi Naron Accounting Manager: Holly Tharp POSTMASTER: Send all address changes to Delta Magazine, PO Box 117, Cleveland, MS 38732

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

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

deltamagazine.com Subscriptions: $28 per year 6 | MAY/JUNE 2024

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Welcome to Mockingtrail Square—Cleveland’s first planned unit development. With fifty lots, the subdivision has a neighborhood feel and is conveniently adjacent to both the Cleveland Country Club Golf Course and Delta State’s Athletic Fields, which can be accessed by a pedestrian/golf cart bridge. There are five floor plans to choose from, which are architecturally designed to model the upscale environment of Florida’s scenic 30A area, or have a custom design plan for your lot. Call us if you’re ready to take the next step!

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CONTACT US Chris Collins, Managing Member Office: 662.843.5060 ccollins@roycollins.com roycollins.com

Debbie Davis Real Estate, Realtor Office: 662.402.0031 debbiedavisre@gmail.com debbiedavisre.com

Partnership Properties, Realtor Office: 662.843.8850 partnershipprop@gmail.com partnershipprop.com

mockingtrailsquare.com DELTA MAGAZINE 2024

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from the editor

Sunday Morning Pancakes ometimes it’s only from the perspective of looking back, often over many years, that what is truly important in life becomes clear. And we often find the little things were really

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ABE DRAPER

the big things all along.

Take motherhood for example. We recently asked our readers to share the favorite foods their mothers and grandmothers made—the ones that immediately conjure up memories of being home or going to see grandma. And although we received a variety of answers, which we share on page 110, the common threads among them were not only the “normalcy” of the recipes, but also the feelings they evoked. Home. Family. Comfort.

Nowhere to be found was a multi-step, complicated gourmet recipe. Just good, basic, oldfashioned food from good, basic, old-fashioned families.

My mother has always been an excellent cook—and ours really was the family who shared almost every meal together. At least breakfast and dinner— every night. That was at a time when childrens’ sports and activities were more reasonable, but still both my parents worked full-time and life was busy. It was a priority. In my family, much of our time spent together revolved around food in some form or another. We were expected to work in our huge garden every summer (my parents, now in their 80s still do), and we put up the vegetables to have for the remainder of What a fun day I had in the Oxford home of the year. My sister and I made brownies or chocolate chip Mary Madeleine and Michael Koury. It is truly cookies most Saturdays after cleaning the house (of which she a hidden gem, filled with their vast art did the vast majority) and watching American Bandstand. We collection, family treasures, and unique finds masterfully arranged in their comfortable set the table and helped clean the kitchen every night. We ate cottage. leftovers, and we did not eat out!

So, like our readers, my memories of my mother (and Mama and me this past Easter. many of our conversations to this day) revolve around food, and took place in the kitchen.

Although I don’t remember specific lessons, it was from her that I gleaned my understanding of cooking, by just always…cooking. I was making the cornbread for most meals by the time I was eleven, which I know I learned from her. And more importantly, I inherited my love of cooking from her. A love and interest we still share, and that I have passed on not only to my daughter, but my sons as well, who are both capable cooks.

If Mama has a specialty, I would say it is desserts. Her repertoire is vast, but the family favorites are homemade coconut cake with seafoam icing (my brother’s birthday cake), banana pudding with homemade custard (no pudding mix for us), banana caramel pie, prune cake (I know, but trust me, it’s delicious), boiled custard, and all variety of pies. Lemon and chocolate meringue, chess pie, coconut pie, the list goes on.

And she always made a homemade crust. But what really sealed her pie-making into my forever memory is that, never wasting a bite of anything, she would take the strips of pie dough trimmed from the edges, sprinkle them with cinnamon and sugar, and bake them for my siblings and me. I remember her letting me do the sprinkling. It was There’s nothing like Nana’s cooking: My children with my just a little thing, but I’ve never forgotten it.

All this is to say that I believe moms are to families as kitchens are to the home— mom—and her homemade dressing and cranberry sauce—last Thanksgiving. the heart. Mine certainly is, and I hope I am to mine. So, with Mother’s Day approaching, I would like to tell moms, especially young moms, that it doesn’t matter what you make, your family will love it because you made it. And that time spent together in the kitchen will be filled with many little things that years later become the big things.

Case in point, when I asked my children to tell me their favorite memory of me in the kitchen, shamelessly fishing for a compliment, it wasn’t the more time-consuming special holiday meals that came to mind. My son Thomas simply responded, “Pancakes on Sunday mornings.”

Happy Mother’s Day! DM

Cindy Coopwood Editor

@cindycoopwood | editor@deltamagazine.com 10 | MAY/JUNE 2024

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This Mother’s Day, show the women in your life how much you love them by encouraging them to schedule an annual mammogram.

BETH’S MISSION...BREAST HEALTH

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EXHIBITION NOW OPEN

Explore the Threads of History Through 20 Rarely Seen Flags

Plan Your Visit TWO MISSISSIPPI MUSEUMS | JACKSON, MS

contents MAY/JUNE Volume 21 No. 6

90 106 departments

38 BOOKS Reviews of new releases and what Deltans are reading now

42 SHOPPING Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Graduation gift ideas

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50 ART

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KATHY SUE WELLS Contemporary Mississippi artist draws on her Delta roots

56 MUSIC

DELTA STRING BAND Resurrecting forgotten old-time American field tunes

90 HOME

FOR THE LOVE OF ART A comfortable cottage was radically transformed into an art-filled haven

116 features

62 The birth of a River writer

The making of The Great River, Boyce Upholt’s debut book

68 Clarksdale’s Jolly Cab Ridin’ around, safe and sound 72 Delta Wind Birds Working to create Delta habitat for migrating shorebirds 78 Conversation with A.K. Benninghofen Writer, actress, and Indianola native 84 A cruise, a book, and a road trip The life changing adventure of an 80-year-old Californian

ON THE COVER: An eclectic arrangement of daffodils, red lamps, and objets d’art on the dining table greets guests at the Koury home in Oxford. Photo by Abe Draper 14 | MAY/JUNE 2024

106 FOOD

JELLO: The Eras Tour Vintage gelatin recipes Memories of Mom, page 110 Readers share favorite recipes

116 HISTORY

The REETS: A look back at the Delta’s popular rock band

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in every issue 18 Letters 26 On the Road Where we’ve been, where we’re going next

30 Off the Beaten Path Roaming the real and rustic Delta

34 Hot Topics 120 Events Cabin fever, page 126

130 Delta Seen 136 The Final Word

by Jerry Hyer

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DAVID LUSK GALLERY Memphis | Nashville

BRUCE BRAINARD Auspicious, 2024 oil on canvas, 40 x 48”

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LETTERS HISTORY

Dear Mr.French...

An Indianola man’s mission to send news from home to World War II soldiers around the world

W.R. French indexed everything he could find about Sunflower County and kept it in scrapbooks anticipating the day he would write the history of Sunflower County.

BY MARILYN TINNIN • PHOTOS BY JOHNNY JENNINGS

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uthor Marie Hemphill’s 1980 comprehensive history of Sunflower County, Fevers, Floods, and Faith, describes the “something special”

that sets the Delta apart. She attributed its uniqueness to a “rare quality involving the soul of its people—their generosity, their friendliness, their willingness to accommodate, and a never-failing optimism that can survive such problems as floods, droughts, labor shortages, high taxes, and crop failures.”

Marie was my mother, and I was privy to many conversations she and my father had during the five years she spent researching and writing her book. A name she often mentioned was Willie French, an Indianola leader who had been something of a mentor

to her through the years. Frequently called “the dean of local history,” Mr. French had also dreamed of writing a history of Sunflower County. He spent decades exploring musty courthouse records, traversing forgotten paths around the

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I would like to thank Marilyn Tinnin for her article in the March/April issue of the Delta Magazine. This article was about the late W.R. French from Indianola and how during WWII he sent copies of the “Spoke and Page” to over five hundred men and women in the service from Indianola and Sunflower County. My father George Rives, two brothers and sister were from Indianola and they were one of his recipients. As soon as we read the article I knew in my heart I needed to go to the museum. My husband and I spent two days going through the albums and after the first fifteen minutes found a letter from my dad.

It brought joy to my heart to find such a treasure. Ended up finding letters from three uncles, aunt and several cousins. Even saw a deposit slip where my grandmother had given money to Mr. French to help with mailing and supplies.

Thanks also goes to Barbara French Hughes for sharing her grandfather’s albums.

Georgia Rives Henderson Trumann, Arkansas Thank you for the article on my grandfather (Grand) as I called him. I had wanted this story to be told for future generations in my family. I also want to thank Marilyn Tinnin for the many hours of research and telling the story. Your staff did an excellent job on the layout and photographs. I have received so many responses from friends and others.

I enjoyed the article on the Rushings and their winery. Sam Rushing is my cousin.

What a coincidence that both sides of my family would be in the same issue. Thank you to Delta Magazine.

Barbara French Hughes Jackson, Mississippi

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To contributing writer Doc Gary—I grew up in Merigold and finished high school there in 1952. I enjoyed your hunting article about “Mr. Henry” Hiter. He was called “Shorty” in Merigold. I also really enjoyed the pictures of Peter Rabbit and Nan McGarrh, Jimmy Goudelock, and Shorty and Martha Hiter who were all from Merigold.

I’m writing to share with you that your mother, Claudine Lusk at the time, taught me eleventh grade at Merigold High School.

She was a Business Ed teacher, with no computer teacher then. I really loved her as a teacher—she taught typing, shorthand, and bookkeeping and she was also the secretary to the principal. She drove from Schlater every day. She married that year, I think 1951, and became Mrs. Gary. The girls all wanted to look like her, and the boys had a crush on her! Because of her, I also became a Business Ed teacher and taught for thirty-five years in Pensacola, Florida. I am now 89 years old, and I wanted you to know this and to pass along to her what a wonderful influence she had on me.

Good luck to you and good hunting. I spent many happy days at Merigold Hunting Club during my teens as well.

Mary Allan Smith Willis Pensacola, Florida I’m writing to thank you for the great ideas we saw in the recent wedding issue!

My son, Sam Larson, plans to wed MaryHannah Hip in June at our family’s farm in Oxford, Mississippi.

After reading Chatham Kennedy’s article, “A Delta Bachelorette Trip,” my future daughter-in-law was inspired to plan her bachelorette trip in the Mississippi Delta!

She and her bridesmaids will visit McCartys Pottery in Merigold and will have lunch at their onsite restaurant, The Gallery. From

there, they will travel to Cleveland and spend the night at Cotton House, a tribute portfolio hotel. They will spend the remainder of their time shopping and antiquing. I love that Delta Magazine highlights ways we can utilize all of the wonderful resources our state has to offer, like planning a bachelorette trip without crossing the state’s border. Thanks again for the inspiration!

Christy Larson Oxford, Mississippi ART

“I want to glorify God in everything, especially in my art, to leave a legacy for my kids, and [to paint] portraits that bring joy to the clients that will be passed from generation to generation.”

– Hayden Hall

BY TERRI GLAZER • PHOTOGRAPHY BY AUSTIN BRITT

ollege student and athlete, Bible teacher, massage therapist, club bouncer. Hayden Hall’s life is a book with many chapters. The overarching theme of the story, however, is the Clarksdale native’s love of art and his gift for creating it.

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Called to Create More than just a likeness, Hayden R. Hall portraits capture the essence of his subjects

Hall’s talent became evident early on. He was fourteen when people started to notice that his drawings of famous people were remarkable likenesses. He earned “professional” status as a freshman at Delta State when fellow students paid him fifteen dollars for a pencil sketch of their boyfriend or girlfriend. “They’d give me one of those little wallet-sized photos, and I’d draw it up. I always had spending money,” he recalls.

Along the way, Hall enrolled in a series of colleges, pursuing education in majors that varied from physical education to religion to nursing. But, his thoughts always turned to his first love—art.

Hall says he never forgot a pivotal conversation with renowned Mississippi portrait painter Marshall Bouldin III, a lifelong friend of Hall’s mother and his eventual mentor. Then, as a young man in his thirties, Hall was consumed by his desire to create art. “I was almost in tears. I said, ‘Marshall, I want to be an artist so bad!’ He told me, ‘Hayden, you’re not an artist because you paint; you paint because you’re an artist. You can’t not be an artist.’”

A health crisis in his forties led to Hall’s first sustained, successful venture into the art world. A bodybuilder and “the epitome of health” at the time, Hall suffered a massive stroke after having blood vessels to his brain stem accidentally damaged. In what he describes

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Many thanks to writer Terri Glazer, photographer, Austin Britt and the team at Delta Magazine for featuring my portraits in the recent March/April issue. The article exceeded any expectations I could have had.

Terri’s attention to detail and telling my life story was outstanding, and the response I received was overwhelming. For weeks hardly a day went by that I did not receive a call, text, or Facebook message commenting on the article and how well it was written, the photos, and a couple of messages regarding my personal testimony as well. I’m also happy to report that I also garnered several commissions in response to the article!

It was truly an honor to be included, and I cannot thank you enough for highlighting my work.

Hayden R. Hall Clarksdale, Mississippi

SEND COMMENTS AND LETTERS TO: editor@deltamagazine.com or Delta Magazine, PO Box 117, Cleveland, MS 38732 18 | MAY/JUNE 2024

A recent portrait of one of Hall’s favorite subjects—his grandson, Eason.

He looks forward to painting many more of him as he grows up.

Y’all Said

SOCIAL MEDIA COMMENTS @deltamagazine

We Asked...

What is your favorite Southern book that has been made into a movie?

Can’t say any are not good, but right now I would say it’s a toss up between Gone with the Wind and Where the Crawdads Sing. – Michael Patterson

To Kill a Mockingbird. It is a masterpiece in acting and filmmaking. – Debbie Watson To Kill a Mockingbird – Gina Tompkins Where the Crawdads Sing is my favorite movie!

– Allison Davis I initially thought A Time To Kill, but then thought farther back in time to the classic To Kill A Mockingbird. So many good books, so many good movies. – Ann Bullock Gone With the Wind of course! – Sarah Hovis Where the Crawdads Sing – Robert Baylot Gone With the Wind – Carol Kiefer Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil!

– Rita Johnson To Kill a Mockingbird – Mary Lynn Powers Steel Magnolias and Where The Crawdads Sing.

– Connie Lancaster

READER RESPONSE deltamagazine.com was something I would have never thought would happen, even when I thought “Oh, I hope this does take off” I didn’t think it would go that far. I’ve recently signed a book deal with Hachette Publishing, and I actually had an interview with ABC News recently—but the book deal is definitely the most life-changing. I’ve gotten to work with incredible brands. Every day I wake up and look at my phone, and it’s like a whole different world. There are so many people saying the kindest things from this community we’ve built. It’s grown so fast that it honestly is head-spinning, so it’s hard to point to just one moment.

Let’s Discuss…

LANDON BRYANT

The internet can be such a harsh place. Kudos to you for putting yourself out there because that can be scary at times—but you landed on the softer side. The comments are all fun and respectful.

I agree. That’s one thing I noticed when I started doing this. I set out to speak from a place of kindness, and that comes from teaching four-year-olds—we are just tryin’ to stay on our stools and not mess with each other! So that’s where it began, and it sets the tone for the channel. I realized very quickly that people are looking for community on the internet. They are looking not only for a place that’s not divisive, but also for a place where they can share their opinions and experiences without fear of being attacked. So, it seems there was a void for spaces like this.

Mississippi-native and social media star talks accidental fame, his love of the Delta, and affection for all things Southern

BY KELLI WILLIAMS PHOTOS COURTESY OF LANDON BRYANT

F YOU’VE COME ACROSS THE ACCOUNT LANDON TALKS ON INSTAGRAM OR TIKTOK, it’s likely that his reels resonated with you on some level. Landon Bryant’s calm, Southern drawl will pull you in, but it’s his take on Southern culture and our vernacular that will have you giving him a follow.

Hailing from Laurel, this former art teacher simply brings up topics to “discuss” such as the pronunciation of “pecan” to the classic “Southern goodbye” to more controversial topics such as “the best mayonnaise.” And the comments pour in. Not only does Landon speak directly into the hearts of those living below the MasonDixon Line, but he gives us all a huge dose of reality—with a lot of humor—by holding a mirror up to the fabled lingo and colloquialisms of our daily lives.

I had the opportunity to visit with him about his love of the South, the famous faces that follow him, and the impact of kindness in his corner of the internet.

It’s entertaining to see how people are so invested in the posts and have full-on discussions about the subject.

I do think that the comment community of my posts is what’s so valuable. I talk a lot and that’s fine…but the comment section is just gold. It’s solid gold.

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Being Southern is such a big part of me, it has navigated my whole approach to this journey!

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First, tell me about your background.

I am from Laurel and have lived here my whole life, except college.

I moved back to Laurel after college, and my wife and I are raising our ten-year-old son here. It has just been such a journey. I’ve been an art teacher for the past almost ten years here in the public school.

I taught 4K up to 6th grade, which was quite an experience, and now I’m doing whatever it is you call this—which is mind- blowing to me.

How did the @landontalks platform originate? Was it organic?

This definitely started organically. I talk too much, and my wife has been hearing me talk since second grade. We’ve been friends since second grade. One day I was just talking to her…talking and talking…and she kindly said “what if you talk to the internet? What if you told all your stories to the internet?” So it was very organic. As I told stories about life here in Laurel, people started asking me questions about things that I said, and it turned into “well, let’s discuss that” and that’s what we did. And it’s kinda blown up. Of course I’ve made some decisions along the way to help move it along, but it started by just having these discussions. I think that’s the key to it, that it’s still very genuine.

What has been the most surprising thing that’s happened from all of this popularity?

Well, I made the front page of the The New York Times, and that

Above, Savannah and Alexa Engel with Kate Bryant on the banks of the Mississippi River

It’s interesting that no matter where you live in the South, most of these phrases or sayings are so common. I grew up in several places in Mississippi and Alabama, and they basically resonate across the board. We sprinkle these little nuggets in our conversations and don’t even realize it.

Exactly. The first time it happened to me, I said I was “fixin’ to” do something, and someone asked what that meant. It kinda broke my brain that they didn’t know what that meant. Like, how do you express that meaning without saying “fixin’ to?” I think that was the one that started it. I love to see the things that we, as Southerners, do that are particular to us. It’s changed my perspective on my own conversations—now I listen to everything people say, and it’s turned into a treasure hunt. There are so many common things that we say that people from other places don’t. I recently had to go through what “cut the lights on” means and found that some people don’t “cut” the lights on. They “turn” them on. And people don’t “mash buttons” or “crank the car,” and I didn’t even realize that.

Yes—now you can crank the car by mashing a button from inside your house!

That’s so funny. Yes, now that sentence would really confuse a lot of people.

What were the top three phrases or topics you were surprised about that really took off?

Well, I’ll tell you, the ones that have really gone viral are the grandma and grandpa names. There are about six or seven million views on those, which blew me away. Of course, people love “y’all”

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Landon and Kate Bryant

and the nuances of “bless your heart”—you know it can be a good phrase or be a negative one. People have really taken to “might could,” which surprised me. I have a line of merchandise with that phrase that’s been really popular. And when I looked it up grammatically, it’s even proper grammar, which was so fun to discover.

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March-April Issue 2023 Q&A with Landon Bryant by Kelli Williams ~ I so enjoyed this article about the South and the Delta.

I’ve lived in Atlanta 45+ years and I still miss the Delta! You brought so many memories to mind. Since I married a “Polack” from Chicago, I’ve learned about another culture, for sure. I have relatives I can barely pronounce, much less spell!! The Delta will always be a part of my soul. Thank you. – Paula Yeska DELTA MAGAZINE 2023 2024 | 19

Sunset Sweetspot

PHOTO BY MARSHALL BLEVINS

There’s nothing like being at the right place at the right time.

Golden hour is a sight to behold at the spot where the county lines of Bolivar and Coahoma Counties abut. This magical place is known as Roundagator to the locals, named for the nearby communities of Roundaway and Alligator. DM

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ON THE ROAD

where we’ve been, where to go next

BOLIVAR COUNTY

J&W Smokehouse is a welcome sight—and smell—as you drive through Cleveland on Highway 61. – ANNA SATTERFIELD

BOLIVAR COUNTY

MARSHALL COUNTY

It may have seen better days, but this door still beckons visitors to “come on in.” – DELTA MAGAZINE

PHOTO OPS Worth the ride: New Blues Trail markers for Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside recently installed at Holly Springs Courthouse Square. – DAVID SWIDER

WASHINGTON COUNTY

GUNNISON

Beauties enjoying a late afternoon on the Mississippi River Levee. – DELTA MAGAZINE

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Wepfer Marine River port in Greenville when the river was at an all time low earlier this year. – LOUISE WORD

BOLIVAR COUNTY

INDIANOLA

Spare tractor tires are ready to roll at Satterfield Farms near Longshot. – ANNA SATTERFIELD

FOOTE

“Nuts for the Blues” Guitar art made of pecans,

by Jane Allen McCrory, at the Indianola Pecan House. – LARRY HENDERSON

& FUNKY STOPS The stately remains of Mount Holly in the South Delta. It was built in 1855 and burned in 2015. – ROBERT SKRMETTA

SUNFLOWER COUNTY

CLARKSDALE Planting season is underway at Shurden Farms in Drew. – STAFFORD SHURDEN Spotted at the Juke Joint Festival. What could be better than beer and the blues? – LEE HARER Instagram users, follow @deltamagazine

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Enjoy Homestyle lunch in our Tearoom Monday - Friday 11:30 am - 1:45 pm

Art Gallery June 2 - July 31 Tuesday - Friday 11:00 am - 2:00 pm Opening & Closing Receptions

Shop & Sewing Room Monday - Friday Shop 10:00 am - 4:00 pm Sewing Room 10:00 am - 3:00 pm Heirloom children’s clothing and unique items hand-crafted by local artisans and makers

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Bayou Academy

Elementary

BA Elementary serves K3 - 6th grade Apply online now!

scan for information

“Empowering students for their success and the glory of God.” Bayou Academy admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all rights, privileges, programs and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, and athletic and other school-administered programs.

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OFF THE BEATEN PATH roaming the real and rustic Delta

KENOY’S Home of the Famous Two-Fisted Burger, T-shirts, and Fireworks!

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F YOU’RE IN NEED OF A GOOD MEAL, SOME CUSTOM-DESIGNED AND PRINTED SPECIALTY ITEMS AND FIREWORKS, Kenoy’s outside of Clarksdale can meet all your needs in a one-of-a-kind shop that offers customers all of those things and more!

The “Two-Fisted Burger” put this restaurant, founded in 1995 by Thearue Kenoy Harris, on the map. But, it’s the laid-back atmosphere as well as all of the other mouthwatering menu items that keep customers coming back.

Kenoy is the driving force behind this eclectic business, from flipping burgers to designing graphic tees, he wears many hats to keep his business thriving.

“I started cooking first and was looking for other ways to make money,” he shared. “I saw a need for the screen printing business so I started that and have been doing pretty good with it.”

Whether you’re in the mood for a classic burger and fries or craving some BBQ goodness, Kenoy’s has got you covered. The Two-fisted burger is “so big you need two hands to eat it.”

“You already need two fists to eat the single,” Kenoy laughed. “But you can add one or two more patties if you want!”

Some of the other popular items include BBQ, philly steaks, burnt bologna and BBQ bologna; all prepared when you order. Kenoy’s personal favorite is the traditional burger with sweet potato fries with his special honey obe seasoning.

Along with serving delicious meals, he also offers custom printing on everything from stickers to apparel and more. “Silkscreen is really good, but it’s not better than my cookin’!” he quips.

Kenoy displays a variety of items for sale at the front of the restaurant. When a customer asks for a different size, Kenoy enthusiastically responds, “Just hold on a second, I’ll make one for you!”

And what about the fireworks? Kenoy explains that he sells them year round, but they are really only big movers for July 4th and New Year’s Eve. So, whether you’re stopping by for a quick meal, t-shirts, some bottle rockets or a little bit of all three, you’re sure to be satisfied. Kenoy feels blessed to have been serving his customers and the Delta for nearly thirty years, and plans to continue doing so.

4125 Friars Point Road, Clarksdale; 662.624.9030 Facebook: @Kenoy’s –“Home of the Famous Two-Fisted Burger”

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Just outside of Clarksdale, Kenoy’s has been a favorite spot for a quick meal for nearly thirty years.

BUSTER’S BUTCHER Where Quality Meets Craftsmanship

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N AN ERA DOMINATED BY MASS PRODUCTION AND INDUSTRIALIZED FARMING, MEMPHIS NEWCOMER, BUSTER’S BUTCHER, snubs its nose at the status quo by

Buster’s Butcher provides carefully selected and beautifully prepared meats as well as other specialty foods.

providing customers with high-quality, farm-to-table, meat and cheese as well as specialty grocery items.

If there’s something familiar about Buster’s, you’re not imagining it. Their roots run deep in Memphis.

R.M. Hammond, Jr, affectionately known as “Buster,” opened a liquor store seventy years ago on South Bellevue near the Stax Museum. Back then, north Mississippi was dry so Buster’s became a first stop for Delta residents venturing into the city, marking the beginning of a tradition that continues to this day.

After several iterations, the store now boasts 16,000 square feet, with a plethora of adult sundries not matched anywhere in the Mid-South. Buster’s grandsons Morgan and Josh manage the business and have now welcomed the fourth generation Morgan’s son, Bear, into the business.

The past year was incredibly busy for the Hammond family, opening both the butcher shop and continuing their heritage with Buster’s Liquors East.

“We opened last summer and business has been great,” said Brad McCarley, Buster’s head butcher.

“We carry a lot of items here that you can’t get anywhere else. Quite a few customers come up from Mississippi and over from Arkansas as well.”

This high-end butcher shop is like nothing else you will find in the South. Whether it's beef, pork, lamb, veal, duck, quail or rabbit, Buster’s will only allow the finest meats to find their way onto their cutting boards.

Some game, including elk and bison, is also available.

They carry specialty groceries as well, including a wide selection of European and domestic cheeses, charcuterie, house-made deli-meats, grab-and-go steakhouse side dishes, sandwiches and much more.

“We have some people come in here for the first time and get a little overwhelmed by the amount of items we carry,” Brad said half-jokingly. “They say they have to go home and make a plan before they come back.”

One thing is for certain, at Buster’s Butcher, whatever you’re seeking, you can trust that each cut has been carefully selected and expertly prepared, carrying on a Hammond family tradition of doing business with excellence and dedication.

199 South Highland Street, Memphis, Tennessee 901.695.1128 bustersbutcher.com Facebook: @Buster’sButcher; Instagram: @bustersbutcher DELTA MAGAZINE 2024

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DE S IG N YOU R DR E A M S PAC E

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HOT TOPICS BOOK INN CAFE Fabulous food in a historic location In the last four years, Janeece Font-Clifton went from selling cakes and cookies out of her home to running the Book Inn Cafe in Greenville, a coffee shop, bakery, and specialty food market situated in one of the Delta’s most venerated historic buildings.

The now-cafe once housed the beloved McCormick Book Inn, Mississippi’s oldest independent bookseller. The McCormick family opened it in 1965, and in 2012, its owner retired, leaving the building behind.

Then, it was a restaurant called Midtown. Then, it was vacant again. Later, it was a coffee shop called Grounded Sister. At that time, Font-Clifton was running a quickly expanding cottage baking business. She began making cakes and cookies for Grounded Sister until, in 2022, ownership changed again: this time, Grounded Sister’s original owner was moving her talents elsewhere, leaving Font-Clifton to take over the space.

She decided to pay homage to the original owners with the name, the Book Inn Cafe, and even with the furnishings, which are modeled after the McCormicks’ shop. The cafe will also soon house part of the McCormick Collection of archival books.

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The Book Inn Cafe offers beautiful baked goods, from bread and pastries to cookies and cakes, as well as café-style coffee, tea, and espresso drinks. It contains a small but eclectic market, where customers might find chicken salad, pimento cheese, pickled peppers, or homemade bread.

Font-Clifton even has menu expansions in the works. “We will be serving lunches from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.,” she says. “I decided that my whole emphasis was going to be having things that no one else has. On my [upcoming] menu, I have boards and salads and crostini, and my ginger turmeric soup, and I will be adding some other hot items later, but most of it is cold serve.

The thought behind that is a place where you can come and sit and spend time and enjoy.”

Font-Clifton has big plans for her little historic cafe. She hopes to bring the fresh and eclectic to Greenville through her business—but she also plans to preserve the old-fashioned, simple, southern comfort that the McCormicks cultivated before her.

825 South Main Street, Greenville; 662.599.2665 Facebook: @BookInnCafe; Instagram @bookinncafe

CRAWFORD ALLEN Going viral with a message of faith Crawford Allen is just like any other Clarksdale native. Allen, a business student at the University of Alabama, loves hunting, fishing, big trucks, hearty food, and the Lord. He’s the prototypical good old southern boy. It just so happens he has over 67,000 followers and 1.8 million likes on TikTok. “It all started because of my dog, Buck,” says Allen. Buck is a hunting dog with a knack for learning new and creative tricks.

Crawford thought the world ought to see it for themselves, so he started posting his pup on TikTok. After filming and posting one particularly innovative trick— where Buck opens the fridge with a rope attached to the handle and fetches his owner a Michelob Ultra—Allen’s TikTok page, under the handle @crawfordallen, went viral faster than you could say ‘fetch.’ “I gained like 10,000 followers overnight,” Allen recalls.

Ever since the explosion, Allen has been using social media as a platform not just to showcase his furry friend, but also to share his faith and promote the southern lifestyle he loves.

Allen’s TikTok page features content about dog training, truck maintenance, college cooking, and the outdoors. Allen is most proud, though, of the content that highlights his faith, from reading Bible verses to openly practicing Lent. “Whether one person or ten thousand people see it, that’s what I always say on those videos—it’s still a win if it hits one person where they need to be hit,” says Allen.

When he’s not posting or studying for his MBA, Allen is

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operating his small business, Delta Feather (its main product is hats, but Allen and his co-operators Joel Sams and Adam Lalance have expanded into shirts and koozies). It’s hard to balance a booming TikTok page, a small business, and school. But, Allen is dedicated to spreading his message online.

“I think the goal for the page in the long run is just to continue promoting that Southern lifestyle that, in my eyes, is slowly dying,” he says. “It seems like people don’t hold the core traditional values anymore, don’t really take a second to step back and breathe. I think that’s what a lot of my page is.”

Clarksdale; 662.592.2900 TikTok: @crawfordallen; Instagram: @crawforda

CORTERRIUS ALLEN: DACAKEGOAT Shelby’s Netflix famous cake artist Is it real, or is it cake?

Hyper-realistic cake decoration has long been a niche-yet-impressive art form, but recently, it has caught fire on social media. The hype around cake artistry has sparked viral videos, memes, and even shows on Netflix and Food Network. Corterrius Allen should know: he’s been a contestant on two of them. Allen’s talents as a baker have taken him to the small Corterrius Allen screen and beyond—but his story starts in the Delta.

“I was an 18-year-old high school student, and I had got a job at a bakery,” says Allen. “It was in a small town called Cleveland, Mississippi, in the Delta.” At his first job, Allen learned the ins and outs of the baking business. It paid off when he started his own small cakes-and-cupcakes business while attending Coahoma Community College. (2024 marks CJA Cakes & Cupcakes’ fifth year of operation, according to Allen.)

Allen had not even been filling orders for more than two years, though, when his career went national.

“People were telling me, like, you should go try for those shows,” Allen recalls. So he did. Allen sent an audition to Food Network.

Next thing he knew, he was a contestant on the eleventh season of

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Halloween Wars; two years later, he competed on Netflix’s “Is It Cake?”

Being on television launched Allen’s career to new heights. He says people recognize him in public now; he has released a merchandising line called “Cakenotized” and even made cakes for major franchises like Firehouse Subs.

In his every day, though, Allen works in family advocacy. “I’m DaCakeGoat 24/7, and I’m a social worker 24/7,” says Allen.

“I just kind of try to tie both of them together,” he says. “I call it ‘caking your problems away.’”

With TV spots, brand deals, and a demanding day job, it would be easy for anyone to get lost in the weeds. But, Allen has stayed true to himself and his roots. On top of his other dreams and ambitions, he is working towards opening a brickand-mortar bakery in his hometown of Shelby.

Until then, you can follow Allen’s creations on on his social media platforms.

TikTok @theeecakegoat; Facebook: @CorterriusJaQuavionAllen; Instagram: @dacakegoat

SUMMER’S SUSHI Personalized sushi from Florida to the Delta Summer and Blair Rushing are partners in life and in sushi. Co-owners and operators of Summer’s Sushi, the Rushings bring personalized sushi experiences to their customers’ homes. Together, they built a business that’s making waves from the Mississippi Delta to the Florida coast.

Their story starts at a southern-style sushiserving juke-joint called Jack’s by the Tracks in Pascagoula, Mississippi. It’s where Summer—Laurel native and former Jack’s by the Tracks chef—and Blair—Pascagoula native and former Jack’s by the Tracks customer—first met.

“I just fell in love with the art of it all,” says Summer. Summer began making her eclectic sushi in-house at her friends’ homes. Soon, she realized she had stumbled into an opportunity. The rest is history.

Summer’s Sushi is based out of Pensacola, Florida, but their clientele comes from all over the south—particularly the Delta, thanks to Summer’s family connections there, and good old word of mouth. It’s not the kind of experience you can find just anywhere. The Rushings and their team travel to their clients and prepare the sushi spread of their client’s choosing in-house.

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Options range from the traditional, like the Classic Cali Roll, to the eclectic, like the Seared Tuna Roll, which features asparagus, avocado, and red peppers.

Summer’s Sushi occasionally offers sushi classes in two brick-and-mortar locations: Bodacious in downtown Pensacola, and the Viking Cooking School in Greenwood.

The Rushings’ story is about the south and, of course, about sushi, but it’s also about overcoming struggle. Summer and Blair are both recovered addicts. “I actually got sober while working at Jack’s,” Summer recalls. “I feel like it saved my life for sure,” she says of her experience as a sushi chef. “That is something we want to pursue in our future— helping other people, too.”

Summer and Blair take pride in their enterprise, but more than that, they take pride in the hope and community it creates. “In just the three hours that we’re there, we can leave a party hugging and loving,” says Summer. “It’s not just the sushi that we’re bringing them. It’s an experience. It’s a connection.”

228.617.9300; Facebook: @SummersSushi; Instagram: @sumsumssushi DELTA MAGAZINE 2024

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DELTA MAGAZINE 2024

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BOOKS

Buzzworthy Comments

Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange (Penguin Random House) Tommy Orange is an important author, and so his latest novel, Wandering Stars is a paramount work of fiction. It is both a prequel and sequel to his Pulitzer Prize finalist, There, There, but there is no need to have read his breakout debut to be immersed in this compelling novel about cultural, multigenerational trauma. It starts in 1865 with a man named Jude Star who survived the Sand Creek Massacre, only to be sent to the Carlisle Industrial Indian School, where he is supposed to be re-educated and assimilate into civilized society. His son Charles is brutalized while imprisoned a generation later. The reader is also swept forward to the aftermath of a shooting at a powwow in Oakland in 2018. Orange’s writing is brilliant and impactful through these connected timelines, enlightening the reader on what it Tommy Orange means to cut a people adrift from their culture, and what it means for the generations who come after. (Liza Jones) Daywork by Jessica Fisher (Milkweed Books) Jessica Fisher is an award-winning poet, and her third book, Daywork is a beautiful compilation of introspective and emotional poetic stories, pondering time and art. The title comes from the giornata, a section of fresco painting that can be done in a day. The finished painting has seams that show the daily work over a period of time, and it becomes clear that Fisher herself is painting something for the reader. The result is a deep interrogation of time versus the act of creation in everyday life. She seems to argue that art is deathless while time kills with ruthless determination, rendering grief always. Her poetry is illuminating, with a confident, exigent voice. It shoots its light into the soul with both largesse and intimacy. (Liza Jones)

We asked Facebook friends and the Delta Magazine fan page group members what is the longest book they have ever read. o Donna Pase Keithley, retired Bella Vista, Arkansas

The uncut version of The Stand

by Stephen King o Walter Herbison, sports consultant Ridgeland, Mississippi

The Land Where the Blues Began

by Alan Lomax o Sharon Reece Neff, retired Acrola, Mississippi

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell o Max Rapert, salesman with Delta Materials, Inc. Trumann, Arkansas Jessica Fisher

One Icy Night by W.A. Pepper (Hustle Valley Press) Cleveland native Will Pepper’s latest novel is true page-turner—gritty and unexpected. Protagonist Rook Kellum is on the run in the most dangerous storm in decades. When a brush with the law goes from bad to worse, can she escape druggies, crazies, and killers? Abandoned by her now-ex-boyfriend at a dive bar in the middle of nowhere, the last thing resilient Kellum needs is the local sheriff confiscating her I.D. when one phone call could expose her true identity and the reason she is on the run from the law. So, when she’s trapped by a deadly ice storm that destroys the Mississippi Delta, the twenty-year-old fugitive has a plan: get everyone drunk, steal back her license (and a madman’s car), and get the hell out of town. It is only when Rook escapes to a secluded cabin does she discover she isn’t the only one in need of rescue.

As she fights her way out of one disaster just to get pounded with another, will Rook live to see the light of day? With its brisk pacing, engaging flashbacks, and W.A. Pepper well-developed characters, One Icy Night is a great choice for fans of thrillers. (DM Staff )

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy o Cindy Turner Roberts, retired Santa Rosa Beach, Florida

The Stand by Stephen King o Anita Grossman Horn, retired Pine, Colorado

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy o Anne Martin Vetrano, freelance writer Rosedale, Mississippi

The Bone Tree by Greg Iles o Otis Goodin, retired Franklin, Tennessee

The Goldfinch by Donna Tart o Mona Milan, art teacher Greenville, Mississippi

Roots by Alex Haley

For the Record Books Delta Magazine fans are currently reading o Nancy Webb Phillips The Delta in the Rearview Mirror

by Di Rushing

o Sharon Reece Neff Don’t Give the Enemy a Seat at Your Table

by Louie Giglio

o Todd Cooper The Lost Metal

by Brandon Sanderson

o Frances Turnage The Heart of Everything That Is

by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin 38 | MAY/JUNE 2024

o Bob Lowry Death After Dishonor

by Danny R. Smith

o Derwin B. Govan The Collector

by David Silva

o Rodney Greene The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History

by Alexander Mikaberidze

o Debra Taylor Simpson Debra Taylor Simpson

by Dyan Cannon

o Pamela Tatum Signa The Girl in the Letter: A Home for Unwed Mothers

by Emily Gunnison

o Billy/Paula Logan Maines The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

by Kim Michele Richardson

o Marsha Lishman Cross Down

by James Patterson

o Will Gault Demon Copperhead

by Barbara Kingsolver

Thank You Please Come Again by Kate Medley (The Bitter Southerner, Inc.) If you are a lover of gas station food, road trips, and the American South Thank You Please Come Again is the book for you. Photojournalist and Mississippi native Kate Medley’s documentation of her travels across the South, photographing service stations, convenience stores, and quick stops, tells a rich story. Along the way, Kate pulls over for tamales, fried fish, and banh mi, but her images uncover the people and landmarks that supply far more than food and gas. In an ever more divided America, these iconic gathering spaces provide unexpected community, generosity, labor, and creativity. Are these rural and urban pit stops the true “filling stations” of our time? In words and nearly two hundred incredible images from the American South, Kate Medley shares her answers. (DM Staff ) Nothing to Lose: Nothing to Lose: A Story of Poverty, Resilience, and Gratitude by J.L. Holloway (Neil White) One of the state’s most successful business stories just could be J.L. Holloway. A native of Prentiss, Holloway started picking cotton at the age of four and has been an entrepreneur his entire life. Along the way in his rag to riches story, Holloway has owned and operated businesses and industries ranging from equipment rental and international logistics to offshore drilling services and aerospace leasing.

Holloway has just written a book about his life, Nothing to Lose: Nothing to Lose: A Story of Poverty, Resilience, and Gratitude. In it Holloway tells his story of the businesses that he built and sometimes lost. He talks about the cast of characters he encountered along the way in his career that include well-known politicians, public figures, life-long friends, and eccentric acquaintances. He reveals the public highs and the embarrassing lows during his career and the marriage that was his saving grace. Holloway’s vulnerability, candor, and willingness to let readers experience his most difficult moments adds a rare significant depth and meaning to his remarkable story. With few resources to lift him out of the poverty of his early years, he showed a remarkable willingness to work, an uncanny ability to find an opportunity, and a charm that moved people to take a chance on him. (DM Staff ) Once a Delta Boy Always a Delta Boy by Gene Holiman (Archway Publishing) In this book author Gene Holiman relives his own memories and those of many other families during the mid-Twentieth Century Mississippi Delta. Hopefully, these recollections can help readers recognize events and places that were integral to their own upbringing during these formative years. Read. Reflect. Laugh. Cry. Relive growing up in the Delta from your own perspective.

The years just after World War II witnessed an idyllic era which packed explosive agricultural and industrial growth, and which provided a perfect small town atmosphere for raising families. But, as more widespread integration was introduced in the '60's, many abrupt changes occurred in the area. Wealth shifted among families and races.

Racially separated schools were consolidated. Some businesses prospered, many others shuttered their doors. Opportunities finally opened for some citizens just as they slammed shut for others. Growth in Queen City Greenville and other nearby enclaves peaked and then began to spiral downward. No matter where you live today, one truth still rings true, however. If you were born or raised as a child of the Delta, you will always be a proud child of the Delta.... a Delta Boy (or Girl) (DM Staff ) DM DELTA MAGAZINE 2024

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SHOPPING

Mother’s Day Blooms and Blossoms

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Make Mother’s Day special with these floral-inspired gifts!

1. Pima Long-Short Set in Wildflower Vine Floral

LAKE Instagram: @lakepajamas lakepajamas.com; 912.999.6177

2. Rose Petal Amaryllis Bulbs Willow, Clarksdale Instagram: @willowbotanicalandgoods willowclarksdale.com; 662.621.6591

3. Jane Carr Hortensia Wrap in Delphinium

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Village Tailer, Oxford Instagram: @_shopvillagetailor shopvillagetailor.com; 662.234.8217

4. Lollia Bubble Bath

Lavender Lane, Indianola Instagram: @lavenderlaneindianola 662.452.5131

5. Jon Hart Weekender in Rose

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with Peony Webbing

Mod + Proper, Cleveland Instagram: @modandproper modandproper.com; 662.400.3111

6. Diamond Flower Stud Earrings Mednikow, Memphis Instagram: @mednikowmemphis mednikow.com; 901.767.2100

7. Pickleball Paddle and Custom Case Barrington Gifts Instagram: @barringtongifts barringtongifts.com; 214.528.6990

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8. Floral Cocktail Napkins

Shoppes on South Main, Greenville Instagram: @shoppesonsouthmain 662.702.3999

9. Succulent White Planter

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The Olive Tree, Starkville Instagram: @theolivetreestarkville theolivetreestarkville.com; 662.722.3019

10. S is for Style—The Schumacher Book of Decoration Coffee Table Book

The Olive Tree, Starkville Instagram: @theolivetreestarkville theolivetreestarkville.com; 662.722.3019

11. Blossom Ginger Jar

Neysa’s, Cleveland Instagram: @neysasfiresideshop neysas-fireside.myshoplocal.com; 662.843.3311

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6.

We love the feminine touch on this hard-working tote!

7.

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Mom will LOVE this beautiful cachepot— perfect for orchids!

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10.

11.

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SHOPPING

Graduation

5.

8 great gift ideas for the graduates on your list

GIRLS 1. Molded Eva Slides

6.

Rosson Co., Cleveland Instagram @rossoncompany rosson-co.shoplightspeed.com; 662.843.3986

Perfect gift to show team spirit in an apartment or the dorm!

2. Laura Park Giverny

Large Cosmetic Bag Sav-More Drugs and Gifts, Grenada Instagram @savmordrugsandgifts savmordrugsandgifts.com; 662.226.6741

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3. Taylor Swift and the Clothes She Wears Coffee Table Book

Magpie Gift & Art; Clarksdale Instagram: @magpiegiftandart 662.624.8385

4. Pura Machine + Fragrance

Social X Saint, Hernando Instagram: @socialxsaint socialxsaint.com; 662.298.3566

7.

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Your girl-grad will love these for the beach or the dorm!

9.

2.

BOYS 5. Word Mark Pillow

Little Birdie, Calhoun City Instagram @shoplittlebirdie littlebirdiehome.com; 662.628.4172

6. MSU Cowbell

Mimi’s on Main, Senatobia Instagram: @mimisonmain 662.562.8261

7. Ole Miss Tumbler

3.

4.

Mimi’s on Main, Senatobia Instagram: @mimisonmain 662.562.8261

8. Kanga Coolers Kast Mate in Woody

Social X Saint, Hernando Instagram: @socialxsaint socialxsaint.com; 662.298.3566

9. Premium Socks

DeadSoxy Instagram @deadsoxy deadsoxy.com; 972.861.0103

46 | MAY/JUNE 2024

Father’s Day

Honor your dad • grandad • husband • brother with these fun and functional gifts

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1. Small Batch Artisan Bacon

Bill-E’s Bacon Facebook: @billessmallbatchbacon billesbacon.com; 251.209.2129

2. Red Panther Brewing Co. Six Pack Collective Seed, Clarksdale Instagram: @collective.seed collective-seed.com; 662.624.2381

3. Thank You Please Come Again: How Gas Stations Feed & Fuel the American South Book

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Available at local bookstores Instagram: @bittersoutherner bittersoutherner.com

4. Larry Dale Rider Cowboy Boots Double B, Pontotoc Instagram: @doublebboots doublebboots.com

3.

5. Customized Golf Towel

Weezie Instagram: @weezietowels weezietowels.com; 404.941.7514

If your favorite dad is a connoisseur of gas station food, or a lover of road trips and Americana—this is the book for him!

6. Gentleman's Gift Basket

The Mississippi Gift Company, Greenwood Instagram @themississippigiftcompany themississippigiftcompany.com; 662.455.6961

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7. Estelle Rocks Glasses Set

Mod + Proper, Cleveland Instagram: @modandproper shopmodandproper.com; 662.400.3111

8. Yukon Outfitters Cooler

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The Sportsman Inc., Greenville Instagram: @the_sportsman_inc 662.335.5018

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A great gift for dad to take when he goes to hit the links!

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ART

Kathy Sue Wells Contemporary art inspired by love, peace, heartache and joy

BY SUSAN MARQUEZ • PHOTOGRAPHY BY ABE DRAPER

50 | MAY/JUNE 2024

A recent work by Wells, Are You in the Zone?

s a contemporary Mississippi artist, Kathy Sue Wells draws on her Delta roots. “I love texture, color, and balance,” she says. “I have always loved distressed wood and rusted metal. I can’t help but think that the sights I grew up with in the Mississippi Delta contributed to that.”

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A native of Cleveland, Kathy Sue graduated from Cleveland High School before going to Delta State. “It was just eight blocks from my house,” she laughs. “I had no idea what I wanted to do.”

She took fashion merchandising and accounting classes, trying to figure out what she wanted to do. Kathy Sue realized early on she couldn’t imagine sitting at a desk all day staring at numbers.

“Boring!” She ended up getting a degree in graphic design with a minor in drawing. “It turned out to be such a blessing to me that Delta State has such an outstanding art department.”

The Madison resident has operated her graphic design company, Wells Graphics, since 1996. “I didn’t know I would go into graphic design,” she recalls. “A friend of my sister’s saw my doodling one day and told me I should look into graphic design.

Happy Life

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Wells busy at work in her studio, with finished pieces scattered against the walls.

I took a class in graphic design, and it opened my eyes to the fact that there were options I had never before considered.”

Kathy Sue says that was before the days of computers when layouts were all done by hand. “I’m glad I had that opportunity, although when computers came along near the end of my college years, I learned to use them.” She took her knowledge with her to G. Williams and Associates in Jackson, where she had an internship before going to work for Debbe Amacker (now Debbe Tillman) at Amacker, Inc. After working for both companies off and on for several years, Kathy Sue began freelancing. “I worked out of an office in Jackson, then Clinton, for a while before moving my office into my home in Madison.”

While the world of graphic design is more rigid, Kathy Sue found an escape in her art. “I started painting, and it made me feel like a kid again. It’s a wonderful escape for me. I can clear my mind and focus solely on painting.” She paints in a spare bedroom in her home.

“It’s a sanctuary of sorts for me,” she says. “I feel that painting is something more Godly to me. Sometimes, I light candles or twinkle lights, and it’s very quiet. I go into my zone. Other times, I play music. It just depends on my mood. Regardless, it’s like my secret garden. A private space I can call my own.”

Kathy Sue says she sometimes has ideas in her head of what to paint. “I keep a sketchbook with me at all times, and I make rough sketches and write down the colors and the feel I want. The older I get, the more I realize the Delta has had a profound influence on my work. There is a real depth to the people there, and there are so many stories. I think a lot of beauty can come from both the good and bad experiences we all go through. I try to capture that beauty with my painting.” She works on canvas and paper and sometimes does collages, layering to get her desired effect. Her paintings are inspired

by God, nature, peace, joy, love, and heartache.

Just like life has many layers, Kathy Sue says she loves having many layers and textures in her work. “It’s almost like putting together a puzzle, with the textures, colors, and balance of each piece. I really enjoy it and have lots of fun with it. I still have new styles I want to 52 | MAY/JUNE 2024

Thrill of the Journey (1 and 2)

try. I’m always seeing compositions in my head. I’ve gotten to love monochromatic, and I’d love to do more of that. I’d also like to explore a more realistic style. I’ve been doing some folksy stuff that is fun, too.” Working in acrylics, charcoal, and pastels, Kathy Sue says she does a lot of large-scale canvases. “People seem to want those more in their homes for maximum impact.”

A gifted photographer, Kathy Sue takes photos of things she may want to paint, but she is still seeking her own style. “I want to paint things my way, looser, and not so tight. Sometimes, as an artist, you feel so vulnerable, but it’s important to push yourself. I want to move to different topics and themes and see where that leads me.”

Pondering DNA and how traits are passed down through the generations, Kathy Sue can’t help but wonder if perhaps her creativity came from her father. “He was so creative,” she says. “He was the manager of Gibson’s in Cleveland when I was growing up. People always commented on how clean and well-laid out his store was. He did great merchandising and designing creative end caps. He was so ahead of his time. I remember one year, he had a Santa parachute from a plane into a field across the street from the store, and then he walked over to take photos with the kids who came to see him. My dad was such a creative person, and I think maybe he passed some of that down to me.”

Over the years, Kathy Sue has shown her art at different galleries in Mississippi, and her talent has been recognized in unique ways.

She entered a contest that the furniture company I.O. Metro held and won first place for the southeast. She also sold a few pieces to John-Richard, a luxury home furnishings manufacturer based in Greenwood, for reproduction. “I was excited when I walked into the old Batte Furniture in Jackson one day and saw some of the artwork I sold to John-Richard in there!”

Kathy Sue’s photography and paintings are available to view and purchase at the Book Inn Cafe in Greenville and in Image Gallery and LaBelle Interiors in Madison. You can also see her work on her Facebook page, KS Wells Artist, and her website, kathysuewells.com.

DM

Peace

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MUSIC

Cody Ruth, Charles Sullivan and Amanda Mayo-Saalwaechter

String Theory

BY JIM BEAUGEZ

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EUPHUS RUTH

Greenville’s Delta String Band resurrects forgotten old-time Americana and Mississippi fiddle tunes on their debut, Songs of Late Vol. 1

MARK FRYE

M

It’s why once-obscure bands like Big Star and the Velvet Underground, who influenced future chart-toppers R.E.M. and countless others, can find new fans decades after their heydays. The same goes for many Delta blues singers and guitar pickers, who only achieved recognition late in life or posthumously after rock and roll became a cross-cultural phenomenon.

And it’s why Delta String Band, an oldtime American music group based in Greenville, wasn’t content to play “Man of Constant Sorrow” or “Rocky Top,” songs even non-bluegrass fans recognize, when the roots of those songs led further back into time and history.

Cody Ruth and Charles Sullivan, the two constants of the Delta String Band’s lineup to date, find a deep well of inspiration in those sepia and tintype tones of yesteryear.

And since adding fiddle player Amanda Mayo-Saalwaechter to round out the trio, the mostly forgotten fiddle tunes predating many bluegrass and old-time American music standards have become their latest obsession.

“We’re not so much a bluegrass band— we’re more of an old-time band,” Ruth says.

“When we first started, I guess we were on the edge of bluegrass and the whole newgrass movement. But we’re focused on

Ruth, Sullivan and Amanda Mayo-Saalwaechter performing at the Delta Hot Tamale Festival in Greenville 2023.

NICK SAALWAECHTER

usicians tend to leave a trail of clues from the songs they play to the music and artists who inspired them. Lyrical turns of phrase or vocal inflections, musical patterns and motifs, and the sounds of the instruments themselves can be traced backward in time, as each generation adds their own signatures along the way.

FAITH BARNETT

Ruth and Sullivan at the Blue Front Cafe in Bentonia.

Ruth, Sullivan and Amanda Mayo-Saalwaechter

Mississippi songs, playing stuff that’s 100 years old.”

Over the past year, their setlist has transitioned from the songs of John Prine, Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton, as well as more recent Americana bands like Drive-By Truckers, to vintage fare such as “Tupelo Blues,” “Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy,” and “Poor Mary Sitting in the Corner.” And, they’re playing a lot of songs residing in the public domain—their new EP, Songs of Late Vol. 1, released in April, features “Cluck Old Hen,” and “Who Broke the Lock,” a pair of nineteenth-century Appalachian tunes.

“There’s so many fiddle songs, it was getting overwhelming trying to pick what to play,” Ruth says. “Listening to the Soundwagon CD [Give the Fiddler a Dram, 2009], with Jack Magee, and then

researching the artists that originally did those songs is what gave me a little bit of focus instead of just learning any old song.”

The music Delta String Band plays is 180 degrees from Nirvana, Tool and the nineties alternative-rock and metal bands Ruth and Sullivan grew up cranking. But the transition from modern music played on electric instruments through massive amplifiers to the traditional sounds of an acoustic guitar, fiddle and viol—a bowed, Revolutionary War-era stringed instrument sized between a cello and an upright bass, which allows Ruth to play bass parts and higher fiddle parts as the gig requires—was gradual. Ruth owned an upright bass as far back as high school, for example, but didn’t apply it to his music for several years.

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TOP ROVE LIFE PHOTOGRAPHY FAITH BARRETT

David Morgan, Ruth, Sullivan and Mayo-Saalawechter at Mighty Roots Music Festival in Stovall in 2023.

FAITH BARRETT

Morgan, Ruth, Sullivan and May-Saalwaechter performing at the Delta Hot Tamale Festival in 2023.

Ruth and Sullivan performing.

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Ruth studied bass and jazz at the University of Southern Mississippi under Dr. Marcos Machado and Larry Panella, and then moved to New Orleans, where he spent evenings playing music around the city. “I’ve played in so many venues in New Orleans,” Ruth says. “I used to play at Siberia every other Thursday with a Klezmer European folk band. I used to play at the Spotted Cat occasionally. I had a residency at the Carousel Lounge in Hotel Monteleone. I mean, I did everything.”

His day job—working for a construction crew on renovations of historical buildings—brought him home after a few years, though, when he returned to work on the restoration of The Belmont 1857 mansion in Wayside in 2016.

Sullivan spent a short time in Pennsylvania before returning, too, and never stopped playing music. Back in Greenville, he formed a loud, distortedguitar-driven duo with his brother on drums, and strummed country and folk songs on his acoustic guitar at open mic nights across the Delta. It wasn’t a huge leap, then, to transition to playing bluegrass and old-time music.

“I got my first guitar for my 14th birthday, and I was really into Kurt Cobain,” Sullivan says. “But I think the core of the country side of it came from being raised listening to classic country music, like Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson—all the outlaw stuff.

I was around it constantly, and as I got older, I circled back to that aspect of nostalgia, and I enjoyed it a lot.”

The group’s origin dates to the 2018 Belmont Bluegrass and Barbecue Festival, which they helped create alongside the late Delta historian Hank Burdine and Camille Collins. In fact, they formed the Delta String Band explicitly to perform there. “It was up to us to come up with enough bluegrass bands, or at least bluegrass-adjacent bands, to make a festival together,” Ruth says. With a month to put it together, they pulled in friends Spike Brown on plectrum banjo, David Morgan on mandolin and Sarah Taylor on lead vocals.

“When I decided to put the band together for the festival, I’d already been playing in a duo with Charles,” Ruth says. “We got everybody together and pulled from everybody—mainly Charles, any songs he knew—and some songs I knew how to sing, some songs Spike knew how to sing. Whatever somebody happened to know, we just threw it in. There wasn’t really a grand plan.”

EUPHUS RUTH FAITH BARNETT

Sullivan and Ruth

Clockwise from top left: Sullivan, Ruth, Brown, Slayton and Morgan

EUPHUS RUTH

Eventually, as band members and collaborators like Craig Adams, Mike Slaton and Will Coppage came and went, Ruth and Sullivan began to specialize in more obscure numbers, becoming record-crate diggers and chasing song leads down internet rabbit holes as they researched fiddle songs associated with musicians from Mississippi. Ruth also read Harry Bolick’s Mississippi Fiddle Book, which gave him the history of old-time songs, as well as transcriptions so the band could learn them.

“I think it gives us focus but also represents where we’re from,” says Ruth.

“We could learn a bunch of Virginia songs, but those aren’t really our songs. I felt it was most appropriate to learn songs that originated close to where we’re from, and then bring those to other places.”

Branching out from the Delta bar and festival circuit, the Delta String Band will play its first Memphis gig this summer, as well as festivals in Louisiana and gigs down to Hattiesburg and over to Arkansas. The band is fielding performance requests at thedeltastringband@gmail.com, and Songs of Late Vol. 1 is available for streaming from Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and other services. DM

EUPHUS RUTH

Ruth, David Morgan, Will Coppage and Sullivan performing at Bluegrass Mass, Dockery Farms in 2023.

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OUR AGENTS—TOP ROW L-R: TERESA BROOKS, LIBBY GERALD, KRISTIN HUBBARD, CALEB LUKE, MELANIE MITCHELL BOTTOM ROW L-R: NATALIE MORGAN, AMY MYERS, JOE WEBB, JUDY WEBB, JAY MURPHY—MANAGING BROKER

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On the making of

The Great River The birth of a River writer

Before reaching the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River once split its water into many different channels. But today, those bayous are disconnected from the river, which has devastated local marshes. Terrebonne Parish, pictured here, is one of the fastest-disappearing places on Earth.

BY KELSEY BETZ • PHOTOS BY RORY DOYLE

The story of The Great River, Boyce Upholt’s debut book, began when the rest of his life first started, which is to say, when he moved to the Mississippi Delta. Teach for America had offered him a job in 2009 to come work in Mississippi. In search of adventure and meaningful work, Upholt accepted. “And then that adventure became the rest of my life,” he recently recalls.

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Upholt, pictured here on assignment an Arkansas soybean field, has been a freelance writer for more than a decade. Below, he fishes in the Louisiana delta while on assignment for Smithsonian.

Upholt had always known he wanted to make a life as a writer. Figuring out how to do that wasn’t always obvious, but living and working in Mississippi brought clarity to the Connecticut native. “Being in a place with such a strong literary culture, I think it just forced me to do this thing that I’d always wanted to do,” Upholt said.

He began writing for several publications, including this magazine.

What sparked the idea for his first book was an assignment for the Bitter Southerner about John Ruskey—the owner of Quapaw Canoe Company in Clarksdale, which is the foremost operation offering guides of the Lower Mississippi River. What he discovered on that assignment was a place both familiar and foreign, mythic and misunderstood, massive yet hidden. The first thing he knew at the conclusion of that trip was that he wanted to go back.

Over the years, Upholt journeyed on and along the river countless times, learning, writing, exploring. But that first trip with Ruskey was the first time Upholt

got a taste of a writer’s life, at least the type of writer he wanted to be.

He had previously been drawn to journalism in part for the chance to explore the world. That first trip on the river, then, was a turning point in his career, he says. This book, his first, is another.

Set to publish on June 11, The Great River is an ambitious work that encapsulates nearly four thousand years of the Mississippi River’s history and of man’s interference with it. As Upholt sees it, the book is part history of how the river has been viewed and treated because of that and part journalistic work showing what the river is now.

“Over thousands of years, the Mississippi watershed was home to millions of Indigenous people who regarded ‘the great river’ with awe and respect, adorning its banks with astonishing spiritual earthworks. But European settlers and American pioneers had a different vision: the river was a foe to conquer,” The Great River book summary reads.

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What makes the Mississippi so great is its many tributaries. But these rivers face crises. Below, engineers work to repair a levee in Atchison County, Missouri, after major flooding struck the Missouri River in 2019. Below, the lock at the "Falls of the Ohio," near Louisville, Kentucky, is one of the many pieces of infrastructure that assist navigation, but cause ecosystem impacts. (Photos copyright the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.)

While there are some texts in existence that cover this topic for an academic audience, The Great River is one of the first books written about it for a popular audience. Upholt hopes it will serve as a lasting resource for anyone wanting to learn about the river while also drawing people in because it’s an enjoyable read.

Beyond that, he hopes it convinces people to think about the Mississippi River, the places built alongside it, and its conflicts and complexities. Because knowing the river more intimately can change the way we see the world, as it did for Upholt. He finds he’s now more attuned to geography and ecology and how they shape so much of our culture.

“It wasn’t until the time I spent on the river that really changed the way I think about and interact with the world,” Upholt said. “I wasn’t a river-centric thinker before. I realized that I lived alongside the continent’s biggest river and that it had

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Indigenous earthworks, like the Winterville Mounds in Washington County, above, appear all along the Mississippi, and Upholt says they offer a guide to other ways of seeing the river. Below, the concrete revetment meant to stop flooding lies exposed near Rosedale during the recent drought.

completely shaped the place where I lived.”

That thinking has evolved into his latest project, which is an email newsletter called Southlands that provides a guide to nature across the South.

Ultimately, Upholt wants readers to be inspired to get to know the Mississippi River for themselves, to interact with its waters and banks, and to see the great American beauty for what it really is.

“I hope,” he writes in The Great River, “that you will see the beauty that persists despite our mistakes. And I hope most of all that you will be tempted to come and join me on the rivers across this great and sprawling watershed. Your presence—all of ours—is what the Mississippi most needs.”

The Great River is available for preorder at Cotton Row Book Store in Cleveland or through most booksellers.

For additional information, visit boyceupholt.com. DM

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Clarksdale’s Favorite Ride Ridin’ around, safe and sound

BY BILLY HOWELL • PHOTOS BY MADGE HOWELL

Roosevelt Noah, aka “Mr. Jolly” stands with his current cab. He has become a fixture on the streets of Clarksdale, serving the community for years with his cab service.

ifty-seven years and counting. That’s how long Roosevelt Noah has been driving a cab, serving Clarksdale and Coahoma County locals and tourists. As the longtime owner of Jolly Cab Company, “Ro,” “Mr. Jolly,” or “Jolly,” reverently serves his hometown area with reliable, safe, and welcoming transport, often accompanied by Delta lagniappe—that little bit extra.

F God has been good to me all down through the years, and there are a lot of people who don’t have money.

I’ll ride them for free. – ROOSEVELT NOAH 68 | MAY/JUNE 2024

Jolly first learned the streets of Clarksdale driving a school bus and serving his community in law enforcement, often in the wee hours of the morning. Born in Clarksdale seventy-seven years ago, Jolly spent fourteen years, until recently, assisting Coahoma County as an election commissioner. Before that, he spent ten years driving a school bus, followed by eight years as a patrolman for the Clarksdale Police Department, finalizing his law enforcement career with thirteen years as a deputy sheriff for Coahoma County.

“I’ve been working with the public for a long time,” says Jolly. He truly knows his streets like no other. “I’m from Sherard, Mississippi,” he continues. “The reason I got started in the cab business staying out at Sherard was my wife was working at the Head Start Center on what was Fourth Street and Yazoo in Clarksdale. I used to bring her to town in the morning after I would do my school bus route.”

Not having anything to do while waiting for his wife to get off work at noon, he would walk down the street to the Courtesy Cab stand and chat with the drivers. One day, a driver asked him if he wanted to drive a cab. At the time, Courtesy Cab had nine cabs operating and there were about thirty cabs in Clarksdale.

“I drove for about four or five years before I started my own business,” says Jolly.

Asked where the name Jolly came from, he said a former business partner’s wife came up with the name. It fits, as Jolly is one of the jolliest fellas a rider could ever meet.

Most of Jolly Cab’s business is local, but he does ferry tourists, often from Hopson and the Shack Up Inn to town and back, though he says COVID did affect his tourist fares. Primarily a local service, as the last cab standing in Clarksdale, Jolly does make runs to the Memphis airport and has driven to New Orleans for a fare.

“I’m going to continue to drive a cab,” Jolly says. “These tourists, if they call me any time and I’m at home in the bed, I’m going to get up and go get them.” Jolly will not only avail himself at all hours to serve tourists, but he says because God has been good to him, he feels it is incumbent upon him to bless others. When driving tourists who have come to the birthplace of the blues to hear live music 365 days per year, Jolly will extend the previously mentioned Delta lagniappe by adding a brief tour around town at no extra charge.

“Now, God has been good to me all

Mr. Jolly with fellow Clarksdale native and writer, Billy Howell.

down through the years, and there are a lot of people who don’t have money. I’ll ride them for free,” he says. “If you’re going my way and I know you, I’m going to pick you up and give you a ride. If I can help anybody, I will do it. When God blesses you, if you can bless somebody else, you need to do it.”

Jolly intends to bring sustainability to the local cab business. He states that if he ever retires, his two sons will take over the business and continue serving the community.

Jolly charges fifteen dollars to drive out to the Shack Up Inn to pick up just one person and bring them back to Clarksdale; if there are two, he will charge just eight dollars and fifty cents a head, and if it’s more than that, he cuts the rate to just six dollars per person. If he takes fares out to Hopson, Ground Zero Blues Club, or any place downtown, then regardless of time, he will come to pick them back up and take them to wherever they are staying.

“When I started driving a cab, car insurance was twenty dollars per year, gas was eleven cents per gallon, and we charged

only twenty-five cents per person,” Jolly says.

“Now, my insurance is over one thousand dollars per year, and gas is very expensive.”

Asserting that he does not try to charge too much for his services, he does note the expense of operating a vehicle in today’s economy.

What a blessing in a small Delta town to have reliable cab service from a man who knows his town as well or better than any other and who—due to his deep-seated faith and Delta upbringing—is delighted to serve all those God brings across his path, even at hours when most folks are safely tucked in their beds.

Call Mr. Jolly, Ro, or Roosevelt at Jolly Cab Company at 662.624.9256 for a ride with an original. DM DELTA MAGAZINE 2024

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Spring kayaking on Sky Lake near Belzoni.

A Safe Harbor Jason Hoeksema and Delta Wind Birds work to create Delta habitat for dwindling numbers of migrating

JASON HOEKSEMA

BY JIM BEAUGEZ

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housands of feet above the Mississippi Delta, the region’s proliferation of oxbow lakes, catfish ponds and bayous shimmer in the sunlight. To the human eye, it can

T

PHOTOS OBTAINED FROM DIGITAL MEDIA SOURCES

appear as if a map were laid flat over the alluvial plain, the curvatures where land meets water defined and each body of water uniform.

But the birdwatchers and waterfowl hunters who flock to these vantages to view and hunt certain species as they travel along the Mississippi Flyway, a bird migration route that follows the Mississippi River and its major tributaries, know that can’t be entirely true. Each backwater, pond and river is its own micro-ecosystem, with differences in depth and drainage and manmade obstructions wielding influence over them.

Perhaps no family of birds understands this as well as shorebirds, a group that includes familiar species such as snipe, woodcock and killdeer, and lesser-known species such as sandpipers, plovers, godwits and willets. These birds account for forty percent of all migrating waterbirds in North America, and more than half a million of them migrate through the Delta each year.

And not many people are as closely attuned to their plight as Jason Hoeksema, cofounder of Delta Wind Birds and the president of its board of directors.

“There's a real lack of stopover habitat that is appropriate for those birds in this area,” says Hoeksema, who is also a biology professor at the University of Mississippi.

“Historically, there was more, before the advent of modern agriculture.”

Migratory songbirds such as warblers, buntings and grosbeaks have historically arrived in spring and early summer, while herons, egrets and cormorants reach peak numbers in late summer and autumn.

During late fall and winter, a number of varieties of waterfowl—various ducks, geese and related species—seek food and shelter in the Delta. Among the shorebirds, some species only stop in the Delta on their fall and spring migratory journeys, while others spend the winter.

“Shorebirds don't just occur on the ocean shore—they are a group of birds that migrate through Mississippi mainly and

Belted kingfisher

Prothonotary warbler

American pipit

Jason Hoeksema, center, on a birdwatching trip.

Bald cypress, Sky Lake

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DELTA WIND BIRDS

On a weekend field trip, birdwatchers toured DWB Sky Lake Nature Reserve and Four Winds Refuge.

stop anywhere they can find shallow water and mud flats, where they probe for insects and other invertebrates to eat,” he says.

“These are really special birds because most of them nest in the Arctic, but they spend the winter anywhere from the Mississippi Delta all the way down to the southern tip of South America, and they come through Mississippi in huge numbers.”

Today, though, there are fewer of these birds filling the skies, fields and waterways of the Delta. The number of shorebirds participating in these seasonal rituals along North American flyways has declined 33 percent since 1970, according to the North American Bird Conservation Initiative.

Delta Wind Birds, a conservation group founded in 2013, raises funds to create temporary stopover habitat for these migratory waterbirds on private lands.

“Mostly we contract with private landowners and pay them a fee that helps to offset the costs of water management that benefits these birds,” he says.

Hoeksema, a Michigan native, caught the birdwatching bug at an early age thanks to the influence of his nature-loving family members. “My parents and my grandparents always had bird feeders in their yards and binoculars and bird books sitting around. I got sucked into the fun of watching bird behavior and the challenge of bird identification.” He even spent spring breaks with his family in Panama City 74 | MAY/JUNE 2024

Beach, Florida—a well-known party spot for college spring breakers—getting up early in the morning to birdwatch at St. Andrews State Park along the Gulf of Mexico, long before the previous night’s revelers were awake.

After becoming a regular visitor to the Delta, Hoeksema and his colleagues realized that disused or fallow farm lands, or fields that have already been harvested, could provide temporary, seasonal habitat for migratory shorebirds and possibly help to restore their populations.

JASON HOEKSEMA

Spotted: A roseate spoonbill in flight.

“Certainly these birds have the ability to somewhat adjust their migratory pathway if there's better habitat elsewhere, but if that requires them to fly farther, they use more energy and reach those stopover places with lower fat reserves. It takes them longer to refuel, and it's thought to decrease their rate of survival overall.”

Delta Wind Birds’s efforts focus on working with crop farmers, especially those who are growing corn, which is harvested early in the fall, to put water back out on crop fields after the corn is harvested.

Benefits to the practice potentially serve multiple purposes. The temporary, shallow wetlands draw in birds that can hunt for invertebrates in the mud, aerating the soil with their beaks and depositing fertilizing nitrogen and phosphorus into the fields through digestion. In some cases, they’ve shown that crop yields are slightly higher on fields that have previously been flooded.

In addition to the group’s work with farmers, it also owns 14 acres bordering Sky Lake in the central Delta near Belozni. The DWB Sky Lake Nature Reserve is located across the water from Sky Lake Wildlife Management Area, a conservation district maintained by the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks for recreation and sport. Visitors to the WMA can walk the half-mile, maintained boardwalk among these ancient trees, while visitors to the DWB Nature Reserve can pick out birds on the lake itself.

“Sky Lake WMA contains around its perimeter, and especially at the north and south ends, one of the best remnants of old-growth bottomland, hardwood trees in the southeast,” he says. “Specifically, it's bald cypress and tupelo swamp, and some of the bald cypress trees there are more than 1,000 years old. They're gigantic and

ancient, and they're really stunning.”

By contrast, the reserve is more rustic but offers direct access to the lake and the remnants of a bald cypress swamp along the water’s edge.

The group also helps private, nonagricultural concerns restore shorebird habitat. Four Winds Refuge, located a short distance from the DWB Sky Lake Nature Reserve, currently maintains 800 acres for private use. Bill Sullivan, one of the refuge’s owners, says they have used the property to raise bees, hunt small game and observe wildlife. “We have every kind of Mississippi mammal you could imagine on that place, so we have a lot of things to see and watch,” Sullivan says. “And we love to watch and manage for shorebirds.”

Sullivan says Delta Wind Birds works with him and the other owners to return the parcel back to its natural hydrology. “We're looking to maintain habitat for wintering and migrating shorebirds, and rearing shorebirds is quite a niche—these birds travel thousands of miles back and forth, maybe across multiple continents,” he says.

“Among all the shorebirds, these few 100 species of shorebirds are mysterious. We don't understand what motivates them to do that, and we don't understand much about them at all. And their numbers are plummeting.”

All of which, naturally, keeps the docket full for Delta Wind Birds.

“We love connecting with landowners who are looking for ways to be even more conservation minded in the way they manage their land, and we can provide ideas for that and some resources, as well,” Hoeksema says. “That's really at the center of our mission.” DM deltawindbirds.org DELTA MAGAZINE 2024

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A conversation with

A.K. Benninghofen

BY KELLI WILLIAMS • PHOTOS COURTESY OF A.K. BENNINGHOFEN

Delta-native, writer, and actress A.K. Benninghofen might now reside in Asheville, North Carolina, but the Indianola native continues to channel her Southern roots in every aspect of her creative life. We caught up at The Crown to chat about her life, the path that lead her to theater and acting, the influence of the flatlands on literary pieces, and the undeniable connections that the state of Mississippi brings to all those that call her home, no matter where the road takes us.

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Tell me about growing up in Indianola?

I was born in Tupelo, and both my parents were born and raised there, but we moved to Indianola when I was eight-yearsold, so I consider it my hometown and myself a Delta girl! I think like most people who grow up in a small town, you always have the love-hate, and I was always busting to get out. But during my recent visit home, eight of us got together and it was like no time had passed. It was just a very special place to grow up.

What was your intro into the arts scene?

My parents were great—they’re not artists, but they were, and still are very into the arts. My dad was a DJ at WNLA forever. They took me to the Delta Blues Festival, and they also directed shows at the Mid-Delta Arts Association. I was in some shows there off and on for a bit. I wasn’t a full-time theater kid, but it was always part of my life. It was such a great community of people that might not have overlapped otherwise, but in the space it was just this neat “mutual admiration society.’’

I love the phrase, “mutual admiration society,” which rings true in lots of community theater groups. So tell me where your path led you after school.

After I graduated from Indianola Academy I went to Southern, where I was a journalism major, because I loved writing, but it was surprisingly technical—I thought it was going to be more creative. So that didn’t stick. I bounced around, doing a summer at Delta State, a year at (Mississippi) State, and then told my mama I wanted to quit school and be a flight attendant. But she wanted me to get a degree, and she’s the one who figured out that I needed to go back to Southern and get a BFA in Theater! After college I did some regional theater. I was in a play at the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville that was fabulous and well received. It was a twoperson show that was sold out. I had this big amazing dressing room and flowers all the time, so I just thought “this is what my life was going to be like!” Funny enough, that was the last time my life was like that!

Then I did some other plays and eventually moved to New York. I was twenty-three,

and lived there until I was thirty. I did a little bit of theater, a few indie film and TV projects, but really, I was more in love with living in New York, than I was in love with being an actor. I didn’t like the business of pursing it. I was also the maitre d’ at Gramercy Tavern. I don’t know how landed that, because career restaurant people wanted that job—but I really got in to that high-end restaurant scene. One funny sidenote about when I worked at Gramercy Tavern, is when people would come in with a Southern accent, we would get to talking and within minutes realize we had mutual connections. That blew the minds of my co-workers because they didn’t even know people who lived in their same block, and here I was knowing people from all over the State! I was still doing acting some, and I was doing stand-up comedy as well which was interesting.

I imagine coming from Mississippi and trying to make it in New York with those crowds was an interesting experience.

It was a bit terrifying, and yes they are a little harder to please, but it was a great challenge and confidence builder, knowing that I could get up there and do it. In 2000 I moved to Los Angeles, and I did some really great theater there. But again, the business part itself was very daunting to me.

I loved actually acting—I just wasn’t good at the networking part. It just felt false Navigating the creative side and business side of the industry must have been difficult.

Yes it was. But I met my husband out

Actress Bethany Joy Lenz who plays Lucy starred alongside Benninghofen who played Margaret.

Getting ready on the set of A Biltmore Christmas.

there in LA. We met on stage, and he was in the business as well—as an actor. Once we decided to start a family, we both realized we were kinda done with it. We were having a child and it just wasn’t a dependable business, and it’s so expensive to live out there. He had lived there eighteen years by the time we left. We picked Asheville, North Carolina and moved there in 2005, and now we’ve been here for eighteen years. I just never looked back. I closed that part of my life and thought I’d never be an actor.

What was your creative outlet once you moved?

Well, I really loved writing, so when my kids were little I started that back. I had some short stories published and worked on two novels that are still waiting to be

finished. I got a literary agent in New York, and was on that track big time. Then Covid hit. I just couldn’t focus. My anxiety was through the roof, my kids were doing virtual school, and I didn’t have any solitude to write. Prior to that, (a few years before Covid) my husband realized he really missed acting and decided to sign up for some local acting classes and did some community theater for fun. That’s when he discovered the whole business had really changed. You don’t have to live in New York. You audition virtually now, where you shoot the videos yourself and upload them to casting directors. So at that point, he looked up his agents, and they really welcomed him back with open arms and he started booking things in the area.

Did that make you want to get back as well?

Well I didn’t at first. I was telling him, ‘no, you do you,’ but I was helping him with his readings back and forth and that was super fun. But when Covid hit and I had stopped writing and for a year felt really stuck, he said ‘don’t you want to try this?’

That’s what really got me back into it. So I auditioned for his agents, they signed me, and I started booking work again. It has been the greatest surprise—to return to acting at this point in my life. To be booking film and television from right here where I am. I don’t have to uproot my life or anything. So it’s been this fantastic gift.

So what was your first gig when you started back?

I booked a part in The Staircase on HBO.

A Biltmore Christmas debuted on the Hallmark Channel in 2023.

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On set at A Biltmore Christmas.

Actress Emily Blunt and Benninghofen in the hit movie Pain Hustlers.

At Ukiah Japanese Smokehouse in Asheville the main cast of Hallmark’s A Biltmore Christmas.

From left, Kristoffer Polaha, Jonathan Frakes, Benninghofen, Annabelle Borke, Colton Little and Bethany Joy Lenz.

Oh wow that’s amazing, and fellow Mississippian Parker Posey is in that as well.

Yes! We didn’t have any scenes together, but we were in the makeup trailer together for a while. She was just hanging out while I was getting my makeup done, and we had a great visit. She’s always just been one of my favorites. She is just hilarious and everything I would want her to be in real life. I had this very small part, and it was only a couple of weeks after coming back in to this when I got this role, I had three little scenes, one of which got cut, but it was a tiny part in this big production which was a great re-entry because I got to see all these big things going on and because I had a small role, I knew I couldn’t mess it up too bad. And working with the actor Michael Stuhlbarg who played my husband was 80 | MAY/JUNE 2024

fantastic, but it was a legit credit and right out of the gate, and I just wondered if it was going to be like the Fayetteville situation again because this was great! My husband was also in the show and we were both in the first episode together which was fun.

But Covid was still pretty prevalent, so it took four weeks to do my scenes because you had to quarantine and test for everything. There were all these moving parts and it look a lot of time.

With film incentives across the South, it seems like way more projects are being made in the southern states these days.

Yes, and our agency works specifically with those films in the area. And that’s pretty much what I’m auditioning for now.

But I’m still submitting stuff around the country.

Tell me about filming for A Biltmore Christmas. I know there is such a cult-following for the Hallmark Christmas movies!

I had no idea what a following these movies had. I mean, I knew Hallmark was a thing, but I didn’t realize until I was cast what a sub-culture there is. But it’s such a positive sub-culture, if I’m going to be involved in something, that’s the best. That audition came through, but at first I didn’t think I was what they were looking for, because the part was written in a way that it would be someone older, maybe a bit more frumpy. I just wasn’t what they pictured initially. But they liked my audition. One thing I think they liked the most was my southern accent. For most projects I have to turn that off or I might lose the part. This role didn’t ask for a southern accent, but I felt with the way the cadence of the dialog was written, it just needed one, so I took a chance and did it.

And in the end, I think in the end that’s a large part of why I got the role.

So that segues into my next question: How do you think being from Mississippi and the Delta has influenced what you do, and what do you take from growing up here that you use in your career?

I think the South has a reputation of being very homogeneous, and that you have to conform to a specific aesthetic and mindset. But regarding the Delta specifically, at least in my experience, I know more eccentric people from here than I did in New York or LA. People here celebrate and love that uniqueness, and I believe that inadvertently helped me in my

career. I’ve always felt the freedom to be exactly who I was. And just like my old friends I got together with recently, we aren’t necessarily alike or have a ton in common, but I know that they love me for who I am. I never felt I had to be what somebody else wanted me to be. Here I was encouraged to do my own thing, and I always felt like people cheered me on when I did that. So I’d say that freedom and confidence, and the exposure to such unique people was a great influence and encouragement to me. Even when I had something published when I was writing, I’d hear from people from the Delta encouraging me. I write a lot about fictional versions of this area. The Delta is hard to describe to anyone who is not from here.

I’m so proud of that and of being from a place that is so complex that you can’t just look at it as a whole and understand it.

Lifelong friends Benninghofen, Dion Times Sones, Kathi Gentry Dunnam, Dana Burrell Lipsey, and Beth Williamson MacLeod, Kelly Smith Pilgrim and Jennifer Roughton Schaumburg recently got together at Nola Restaurant in Indianola. Below, the friends recreated a beloved photo from their high school years.

Mississippi is such a huge inspiration across the board for people. So what’s next on your horizon?

It really is! I’m doing a play in Asheville, and I’m excited because I haven’t done theater in a while and I’ve really missed it.

It takes so much time, but now that my kids are high school and college age I have a little more freedom. The fact that they double cast this play, with two actors playing each role, lets the people involved continue to book film and TV roles because there is always an understudy—so that’s great and gives me more freedom to still pursue projects.

What appeals to you more—dramatic roles or lighter, comedic ones?

I enjoy them both really. The Biltmore part was challenging for me because it’s such broad comedy. It was a really fun challenge to take on with the physicality of it all, but it wasn’t in my wheelhouse right away. And just to be a total counterpart to the lead, very rubber-based acting, wasn’t something I had done a lot before. But I love drier comedy and drama as well.

What do you most look forward to doing when you come home the the Delta?

Well I actually haven’t been home since 2008, which I can’t really believe. My parents no longer live in Indianola, so I haven’t had a home to come home to here in a long time. So when I visited my mom in Tupelo, I told her I had to come back to

the Delta. But, a Pea Soup’s Shrimp Basket was on the top of the list, and it’s exactly the same—I can’t believe it! And the landscape.

As we were driving down into the Delta I got emotional. I just forget how affecting it is. That night we stayed at the Blue Biscuit Airbnb, and as we were walking back there the sky turned pink. This color only happens here. It’s just not the same anywhere else. And the people! That’s really the thing. The Crown—I remember it

when it was at the Roughton’s house and I tried not to break anything. All these little touchstone places, there’s just nothing like it.

I’ve just now started to return to writing, and my two novels are set in fictional towns like this, so it was great to see it again and get that sense memory. Now it’s just so much more viceral. I’m inspired to dig back in. DM

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A Cruise, a Book, and a Road Trip

The life-changing adventure of an 80-year-old Californian

BY RICHARD NEMEC

he septuagenarian in the floppy farmer’s hat and boots wearing Levi’s and a freshly laundered button-down blue shirt offset by a distinguished-looking all-white beard regaled an audience of riverboat tourists one fine spring day last year in Greenville, Mississippi, and I felt fortunate to be in his company as a first-time visitor to the Delta. The late Hank Burdine, farmer, road-builder, and accomplished author, had that effect on me almost instantly, and he was the sole reason that I, at age eighty, decided to travel nearly two thousand miles to have a dinner in Mississippi.

T

Burdine’s sincerity, insights, and humor came through loud and clear over his Delta drawl. He gave you the feeling you were sitting on his front porch at his farmhouse in nearby Chatham enjoying a cool one while hearing more stories of local lore. After only a brief meeting, he readily invited me back to visit him in the Delta.

That I as a native Californian had ventured into Mississippi at all was still surprising and somewhat surreal to my “Northerner’s” mindset. But that I was unexpectedly appreciating and resonating with Burdine’s beloved Delta was even more of a shock to my aging psyche. Hank and a local Greenville native and blues musician/songwriter Steve Azar tapped into a bit of my soul with their straightforward,

no bullshit views on life in Mississippi.

Other musicians and historic sites that we encountered along the way were equally eyeopening, including the Civil War battlefield at Vicksburg.

I have my life-long friend who now lives outside Phoenix, Jim Oss, to thank for allowing me and my wife, Connie, to discover these fine people and a slice of America I never wanted to find. While Connie and I, along with some longtime friends from Chicago, have toured the world using various oceanic and European river cruise lines, my wife and I had never done a river cruise in the United States, let alone one on the mighty Mississippi River. It was at the very beginning of the Covid pandemic when Jim and his partner Matt Kohl asked

Mary Mahoney’s photo by William Colgin, Delta Magazine May-June 2016.

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Richard Nemec, Connie Nemec, Bruce Meyer, and Frances Meyer at Superior Seafood Café, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Hank Burdine’s book that inspired Nemec’s return trip to the Mississippi Coast and on to the Delta.

us to sign up for a 2023 Viking cruise from New Orleans (NOLA) to Memphis.

Connie and I had visited NOLA many times and would return there with little prompting. Plus, we had never been to Memphis, although we were big jazz and blues fans. Throw in New Orleans dining and we were sold on the boat trip mostly for three things—jazz, blues, and food. While the music and food in NOLA, on the Viking ship, and in Memphis were all outstanding, it was the Delta that captured my heart.

During the Greenville visit that included music from Azar and good home-cooked dishes, I met Burdine and purchased his book, Dust in the Road, a collection of wonderful stories he has published over a number of years this century in Delta Magazine. The collection is a treasure house of stories from a self-described “Delta boy.”

When I got to page 199 in the paperback edition with the deceivingly mundane titled story, “Delta Hospitality on the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” I was all in with Mr. Burdine and his storied Delta and Coastal Southern

landscape. It is a homage to a French built building dating back to the 1730s when France ruled the central nervous system of North America that was transformed into a family-owned restaurant and gathering place in the 1960s by the late Mary Mahoney, a Yugoslavian immigrant who was praised by one of her long-time waiters as “able to put out a fire without any water.” It continues operating today under the deft touch of her son, Bob, still called Mary Mahoney’s Old French House Restaurant with a litany of famous people who have dined there.

“Constructed of handmade bricks with huge hand-hewn wooden peg cypress columns and roofed with slate brought from France, it was built to last,” Burdine wrote in 2016, noting that the structure was unfazed by the wrath of Katrina and earlier late twentieth century hurricanes. The venerable history of the structure is only exceeded by the Mahoney humane touch in making customers feel more like friends by creating a welcoming atmosphere people from all walks of life can appreciate.

The late Hank Burdine welcomed Viking Mississippi River Cruise tourists, regaling them with the stories and history of the Delta as only Hank could.

Hank’s son, Matthew Burdine, has taken on the mantle of greeting Viking tourists. Here with singer-songwriter Steve Azar introducing them to the culture, music, and lore of the Delta.

The Viking Mississippi Cruise ship docked at the Greenville Port.

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The National World War II Museum is one of the historic venues the group visited in the Crescent City.

White Pillars Restaurant in Biloxi, Mississippi

and Old French House restaurants was an easy task for my 80-year-old brain.

In a pre-Mardi Gras mood in midJanuary, the Crescent City offered all of its specialties from jazz at Preservation Hall to gourmet meals for lunch and dinner in abundance to cultural relevance at such venues as the World War II Museum, the St. Louis Cemetery in the back-down section just off Basin Street, and the New Orleans Cooking School. At the end of our Road Scholar experience, I was afraid my crusade to Biloxi would pale and make our experience anti-climactic.

In addition, when we drove past the “Welcome to Mississippi” sign along eastbound Interstate 10 and pulled into an antebellum-designed state rest stop, my mind was flashing to visions of the past of the U.S. Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. I personally was still struck by the stark differences between our present experiences

PHOTO BY WILLIAM COLGIN, DELTA MAGAZINE MAY-JUNE 2016

Burdine conveyed this nicely in his essay, and I communicated my “discovery” of the Biloxi culinary icon to our traveling companions from Chicago, Bruce and Frances Meyer, with whom we have visited six of seven continents and more than sixty countries on extensive trips these past twenty years. On one of our weekly Zoom cocktail meetings over the internet, I suggested perhaps a trip back to New Orleans with an added short road trip east to Biloxi, and they, too, were willing to travel hundreds of miles for a meal.

Fran and Connie eventually found a weeklong Road Scholar program in the Big Easy, offering lectures on the history, culture, music, literature, and culinary delights in and around the French Quarter with a stay in the family-owned Monteleone Hotel. Once we booked the New Orleans leg of the trip, the add-on to Biloxi and reservations at the White Pillars

“Constructed of handmade bricks with huge hand-hewn wooden peg cypress columns and roofed with slate brought from France, it was built to last,” Burdine wrote, describing the historic building, in 2016.

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as senior citizens versus the frightful TV news images of the South from our youth.

Fifty miles farther up the highway, Biloxi sparked similar sixty-year-old images from a friend in high school who was stationed at nearby Keesler Air Force Base in 1961 and who I was corresponding with at the time.

Jim Crow laws had set a tone that shocked young adults of my generation. We had no experience with “Colored” and “White” public accommodations.

Countering these past stereotypes for my wife and I were the sweet memories from our recent river trip that included the B. B. King Museum, the Crossroads of iconic bluesman/songwriter Robert Johnson’s onetime epiphany, and the new historical perspective we obtained on the Delta as an important part of Americana, albeit stained by centuries of slavery. Our foursome found all the locals in Biloxi friendly and outgoing like the older African-American woman and local educator who welcomed us to the OhrO’Keefe Museum of Art, featuring the works of George Ohr, a world-renown pottery artist, and sculpture and artworks from Gene Koss and Toshiko Takaezu.

Designed by global architect Frank Gehry as a multi-building compound along Beach Boulevard, the distinctive facility was named for Ohr, considered the first artistic potter in the U.S. (1857-1918) and the O’Keefe family that provided the first major philanthropic contribution to the museum in 1998. Included on the property is the refurbished home of Pleasant Reed (18541936), a former plantation slave near Hattiesburg who came to Biloxi in 1871 and overcame many obstacles to be a successful carpenter.

Our two dinners in the shrimp boat-

At Antoine’s with Bruce taking photo in mirror in New Orleans.

nonsense. She shouted emphatically, “Do by a more than 2,000-year-old oak tree. On laden town turned out to be the highlight of you have a reservation?” And after we our visit, we didn’t get to see all that. And if our week in the Deep South—even after shouted back, “Yes,” she commanded, we come back, I will definitely try to get a dining at Commander’s Palace, Antoine’s, “Follow me!” She then effectively whisked brief tour of the place, but we did indulge Brennan’s, and GW Fin in NOLA. Friday us to our room in the house and to our ourselves in the hospitality and the cuisine. night we went to White Pillars where the server who treated us as if she had been They were both unbeatable. hospitality and service matched our last trained at a fine Southern finishing school, We had our own room with only one night at the Old French House. Everything complete with a smile that I am sure melts other table, and we could look out to diners from the cocktails to the entrees and desserts hearts among her contemporaries. on an enclosed veranda nearby. Otherwise, the were done to perfection.

Everything we tasted, we agreed, outdid setting was like a private club or one’s home The following night, I pulled off Beach dining room. So, when we Boulevard (Highway 90) one street proceeded to exit, retracing our steps, too soon when we saw the Mary we were overwhelmed when we Mahoney’s sign, and that was the reached the bar area by an avalanche only thing that went wrong that of formally attired revelers—all night. We parked on an unpaved young and very good looking. The lot adjacent to the restaurant’s large hostess was steering a party of four or paved lot that was full of cars. We six people through the milieu, and had a 7 p.m. reservation I had seeing our predicament, asked us to made in October when I carefully wait while she ushered in the new told the hostess on the phone that arrivals, and then promptly asked us Hank Burdine had sent me. to retreat, retrace some of our steps, I use a walking stick (like a ski Connie, Fran, Bruce and Rich in Carousel Bar at Monteleone Hotel and follow her through the kitchen pole) to get around, so I was lagging in New Orleans. area to an auxiliary exit. behind the other three when we some of New Orleans’ finest restaurants, and As we did, I bumped into an attractive approached the modern, added-on retail after I explained our mission as driven by young blonde woman whose blue eyes commercial space that is plastered on one Mr. Burdine, owner Bob Mahoney came to captivated me in a fraction of a second. If I side of the eighteenth century home-turnedour table and spent ten minutes delighting were in my youth, I would have quickly made restaurant only to head into a half-dozen us with some of his thirty-second jokes and an excuse to stay and join the party, but at very formally dressed and happy people— the recollections of what Katrina did and eighty I dutifully followed the instructions of five attractive middle-aged ladies, all wearing didn’t do to his family restaurant and oneour hostess. fur coats or stoles over their formal dresses, time family home. In his writing, Burdine When we were out in the cold January accompanied by a young dude dressed to the describes Bob as the one at the restaurant’s night air, I quietly smiled to myself, and I nines in a colorful tuxedo/cumber bun outfit bar who reached under the counter and swear I could feel a gentle tap on my shoulder with a matching bow tie. We didn’t know it poured him his favorite scotch upon seeing as I was walking alone behind my compatriots. at the time, but this was early pre-Mardi him during his last return to Biloxi after My guess was that Hank Burdine’s spirit was Gras season. being gone for many years. saying to me, “I told you so.” DM Our preview outside gave us a hint of the Burdine’s 2016 article adroitly described overflowing bar we walked into that serves Richard Nemec is a long-time Los Angeles writer the overall property as including separate as the entrance complete with a very whose real job is world traveler. He can be reached at: rnemec@ca.rr.com. grand rooms and courtyard/carriage house elegantly dressed hostess who you could tell space, all now used for dining and protected right away was friendly but brooks no DELTA MAGAZINE 2024

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HOME

For the Love of Art Once a college-town duplex, this comfortable cottage was radically transformed into an art-filled haven

BY TERRI GLAZER • PHOTOGRAPHY BY ABE DRAPER

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After two major renovation projects, this former duplex is now a comfortable family home for the Kourys and their two children.

W

hen an artist and an art lover get married, it’s only natural that they start to collect beautiful things. So goes the story of Mary Madeleine and Michael Koury.

In the foyer, a Jere Allen portrait of the artist’s mother bears a striking resemblance to Mary Madeleine’s great-grandmother.

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“My wedding gift was two Andrew Bucci paintings,” says Mary Madeleine. Those works by one of the state’s most prolific painters, along with a large and varied collection of mostly Mississippi art, now hang in the Kourys’ charming Oxford home.

The couple continued the tradition of purchasing art each year for their anniversary and other special occasions. Michael explains, “Rather than getting each other something silly that wouldn’t be used or appreciated after a year or two, we decided to do that for anniversaries. We didn’t have kids, and we were renting a place through school at the time. We didn’t have a lot of overhead, so we would go in together and buy a piece of art for each major anniversary or holiday. Then, we could take it with us wherever we ended up. We knew that it could move with us through the years.”

Chances are, their treasured pieces won’t be making another move any time soon. After completing two major renovations on a house near Oxford’s historic square, the Kourys say they have no intention of leaving their “forever” home. The place has come a long way since they bought it in 2013. The original post-war cottage had been modified over the years and served as student housing at the time.

“A college student lived upstairs, and a college student lived downstairs,” recalls Mary Madeleine, “and there was no staircase in the house. You had to go outside and around the house to get to the lower floor.”

A wall of floor-to-ceiling shelves in the dining room provides space for Michael’s extensive book collection. Mary Madeleine’s grandmother’s sofa is right at home in the space, freshened up with cheerful new upholstery.

Part of the initial renovation project, the indoor stairwell connected the home’s two levels and better defined the entryway.

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The study defines eclectic design. Antique lighting and seating work perfectly with Mississippi folk art, a tribal-inspired rug from Anthropologie, and, of course, books.

Fresh paint and updated upholstery give the settee, another family piece, a new life.

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The couple remedied that situation during the first renovation project, which was completed before moving in. By cutting through the upstairs floor to create a stairwell that would connect both levels of the house, they were also able to construct a wall to better define the home’s entryway.

That new foyer area now sets the tone for the entire home. Filled with vintage and antique furniture, art, and books, this space is an homage to all the things the homeowners love. Handmade wallpaper sourced through Jackson interior designer Kathryn Koury, who happens to be Michael’s mother, sets an artful backdrop without upstaging other elements. Although the subject of the striking Jere Allen portrait is the artist’s mother, it spoke to the Kourys in a familiar way. Says Michael, “It looks like [Mary Madeleine’s] greatgrandmother. We have a photo of her, and it just reminded us so much of it, it could almost have been a portrait of her.” The secretary desk, and several other pieces throughout the home, came from St. Martin’s Gallery, a former antique shop in Jackson, Mississippi, that is now closed.

Just off the entry is a light-filled room that was expanded via a bump-out in the front wall during the initial redo. The project also involved adding an entire wall of bookshelves. “I enjoy reading a lot and needed more space for books,” Michael explains. The spot served as the living room until the second project, and the shelves still look at home as the backdrop for an antique, oval dining table and chairs.

The mood is dramatic in the butler’s pantry. Antique doors sourced from New Orleans lead to a home office/homework area for the children.

Copper on both the countertops and backsplash gives the area a warm glow, and is just the right spot for a meticulous model of The Mayflower Restaurant, a Jackson favorite of Michael’s, by Oxford miniatures, Lee Harper.

Extending from the opposite side of the entry is a study that is both bold and beautiful. Asked if she had any trepidation about painting all the walls and trim the saturated shade of green, Mary Madeleine says she felt confident about it, as well as her choice of burnished gold wallpaper on the ceiling. It’s no wonder she could envision the stunning finished product in her mind’s eye. The Greenville native studied art at Delta State and now teaches at the Willie Price Lab School on the Ole Miss campus.

The cozy study is home to more of Michael’s extensive book collection, as well as an assortment of traditional face jugs. Created

by Pat Thomas of Leland, Cleveland artist Ky Johnson, and others, the clay pieces add an earthy feel to the spot filled with mostly

Nestled in a nook in the butler’s pantry, this Bill Lester woodblock print holds special meaning for both Michael and Mary Madeleine. It is one of only three surviving copies of the original art for the cover of “Good Old Boy” by Willie Morris.

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With an artist's eye, Mary Madeleine found a home for works of art in every room of the home.

Bold wallpaper and a statement light fixture add an artistic element to the bathroom.

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The primary bedroom is a relaxing haven for the homeowners.

Here, saturated color gives way to a lighter palette to create a serene feel.

antique furnishings, including a vintage chandelier the couple found at Russell’s Antiques in Greenwood.

Freshened up in the initial remodel with new cabinets, brick paver floors, and a charming ceiling treatment fashioned from wood taken off the house’s exterior, the kitchen is cheerful and efficient, yet not large by today’s standards. As part of the more recent renovation project, the Kourys transformed a laundry room just off the kitchen into a scullery to provide more storage, extra appliances, and space that comes in handy as they entertain frequently.

Even the kitchen is filled with art. From a pair of large Carl Blackledge abstracts that add vibrant color to another Jere Allen portrait to a trio of small pieces by the Delta artist who goes by the

moniker Church Goin Mule, the kitchen walls are a feast for the eye.

By taking in a seldom-used screen porch, the couple created a comfortable family room behind the kitchen, complete with the home’s only fireplace. “We had to have somewhere for Santa to come!” says Michael in a nod to their two elementary-aged children.

The room’s many windows provide great views year-round. Leafy branches lend the space a treehouse feel in summer; when the trees are bare in winter, the view is a cityscape going all the way to the holiday light display on the square.

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Brightly colored posters from the Highway 61 Blues Festival, some of the Kourys' earliest acquisitions, brighten the wall of their son's bedroom.

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providing a convenient and beautiful place for outdoor cooking, relaxing, and casual dining. The thoughtful design by architect Edye Conkerton of Taylor, draws the eye up to the vaulted ceiling and provides more of the views the family so enjoys.

That project also involved a sizable addition on the opposite end of the home, creating new spaces on the main floor and renovating the downstairs to include a casual hangout area for the kids, a comfortable guest suite, and a light-drenched art studio for Mary Madeleine.

Upstairs, the new living room and butler’s pantry are the stars of the show. Under the living room’s vaulted and beamed ceiling, the Kourys’ art has a place to shine. The two Bucci pieces that started it all hang above a rich red sofa, flanking an energetic floral by Carl Blackledge. A pair of Rod Moorhead Fury sculptures frame the clerestory windows, providing artistic symmetry.

As for the new room’s furnishings, Mary Madeleine says they were acquired slowly. She moved some pieces from other locations in the home; others came on board as the couple found things they loved. “We always had a mental list of what we were looking for,” Michael recalls. “It seems like when we were zeroed in on looking for one particular thing, we had a harder time finding that as opposed to having it happen organically. If we were shopping antique stores or consignment places and just found something, it meant more.”

The butler’s pantry adjacent to the living room is another spot where the resident artist’s creative vision produced a design masterpiece. Bathed in dramatic Benjamin Moore Van Dyke Brown

“

We collect mostly Mississippi artists. Andrew Bucci has since passed away, but we were fortunate to meet him a couple of times through the years. Richard Kelso was our neighbor in Jackson; that’s how we got to know him and appreciate his work.”

– MICHAEL KOURY

The works that started the couple's extensive art collection, a pair of paintings by Mississippi artist Andrew Bucci, hang in the new family room, flanking a bright abstract floral by Carl Blackledge.

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The cooking porch created by architect Edye Conkerton combines utility and beauty.

A white tulip dining table and chairs add a contemporary touch to the screen porch. The family enjoys outdoor dining when the weather is mild.

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Formerly a screen porch, this cozy room is now useful year round. It comes in particularly handy for Santa on Christmas Eve, as the setting of the home's only fireplace.

The Kourys count two paintings by Richard Kelso among their favorites. The images are of his former studio, a place familiar to Michael and Mary Madeleine when they lived across the street from the artist in Jackson.

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Browsing antique shops and consignment stores, the couple found interesting and eclectic pieces to fill their new family room.

Sourced from an architectural salvage seller in New Orleans, these antique doors were covered with the dust of decades when the Kourys found them.

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Cabinetry and countertops in crisp white blend with warm wood, brick floors, Mississippi art, and books in the kitchen.

from the barrel ceiling down and accented with glowing copper, the space is sophisticated and breathtaking. A third work by Jere Allen anchors the far end wall, while another particularly meaningful piece to both the Kourys hangs over the sink. Says Mary Madeleine, “[Artist] Bill Lester was my advisor at Delta State, and Michael loves [author] Willie Morris. I was at Russell’s Antiques in Greenwood, and I saw that hanging there, and it looked familiar. I remembered that it was hanging behind Bill’s head all those years when I met with him in his office. It’s his original book cover art for [Morris’s book] Good Old Boy. He had done three prints, and that was one of them.”

From the series of Highway 61 Blues Festival posters the couple bought early in their relationship on a student’s budget to the myriad of works they’ve added since, the Kourys’ love of Mississippi art in its many forms and styles shines brightly in their home—collected, curated, and designed as only an artist’s home could be. DM

Opposite page: Originally drawn as a hallway, the butler's pantry is a showstopper thanks to its barrel ceiling, monochromatic paint treatment, and moody lighting. A large portrait by Jere Allen provides a dramatic focal point.

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• special occasions • epicurean • gourmet • cuisine • tastings • fine wines • charcuterie • culinary events

crews culinary

www.thefarmrows.com 100 Farm Row Drive Boyle, Mississippi info@thefarmrows.com

OPENING LATE SUMMER 2024

culinary • epicurean • gourmet • cuisine • tastings • atmosphere • foodies

Congratulations to the Class of 2024!

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JELLO 106 | MAY/JUNE 2024

THE ERAS TOUR

BY CORDELIA CAPPS • PHOTOGRAPHY BY RORY DOYLE

any of us share common memories (some I’m afraid we’d rather forget) of gelatin-infused creations, expertly unmolded with fingers crossed by our mothers and grandmothers at family meals. Who

M

could forget Jello day at school? The jiggly green square, topped by a dollop of Cool Whip if you were lucky, was a welcome sight. Later in life, for many, the only relatable concoction that contained gelatin was the ubiquitous Jello shot—which, if I’m being honest, I just don’t really get.

Unpopular opinion, I know. I’m not a partaker of shots of any sort, but if I were, I think I’d just as soon gulp it down in its original form, sans the squishy texture. But that’s just me.

There was definitely a mid-century obsession with gelatin recipes which our matriarchs fully embraced, most likely the result of much more limited grocery options after the end of World War II. It’s popularity remained strong through the 70s with many iterations— lending a certain nostalgia to the congealed concoctions of our youth.

As far as food trends go, we think retro gelatin recipes are due for a comeback—and I will admit, many were and still are delish. Fluffy, fruity, delights mixed with cream cheese or Cool Whip still find their way onto our holiday tables. However, there lurks in my memory a jello “salad” made with a beef stock base that had bits of carrots, celery, and peas suspended in it, trapped, begging to get out. That one must stay in the annals of history.

The resurrection of congealed recipes has been on the mind of DM food contributor Cordelia Capps for quite some time. “My grandmother adored serving congealed salads in individual molds on a bed of iceberg lettuce with a dollop of homemade mayonnaise on top!,” she remembers fondly. In fact Capps still rotates several beloved gelatin recipes of family and friends into her menus when entertaining. On the following pages she shares some of her favorites just in time for spring and summer celebrations. And she adds, “I don’t believe any of these congealed recipes call for the iceberg or the mayonnaise…however, they are delicious!” – CINDY COOPWOOD SWEDISH CREAM

We’re not the only ones interested in a gelatin resurrection! Ken Albala’s new book The Great Gelatin Revival encourages readers to celebrate gelatin's return and takes a deep dive into the sublime world of aspics past and present.

1 package Knox gelatin 1 cup cool milk, divided 1 cup sugar ½ pint whipping cream (1 carton) 2 tablespoon vanilla 1 pint of sour cream (2 cartons) Garnish (optional): fresh fruit

Dissolve one package of Knox gelatin in half cup of cool milk.

Add the other half of milk the heat, do not boil. Dissolve one cup of sugar with milk then add whipping cream, vanilla and sour cream.

If you do not have vanilla you can replace that with rum, brandy or sherry. Mix together and let sit overnight. Stir before serving then spoon into individual bowls and garnish with fresh fruit; strawberries, pineapple, peaches or blueberries.

Original recipe by the late Martha Lenoir of Greenville.

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CHRISTOPHER BLAKE’S SHRIMP MOUSSE 6 cups shrimp; cooked, peeled and deveined 2 cups sour cream 1 pound cream cheese 1 cup mayonnaise ½ cup finely minced bell pepper ½ cup finely minced celery ½ cup finely minced green onion ¼ cup finely minced pimientos ½ cup chili sauce ⅛ teaspoon Tabasco 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce 2 tablespoons unflavored gelatin ¼ cup cold water Juice of 2 lemons

Boil shrimp in salted water, drain and finely chop. You must have 6 cups of shrimp. Cream together cheese, mayonnaise and sour cream; add all seasonings. Dissolve gelatin in lemon juice and cold water. Heat over water in top of a double boiler for 5 to 10 minutes.

Gradually fold into the cheese and seasoning mixture. Add shrimp and blend well. Pour into a 2 quart chilled ring mold. Refrigerate overnight. Unmold and garnish with watercress or parsley. Serve as an hors d’oeuvre or as a main course.

Recipe from The Cotton Country Collection, published by the Junior League of Monroe, Louisiana, 1972.

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MARY’S MUSTARD MOUSSE Wesson oil or similar neutral-tasting oil for oiling the mold 1 cup cold water 1 tablespoon (1 envelope Knox) unflavored gelatin ½ cup sugar 2 tablespoons dry mustard ½ teaspoon ground turmeric 1 teaspoon celery salt 4 large eggs, at room temperature ½ cup apple cider vinegar 1 cup heavy cream, whipped soft peaks

With a paper towel, rub the inside of a 5-to-6 cup decorative mold with oil and set aside. Place ¼ cup of the water in a small bowl and sprinkle the gelatin over the surface. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine the sugar, dry mustard, turmeric, and celery salt. Whisk to break up any mustard lumps. Whisk in the eggs, one at a time, until thoroughly combined. Pour the mixture into the top of a double boiler set over hot water on medium heat. Whisk in the gelatin mixture, the vinegar, and the remaining ¾ cup water. Continue whisking continuously until the gelatin has dissolved and the mixture thickens slightly. Remove from the heat.

Transfer the mixture to a medium bowl and chill until it mounds slightly when dropped from a spoon. Fold in the whipped cream and pour into the prepared mold. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 4 to 6 hours until set. When ready to serve, dip the bottom of the mold into hot water for a few seconds and unsold onto a serving plate.

Serves 16 as a condiment.

Recipe from Julia Reed's South: Spirited Entertaining and High-Style Fun All Year Long; Rizzoli, 2016.

ANNE ROSS’S LAYERED TOMATO ASPIC 2 packages lemon jello 1 package Knox gelatin 2 cups small curd cottage cheese ¾ cup mayonnaise ½ cup green onion, chopped 2½ cups tomato juice 1 cup boiling water 1 cup finely chopped celery 1 can artichoke hearts, chopped Salt

In food processor, puree cottage cheese, mayonnaise and green onion. Dissolve one package of lemon jello in 1 cup of boiling water. Combine jello and cottage cheese mixture. Pour into the bottom of a saran-lined mold and chill for 1½ hours.

Dissolve other package of lemon jello and Knox gelatin in 2 cups of hot tomato juice. Add ½ cup of cold juice, celery and artichokes then salt to taste. Pour over first mold and congeal.

Original recipe by the late Anne Ross McGee of Leland. DM

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A DASH of this, a PINCH of that Mother’s Day is the perfect time to remember our moms’ culinary skills, and the love they poured into every dish

Some of the best memories of our of moms and grandmothers were made in the kitchen and they take us back to a time when all seemed right with the world. Certain dishes will forever be etched in our minds as loving reminders of sweet days, from childhood weeknight meals to special holiday recipes. In honor of Mother’s Day, we asked our readers to share favorite memories and recipes of dishes their moms and grandmothers made—some of which had never been written down but have now been passed along to new generations.

“Chocolate pie! ”

– Kathy Sage Moon

My maw always made dumplings for every holiday, I would go and watch her because she never exactly followed a recipe. Her last Thanksgiving with us I went to her house and helped her finish up cooking them. I brought my camera and snapped a picture of her working her magic. Now I make the dumplings for every holiday and I have printed the picture and hung it in my kitchen. Sometimes it is like she is still with me while I’m doing it. – Emily Nichols

Banana pudding made with a “cooked custard! Lemon meringue pie and Chocolate meringue pie.”

– Nancy Odum Beal

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What favorite dish did your mother or grandmother make that has been passed along in your family?

MOTHER’S EYE OF ROUND ROAST

THE BEST EVER PECAN PIE

1 can cream of mushroom soup 1 package Lipton onion soup mix 1½ cans of water 1 to 2 teaspoons of Kitchen Bouquet 1 to 2 teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce

3 eggs ¼ teaspoon salt or less ¾ cup white sugar ¾ cup white Karo ½ stick butter, melted 1½ teaspoons vanilla 1¼ cups pecans, halves or coarsely broken pieces

Stir all of these ingredients in a bowl. Set aside. Make a tray in your pan with wide, heavy duty aluminum foil.

Allow enough to hang over to wrap your roast in it. Spray the bottom of the foil with pan spray. Pour enough of the gravy to cover the bottom. Put your roast in then dust with black pepper and salt. Pour the rest of the gravy over the top and wrap so that it is air tight. Put into a 425 degree over for 20 minutes per pound. When the time is up, cut the oven off but DO NOT OPEN the oven door until the oven gets back to room temperature, usually about 4 hours after you cut it off. Remove from oven, slice to serve and enjoy!

Beat eggs with rotary beater until light and fluffy. Sprinkle salt onto eggs.

Stir to blend. Add sugar and stir to blend. Add Karo and blend well. Add melted butter, pecans and vanilla. Stir to blend. Pour into a 9 ⅝inch or a 10-inch pie crust and bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes.

Lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees and continue baking for 45 to 50 minutes, until the pie is set in the center and looks golden brown. Remove from oven and cool completely. Enjoy with good friends and family.

My Mother’s Eye of Round Roast recipe has been passed down to the fourth generation in our family. It is a favorite, always requested at holiday gatherings. She also baked a fig preserve cake made with her homemade fig perserves and a delicious pecan pie which are requested at family reunions. – Sue Dorrill

FIG PRESERVE CAKE 1½ cups sugar 2 cups plain flour 1 tablespoon vanilla 1 teaspoon cinnamon 3 eggs 1 teaspoon nutmeg ½ cup chopped pecans 1 cup oil 1 cup drained, chopped 1 cup buttermilk fig preserves 1 teaspoon soda 1½ teaspoon cloves

Put all ingredients except pecans and preserves in mixing bowl. Beat at medium speed until well blended.

Add preserves. Beat at slow speed until preserves are well blended. Fold in pecans. Pour batter into a 9x13 pan that has been sprayed with pan spray. Bake at 325 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes, or until it tests done. Remove from oven and let cool for 10 minutes. Pour glaze over cake in pan while both are still warm. Cover tightly. Enjoy with a cup of coffee and good friends.

Glaze 1 cup sugar ½ cup buttermilk 1 stick butter 1 tablespoon molasses 1 tablespoon vanilla ½ teaspoon soda

Melt butter, add other ingredients and let come to a boil. Boil slowly about 7 to 8 minutes, or until the glaze is dark brown and slightly thickened. Let cool slightly and pour over cake while both are warm.

MOM’S SKILLET SPAGHETTI 1 pound ground beef 1 medium onion, chopped 1 package spaghetti 1 jar (28-ounces) of your favorite spaghetti sauce ½ cup water 2 minced garlic cloves 1 packet of dry McCormick’s thick and zesty spaghetti seasoning ½ cup of brown sugar 1 teaspoon sugar 1 teaspoon salt

In a large black skillet, cook beef, garlic and onions over medium heat until meat is no longer pink; drain. Add brown sugar and slowly almost like a caramelizing process melt the brown sugar into the meat. Stir in cooked spaghetti and the next ingredients; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 30 minutes or until the spaghetti and sauce is completely blended. Sprinkle with sharp cheddar cheese if you like the cheese; cover and heat until melted.

We have found that the secret is caramelizing the brown sugar into the meat sauce and you have to use the dry packet of spaghetti seasoning.

My Mom’s famous skillet spaghetti has caused disagreements, discussions, and taken lots of trial and error to recreate it by her children, and now grandchildren and their spouses. She has taught me and my siblings how to make it—and I am getting close to hers but I still haven’t received the A+ rating that all of the grandchildren and great-grands love. – Deborah Martin

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STRAWBERRY PIE 1 cup water ⅔ cup sugar 2 tablespoons cornstarch half of 3-ounce package strawberry jello 1 quart fresh strawberries 1 Pet Ritz pie shell

“

Fried apricot hand pies, blackberry cobbler, fried chicken, cherry pie, hot water cornbread and the list goes on and on. Everything was made from scratch and nothing written down!

She was a true Southern cook and the best momma. No person ever left our house hungry and no death in the family or church wasn’t honored with one of her dishes.

”

– Mina Harris

“

English peas and dumplings was one of my favorites made by my grandmother. Her family made this in Germany before they immigrated to the United States.

”

“

– June Patterson

My grandmother made Murbeteig, a German treat. She would make with apples or plums.

Still my favorite!

”

– Katie Rabb

“

Daube spaghetti: cheapest roast, tomato sauce and paste, onion, garlic, pasta. Brown roast all sides and set aside. Sautée onion and garlic add tomato sauce and paste, add roast. Cover and cook till roast is tender. Serve over pasta or white rice.”

– Robert Skrmetta

“

My mom's cream pies—chocolate, pecan cream, and lemon—are all faves and get made when company comes. I now have my mom's aluminum pie pans that are marked with what was in it. She got tired of everyone wanting to know before they cut into it!

My husband Dennis loves his mom’s Red Jello Salad and his grandmother’s pecan pie. He had to go over to his grandmother’s house when she made one so he could measure out the ingredients so we would have a recipe!

She just added this and that and didn't measure. Everyone says it tastes like hers but it’s still not quite hers—I’m sure it was the love she put in it!”

– Connie Lancaster

Poke holes in pie shell with a fork; bake according to package directions and cool. Wash and slice strawberries. Place in baked crust. In a boiler combine first three ingredients. It will take about 4 to 5 minutes to come to a boil. Once it boils it will become opaque and thick. Remove from heat and add ½ of a 3-ounce package strawberry jello, and stir until dissolved. Let cool a little. Pour over strawberries and refrigerate until set. When firm, add cool whip and serve.

Tip for deconstructed pie: One time my crust broke into a million pieces, so that’s when I started serving it in the jars, all jumbled together! It’s so good because if you love the crust like I do, you can add more!

My mom’s strawberry pie is still my favorite. She is 91 years old now—my brother and I were adopted—so my parents were a little older! – Pamela Roberts

CORN SPAGHETTI 1 can whole kernel corn, drained 1 can cream style corn 1 cup Velveeta, cut in cubes and put in measuring cup ¼ to ½ cup butter spaghetti, broken into pieces to fill a 1 cup measuring cup

Place velveeta and butter in microwaveable bowl and melt. Stir well. Put corn into pan. Add melted butter and velveeta. Stir well. Cook spaghetti in water. Drain. Put in to with corn mixture.

You can place in oven and bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 45 minutes. Now if you are like us and in a hurry we just warm it up on stove top. It's usually gone in minutes when grands are here.

One of my favorites is corn spaghetti. It’s a recipe from a lady who was like a “second” mom to me when we lived in Nebraska. We lived there about twenty years after we moved from Texas, and now I make it for my family.

It’s my go-to for potluck dinners. – Connie Lancaster

FUDGE NUT MUFFINS 4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate 2 sticks oleo, melted 1¾ cups sugar 1 all-purpose flour

4 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla 2 cups pecans, chopped pinch of salt

Melt chocolate and oleo. Add sugar, stirring to blend, then flour and salt. Add eggs, one at a time, stir in lightly after each. Finally stir in vanilla and pecans. Bake in muffin papers at 325 degrees for 25 minutes. Makes 24 muffins.

My mom’s fudge nut muffins! – Allison Vandevender Davis

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THE REETS A look back at one of the Delta’s most popular rock bands from the 1960s

BY JIM “FISH” MICHIE

A

fall Friday night in Ruleville, Mississippi, and the excitement associated with the weekly football game had come to a fever pitch. The students were almost as excited

about the band playing for the sock hop as they were about the football game. The Reets from Cleveland, Mississippi, were playing. British Sterling and Jade East permeated the air in the Ruleville Youth Center, and there was enough raging testosterone to energize the marquis at the Delta Theatre in Ruleville.

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Football players, with their hair still wet from post-game showers and ill-fitting sports coats, were starting to arrive to congratulatory pats and handshakes. There were several young future musicians standing close to the bandstand, watching the musician’s every move as they put the finishing touches on setting up their equipment.

The atmosphere was electric. Suddenly, it was on. The Reets’s lead guitar player, Alston Meeks, begins the guitar riff of the Paul Revere and the Raiders tune, “Kicks,” followed by Teddy Buckley’s

Teddy Buckley, Alston Meeks, Jimmy Pambianchi, Ricky McWhorter, Don Turnipseed

On the road with The Reets.

driving bass line, a counterpoint to music of The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Meeks’s solo riff. Red and blue lights Otis Redding, and peaking musical acts flooded the bandstand. There was a of the ‘60s. They needed to hear it live. scream in unison by the teenagers. The The Reets proved to be the band that dance floor filled immediately, and they delivered. were off the tarmac. Multiply this scene The Reets formed in 1965 when they by who knows how many times were still in high school in Cleveland, throughout the Delta in the mid-1960s.

Mississippi. Jim Goudelock, now a The Reets were composed of Jimmy resident of Colorado, was equipment Pambianchi, Alston Meeks, Don tech and ran lights for the band.

Turnipseed, Teddy Buckley, and Ricky Goudelock recalled, “They didn’t play McWhorter, all students at Cleveland Jim “Fish” Michie and Jim Goudelock. anything they didn’t like. If one wanted High School. Each of these musicians to play something and the rest vetoed, it grew to be legends in the Delta, all didn’t make the song list, no matter how because of The Reets. Don, Teddy, and Ricky were members of popular it was. … It usually took two to three songs to find their the Wildcats Marching Band at CHS. Pambianchi was an avid groove at a gig, but after that, it was magical.” blues lover, and Alston already had the reputation of excelling at The late Duff Dorrough, the renowned Delta guitarist, singer, almost anything he tried. The Delta youth were thirsty for the and songwriter, talked about The Reets with respect and DELTA MAGAZINE 2024

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was so perfect, just so cool,” said Dorrough. “Ricky, in silent admiration which seems commonplace among musicians who communication with Buckley, both finally busting out with a grew up in the Delta from that era. “No solo trips here,” ringing ‘Ooh’ or ‘Ahh.’ Pambianchi, the wounded screamer, Dorrough once said. “If Alston Meeks’s lead guitar and Don voicing our universal message: Turnipseed’s drumming were ‘Ooooouw,’ and then Alston, obvious focal points for starters, the firecracker lead player back Ricky McWhorter and Teddy when speed mattered so much.

Buckley’s backup harmony and And later, Hank Martin, later, their trumpet playing were whose mature vocals and just as important to the band’s trumpet playing signaled to us overall sound.” that these kids were growing Jimmy Pambianchi was the up.” perfect mid-Sixties soulful rebel Although they only vocalist, and his earnest, hoarse recorded one studio 45 RPM treatment of British Invasion record, “Why Can’t Time gems was no less powerful on Stand Still/Til You Brought medleys by The Temptations, Me You” at Lyn-Lou Records The Rascals, and The Four Tops. in Memphis, The Reets One song that featured Alston’s continue to pop up on the rapid-fire lead guitar intro and Internet on different sites.

Jimmy’s sincere world-weary The immediate positive vocal was James Brown’s “It’s a feedback from a fan-created Man’s Man’s Man’s World”. It Class Reunion at Cleveland Country Club. Left to right: Hank Martin, Facebook page and its was quite a showstopper for a Fish (behind Hank), Don Turnipseed and Ricky McWhorter. members from across the bunch of high school kids. nation demonstrated The Reets’s profound effect on the 1960s “As happens with talented bands, we shifted focus as to who generation in the Mississippi Delta. was our favorite: Turnipseed, playing with the butt end of his “No doubt about it, they were our musical heroes,” said drumsticks, twirling one, flipping the other, and shaking his long Dorrough, summing up the band from his youth in the ‘60s. DM straight hair out of his eyes to reveal a birthmark over one eye that

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EVENTS

Lionel Richie + Earth, Wind & Fire, May 29

Gabriel Iglesias, May 10

FESTIVALS, MUSIC & FUN THINGS TO DO May 1

Brandon

May 4

Memphis

Reo Speedwagon

Super Freak: The Rick James Story

Brandon Amphitheater brandonamphitheater.com

Orpheum Theatre orpheum-memphis.com

May 1 - June 2

Memphis

May 4

Cleveland

Walk for Life-Women’s Resource Center Downtown Cleveland friendsofwrccleveland.com

May 4, 9 am

Dinner on Stage

International Women’s Ride Day

Orpheum Theatre orpheum-memphis.com

Southern Thunder Harley-Davidson southernthunderhd.com

May 2-5

Clarksdale

Bones Fest XXVII Shack Up Inn shackupinn.com

May 3-4

May 4, 11 am

May 4, 6:30 pm

Downtown Greenwood mainstreetgreenwood.com

Owl Prowl

Jackson

Bologna Performing Arts Center bolognapac.com

May 4, 7:30 pm

Tom Lee Park riverbeat.com

May The 4th Be With You The Music of Star Wars

Jackson

Jackson Convention Complex ardenland.net

May 10, 8 pm

The Hodding Carter Memorial YMCA Classic 10k Run, 5k Walk, 1 Mile Fun Run

Memphis

FedEx Forum fedexforum.com

Memphis

Renasant Convention Center bridalshowstn-re.com

May 5, 6 pm

Oxford

Charles Wesley Godwin The Lyric visitoxfordms.com

Memphis

Gabriel Iglesias: Don’t Worry Be Fluffy Tour

Tennessee Bridal & Wedding Expo Greenville

Jackson

Mother’s Day Celebration Concert

Cannon Center for the Performing Arts memphissymphony.org

May 5, 1:30 pm

Memphis

Halloran Centre orpheum-memphis.com

May 10, 7:30 pm

Memphis

Riverbeat Music Festival

120 | MAY/JUNE 2024

Southaven

Mississippi Museum of Natural Science mdwfp.com

Landers Center landerscenter.com

Cleveland

Pretty Woman: The Musical

Greenwood

Monster Jam

The Eudora Welty House & Garden welty.mdah.ms.gov

May 7, 7:30 pm

Midtown Neighborhood visitjackson.com

Que on the Yazoo

Downtown Greenville visitgreenville.org

Southaven

Leland

Southaven

Jackson

Yoga in The Welty Garden

Robert Moody Presents The Orchestra Unplugged: Tchaikovsky comes to America

Midfest

May 4

May 7, 7 am

May 9

Downtown Leland lelandchamber.com

May 3-5

Thalia Mara Hall thaliamarahall.net

Silo Square silosquarems.com

May 4, 2 pm

May 3-5

Jackson

2nd Annual “Blues for the Blue” Crawfish & Blues Festival

Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Festival

May 3-4

Old Armory Pavilion oxfordarts.com

Pretty Woman: The Musical

Metal Museum metalmuseum.org

Memphis

Oxford

Oxford on Skates

May 6

No Place Like Home

May 2

May 5

Super Freak, May 4

Blippi, May 19

Matt Rife, June 2

May 11, 8:30 am

Memphis

Orion 5K Downtown Memphis raceroster.com

May 18, 7:30 am

May 11, 10 am

50th Annual A’Fair Arts & Crafts Festival Laurie Wiley Memorial 5k

Clarksdale

Clarksdale Caravan Music Festival

Hernando Courthouse Square cityofhernando.org

Cat Head clarksdalecaravan.com

May 18, 11 am May 11, 10 am

Jackson

Mississippi Makers Fest

Cole Swindell, May 24

May 18, 1 pm Jackson

Marine Discovery Day MDWFP’s Mississippi Museum of Natural Science mdwfp.com

Old Armory Pavilion www.oxfordarts.com

Hernando

Mother/Daughter Tea Party Time

May 20 Memphis

Memphis in May

May 24, 11 am

The Clairvoyants Gold Strike Casino Resort goldstrike.com

Memphis

Orpheum Golf for Education Orpheum Theatre orpheum-memphis.com

Liberty Park memphisinmay.org

May 17

Memphis

Blippi: The Wonderful World Tour Orpheum Theatre orpheum-memphis.com

DeSoto Arts Council visitdesotocounty.com

May 15-18

Oxford

Women of Worth and Excellence Local Festival

May 19 May 11, 12 pm

Clarksdale

Women in Blues Shared Experiences HQ www.womeninblues.org

Two Mississippi Museums msmakersfest.mdah.ms.gov

May 11, 10 am

Hernando

Tunica

Clarksdale

Ground Zero Blues Club 23rd Anniversary

Taylor Hollingsworth, May 25–26

Ground Zero Blues Club groundzerobluesclub.com

May 24, 6 pm

Southaven

May 24-25

Jackson

Mississippi Music Awards

Couch Fest III

Landers Center landerscenter.com

Urban Foxes urbanfoxesjxn.com

May 24

Tunica

May 25

Memphis

Tracy Byrd

The Great American River Run 2024

Fitz Casino & Hotel fitzgeraldstunica.com

Downtown Memphis memphisinmay.org

May 24

Brandon

May 25-26, 9 pm

Cole Swindell

Taylor Hollingsworth

Brandon Amphitheater brandonamphitheater.com

Blue Levee visitclevelandms.com

Rosedale

Nate Bargatze, May 31 DELTA MAGAZINE 2024

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Easton Corbin, June 14

May 25-26

Jackson

Kevin Hart: Brand New Material Thalia Mara Hall thaliamarahall.net

May 29, 7:30 pm

Memphis

Lionel Richie + Earth, Wind, & Fire FedEx Forum fedexforum.com

May 29 - June 2

Memphis

F.I.R.E. + River Exhibition Metal Museum metalmuseum.org

May 30, 7 pm

Memphis

Megan Thee Stallion: Hot Girl Summer Tour FedEx Forum fedexforum.com

May 31, 7 pm

Memphis

Nate Bargatze: The Be Funny Tour FedEx Forum fedexforum.com

May 31 - June 2

Memphis

Shrek the Musical Orpheum Theatre orpheum-memphis.com

June 1

Cleveland

A Night in the Arts Delta Arts Alliance deltaartsalliance.org

June 3, 7:30 pm

Samara Joy Cannon Center for the Performing Arts thecannoncenter.com

Shrek the Musical, May 31–June 2 122 | MAY/JUNE 2024

Memphis

Mingle

IN THE DELTA

Samara Joy, June 3

June 6-8

Olive Branch

MidSouth Nostalgia Festival Whispering Woods Hotel & Conference Center midsouthnostalgiafestival.com

June 6-9

Tupelo

Elvis Festival Downtown Tupelo tupeloelvisfestival.com

June 7-8

Olive Branch

Mississippi Moon Festival Aisling Farm mississippimoonfestival.bandzoogle.com

June 8, 8 am

Jackson

662 . 4 55. 42 27 Mon-Sat: 5 -10 pm 314 Howa rd St reet t heal luvian.com/g ia rd i nas

Rainbow Run 5K Duling Hall raceroster.com

June 8, 10 am

Jackson

Mississippi Pickle Fest Mississippi Agriculture & Forestry Museum msagmuseum.org

June 8

Glen Allen

5th Annual Straight Off the Lake Music Festival Paul Love Jr. Park visitgreenville.org

June 8

Jackson

Show Me Reptile & Exotics Show Wahabi Shriners showmereptileshow.com

June 8 - January 5

Jackson

Dinosaurs Around the World: The Great Outdoors Exhibit Mississippi Museum of Natural Science mdwfp.com

June 9

Memphis

The R&B Money Tour 2024: Tank with Keri Hilson & Carl Thomas

Memphis’ finest.

Orpheum Theatre orpheum-memphis.com

June 12

Memphis

Matt Rife: Problematic World Tour Orpheum Theatre orpheum-memphis.com

DELTA MAGAZINE 2024

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June 12-16

Grenada

June 29

Memphis

Henry Wise

Thunder on the Water Safe Boating Festival

The Blue Jeans Ball

Holy City

Grenada Lake visitgrenadams.com

Orpheum Theatre orpheum-memphis.com

June 29 Brandon

June 4, 5:30 pm: Off Square Books, Oxford June 5, 5 pm: Lemuria Books, Jackson

Easton Corbin

Bert Kreischer’s Fully Loaded Comedy Festival

Kathy Izard

Gold Strike Casino Resort goldstrike.com

Brandon Amphitheater brandonamphitheater.com

June 4, 6 pm: Novel, Memphis

June 14

June 14-16

Tunica

Jackson

JXN Tattoosoul Fest Mississippi Trade Mart visitjackson.com

June 29, 2 pm

Clarksdale

BAM - Birthplace of American Music Festival

Shelterwood

Shelby Farms Park agapemeanslove.org

June 6, 5:30 pm: Off Square Books, Oxford

Southaven

Southaven Exotic Pet Expo Landers Center landerscenter.com

In the Hour of Crows Quinn Connor

Bentonia

Benton Blues Festival Downtown Bentonia visityazoo.org

June 15

Dana Elmendorf in conversation with Katie Lewis June 8, 6:30 pm: Novel, Memphis

Delta Street bamfestms.com

June 15

Lisa Wingate

Faith Family Festival

June 29-30 June 14-16

Memphis

Trust the Whisper

Memphis

Je’Caryous Presents: New Jack City Live!

Orpheum Theatre orpheum-memphis.com

LITERARY EVENTS

The Pecan Children

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

John Giggle

Bite By Bite

Bloody Tuesday: The Untold Story of the Struggle for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa

May 2, 5 pm: Lemuria Books, Jackson May 4, 2 pm: Novel, Memphis

June 11, 6 pm: Novel, Memphis

June 13, 5:30 pm: Off Square Books, Oxford

Robert Colby in conversation with Kathryn McKee

Omar Tyree

An Unholy Traffic

Control

Zebra

May 7, 5:30 pm: Off Square Books, Oxford

June 13, 6 pm: Novel, Memphis

Graceland Soundstage gracelandlive.com

Julian Randall

Retribution June 14, 6 pm: Novel, Memphis

June 19, 7 pm

The Dead Don’t Need Reminding

June 15

Memphis

Wilbur McKesson

Jackson

Lift Every Voice: A Juneteenth Celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Cade Chapel M.B. Church operams.org

June 20-23

Greenville

The 39 Steps

May 8, 5:30 pm: Off Square Books, Oxford May 9, 5 pm: Lemuria Books, Jackson

Garth Risk Hallberg

Bob Drury

Katherine Center

Throne of Grace May 15, 5 pm: Lemuria Books, Jackson

Delta Center Stage deltastage.com

Mary Annaise Heglar

June 21-23

Memphis

Come From Away Orpheum Theatre orpheum-memphis.com

June 22-23

Jackson

Mississippi Comic Con Mississippi Trade Mart mississippicomiccon.com

June 22-23

Southern Flea Market Landers Center landerscenter.com

Troubled Waters

June 15, 12 pm: Lemuria Books, Jackson

The Rom-Commers June 20, 5:30 pm: Off Square Books, Oxford Tara M. Stringfellow in conversation with Kontji Anthony

May 16, 5 pm: Lemuria Books, Jackson

Magic Enuff

Hazel Ro

Ace Atkins

Now or Never

Don’t Let the Devil Ride

May 21, 6 pm: Novel, Memphis

June 25, 5:30 pm: Off Square Books, Oxford June 26, 6 pm: Novel, Memphis

Pete Candler in conversation with John T. Edge

Southaven

The Second Coming

June 24, 6 pm: Novel, Memphis

A Deeper South

Boyce Upholt

May 23, 5:30 pm: Off Square Books, Oxford

June 25, 6 pm: Novel, Memphis

The Great River Mark Greaney

Sentinel

June 29, 2 pm: Novel, Memphis DM 124 | MAY/JUNE 2024

DELTA MAGAZINE 2024

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TRAVEL

CABIN FEVER

The sounds of crickets chirping, the thrill of fish biting and the relaxation that comes from a sunrise on the water is the perfect recipe for a relaxing getaway.

Luckily for Mississippians, you don’t have to own a spot on the lake to enjoy all the good feels. We’ve highlighted a few areas around the region where you can enjoy life on the water and outdoor activities that offer something for all ages.

J.P. Coleman State Park, Pickwick Lake For the Delta traveler looking for an adventure right here in our own state, there is the J.P. Coleman State Park, which forms at the bottom of Pickwick Lake. The body of water stretches from the middle part of Tennessee and lands in the belly of Tishomingo County in Mississippi. The views can’t be beat, as it is perched on a rocky bluff overlooking the Tennessee River and offers a variety of overnight accommodations with 69 RV campsites, nine primitive campsites, 20 duplex cabins, three cottages, 16 motel rooms and three townhouses. If travelers are just looking for a scenic day trip, day passes are available by reservation in the area as well.

“People adore J.P. Coleman State Park for its tranquil ambiance and are drawn in by the serene beauty of its expansive lake. Beyond its picturesque landscapes, it’s renowned as the ultimate ‘honey hole’ for anglers, offering unparalleled fishing experiences that leave enthusiasts hooked for life. J.P. Coleman State Park is a sanctuary for relaxation and adventure alike,” says Ferrin Calvert, Tourism Director for Tishomingo County.

Spring and summer are a fantastic time to explore this area in Northeast Mississippi, and visitors will find plenty to do with miniature golf, playgrounds, sailing, swimming, skiing and fishing on Pickwick Lake. Park facilities include a visitor center, conference room, marina, boat launch and picnic pavilions. Appealing to

travelers of all ages, it’s the perfect getaway for a long weekend, or a stop off to take in the beauty of Mississippi before traveling on to further destinations.

613 County Road 321, Iuka; 662.423.6515; reserve.mdwfp.com/jp-coleman

Roy’s Store and Cabins, Lake Washington For Deltans, the draw to Chatham and the Lake Washington area is a convenient option, with a storied past, beautiful natural scenery, great honey holes for fishing, and a perfect spot for visitors looking to unwind and get away from it all.

Recently, a multitude of cabins and homes have been renovated and are available to book in the area under the name of Roy’s Cabins, with offerings from one-bedroom private accommodations, two-and three-bedroom cabin options, duplexes, and full homes right there on property. Also available are fishing charters and other activities that adventure (or peace-seekers) might want to experience.

Another new must-see nearby is the reinvention of the iconic Roy’s Store. Roy’s not only offers the coveted bait, fishing gear, and other sundries, but also serves as a fantastic steakhouse that often offers live music for folks just staying a stone’s throw away at the cabins. For visitors looking for an all-in-one serene experience not far from home, this is your place.

7 Roy’s Store Road, Chatham; 662.827.2588; royscabins.net 126 | MAY/JUNE 2024

Grenada Lake Resorts and Guides Grenada Lake has long been a hot spot for recreation, water sports, and fishing competitions, and now the visitor experience has been magnified with offerings of new cabins and RV pads for anglers or travelers looking to unplug and enjoy the quiet beauty of the area.

When Chris and Sandy Fuller began building Grenada Lake Resorts, they hoped that it would be a place for people and families to relax and enjoy all the outdoor adventures that Grenada has to offer.

Chris has always enjoyed the outdoors—especially fishing. Chris began fishing crappie tournaments in 2019 which has led him to many business ventures within the crappie fishing industry.

Whether guests travel to Grenada to fish, golf, hunt, or just relax, the couple hopes to provide high-quality lodging to those visiting the area. The cabins and lodge are centrally located to provide many oppoaccommodateand nestled beside a small private lake, where you can relax in the serenity and enjoy the 20-acre pond with nature and solitude.

The area offers seven cabins of various sizes, 17 RV pads that accomodate everything from small to large campers, a lodge and a boat ramp. They even offer kitchens for you to grill and enjoy your fresh catch from the day. Guided fishing tours are also available. Grenada Lake Resorts is located just

a few miles from the Dogwood Golf Course and of course, near some of the best crappie fishing in the county, this inclusive spot is the perfect warm weather getaway.

635 Hendrix Road, Coffeeville; 318.791.2266; grenadalakeresorts.com

Moon Lake Rentals The beauty of Moon Lake outside of Clarksdale is the best kept secret of the Delta. The calm and tranquil waters of the area keep bringing repeat guests year after year. The 2,300-acre oxbow lake located outside the mainline Mississippi River levee in Coahoma County is the perfect landing spot to enjoy the outdoors, while also having access to incredible blues music in the epicenter of Clarksdale, and also quite close to Helena, Arkansas as well, home of the King Biscuit Blues Festival.

Currently there are ten multi-room homes available for booking, ranging from small abodes for a quiet and romantic getaway to larger accommodations for groups looking to get together for a fun experience in the Delta. Some properties even offer boat slips and docks to get the most out of your experience.

“Travelers love staying on Moon Lake mostly for the sunsets and the peace and quiet, away from the busy life! We have guests all year round and in all different forms,” says Jones Luster, manager of Moon Lake Rentals. “Throughout spring and fall we have festival travelers, the winter brings duck hunters, and of course in the summer we have vacationers looking for a weekend away on the water.”

Not only is the lake pristine, but the proximity to the famed Uncle Henry’s restaurant at Moon Lake is an added bonus, which offers delectable dining choices where both locals and visitors enjoy the culinary delights. visitclarksdale.com; Instagram: @moonlakerentals DELTA MAGAZINE 2024

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DELTA SEEN

2023 - 2024 Junior Auxiliary of Greenville Charity Ball at the Greenville Golf and Country Club on February 24. Photos by Beth Giachelli.

Back left to right: Catie Palasini, Brittany Brozovich, Brooke Mosow, Ashley Corban, Faith Pieroni, Michaela Stone, Stephanie Rester, Mary Catherine Brooks, Susan Lawrence, Catherine Weaver, Arlayna Moss, Whitney Jones, Annie Hughes, Courtney Zepponi, Maddison Bruton, Katherine Anne Nicholson, Peyton Palasini, Sarah Nichols, and Katie Elliot; Front left to right: Noell Harris, Livie Fratesi, Braxton Elliot, Alex Brocato, Katiebeth Maddox, Kori Thigpen, Alicia Shoffner, Angel Reed, Andrea McCann, Lauren Dillard, Haley Smith, Eleanor Pittman, Lindsey Bell, Brinkley Farmer, Shelby Miller, Alyssa Johnson, Mackenzie Cousino, Annie Welty, Lauren McCord and Casey Nelson

Matthew McCarney, Casey, Bill, Rhonda, Lacey and Billy Brozovich

Queen Sherry Smythe and King Tim Bixler

April Andrews, April Robertson and Kathryn Cox

Sissy Gardener, Marla McGee and Debi Hendrix

Ben and Susan Lawrence with Brittany and Martin Frankel

Arlayna Moss, Brittany Frankel and Kyle and Nikki Christopher and Lauren Dillard Michaela Morgan

Doug and Holly Wade with Johanna and Martin Walker

Jay, Sonya, Tim, Justin and Ashli Bixler

130 | MAY/JUNE 2024

Clarksdale Junior Auxiliary Charity Ball in the Norman Brown Commons Building in Clarksdale on March 22.

DELTA SEEN

Moose Morris, Mallory Collins and Amy Morris

Rachel Ware, Anna Claire Luster and Mary Kathryn Burge

Kristin and Curt Orr

Mason and Kate Dunn

Laurie and Darrell Bullock

Katelyn Willis, Anna Catherine Smith, Caitlin Walker and Katie Flowers

Mary Amelia Humber, Rachel Ware, Kristin Orr, Madelyn Meg Murphey, Kristin Orr, Paul Pearson and Jen Waller Marley, Laurie Bullock and Anna Claire Luster Kate Murphey

Amanda and Chris Mincey

Anna Burton and Shaun Camille Brown and Cassie Leigh Freeman Martin

Jonathan and Anna Brittain Martin

Zack and Anna Catherine Smith

Anna Claire Luster, Madelyn Marley and Rachel Ware DELTA MAGAZINE 2024

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DELTA SEEN

Katie, Jennifer, and Caroline Ennis

Miller and Rebekah Arant

Brad McCarley and Josh Hammond

Carmon Cox and Kristi Carmichael 132 | MAY/JUNE 2024

Delta Celebration in honor of the inauguration of Dr. Daniel Ennis, President of Delta State University at Grammy Museum MS in Cleveland on February 23. Photos by Holly Ray. Belle Meade Garden Club lunch featuring Josh Hammond and Brad McCarley of Buster’s Butchers at Kristi Carmichael’s house on February 28.

Nan Sanders and Bettye Mitchell Robert Ragan and Amber Kincaid George Miller and Dan Ennis

Campbell and Joe Saia

Brandi and Eddie Lovin with Christy Riddle

Lauren Keras and Brad McCarley

Paula Sansome and Ellen Lester

Josh Hammond and Carmon Cox

Junior Auxiliary of Cleveland Children’s Benefit Ball at the Bolivar County Expo Center on February 16. Photos by William Powell

Caleb Reed, Robin Reed, Keller Reed, back left is Boo Flowers, Nancy Flowers, Nolan Reed, Teresa Reed, Bob Reed, Layla Reed, Alex Reed, Will Reed, Callie Reed, Addie Jane Reed, Dossie Shook and Merita Shook

Lex Davis, Teresa Reed and Richard Boggs

Ben Aylward, Alex Aylward, Christy Aylward, Trey Aylward, Peyton Brigham, Karol Brigham, Pat Farr, Don Aylward, Lee Aylward, Deason Aylward, Sarah Aylward, Brig Aylward, Keri Evelyn Neumann, Erik Neumann, Jenna Neumann, Oskar Neumann, Renee LaMastus, Mack LaMastus, Mary Madeline Schumpert and Gibson LaMastus

Laura and Cindy Grittman with Anna McClain Sykes

Rob Shipp, Janna Shipp, Natalee Shipp and Jasmine Shipp

Libbi Logan and Robin McKnight

DELTA SEEN

Chuck and Jackie Williamson

Matt and Christie Sledge

Will, Callie, Addie Jane and Caleb Reed

Diane and Marty Chenault

Molly Roberts and Georgia Tindall

Queen, Sarah Aylward and King, Bob Reed

Britney Roconni, Mary Alice Holloway, Lacy Radicioni, Corley Mullins, Mary Parker Redditt and Caitlyn Thompson DELTA MAGAZINE 2024

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DELTA SEEN

Anders Hedrick, Anna Claire Harris, Lauren Burke, Callie Galey, Sarah Abbay, Jane Rob Pannell, Morgan Minton and Rae Elizabeth Parsons

Greenwood Junior Auxiliary Charity Cotton Ball at the Leflore County Civic Center on February 24. Photos by Andy Lo

Amanda Langford, Morgan McCaleb, Lainey Harreld, Monica Bartlett and Lori Beth Gann

Kathryn, Jeff and Julie Day Warren

Mary Kathryn O’Dell, Erin Ashley Cooper and Elizabeth Whites

Frank and Beth Leflore

Cotton Ball Queen Ann Lamar Jefcoat and Cotton Ball King Ricky Belk.

Erin McBride, Sara Grace Long and Lauren Tackett

Ashlea and Michael Galey

Abby Rogers, Millie Moses, Angie Cole and Anna Grace Rice 134 | MAY/JUNE 2024

Annette and James Morgan III, Jean Morgan Bush and Mary Annette Morgan Smith

The 21st Annual Juke Joint Festivial in Clarksdale April 11-14 A selection of photos by Delta Magazine readers

DELTA SEEN

Juke Joint Bride and Groom Kate Murphey and Von Seibert

Layla Musselwhite performs with her father Charlie Musselwhite during the festival

Gardner Ware and Elizabeth Blaine Cauthen

Juke Joint Baby Rigby Rodgers with his aunt Beth Johnson

Laurie Bullock, Anna Claire and Jones Luster

Juke Joint Queen Mallory Jones

Juke Joint Festival King, Tripp Armstrong

Karen Cauthen, Teresa Ragland and Val Agostinelli

Steve Hays with Wade and Michele Fondren

Kris Blakely, Scott Coopwood and Derek St Holmes at the Crossroads near the historic Dockery Farms Plantation

Juke Joint Festvial volunteers Kate Dunn, Caysi Seely, Megan Denton, Jen Mohead, Val Agostinelli, Margaret Holcomb, Rachel and Mila Cirilli

Sophie Clay, Lisa Howorth, Maude Schuyler Clay at Cats and Dogs Opening at Southside Gallery in Oxford

Annual MDJC football reunion, classes 1964–1968 at Vito’s Marketplace in Leland on March 2. Left to right: James Stricklin, Phil Greco, Mike Domino, Neal Berryhill, Paul Walker, Frank Dantone, Regan Ford, Tommy Fava, Joel Henderson, Hal Bridges and Guy Hall DELTA MAGAZINE 2024

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Thefinalword An Ode to Nanny

Jerry Hyer, a Darlove native, lives in Hattiesburg. He is a pulmonary/critical care physician at Merit Health-Wesley.

He is husband to Margaret and father to Mary Margaret (Stephen Moore), Bonnie Elizabeth, Katherine and Henry.

lmost a century ago, my grandmother, Minnie Laverne Newton Hyer, and her family embarked on a journey that would change not only their lives but also the lives of many others. Leaving behind their hometown of Sweetwater, Alabama, the Newton family moved to the Delta in a Model T truck to Darlove in Washington County, Mississippi. In the Delta, Newton would marry my grandfather, Henry Barton Hyer, who was from a farming family and built a life filled with hard work, frugality, and unwavering faith. They had four children, thirteen grandchildren, and now fourteen great-grandchildren. She would become known as Mrs. Jim to the community, but she is and will always be Nanny to me.

Growing up during the Great Depression, Nanny experienced firsthand the struggles and hardships that plagued the Delta and the nation. These early experiences shaped her character and instilled in her the importance of hard work and perseverance. Throughout her life, Nanny never wavered in her commitment

A

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BY JERRY HYER

to these principles. Even at 107, she continues to embody the values of resilience and determination. And speaking of her longevity, clean living has undoubtedly played a part! She has been a teetotaler her whole life, and she has eaten sausage or bacon and butter every single day. She was very active but never intentionally exercised.

Nanny’s home, located just a quarter mile down the road from my childhood home in Darlove, holds countless memories for me.

It was a place of warmth, love, and nourishment for the body and the soul.

Counting the meals I’ve shared at her table in my fifty-six years would be impossible.

Nanny’s cooking skills were unparalleled, with dishes that could rival those of any Michelin-starred restaurant! What made her food truly special was that most of the vegetables came from her garden. She taught us the value of self-sufficiency and the satisfaction of growing and preparing food.

Corn, okra, butter beans, and tomatoes were usually on the table, along with a roast, rice and gravy, and scratch-made cornbread.

And, of course, a delicious pie, usually chocolate or, my favorite, lemon icebox—no meringue for me, please!

But Nanny’s influence extended far beyond the kitchen. She is a woman of deep faith, and her prayers were integral to our family gatherings. Before every meal, she would lead us in a heartfelt blessing, reminding us of the importance of gratitude.

Her prayers were authentic and filled with a genuine connection to the Divine. It was evident that she had a special relationship with the person she spoke to. That relationship has sustained her through the majority of her years, which she spent alone after the death of my grandfather, Barton.

He died sixty-four years ago, but she keeps his photograph on the windowsill in her bedroom. She still talks about how much she misses him and can’t wait to see him again.

She was forty when she became a widow and never remarried.

In addition to her spiritual guidance,

Nanny also imparted invaluable wisdom about life and relationships. She taught us the significance of family, community, friendship, and faith. She still calls us to fill us in on the community’s births, illnesses, or deaths, though sometimes we reply with, “Nanny, we don’t know who that is!”

Nanny’s love for her family knows no bounds, and her door has always been open to her grandchildren and extended family.

Through her actions, she showed us the true meaning of unconditional love. One of her favorite things to say to her loved ones is, “In pride or in shame, my love for you is the same.” We all know it doesn’t matter how much we fail or succeed; she loves us regardless.

Nanny’s teachings were not limited to abstract concepts. She also taught us practical skills that would serve us well in life.

A true matriarch of our family farm, she often supervised my brother, cousins, and myself in the field while we chopped cotton.

Nanny showed us the value of hard work and the importance of taking pride in our accomplishments. She taught us good manners and the importance of treating others with kindness and respect. And if we forgot these lessons, there was always a switch out her back door for us to go out and bring her so she could remind us of how to behave!

As I reflect on the impact Nanny has had on my life, I am filled with gratitude and admiration. She has been a guiding light, a source of wisdom, and a pillar of strength.

Her unwavering faith, tireless work ethic, and unconditional love have left an indelible mark on our lives and helped make me the person I am today. Nanny’s legacy will shine brightly, illuminating the path for future generations. She is frustrated that her body is failing her now, but her mind remains sharp. She has said she doesn’t know why she’s still here at the remarkable age of 107.

But we remind her that God has used her for her whole life and that He must not be done with her yet. DM

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