My Delta, My Trip (part 1)

Last week I went to the Mississippi Delta and took a few pictures I wanted to share. It took me a little while to transfer the photos, so this post is a little behind. The delta roughly runs from Memphis to Vicksburg (north to south). it extends from the Mississippi River to west, about 20 miles short of I-55 to the east, basically The Yazoo River. It is said that the Delta stretches from the Lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis to "Catfish Row" in Vicksburg. I say that's about as good a geographical line as I can dream up.

There's a history and connection to New Orleans, in part because of the cotton going down river. In some ways it's from the connection of the river, but more than that it's a history of the money moving up and down the river from those cotton fields to the markets down in New Orleans. It has come to shape a great deal of my thought and tastes. where i went to law school, the tastes I tend to have, even the language I like to hear. To this day, i recall more of the French I learned in a short stretch of time than any of the Spanish I learned living in Mexico.

I digress. My hometown is Clarksdale. It's somewhat ground zero for the Delta and The Blues and all the good and bad that's Mississippi. see this picture of the corner of a building? This was the first apartment my parents had. The building cuts a diagonal, a triangle across a corner downtown. it's the bus station for the Greyhound Line. If you look at that last door leading to the corner, you're seeing my parent's first front door. It was a tiny apartment attached to the station where my father worked. SPACIOUS! heh.