Back to the Delta, Going to Memphis

It's said that the Mississippi Delta begins in the lobby of Peabody Hotel in Memphis, and ends at Catfish Row in Vicksburg.  On the east of the Delta are the "hills" and the western border is the River itself.  The alluvial flood plain is the Delta.  That's where the cotton grows still, along with rice and soybeans, and now catfish.   John Lee Hooker, BB King, Mississippi John Hurt and Morgan Freeman are from the Delta.  And while I wasn't born there, it's where I'm from too.

Mom's not from the Delta, but she is a Delta Belle.  She grew up in Memphis, and it was to Memphis that she and I drove while TRIMMING OUT was on the hard, being tended to by the good folks at British Marine in Alameda, prior to my sailing down the coast of California.  The Memphis trip was in conjunction with her 90th birthday celebration scheduled in Cleveland, MS, and with the 50th reunion of my class at Cleveland High School...tho I wasn't to graduate with them...they let me think I'm a classmate.

So down to Memphis we drove from her home in Kentucky.  Old haunts were visited....the house where my dad proposed, the Memphis Academy of Art where he and she performed a piano duet once, and he conducted the local opera company's "Carmen" when I was 11.  We passed Rhodes College and the Halliburton Tower, named for the local explorer who Mom revealed was one of her early heroes.  She and her best friend were going to be "foreign correspondents" after they matriculated from Miss Hutchison's...perhaps the impetus for some of my adventuring...Peace Corps, motorcycling and such.

Then down to the Delta itself.   Hiway 61 now goes right past the well marked entrances to Tunica's gambling emporia, but bypasses such towns as Clarksdale, Shelby and Mound Bayou...depriving visitors of the real flavor of that unique part of the world.  Even Merigold has a bypass, an attempt to speed the motorist along, or to deprive the local merchants of customers...who knows?  It ain't the way it was.

The visit with the family was great, and that with a luncheon at the Country Club where I had been a lifeguard in the late 60's...listening to the Beatles and the Stones and Herman's Hermits while my wards splashed and tanned, brought back the nostalgia of the Delta summers.

The reunion was terrific too, with big smiles and lots of hugs, and "whatever happened to's...?"  It was an amazing class from a unique place.  Of the 80 odd graduates, at least 4 went on to become physicians, one an award winning author, architects, builders, farmers, ranchers, real estate developers and a plethora of educators, some of whom had been students of my father.  One had been blown off an oil rig during an explosion in the Gulf and lived to tell the tale, a few were veterans who served in Viet Nam, Europe and Stateside; one had served as a Red Cross Volunteer in Viet Nam, a few had lived abroad, while others had never left Bolivar County.  Just a wonderful group of people.

So when it was all over, Mom and I headed back to Kentucky via Oxford and Corinth, MS,  and I returned to California for the next leg of the Voyage...

Here's a picture of me, Mom and my brother, Richard, after her 90th birthday luncheon.