Tour of the Mississippi Delta was eye-opening – The Vicksburg Post

When I first moved to Vicksburg way back in 2014 to take a job across the river in Louisiana, someone described it as a “nice little Delta town.” I really didn’t know what that meant back then, and after getting my own little tour of the area known as the Mississippi Delta earlier this month, I realize I still didn’t fully grasp its significance.

I think the idea of the Mississippi Delta really began to come into focus for me the first time I heard the quote attributed to writer David Cohn that said, “The Mississippi Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis and ends on Catfish Row in Vicksburg.”

By that time, I was already working here at The Post, so I knew what Catfish Row meant. I had also recently taken my kids for a quick weekend in Memphis, where we stayed at the Peabody and got to witness the famous ducks in the lobby. So, I had more of an idea of at least the geographical borders of the area.

But a quick trip with the girlfriend over the Fourth of July weekend really opened my eyes to so many things I had only heard about, and plenty of others I had no idea existed.

In Cleveland, for example — a place I have driven through countless times when the kiddos still went to school in Tate County — I had never ventured farther from the highway than Walmart or Kroger. So, boy was I surprised when we turned the opposite direction off Highway 161 and suddenly there was the GRAMMY Museum and Delta State University. Did you know Mississippi has the most Grammy winners per capita of any state? Did you know Delta State’s unofficial mascot is the Fighting Okra?  Because I didn’t. But I do now!

Headed north, we came to a town I had at least driven through once — Greenville —- although it had been a quick trip to drop something off at the newspaper there. The girlfriend having grown up in Greenville, I got to see how much more the town has to offer, including what I now understand to be a not-so-hidden gem in Doe’s Eat Place. If you haven’t made the trip to this nondescript cinder-block building where you enter through the kitchen, sit within inches of other people’s tables and have some of the absolute best food of your life in the process, I obviously recommend it highly. Again: who knew? Apparently a lot of folks, because it was packed. 

Yet another stop that taught me something I didn’t know about Delta culture was a visit to McCarty’s Pottery in Merigold. I won’t pretend to be a person that knows much about art. I’ve been told that whatever art you like is good art. If that’s the case, McCarty’s is really good art. Aside from the wide variety of pottery, the winding building it is housed in and the accompanying grounds alone are worth the trip.

At the northernmost point on our trip, I finally had the chance to step foot into Clarksdale. Being a big music fan, people who know me are always shocked when they find out I haven’t visited. Well, now I have, and from the famous crossroads where Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the Devil to become an amazing guitar player to the Ground Zero Blues Club owned by Morgan Freeman, I was able to check several things off my Mississippi travel bucket list.

And I guess we picked an appropriate time to make the trip. We made it home just as the movie “Sinners” was making its debut on streaming. And if you missed Mississippi Today’s glowing review of the film’s precise portrayal of the Mississippi Delta, it’s worth the watch. Even for someone newly educated on the area, it was neat to see and seemed a historically accurate depiction of the region, aside from the vampires, that is. We didn’t see any of those. 

Maybe next time.

Blake Bell is the general manager and executive editor of The Vicksburg Post. He can be reached at blake.bell@vicksburgpost.com.