Chicago · Revenant

Maybe I should make this my internal Chicago travel blog.

Maybe I should flap my arms and fly to the moon with Veronica Lake riding on my back.

Hey, wasn't this a cool idea? I'd blog about my adventures during the day. Trouble I'm in hotel number two with crappy Internet service.

Full wrap up when I get back. I promise. Bah.

I am the King of Blues Travelers.

Starting at 8:30, I headed south on Highway 61 (not revisited, this was my first time down the road). First stop, Dockery Plantation, where, more or less, the blues were born. A bit of a drive, and since it's private property and a working plantation, it is advisable to reserve photo ops to the extremely photogenic barn and offices out front. It was here I noticed that the cotton is everywhere.

Driving up through the middle of the state I saw plenty of cotton fields, but in the Delta there's no escape from the fluffy white stuff. It rolls around like tumbleweeds and covers the sides of the road in light flurries. The other predominant feature of the scenery is ramshackle buildings. I saw more literal shacks everywhere I went, growing more shabby and poorly repaired the deeper I delved. And yet, they never appeared as anything less than solid, evene when tilting 45 degrees... But back to the trip.

Leland was the next stop. I arrived a bit before operating hours at the Highway 61 Blues Museum and had to wander about until 10 a.m. Good thing, since it allowed me the opportunity to discover that Leland was the birthplace of Jim Henson AND the WInter brothers. The museum is a tightly packed but rich collection of blues ephemera, though naturally they concentrate on the Delta's musicians and especially Leland blues performers. Of special note is the James "Son" Thomas exhibit. Thomas wasn't just a great bluesman who learned at the feet of Sonny Boy Williamson and Elmore James, he created remarkably weird sculptures (see link above). I visited Mr. Thoimas' grave just outside of town, in yet another evocatively sparse and remote graveyard. Things weren't as quiet as they were at Elmore James' gravesite, the insects--which included dragonflies and mosquitoes as big as your head--clicking and buzzing in the background.

On to Holly Ridge and Charley Patton's grave next. Mind you, I don't want to give the false impression that these places are side by side. This trip took place between 9:30 and 5 p.m., so that should give you an idea of the distances I traveled. The Delta is not petite.

More tomorrow.

Gotta be honest with you, kids, this trip hasn't exactly shaped up into the culture shocking event I thought it would be. But I suppose that's asking too much. I entered into this with specific ideas about the South, many of them outdated, others simply unfair. No, I wasn't expecting white gents in white suits, smoking big cigars while striding through town with a bourbon filled cane. Nor did I think the streets would be filled with dancing and singing black folks, every corner manned by a bluesman with a wide-brimmed hat and a guitar.

New Orleans, on the other hand, was exactly what I expected: a town left to a state of decrepitude, hanging on to its most stereotypical traits and features in order to survive. Mike told me she was sorry I didn't get to see NOLA as it was, pre-Katrina. What I saw was a beaten lady of the evening trying to use a ton of make up to cover up the marks. Shameful, shameful.

I don't want to sound like I'm slamming New Orleans. Not at all. While I won't excuse the fact that Bourbon Street is a disgusting tourist trap, repository of all the tacky neon vice I now appreciate Chicago taking the time to push out of sight, and is so inundated with booze, piss, and vomit, high-pressure steam cleaners loaded with bleach and acid couldn't get the smell out, I can see the skeleton of a city that not only was great, but wants to be great again. The buildings are beautiful, and it's plain that they couldn't be imagined anywhere else. Buildings define a city. The solidity and strength of Chicago greystones; the painted, slanting ladies of San Francisco, the impregnable cockroach repositories of New York... The French Quarter's and Faubourg Marigny neighborhood's structures really define New Orleans style.

The problem is, not everyone there is living in 18th Century buildings. I didn't see terribly much while I was there, but I did drive up and down the streets: downtown, Canal Street, both ways (Christ, the traffic is awful... I think I was competing with Saints traffic too; everyone was dressed in the team's colors), up and down Rampart, and so on. Having no clue where I was going, I don't know if I reached the 9th ward. Probably not, because most of the buildings I saw were still standing. Sort of.

It's utterly repugnant, the conditions people are still being forced to live in. The French Quarter and Faubourg Marigny survived because they're higher up, and thank God, because there were some very nice people living and working there (I stayed in a Marigny B&B), and the buildings are, if I may repeat myself, gorgeously decadent. But most homes looked like they'd been kicked around and tagged by some giant mean kid. There were spray-painted signs begging customers to come back. Most of the windows were boarded up. Overall, the place and people gave off a "Who gives a shit?" vibe. And only a hardhearted son of a bitch could hold that against them.

On the more personal and childish side, I HATE HATE HATE New Orleans for not getting their shit together enough to make it possible for me to visit the wax museum (closed) and jazz museum (apparently closed or no posted hours). Also, store the fucking beads and feather masks until Fat Tuesday. And Jesus Christ, turn off the zydeco, or I'm going to start shooting tourists every hour on the hour.

Aha, one other saving grace: I saw the Ignatius J Reilly statue. I thought he'd be fatter. Pictures to come.

The drive to Clarksdale was... uneventful seems to be an understatement. Nothing happene on I-55. Part of me should be surprised, but after years of road tripping, I'm used to seeing more than a handful of historical markers and tacky billboards along the way. Where's your Mars Cheese Castle and Tommy Bartlett's Robot World, Mississppi? Alas, in the interest of making good time and beating a few establishments' 5 p.m. closing times, I had to skip Jackson, MS, and its two sole draws for me: the house where Skip James, Tommy Johnson, and a slew of other bluesmen lived, and HC Speir's furniture store.

Tomorrow is grave day.

Sorry for the anti-climax, kids, but the Wifi at my first Inn petered out. Everything else was fine though.

I'm in Clarksdale and starving after seven hours of driving northwards. Can't say that Mississippi hasn't joined the 20th Century, but I was greeted with the sight of prisoners working the roads, dressed in green stripes, and plenty o' fields of cotton. Suffice to say parts of the old South rfemain intact.

Fearing that I'd arrive too late to do anything in Clarksdale, I visited only one bluesman's grave. Elmore James' last resting place is in a remote black graveyard. His stone is rather professional looking beside carved concrete slabs and the like. Left a guitar pick and stole a sample of dirt. I also stopped by lesser-known bluesman Lonnie Pitchford's grave. No one and I do mean NO ONE was around. It was warm and sunny, and I was prepared for a lack of car noise and such, but being raised in a suburban area I always expect to hear insects and burds. there was nothing, aside from occasional black fly's buzzing. The stillness was a little unsettling, and that's not dramatic license on my part. Imagine what it would be like around a more demonic soul's--like Robert Johnson--final bed.

More later. I'm starving.

The package arrived intact. Repeat, the package arrived intact.

I am staying in the old slave quarters behind the big house (that is, the B&B I'm staying at). Sparse but hardly spartan, I think I'll be comfortable here. Turns out the rental people think that "economy" means mini-SUV, so I'm hoping that gas doesn't cost as much as renting the damned thing. My God, what was I thinking? I can't afford this.

The flight was uneventful. Went by in a blinking. I managed to finish a chapter of Robert palmer's Deep Blues (yes, you must buy). Fortunate enough to have no one sitting next to me in my already wee seat. What do you expect for an $84 flight, Dan.

Driving to the B&B, I made my inevitable wrong turn and ended up in some fairly seedy looking areas. The Katrina markings are still on most of the houses here, lookjng like hex signs or voodoo glyphs to Legba. Some buildings look like someone took a cheese grater to them, but there is also new construction and repair. I can't say it looks like a city on the mend.

Accidentally drove down Bourbon Street, which you're advised not to do with a SUV, even a little one. This is a chocolate city indeed, with a pale white tourist center. I'm about to head over to the French Quarter for some grub right now. Talk soon.

I have to admit, I'm getting nervous. I keep reading that the South is still pretty deep in some parts, and that I'll be facing gravel and dirt roads and long stretches of nothin' for plentiful miles. I've been downloading directions to all the specific spots I want to hit--Mississippi John Hurt, Charley Patton, Elmore James, Sonny Boy Wiliamson II, and others graves--but they're buried more deeply across the land than they are in it. Nost of the trip will be spent crawling up through Southern Mississippi--the Delta is in the northwest half. Memphis and New Orleans will be the extent of urbanity, and on either end. I am used to driving through the Midwest. I am accustomed to stretches of flat nothing, waving shafts of grain and corn, cows. What wil I see down there? Cotton? Peanuts? Vast tracts of sorghum?

maybe I'm making more out of this than I should be. I imagine I'll be horrified to discover Zeke's Starbucks franchise in the middle of Tutweiler, MS.

This blog will possibly be another dead body on the road of ideas I've had and then quickly abandoned. Maybe not. There's nothing more enticing or inspiring than a clean, empty notebook... until you hit page two and wander off to do something productive, or not.

Either/or: I'll try to blog as time allows on my trip in the coming week. I predict few fights, fewer escapes from southern redneck sheriff pokeys, and almost no runnings afoul of demonic witchwomen or practitioners of voudon. I do, however, predict much shopping and searching for oddities. I am an American hipster, it is what I do.

I will try to educate and entertain, but I can't say I'll always be accurate. I'm traveling without my personal library or copious amounts of research time. I think I'll be gone from every town I hit even before I arrive there.

Questions and tips are encouraged as I wind through this portion of the Old Weird America.

And he was never seen again. At least until he got back.