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The last post mentioned that by the end of this weekend, I would have visited Oxford, Clarksdale, and a watermelon festival in Mize, Mississippi. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the opportunity to complete any of these adventures.
In lieu of Oxford and Clarksdale, I decided that after a long Friday night it would be best to minimize my Saturday travels and explore Vicksburg, Mississippi in more depth. 
The last time I visited Vicksburg, a few friends and I attended the lavish—in a southern sense, complete with all the heart-clogging fixings—opening of a traveling Smithsonian exhibition chronicling the history of the Blues. This time, however, I sought out to see this quaint town nestled one of myriad bends on the Mississippi River. Before stopping in Vicksburg, I felt an outstanding obligation to permit my car, even if for the most fleeting of moments, to experience the “West.” My 1998 Honda Accord, in other words, crossed the Mississippi River into Louisiana, exited the highway, re-entered the highway, and then returned to Vicksburg for some sightseeing.
While it’s known for its relentless Civil War siege and today for the riverboat casinos that dock there, Vicksburg takes phenomenal pride in being the first place that bottled Coca-Cola. Joseph Biedenharn first bottled this mediocre yet wildly lucrative elixir in his charming candy store and soda parlor on Washington Street in 1894; beforehand, it only existed “on tap,” I suppose. Today, the town has immortalized the store as the Biedenharn Coca-Cola Museum, adorned with an extraordinary array of antique bottling equipment and Coke memorabilia, including a collection of coke bottles that if brought up north could accrue a small fortune in 5-cent redeemables. After visiting this oh-so-touristy downtown destination, I stopped by the Attic Gallery, a regionally-renowned gallery of contemporary Southern art. Ascend ding four stories through a catacomb of hallways and rooms, beautiful art inhabits each nook and cranny of this rustic building, from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling.
Today, a few friends and I set out for the Smith County Watermelon Festival. There was only one small problem: no watermelon festival existed; it instead took place on Friday and Saturday. We showed up in Mize, Mississippi to a ghost town, similar to all one zillion of Mississippi's small towns on the Lord’s Day. After realizing we had traveled for well over an hour and played the blame game about who exactly flubbed the festival dates, we agreed that it was the Mississippi tourism website’s events calendar that had led us astray. The journey is nonetheless the best part of the trip. We stopped at a roadside watermelon stand and with the help of two of the farmers, learned how to property select, cut open, and properly eat a Smith County watermelon. Over the next several hours, we 
wandered through a corn field at the brink of harvest, visited the small town of Mendenhall, Mississippi, and stopped at Jerry’s Catfish House, where I ate one of Mississippi’s most famous filleted-and-lightly-battered catfish.
I’ve returned to Jackson not only more cultured, but well-fed and with enough watermelons in tow to supply Gallagher and his bizarrely comedic act for quite some time.
Nothing all-that new is going on here in Jackson. That’s not to say that I’m bored. In fact, I’ve been in engaging in much of the same activities about which I’ve already written. Who wants to hear about that which is usual, familiar, or just not noteworthy for the second time?
This weekend will boast some awesome activities. On Saturday, a few of us will be heading upstate to Oxford, the home of Ole Miss, and Clarksdale, where I plan on visiting the Delta Blues Museum and Morgan Freeman's blues club Ground Zero. The next day I’ll hopefully gather a group of people to go down to Mize, Mississippi for the annual Smith County Watermelon Festival, which boasts such events as a watermelon seed-spitting contest, a greased watermelon race and a watermelon eating contest.
Have I mentioned that I love the South?
Greetings from the Mississippi State Republican Committee dinner, clad in blue seersucker and confederacy: 
"Hey,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “Happy Fourth of July!”
“You too. What’s up?”
“Want to go on a road trip?” 
“Sure.” In case you’ve been incarcerated for the past few months or just don’t read very carefully, I love going on road trips—and especially on the Fourth, when burning some fuel and traveling the country is what makes America great. I needed to ask one question though: “Where to?”
“This blues festival in Northern Mississippi.” I’m well aware that every other post is about my adventures to some small-town blues festival and that I’m thoroughly addicted. Anyway, I needed my fix and I was ready to go within two shakes of a lamb’s tail.
“Let’s go!”
And we went…to Avalon, Mississippi for the annual Mississippi John Hurt Blues Festival. There was only one problem: we had no clue who Mississippi John Hurt even was, except for the fact that he adopted his home state as his prenom de guerre in an ever-competitive blues world. Thankfully, most of the friendly folks we talked to upon our arrival in Avalon tolerated our egregious ignorance and educated us on the man who some say to be the one of the most influential blues guitarists.
A Scottish Jew we met at the festival is writing a book on Hurt and emphasized that what’s especially interesting about Mississippi John Hurt is not his achievements, but the path he took to his achievements. 
Growing up on a farm in Avalon, he became a popular singer in the community and in the late 1920s recorded several albums in Memphis and New York. His record label, however, went belly-up during the Depression and he returned to Avalon to tend to the land once again. Thirty years later, a folk musicologist became enamored with Hurt’s music and came to Avalon to both find him and convince him to come out east to perform—at the age of seventy years old. Hurt agreed and made his debut performance at the famed Newport Folk Festival in 1963, a festival that also boasted Bob Dylan, Peter Paul & Mary, and Joan Baez on its lineup. Many believed that Hurt would fail to connect to his audience due to profound geographical and generational differences, yet that proved not to be the case. He came out on stage, slowly scanned the crowd, and asked with confidence, “In Mississippi fashion, how’s it going y’all?” Everyone went berserk and his set was an absolute success. After that show and up until his death three years later, he made several recordings and became an integral part of the 1960s “folk revival.” So, in a way, I suppose Hurt is the Terrence Mann (from Field of Dreams) of Blues Music…except without apparitions and a Moonlight Graham.
I spent Thursday and Friday in Lafayette, Louisiana and New Iberia, Louisiana doing research on their small yet vibrant Jewish communities. These two towns make up a large part of what is known as Acadiana, the area to which French Acadians fled and settled when leaving English-colonized Quebec. In other words, this was Cajun country! We heard some great Zydeco, the musical genre at the intersection of traditional Cajun music and Delta blues, at a small tin-roofed venue and the next morning I ate a hearty Cajun breakfast of an omelet, biscuits, and grits. Mmm… What was most striking about this area was the landscape. Somewhere between the palatial swamps, moss-and-ivy covered oak trees, and the 500% humidity, I realized that The Waterboy wasn’t very far off:
You know those Walgreens commercials that talk about a place called Perfect, where every front lawn is fresh-cut and verdant, where every picket fence is as pure white as a brand new MacBook, and where everyone is just so darn friendly it makes you question the whole human condition? “Of course, we don't live anywhere near Perfect,” these commercials attest, “so we have Walgreens.” Well, I’ve found a place that’s every bit as perfect as Walgreens—if not more so—but without the prophylactics and codine. This utopia is called Vicksburg, Mississippi, and it’s only a forty-five minute’s drive westward from Jackson. A few friends and I went there on Thursday for the grand opening of a traveling Smithsonian exhibit at the Southern Cultural Heritage Foundation. The foundation isn’t as notable as their property: they own the auditorium where the banquet scene took place in O Brother, Where Art Thou?. In that very same auditorium there was a fun blues concert and just outside a free picnic (with delicious fried catfish, of course) accompanied by a bluegrass quartet. All the residents of this small town showed up dressed sharply for this cultural event and were all so friendly. We took a stroll around the town as well, which is best known for its bloody submission to General Grant in the early summer of 1863 and being the birthplace of Coca Cola. By the way, I didn’t get the opportunity to tour the battlefields, but I’m sure they look like the myriad other battlefields that have been transformed into state or national parks. Who needs the battlefield anyway? The town is beautiful, but I can not explain exactly why. Somewhere between its location—perched on a hill overlooking a small bend in the Mighty Mississippi—and the way in which everything is in its proper place and in its pristine condition, it’s just…let’s see, “Perfect”. Unfortunately, I wasn't smart enough to take pictures while in Vicksburg. Oh well.
However, I did take some pictures recently of the State Capitol in Jackson:
The last time I visited Vicksburg, a few friends and I attended the lavish—in a southern sense, complete with all the heart-clogging fixings—opening of a traveling Smithsonian exhibition chronicling the history of the Blues. This time, however, I sought out to see this quaint town nestled one of myriad bends on the Mississippi River. Before stopping in Vicksburg, I felt an outstanding obligation to permit my car, even if for the most fleeting of moments, to experience the “West.” My 1998 Honda Accord, in other words, crossed the Mississippi River into Louisiana, exited the highway, re-entered the highway, and then returned to Vicksburg for some sightseeing.
While it’s known for its relentless Civil War siege and today for the riverboat casinos that dock there, Vicksburg takes phenomenal pride in being the first place that bottled Coca-Cola. Joseph Biedenharn first bottled this mediocre yet wildly lucrative elixir in his charming candy store and soda parlor on Washington Street in 1894; beforehand, it only existed “on tap,” I suppose. Today, the town has immortalized the store as the Biedenharn Coca-Cola Museum, adorned with an extraordinary array of antique bottling equipment and Coke memorabilia, including a collection of coke bottles that if brought up north could accrue a small fortune in 5-cent redeemables. After visiting this oh-so-touristy downtown destination, I stopped by the Attic Gallery, a regionally-renowned gallery of contemporary Southern art. Ascend ding four stories through a catacomb of hallways and rooms, beautiful art inhabits each nook and cranny of this rustic building, from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling.
Today, a few friends and I set out for the Smith County Watermelon Festival. There was only one small problem: no watermelon festival existed; it instead took place on Friday and Saturday. We showed up in Mize, Mississippi to a ghost town, similar to all one zillion of Mississippi's small towns on the Lord’s Day. After realizing we had traveled for well over an hour and played the blame game about who exactly flubbed the festival dates, we agreed that it was the Mississippi tourism website’s events calendar that had led us astray. The journey is nonetheless the best part of the trip. We stopped at a roadside watermelon stand and with the help of two of the farmers, learned how to property select, cut open, and properly eat a Smith County watermelon. Over the next several hours, we 
wandered through a corn field at the brink of harvest, visited the small town of Mendenhall, Mississippi, and stopped at Jerry’s Catfish House, where I ate one of Mississippi’s most famous filleted-and-lightly-battered catfish.
