Day 7 Mississippi - Looking for the Biggest river in America

Oh great Mississippi, I long to see you...

I've been here a week and hadn't seen the Mississippi River. I knew it was west of here, so all I had to do was drive west and I would run into it. You can't miss it, right? If you did you would drive into it. I took off on a little road and headed west. The problem was that once you get close, there is so much flooding that you have to turn back before you get to the river. I drove and turned and drove and backed up for about 3 hours. I drove through tiny towns like New Hope and Rena Lara. I was pretty sure I was almost at the river when I drove through Beulah land, but still I got turned back. I ended up in a little town called Jonestown.... how cool is that?

Uptown Brown's - Home of the original Chicago's Jewtown style polish

I stopped for lunch at Uptown Brown's - Home of the original Chicago's Jewtown style polish. I talked for a while with Mr. and Mrs Brown. Mr. Brown's daddy opened the joint in 1964. He recommended the hot polish dog and cool-aid. I went for the dog but passed on the cool-aid for obvious reasons. The dawg was big and smothered in onions, jalapenos and some other green pepper that about made me cry. It was nothing short of delicious!

Rest In Peace, We'll see you in the morning

The cool thing about sight-seeing in this area is that there is a pretty cemetery, church, or both about every mile or so. I stopped at a couple and noticed that ladies around here have some pretty names.
Lugene J Mitchell, Jasmine Earlenisha, Virda Lee Williams, Lilly Colle, Applonia Louise, Gestra Lontarzar and Mrs. Viola "Fennie" Bates.

The birth and death dates are listed as Sunrise and Sunset.

There were phrases scattered all about to remind us that death is not the end

There is rest in heaven
      Rest In Peace, We'll see you in the morning
            Singing in God's heavenly choir
                   and my favorite was, Death is a new life

Cemetery rules prohibit taking flowers from others graves for use on your grave site. Oh, and also no visiting at night.

So half a day is gone and I still havn't found the river. I've driven almost 100 miles and the river was only 15 miles away. I talked to a guy that was standing on the side of the road with a gallon milk jug full of water. He told me it was 100 degrees today. He said I couldn't get to the river, because all the roads were flooded, but if all I wanted was to see it, I could drive to Rogers Arkansas and drive over the bridge. He gave me directions to the highway and in about 20 mins, I was driving over the Mississippi river!!!

OK this river is huge. It is about 100 times the size of the Sacramento river. I may never be able to refer to the Sacramento as a river again. The river had barges traveling on it that were bigger than football fields. It was mud-colored and flowed pretty fast. It was interesting to see and I'm glad I made my way here.

I drove around Rogers Arkansas and saw the first person on the trip that was wearing over-alls. They were the cool osh-kosh type that my grandpa (from Arkansas) wore every day of his life. He would put on a dress coat over them for Sunday. This brought back some fond memories,

While I was sitting in a parking lot in Arkansas, I saw a cop looking at me. Oh no! I forgot that I had signed a paper with the rental car company that I would not be leaving the state of Mississippi.  Dang! They probably already had a BOLO out for me.... possibly even a dragnet. I played it cool and slowly drove off. I hit the road, dropped the Charger's shifter into low, sprayed gravel and shot back for the Mississippi river bridge. In 3 minutes I was crossing the state line...... Ha Ha Arkansas State Troopers! You'll never catch this old boy!

After I was safely back into Mississippi and my heart rate slowed back down from my brush with the law, I headed back to the Hopson Plantation. Unfortunately, I'm a sucker for any sign that even hints of something quaint - "Delta Museum" was just such a sign. I headed in that direction and in about 10 minutes, I was driving through Friar's Point. Now this was a cool town. I saw a filling station with a guy leanin' back on a chair against the front of the building. I parked in front of an antique/junk shop. I saw a little bank and went in to use the ATM. There was only one person in the place, a lady at the teller window, and she told me there were no ATM's in town. I still had a little cash so I walked over to the antique shop. The place was locked up so I walked to the filling station to get an RC cola. The man called the owner of the antique shop to let her know there was a man from California that wanted to buy some stuff. She said she was closed because she had to take her grand-daughter to the dentist. Bummer. He did point me to the museum.





The museum seemed deserted from the outside, except I could hear some loud TV coming through the door. I walked in and up to the counter, but no one came to the old "Teller" - type window. I could hear the Montel Williams show blasting from over the tall counter. I walked around the side to get someone's attention and startled an old man watching the TV. He was about deaf and cocked his ear close toward me when he talked. He took my $4 and told me to browse around and let him know if I had any questions. I read about a local church that was burned down by Union soldiers. Someone ran into the flames to save the church's records. The Union general made him throw the records back into the fire. Later the church was rebuilt with logs, but a tornado ruined it. It was rebuilt again and burned down 30 years later. It was rebuilt one more time and has church services to this day.  That's about all I learned because the place was almost too dark to see anything and they didn't even have a fan.  It was so hot, that half way through I stepped out the back door to cool off in the outside heat. I jumped in my car and kicked on some AC!

OK, back to the Hopson Plantation. But where is it? None of the little roads were on my crappy tourist map and GPS is futile. That's ok, because I have a pretty good sense of direction. The problem was that no roads went the direction I wanted to, so I had to do a lot of drive-turn-drive-turn. I did this for a while and was getting a little nervous (and hungry) when I came up on a little hamburger shack in the middle of nothing. It was empty and the guy seemed happy to see me. He said he didn't have much left for the day, but offered to make me a couple of fried bologna sandwiches for $4, with french fries! I told him I liked my bologna fried to near black. He said "Ya, me too".
I stood in front of a fan and listened to the jukebox while he cooked -
Someone was singing...

It's hard around here....
aint no white, aint no black, just the wrong side of the tracks.
Yeah..., it's hard around here....

I got my fried bologny and he gave me some directions. He wrote on the back of a brown paper sack. He sketched in detail, including dots for each of the 4 stop signs at every intersection. He drew a school and a silo and church with Christmas tree shapes for trees. Man, this was on its way to becoming a work of art, but he drew so much the pen ran out of ink. He searched the place for another one but found nothing. He went to a back room and even out to his car, but nothing. I would have to commit the rest of the directions to memory. But he did continue with his finger on the blank area of the paper sack, just as if he were writing. I did my best to recall everything and in about 40 mins I was driving back into Clarksdale. The weird thing is that I came in from the opposite side of town than where I left. I know I drove a long ways, but all the way around the world? Wow!