No Black. No White. Just Blues.

It seems like a lot has happened since my last blog, but it’s all become a blur of sleepless nights and excessively industrious days. Snapshots of last weekend: windows-down, volume-up drives in the minivan along Delta drags, including Highway 61, the ‘Blues Highway’ (the very same that Dylan commemorated in ‘Highway 61 Revisited’); a wine blurry and booze-buzzed late night/early morning walk along the creek and through the streets of Indianola with Bunny and our new friend TKO; one part fried oysters, two parts cold Coronas, on a evening of fireflies blinking to the beat of the Beatles, Harrison’s chords and Lennon’s call barely audible once outdoors and overwhelmed by a million competing male crickets, beneath a blanket of brilliant stars in a hunting lodge alongside the mighty Mississippi River; pool at Po’ Monkeys (see picture), the dimly-lit, low-roofed, sporadically opened, raised shack in Merigold, just outside Cleveland, that lays claim to being ‘the last, authentic juke joint in the delta’ (a juke joint is a BYOB social gathering place, not far from a bar in derivation, where blues music and dirty dancing reign supreme - the original term ‘jook’ comes from a Nigerian tribal word for ‘wicked’); arriving back on campus at one am on the Sabbath, after some drinks and dancing complimented by AH’s wailing harmonica in Indianola’s Club Ebony, just in time to start my focus paper ....

And school on Monday. This was the last week of summer classes for us in Holly Springs, meaning hectic administering of final exams, grade compilations, and goodbye’s to both our students and our second years. As busy as this past month has been, I’ve grown as an ‘educator’ ten-fold, thanks to the experience I’ve gotten, and freedom I’ve been allowed, in front of a classroom, as well as the tutelage from our one-year vets (big thanks to BH and AT) and professors/administrators. Given the keys without a license and barely a manual let me learn on the fly, the way I would prefer. As far as the kids are concerned, hopefully they’ve gotten something, either academic or life lessons, out of my daily soap-box ramblings.

Friday, our final day, began with a sunrise drive with Bunny, MG and RK in the Pontiac back to the Sardis Lake beach where we had thrown a bbq for our second years and administrators the evening before. As the sun climbed the sky behind us, we scoured the sand and pine needles for a few pairs of glasses and a set of keys left behind – nearly all lost items were found before we had to hop back in the car and groggily speed up Hwy. 7, caramel latte in hand, in order get to the school, button up in the parking lot, and make it inside before first period. The day flew by, most of it test-taking, culminating in a project our students had been working on. Our class compiled a booklet of autobiographies and we invited parents in for a chip & soda party to hear them read their work aloud (as AM noted in class, the autobios revealed, among other things, that all three of our boys have either been shot or stabbed already). I will definitely be doing a similar exercise at the beginning of the school year coming up, in order to get to know my students more intimately and personally. After the ‘party’, we got our principal to open up the gym so we could show these punk eighth-graders what a couple of has-been ballers can do on the court. On the way home, RK convinced us to swing by ‘the pink house’, which turned out to be the infamous Graceland II, one (deranged?) man’s tribute to the late-Elvis Pressley. Opened 24/7, ‘just knock’, it houses a floor-to-ceiling collection of Elvis memorabilia/junk, including a ‘$10 million’ record, stored behind a thin glass door and your average Master-Lock. I’m pretty sure I heard, more than once, the soft and deep questioning croon coming from behind one of the many sparkling mannequins, of ‘Are you lonesome tonight?’


Saturday and Sunday were spent crammed in the back of MG’s bright yellow pickup for some fruitless furniture-shopping on the way to and from our new house. After a meal of Kool-Aid pickles, fried tamales, hog maws and dirty south burgers at Big Jim’s in Clarksdale (note: apparently Tuesday nights at Po’ Monkeys are for the ‘bad folk’ while Thursdays are for the ‘good folk’) and a drive past Morgan Freeman’s famous club, Ground Zero, we shared ice cream and cake with the mosquitoes in the country for RK’s birthday, then spent our first night in our Leland estate (myself on an air mattress in the front living room by our wall of windows). Will put pictures of the place up on smugmug soon.

And last night, back on campus after another 24 of no repose, sat under the sleepless stars until the sun came up and finally got to see Rowan Oak, Faulkner’s spot, in the light of dawn after a wooded hike with Bunny through spider webs and dried up sandy steams behind the Ole Miss baseball field. Somtimes staying up all night can leave you more refreshed than all the sleep in the world. The sun is out, the sky is breathing - I'm wide awake and dreaming.

And tonight, Chevron for dinner ....

“freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose …”

Happy 4th of July! Are you feeling your freedom?