After a long break, let us return to the Mississippi Delta, which is full of interesting little towns and remnants of an older era. Routes 149 and 16 take you through the southern Delta, past small towns, catfish ponds, and the Delta National Forest, ending in Rolling Fork (which will be the subject of a future article).
The town of Louise is pretty quiet but looks reasonably prosperous. There is a silo and an auto body shop on the main road.
South of Louise on Rte. 16, at the corner of Nixon Road, is a an old store. It was locked up, but the material (stuff) inside looked reasonably fresh, so maybe someone is using it as a storage building.
The Miller Mart Store at Tom Miller Road offers Budweiser.
Further south, another farm store at Bayland Road was closed. Notice the square front or facade.
Hwy 16 makes a right angle bend to the west as it enters Holly Bluff, with Sally's Ole Lake Gro at the bend. The Royal Crown Cola cooler was empty, so I suspect Sally has moved on.
Railroad Ave. crosses Rte 16, with this Hegman Farm, Inc., store at the corner.
Across the street was a traditional square brick store, unused now.
We will continue our tour of the Delta in future posts. Some of the photographs above were taken with Kodak BW400CN film in a Leica rangefinder camera and 35mm f/2.0 Summicron lens (click the photos to enlarge and check if there is grain). The others were from a Fuji X-E1 digital camera with RAW files converted to monochrome using PhotoNinja software.
2 comments:
These are remarkable pics; I love photos of disappearing Americana.
Thank you for the comment. Yes, it is sad how much of our architectural heritage is disappearing. In many of these small Mississippi towns, nothing replaces the abandoned buildings when they eventually collapse.
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