The Mississippi Delta 24: Panther Burn

Panther Burn is an unincorporated community in northwestern Sharkey County, Mississippi. What a fascinating name! The blog Ophelia Explains it All has a detailed comment from an anonymous writer about the unusual name. It was related to burning the brush to prepare the land for cotton agriculture. Panther Burn is a bit out of the way, but my family and I had been birding in Yazoo National Wildlife Refuge and were heading south on US 61 when we decided to stop and look around.

We saw a group on the porch of the old cold-storage building. They were students from Illinois and Wisconsin with their mothers' ashes. Their mothers had been part of the great diaspora in the 1950s, when thousands of African Americans fled Mississippi to escape poverty, brutality, and the seething racial hatred that dominated the social conditions at the time. The midwife's house had formerly been in the lot next to the warehouse, and the students wanted to spread the ashes where their mothers had been born. We were honored to be able to share this time with these visitors from Illinois and Wisconsin. I sent them digital files of these photographs.

There is not too much to see in Panther Burn, just some old sheds, farm houses, and mobile homes. Very few wood frame buildings remain.

I took these photographs with a Mamiya C220 twin-lens camera and the Mamiya 55mm lens. Film was Kodak Tri-X professional, the older ISO 320 emulsion, developed in XTOL developer. The lens had haze and flared, accounting for the loss in contrast.

Country Stores 17: The Tomato Place, Vicksburg, Mississippi

The Tomato Place, at 3229 Highway 61 S, is a combination restaurant, fruit stand, local products place (such as honey), and just plain fun spot to visit. I took these pictures in winter, so there was not much local produce available.

Many of these family-owned stores in Mississippi have folk art, hand-painted signs, and souvenirs  for your viewing pleasure. European travelers love these American local institutions.

Mallory (who is my neighbor) generously let me take pictures inside. This was a 1-sec exposure.

The honey is local - use it to develop resistance to pollen. The bread and cookies are excellent. My recommendation: visit and sit awhile. Patronize these local vendors.

Photographs taken on Kodak Tri-X 400 film with a 1971-vintage Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic camera and 35mm ƒ/3.5 Super-Takumar lens (a superb little optic). I developed the film in Kodak HC-110 developer. This 35mm lens flares at the bare light bulbs, but I rather like the effect. A thin emulsion film may exhibit less of this flare. I scanned the negatives with a Plustek 7600Ai film scanner operated by Silverfast Ai software.

Country Store Still in Business: Roy's Store, Chatham, Mississippi

Roy's Store is one of the rare 100-year old Mississippi country stores that is still in business, and doing very well with its clientele of hunters and fishermen. Located at 2202 Lake Washington Road near the northern end of Lake Washington, it has survived floods and the Great Depression.

Roy's Store and Cabins, Chatham, Mississippi

The front has been fixed up and has modern gasoline pumps.

 

 

The inside is full of useful stuff for fishermen, along with and bits and pieces from the old days.  Stop for a coffee or snack. As of 2008, there was not yet an espresso machine.

Old Highway 61, Chatham, Mississippi

This is part of the original U.S. Highway 61. It is a single concrete lane running straight through the farmland.  It was explained to me that in the 1920s, the State could only afford to pave a single lane, which was adequate in an era when few people had cars or mechanized farm machines.

In winter, this is an excellent area for birding.  These people are participating in the annual Audubon Society Christmas bird count.

Lake Washington

Lake Washington is rimmed with cypress trees and is a great place to see cormorants, grebes, and other waterfowl. It is well worth a visit. Close by are the two abandoned mansions at Lake Washington.

For more information on Roy's Store and Cabins, call 662-827-2588.

Update June 5 2017: An Australian gent posted some wonderful photos of Roy's Store on his blog, The Rolling Road. Click the link. He is a Leica photographer.

The Mississippi Delta 9: Hushpuckena and Shelby

A friend suggested I visit the semi-abandoned town of Hushpuckena, about 4 miles north of Shelby in Bolivar County. This was an excellent suggestion because driving along modern US 61, you would not know the former town existed in a grove of trees. You have to turn off and look for Old Highway 61. I stopped at one occupied 1960s-style house, and a young lady said there were plenty of empty houses for me to photograph.

Most interesting to me was the old country store (or company store, if one company once owned all the fields around here). I could not make out the faded signs.

The roof over the left half of the building had failed and the jungle was taking over. From the decorative side plate over the door lock, you can see that this building had been made with pride.

A door on the side was open and I took some photographs inside. The manila folders on the floor contained thousands of 1980s medical records from Bolivar County Hospital. What were the easy chairs for? Did someone have a party reading X-ray and diagnostic reports? Very odd. I love exploring old buildings because you never know what you might find.

Shelby is only a few miles away. The former Shelby Bank & Trust Co. once occupied the cutest little square-front building. A friend informed me that the Roberts Insurance Agency also once used this building. The dark sky is a result of a polarizing filter. Sadly, many of the other commercial buildings in Shelby are gone.

These are digital images taken with a tripod-mounted Panasonic G1 digital camera, most with the 14-45mm Lumix lens. The scenes in the old Huskpuckena store were taken with the superb Olympus 9-18mm lens for micro four thirds (µ4/3) format.

Some black and white film photographs from this same trip are in this article (click the link).

Update March 2013:  The medical records have been removed, according to a physician I know in Greenville. When I told him the story, he was alarmed and had the files removed and destroyed. He said the files were still pertinent because two of the names he saw were his coworkers from the Greenville hospital.

The Mississippi Delta 7: Boyle

Let us move further north into the Mississippi Delta. Unfortunately, I did not have time to explore Cleveland, which is the county seat of Bolivar County and home of Delta State University. But just south of Cleveland on Hwy 61 is the town of Boyle. Most motorists probably rush on through, but two sites caught my eye.


First was this lonely cemetery on the east side of the highway just south of town. There was no church on the site. Notice the skilfully-carved tombstone for a Miss Annie Gade, died Jan. 4, 1883, aged 2 Yrs. 3 Mos. & 20 Days. We forget what a terrible toll childhood diseases took on our ancestors. Never let anyone tell you we should go back to an era of simpler medicine without modern diagnostic equipment, sterilization of instruments, and, especially, inoculations against common diseases.


Further north, a more cheerful scene: this is the Daspot store where you can buy sunglasses and ladies' fashions. The proprietor was very cheerful when I asked permission to photograph the models.  The customers seemed a bit perplexed.

A profile view if you prefer....

Photographs taken with a Panasonic G1 digital camera.

Margaret's Grocery, Vicksburg, Mississippi: the Early Days

Margaret's Grocery at 4535 North Washington Street is an amazing piece of folk art crafted by the Reverend H.D."Preacher" Dennis. Many people have photographed the site, including the talented local photographer Marty Kittrell (see his blog), but I would like to add some photographs from my 1980s and 1990s archives. This first photograph is from December 1985, soon after H.D. married Margaret Rogers. At that time, it really was a local grocery store catering to nearby residents from the Kings neighborhood. There were just a few of the hand-crafted decorations that later transformed the humble shop.

By 1988, look at the brickwork! Reverend Dennis is the tall gent framed by the brick arch. He was proud of his work, and as many locals know, once he started talking about his love for the Lord and his temple, he went on, and on, and on... He told me that at the end of World War II, he worked as a prison guard for German prisoners and learned his brick skills from them. He said they were the best craftsmen anywhere. Germans had an affinity for Rev. Dennis because many German tourists visited, as proven by testimonials in German in the guest book. The photograph above is a scan of a 4×5-inch Fujichrome transparency.

You can see how brilliant the colors were when fresh. It was a difficult site to photograph because you needed to be there in the morning when the sun shone on the front. (The two frames above are from Fuji Reala film exposed with a Rolleiflex camera.)

Here is a 1990 detail of one of the towers.

Here is an April 1996 photograph, with a yellow motif along the roof line. The Coca Cola signs along the awning have been painted over.

Along with the exterior, Rev. Dennis was working on the inside. He eventually covered almost the entire ceiling and most of the walls with flowers, clocks, paintings, crosses, and things I can't name. This was a badly underexposed Kodachrome slide from 2002 that took some effort to scan and bring out details from the darkest areas.

I am not sure when the famous bus appeared on the property, but it was there in 2002, already decorated. This was another difficult Kodachrome to scan because the windows were overexposed while the ceiling was dark. Nowadays, digital imaging handles the exposure range much more gracefully.

Margaret passed away in 2010 and the Rev. Dennis had to move to a nursing home. Since then, vandals have stolen art and architectural features, and rain and weathering are taking their toll. In a later blog I will show readers what the Gro looks like today. The Vicksburg Post has featured Margaret's Grocery several times over the years, with the most recent article on 15 August, 2010.

Back in the 1980s, North Washington Street had a number of odd places to see. Here is a former Corvair junk yard. I wonder where they all went? People restore Corvairs now.