Shantybellum

Prospect Hill Plantation: A crumbling mansion searches for salvation

2012-02-02T13:08:00.000-06:00

Story and Photos by Elodie Pritchartt

“Mywound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.” ~Pat Conroy

Andre and I sat in his car at the fork in the road and triedto decide what to do.

“She didn’t say anything about a fork,” said Andre. Welooked at each other and laughed.

“Can you call?”

Andre looked at his cell phone. No signal.

“Aw, heck,” I said. “Go right.”

We were in Lorman, Mississippi, thirty miles north ofNatchez on a gravel road looking for a house a friend had told us was for sale:1854 Greek-revival, raised cottage-stylemansion on 3.3 acres for around $20,000. Needs a lot of work.

I had posted it on my Facebook page and was surprised at howquickly Andre sent me a message.

“We’ve got to go see this place! Can you go this weekend?”

Then he sent me a link to a book on Amazon called Mississippi in Africa by Mississippiauthor Alan Huffman. Huffman’s book tells a tale spanning two continents andtwo centuries, and had all the elements of a Shakespearean tragedy—wealth,greed, war, family, murder, redemption, sorrow and hope—the story of ProspectHill Plantation.

And what a story it is.

Prospect Hill was built by Isaac Ross, a Revolutionary Warveteran who moved to Mississippi in 1808. Extremely wealthy, Ross had over twohundred slaves with whom he operated a successful cotton plantation. He was known for seeing to the comfort, wellbeingand education of his slaves.

Ross knew slavery wouldn’t last, and had heard about theAmerican Colonization Society, which hoped to repatriate freed slaves to theAfrican country of Liberia. When he died in 1836, his will stipulated that uponthe death of his daughter, Margaret Reed, the plantation should be sold and theproceeds used to pay passage for those of his slaves who wanted to go toLiberia.

But Ross’s grandson, Isaac Ross Wade, contested the will andalthough Margaret Reed would die only two years later, the case was held up inthe court system for a decade with suits and countersuits, the slaves’ sidebeing aided by the Colonization Society.

In 1845, a handful of slaves decided they couldn’t wait anylonger. The cook drugged the coffee, and after everyone had gone to bed, thehouse was set afire. Everyone but a six-year-old little girl was rescued. Afterthe uprising a vigilante committee hanged eleven slaves in the big white oaktree behind the ruins of the house.

Even so the will was eventually upheld and the slaves whochose to go to Africa were allowed to do so, establishing a colony calledMississippi in Africa. These educated blacks were prosperous. They operatedplantations on which they built large homes reminiscent of the antebellum homesof their former masters, and battled with the native tribes, a culturalconflict that continues even now.

After learning about the story, I remembered finding an oldfamily tree tucked away in a forgotten drawer at home and discovered that Iwas, in fact, a descendant of the Wades of Mississippi. I also found an oldfamily album from the 1800s with several pages devoted to Wades. Unfortunatelynearly every Wade-identified page had been stripped of its photo, only one intact, and not a direct descendant.

So our journey was a bit more than idle curiosity—I wasexploring a heretofore unknown chapter in my family heritage while Andre hopedto find a way to help save the house—built after the fire that destroyed thefirst one, completed in 1854.

"The present dwelling at Prospect Hillwas built by the current owner, Judge Isaac Ross Wade, who received theplantation as a fee for nine years service as the only qualified executor ofthe estate of his grandfather, Captain Isaac Ross of the American Revolution.

Thehouse was started in June 1853. That is, the brick were burned in kilns nearthe site of the house, in what was part of the orchard for the plantation. Thewater for mixing the clay for the brick was brought from nearby Turkabee Springnamed for an old Choctaw Indian Chief. Two Negro slave boys, Nick and Zack,brought the water in pails carried on their heads. They were sometimes aided byother boys and girls when the plantation work was not pressing.

Thecontractor was named Mattingly and the chief mechanic was Ephriam Boyce. Thehouse was a splendid piece of work when it was finished, April 30, 1854. Inthose eleven months, the beautiful home was finished complete with twofine outbuildings on brick foundations; one had two rooms and a wide frontgallery and was used for a kitchen and storeroom. The other had two rooms foryard servants, a wide front gallery, and under the end room, a brick room usedfor ironing or a laundry room. These in later years were used for a loom orweaving room. There were two fine arched cisterns, one for the house or familyuse was twenty six feet deep and fourteen feet in diameter. The other, not solarge, was used for the kitchen and laundry and servants about the yard. Bothwere bricked and heavily cemented throughout. Yard and garden fences had beenmade and painted or white washed, the entire premises were ready to be occupiedand the keys handed to Judge Wade.

TheJudge moved his family in on the second day of May, 1854." ~ JennieAllison Wade Killingsworth, daughter of Isaac Ross Wade. Jennie was born May 2,1854, the day her family moved into Prospect Hill.

My advice to take the right fork was wrong, but after abouttwenty minutes and a few missteps, we finally found the entrance, manned byJessica Crawford, a tiny slip of a girl who had promised to meet us. Wefollowed her SUV as she led us through the backwoods of Lorman, over oldlogging roads and under modern power lines into an opening in the trees.

Jessica had driven nearly four hours to meet us from herhome in Marks, Mississippi, where she serves as southeast regional director atthe New Mexico-based Archeological Conservancy. She helps acquire archeologicalsites for the Conservancy, usually Indian mounds or villages, Civil War sites,some Colonial forts.

“Normally we try to avoid any kind of structures,” she said.“We’re set up to manage what’s under the ground. On top of the ground is whatmy boss calls ‘the money pit.’”

The Conservancy hopes to stabilize the structure until theycan find someone to buy and restore it while retaining an archeologicaleasement so they can continue to study those artifacts still below ground.

The sight of the ancient, crumbling mansion with its barewooden façade and tall chimneys rising above the tree line was beautiful andsad and amazing.

“Be careful where you step,” cautioned Jessica. “I’ve gottenthe yard cleared for the first time in years, but there are stumps, so watchwhere you walk.”

She’d done much of the work herself, coming frequently and oftenalone to this remote spot to rescue it from the encroaching jungle. It wasclear she loved it and wanted to save it.

An ancient brick staircase covered in lichen, rosegracefully from what had once been the main entrance to the plantation, framedby large cedar trees. Old-growth garden plants punctuated the grounds—camellia,crape myrtle, wisteria, dogwood, all dripping Spanish moss.

The front porch hung at a crazy angle, having lost many ofits graceful, fluted columns. The stairway threatened to collapse altogether.An elegant doorway stood trimmed with dentil moulding, jib windows opened ontothe porch, the façade still showing traces of the plaster and scoring over woodonce used for grander houses.

In the backyard the same white oak that had borne the bodiesof eleven slaves had fallen in a storm and taken off the back of the house andpart of the second floor. A fireplace hung high over our heads hugging the sideof the house. A set of shelves on the remaining back wall still held bottles, alltilting toward oblivion. A peacock sat among the flotsam, quiet and proud.

“That’s Isaac,” said Jessica. “He’s been here seven years. Wenamed him after Isaac Ross.”

“How long since anyone’s lived here?” asked Andre.

“I’ve found mail in there from 2007, but I know the frontporch roof had fallen down as early as 2000,” said Jessica.

The previous owner loved the house fiercely, but a string ofbad luck and tragedy had forced him to finally move.

We explored the basement rooms crammed halfway to the ceilingwith furniture, pianos, farm implements, and the junk of a thousand years: threepianos in the basement, alone, another upstairs, all in ruinous condition andfar past help; a kitchen area with sink, refrigerator, stove, etc. Permeatingthe air was the smell of funk and decay, mildew and something else….possiblythe droppings of raccoons and other wild animals that had taken up residence.

Upstairs, we stepped carefully around rotten floorboards anddecaying furnishings, books, mattresses and clothes, all left by the previousowner, and saw what a beautiful place it had once been. I was amazed that themirror in the dining room had not been stolen. A lone bat kept Isaac companyinside, hanging from the molding in a back room while Isaac roosted at night onthe top of a bedroom door.

We walked to the family cemetery behind the house. Likecoming onto a secret garden among the trees, vines and thorns, the cemeterystood anchored by a massive columned monument—its beauty and size difficult to describe.According to Huffman’s book, the monument was commissioned in 1838 by theMississippi Colonization Society for the astronomical price of $25,000 andbears the following inscription:

“Hislast will is graced with as magnificent provisions as any over whichphilanthropy has ever rejoiced and by it will be erected on the shores ofAfrica a monument more glorious than marble and more enduring than time.”

The remains of a wrought-iron fence enveloped the headstonesand crypts, many damaged by a falling tree in another storm.

Ignoring the real possibility of rattlesnakes, I crawledunderneath the house where ancient farm equipment waited as though expecting tobe used again. Jessica pointed out a beam overhead with handwriting on it inchalk. I could make out the word “Jefferson” and the date “1872.”

“This is where the workers would come to practice theirpenmanship,” said Jessica.

On our next visit in November to a fundraiser Jessica hadorganized to finance stabilization of the roof, I was stunned at how much workhad been done. The basement had been cleared, the porch removed and temporarystairs erected to allow visitors ingress. That wasn’t all.

“We have discovered foundations in the back of severalbuildings,” she said. “…what we think is probably a kitchen, a laundry and asmokehouse and also a brick structure that was possibly for the house slaves. Wethink we have the cotton gin down the hill by the creek.”

I was excited. Alan Huffman was there, along withdescendants of the Rosses, the Wades, and the slaves, some of whom were recentrefugees from the conflict in Liberia. They had driven down from Washington,D.C. to attend this gathering. Alan had traveled to Liberia when writing hisbook, a risk I would have been too cowardly to take. I could only imagine whatthis meeting meant for him.

We heard stories about the plantation from Jessica, Alan,local historian Ann Brown, and James Belton, a descendant of the slaves fromMcComb, Mississippi who told us stories that had been passed down to himthrough the generations. It was an amazing experience.

We shared a meal together—all these many years later—descendantsof master and slave. We told stories and asked questions and crossed thebarriers of time and place and culture. It was a good day and I trust that goodthings will come of it, not the least of which are the future prospects of ahouse with a story in Jefferson County, Mississippi.

The mirror, furnishings and trash have all been cleaned out in order to show the house. So far, the Conservancy had one individual who is seriouslyinterested in purchasing the property. Those who want more information or wishto help with the stabilization efforts can send contributions to or contact TheArchaeological Conservancy’s Southeast Regional Office, P.O. Box 270, Marks, MS38643, tacsoutheast@cableone.net or visit their website at americanarchaeology.org.

To read more on Prospect Hill, visit Alan Huffman's blog where he has several posts pertaining to the history and the house.

Blood at Courtland Plantation

2012-01-23T17:10:00.001-06:00

The War of 1812 was not kind to Courtland Smith. He arrived in Mississippi in 1799, and later joined the Mississippi Dragoons to fight the British. He fought with Colonel Hines in the Battle of Pensacola, where he received a saber cut on his cheek that laid open the entire left side of his face from his eyebrow to his chin. He was only 20 years old.

He was haunted by his disfigurement, and so chose to live in the wilderness, preferring the nonjudgmental eyes of the woodland creatures to the townspeople who might stare with pity.

With his government grants secured, he could afford to build a house. But much to the distress of his family, he built on an Indian mound. Most of the Indians were scattered and the view the mound afforded was lovely. What could go wrong?

The house was completed in 1816. It was a simple structure consisting of four rooms, built of solid timbers fitted together with thumb grooves and pegs. He did not enjoy it long. On February 13, 1817, he was found dead in his bed with the point of an arrow embedded in his heart.

It would not be the last time Indians sought revenge for their desecration.

"Only negroes were on the plantation when his body was discovered. They became frightened and let their superstitious fears possess them to such an extent that they practically reverted to the savage condition that had been theirs so recently in Africa.

Esther, Courtland's mother, who lived in the Second Creek neighborhood on Burleigh Plantation, was overcome with grief. But she insisted that her son's death was God's will, preordained from the beginning of time. She paid little attention to the negroes and let them run wild. Later, when she became more calm, she moved the slaves to Burleigh and eventually got them quieted down." ~ The Old House by Catharine Van Court, 1950.

Smith's tomb is in the Philanda Smith burial ground on Retirement Plantation near Second Creek in Adams County.

A few weeks ago I learned that my favorite local bookstore was closing its brick-and-mortar business to go exclusively online. Cover to Cover was a delightful resource for rare, signed and first-edition copies of books pertaining to Mississippi and Natchez, and I enjoyed many hours there browsing the old books. Thus forewarned I ran down to the corner and dropped a bundle on books I knew would soon be gone if I didn't act straightaway.

I've just finished one of those books -- The Old House -- by Catharine Van Court, who was born on Courtland Plantation in Adams County, Mississippi in 1873. I grew up here in Adams County, but had never heard of Courtland Plantation, which was located near Sandy Creek on Kingston Road, a few miles down the road from where I live. I discovered a book that is not only beautifully written, but one that shed light on a history I was unaware of and also of another family tie.

I had heard the name "Van Court" before in reference to my family, and had driven by a house on Washington Street called The Van Court Townhouse, and wondered if it was one and the same. As it turns out, it was. I discovered a reference on Mississippi authors that Ms. Van Court married A.E. Pritchartt in 1892. Alexander was my great grandfather's brother.

Courtland wrote The Old House in 1950, capturing in it the life on a plantation not long after the Civil War, and the concerns and hardships of people at a time when disease could wipe out generations without warning. She wrote about the people who populated her small world, remembering with fondness and sadness the faces of those people -- both black and white.

For many years [after Courtland Smith's murder] the cabin stood empty. Then Mrs. Adaline Baker, my grandmother, who had inherited it from Courtland, her brother, decided to enlarge the house, name the place for him and live there. ~ The Old House

Life at Courtland Plantation was remote and sometimes hard. Van Court tells of being born on the plantation rather than at the townhouse because of the creek, which could flood without warning.

There was no bridge over the creek. A few hours after a rain up in the hills, Sandy Creek would rise. Often, the first knowledge of the coming flood would be a faint murmur. This would grow louder, rapidly. Then suddenly from around the bend there would come a volume of water that, as it bore down, looked like an immense wall. When it gained lower land, it would spread out. In a short time, from the Courtland side, which was high, it appeared to be a wide sea.

The Natchez

Eugène Delacroix (French, Charenton-Saint-Morice 1798–1863 Paris)

The water, as it came from the hills, would roar so loudly it could be heard for several miles. ~ The Old House

Ms. Van Court's brother, Sydney, was also killed by an Indian named Red Eagle. One night news came to the plantation that the Homochitto River was rising. Sydney spent the entire night trying to save the horses that were in the pasture.

"We lost two of our best mares," [Sydney] said.

Father had been about to help himself from a plate of scrambled eggs. But he waved the dish away. Then he pushed his chair back: "That's bad, Son," he said, "but don't take it so to heart. Plantation life is like that."

"When I got there, I found Red Eagle roaming about," Sidney said.

"What was he doing in our pasture?" Father showed his surprise.

"If he'd given us a little help when I asked it, we wouldn't have lost the mares. But he just stood staring as we worked."

"What did you say to him?" Father asked.

"When we were through, I told him never to show his face on Courtland again." ~ The Old House

Not long after, Sydney was taken ill with Typhoid fever. Times were hard and the family was forced to sell the townhouse. Leaving Sydney in the care of a servant, Catharine and her father went to Natchez where her mother had been packing up to move out to Courtland permanently. On the way back home, they happened onto crowd.

The figure of an Indian lay stretched upon the ground. The man's face was covered with blood...his whole body was bloody. Eight or ten men were milling about but no one appeared to be giving him any assistance. Father jumped out and went over to see what had happened.

Isaac, who had come over to the coach, said:

"It's Red Eagle, Miss Addie. He done stole a man's horse. Fred, what lives on Mr. Vaughan's place, says Red went into his pasture, just 'fore daybreak, and got it."

"Is he dead," I asked.

"I reckon so, Miss Katie," Isaac said.

"Go on and tell me about it," Mother urged.

"Well," Isaac said, "soon as ever Fred missed his horse, he and a gang set out to find it. They spied Red comin' down the road from Courtland on the horse's back. Soon as ever he crossed the creek they stopped him. Then they pulled him off the horse. About that time, Fred brought the handle of his pistol crashin' down on Red's skull. I 'low how he done killed him...but 'taint much loss, nohow." ~ The Old House

They continued their journey back to Courtland.

Our coach led the van and as we rolled through the big, white gate that opened into Courtland where we saw Lizzie, who had remained there to care for Sidney, racing down the driveway. Her hair was standing out about her face...her eyes were wild.

The coach had hardly stopped when we were out and up the steps and into the house. I was the first one to reach my brother's room. He lay on his back in the middle of a great four-poster. Rightaway, I knew he was dead. Blood was everywhere except on his face. Evidently, Lizzie had washed that carefully before she came to meet us. His eyes were closed and his features were not distorted. When I pulled the sheet back a bit, I saw that there was a gaping wound in his chest...it was just above the heart. Liz stood by my side.

Later that evening, Father told us that she had found my brother when she had come into the house to give him his breakfast. Evidently he had been stabbed while he was asleep. There were bloody handprints on the door. But no weapon was found and there was no sign of a struggle. He must have been killed instantly.

As I lay awake the night before the funeral I repeated softly, though my heart was bitter, a war song of the Natchez race:

"Son of the Chiefs of the Beard,
thou shalt know this mystery.
Praise be the Chiefs of the Beard

who know how to avenge their ancestral injury!"

Great bitterness had been shown our family by the few Indians left in Adams County. But it was unlikely that this could have had any connection with Sidney's death for the Red men were entirely unorganized. I agreed with my father that Red Eagle was the murderer. I thought it more than likely that the Indian had resented the fact that my brother had told him to leave the plantation and never to set foot upon it again.

In the epilogue, Van Court writes:

Throughout the years, fire and wind took a toll of the house at Courtland. But even after the plantation was sold, whenever I have been in that part of the country, I have gone and stood beneath the trees I love so well. Always, before I would leave, I would climb the hill to the house. Then I would see it through a mist...it would still appear beautiful to me.

But a few years ago I read in The Natchez Democrat that the house had been completely demolished by fire. A great loneliness swept over me as I read. Suddenly I was conscious that I was smiling; after all, I thought, White Apple, the Great Sun of the Natchez Nation, may yet have a marker on his burial mound for Courtland plantation is now a part of the Homochitto National Forest.

~ The Old House by Catharine Van Court

The Dietz Press, Incorporated
Richmond, Virginia
1950

The Aviary

2012-01-18T09:52:00.000-06:00

Early morning.
Raucous parakeet
Negotiations.
Cleaning house.
Shouting orders.
Making borders.
I am here.
You stay there.
Each man’s perch,
his cage

Feathered jade.
Sapphire desire,
fleeting, desperate, quick
as all get out
Of me. Before
You know it,
You’ve spilled
your seed and
everything’s a mess.

The doves arrive
for brunch and wait
along the wall.
Caged
neon emissaries
peck solemn salutations
In yesterday’s hulls
And wonder.

Why do the
dull-coated birds
fly free?
How far is up?
Is the garden flat?
Or round?
Palm fronds sigh.
Water giggles.

Yellow bird
pushes eggs out
the nest, her right
to choose, the
only choice
left.

~~ Elodie Pritchartt

Reflections on Shantybellum

2012-01-16T12:23:00.000-06:00

Into the Mystic

2012-01-09T15:48:00.000-06:00

It's been magically foggy here for the past two days. Like living in a cloud.

Who are they? Old Natchez Photographs III

2011-12-30T15:56:00.001-06:00

Sue at six weeks

Class 1913 Stanton College

At Portland, Ark. 1909 Isabel and William (Munger?)

At Portland, Ark. 1909 The Picnic

At Portland, Ark. 1909 Isabel, William and the colt.

Natchez, 1911

Natchez, 1911 Anna and me (Annet Pritchartt)

Natchez, 1911. "Our Gang"

Natchez, 1911 Isabel and William.

Photo Restoration by Elodie

2011-12-28T14:13:00.002-06:00

A few years ago I started teaching myself Photoshop Elements. After awhile I got pretty good at it and people started bringing me photos to alter or restore. These first three pictures are my latest effort. When the client brought it in I wasn't sure I could do it justice, but I think it turned out rather nicely. It's fun as long as you've got the time and patience to do it.

Who Are They? Old Natchez Photographs II

2011-12-19T14:15:00.002-06:00

This photo was captioned "Cruel Bluebeard prepares to kill his wife."

And this was captioned, "To the rescue."

This was taken for the Mardis Gras (The Car Parade)

I think perhaps this is Corrine Wade, as is the one below, taken on the porch at 203 Clifton Avenue.

Far left is Annet Pritchartt and next to her, her brother Howard Pritchartt. Taken in the side front yard at 203 Clifton Avenue, Natchez, MS.

This was captioned, "Looking at the moon." I think the girl closest to the camera is Annet Pritchartt.

Taken in the front yard at 203 Clifton Avenue, Natchez, MS. The bluff in the background.

Annet Pritchartt on far left. Taken at the old Learned mansion on the bluff, known today as Maggie Burkley's house.

Who Are They? Old Natchez Photographs

2011-12-02T12:19:00.001-06:00

I'm trying to get identifications on the people in these photos, taken circa 1904 - 1915. Any ideas, anyone? I'll post new ones every few days. If you do think you can identify some of them, please email me at elodiepritchartt@aol.com. Thanks!

These first five were taken at 203 Clifton Avenue, Natchez, MS Circa 1907-09

Annet Pritchartt on far left; Corrine Wade (Cora) on far right.

Corrine Wade on left; Annet Pritchartt on right

Annet Pritchartt in rear looking down; girl on right with finger in mouth is Corrine (Cora) Wade. Born 1897 and lived at 207 Clifton Avenue. Cora had a sister, Clara, born in 1895. Corrine had a son with C.V. Hollis -- Claiborne Hollis, a financial consultant in Natchez who still lives at 207 Clifton. I think Corrine died after giving birth to Claiborne, and I remember Miss Clara living at 207 Clifton. She had two large Magnolia trees in her front yard in whose strong, gentle branches I spent many an hour climbing and playing.

Rear right in sailor dress is Annet Pritchartt; far right with dog in her lap is Corrine Wade.

The next series of photographs says "House Party, Martin, Mississippi, July 1909

Man on right tentatively identified as William Evans Dean 1874-1956. He married Anna Trimble.

Annet on far left - next to her Corrine Wade. Girl on far right end believe to be Clara Wade her sister.

Caption for this picture said, "Our chaperones."

For more photos, please also see Matters Familias - The Long Farewell.

Natchez Court Records 1767-1805

2011-11-30T15:09:00.001-06:00

New Orleans, 30 March 1786. p. 46. Deposition:

I do hereby declare upon oath that a few days before Mr. John Woods let Mr. Stephen Minor have the negroes for the money he was in debt to him, Margaret Woods, wife of said John Woods came to me and said that ever since she had been married she was used to have negroes to wait upon her and that it would go very hard with her to be without a negro to do her business but she feared that it would take all her husband's negroes to pay the debts.

I asked her if she could not lay in a petition to the Commandant claiming the country-born negro wench, called "Beck". She said it was doubtful it would do as she brought but five guineas in gold to Mr. Woods when she was married which she lent to pay a part of the purchase of the wench called "Kate".

And further I do declare that some short time after, Mr. Minor having in his possession two negroes that he had bought of the said Woods, one Mrs. Owens came to me and told me that Mrs. Woods had been several times to beg her to steal a negro wench her husband had sold Mr. Minor. I asked her if she knew what Mrs. Woods intended to do with the wench.

Mrs. Owens said that Mrs. Woods told her that she had the negro fellow of Mr. Minor hid out in the cane-brake, and if she could get the wench, she would immediately go to the Choctaw Nation after her husband, as he was to wait there for her on the path.

I then told her that she ought to go and inform Mr. Minor of Mrs. Woods' intention and proceedings, which she agreed to and we went together and made the matter known to Mr. Minor.

Signed Patience Welton with her mark. Wit: John Welton, Stephen Haywood.

I do hereby certify upon oath that the time Mr. Minor lost his negro fellow, named "London", that he bought of John Woods, the said negro was harbored by Mrs. Margaret Woods, wife of John Woods, in a cane-brake. This she, herself, told me. Moreover, I saw the wench with victuals for the said negro.

She sent a man to me to buy a horse from me to send the negro away to the Choctaw Nation, and likewise begged of me and my wife to steal a wench, named "Kate", that Mr. Minor had bought of her husband. We both agreed that we would, in order to satisfy her until we could acquaint Mr. Minor of her intentions, which we did.
Signed William Owens. Wit: James Elliot, Stephen Haywood.

Image

FIFTY YEARS
--OF--
SLAVERY
--IN THE--
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

HARRY SMITH,
OF OSCEOLA COUNTY,
MICHIGAN.

GRAND RAPIDS, MICH.
WEST MICHIGAN PRINTING CO.
1891.

Woodville Lofts Breathes New Life into Old Hotel

2011-11-05T12:57:00.001-05:00

Story and Photos by Elodie Pritchartt

What do you do when you want to find a cozy little getaway where you can relax, someplace pet friendly so you don’t have to board the dog?

Buy a hotel, of course.

That’s what happened when New Orleanians Jim Derbes and his wife Jan Katz found themselves making an offer on the old hotel on the square in Woodville, Mississippi back in April of 2006, shortly after Hurricane Katrina.

It couldn’t have been a better match for Woodville, as the couple hopes to breathe new life not only into the building but into the town square, too. There are plans for condos, offices, an art gallery, a yoga studio, and a coffee shop with a restaurant and music venue.

“We didn’t leave New Orleans until a few days after the storm, and we ended up in Houston staying in someone’s home who we really didn’t know very well, and they wouldn’t let us bring the dog, understandably. So we boarded him,” said Jan.

Bosco, the couple’s Labrador retriever, had greeted us at the door — a quiet, gentle creature who seemed unimpressed with all the hoopla generated by his simple needs. We sat at a kitchen table in a room that was making do as a temporary home, our conversation punctuated with the sounds of construction in another part of the building.

Jan smiles. “After the storm, I said to Jim, ‘The one thing I really would love is some tiny little apartment somewhere where we can bring Bosco.’”

One night Jim was browsing real-estate listings on the computer and ran across the listing for the old hotel located on the square in the center of town. The mid-nineteenth century building had definitely seen better days. It had served as a hotel up through World War II with a lobby downstairs and fifteen hotel rooms upstairs.

Throughout the years, many businesses occupied the downstairs spaces—several grocery stores, a Ben Franklin, a drugstore, an antique store, a boutique, even the Greyhound bus station.

Writing in the The Journal of Wilkinson County History in 1992, Stella Pitts notes:

So the old building waits, its bricks crumbling, its walls leaning, its rooms filled only with dust and memories, hoping that someone will come along one day and save it from the destruction that must surely come otherwise.

Fortunately for the building and for Woodville, Jim and Jan came along. Although the amount of work required was a bit more than they’d bargained for, they are taking pains to adhere to standards set forth by Mississippi Archives & History.

The view of the courthouse from one of the lofts.

Jim, who has practiced law in New Orleans for forty-two years, has also been active in historic restoration and preservation for over twenty years. He has restored several buildings, two of which garnered awards, including an 1858 Greek Revival Mansion on Bayou Road called The Benachi House & Gardens, now a wedding venue.

Over the years he’s restored other buildings in New Orleans and went into the B&B business. In 1973 he served in the Louisiana Constitutional Convention. He has also served as president of the Louisiana Landmark Society and the Vieux Carré Property Owners, Residents & Associates, Inc., one of the oldest preservation associations located in the French Quarter.

As an attorney he was the first director of the Release on Recognizance Program in Parish Prison.

The Woodville Square is surrounded by beautiful historic structures.

“I was an attorney with the poverty program, was in legal assistance when I got out of law school…”

“And he just finished digging a trench downstairs,” says Jan of what has become his current cause.

Jim’s interest in working with his hands began when he inherited a box of tools from a great uncle when he was a child.

“It was an old toolbox with ancient tools,” he said. “Things that people don’t really use anymore. They’re collectibles now.”

He started making things, learning as he went.

“I had no mentor,” he recalls. “My father was all thumbs. For some reason, I became interested in the improvement of buildings, and at this point I’ve probably worked on a couple of dozen in some way or another.”

Shards of the past found on site.

It shows. Walking through the old hotel building, Jim points out the new cabinetry, all built on site by local craftsmen. The plans for upstairs include seven condos, one of which they will keep, five that will be sold and one small efficiency apartment for guests of the other condo owners.

All of the condos will have balcony access with treetop views.

“And the light is so magical,” says Jan, pointing out the evening light as it played through the branches.

It makes sense that the light would play a big part in Jan’s love of the hotel. She has an artist’s eye, and has been collecting since buying her first painting at the age of fourteen.

After completing her English degree at Sophie Newcomb, Jan taught filmmaking and English for several years, which eventually morphed into a photography gallery at her home, exhibiting New Orleans photographers like Clarence John Laughlin and Michael Smith.

In the early 1980s, she closed her gallery and launched an award-winning line of jewelry, known as Alexa-Jared, sold in 550 stores around the country. She stuck with jewelry for thirteen years.

“It was wonderful,” Jan recalls, “but I was just done."

Woodville's Museum on the Square

Then in the year 2000, Jan’s first husband—the late Judge Robert Katz —died very suddenly.

“All my friends told me I shouldn’t be in the studio, that I had to get out.”

She was hired at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art where over the years she has worked in a number of positions, including the one she presently holds as founder and Curator Emerita for the Center of Southern Craft & Design.

After running into Jim, an old friend and associate of Robert’s, at a Christmas party, the two found love and were married.

Part of Jan’s plan for the hotel is to exhibit some of her collection of self-taught outsider art and crafts in the common areas.

..While the upstairs is still very much in progress, the downstairs areas are nearly complete, boasting a combination of modern lines and design, colors, and light fixtures and accessories from IKEA while incorporating the old beadboard and flooring of the original building.

“Part of our job,” says Jan, “…is that we want to bring creativity and life to downtown Woodville. The creativity is here, but at 5:30 everything stops. And the weekends are very, very quiet.”

The coffee shop, tentatively called The Town Square Café, will be owned and operated by Chef Jason Roland and his wife Caryn of Heirloom Cuisine, a hugely popular catering company with a kitchen in St. Francisville, and clients all over the region. The café will serve as a coffee shop during business hours and a restaurant at night.

Classically trained at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, Jason specializes in multi-regional cuisine. For eight years he was Executive Banquet Chef of the Windsor Court Hotel. He also worked at Mr. B’s Bistro, Muriel’s in Jackson Square and Beau Chene Country Club, all in New Orleans. With an eclectic, organic menu, wine, and eventually a full bar, the plan is to offer a venue for dining and live music.

“This is not a new recipe,” says Jim. “This has worked in urban areas all over the country for the last thirty years. People have rediscovered downtown.”

The couple hopes that having shops, offices, cafes, galleries, exercise studios, and more in this historic town square, considered one of the most iconic in Mississippi, will breathe new life into evenings and weekends in Woodville. It sounds like a recipe for success. And Bosco can come, too.

Photography Event November 16, 2011

2011-11-05T11:51:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, November 16, @ 7:00 PM - “Conversation with the Artists” at the Town Square Café. Photographers Dr. Lee England, of Natchez and Peter Verbois of St. Francisville, discuss their work now showing in the Café’s exhibit “Meeting in the Middle.”

Moderated by Elodie Pritchartt. Free and open to the public. Regular menu plus three-course $15 supper special available. From 5:00PM. Reservations suggested but not required.

Photo by Lee England, New Orleans Waiters
Echoes Photographic Gallery
107 North Pearl Street
Natchez, Mississippi 3910
601.445.2345
or
601-431-7737

Wanted Dead or Alive - Natchez Court Records 1786

2011-10-24T10:22:00.000-05:00

The robberies lately committed by rebel James Armstrong, his two sons and negro, together with the vagabonds, named John and James Lovell and George Blair, who forcibly entered the houses of four inhabitants of this District and putting them in fear of their lives, stripped their dwellings of everything most valuable they could carry off, such as clothes, goods, firearms, horses, saddles, bridles and other effects, contrary to the public peace and tranquility, being well-known.

In order to promptly and effectively remedy these, to cut short the course of these villains, I do hereby command all inhabitants, without exception to unite immediately and in parties of twenty persons and pursue these public robbers without delay until they are taken dead or alive, the public tranquility in a measure depending on their apprehension, as also on the expedition used, in which every person is interested.

It is therefore recommended to the inhabitants to concert among themselves the best means of taking these robbers, each party taking a different route and such as they expect most likely to be used by these villains in placing ambushes for them where they might think needful and where they may intercept them on their return from their nocturnal expeditions.

At Fort Panmur at Natchez, 12 Aug. 1786. Signed Carlos de Grand-Pre

Circular to William Brocus, Samuel Gibson, Roswell Mygatt, William Tabor, Prosper King, Ezekiel DeWitt, John Swayze, James Swayze, William Smith, John Coleman, Samuel Walker, Waterman Crane,
Israel Leonard, John Pickens, John Ford, James Stoddard, John Martin, Jeptha Higdon, Richard Adams, John Adams, Edward Lovelace, Adam Lanehart, Jeremiah Coleman, John Lum, John Stampley, William Collins, John Kincaid, Joseph Fort and Elias Bonnell.

Visions of Home

2011-10-06T17:00:00.000-05:00

*Photos © Elodie Pritchartt

Natchez Characters - Ritchie Montgomery

2011-09-23T13:07:00.003-05:00

I found some clippings of articles I wrote when working for The Natchez Democrat in 1979 and 1980, and thought I'd share one with you. This one is about my friend Ritchie Montgomery, whose latest acting role was as the bus driver in The Help. He's come a long way since this article was written, no longer working as an assistant but as a very seasoned actor with 94 movie titles under his belt.

April 6, 1980
NATCHEZIAN KEY FIGURE IN MOVIE
By Elodie Pritchartt
Democrat Staff Writer

Wou would ever have believed that when Columbia Pictures came to town to film "Beulah Land," they would bring one of Natchez's own, home-grown locals to work in production?

Ritchie Montgomery is "Beaulah Land's executive production assistant "in charge of everything," who returned to Natchez after one-and-a-half years of living and working in various jobs in Los Angeles.

Montgomery grew up in Fayette, a long way from Los Angeles and Hollywood. He was always interested in entertainment and he holds a bachelor degree in fine arts from the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.

After leaving school, Ritchie began managing the bar at Hallelujah, Ltd., where he was affectionately known as the "speed-rack kid."

When he finally decided to go to Hollywood, he landed a job with "Freedom Road" as a truck driver and found himself right back in Natchez.

His truck-driving skills, however, left much to be desired, so he tried his hand at production assistant and proved himself worthy of the job.

Production assistant is a very important job, coming fifth in the line of production positions.

"First you've got the director," Montgomery said. "Next comes the first assistant director, then the second assistant director, the assistant director trainee and then the production assistant."

Montgomery's job consists of making certain that the actors and extras are costumed and on location as well as seeing that extras are paid at the end of a day's filming.

It is his job to be at Columbia wardrobe first thing in the morning. this often means having the extras dressed and ready to go on location by 6 a.m.

"I'm the first one in and the last one out," Ritchie said. "I have to stay until the bitter end every day."

Ritchie is supplied with his trusty walkie-talkie, which he keeps fastened to his belt. Whenever an extra or actor is needed on the set, word is sent to Ritchie over the walkie-talkie and before you know it, here comes the speed-rack kid with a truckload of extras.

Leslie Ann Warren personally requested that Ritchie serve as her personal assistant.

"She called her manaager in Los Angeles and asked him to put me on as her production assistant. He (the manager) had never heard of me so he called her producer, David Gerber, on the phone. Nobody knew who I was until finally somebody got Chris Morgan and he got me the job."

Montgomery enjoys his job, but his real interest lies in acting. He discovered, however, that even with a degree and a Screen Actor's Guild card, it's awfully hard to land an acting job in Hollywood.

"They always tell you, 'Sure, come on out to Hollywood; we'll take care of you and get you a job,' but they never do. It's tough out there."

After many long, hungry weeks of unemployment, Montgomery finally started working for a moving company in Los Angeles called "Starving Students."

During his off hours, he tried to make his break in acting by doing stand-up comedy routines at the Comedy Store.

The Comedy Store is a club where unknown actors work for free with the hope of being discovered buy one of the talent scouts who frequent the club. Many famous comedians such as Robin Williams got their start at the Comedy Store.

"We mostly do situation-comedy improvisations. For example, the audience would name different things that give you the blues and we'd make up a funny blues tune about it."

Montgomery gets to meet a lot of interesting people in his job as production assistant. While working on a movie in Los Angeles called "Coastliner," he became acquainted with David Jansen and Susan St. James.

"They asked me to have a drink with them one day after filming. susan St. James was going to meet her boyfriend who just happened to be Stephen Stills.

"Well, naturally, I was all excited about meeting Stephen Stills, so I thought I'd impress everyone and order a round of drinks. When the waitress came to collect, I realized that I didn't have enough money. I was really embarrassed and I said, 'Uh, hey everybody, I hate to say this but I'm kind of short.'"

Susan St. James looked at Ritchie, who is all of five feet, six inches tall, and replied, "Oh, Ritchie, everybody knows that!"

The movie company left Natchez Saturday but Montgomery plans to stay behind for awhile and take a vacation.

Then it's back to Hollywood and hunting for another job.

Here is Ollie in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3d.

You know, it's funny looking back on these old stories. I had just started writing, and didn't have a degree, and I see all kinds of holes in this story that were I to have written it today, I'd have done a better job. Still, it's kind of fun going back and remembering.

*Photo Caption from Democrat article: Ritchie Montgomery, center, is comforted by anothe extra during a recent scene in "Beulah Land." Montgomery was also the executive production assistant for the project. (Democrat photo by Mike Willey)

Matters Familia - The Long Farewell

2011-09-20T14:37:00.002-05:00


203 Clifton Avenue, Natchez, Mississippi

In 1885, my great grandfather, William Howard Pritchartt (Will) of St. Louis, Missouri, was a purser on a steamboat on the Anchor Line on the Mississippi River. While on a cruise downriver to Natchez, Mississippi, he met and fell in love with Miss Anne Mounger, also of St. Louis. After he married her, they returned to Natchez and he bought two lots on the bluff overlooking the river and built this house, completed in 1900 for the sum of $3,700. No one but Pritchartts have ever lived there.

I had hoped the house would stay in our family for many more generations, but things don't always work out the way we want, and we sold it last week to friends who will be loving stewards for our old legacy. In cleaning out the house for the first time in over a century, I found a small photo album with pictures of a family during happy times. The inscription at the beginning of the album reads, "To dear Aunt Lucy with love from Anne."

Anne was my great grandmother, and was the photographer who took and developed these photos. I remember hearing about her love of photography and found a metal cannister with Kodak stamped upon it as well as a metal gelatin developing tray.

Will and Anne had two children -- Anne Mounger, born in 1895 and William Howard, born in 1898 -- who brought their parents many joys. Anne, who was called Annet, lived there until her death in 1992. She was my great aunt, a brilliant woman who never married, but traveled the world, studied history at Barnard and returned to Natchez where she taught mathematics for 40 years. William Howard, my grandfather, was called "Boy" most of his life, and was a quiet, gentle man who offered his own family an example of an honest, dignified life.

I offer the following as a tribute to my forebearers.

(Simply click on a photo to see a larger version.)

Newspaper article from St. Louis Newspaper about 1885

"SURPRISE - Among the many gallant and courteous gentlemen who do service in the offices of the various steamboats coming to this city, and particularly those of the Anchor Line, there are none perhaps more courteous, polite and efficient than Mr. W.H. Pritchartt, of the steamer Arkansas City.

As a proof of his popularity, and the esteem in which he is held, especially by the ladies who are fortunate enough to secure passage on this boat, Mr. Pritchartt was presented, on the last trip to Natchez, with a beautiful stool or ottoman cover, exquisitely finished, and wrought in various colors. To say that the fortunate gentleman was surprised would be putting it mildly.

The fair donors of the handsome present were Mr. Capt. C.B. Ziegler, Mrs. Oscar Moore, and Miss Anne Mounger, all of St. Louis. These ladies are making the round trip on the elegant steamer. Mr. Pritchartt is proud of his treasure, but cannot realize how the ladies managed to resurrect Joseph's many colored coat of ancient fame, with which the dainty piece of work is finished."

Excerpt from his obit in 1934 - Natchez Democrat:

Will

". . . For a time he was connected with the Anchor Line steamboats on the Mississippi river. When he came to Natchez in Sept, 1889, he went into business with the late Captain S.E. Rundle. In 1905, with W.R. Wade, he organized the firm of W.H. Pritchartt & Company and was connected with it until 1916. ............" William Howard Pritchartt was born in St. Louis in 1856 and died in Natchez MS 1934. He married the lady Annie Munger that made him the stool."

I found the stool about a year ago.

Annet, age 11; Boy age 8; Jet, age 10

Annet, Age 13. When Annet was born she was named Anne. But because her mother and grandmother both shared the same name, they stuck a "t" on the end at called her Annet (pronounced like Janet). All her life, people called her Annette, never realizing the error, but she never corrected anyone. I named my daughter after her. When I told her, she exclaimed, "No one has ever named anyone after me except for an old Black man, who named his yellow mule after me when I was a little girl."

Annet, age 16

Annet and Jet. Jet was the beloved family dog. One night she came downstairs and went, one by one, to each person, saying hello...as it turns out she was saying goodbye. After she'd greeted each family member she went out into the upstairs hall and died.

Annet, age 12, standing on the carriage block in front of the house. The block remains.

Boy's Cat

Annet's Cat


Aunt Puss and Annet, age 12. Aunt Puss was my great grandfather's sister, Sarah Pritchartt Caskie

Boy, age 10 and Bess, boy's dog. The name is rather prophetic, as he eventually married Bessie Rose Grafton, whom everyone called "Bess."

Boy, age 8 and The White Gobbler

Boy, age 11

Boy's Cat

Clifton Avenue. The bluff has caved off over the years until now the street ends just past the house. A herculean effort has been made to save the remaining bluff, and it seems to be working.

Annet and Possum; February, 1910

George, age 2; Annet, age 13. I don't know who George is.

Mardis Gras, 1909. The Automobile Parade. Annet, age 14 with unknown driver.


Natchez, Mississippi as probably seen from the ferry that used to transport people across the river between Natchez, MS and Vidalia, LA

Possum. In addition to the cats and dogs, turkeys, chickens and Dolly the pony, there was also a pet parrot whose cage hung from the ceiling in the stairwell. The parrot was often let out of his cage. There was an old black man, an ex-slave named Wes who lived in a small shack behind the house. That parrot loved Wes. One night, Wes was awakened by the sound of the parrot calling, "Wes! Oh, Wes!" Wes ran outside in time to see the parrot being carried away by an owl.

The Side Yard

The New Puppy

The Side Yard

This is a daguerrotype. I think it may be my great-great grandmother. While going through the house, I found her marriage license, dated 1865.

On board the US gunboat des Moines, anchored at Natchez, 1906. William Howard Pritchartt and William Howard Pritchartt, my great grandfather and my grandfather.

White Turkeys

Annet, age 12; boy, age 9

Annet, age 16 with her mother, Anne.

Annet, age 10; the fig tree brought from Farmerville

Annet in Colonial Costume, Age 15

I don't know who this is, but since it was the last picture in the album, I think it must be the aforementioned dear Aunt Lucy.

The Back Gallery

Boy, age 13 and Dolly

Boy, age 13. I can still remember when there was earth on the other side of the street, all gone now.

Boy and Jet

Boy on the back gallery. We still have those little children's folding chairs.

Clover, age 11 months

The Dining Room

The Dining Room. We still have my great grandfather's rolltop desk.

White Wyandottes

The Sitting Room. Although the piano is gone, we still have the stool as well as the flower painting on the wall. I found the menorah in the pantry in pieces. At least, I think it's a menorah. My great grandparents were Catholic.

The Sitting Room. We still have those fancy Victorian chairs, which were bought from the owners of the antebellum house, Montebello, after it burned around the turn of the century.

The White Gobbler

Unknown

The Upstairs Hall. The window at the end of this hall opens onto a balconey. On warm, summer nights when I would sleep over at Annet's, she would put the daybed seen in this photo out on the balconey. I would lie on the cot with the stars shining overhead and the lights of Vidalia across the river twinkling like jewels in the night. To this little girl, Vidalia seemed a huge, shining metropolis. Ah, the magic of childhood.

White Turkeys

"My First Brood"

Will and Boy, age 13

I was clearing things out of the attic the other day when I noticed the sun shining on the wall by the stairs, clearly showing the house address, which is painted on the glass above the door.

The sun sets behind the river directly in front of the house. I've so often sat outside to watch it turn into an orange ball against a pink sky that I'd never seen it from inside.

Every afternoon it shines the address on that wall. The house seems to be saying, "I am here. Always."

The Lemon Drop Martini Shakeup

2011-09-10T09:59:00.002-05:00


Photo courtesy of PDPhoto.org

My neighbor Judy and I tried a new product last night -- The Lemon Drop Martini Shaker that I found at Target. The martinis are deelish; however, there is one slight problem. It comes with this little container of really pretty yellow sugar that you're supposed to line the rim of the glass with. It's friggin' impossible to get it open! So Judy wanted to write a letter of complaint to the company that makes it.

"Well, okay," I said, "But lemme have a couple of these dranks first. I'm a MUCH better writer when I'm in my cups."

So we had a drank or three. They taste like kamikazes, by the way. I dashed this off and sent it, post haste, to the complaint desk at El Paso Chile Company last night. No reply so far, but it IS the weekend. I'll let you know if I become famous.

Dear Shir,

I am writing to ask you a favor, please. I NEVER buy edible products at Target Stores, but your Lemon Drop Martini shaker looked downright delectible, particularlyarrly the beautiful yellow crystals of sugar sitting tauntingly on top of the shaker. They teased me. They beckoned to me, the light winking off those golden candy crystals under the department store lights, postioned just so, to take advantage of my compulsive nature. And even though I was on my way back to the office, I simply had to answer that call.

Thus armed with shaker, sugar, and Kirkland brand vodka (bought on the run at Piggly Wiggly) I returned to work via the ladies room. With my assistant keeping careful lookout at the door, I proceeded to mix the most delicioush lemon drop martini I have ever seen. All it needed now was the amber-colored crystalized sugar to crown the glass, which had been lovingly kept in my office freezer behind my desk for just such an occasion. I was so excited you would've thought I was drinking absinthe! But I could not allow myself one taste until my creation was complete. I needed to add the sugar to the rim of that glass.

I twisted the top. I turned it. I pulled on it. Heck, I even tried pushing it further inside. However, even with all the industrial-strength office supplies at hand -- staple removers, Swiss army knife, cuticle scissors, tweezers, tampons, etc., it was impenetrablebleble. I was unable to crack that sugar case.

Twisting it hurt my wrist. Banging on the desk caused my boss to look up and ask what was going on.

"Oh, nothing, sir. Just a spider! I've taken care of it."

Next, I tried the tweezers. They broke. Dammit. Finally to add insult to injury the jewels from the tips of my newly applied Lee Press-On Nails flew across the room, striking my boss's pet parakeet, Piccolo, in his cage. I think his vision is permanently damaged, and he's been making a strange croaking noise ever since.

Needless to say, I was desperate. I tried again, pulling out the heavy artillery -- the black onyx Scorpion Fantasy letter opener from Lord of the Rings my mother in law gave me for Christmas last year. Nada. Nothing. I looked at my trusty assistant and said, "Jephrey, stop playing with my mascara and get over here. I need help with this sugar."

Jephrey's eyes flashed. "Don't call me sugah, sugah."

The next thing I knew I'd been slapped, not only on the face, but also with a sexual harrassment lawsuit. Hmph! If he thinks I'm getting him tickets for that Barbra Streisand concert that's coming up, he's got another think coming. I don't care if Judy Garland, Cher, Lisa Minelli and Marilyn Monroe are returning from the dead....oh, wait. Lisa's not dead. Well, anyway....I am now unemployed and awaiting my arbitration hearing.

Please advise if you plan to make your package more user friendly, as I've had an offer for employment at McDonald's, and their bathrooms have swinging stall doors. I must be able to work more quickly in the future.

Thank you for your earliest attention to this matter. Unless this problem is rectified, I won't be drinking tee many more of your wonderful-but-difficult martoonis.

Shincerely yours,

E. me

Matters Familias - Balls of Steel

2011-08-09T11:20:00.001-05:00

Okay...so last night I was all freaked out and complaining about that damned Murphy whose law just plains sucks eggs. You know, the one that says if it can go wrong it will?

I was visiting the boyfriend in town and called my dad to see what was going on.

"Dee, Versace is gone. I've looked everywhere."

Versace, for those of you who don't know, is my daughter's precious little puggle (cross between a pug and a beagle). The ex-husband decided he didn't want to deal with her anymore after my daughter got an apartment, so I went over to the house on my last visit to Los Angeles and got her and brought her home. My daughter loves that dog more than anything or anyone else. So on the few occasions something's happened where we thought we'd have to make that dreaded call and tell her something awful has happened have been truly horrifying times.

Last night was one of them.

My dad lives on 400 acres in the country. There's a fellow who lives behind us who raises cows, and he and my dad have an arrangement. If he'll come and cut the pasture and make it look all pretty like a golf course, he can keep the hay and use it for his cattle.

But Versace loves to chase cars. So we have to keep her inside if anyone's driving around outside. So back to the story.

"I'd waited until I was sure Robert had left and then I let her out," he said. "But a little while later I heard the other dogs making a big racket, and went out to see what it was."

Turns out all the dogs were frantically barking at a big-as-all-get-out water mocassin. My 85-year-old father, who cut down a pecan tree all by himself last year, got a stick. Not even a big stick. Just a stick. And beat that three-foot-long, four-inch-diameter, mean-ass water mocassin to death. A little stick maybe two feet long.

"I felt bad for the poor snake," he said. "But I had to do it."

The closer he gets to his own mortality, the more he hates taking a life -- any life.

I'd have been scared silly.

Then he noticed Versace was gone. And that's when I called. We both knew what had happened. She'd been bitten and run off to die somewhere.

"I'll be right out," I said, along with a few rather horrible profanities under my breath, and drove pell-mell out to Daddy's. We called and called and called. Nothing.

I was supposed to have taken her to the vet this week for all her shots, her worming, and her rattlesnake vaccine. This was a water mocassin...but still.

I was heartbroken. And exhausted. I went to bed. I ranted about Murphy's Law on Facebook for a bit and then turned off the light and went to bed. I was in that twilight where you're not really asleep but not awake either, when I heard something running into the room and jumping onto the bed.

"Versace?"

She waggled her butt and smiled and licked my face.

Am I dreaming? I stumbled out of bed and went downstairs. I crept into Daddy's room.

"Daddy?"

"She came to the door a few minutes ago. I was so glad to see her I gave her a whole can of cat food."

Canned cat food is Versace's guilty pleasure. He usually curses at her and kicks her out of the way when she tries to horn in on the kitties' food.

I took her today to get those shots.

How do you spell relief? W-o-o-f!

Matters Familias - Road Trip

2011-08-02T07:18:00.001-05:00

Last Friday I was at the gallery, not working but waiting on customers who mostly didn't come. I'd had visitors all morning and late into the afternoon. I'd been wanting to work on an article, but there was just no doing it that day.

At about 3 p.m. my father dropped in, and as I was talking to him I looked down and noticed my computer's battery was running down and I only had about eight minutes' time left. My power cord had died.

I have a story due this week, so I freaked. I jumped up and announced that I had to go to Baton Rouge, a two-hours' drive away. I had to get there, pronto, and pick up a power cord. There was no time to call and wait for another cord to arrive in four days' time.

My father has this fear of me traveling alone. And even though I know it was the very last thing he wanted to do, he insisted on driving to Baton Rouge with me. It was the first time in many months that we were enclosed alone together, and forced to keep each other pleasant company.

In his old age, my father has started to obsess about certain things -- the river and its floods being paramount on the list. He's worried about climate change and tells me on a daily basis that all the birds have disappeared.

"I've only got four hummingbirds this year," he says. I never see anything in the sky anymore. Look! Do you see a single bird? Where have they all gone? And the toads. We used to have scores of them at the house. I never see them anymore."

I looked into the sky as we drove down Highway 61 at 70 miles an hour, and I had to admit I didn't see a single bird. But the weather was threatening to storm, and I thought perhaps that was the reason.

Then after a few minutes, I saw a single, large buzzard flying across the road ahead of us.

"Look, I said. "A buzzard. See? The birds aren't gone."

And then my dad -- the atheist, the cynic -- said, "Look at that. So it is. A buzzard. Bless his little heart."

A buzzard? Bless his little heart? Who ever uses the terms "buzzard" and "bless his little heart" together?

It was one of those tender things that he says so infrequently that it made my heart ache for him.

A little while later, he spied a crow flying over the field.

"Look at that crow," he exclaimed. "God love him."

And I suddenly had a lump in my throat that I couldn't seem to swallow.

When we got to Baton Rouge, I realized I took a wrong turn and was lost. This is one of my dad's biggest fears, and I kept waiting for him to blow up while I called Tommy on the phone and asked him to get directions. It was rush hour in Baton Rouge, and I found myself reverting to my Los Angeles driving skills where a half-second's delay would enable me to dart into other lanes of traffic.

"Am I making you nervous," I asked my father.

"No," he replied. "As long as you're the one driving, I'm fine. There is no way I could do this," he added. "Getting old is hard. I couldn't drive like that for the world. You're a good driver, Elodie," he said, and I felt good in the way I felt good as a child and he told me I was pretty. A warm sense of nostalgia came over me.

We made it through Baton Rouge and I traded in the old cord for a new one. On the way back to Natchez, I detoured off the road and took him to see the shining, golden spectacle that is now a bridge joining St. Francisville to New Roads, built in a panicked rush ahead of the flood. Before the flood -- for years before -- the only way to get across that river was by ferry.

He loved it. He loved the bridge; he loved the scenery; he loved remembering what had changed and what had stayed the same.

And I loved him for it. Fiercely. It was a good day. I'm thinking I might need to destroy this new power cord. Just for the sake of love.

Prince Among Slaves - Our History; Our Culture; Ourselves

2011-05-26T16:52:00.000-05:00

[Communicatedfor the National Republican}

Natchez,April 7, 1828

“Thisletter will be handed to you by a very extraordinary personage — no less thanyour old acquaintance Prince, (or Ibrahim,) who is now free, and on his way tohis own country; where he was captured in battle, nearly forty years ago, andhas been in slavery nearly the whole of that period, upon the plantation of Mr.Thomas Foster, of this county. I am much gratified to have been theinstrument of his emancipation — although from his advanced age (sixty-sixyears) he can but possess merely a glimpse of the blessings to which he wasentitled from his birth.”

Thusbegins an article in a national newspaper dated 1828, describing the fight forthe freedom by Abdul-Rahman Ibrahim ibn Sori, an educated African prince whospent the majority of his life as a slave on Thomas Foster’s Plantation northof Natchez.

The manwriting it (probably local newspaperman Andrew Marschalk) clearly thinks ofAbdul Rahman not as chattel, but as a person, a man in his own right. Askanyone in the South about race and they'll tell you it's complicated. Seemsas though it was complicated in the 1700s as well.

Here wasan African slave, sold into slavery by rival Africans; yet he had powerfulwhite allies fighting to gain his freedom while ignoring the fact that therewere millions more for whom there was no fight, no hope for freedom.

Born in 1762 in Timbo,West Africa (present day Guinea, Fouta Djallon), Abdul-Rahman was educated inMali at Timbuktu, and served as a leader of one of his father's army divisions. In 1788, after winning a battle against a warring tribe, he and a handful ofsoldiers who had left to report back to his father were ambushed, captured andsold to slave traders, who brought him to America and sold him to Natchezplantation owner, Thomas Foster. He was 26 years old.

After acouple of escape attempts from Foster's plantation, Abdul-Rahman becameresigned to his fate and worked for Foster. Because of his knowledge aboutgrowing cotton in Fouja Djallon and his ability to read and cipher numbers, heproved a valuable asset to Foster, becoming the plantation's de facto foreman,allowed to travel and make purchases and sales. In 1794 he marriedanother Foster slave, Isabella, with whom he had five sons and four daughters.

One dayabout 20 years later, he ran into someone whose life he and his family hadsaved many years before in Fouta Djallon -- Dr. John Cox, an Irish surgeon whohad served on an English ship that had become marooned off the coast of Africa. Badly injured and ill, Cox was taken in by Abdul-Rahman's family, who nursedhim back to health.

Abdul-Rahmanwas walking down the street one day when Cox happened along and recognized him. When he learned that his old benefactor was a slave, he vowed to see to it thathe would be given his freedom and returned to his native land. But Fosterwould have none of it. Abdul-Rahman was too valuable an asset, and he refusedto release him for any price. Cox worked to gain his friend's freedomuntil his death in 1816.

In 1826,Abdul-Rahman wrote a letter to his relatives in Africa. A local newspaperman,Andrew Marschalk sent a copy of the letter to Senator Thomas Reed inWashington, who took it to the US Consulate in Morocco. The Sultan of Moroccothen asked President Adams and Secretary of State Henry Clay to giveAdbul-Rahman his freedom. Finally, in 1828, Foster agreed to freeAbdul-Rahman with the stipulation that he return to Africa and not live as afree man in America.

Beforeleaving the country Abdul-Rahman and his wife went to Washington and tried toraise enough money to buy their children and take them with them. They wereunable to raise enough funds before Foster found out about it and said it was abreach of their agreement. So he and Isabella left America and sailed toLiberia. He was an old man, and had been a slave for more than 40 years. He died of a fever four months after arriving in Liberia, never seeing Fouta Djallon or his children again.

Althoughthe capture and enslavement of the prince robbed him of his potential kingshipof his home country, his descendants think of him not only as royalty but as afamily patriarch who gives a specific identity to otherwise innumerablefaceless African ancestors.

One ofthose descendants, Adams County resident, Beverly Adams, says, “It is abittersweet tale, which contrasts his identity with the injustice done to him. His faith brings honor and nobility from his native country, Futa Jallon, toNatchez, like jewels dug out of the muddy water of the Mississippi.”

She adds,“It is ironic that the indignity and suffering of slavery created such a richhistory for my own African-American family, as portrayed by Dr. Terry Alford’sbook, Prince Among Slaves.”

The final paragraph in thearticle from 1828 reflects this bittersweet story.

"Princecalled to see us yesterday, with his wife and sons, who are really the finestlooking young men I have seen. They were all genteely drest; and althoughthey expressed themselves pleased with the freedom of their parents, there wasa look of silent agony in their eyes I could not bear to witness."

(Manythanks to Beverly Adams and David Dreyer for their help in writing this story)
Engraving of Abdul-Rahman courtesy of Library of Congress

For further information, see the PBS documentary Prince Among Slaves based on the book Prince Among Slaves by Terry Alford.

Prince Among Slaves - Screening and Discussion June 5

2011-05-26T15:37:00.000-05:00

Click on Photo to enlarge

A Lovin' Spoonful: A troubadour's journey leads her back home

2011-05-04T17:55:00.000-05:00

Not long before I moved back to Natchez from Los Angeles, I kept hearing about this fellow, Jack Kelly. It seemed as though his name was on everybody’s lips, and I thought he must be quite popular.

So imagine my surprise when I was introduced to Jack—late fiftyish; five foot, one; a stylishly coiffed mass of red curls; and a set of green, Irish eyes that twinkled with intelligence and the kind of seasoned humor that hinted at a life filled with joy and pain and everything in between.

“How do you do?” she asked, smiling, her eyes searching mine for an honest answer.

Yes, you heard right. I’ve never met a boy named Sue but I’ve met a girl named Jack. We were waiting to hear a band play at The Corner in Natchez. I was married at the time, and my husband had been invited to play saxophone. The band started up and we listened and chatted awhile. I learned she was a Natchez native who had recently returned home after an extended absence—something I was longing to do, myself.

As we talked, a tune began playing and Jack hopped off her stool and ran over to the band, pulling on what looked like a medieval knight’s armor. Suddenly, she had a set of spoons and was scraping them across that “armor”—a kind of refashioned washboard, making the most incredible sounds. It was almost like a rapper spinning a vinyl, only earthier, more low-tech. The music took on a whole new dimension with Jack punctuating the beat the way drums and snares simply couldn’t. A smile spanned her face; her eyes invited you to dance.

“Wow,” I gushed. “I had no idea you could make that kind of sound with a washboard. You’re really good.”

“Thank you,” she replied. Then she tilted her head, her eyes focused on some distant memory, and said, “Yes, I feel as though I finally have credibility as a musician in my own right.”

And I could tell from her reply that it had been a journey. I was right.

Music played a part in Jack’s life from the start, with jam sessions at home between her father, a saxophonist; his sisters, all pianists; and one of his brothers, also a saxophonist.

She was nine when she experienced her own musical epiphany. One night, her big sister, Jemmy Sue, who’d been assigned babysitting duties, dragged little Jackie along to a party in town. On an upstairs back-porch veranda, Mississippi Blues legend Papa George played the guitar and harmonica, and sang the Blues. A man pulled up a chair and put a washboard on his knee and started scratching it with a brush.

“And I saw my future,” she said.

She got her own washboard and experimented with different techniques—thimbles on her fingers, bottle caps, wire whisks. She finally settled on spoons.

After she’d finished school, life took Jack through nine states, three marriages and three careers, during which time music fell to the wayside.

In 1987, she moved to New England, where she earned a master’s degree in communications and became a writer for corporate public relations.

And then in 1987 while she was living in New England, music reentered her life.

“Every year they had the Great Connecticut Traditional Jazz Festival. I worked as a volunteer so I could hear the music.”

One night after several years as a volunteer, she finally mustered the courage to sit in on a jam session.

“I pulled out my little washboard and my heart was beating, like, 50,000 miles an hour. I got onstage and I was the only washboard. There was a piano player and a horn. Oh, my God…and it was Dixieland jazz. And I just played my little washboard like nobody was looking and the crowd roared. It was great!”

It was also in Connecticut where she saw her first frottoir —the washboard worn over the shoulders like an apron. Clifton Chenier, the king of Zydeco, had come to play with his Red Hot Louisiana Band. Chenier invented and designed the frottoir (Cajun for musical rub board). He drew a picture of it in the dirt and asked a metalworker if he could make one for him. According to the Smithsonian Institute, it is the only musical instrument ever invented in America.

“I knew I had to have one,” she said. “But nobody had ever heard of it.”

She finally found a welder in Louisiana to make one for her. That’s when she became a troubadour, sitting in with Reggae and other bands on the weekends. Sometimes they let her and sometimes not, but she wasn’t afraid of rejection.

“There’s nothing more joyful than when you jump up onstage and you’re playing, and you look around and the musicians are giving you a thumbs up. When you get endorsed by fellow musicians, you’ve made it.”

When she turned fifty, she took a rainbow buyout from her company, divorced, and decided to go see her parents in Mississippi. And she finally found home.

“I got here on a weekend, a Friday. I stopped in Washington [Mississippi, just north of Natchez] to get some gas, and I walked in to pay for it and somebody said, ‘You’re one of the Garraway girls.’ I’d been gone thirty years. It started happening everywhere I went. I knew I was home.

“I’ve lived all over the place. Nine states. DC, Virginia, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana…” Her voice trails off. “Everywhere I went I’d go on a trip and get back home and it never felt like, ‘Ahh. I’m home now.’ Until I got back to Natchez.”

She hadn’t been home a full weekend when someone told her about the Under-the-Hill Saloon.

“When I left town, people didn’t go Under the Hill. The Blue Cat had been shut down. It was a no-no.”

It was a Sunday evening. Her face lights up at the memory.

“It was packed with old and young and rich and poor and black and white and gay and straight and foreigners and locals,” her voice rising in crescendo. “And there was a Blues band playing!

“And I thought why did I stay away so long? I’d never gotten that anywhere. Not the Blues. Not that diverse crowd.

“And people were dancing where they were standing. Oh, God,” she said. “I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.”

Through her sister, Jemmy Sue, she found a Reggae band in Baton Rouge—Henry Turner, Jr. He invited her to sit in. After Katrina, he called and asked if she’d join the band as a paid member.

“I’m now hugging sixty. So here I am. These young, black men with their dreadlocks, and this little white lady.”

A year after Katrina, they performed a showcase on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans during the Cutting Edge Music Trade Show. A scout from Jazz Fest was there, and four or five months later they were invited to play the 2007 New Orleans Jazz Festival.

She played at The House of Blues in New Orleans in the year 2000, when she snuck up onto the stage and started playing. The crowd went crazy. The band noticed it and turned around. When the song was over she ran off the stage, but the band came back and got her and brought her back out.

This year she played onstage at the Natchez Balloon Festival with Terence Simian & the Zydeco Experience, who won an Oscar for the music in Disney's animated film, The Princess and the Frog.

“I stood by his washboard player and we jammed together,” she recalls. “You know, washboards are kind of like the stepchildren of music. I think we’re coming into our own. But we take a lot of backtalk.”

I thought back to that first meeting when she talked about becoming a musician in her own right, and I began to understand what she meant.

“But it’s a down-home, informal thing,” she says, adding that she’s always wanted to form a jug band.

“It’s a fun thing. You can’t take it too seriously.”

She also has a clave, a cabasa, and a tambourine.

“I bring them and put them out so the audience will feel free to pick them up and join in.

“One of the most fun things is when I jump off the stage and little girls want to come up and play it. If only one kid could find more joy in their life, and saw it, you know, and said, ‘There’s something I can do,’ wouldn’t that be cool?

“And let’s don’t say that just because we’ve turned fifty, it doesn’t mean we can’t still be in a traveling band.” She cackles, delighted.

“I’ve come full circle,” she says at last. “In March of 2007 I decided to quit drinking. It was the best decision of my life. In my first year of sobriety I played at the Jazz Festival and the Balloon Festival. It was a highlight of my life.

“I had a lot of failures in my life, in love. I didn’t get lucky in love. Now that I’m sober, I know I brought every damned bit of it on myself. But now I’m just happy to be home.”

Having found my anchor here, myself, I know just how she feels. Joyful.

Story and 1 photo by Elodie Pritchartt © 2011

The Murder Trial of the Century

2011-04-13T13:04:00.002-05:00

Perched on a gentle hill at Duncan Park is one of Natchez's architectural gems -- Auburn. The house was built in 1811 for a wealthy Natchezian, Lyman Harding, the first attorney general of Mississippi.

Auburn was the first home to be built in Natchez using an architectural design. One of the home's most beautiful and unusual features is the lovely freestanding spiral staircase in the foyer.

But what makes this staircase even more interesting than its delicate, airy grace is the tale of Levi Weeks, the architect Lyman hired to design his beautiful home. The tale of Levi Weeks is mysterious and violent and fraught with drama and involved the most sensational murder trial of the 19th Century.

Following a not-guilty verdict in the murder of his sweetheart, Elma Sands, Weeks left New York because of public sentiment against him. He move to Deerfield, Massachussetts; then Cincinnati, Ohio; then to Lexington Kentucky. The story followed him until he finally landed in Natchez, and became a successful architect.

The story has twists and turns that rival his beautiful staircase. I could not tell it any better than it's told on the blog Murder by Gaslight. Click on the link to read it.

staircase photos by Elodie Pritchartt © 2011

The Other Wedding Dance

2011-04-12T15:00:00.001-05:00

Picture this: 1978. LSU. Sigma Chi house. Frat boy writhing and sweating, prostrate on the dance floor encircled by cheering boys and giggling girls; me, age sixteen, peering over my freshman date’s shoulder in abject horror.

“What’s wrong with him?” I ask.

“Wha? Ha!”

My date dives in and begins seizing beside his seizing friend.

Oh.

My high-school boyfriends never had the gumption to try that at our homecoming dances. And the Hotty Toddy cheering crowd only wished they’d invented “The Gator,” in which the entire fraternity squirmed, flopped, humped, and flipped like a floor full of -- well…alligators. Make that drunken alligators.

My introduction to the Gator was almost as puzzling as the first time I watched someone suck a crawfish-head. Looks like they are enjoying the hell out of what they’re doing…still…I think I’ll just watch.

As my hometown Natchez, Mississippi, is only ten miles from Ferriday, Louisiana (birthplace of Jerry Lee Lewis), I have seen quite a bit of both crawfish-head sucking and gatoring. (Yes, “gator” conjugates in these parts.) I’ve watched guys gator in upscale clubs, dive bars, Cajun restaurants, at Mardi Gras balls, holiday country-club dances, 21st-birthday celebrations, 60th-birthday celebrations and wedding receptions.

Sad to say, the Gator is not as compulsory at celebrations in other parts of the country. Even sadder, some people don’t know how to gator or even to which song they should hit the floor.

To enlighten the uninitiated, I sought the clarity of a professional. If anyone can give you the skinny on the alligator and entree into the gator inner circle, it’s Glen McGlothin. Mayor of Ferriday on and off for the last 14 years and a professional musician for 47 years (his pedigree includes cousins Jerry Lee Lewis and Mickey Gilley), McGlothin has gatored his way from Plaquemine to Memphis and back again.

“The first time I saw it done was to Louie Louie at a club in Breaux Bridge in the '60s” he said, making a slow rocking movement with his shoulders.

Theoretically, the diaspora of gatorers is thought to have begun with African American bands who played for white frat houses as depicted in the movie, Animal House. McGlothin, however, has a more realistic and culturally integrated take.

“Cajuns are a whole different ball of wax,” he explained. “They weren’t as uptight. Blacks and whites partied together; white bands had black members; black bands had white members. Who knows who did it first—but I think it came from those juke joints down in south Louisiana like the Purple Peacock in Eunice and the Pelican Club in Ville Platte.”

The original dance he described as getting down on all fours, like you might if getting ready to do push-ups, and crawling forward and backward to the reggae beat of Louie Louie.

“I still do that version, but you have to be careful how you move your rear-end or you might look like you’re doing something you ought not be.”

The movie Animal House changed the gator, he explained. “Now they like to gator to Shout by the Isley Brothers, and they dive in, flop over on their backs and do what I call the dying cockroach—it’s all your own interpretation now. They do the worm and pile on top of each other.”

Wild party boys willing to chug-a-lug and moon anything carried forth the primordial dance for five decades and have never pretended to get down on the floor and crawl around with one another for anything more than a laugh.

“Third set out of four—people are ready to party. That’s when they gator. They get loose and have fun,” said McGlothin.

But I sense a deeper reason lurking beneath the sweat-stained tuxes and booze soaked laughter. With dance, they seize the moment of party crescendo guaranteeing an uninhibited and appreciative audience and offering up their own kind of performance art, an interpretive “King of the Mountain” horizontal victory prance coupled with a daredevil challenge.

The gator stirs up man’s urge to climb and paint water towers, dangle their rears from speeding car windows, water ski barefoot, show-off, and laugh at fear.

“I’ve seen guys slide up into the drums. I’ve seen middle-aged guys dive in to start the gator, get the breath knocked out of them and just lay there,” said McGlothin. “I’ve seen guys start it at their own weddings and it becomes a ‘gator-off.’ The daddies jump in, then the uncles, then the old grandpas. Then there’re the people who forget they’re at a wedding and do the X-rated version…”

McGlothin’s band, Easy Eddie and the Party Rockers, plays at least 15 weddings a year at which, he says, gatoring is guaranteed.

“If it’s around here, they’re gonna do the alligator. It’s a participation dance. Mothers of the bride and groom, grandmas and aunts gather around to watch. It can make the party.”

Women watch. Make that ladies watch.

“If a girl gators, she’s…um…less inhibited than the other ladies,” said McGlothin, “She’s not a debutant…um…she’s more fun.”

At 63, McGlothin is more of an instigator than a gatorer.

“Hell, I wish I could still do it. I can get down but I can’t get back up. I look more like a turtle. It’s embarrassing to waller around on the floor.”

Unless you mean to wallow around on the floor. Then you’re doing the gator.

Courtney Taylor is a freelance writer and dance floor commentator living in Natchez, Mississippi.

Stanton Hall

2011-04-08T14:23:00.007-05:00

Sunday evening at Natchez Under-the-Hill

2011-02-23T16:40:00.001-06:00

Photo by Elodie Pritchartt

Natchez Court Records 1767-1805: Horse Trading

2011-02-06T15:19:00.000-06:00

This case surprised and pleased me greatly. I really didn't think slaves would be given any consideration, whatsoever, but this case clearly shows that much consideration was given to a sense of fairness to this one, a woman, to boot.

p. 356. Negress Amy versus the heirs of Asahel Lewis.

Petitioner represents that her former master gave her, in recompense of her service one horse which she has in her possession but finding that the heirs of her sd master intend to deprive her of the said horse, begs that Mr. William Collins and Mr. Abner Phipps give their declaration before Mr. Ezekiel Forman, Esq. of what they know of the right to the said horse, to the end that title to the horse may be confirmed.

She signed with a mark. April 23, 1794.

Ezekiel Forman will take declaration on same.

Owing to the illness of Mr. Forman, this is transferred before G. Benoist, Esq.

This is to certify that I went to trade with Mr. Lewis for his black horse but he said I must apply to Amy for him for he had given her the said horse.

Sig: Wm. Collins. Pine Ridge, 24, Apr. 1794. Before me, Gabriel Benoist.

Personally appeared Abner Pipes, Jr. who, on oath, declared that he once heard the late Asahel Lewis, speaking to the negro woman, Amy, refer to the black horse as hers. Signed.

Natchez History - The Wild, Wild South

2011-02-06T12:53:00.005-06:00

(Fort Rosalie)

A couple of years ago I ran across a book on Ebay: The Natchez Court Records 1767-1805 by May Wilson McBee. Since most of my readers are from Natchez, I thought you'd enjoy a sampling of the people's lives in the earliest part of our history. I'll be posting them occassionally as the notion strikes me, so be on the lookout.

p. 108. A letter from Don Manuel de Texada.

Sir: I have to inform you that last night at twelve o'clock, Armstrong and five white men, well-armed, invested my house, robbed me of two horses which they were tying when, hearing a noise, I went out and accosted them mildly, being alone and unarmed, represented to them that it was grievous to see my horses taken before my face, to which Armstrong answered that he had ordered them to be taken and if any person said a word he would take his heart out, and at the same time told his companions to examine the house for a saddle and take it also, as likewise any firearms they might find, and not finding any firearms, they took my saddle and bridle, a great coat, a yard and a half of cloth and a handkerchief, from whence they went to the house of Stephan de Alva, where finding nothing that suited them but one gun, they took that and went away, uttering two thousand bravados, Armstrong saying that it was he who commanded at Cole's Creek and he expected in a fortnight to have men to take to the fort.

(Shew! Talk about a run-on sentence!) continued...

From thence they came to the house of James Cable and finding only his wife at home, they ransacked the house and finding nothing that suited them but a rifle, two blankets and a saddle and bridle, they took these articles and went away, swearing they would have Cable's life. It is my opinion that if Your Excellency should not take some effective means, Armstrong will soon have troops strong enough to ruin all the settlers on this creek.

I should have waited on Your Excellency in person but at present am somewhat lame, etc. God Preserve you Many years.

Cole's Creek August 10, 1786. Signed, Manuel Texada. To His Excellency, Don Carlos de Grand-Pre.

Zooey's Tale

2010-12-16T13:59:00.000-06:00

One of the most amazing and wonderful memories of childhood was watching a cat have kittens. It's a learning opportunity no child should miss, and ranks right up there with memories of sending notes to Santa up the chimney on cold, winter nights or chasing the fogging machine on sultry summer days when white noise drowned out all other sounds except for our childish squeals and laughter.

So when my daughter was in the third grade, I decided it was time for her to experience the excitement of seeing kittens being born. Only one problem: both my cats had been spayed. I had worked at an animal shelter in high school, and remembered that unless I took the pregnant mother cats home, they were put to sleep as a matter of course. I think at one time I had more than 16 cats at home. I would bring them all back to the shelter to be put up for adoption when the kittens reached about six weeks of age.

With that in mind, I called the shelter in California where we were living and told them that if they would call me the next time someone brought in a pregnant cat, I'd see to it that all the kittens would find homes and that I would keep the mother cat.

The very next day they called. I went down to the shelter and found the most beautiful, long-haired, polydactyl-pawed, pastel calico kitty I've ever seen. They said she was probably about two years old. She was sweet as could be, and her feet were so huge they looked like snow shoes.

"Wow! She's gorgeous," I remember saying. "Who brought her in? Where'd she come from?"

"A man from Castaic," the attendant said. "He didn't say anything else."

They were so glad someone was taking a pregnant cat, they didn't even charge me the usual fee for adopting her. We named her Zooey and brought her home. Three weeks later, we all watched as she gave birth to five little polydactyl kittens, one of which we kept and named Oreo.

Zooey was a love of the first order. Except for those feet and a bony little bump halfway down her tail, she was perfect.

After the kittens were weaned and adopted out, we had her spayed. She was fat and fine and happy with us.

That was...gosh....15 years ago? We lost Oreo last summer, but Zooey's still with us. That would make her about 17 years old now. Lately she's gotten painfully thin and her coat seems to have lost its luster. A couple of weeks ago, I found bloody diarrhea in the litter pan and took her in. Irritable bowel syndrome, the vet informed me, and gave me some medicine for it. She's also got a pretty severe case of arthritis in her hips, which -- like mine -- seems to flare up in rainy weather.

Then I felt a suspcious bump on her back, not encapsulated like a cyst but with fingers that shot off in different directions. So back to the vet we went. She had surgery to remove the lump yesterday.

"Oh, yeah," I told the vet, remembering the little bony protruberance on her tail. "She's got this bump about halfway down her tail. Been there forever. As long as you've got her sedated, why don't you check and see what it is."

I figured it was a birth defect. Any cat with that many toes could easily have a defect someplace else. But it seemed like maybe it was a bit bigger lately.

So yesterday the vet called to tell me Zooey was out of surgery and doing fine. Turns out it was just some kind of fatty tumor that I shouldn't be too concerned about.

"But you know that bump on her tail?" he added.

"Yeah?"

"It was a BB."

A BB!!! As in BB gun. Someone had shot that beautiful cat back in California all those many years ago. Although she's been fine all this time and with no apparent pain from it, I was furious. I just don't understand people. I wondered anew at the man from Castaic who brought her in and had had her for two years, only to give her away when she got pregnant.

The only photo I can lay my hands on at the moment is a photo of Zooey after she'd been clipped for the first time. It doesn't do her justice. She was a magnificent-looking feline. I'm so glad she's okay. And so sad she had such a rough start in life.

Please remember your local, state and national shelters and humane societies this holiday season.

The Journey Home

2010-11-15T10:02:00.003-06:00

I spent the day enfolded
in the car, searching for reasons
not to go back to the house,
yearning for something
I couldn't name.

I left the inland desert,
traversed the valley and listened to
the songs of my youth.

A young Neil Young sang
to the old man I'd become
and I was struck with such
a sudden sadness it shocked
me from my reverie.

I looked around at other drivers,
their faces expressionless,
resigned.

No one saw the difference.

The car rode the crest
of the Sepulveda Pass and eased
into its descent like rolling off
a bed mid-dream. Before you know it
you've hit the floor, slightly hurt
and wondering how you'd not
seen it coming.

The Getty loomed like Mount Zion
in the sky, all angles and white.
The trolley sidled up the canyon wall
like a magician delivering
the sinners to Saint Peter.

The City of the Angels crouched like a cat
below, and the air suddenly changed.

I exited on Santa Monica Boulevard,
and waited at the light.
The bums are back.
It's like it was in the '80s,
and everything new is old again.

The blush of dusk hung
like a dirty persimmon
on the horizon.

Numb with anonymity,
I followed the stream
of lights that curled
back into the valley.

This is all there is.
No rhyme. No reason.
Just this.

And more of this.

I stopped at Circle K for milk,
and when I turned the corner
onto Copperhill, I stopped.

A coyote.

In the sweep
of the headlights, he was
beautiful and lithe and seemed
right at home, even here.
I wanted to tell him so.

He trotted easily and crossed the street.
Unafraid.
He stopped at the edge
of the brush and turned to watch me,
as if to tell me something.

Go home.

And I cried because home is
so very far away.

~~ Elodie Pritchartt

Photo by Jeff Ackerman

Big Pink Guesthouse Featured in Blog

2010-11-06T10:20:00.000-05:00

Travel photographer and writer Gayle Harper is presently working on a project about life along the Mississippi Great River Road, the national scenic byway that accompanies the Mississippi River from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico.

Ms. Harper's collection of photographs along the Great River Road was nominated for the Santa Fe Prize for Photography in 2009. Upon completion of her trip down the river, Ms. Harper plans to publish a coffee-table book with the images and stories she gathers along the way.

Her decision to make a 90-day trip down the Great River Road is the result of a little factoid put out by the National Park Service that states that it takes a drop of water about 90 days to make its journey from the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Minnesota to its destination at the mouth of the river in the Gulf of Mexico. To read her blog about this trip, called Surrendering to Serendipity, and Ms. Harper, go to http://gayleharper.wordpress.com.

Last week found Ms. Harper at Shantybellum's sister guesthouse -- The Big Pink Guesthouse in Clarksdale, Mississippi. You can read all about Clarksdale, its local color and the characters and sights she discovered there at http://gayleharper.wordpress.com/2010/11/04/in-the-presence-of-greatness/.

We look forward to hosting Gayle at Shantybellum next week, and trust that Natchez will enchant her as much as Clarksdale, albeit in its own unique style.

Photo by Elodie Pritchartt

Balloon Festival, 2010

2010-11-02T16:48:00.000-05:00

Halloween 2010 An Old Lost Camera; a New Found Friend

2010-10-31T21:02:00.005-05:00

Who knew that losing a camera could turn into such a feelgood moment?

Tommy and I went down to St. Francisville last night for the Faux Blood Music Festival with True Blood soundtrackers Jace Everett, et al, and Chuck Prophet and his band from San Francisco, who played at Magnolia Cafe.

The music was awesome, and I was awestruck at meeting the guy who wrote that song for the opening credits of True Blood. To meet the person and be able to tell him how much you love it is something special.

(Apologies for the image that video shows up with.)

If you're not familiar with it, Magnolia Cafe was the winner of Country Roads Magazine's Favorite Small Town Dining Destination" and Favorite Venue for a Live Performance.

Knowing we'd be having cocktails, Tommy and I did the responsible thang and took a taxi to the restaurant, asking the driver if he'd be so kind as to return and pick us up later that night. The driver's name is Mark Armstrong, a 70-something-year-old man with his own taxi and tour service. He promised he would come back, but said he had to get up this morning to go see his wife, who is in a nursing home with cancer.

After we got out of the cab, I realized I'd left my camera in the back, and called. Told Mark just to hang onto it and bring it when he came back. Alas, we were having such a fine time, I didn't hear my cell phone when he called at 11 p.m. to say he just couldn't stay awake any longer and he'd bring it by the hotel in the morning.

The noise was so loud I couldn't quite make out what he was saying, though, and thought he'd said he would bring it by last night and leave it at the desk. So when we got to the hotel and discovered it wasn't there, and tried to call, I must admit I suspected I'd seen the last of my camera. Now, you can get these cameras for a lot less today than you could ten years ago, but when I bought it, it was a pretty pricey item. And I make my living with my camera and my 'puter, both of which I hope to never lose.

I was having murderous thoughts: "I wanna do bad things to you."

When he showed up at the hotel this morning, he emerged from the taxi with his little dog -- same kind of dog as Toto in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The two came up to the room to deliver the camera in person, and I felt downright ashamed. We talked about Muffin, his dog, and he said he was taking her to see his wife, whom he informed me, he still adores 25 years after he married her. Muffin, he said, really cheers her up.

"I hope she gets better," I sympathized.

"Oh, honey, she's not gonna get any better. This is it."

"I'm so sorry," I said, quite honestly.

"We've been together 25 years," he said, and it's been really hard being at the house alone. If it weren't for Muffin here, and my little cat," he continued, "I don't know what I'd do."

He told us about his place in the woods, and the deer he feeds daily -- just like my own father -- corn that he pours out dutifully every evening.

And he started getting choked up. Before you knew it, the three of us were crying, and Mark and I were hugging each other.

"You know," he said later as he was about to leave, "I gave three sisters a drive up to Natchez a few years back. They were taking a cruise. They were staying at the Eola. That's just about the prettiest hotel I've ever seen. And Natchez is pretty, too," he said. "I think of St. Francisville as a little Natchez."

I quickly agreed. St. Francisville is a jewel.

"Well, next time you want a vacation, drive on up. We've got a little B&B you can stay in."

"Why, that sounds just fine," he said, and we parted ways.

We drove through Centreville on our way back to Natchez, and had lunch. On our way out of town, I noticed I had several missed calls on my phone. It was Mark.

"Can I get your names, please?" he asked. "I really enjoyed meeting y'all. You're nice folks."

Guilt about the camera sticking in my craw.

"Next time y'all come down, I want you to call me," he said. "I give tours, and I'd be proud to take you on a tour. I told my wife about you, and it was just real nice talking to someone. I don't have any family. No children. Just my wife and my pets. I haven't talked to anyone like that in a long time."

I felt that old familiar lump in my throat.

Then he told me to Google him.

"I've driven everybody from George Clooney and Bob Hope to The Rolling Stones and AC/DC. Just a whole bunch of people. Look it up. You'll see."

So I did. And you know, he wasn't kidding.

So for all my readers, please call Mark Armstrong at Tiger Taxi and Tours the next time you're in the St. Francisville/Zachary/Baton Rouge area. You'll get a ride with a real character -- one who knows all the haunts and stories and the heart to tell them.

Maybe I should lose my camera more often.

Tiger Taxi and Tours

"Always on the Prowl"

Mark Armstrong, owner
Cell Phone: 225-921-9199 Home Phone: 225-635-4641

Howard's Revenge

2010-10-27T12:11:00.002-05:00

Pictured from left, back row: Howard Pritchartt, Jr.; Devereux Marshall; Elizabeth Patterson; Bubba Patterson; Sophie Junkin; Mimi Brown; Neville Marshall
Seated, from left, front row: Alma Kellogg, Andree Benoist, Sally Junkin
The identity of the woman in the photo is unknown. I do wish I knew who she was. She's got the sweetest expression on her face, and should be recognized for playing the role so well. She's a good sport, to boot.

Utter the name "Katherine Miller" in Natchez, and the reactions you get vary wildly. She's either the patron saint of Natchez or evil incarnate. Sometimes both. But you have to give the old girl credit, for it was Katherine Miller who spearheaded the formation of the Natchez Pilgrimage, which saved this town from certain doom.

During the 1930s, Katherine traveled the country with a projector slideshow of antebellum homes, inviting prospective visitors to see how the Old South used to live. Because of the success of her campaign and the cooperation and efforts of the other ladies in town, people who were barely eking by during the Great Depression were able to hang onto their homes in Natchez.

For over sixty years, she ruled Natchez society engendering fear, admiration, adoration and loathing in equal measures. Under her direction, grown men were persuaded to dress up like Southern planters and dance the Soiree for strangers. They even allowed their wives to smear rouge and lipstick on their sons, and dress them in lace and knickers and ballet shoes to dance around a Maypole with little girls in hoopskirts.

Sure, for the rest of the year they wore camouflage, slapped each other on the back, broke wind, hunted wild game, played football and talked about the price of oil. But March belonged to the women. No disgrace was too demeaning to keep them from following the orders of the matriarchs of Natchez.

When General Douglas MacArthur visited Natchez after World War II, a photographer captured a photo of him being told to look at the camera by The Mighty Katherine Miller. She was scared of nobody, and her legacy lives on even now as every year March comes in like the lion....or lioness, and goes out like the lamb.

It was under the shadow of this matriarchal monopoly that my father, Howard Pritchartt, spent his childhood. His mother, Bessie Rose, was Katherine's sister, and boy, was she disappointed when her only child wasn’t the girl she’d always wanted. She'd had visions of playing dress-up with a beautiful little girl. Not to worry. Bessie Rose decided she'd dress him any way she darned well pleased, and that's exactly what she did.

Every morning she'd send young Master Howard off to school in a sailor suit or Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit, where he'd get beaten up for wearing sissy clothes. When he got home, she would rage at him because he'd ruined his outfit. He remembers one incident, in particular, when she ripped off his jacket and started jumping up and down on it in a fit of fury as he backed away, awed and terror stricken.

Like my great aunt Katherine, Bessie Rose worshiped at the altar of high society, and for her, every night was a party. Nearly every evening, they’d leave Howard at home with his elderly grandmother. He and the old lady took care of each other. He would bring her milk toast and they would keep each other company in the silent house. It was a lonely time.

One night, he begged, "Please don't go, Mubba. Stay home, please?"

"You ought to be ashamed,” his mother replied. “You ought to be happy so many people want us to join them.”

So he grew to hate social events and all that they entailed. As he grew older, my grandmother and her sister tried teaching my father the importance of the social graces. The harder they tried, the more he rebelled. He wanted nothing more than to be a man’s man, happiest when he was out on the river with his friends, hunting and exploring the muddy banks and back bayous of the Mississippi.

Handsome though he was, he always felt at odds when dressed for a party. And though he did his part by participating in the springtime madness that is the Natchez pilgrimage, he never tired of thumbing his nose at it all.

He still laughs when he remembers that when he was still in the army, his aunt Katherine sent a letter to his commander asking him in all earnestness if they could let him come home for the month of March so that he could be king in the pageant.

“They’d never heard of Natchez,” Daddy laughs. “Those women thought Natchez was the center of the universe and that, of course, I should be excused to be king. God, I was embarrassed.”

One of his fondest memories is of his best friend, Johnny Ogden, sneaking into the City Auditorium the afternoon before the pageant with a dead fox he'd found beside the road. Dragging the fox by the tail, Johnny made his way up and down the aisles, over and under the seats of the room, laying down a scent and then slipping back outside.

They roared with laughter that evening when during the tableau for The Hunt, the beagles and hounds used for the scene broke their leads and climbed across horrified tourists' laps, baying loudly, drooling and peeing with excitement, as they tracked the scent of the long-departed fox.

And now at eighty-five years old he, like Katherine, is one of Natchez’s most colorful characters. And although he lives in the country in a house with ancestral portraits on the wall, more often than not you’ll find him wearing a wife-beater t-shirt with a do-rag on his head, driving his tractor all over the property, happily pushing things around, stopping to eat a can of sardines, an onion, and a slice of bread. He spends his days feeding the deer, dogs, cats, birds, squirrels and other assorted animals that call his place home.

From left: Howard Pritchartt and Joe Remondet, circa 1979

And like his aunt Katherine, he's loved (and loathed) in fairly equal measure, but no one laughs louder or longer at Howard Pritchartt than Howard, himself.

And so, at last, with all that being said, I now offer you his original poem about Natchez, making no excuses for the portions of it that are politically and socially incorrect.

Natchez
If you doubts your social fame,  
git an old house and give it a name.  
If you still lacks social position,
git it put in the Pink Edition.   
If your position is still not clear,
git it decorated by a Natchez queer.

But, really, the mostest important of all
Is finagle your brat into the Pilgrimage Ball.
But really the mostest, most ultimate thing
Is finagle the brat into Queen or King.

We're all aware of the social mystique
that sticks to the gal with the finest antique.
So, ladies, ladies, let’s hold a quorum,
to see who’ll rule the Antiques Forum.  
To us this is now our holiest cause,  
since we’s all well into menopause.

So you give a luncheon and I’ll give a tea.  
And I’ll snub you and you snub me.
And when it’s all over, we’ll make our amends,
pretending to be the closest of friends.

What makes it all so goddamned funny
Is all it takes is a little money.
And when it’s all over, we’ll have to admit
The whole damned thing is a big pile of…
old furniture.

~~ Howard Pritchartt, Jr.
circa 1985

Story by Elodie Pritchartt

3rd-Annual Ferriday Songwriters' Songfest a Success

2010-10-25T20:49:00.008-05:00

Aspiring songwriters from California, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida attended Ferriday's third songwriters' workshop on October 22.

The workshop saw a couple of new faces in this year's panelists: three-time Grammy winner Ashley Cleveland and husband/co-writer/premier guitarist Kenny Greenberg from Nashville.

Songwriting instructor Odie Blackmon, also a Grammy-nominated songwriter returned for the third time this year with a sampling of the curriculum he teaches at Vanderbilt University's music program. Armed with song formats and samples, he laid out for attendees the formats used in songwriting.

Our own local hit songwriter, Tommy Polk, discussed topics ranging from copyright law to the changing nature of the music industry due to the rise of the Internet.

Director of the Alexandria, LA, Chapter of the Nashville Songwriter's Association International and the Alexandria, LA, branch of Tipitina's Music Co-Op, Aaron Sibley, discussed the advantages offered to songwriters in both organizations.

Aspiring songwriters learned that as members of these organizations, they have access to low-cost utilization of their facilities and programs including Pro Tools, Photoshop, etc. instruction, weekly jam sessions, monthly songwriting workshops, and networking opportunities.

This year's group of attendees included a higher-than-usual number of Christian songwriters, noted Odie Blackmon, who credited Ashley Cleveland and her soulful Christian music with the increase.

Ashley discussed ways to incorporate scripture and liturgy into personal experience to create an intimate, unique style of your own in faith-based songwriting.

To illustrate her points, she included performances of some of her own faith-based pieces into her lecture, accompanied by her husband, guitarist/songwriter Kenny Greenberg.

"I've paid hundreds of dollars to go to songwriters' workshops like this," said Steve Miller, an attendee from Denton, Texas. "But this was better by far. For $20, it can't be beat."

Every attendee at the workshop received a personalized critique of a song they'd brought for analysis. The workshop ended at Bowie's Tavern in Natchez with an open mic performance by both attendees and panelists. Needless to say it was an impressive performance on all counts.

Sponsors of this year's Songfest include the Delta Music Museum, the Friends of the Delta Music Museum, Mayor McGlothin and the Town of Ferriday, Representative Andy Anders, Stan’s Strings, WalMart, Budweiser, Phat River Studio, FOX 48, Solid Gold Saturday Night, 95Country.com, Natchez Grand, Bowie’s Tavern, Louisiana Economic Development, Louisiana Music Hall of Fame, BASF and Tipitina’s Music Co-ops. Along with immense help and support from Guylyn Boles, Cyndie Dillon, Aaron Sibley and the Ferriday Town Council.

Mississippi Artists - Jane Rule Burdine

2010-09-21T19:34:00.005-05:00

Jane Rule Burdine is an artist and photographer in Taylor, Mississippi. Her photographs of the people and places in our fair state are wonderful windows on the soul of the South. Jane Rule's book, Delta Deep Down, is an amazing collection of many of her photographs with a personal introduction by Indianola, Mississippi- born novelist Steve Yarbrough. I found the following clip on You Tube from Mississippi Public Broadcasting's Southern Expressions with host Ron Brown.

A Delta Blues Epiphany by Courtney Taylor

2010-09-18T15:27:00.005-05:00

The following article appeared in Country Roads Magazine in May, 2009.

Photos by Elodie Pritchartt

The transformative power of a music genre, and the road that leads to it.

Quick, think of a small delta town, hot as hell in the summer and within walking distance of cotton fields with juke joints, river traffic, gambling, drinking, dancing—a place where the music of its poor became the music of the world. If that sounds like Clarksdale, home of the blues in the Mississippi Delta, it also describes Ferriday in southeast Louisiana.

Like Clarksdale, Ferriday is not a very big place, just about four thousand people. Like Clarksdale, Ferriday is a river town, full of fun-loving characters—a few who like to take a walk on the wild side; the birthplace of entertainers Jerry Lee Lewis, Mickey Gilley, and evangelist, Jimmy Swaggart. Like Clarksdale, Mississippi; Ferriday, Louisiana had a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on.

No wonder, my friend Tommy Polk, decided to start our tour of Highway 61 at the Delta Music Museum in Ferriday. Rosemary, a petite African-American lady, greeted us inside the museum and led us through a maze of displays of cousins Lewis, Gilley and Swaggart and memorabilia from dozens of other area musicians. She told of the infamous juke joint, Haney’s Big House and trombonist, Leon “Pee Wee” Whittaker.

“He used to hold Jerry Lee up to the window so that he could see the performers like Fats Domino at Haney’s—and they had a thing worked out where Pee Wee would leave the back door open there for little Jerry Lee.”

That, as legend has it, was where “The Killer” developed his taste for boogie woogie and rhythm and blues. Throughout the rest of the tour, Rosemary gave sordid and lofty details of various artists’ lives like a gossipy but loving auntie, once again proving that the best guides are true locals.

On a Jerry Lee kick, we rushed around the block to see another tribute to The Killer, the Lewis Family Museum. Forewarned with words like bizarre, freaky, surreal, too real, I thought I was prepared. But nothing could have prepared me for the mind of Frankie Jean, Jerry Lee’s sister. I say the mind, because the museum is her temple to her family—a packrat’s unapologetic display of the family’s demons and accomplishments with a disturbed sense of décor.

Utilizing every surface for expression or collection, there are broken-mirror abstracts on doors, Chagall-like paintings of graves and ghosts on the kitchen carpet and bedroom lamp shades, a long brick planter stuffed with Easter grass and badly painted oil lanterns, a collection of whiskey bottles on the piano, a shellacked loaf of bread on the kitchen counter. It is both painful and hilarious. It is a must see. After the tour, you might find yourself hankering for a drink—unfortunately the drive-through liquor store attached to the house was closed.

Still reeling from Graceland-Gone-Twilight Zone, Tommy; his sweetheart Elodie, a poet and photographer; and I stopped at a fast-food restaurant before leaving the Louisiana Delta for the Mississippi Delta. My traveling companions swing easily in my life from old high-school friends to professional colleagues, and without revealing too much of our shared histories, I knew I was in for a good time. Writers all, we settled in for a three-hour ride and an opportunity for uninterrupted storytelling.

About the time we crested the bridge over the Yazoo River, the entrance into the Mississippi Delta, Elodie and I decided it was Tommy’s turn to talk. He told of the day when he was just a boy and he accompanied his father, the Parish coroner, to a shack on the edge of the levee road in Vidalia, Louisiana. They climbed the weathered front steps, crossed the porch, and entered a small dark room where an old man lay dying as his family crowded around him.

The stifling death scene drove Tommy back out onto the porch. Facing the road, he exhaled, listened to the undulating hum of insects match his own steady breathing, and waited for his father’s voice, an official pronouncement of the dying man’s last breath.

“Out of the shack came a long wail,” he recalled.

As he stood there looking down the front porch steps, a couple of neighbors stopped in front of the house.

“They both let out wails. Then more people gathered and they all started this wailing—mourning the old man.”

Like the call and response of a church service the wails from inside led the wails outside.

“It was like they were all looking up at me and wailing,” he explained. “I was frightened, until gradually, the wailing turned to singing. Then they were swaying and I could hear harmony, then they’d start wailing again, and then it would become singing again.”

That, award-winning songwriter Tommy Polk says, was his first real music moment, a heartfelt eyewitness account of how music transforms and transcends.

Tommy grew up a few minutes’ ride from that levee and from Ferriday. Poor eyes but excellent ears, led him to pursue the guitar instead of sports. Later, he found that a song garnered as much attention from girls as a touchdown. With both deep and shallow reasons for loving music, Tommy took his talent for guitar, piano and poetry to Nashville and during a long climb to the top has won ASCAP and BMI citations for chart-topping, internationally popular songs recorded by artists such as Martina McBride, Crystal Gayle, Irma Thomas and many others.

In the midst of Nashville success, Tommy yearned for a retreat where he could hear himself think.

“Cousins in Clarkdale offered a spot on the edge of a Delta cotton field where I could put a shack. I fixed it up and called it the Cadillac Shack.”

Soon other shacks were added, a commissary became a nightclub/dayclub/jam-session venue and a new style of overnight accommodation that puts the “fun” in funky was born. Nowadays, you’ll find similarly funky guesthouses throughout the Mississippi Delta.

“Look, a dust devil.”

“No, don’t stop and take a picture.”

“Look at that barn.”

“Girlfriend, I said no more pictures.”

“Look, I love that old house.”

“You can take a picture on the way back.”

The miles slid by and then we were in Leland, Mississippi; population about five thousand, which bears a striking resemblance to, you guessed it, Ferriday.

“We’re here to visit Eric Fowler at his brand-new recording studio, Studio 61,” says Tommy, as we park in front of a row of downtown stores. If you’re thinking, “What’s to see, three padded walls and a big pane of glass,” think again.

“The thing we’re most proud of is our live-venue recording abilities—five cameras can capture a live performance either in the studio or in front of a live audience in the studio.”

That explains the room large enough for an audience behind the console. A quick Coke in a nearby coffeeshop and we were on that flat stretch of asphalt again.

Next stop: The Delta Music Institute at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi.

“Oh my God!” Tommy yelled—an octave higher than usual, as we entered the multimillion dollar facility. “I want to go back to college!” he screamed as we entered the gymnasium-size recording studio on the same par as the famed Abbey Road in London.

A tour by the executive director of the program, Grammy Award-winning songwriter Tricia Walker and world-class bass player Barry Bays, confirmed that we all three wanted to go back to college. For anyone with any interest in music, DMI is a fascinating place to visit. For someone with a kid interested in the musical arts or music business, this is the place to send them.

We arrive at last in Clarksdale, and are greeted like favorite cousins.

A quick beer and tour of the Cadillac shack and the shack complex now known as the Shack-Up Inn, reveals that Clarksdale knows how to make the most of its funky blues-based tourism. Tommy was instrumental in the development of the concept and with characteristic creative energy has moved on to open three new guesthouses. Two are smack dab in the middle of downtown Clarksdale—Big Pink and Mississippi Music Hall. Honey Hill is quiet, elegant retreat on the Sunflower River.

Big Pink and Mississippi Music Hall are conveniently across the street from the Delta Blues Museum and the main music stage used for blues festivals. Big Pink, an ice-cream parlor turned New Orleans-style townhouse (by ambitious owners in 1960s) is the pretty side of funk, with large guestrooms, a graceful downstairs foyer, dining room, parlor, and a fake indoor courtyard in the back (the courtyard alone is worth the drive to Clarksdale).

Mississippi Music Hall is a turn-of-the-century plantation commissary that Tommy moved in and placed next to Big Pink. A central room with blue windowpanes, comfy stuffed chairs, old rugs and a big screen offers guests a retreat and gathering place during music festivals. The hall also has two guestrooms, one of which we settled into, before walking across the street to Ground Zero blues club for an evening of cold beer and a killer jam session. Believe it or not we behaved ourselves well enough to rise early the next morning and explore Clarksdale.

It looks to me as if Clarksdale has become a Mecca for transplants who have tossed aside conventional lives for unique businesses either based on the blues or because of their love for the blues. A young man from New Jersey owns Cat Head Delta Blues and Folk Art; a retired trust lawyer from The Netherlands opened the Rock’n Roll Blues Heritage Museum, showcasing his vast collection of music memorabilia from the twenties through the seventies; a musician and painter from Florida opened Hambone Art Gallery where you can buy a painting as well as a ham sandwich, and an outdoorsman and artist from Colorado makes artful dugout canoes, paints watercolors and leads canoeing and kayaking expeditions from Cairo, Illinois, to the Gulf of Mexico—to name a few. And the renovation and migration continues. A day in Clarksdale will make you wish that you could spend a month there—or maybe the rest of your life.

After too short a time, we headed for Indianola, Mississippi to the B. B. King Museum, the polar opposite of the Lewis Family Museum. State-of-the-art exhibits housed in a gorgeous facility stimulate visitors through a totally interactive environment. It is a fitting tribute to the legend of guitar blues, and a shining example of modern museums. Elodie and I particularly enjoyed the digital guitars that allow you to play like B.B.—or at least feel like you are.

Exhausted from our whirlwind tour of Highway 61, we buckle up for the drive home. I ask Tommy what’s next on his agenda.

“I want to bring music back to Ferriday, and I’d love to see Ferriday become the next Clarksdale. I’d also like to take people on music and heritage tours from Nashville to New Orleans.”

I believe he can do just that. In Clarksdale, he started with one shack. Across the river from Ferriday in Natchez, Mississippi, he has now has Shanty Bellum, a five minute walk from the best view of the Mississippi River anywhere, a blend of old Natchez charm with Clarksdale fun.

It’s one shack. The beginning.

Immersion

2010-08-19T18:54:00.001-05:00

Like teabags poised

over the roiling water,

we dangled, by turns,

from a rope.

Pushed off the roof

of the boat,

swung out and dropped

into the muddy mug

of the Mississippi

only to emerge

laughing

surprised

at having survived

the fall.

Little mud mustaches

etched the sepia

memories of

that river

that day

that summer

that childhood

into our skin.

Now the sandbars

whose soft embrace

showed us the way

rarely surface --

the channel and our veins

silted

with the detritus

of forty years.

We have reunions,

make note

of those not there.

Search name tags

for faces

we no longer

recognize.

We bury

parents

friends

and fears

of the undertow

as the bank sloughs

each spring

rechannels

our expectations

and we emerge

laughing

surprised

at having survived

at all.

~~ Elodie Pritchartt

August 18, 2010

Summertime

2010-07-19T10:11:00.002-05:00

Lake St. John, Louisiana - July 18, 2010 Photo by Elodie Pritchartt

Happy 4th of July, 2010

2010-07-07T13:42:00.000-05:00

Photos by Elodie Pritchartt

The Shanty Cats

2010-07-03T08:28:00.000-05:00

Music, Munchies, Merriment and Monkey Business

2010-05-25T17:12:00.008-05:00

It was all music, munchies and monkey business at the first annual Soul Survivor's Festival in Ferriday this weekend. The festival celebrated the history of blues music and the contributions of African American musicians to the legacy of Ferriday, Louisiana.

The festival started out with the unveiling of a Mississippi Blues Marker on the lawn of the Delta Music Museum. The Mississippi Blues Trail markers tell stories through words and images of bluesmen and women and how the places where they lived and the times in which they existed–and continue to exist–influenced their music.

The Mississippi Blues Trail is an ongoing project of the Mississippi Blues Commission, and is funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Misssissippi Department of Transportation, the Federal Highway Administration, AT&T, and the Delta Center for Culture and Learning at Delta State University plus additional support from the Mississippi Development Authority Tourism Division.

Ferriday's is one of only a handful of markers placed outside of Mississippi, and was included because of Haney's Big House, one of the many clubs on the old Chitlin' Circuit, which was frequented by great artists like B B King and Fats Domino. In addition, Haney's also played host to local musicians like Ferriday's Leon "Pee Wee" Whittaker and Natchez's Hezekiah Early and Y.Z. Ealey. Jerry Lee Lewis also frequented the club as a youngster, soaking up the sounds he heard there, and incorporating them into his own distinctive style when he started his own music career.

Gathered in the shade of Rockabilly Plaza, festivalgoers enjoyed barbeque, cold drinks and music by Hezekiah Early and Lil Poochie, Osgood and Blaque, and the YZ Ealey Band with Jimmy Anderson sitting in on harmonica. We even had a guest visiting all the way from London, England -- Paromita Saha, a freelance writer with a special love for music, the blues, in particular. She'll be doing a writeup soon. We'll be sure to let you know about it.

"This is brilliant," said Paromita, who couldn't get over the fact that she was sitting in a little town in Louisiana listening to longtime, authentic blues legends playing the music they shaped in the place it was created.

The highlight of the afternoon for the kids, especially, was an appearance by Tim Lepard and Team Ghostriders. Tim travels the rodeo circuit with his team of border collies ridden by white-throated capuchin monkeys, who make quick work of corralling a group of goats and sending them on their way in the back -- wait; scratch that -- on the roof of a pickup truck.

Also a hit with the kids were the train rides given courtesy of the Concordia Parish Sheriff's Department.

For a sampling of some of the day's music and events, check out the three videos below.

We're looking forward to many more Soul Survivors Festivals in years to come. For more info, go to: www.ferridaysongfest.com

A special thanks to Cristen Craven Barnard, who created the poster for this year's event, which is available for purchase for $25. If you'd like to purchase a poster, please contact Tommy Polk at tommypolk@hotmail.com. All proceeds go to the Friends of the Delta Music Museum, a 501c3 nonprofit organization, and will go toward future live music events in Ferriday.

We would like to thank the following for sponsoring the Ferriday Soul Survivors Festival, without whom this event would not have been possible:

LouisianaTravel.com

Entergy
Delta Bank
Fashion Nail Salon
Town of Ferriday
Bryant Hammett & Associates, LLC
The Ferriday Markets
Strozier's U-Pak
Marsala Beverage
Concordia Bank & Trust

Story, photos and videos by Elodie Pritchartt

Calling All Soul Survivors

2010-05-20T16:44:00.000-05:00

This weekend marks Ferriday's first Soul Survivors Blues Festival. The Mississippi Blues Trail will be putting up a marker in Ferriday, too.

Read all about the Festival in this article in the News Star from Monroe, LA.

The Night the Music Died in Natchez

2010-04-30T12:20:00.001-05:00

On this the 70th anniversary of the infamous Rhythm Club Fire, Chicago Public Radio has a story about the tragedy that brings it to life with music from the band that was playing that night and recollections of people who were there. More than 200 people perished in the fire, which changed state and federal laws pertaining to fire codes that are still in force today.

You can listen to it here:

http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=41626

Anne Vidal's Wild Ride

2010-04-01T16:12:00.000-05:00

"What do you mean we're out of gas?"

Anne Vidal's beehive wig smacked against the roof of the bus as she jumped up to take a look at the gas gauge.

"We just left a gas station!"

After coughing its last, the engine in the short bus ticked as it cooled. We were somewhere between Woodville and Natchez, and out of gas. At 2 a.m.

The sequins in Anne Vidal's banana clip winked remorselessly, conspiring with her eye shadow, her nail polish and 1960's polyester pantsuit to ensure the birthday girl was the Queen of Cool. There are only a handful of women who could pull it off. Think Judy Jetson. Think Carol Brady. Think Cyndi Lauper, Tracey Ullman, and an early incarnation of Madonna all rolled into one. Damn. I wish I could dress like that.

But even the Queen of Cool was beginning to lose hers. She looked around at the rest of us.

"What are we gonna do?"

"Do we have any Scotch left?" I asked.

I'm nothing if not practical. I pictured Tracey Ullman in her terrycloth bathrobe saying, "Go home! Just go home!"

Not a chance.

It had been a long and glorious night, and our little band of reprobates was feeling the effects of their age. It was time to go to bed. We COULDN'T be stuck in the middle of nowhere in a short bus that advertised itself as prison transport. Could we?

"How could you not know we were out of gas?"

Anne Vidal looked at our driver, Johnny, his facial expression hidden by the little black fedora he'd worn all night.

"Gas gauge don't work," he replied his voice a quiet, studied calm.

We looked at each other.

Rut-roh, George.

____________________________

It had all started out innocently enough. It was Wednesday, and Tommy was out of town. I was in charge of feeding the cats at Shantybellum. Reaching out to unlock the door, I spied an envelope tucked into the doorjamb. Addressed to Tommy and Elodie, I opened it and pulled out a card:

"She was nobody's doormat and had the tattoos to prove it."

It was a party -- a ride to Teddy's Juke Joint in Zachary, Louisiana, on Saturday night in a bus with other adventurous souls to listen to Li'l Jimmy Reed do his blues thang. It was Anne Vidal's birthday and she wanted to do it up right.

Eighty miles down the Blues Highway 61, toward Baton Rouge, Teddy's is the real deal in juke jointery (Is that a word?). Teddy, the proprietor, was born in the little shotgun house where -- dressed to the nines -- he spins his favorite tunes between sets of live music.

It's a fun, funky atmosphere with an eclectic clientele who leave their differences at the door and enjoy the music, each other and themselves amid a collection of Blues memorabilia, Christmas lights, disco balls and chaos.

Hmm....this was an offer we couldn't refuse.

Ten of us met up at Anne Vidal's little eatery -- The Pig Out Inn BBQ -- where she had the short bus prepared and waiting. Painted a kind of nondescript brownish/gray/green, it had "Angola Bound" painted on one side and "Prison Transport" on the other.

We stepped inside and back into the 70's where three old sofas covered in scarves and tassels sat on a red Persian rug. The smell of incense wafted the air. Sandwiches from Pig Out and Clara Nell's deviled duck eggs awaited us alongside an impressive collection of libations, which included coffee for Johnny, our faithful driver.

Like Anne Vidal, my dear cousin Roberta had come dressed for the occasion in a black tutu with a pillbox hat. Her date Mitchell, sported a fancy black cowboy shirt with an upside down guitar in white piping, matching his leonine mane of striking white hair. Anne Vidal's boyfriend, Steve, had on the pointiest pair of cowboy boots I've ever laid eyes on. How come I never think of these things?

"What's the story on the bullet holes?" I asked, noticing the all-too-real set of bullet holes in the back window. "What's the story on the bus, in general?"

"I bought it from somebody who had a hunting camp," said Anne Vidal. "Somebody shot it."

"Everybody ready? Let's go."

"We don't have no turn signals on here," said Johnny. "And we only got one brakelight."

"Well, we've got one, anyway," said Anne Vidal. "We'll make do. Let's go."

We realized soon thereafter that we didn't have any inside lights either. Fortunately, Tommy had a flashlight. We could still find the food. We were having a grand old time, eating those duck aigs and telling stories. We'd passed the new prison down in Woodville, when Johnny said, "We're losing oil pressure."

We pulled into the nearest gas station and treated the engine to some oil. Satisfied we were still roadworthy, we continued on our way, arriving at Teddy's with plenty of time to partay.

Our friend Doretta met us at Teddy's. She'd driven up from New Orleans and looked great. I don't think I'd seen her or Kim (who took all these pictures) since high school.

We decided to call it quits around midnight and piled back into the bus to head home. We stopped again at the same little gas station to grab a coke and a bathroom break, then continued on our way.

About 20 miles outside of Woodville, we chugged to a stop and found ourselves in the aforementioned predicament.

"I can't believe we just left a gas station and didn't get gas," said Vidal, Anne Vidal's brother. "Unbelievable."

"But I just filled it up," protested Anne Vidal.

"Yeah, but we took it out the other day," said Johnny. "We drove a lot that day. Remember?"

I was beginning to think Johnny wished he'd never agreed to this trip.

"Well, I guess it's my fault, then," said Anne Vidal. "I should've remembered."

I felt bad for her. I think we all did.

"Aw, it's an adventure," I said and laughed, a bit hysterically.

I remembered a TV show on The Learning Channel I used to watch back in the 90s called Stories of Survival where people in everyday situations suddenly find themselves fighting for their lives. I looked at Tommy.

"Did you bring your insulin?"

"Oh, God."

I don't know who said that. More hysterical giggles.

"How can the gas gauge be broken, too?" asked brother Vidal. "Do you even have an inspection sticker on this thing?"

"Yeah. I peeled it off my car this morning and stuck it on the bus."

I knew Anne Vidal was smart. I'd have forgotten to do that.

"Who can we call?"

"We could call Doretta."

"She's halfway back to New Orleans by now,"

Somebody suggested the highway patrol.

"Nope. Can't do that," I said, sipping on my scotch (one for the road, you might say). "We've been drinking."

"But we've got a designated driver," said Roberta.

Have these people been adults so long they've forgotten how to get into trouble?

"Open container," I said. "We'd get busted for sure."

"We could spend the night here," someone else said.

"I want to go home!" cried Clara Nell. "I don't want to sleep on the bus. I want to sleep in my bed!"

Her Tempurpedic bed, no less. It's hard to feel sorry for someone who can afford a Tempurpedic mattress. We all looked at her.

Silence.

"I'll call a tow company," said Mitchell, whipping out his phone. Kim, ever calm, snapped photos for posterity.

"Hello? I need you to bring us some gas right away," he said, adding, "I don't care what it costs. We've got to get out of here. Now!"

"Don't tell them that," Tommy protested. "They'll think it's true!"

He could see dollar bills flying away down the highway.

"We need to get off this shoulder," he said. "And we need some tail lights so cars won't hit us."

"Nope. Actually, it's better that we don't have them," I said. "Drunks tend to aim at them, thinking they're following the car ahead of them."

"I've got a friend in Natchez I can call," said Vidal.

And he did.

"It'll be 30 minutes."

The men climbed out to stretch their legs.

"I knew I should've used the bathroom back there," said Roberta. "I've got to pee."

I went around the front of the bus with her to make sure I could shield her should anyone drive past, memories of driving to Gulf Shores with my parents for summer vacation replaying in my head. We climbed back in to wait for help.

A few minutes later the bus filled with light as a vehicle pulled in behind us. I could discern some kind of lights across the top.

"Uh, oh. I think it might be the highway patrol," I said.

The idea of trying to hide the booze was laughable.

"You sure?" asked Vidal.

He stood outside the bus, peering into the light like Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

"Nope," said Vidal. "It's a truck."

Then another truck pulled in behind it.

Mitchell and Johnny went around to the back of the bus. Both trucks stayed where they were, their engines idling as their drivers took in the scene from about 50 yards back.

They looked at Mitchell and his upside down guitar, his white hair. They looked at Johnny, still unreadable under his little black fedora. They took in the bullet holes in the rear window, "Prison Transport" written on the side.

They peeled out like the hounds of the Baskervilles were after them.

I don't know for certain, but I'd bet they were thanking their maker for delivering them from a horrible fate. A fate worse than running out of gas on the side of a road in the middle of nowhere, Mississippi.

Shew! That was a close one, all right.

Inside the short bus, Roberta stretched across the seat and put her head in my lap. "I'm going to sleep," she said. "Wake me up when we get home."

We swapped stories, the atmosphere punctuated by Berta's soft snoring. An hour went by. Then another 30 minutes.

"I don't think anybody's coming," said Clara Nell, panic starting to rise again.

Just then Tommy pointed across the road.

"Isn't that a tow truck?"

We watched as its tail lights crested the hill and disappeared into the darkness.

"You think that was him? He didn't see us. Vidal! Call him back."

He got him on the phone and told him to turn around.

He came back and brought us our gasoline and emptied it into the short bus.

"Man, I went all the way to Buffalo looking for you guys," he said, the smell of gasoline settling inside the bus.

"Buffalo," said Tanna, puzzled. "Where's that?"

"New York," Tommy answered, which got a big laugh. Well, okay. It was funny, but I'm still funnier than he is.

With gasoline fumes thick in the air, we headed toward home. As we turned onto Canal Street for the final leg home, we all breathed a sigh of relief, joking about what a great story it would be. Then we ran out of gas.

Again.

Right by by the visitor's center.

"Johnny, don't stop! We're going downhill. See how far it'll coast."

We all leaned forward as though that would help it coast a little further as the short bus whispered hopefully, "I think I can. I think I can. I think I can."

We made it all the way to Rosalie and cheered as we turned into the Isle of Capri parking lot.

It was 4:15 a.m. as our hapless little crew tumbled out of the bus and onto Natchez soil. Tommy knelt down to kiss the earth. Oh, scratch that. He tripped and fell.

"Ow! Gimme the ice chest and that flashlight."

We patted Johnny on the back, thanked him profusely and tipped him well. Call it combat pay. We started down the final stretch to The Pig Out Inn BBQ, a block and half away.

"What's that awful smell?" Miss Tempurpedic was not amused.

"This is where the Carriages wait to take tours."

"Ew! I just stepped in horse pee."

As we all stumbled down the street hoping not to see any cops, an old owl in the oak tree at Rosalie watched, our voices fading into the night.

"Watch out for that pile of poop."

"Oh, lovely. That's just great."

"Quit complaining."

"Is there any scotch left?"

"Just point me toward a bed."

"I told you you should've brought a jacket."

"Shut up."

___________________________________________

Photos by Kim Kaiser