The Tractor

Photos by Randy Laird.  Used with permission.

It stood motionless,
the Deere at the edge
of the woods, as though waiting
for something, for someone
to bring the come-along
and finish
what we started.

The bushes moved
in like guerilla soldiers. Stealthy.
The bush hog lay
wounded in the weeds.

And standing in that patch
of angled sunlight,
the heat ticking off
the hours
and minutes
and days
and moments
of reflection and rejection,
it seemed as though I heard a sigh.

The trees, their reply,
a sudden shudder,
showered leaves like trouble
you'd just as soon forget.
Birds burst forth with screams.
Why?  Why?

Had the tractor been brought to clear the brush
or had the brush moved in to claim the tractor?
Who was the warrior here? Who the vanquished?

Insect battalions chant their nightly ululations
and the creepers crawl.

Like a Confederate soldier
fighting someone else's war,
the Deere stands, a silent sentinel
slowly bleeding
precious oil into the ground
and asks us to remember, or
at least not to forget.

Will man ever make order out of chaos
instead of the other way 'round?

Listen to the land.  She will tell you.
Beyond the darkening woods,
behind the hill, you can feel it
a distant rumble
thunder, hoofbeats
the coming roar.

August 14, 2006

A report on Natchez 1932

Natchez, Mississippi, 1932 -- Two years ago we were in Natchez on a business trip.  My husband, looking out of the hotel window, called my attention to an amusing sight.  


Rumbling down the middle of Main Street was a wagon pulled by an old horse.  The reins hung loose along his back and he threaded his way through the traffic at a lazy gait, an ancient straw hat set rakishly on his head.  


The negro driver was fast asleep, slumped down in his seat with his mouth wide open.  The wagon was loaded with large boxes of nationally advertised food products.  What matter if they reached their destination after an hour or so delay?  Even time moves slowly in Natchez.


"How would you like to live in Natchez?" Bill asked, laughing, and I said I'd love it.


That was in jest, of course, but after two years here we are.


~ Sue Brown Hays




I ran across this delightful description of Natchez a few days ago when I was handed a letter written by a Mr. Bill Hays of Baton Rouge, who was trying to find a descendant of my uncle Balfour Miller.  Sometime in the 1930s, Mr. Hay's father owned and operated a tire store in Natchez for about a year.

 "When we lived in Natchez I was about a year old," said Bill, Jr.  "My parents rented a house in town. They both noticed the house had unusual noises from time to time.

"Being from old houses, and as they were in Natchez; they told one another it was merely a ghost. They even named her 'Anna Belle.'

"There was a trap door in the hall which went to the cellar. When my father had to work late, Mother would put the rocker over the hole and rock me until he returned."

After a year or so Bill's father returned to a job with Goodrich Tire Co.  

"As we were leaving Daddy opened a small door to the cellar to find it had been recently occupied by a couple of bums.  He said he told the landlord who did not seem to be concerned.  

"I remember them saying that old house must have been a duplex.  They just never knew it."

Mrs. Hays was a writer, and wrote a mystery novel set in Natchez in the 1940s called Go Down, Death.   I found a copy of the book online and am so looking forward to reading it.

Also included with the letter was a cute poem Mrs. Hays had penned around 1932.    It was written on Eola Hotel letterhead, where she was staying while her husband traveled out of town with a tire company.

I have a feeling I would've liked Mrs. Hays, and hope she had fond memories of the Eola and Natchez.

Building Dreams for a Song

When the band Chicago released Color My World in 1971, I was in 9^th grade.  The languid cadence of the piano introduction was captivating and beautiful.  It’s been called the most famous major seventh chord in the history of music, and it was — bar none — the best slow-dance song of my generation.

 One day in study hall I heard that chord being played on the baby grand piano down in Coach Parker’s classroom.  I went to see who was playing.

It was a new kid – a shy young boy with jet-black locks that hung down in his eyes as he played, totally lost in the music.  His name was Tommy Polk, and he’d picked the song out by ear.  Feeling out of place, not knowing anyone and not having an athletic bent, Tommy found refuge and release and friends through music. Who doesn’t want to hang with the kid in the band? 

“I was never good at sports,” he says. “I was always on the sidelines and never got any recognition. When I was about nine I took a guitar to class and played. Everyone noticed. I was not on the sidelines; I was not overlooked or ignored. I was hooked.”

When he was old enough to drive, he took his guitar to a secluded spot on the bluff where he would sit in the shade, the river a wide, shimmering ribbon down below with the flat, Louisiana delta beyond.  He started writing songs — the first of hundreds.

Tommy would make music his life. In that little classroom in this quiet little town his journey had only just begun.  He moved to Nashville in 1979.  In 1981 he began working at a boutique music-publishing company co-owned by one of Britain’s most successful songwriters, Roger Cook, and Canadian-born Ralph Murphy.  Between them they had written huge hits, such as, I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing; Long, Cool Woman in a Black Dress; Here Comes that Rainy Day Feelin’ Again; and Half the Way.

Under Cook and Murphy, Tommy learned about music publishing, foreign publishing, performing rights, copyrights, song plugging, signing writers, catalog acquisition, demo recordings and record production.

“When I left for Nashville in ‘79, I had written a hundred or so songs at that point. I thought I was going to be the biggest thing since sliced bread,” he says shaking his head. “Wrong!  It would be another 200 songs before I got my first substantial cut.”

In 1989 Tommy signed with Warner-Chappel Music Publishing where he stayed for four years, after which he remained as a signed songwriter, as well as with various publishing houses in Nasvhille, including EMI, Hamstein, The Farm, OMG/Acuff Rose. He also has extensive catalogs at other publishing companies including Sony Tree.

Some of Tommy’s hit songs include Look What Followed Me Home by David Ball; He Feels Guilty to Me by Bobbie Cryner; I Don’t Want You to Go by Carolyn Dawn Johnson; the recently released Beyond My Broken Dreams by Eden Brent; and Willing to Crawl by Johnny Neel, which was featured on HBO’s True Blood in 2009.   He’s even written songs for Irma Thomas and Bobbly Blue Bland.

“I loved what I was doing,” he says.  “I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning.  It wasn’t work; it was play.”

Then somehow things changed. 

“I don’t know,” he says.  “It seemed like the music business had become more cutthroat. People were downloading music off the Internet, which really hurt financially, both for me and for everyone else.  Even the music changed. Performers were writing their own songs rather than using songwriters.  A lot of people were out of work.  Perhaps I changed, too.  It just wasn’t as much fun anymore.”

So Polk switched gears, opening a one-of-a-kind B&B in Clarksdale, Mississippi, called Shack-Up Inn with a couple of business partners. 

“We moved some sharecropper shacks onto my cousin’s cotton plantation and just fixed them up enough to be livable.”

They were simple, rough shacks, the kind where the original old blues players wrote and performed their music — people like Son Thomas, John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson, Lead Belly and others.  It was a huge success. 

“People wanted the blues experience,” he said.  “And they came from everywhere — England, Germany, Japan and the United States.”

It dawned on him that Clarksdale had become a music-tourist destination. He discovered he liked the hospitality business and opened three more.  He decided to move to Clarksdale permanently and bought a house for his mother there. 

When he came back to Natchez to sell his mother’s house in Vidalia, he looked around and realized he didn’t want to cut all ties to his hometown.

Shantybellum

“Natchez is really one of the most beautiful towns in the world,” he says.  “So I bought another shack to use as a B&B and called it ‘Shantybellum.’  I figured I could hire someone to run it here and have a place to stay when I came to visit.”

Shantybellum reflected in the bottle tree

While restoring the house, though, he decided he really wanted to come home for good.  So he stayed, eventually selling the B&B’s in Clarksdale and going to work as a consultant for the town of Ferriday under Mayor Glenn McGlothin, a musician, himself.

“I took Glenn to Clarksdale to show him what we’d done.  He loved it.  And told him that with Ferriday’s musical heritage, I bet we could do the same thing here.”

Jerry Lee Lewis museum

Photo courtesy of The Concordia Sentinel (used with permission)

Will Haney

Ferriday is home to some remarkable music history.  Double-first cousins Jerry Lee Lewis, Mickey Gilley and Jimmy Swaggart are native sons.  For years Haney’s Big House, which burned in 1966, had been a feature attraction on the Chitlin’ Circuit, hosting such notable African American entertainers as B.B. King, Moms Mabley, Redd Foxx, Ray Charles and Bobby Bland.

After witnessing smokestack industry pass up Ferriday as a place to do business for years, McGlothin agreed on a new economic development plan focusing on tourism and music tourism combined with a healthy dose of cultural-heritage tourism.

Frogmore Plantation

Building on tourism assets already in the area like Frogmore Plantation, the Lewis Family Museum, the Delta Music Museum and the Arcade Theater, they got grants.  The plan called for:

·      The renovation of a burned-out shell of a building into an open-air venue called Rockabilly Plaza, which would also function as a farmer's market/music venue and arts center for youth, and with original artwork/murals on exterior walls.

·      The renovation of a deteriorating railroad property into the Haney’s Big House Music Hall to include a large, fully covered outdoor stage for festivals and events. 

·      The partial restoration of an underutilized railroad building to be leased as a private club.

In addition, Ferriday began hosting an annual songwriters workshop at the Arcade for local songwriting hopefuls, bringing many of Tommy’s Nashville co-writers to teach about the business and craft of music.  Ferriday also created and hosted the annual Soul Survivors Festival, honoring Will Haney and Haney’s Big House and the musicians associated with Haney’s from the 1940s until its destruction in 1966.

Playing air guitar on a cane at the Soul Survivors Festival

It was an uphill job.  McGlothin had to deal with water issues and his own health issues as well.  But they persevered. On May 22 at the third-annual Soul Survivors Festival, McGlothin presided over a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new Will Haney’s Big House Music Hall and Jerry Lee Lewis Rockabilly Park and Plaza, the renaming of First Street to Pee Wee Whittaker Avenue, the naming of Will Haney Circle and the placement of seven historic markers downtown honoring Ferriday’s past and people.

As McGlothin’s mayoral term comes to a close, Tommy is looking ahead.  He hopes to continue working as a consultant in the area.  He’s even going back to songwriting.

“I’m playing with a local band in Natchez called Back Roads,” he says.  “I’m also beginning to write again with two of my Nashville cowriters on Skype and putting lyrics on prerecorded tracks sent as mp3 to me. High-tech Tommy songs.”

He looks back on his time with McGlothin in Ferriday fondly.

Mayor Glen McGlothin, left; Tommy Polk, right

“I am so glad Glenn asked me to come aboard. For four years now I've been able to focus on music, even bringing Nashville friends and cowriters down to Ferriday, and working on downtown development projects that I am so proud to have been a part of. 

“In researching Haney's for Ferriday I learned that three of the headliners during its heyday would record some of my songs. I loved learning that.  Who would’ve guessed it?

“We will leave our babies behind for the next administration to nurture and grow Ferriday into a music destination. The ball is in their court. I wish them well.  They have a tremendous tourism opportunity.  I hope Mayor-elect Gene Allen will make the most of it.”

Country Drive around Port Gibson

A Stroll through Old Savannah

The Queen of Cuisine -- Regina Charboneau

Photo by Sal Durkin  Used with permission

A steamboat was as beautiful as a wedding cake without the complications.” ~ Mark Twain

One of the happiest sounds I remember as a child was the music of the steam calliope on the Delta Queen as it pulled into and out of Natchez. The boat is mingled in my mind with enchanted summers where the setting sun lit the horizon with impossible colors, the air hummed with the screams of the cicadas and the scent of honeysuckle hung in the heat. Cries of, “River swimp! River swimp!” came from the curb, the shrimp man’s truck loaded with seaweed, ice and shrimp. The voices of our elders called us to supper on the porch. The river and the boat, the aromas of summer and the meals shared with loved ones are all woven together in a tender tableau.

Beginning in April, the strains of the calliope return on the steamer American Queen, bringing with it the culture and the food for which the South is known. And at the helm of the galley will be the Chef de Cuisine, Natchez native, Regina Charboneau, whose award-winning recipes have taken her from Natchez to Alaska to Paris to San Francisco and now back home to the mighty Mississippi where she has created menus reflecting America’s heartland and her Southern heritage.

The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with commoner things. It is chief of this world’s luxuries, king by the grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took: we know it because she repented. ~ Mark Twain

Regina says she has Mississippi River water running through her veins. Food and entertaining are there, too. Her father, J.P. Trosclair, came from a long line of fine Louisiana cooks. His gumbo and crawfish étouffée were legendary in Natchez. Her mother came from a long line of Mississippi hostesses.

“It was lucky for my mother that she married a good cook,” says Regina. “She was a charming hostess. She could set a pretty table but she couldn’t cook.”

As for drinking I have no rule about that. When the others drink I like to help; otherwise I remain dry, by habit and preference. ~ Mark Twain

It was an influential combination for Regina, for whom cooking and entertaining is second nature. After attending cooking school in Paris in the late 1970s, Regina moved to Alaska where she served as executive chef at the Tower Club in Anchorage. In the early 1980s she moved to San Francisco where she opened Regina’s at the Regis in the heart of the city’s theater district. It would be the first of several successful restaurants and clubs in the area. She became known for her genuine Southern-style hospitality, and it was here where she first met Christopher Kyte, who owned a company called Uncommon Journeys.

“He had these beautiful vintage train cars,” Regina said, “and he hired me to create menus for the excursions.”

In the summer the table was set in the middle of that shady and breezy floor, and the sumptuous meals — well, it makes me cry to think of them. ~ Mark Twain

It was on an excursion from Oakland to the Sundance Film Festival that author Paul Theroux traveled. He wrote about the trip and his meals prepared by Regina. The story appeared in Gourmet Magazine and in two books since then. Regina has been featured in several magazines, and has appeared on the NBC Today show as well as many NBC, ABC and CBS affiliates. As well as being a regular guest Chef on “P. Allen Smith Gardens” television show, Regina writes a monthly column on Southern food for The Atlantic Monthly Journal’s website. She also recently received a Cooking for Solutions award at the Monterey Bay Aquarium for being an advocate of sustainable seafood.

So it was no surprise that when Kyte and former president of the Delta Queen Steamboat Company, Jeffrey Krida, bought the American Queen to refurbish it and put it back on the river, they thought of Regina.

“Jeff Krida says they got the boat, called me and then found a captain,” Regina says with a laugh.

Chef Regina's vision for the American Queen is to recreate many American Classics using the best ingredients each season and location has to offer while creating some new dishes that will become synonymous with the American Queen.

“I want it to be a culinary experience for the passengers,” she says, “with a nod to the history of food that holds cultural significance to the various stops along the river,” she said. “For example, we’ll feature barbeque and caramel cake in the Delta, gooey buttercake and fried raviolis in St. Louis, French cuisine and a jazz brunch in New Orleans.

Nothing helps scenery like ham and eggs. Ham and eggs, and after these a pipe —— an old, rank, delicious pipe — ham and eggs and scenery, a “down grade,” a flying coach, a fragrant pipe and a contented heart — these make happiness. It is what all the ages have struggled for. ~ Mark Twain

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. No one will want for anything.”

The Mississippi river regions offer a plethora of ingredients to work with sustainable fish and seafood, farm-raised quail, free-range chickens, artisan cheeses, wild pecans, wild honey, wild rice, sweet corn, stone ground corn meals and grits with an abundance of citrus and vegetables.

Perhaps no bread in the world is quite as good as Southern corn bread, and perhaps no bread in the world is quite so bad as the Northern imitation of it. ~ Mark Twain

“The key is to recreate without totally reinventing a classic,” she says. “I want to hold on to the core of what has made a dish an American Classic. Some dishes beg for a modern twist and some are best prepared the way they were meant to originally be prepared with the best ingredients available.

The meals onboard will feature sideboard service.

“You serve yourself what you want,” Regina explained. “You create your own dining experience.”

The centerpiece of Regina’s creations will be the Captain’s Menu, featuring many of Mark Twain’s favorite foods, which he often wrote about.

“I’ve taken his favorite foods, some just as he had them and some with a bit of an updated twist to create a genuine River-Boating menu that I would hope he would be glad to partake of,” she said.

The way that the things were cooked was perhaps the main splendor — particularly a certain few of the dishes. For instance, the corn bread, the hot biscuits and wheatbread, and the fried chicken. These things have never been properly cooked in the North — in fact, no on there thinks it knows how to make corn bread, but this is gross superstition.

She views her task as less is more, with an eye to sustainable foods.

“I’m trying to not just give recipes but I’m setting standards for the quality of food onboard. We’re using a significant amount of organic produce. I’m not an earth mother, but I’m in touch with food and the quality and the health of my family and the people I love. I really do care where my food comes from and I think with the demographics of the people on the boat, it will matter to them as well.

I’m sure if Twain were onboard, he would approve.

Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside. ~ Mark Twain

Elodie Pritchartt lives in Natchez, Mississippi where she saw the river every morning from her bathroom window.  She swam in it, learned to water ski in it and swallowed enough river water to make her immune from every known pathogen to man.  She is looking forward to hearing the calliope again.

The American Queen begins cruising from New Orleans on April 15, with stops at Oak Alley, St. Francisville, Houmas House, Vicksburg, and Regina Charboneau’s hometown of Natchez.
www.GreatAmericanSteamboatCompany.com.

So Rose the Dead

Originally posted in 2009.  I found the following clipping at my great aunt's house on the bluff a few years ago. Couldn't ascertain the date of the publication, which I estimate at sometime in the 1930s.  "So Red the Rose" was published in 1935, so it had to be after that.

The author, Thomas Craven was an art critic with a decidedly jaundiced eye.  You can read about him here.

Enjoy!  It's kind of mean, which is probably why I find it so delicious.


Chicago Herald Examiner
A Sunday Edition

Culture of Natchez
Old Mansions Invaded by Tourists
By Thomas Craven

The spirit of the old South, the languorous, magnetic South, lingers on in the little city of Natchez. Situated on the Mississippi, with wooded hills and a magnificent view of the river and the low green fields of Louisiana, Natchez is waging its last fight against the irresistible forces of the changing world. 

As a commercial center, the town is a tomb, a plaintive echo of past opulence, as the sacred citadel of culture with its aristocratic embellishments. It is a landmark in the history of American manners. Here uncontaminated by the encroachments of modern life, you will find mansions, gardens and great estates and the ancestral pride which is the outstanding glory of the ancient regime.

Natchez is famous for its gardens, and that fame is abundantly justified on every hand, but the old houses, with two or three exceptions, are architectural messes. The houses erected from the fruits of slave labor and in the old days staffed with a retinue of black servants are enormous structures with endless balconies or galleries ornamented profusely with grilled ironwork.

You will see in these time-eaten mansions, some of the finest extant specimens of English silver, old chairs and tables of excellent design and incomparable craftsmanship, and occasionally, family portraits painted by real artists such as Audubon and Gilbert Stuart.

The peculiar appeal of Natchez is not based on the intrinsic excellence of its showplaces, nor can it be attributed to any superiority in matters of taste and artistic discrimination. It arises from the legendary appeal of the Old South; and that lure, critically examined, is rooted in snobbery and fantastic notions of superior breeding. 

Snobbery, of course, is not the exclusive possession of the South. We find it permeating the cultural aspirations of Americans of every locality driving our heightened artists into complete subservience to European standards. But as concerns the actual traditions and deposits of slave-holding lords, the South is still esteemed as the cream of American culture.

For this reason, Natchez attracts to its hallowed atmosphere an annual pilgrimage of culture seekers. Conscious of its superiority and literally bankrupt, the town, in plain language, has been forced to sell its most cherished possession, its culture, to outsiders with money to spend. Every spring a week is set aside for the exploitation of inherited treasures and family pride. 

The far-famed old mansions are thrown open to the public – admission twenty-five cents:  visitors are fed and quartered at reasonable rates in houses which, some years ago, could not be penetrated for love or money: the skeleton in every closet is exhibited for a small consideration; and there are other sources of revenue – costume balls, parades, festivals, and garden parties.

Last spring the PILGRIMAGE netted the town about $40,000 and enabled the mortified aristocrats to carry on another twelve months.

After the curiosity seekers have departed, laden with cultural baggage and sometimes with antique chairs and soup tureens, the aristocrats close the doors of their august abodes and meditate on the glories of a vanished society -- the life described by Stark Young in his fable. SO ROSE THE DEAD.