Did I or did I not tell you people that I was a murder expert? Don’t act so surprised.
Well, it’s very narrow at the beginning, gets much, much larger in the middle, and then is skinny again at the other end. That is my theory.
Ann Elk.
Having lived in Natchez, MS my whole life, I have a fairly high regard for my home state. We do have nice scenery, nice people, good food and a bit of history. On the other hand, we are one of the poorest states. That’s only because farmers aren’t making 6 figures a year. As for obesity… well, fried food is not very healthy.
Overall, I like Mississippi. I don’t love it. I wouldn’t be hard to persuade to move to another state. But I’m here for now, and that’s alright.
Mississippi is just alright.
Do you have a delicious novel on the burner, with a mysterious murder set in Miss. ? Oh, the possibilities! You must dish! 
feppy I will be in Natchez in the spring. Would you care to take tea? (or run 'cross the river for a cold one?)
I have to admit I have a negative view of the state based in part on the election (and re-election) of Trent Lott; also as someone from a southern state, I find the idealization of the confederacy (as seen at Ol’ Miss football games) distasteful in the extreme.
My life is divided between Mississippi and Alabama. My parents have moved back to MS in the last few years to the sleepy retirement community they grew up in. It makes me sad to see the town dying. It’s one of those that removed the stop light because it was slowing people down, and lost the Wal-Mart because they couldn’t support it.
But, a lot of people my parents’ age have started moving back as retirement sets in or work-from-home becomes an option so maybe the town will pick up some.
Mississippi will always be, in my mind, a hot day where you hear the dogs barking far away and bugs of many species and smell the hay baking in the sun and you always have to go one town over to get to anything decent no matter where you start. And you grow up with one of three attitudes: (1) yes, we’re from MS and we love it - please come visit!, (2) move away because you can’t take it, or (3) yeah, I’m from MS and I know how to read and use indoor plumbing, so fuck you.
And someone else you may have heard of – William Faulkner.
Hey - back in high school in MS John Grisham came to speak to us. Being a “home state boy does good” type thing. In college, Eudora Welty spoke - I went to her alma mater.
Faulkner, not so much. I hear he wasn’t available. Stuck up bastard.
I’ve only been there once, and that was eleven years ago, but the impression I had as a tourist was that if you’re not into antebellum plantations, there ain’t much to do. Our “tour” of Mississippi consisted of a visit to the place in Vicksburg where Coca-Cola was first bottled.
I drove through part of Alabama and Mississippi en route back to Colorado from Georgia. I was surprised that, while crossing the state line from 'bama into Miss that the highways seemed to be suddenly better manicured. We stopped for lunch in a town that looked exactly like every shady Main Street small town ever seen in the movies. That’s the only first-person impression I’ve ever had of Mississippi. I have to admit that the state’s media exposure hasn’t been very good, but I’ll never forget that drive through the state.
I have never been to Mississippi, but for many years I could not hear about the state without thinking of Phil Och’s Here’s to the State of Mississippi .
I went to the same high school as John Grisham. We had the same Creative Writing teacher. I asked her if he was a good student, and she said he goofed off a lot; she never would have guessed he would become an author. Also, his law practice was in my town.
I’ve lived in Mississippi for most of my life. I’m extremely liberal, and so a lot of the political stuff here bothers me. There is a lot of racism, and there is a heavy expectation that you be religious. As an atheist I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut. I don’t know; things are backward here in a lot of ways, but since I grew up here, I tend not to notice it all that much. But when I do think about it, it bothers me. My children are still very young, but I think a lot about moving because I don’t think I want them to grow up here.
Also, I should say, I live in a very rich part of the state. Which is to say, it’s a normal suburb (we’re next to Memphis, TN), and if I plopped you down in the middle without saying where you were, you wouldn’t guess you were in such a poor state. The schools still suck though. I mean, the football teams are well funded, but other than that, forget about it. And at least when I was in school (about 10 years ago) all the well known problems of the state (racism, sexism, “good ol’ boys,” etc.) were much worse in the high schools. We had separate black and white class presidents, for example. And my history teacher refused to call the Civil War anything but the War Between the States (he also called it the War of Northern Aggression, seriously). And he taught that it was not about slavery. And the KKK isn’t really racist. So, think about that for a second. He was VERY well respected at the school, also; it’s not like he was some kind of fringe whacko.
I guess I would say it falls more on the negative column, but there are a lot of wonderful things here, too. The people are very nice, that’s no joke. I love my neighbors. I like camping and outdoorsy stuff, and I love being within an hour or so of complete wilderness. Also, as I said, I am close to Memphis, which has a lot of “city” stuff, so that helps. I mean, we have good hospitals and all that. It’s a mixed bag, and I’ll be the first person to say there are problems. If I lived further into the middle of the state, I would move, no question. It’s a popular place to hate, but it’s pretty much always been my home, and I’m not ready to leave it yet.
I have spent a few summers in Mississippi visiting family. My father grew up in Columbus and he still has siblings, aunts, uncles and other assorted family members living there. He is one of the few kids in his family who left MS so I guess that contributes to my viewpoint.
When I think of Mississippi I think of a hot place with polite people. Something that people might not fully understand is that even the racists are polite, so I guess that is something positive. I enjoyed the outdoors aspect of it because I like to camp and fish and what not. Most of my days were spent doing odd jobs with my cousins or fishing. There is a lot of poverty there and it is very different in appearance and lifestyle than the inner-city poverty that I have seen.
I thought it was fun that a lot of the black families in town seemed related to my family in one way or other and I spent my days running back and forth between houses.
To me, Mississippi makes me think of polite family oriented people, poverty, racism and a better understanding of the outdoors.
Drove through Mississippi on the way from Memphis to somewhere-else. Briefly stopped in Jackson where we met a nice* bunch wearing these t-shirts.
Later on in Vicksburg we were invited to get drunk with a car full of guys claiming to be true red-necks - I don’t think they were exaggerating.
All in all the little I experienced of the state did little to dispel any stereotyped preconceptions.
*nice because they handed out free bottles of water which we accepted before we saw the shirts. I assumed this was holy water so used it to baptize my nephews!
Probably my favorite weekend of my life was spent in Natchez. My wife’s sorority sister was chosen Queen of the Confederate ball so the whole sorority got invitations. I believe her name was Katherine Tillman. That was quite the extravagant weekend. I can only imagine that a series of parties like that must be valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and take an ungodly amount of planning. One of the parties was at Stanton Hall which was gorgeous. We also went to see this Civil War themed play with period costumes that was really cool as well. I loved Natchez and I feel much more Southern just from attending all that.
***Feel free to correct any details above. I wrote it from memory and it was 14 years ago.
I used to live near the Gulf Coast in AL and my ex-wife and I would spend some of our free time in Biloxi. We were in a mixed marriage so we would constantly get the stares reserved for animals at the zoo. I vote for the thumbs down of MS.
The little airport just outside of Natchez was always good for refueling tho’! I’ve purchased many many gallons there.
You’re pretty much spot on. Every Spring and Fall there is a Pilgrimage. This is when these big antebellum houses open their doors for tours and people dressed in period costumes show the houses. Huge for tourism.
As for the Confederate Pageant (yeah… i know) we have buses come in from all over filled with people who want to see the re-enactment of Mississippi’s history, from the occupation by the French, etc, to the Civil War. (Fun little Civil War fact: The only reason the Antebellum houses are still extant is because Natchez put up the white flag the second that gunboats came to port.) The King and Queen of the pageant are children of people who own an antebellum house, or are either in VERY high standing with the Pilgrimage Garden Club.
The airport is a quaint little stop, for sure. I have a postcard of it at my desk. It’s mostly used for private planes, single engine deals and the like, but it can cater to the needs of 747s and the like.
Hoo boy! I just got back from a trip to Oxford, MS, which was my home for 13 years.
I really loved living in Oxford, most of the time spent working for a blues magazine, Living Blues. I was immersed in documenting blues musicians, mostly older folks who are now passed on. They were amazing strong men and women, who had grown up in bad circumstances, and still managed to create great music, and rise above the crap handed to them socially. I learned a lot about how to live as a decent human being, even in poverty, and got an immense education in the complexity and nitty gritty of racial issues. It made me a much better person.
There was a lot of pain and anger, too, seeing how that system hurt people. There was a lot of alcoholism and messed up despair. Why did this or that great musician have to live out their elder years in poverty, and not get any medical care, when their riffs had been stolen by other musicians who got rich off it? I can say that I worked to alleviate that; helped get press and attention, drove musicians on tour, cooked meals for older people, worked with Music Maker Relief Foundation to get medical bills paid. But, it was great to do that, and as said, I learned a precious lot there, curing many of my middle class white preconceptions.
I love Mississippi for the complexity, for the contrasts, for all the great music and writing that came out of it. It’s a poor state, but, for those who are driven to create there, really rich. This was the first time I had been back in five years. I could walk around the square of Oxford, and, in ten minutes, see folks I knew,by chance, and feel at home. The two-term mayor is also the owner of the very great bookstore there, Square Books. I’m living back in NC now, and there are plenty of great bookstores in Chapel Hill, but none matches the one in Oxford, for atmosphere, selection, readings, and the weekly radio show broadcast from there, with authors reading and musician guests.
And, well, the music, I miss it. People don’t dance here like they do in Mississippi at concerts. I miss that groove.
After time away, now living in a very cosmopolitan Southern area, I left feeling that I could easily move back and live there happily. Count that as a high opinion of Am-Eye-Crooked Letter-Crooked Letter-Eye-Crooked Letter-Crooked Letter-Eye-Humpback-Humpback-Eye.
I was musing over a Son House CD this afternoon and wondering what Robert Johnson’s music would have been like if he had lived a longer life.
But I digress.
We attended some dog herding thing for Mrs. Plant in that fine state. Aside from seeing a small dog chased quite viciously by a duck, socially I couldn’t tell if we were in Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi or Louisiana.