Smoke danced on the horizon. Fields were being harvested. Remnants of corn burned, creating wispy brown clouds that hugged the earth. A crop duster danced on the horizon, spraying a cotton field. Soon its leaves would drop to the ground, leaving snow-white bolls to cover the land like new fallen snow. My car driving was heading up Highway 49W in the Mississippi Delta. I was heading to Greenville for a late-morning speech.
The Belzoni McDonalds is a good snapshot of the Delta. You meet every shape, size, color and economic demographic there. Old men sit and discuss the world inside and outside of the Delta. I had just come from Yazoo City, where you leave the rolling hills to enter this flat land. The bluff stands like a sentinel. A sentinel that has watched over this rich (and poor) land for decades.
I ignored Google Maps and took the backroads to Greenville from Belzoni: A left on Highway 12 with its dried up catfish ponds and a right on Highway 61 with it’s wide-open vistas. If you want to get a true feel for how wide-open the Delta is, drive north from Vickburg to Greeville on 61. It’s a wide-open, two-laned road that carves through history. Need proof? You can see Blue Blues Markers dotting the roadside like mushrooms. As you pass them, you realize the tough conditions were the thorns and the sweet music was the rose. We take our own legacy for granted. But read the guest book at the B.B. King Museum in Indianola. It’s filled with people from England and other countries in Europe.
They are pilgrims in our midst.
At 10 a.m., I spoke to the South Delta Planning and Development District’s annual meeting. The Washington County Convention Center’s room was packed with farmers, mayors, retired coaches, clerks, doctors and so many others. I met people who lived off the land and those who struggled at times to live. “Last year, we had no crop and a great market. This year, we have a great crop but no market,” one farmer. So goes the life of those who live off the land. I spoke out in the parking lot to a cancer survivor. Her eyes twinkled as he talked about how grateful she was to be alive. Life overcomes hardship. It’s something you see all around you as your travel through this beautiful land.
Trees. Rich soil. Power lines. Levees. A lone water tower. Dancing crop dusters, hugging the ground like an agitated yellow jacket.
I drove back Hwy. 82 to 49 on the way home. My brain was tired and a four-laned road was what the doctor ordered. Towering cumulonimbus clouds began to build over the South Delta. Storms formed as I headed back to my home in the hills. Giant raindrops hit my windshield like the mosquitoes had earlier.
A crop duster buzzed me as I drove through Belzoni. The pilot was beating the weather and heading home. He glided his craft in for a perfect landing at the airfield.
His day was done. And so was mine.