Busy Day in the Delta

Thursday night was DJ night at Po' Monkey's juke joint in Merigold.


English journalist Julia Buckley and Tallahatchie Flats manager Les Shanks exited Po' Monkey's in Merigold after a fun Thursday night visit. (Monkey's, as Julia pointed out, is indeed spelled "Poor" Monkey's.)


From left - Larry Grimes, "Joel Schumacher", Julia Buckley and Les Shanks.


The levitating match stick trick.


Monkey's gets the Best Decorated Ceiling Ever Award.

London journalist Julia Buckley had quite the eventful day yesterday. Greenwood was a stop on her road trip from Los Angeles, which will end in New York City. She is writing a freelance article for The Sunday Times' travel magazine on Delta music.

Julia said she would not mind me telling you that her full-time gig has been as a features writer for a "free daily paper" in London that is distributed mainly to commuters. I say "has been" because she received a text message yesterday morning saying she had been "sacked" -- a delightful British term meaning, "You're fired." (Note: The text expressed the situation a bit more delicately and did not actually use the word "sacked." However, for the purposes of this blog, we will definitely use that term, because it is awesome.)

Julia quickly got over it and decided she didn't care, as she hated her job and did not want to return anyway. When a friend of her's recently committed suicide, her bosses instructed her to immediately go and do a story on the situation. Then they refused to let her off to attend the funeral.

How many things are wrong with this picture?

After that lovely start to her day, Miss Buckley spent most of the afternoon on air at WGRM radio station.

She then took a trip into Greenwood's historic Baptist Town neighborhood for a Back in the Day Blues Museum tour with tour guide Sylvester Hoover to see the sites where blues legend Robert Johnson played (before his untimely demise and subsequent burial at Little Zion Missionary Baptist Church off Money Road). While at Hoover's Grocery, Buckley was greeted by a host of friendly locals: "Hey, White Girl," and "Come here, Snowflake." She said she felt like retorting, "Hello, black person," but declined.

One gentlemen said, "Give me a hug, Snowflake!" and then proceeded to rub himself up against her. After learning she was a touring guest of the Hoovers, the man apologized: "Oh, I'm sorry! She's one of yours? I thought she was just some white girl." He asked for her hand upon her departure -- only to proceed to hold it and then lick her arm.

After being licked in Baptist Town, Julia returned to the peaceful Tallahatchie Flats to rest up before beginning her excursion to Po' Monkey's juke joint in Cleveland/Merigold -- led by Flats' manager Les Shanks and accompanied by myself.

An hour and a half later, after a couple wrong turns and the obligatory ask-some-people-at-a-random-gas-station experience, we finally turned left into the appropriate field off Highway 61, veered left onto the appropriate gravel road and made it to Said Financially Challenged Monkey.

The Monkey's crowd was extremely welcoming and kind. We enjoyed it thoroughly. Cover was only $5, the beers were cheap, the DJ delightful and the dancers wonderful. A pool table provided additional entertainment, as did patron Larry Grimes, who said he had been coming to Monkey's for about 33 years now. Julia enjoyed Grimes' magic tricks with coins and levitating match sticks. He informed us that Monkey's is decorated with some 225 stuffed animal monkeys, most of which hang from the ceiling and look super cool. I first wondered if I could guess Mr. Monkey's age, maybe he'd let me step right up and take one home with me.

Another hospitable patron, Vincent Giannini, introduced himself to us and was eager to assist Julia with her article. Giannini said his Italian immigrant family had lived in the Delta for quite some time and also informed her that he had directed the movie "A Time to Kill." The Delta Dirt plans to inform imdb.com that it needs to correct its information to reflect Giannini as the film's director. But until then, we will refer to Giannini as "Joel Schumacher."

On the way back I really had to pee, which reminded me that no Delta road trip was complete until someone got out and peed on a gravel road. I explained this to Julia, along with the squat-on-the-back-of-the-car-bumper trick if you're a chick. I later put it into practice.

A good time was had by all.