TheDeltaDirt.com

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 ...

The pastoral scene at the edge of our camp site in Bristol, Tennesse. Well I guess it doesn't "technically" count as a Delta roadtrip, since my journey didn't originate in the Delta, but for old times' sake, that's what I am calling it. This past weekend, I traveled with three classmates through the Blue Ridge Mountains to Bristol, Tennessee, home of the Bristol Motor Speedway and the Sharpie 500. We arrived at the camp site on Friday afternoon and immediately started the party. The family we were camping with had already set up their Beer Pong table and we jumped right in. Re-rack! The "good folks up the hill" that hosted karaoke on Friday night. By nightfall, the good folks up the hill from us had cranked up their karaoke machine and we indulged the crowd with some selections from George Strait, the Doobie Brothers, and Alabama. It was either our outstanding performances or the constant flow of Miller High Life through the audience, but one way...

Editor's note: This is the long-awaited third in a four part series on my Fourth of July roadtrip to Pearl River Resort. For those of you who are wondering where the beginning is, Part 1 can be read here and Part 2 can be read here . The road warriors pictured before the glowing Golden Moon casino. Back row: Chris Dantone, Amber Harrell, Lee Houston, Ashley Thompson, Toni Sorrell, Thomas Gregory, Tracy McGarrh, and Andy Hackleman. Kneeling: John Stewart, Lee Hodges, and Drew Pinkston. Photo by One-Eyed Steve. As we rolled into the spacious lobby of The Golden Moon casino, we began to feel like celebrities. We were in the nicer of the two casinos and we had just arrived in the largest vehicle in the parking lot. We even had our own chauffeur. But one look at our swimming attire and a call across the porte-cochère from Drew to "grab his cigarettes from the bus" quickly reminded us that this wasn't the Las Vegas strip. We were indeed in Neshoba County, Mississippi. Bu...

Editor's Note: This is R.D. Seawright's final "post" as an alluvial dweller. She moves north to head the Oxford Bureau of The Delta Dirt . As a beat reporter in Yoknapatawpha County, she pledges to faithfully inform on hill-country cultural occurrences and curiosities for her fellow flatlanders back home. Please look for her contributions in the near future. Prelude to a Paradise New Orleans is my favorite place on Earth. And though my experience as a jet-setting world traveler is rather limited, I have been fortunate to visit such locales as Scotland, England, Costa Rica, Canada, Mexico, and just about every major city in the United States. But all these areas pale in comparison to The Big Easy, a supernatural city where romance flies on mythological wings up Rue Royale, through Toulouse, down Dauphin, up Rampart, round Jackson Square, and parallel to the churning currents of the mighty Mississippi, our Father of Waters. Romance settles in the darkest corners of th...

Editor's note: This is the second in a four part series on the Fourth of July roadtrip to Pearl River Resort. Part 1 can be read here . As we unloaded the Black Bullet in the parking lot of Geyser Falls the excitement of a five year-old kid on Christmas filled each of our eyes as we saw what had to be the greatest water park in the history of the world before us. Of course, the six-pack of beers apiece on the ride over probably contributed to our dilusional childlike demeanor. The Locker Room Chronicles Nevertheless, we chugged the remainder of our beers post haste and made our way to the turnstile with our freshly printed tickets in hand. Once in the park, half of us split off toward the lockers and the other half broke out into nothing short of a sprint for the cabana. Seeing that I was carrying a duffel bag the size of a filing cabinet, I was in the former group. If the locker room attendee were to give out awards for the most gear crammed in a locker, I would have won the blue...

Funnoodlers Thomas Gregory, R.D. Seawright, Robyn Jones, Tracy McGarrh, Andy Hackleman and Anna Gregory float in the clear waters of Greers Ferry Lake in Heber Springs, Ark. Photo by Robbie Cash. Head 'Em Up and Move 'Em Out It's Quittin' Time at five o'clock on Friday, and the cars begin to gather at Andy Hackleman's house to load up and hit the highway. The traveling band of roadtrip revelers consists of Andy, Thomas Gregory, Robyn Jones, Tracy McGarrh, and yours truly. We are Heber Springs-bound to stay at the Jones lake house for a weekend of sun-filled fun and frivolity. Anna Gregory and Robbie Cash will be coming from Memphis to meet us there (in Anna's super-fly new set of wheels I might add). We throw our bags in the Hackleman Tahoe. Thomas safely secures his fifty-dollar bag of booze (consisting of Hot Damn, UV Blue Vodka, Taaka Vodka, Jack Daniel's, and enough Zing Zang Bloody Mary mix to supply a small country). Andy packs enough fixins for Sh...

Editor's note: This is the first in a four part series on the Fourth of July roadtrip to Pearl River Resort. Choctaw bound: Lee Hodges, Drew Pinkston, Amber Harrell, John Stewart and Chris Dantone start the morning right with a case of the cold stuff. Ten o'clock in the morning. Sharp. That was the time we had mutually decided on leaving Greenwood for Geyser Falls water park in Philadephia's neighboring Indian reservation: Choctaw, Mississippi. That is why I had showed up at our rally point, Webster's Food and Drink, ten minutes early. At 9:50 a.m., with towel in hand, cooler in tow, donning my best set of swim trunks and a burning desire to surf in the wavepool, I was ready to roll. Around 10:30 a.m. people started to show up. I had been sitting there for forty God-forsaken minutes listening to Max 99 in my rental Ford Taurus. Needless to say, I was a little disappointed in everyone's tardiness. The Neverending Stewart Story Despite the aforementioned sob story, th...

Editor's Note: Our guest contributor, Joe Seawright, weighs in on prize-winning writer Larry McMurtry and the breathtaking beauty of our American West. The Delta Dirt encourages one and all to hop in the car this summer and take the trail made famous by Captains Call and McCrae. Captains Woodrow Call (Joe Seawright) and Augustus McCrae (Jimmy Reed) pose for their portrait in full Texas Ranger regalia. My pal Jimmy Reed and I have always been voracious consumers of great literature, and big fans of writer Larry McMurtry's work....well, some of his work. As another friend of ours once said, Mr. McMurtry was never afraid to mix in a few pretty bad books with his good ones, and that's true enough. However, titles like The Last Picture Show , Terms of Endearment , and particularly Lonesome Dove are among the very best in American Literature, and Jimmy and I have always treasured Lonesome Dove as one of the all-time great stories of the Old American West. I have an ancient, do...

Thomas and R.D. pictured with William Faulkner's historical marker in Oxford. William Cuthbert Faulkner, as he lays dying. Photo by Thomas Gregory. This week's Delta Roadtrip feature took us to Oxford, Mississippi, home of the Ole Miss Rebels and William Faulker. Upon our arrival, the Delta Dirt Duo made an immediate pilgrimage to Faulkner's grave to pay homage with crazy quotes and stories of old. The rest of the night saw us dancing to the grooves of Dova Grove, a Memphis-based jam band with rock and bluesy undertones, at Two Stick sushi bar. The food was phenomenal and the band, even better! I also got to celebrate the right of passage into adulthood with Jerry Dale Blackburn and several shots of saké, as he turned 23 yesterday. A big Delta Dirt Happy Birthday to you, Jerry Dale! Well, the sun rose again this morning (as it always does) and R.D. and I were on the road at 6:00 a.m., sharp. 7:30 a.m. saw us pulling into our familiar Delta town of Greenwood, having ha...