A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day....04-13-04....Mississippi - "Virtute et Armis"

Mama_Bear

[petitfour]

Well, I left out Kermit the Frog (Jim Henson(sp?)) and Oprah, but the list is so long . . . .

I'm sorry I never noticed your travelling threads before. Will pay more attention now. :)

[petitfour]

My brothers played baseball at Leavell Woods Park. I ate many a snow cone there.

[Mama_Bear]

Kermit the Frog is from Mississippi? Who would have thought?

I'm sorry I never noticed your travelling threads before. Will pay more attention now. :)

Great! I hope you will come back again. We have a lot of fun here, but every so often we learn something too. Can't beat that.

I am about ready to sign off for the evening. Thanks again for what you brought to the thread today.

[WVNan]

Isn't that something? Leavell Woods Dr. was a beautiful street when we lived there. Lots of tall pines and Azaleas.

[petitfour]

I have fond memories of the whole area. I haven't been there in 11 years or so. Azaleas, tall pine trees, and Mimosa trees.

[WVNan]

Don't go MB. I'm on a roll here. This picture made me homesick. This is the South of my early childhood.

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[Mama_Bear]

Hi FRee! You crept in and out so quietly this morning that I didn't even know you had been here!

Thanks for dropping off the calendar page. HUGS!

[Mama_Bear]

Don't go MB. I'm on a roll here.

LOL. Well, keep on rollin'. I'll stick around for awhile.

That photo tells such a story!

I remember traveling through the south on one of our trips across country. I must have been seven or eight. Coming from the north, I had never in my life seen a "whites only" sign. I was dumbfounded. I distinctly remember asking my mom why only white people could sit at the restaurant counter and thinking how I would feel if I was told I could not go somewhere because I was different. I remember thinking, as a child would, how much it would hurt my feelings to be treated "different". That experience is burned into my memory.

[WVNan]

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[WVNan]

The thing is though, MB, as a child I would have been sitting right there on that porch with those men listening to their tales and laughter without a second thought. I didn't know anything about "whites only" signs. That was just my world. It was filled with people and places just like that picture.

[JustAmy]

Mississippi!
How the name
Wraps itself
About my tongue,
Telling me
I've come home!
Mississippi.
Those deep brown
Waters course
Through my veins
Like living mud,
Nurturing a soul
Never quite
At home
Any other place
I rest my
Weary bones.
I can stand
In some dusty
Panola crossroads,
Sandy delta soil
Beneath my feet,
And I know
I belong.
All around me
Stretch the fields
Of cotton, sorghum,
Corn, wheat and hay.
While I may
Love the hills,
Love the mountains
With their rocky streams,
My dreams
Are made
Of delta clay,
Of smokey haze
And sultry sun
Shimmering at the edges
Of fields as flat
As the day is long.
This song
I sing to the South!
Here I was born,
Here ever
Will my heart return,
When I hear
Someone speak
Of home.

3/20/84

© Fred O'Bryant.

[Mama_Bear]

Oh, that is lovely, Amy! Thanks so much for bringing that here.

I love the contributions that everyone has made to this thread. We are building a nice archive of information about our country, state by state. :-)

[WVNan]

Speaks to my soul Amy. Thank you.

[WVNan]

Did you listen to the Mississippi Squirrel revival? I always get a laugh out of that song.

[Mama_Bear]

LOL! Mississippi Squirrel Revival! I love it!! I haven't heard this in AGES! What a great find for this thread, Nan. I'm saving this one in my midi folder, for sure!

[JustAmy]

LOL

Ray Stevens had some funny stuff!!

Thanks, Nan.

[Mama_Bear]

It was filled with people and places just like that picture.

Aren't those childhood memories wonderful? When I think of children growing up in the old south, I imagine Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird. I never lived in the south, but I can imagine what it was like because of that book and movie. :-)

[WVNan]

The King of Tupelo.

[WVNan]

Funny you should say that MB, because that is exactly like I was. I lived in the country and knew nothing about racial problems. We were poor as dirt, same as all our black neighbors. We picked cotton together, we drank from the same dipper from the same water bucket. We killed hogs and sat up all night together while the pig turned on the spit and sopped that hot BBQ sauce on it while the old black men told stories of haints and coon dogs.

[Mama_Bear]

Did you listen to the Mississippi Squirrel revival?

Sure did! I just now played it for my mom, she had never heard it. It's still funny no matter how many times I listen to it.