When I was in the sixth grade I got into a debate with my teacher about the Mississippi Delta.
Our class was studying the Mississippi River, and Mrs. Boyle said the delta was at the mouth of the river.
I mentioned that to my father, who worked many years on Mississippi River dredgeboats, and he said the Delta was the flat farmland in the northwest part of the state.
So naturally the next day I told my teacher she was wrong. She wouldn’t back down, which left me on the horns of a dilemma.
I explained the complete situation to Dad that night, and he laughed and said both he and the teacher were right. There is a delta at the mouth of the Mississippi River, and there’s an area called the Delta in northwest Mississippi.
I guess you could differentiate them by calling one the Mississippi River delta and the other the Mississippi Delta.
The sun sets beyond Highway 61 at Valley Park.
Valley Park
I thought about all this last Saturday when my bluegrass-gospel group, Dogwood Cross, had a concert in Valley Park, a village in the lower Delta.
Valley Park Baptist Church was having a Valentine banquet, and the Rev. Adrian Fairchild — who used to pastor Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Bogue Chitto where the other Dogwood Cross members go — invited us to perform.
Angelyn and I drove north on Highway 61 to Vicksburg. After zigzagging on I-20, we followed 61 through the steep hills of Vicksburg until we crossed the Yazoo River and soared down onto the table-flat land of the Delta.
The day was chilly, gray and drizzly as we drove past miles of straight-rowed farm fields backed by brown woods, punctuated by occasional houses and grain bins.
When we arrived at Valley Park, the clouds opened just enough to reveal a glorious sunset. From the church parking lot I gazed west across Deer Creek and the elevated road bed of Highway 61, past an old house and a clutch of winter-bare trees, to the setting sun.
The Delta has a haunting beauty all its own. That makes it a photographer’s dream, as evidenced by a couple of the photos on this page by Sam King of Madison. The Amite County native has taken thousands of photos of the Delta and showcases them periodically on his Facebook page.
Farm equipment and an 18-wheeler are parked outside of Pluto Plantation. (Sam King)
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Valley Park, population 71, is near the location of a scene from the movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou” — an old radio station where the Soggy Bottom Boys recorded “Man of Constant Sorrow.”
I guess that’s fitting since Dogwood Cross also plays old-timey bluegrass.
Our visit to the church started with a feast of smoked beef and pork with all the trimmings, followed by our hour-long concert.
One of the benefits to playing with a bluegrass-gospel group is getting to visit so many interesting rural communities and mingling with so many good folks. It’s always an encouragement.
Andrew Coy of Jackson, Tenn. (grandson of Outdoors Editor Ernest Herndon), holds a rabbit killed on a hunt outside Clarksdale in the Mississippi Delta.
Childhood memories
As with the story of the sixth-grade teacher above, our visit to Valley Park awakened memories of the Delta that go back to my childhood.
My dad was a bivocational preacher, which meant he worked a regular job in Memphis while preaching at various churches on the side, mainly as interim. Those churches were usually set in small farm towns like Courtland and Oak Grove, Miss., Solo and Halls, Tenn., and Biscoe and Earle, Ark.
One year my father bought a small house at the edge of a Mississippi cottonfield to fix up and sell. While he and my brother worked, I set off across the field to explore the woods beyond.
I found a creek and returned on a later trip with a buddy. I brought a pack of bacon, so we built a fire and draped slices over sticks.
You can imagine how that went. Grease made the fire flame up, and the bacon never fully cooked. But that’s boys for you.
As an adult I’ve made many trips to the Delta, most in connection with outdoors stories such as canoeing the Yazoo, Big Sunflower, Little Sunflower, Tallahatchie and Yalobusha rivers; as well as road trips and even a Dogwood Cross concert at Parchman prison.
Our trip last Saturday left me with yet another sweet Delta memory, this one from Valley Park.
