10:40 a.m. - 2022-06-15
Indianola
“Excuse me?”
“The room, you only have 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, if you don't like it no refund.”
A key was passed through a slot in the scratched-up plexiglass and I accepted it out of courtesy--already realizing that this wasn't going to work out. I mean, I've stayed in plenty of dumps, but never one that had come with that sort of disclaimer, so the “room inspection” was just a formality at this point. And of course it was an absolute crime scene. One that left me with more questions than answers. Like: how could there be so many cigarette burns on one bedspread? And did it catch on fire at some point...is that why someone dumped red wine all over it? Why aren't the towels folded, and where did the AC control knobs go? How exactly would you categorize this smell etc. etc. The kicker though was that room 107 opened onto a breezeway and was directly across from a broken ice-machine. Relentless staccato clanging, accompanied by the high-pitched wail of a dying compressor echoed through the concrete tunnel, and was somehow even louder in the room. (I'm not a refrigeration tech, but my guess was that a fan blade had been torn or bent and that the machine was destroying itself violently from the inside.)
I was getting a bad feeling about Indianola, Mississippi.
Hours earlier I'd been in Tuscaloosa, weighing my options. Staying on the interstate meant an easy afternoon's drive to Jackson, where I could either spend the night or push on to lovely, magnolia-ridden Vicksburg and its shameless antebellum charm. But I was eying a route less traveled that would deliver me north of there, to a town planted where the black dirt of the Delta begins. I knew that BB King called Indianola home and used to perform at Club Ebony, a venue on the “chitlin circuit” that had played host to a laundry list of legendary black musicians. And a google search had turned up an article about a BB King Museum the city had built, and its potential as a draw for tourists on the “Mississippi Blues Trail”. I had little interest in visiting a music museum, though. I was keen on seeking out active local juke joints. And definitely keen to hear authentic delta blues, but what did I know? Maybe everybody listens to unbearable contemporary mumble-rap at juke joints now...couldn't say 'till I'd found out right?
So I crossed the state of Mississippi on a straight flat highway, slowing down intermittently for small-town speed traps. There was a sameness to the terrain that seemed to reflect in the layout of these rural communities: a tiny local supermarket (with a Dollar General built inevitably and inexplicably next door), a clapboard beauty parlor named after its proprietress, a shuttered BBQ stand and a gas station advertising “vape” supplies. There were no indications of industry or apparent geographic advantage to these towns. It's as if a bored settler set out from one, walked 13 miles and said “Yeah sure here, whatever”, and the cycle just repeated itself westward. These were the dots Hwy 82 connected. The landscape changed as I hit the cotton fields of the Delta though, and then I was in Indianola. I'd been using the GPS-based navigation on my cellular (more on that later) and when you set your destination as a city without specifying an address, it directs you to the courthouse. This struck me as neat and so there I headed.
I remember being “downtown” in the small Texas town where I lived as a child, too young to understand that these tidy brick buildings and adjacent storefronts were on the verge of obsolescence. My grandmother was a journalist and her newspaper office (I can still smell the printing ink) was downtown, my mom would buy her dresses and have them fitted downtown, and my first terrifying haircut was at a barbershop downtown. Many years later I would attend college in a small town whose economy had collapsed during the 80's oil bust. Its historic downtown still had horse-rings on the curb from back when King Ranch cowboys would ride in to go shopping. But there were no horses tied-up or cars parked there then, only tumbleweeds. So downtown Indianola felt familiar, and it wasn't “dead” exactly. A locally-owned supermarket was open for business on a far corner, and that's always good to see. But otherwise...a second-hand clothing store, a bail-bondsman, a beauty college and a lot of empty buildings. Oh and some faded murals. Of BB King. I dig murals, and have painted some myself; but I wondered if the city had commissioned these as part of their tourism campaign. 'Cause while I could see these contributing to the ambiance of a city-center vibrant w/restaurants, live music venues etc., the idea that a tourist would want to stand on this dead-ass street and stare at a painting of a musician seemed like a stretch. This was decoration, not destination.
Anyway, I took off to find a motel. After the first, aforementioned, attempt failed hard (and with everything I'd just witnessed in room 107 fresh on my mind) I was reconciled to dropping the extra $20 to stay at a “name brand” place. So I headed back out into traffic onto Hwy 28 which, unlike the shaded streets downtown, was built on reclaimed cotton fields. Just a treeless stretch of fast-food, dollar stores, mattress chains...everything ugly about everywhere else in America only extra beat, more faded. I spotted another motel and pulled in. This lobby was air-conditioned and the clerk wasn't behind a bulletproof partition, so that was promising. She apologized for being on a phone-call but informed me that it was important. She'd scheduled an MRI for later that week, and since she was too big to fit in the tube at the local hospital they had to book something in another county. But there'd been a communication problem, and the big tube was overbooked so a nurse had called to reschedule and uh-uh she was NOT having it. She'd already taken the day off and arranged for somebody to pick somebody else up at school etc. Anyway I knew all this because, in the interest of multitasking, she'd put the nurse on speakerphone. Thus I got to witness some radical attitude pivots: from “aggrieved and inflexible” with the nurse to “professional, cheerful and...dare I say flirty?” with me when the hospital would put her on hold. Didn't surprise me though, whiplash tone-shift is a known lady superpower. Probably an essential tool for motherhood come to think of it...
So I got checked in but forgot to ask where the juke-joints were. (In my mind they were situated far from this mean strip of highway, maybe around one of the bayous on the south side of town. Where the sound of fingerpickin' guitars would mingle with the full-throated song of the bullfrog.) Anyway I pulled around the building, parked right in front of my room and...right in the middle of an impromptu fiesta. Seven gentlemen were gathered around a ¾ ton Chevy truck, the tailgate of which was down and serving as a mini bar. Three of them wore cowboy hats and pointy-toed boots; three others were kitted out in gang-banger gear w/ball-caps askew. The eldest (who I noticed everyone deferring to later) had a full head of long hair oiled straight back, a well groomed mustache and a loud silk shirt unbuttoned to the sternum. All seven evinced a penchant for gold jewelry. They were shouting at each other in Spanish, not out of anger, but to make themselves heard over the very (very) loud music. Which was conjunto, so my guess is that they were Mexican nationals. Conjunto is a bass-driven genre, and whoever had wired the sub-woofer in that Chevy understood this with a vengeance. Standing in my room, I felt every note like a fat thump on the forehead, and wondered if maybe I hadn't been too hard on the ice-machine at the other joint.
(What were these guys doing in Indianola, you ask? Well, I don't work for the DEA but...)
Anyway, I made three pointed trips out to the van to get shit I didn't need and slam all the doors, but my old-man glares went unheeded. After the third trip two other trucks pulled in to flank the van and four burly white dudes just off of work got out. Judging from the tools in their truck-beds, they were pipefitters; probably working on one of the natural gas wells I'd passed driving in and were put-up at the motel on the company dime. They'd apparently already met the Mexico contingent and, after everyone exchanged greetings, they fished a couple light beers out of their own cooler and proceeded to up the party ante by firing-up a hibachi on one tailgate and prepping steaks on the other. I’ll admit, a younger me may well have steered right into this skid, introduced myself, and had a blast drinking tequila and shootin' the shit in a motel parking lot. But this was directly outside the door of a room I'd spent an extra $20 on, and older me was a little put out. Whatever though, I'd be headed off to an authentic juke joint soon and these fools would be fast-asleep by the time I got back.
So I cleaned up and expanded the Google search-map to see which of the local bars (signified by little martini-glass map-pins) I wanted to hit first and yeah...no. No juke joints indicated. Also no taverns. Nor ice-houses, discotheques, dancehalls, or pubs. No hotel bars, even. One restaurant had a drink menu, and thus conceivably a bar, but it had closed for repairs years ago and hadn't reopened (a possible casualty of the town's never-realized tourist push?). A flip through the yellow pages confirmed my disappointment. I mean, this wasn't a dry county...there was a liquor store right across the street. Christ. And little wonder there was a very (very) loud party happening in the parking lot of the Quality Inn. Where else were these motherf*ckers supposed to go? I had a six of tall-boys I'd bought in Asheville the night before, and I cracked one. Then I turned the TV on and endeavored to recall a now-rusty (but once-crucial) L.A. survival skill--the ability to tune out a neighbor's bass-frequency. Five cans later I was asleep so maybe it worked.
By 4 AM I was on the road, glad to see the lights of Indianola in my rear-view mirror and quoting the late, great Nina Simone:
“Mississippi Goddamn”
