Are We There Yet?

This marks the second week JR & I have spent conducting interviews throughout the Delta. Monday we traveled to Greenwood, Mississippi. I had visited Greenwood earlier during a staff team-building exercise and fell in love with the town. Viking was founded, and now operates, out of Greenwood. The results of its founder creating and keeping his company in this Delta town are incredible. As I may have mentioned in an earlier blog, Greenwood is home to the Alluvian Hotel. The Alluvian is a four diamond hotel located in the heart of Greenwood's downtown. The storefronts around the area have been refurbished and filled. Chef inspired restaurants dot the streets. There are wonderful old homes that line the main boulevard. Greenwood has an 'old town' feel with modern amenities. JR & I were in Greenwood to interview a woman, Lise, that serves as Greenwood's Community Project Manager. The interview went well. Afterwards, JR & I decided to roam around a bit. JR is from a small town outside of Greenwood. Currently, his parents live in Greenwood. This left me feeling like I had a great opportunity to get to know Greenwood with a knowledgeable tour guide -- that and JR has GPS. First we decided to stop in Money, Mississippi -- the home of Emmitt Till's uncle and the starting point of that notorious tragedy. I snapped a picture of the now dilapidated store where the tragedy began. On our way back to Cleveland, we decided to stop for a soda. Out of the middle of a cotton field appeared a row of shacks and what appeared to be a store. JR made a u-turn and turned onto the dirt and gravel road, past the shacks, and to the store. Upon parking we were met by an older man who took a seat on a church pew located on the store's porch. We came to learn that we had not stumbled upon on a store, rather, we had stumbled upon Tallahatchie Flats -- a collection of shacks refurbished to resemble turn-of-the-century sharecropper's quarters'. Mister Bubba, as the man introduced himself, was the manager. People from around the world, according to Mister Bubba, had visited and rented the shacks. After a long conversation JR & I moved on to find another 'store' for our much awaited soda. According to JR, the Mississippi native, there was a short-cut located just off the highway that would cut our time back to Cleveland. He plugged in his GPS and we broke from the highway. Now I don't have GPS, never used it, but I'm pretty sure when the screen shows the car moving off the red lines and into the abyss of charter-less brown we're lost. We kept on down the road, around the corner, deeper into the cotton, past some houses, past some trailers, past some shacks, beyond a barn, beyond a tractor, beyond the pavement. Finally, we ended up in the middle of a field where the now dirt road just ended. After backtracking we found ourselves back on the highway. We finally found the country store we were looking for -- Sander's Grocery. We stopped and got sodas and candy bars. However, these were not our only options. This particular country store, in addition to soda, also sold hot breakfast platters, deli-sliced meat, worms for fishing, relaxer kits, oil sheen, and more. Finally, we returned to Cleveland full of information and experiences.