Gonna be here the rest of my life / Andrnall I did was shoot my wife”). To Clarksdale,rnhome of the Delta Blues Museum,rnand beyond, past Graceland, into Memphis.rnFor the last part of the trip I was on oldrnHighway 61, the way out to the north forrncountless black Mississippians and arngood many white ones, too. Bill Ferris,rndirector of the Center for the Study ofrnSouthern Culture, has named his Saturdayrnnight public-radio blues program forrnthis road. The Blues Doctor gets a lot ofrnrequests from Parchman.rnBack in Jackson, one Sunday morningrnI went over to the state Agriculturalrnand Forestry Museum, where stands arnreconstructed Mississippi village of circarn1920, differing from a good many hamletsrnstill dotting the Southern countrysidernmostly by being tidier. In the old,rnunheated, white frame country church arnsmall Anglican congregation gathers, tornworship by the Old Prayer Book. Aboutrn20 of us were there that morning, and Irnlistened with pleasure to a sermon onrnthe ideal of the gentleman, as suggestedrnby St. Paul in Romans 12:7. After Communion,rnwe adjourned to the old Masonicrnhall for coffee.rnAnother Sabbath found me at a veryrndifferent service, at Jackson’s First PresbyterianrnChurch, where I went with myrnfriends Douglas and Caroline, he a seminaryrnprofessor, a proud Scot from NorthrnCarolina, she a high-school Latin teacher,rnthe daughter of a Cambridge don,rnboth of them Chronicles readers. Jacksonrnis Baptist and Methodist country, butrn”First Pres” has several thousand members,rna good proportion of them presentrnthat Sunday. The church has missionariesrnat work in the Delta, in Prague andrnBratislava and the Ukraine, in Londonrn(among Muslims), and even in New YorkrnCity, the very belly of the beast. The servicernwe attended was videotaped forrnsatellite broadcast to Canada. (Douglasrnand Caroline’s son was one of the cameramen.)rnThat evening I watched anotherrntelevised ritual, a broadcast taped at thernlocal “cowboy” club. Rodeo’s, whichrndraws even better than the Presbyterianrnchurch. Fifteen hundred dancing whiternpeople would be a scary sight under thernbest of circumstances, but when they’rernengaged in semi-aerobic boot-scootin’rnline dances with names like the ElectricrnSlide and the Tush Push—well, I don’trnknow. I confess that I’ve been to thernLongbranch in Raleigh. I’ve even donernthe two-step there. But I’ve never seenrnthe likes of this. All I have to say is: Irndon’t think Hank done it this-a-way.rnSo many other impressions:rni^’rnJ,rn••”•’•.rnf’rn^ ^rn•1?rnWfrn• #rn^b-rn’ • ^ • :rnI , ‘•rn%rn;rnsrnTrni.vt(rn. ^”.’^alfc.,’!!**** ^^f-‘i.- 4!^®f s.-^^’rnTo a Saxon Poetrn• ^S^irnby Jorge Luis BargesrnTranslated by Robert MezeyrnSnow fallen on Northumberland has knownrnAnd forgotten every footprint that you made.rnAnd numberless the sunsets that haverngreyed.rnMy unknown brother, between your hour andrnmine.rnSlowly, in slow shade, you forged laboriousrnMetaphors of swordblades in the seas,rnOf living horror hidden in the forest.rnAnd of the solitude that dogs our days.rnWhere can I find your deeds, your name,rnyour birth?rnThey all are long sealed in oblivion.rnI’ll never know you as you must have beenrnWhen you were a man like me and walkedrnthe earth.rnLone exile was the road you trudged along.rn—^An informative sociological tour ofrnJackson with a retired businessman whornstudied with Howard Odum and RupertrnVance at North Carolina in the 1930’srnand wrote his master’s thesis on sharecropping.rnI was reminded of ChapelrnHill’s great and beneficent influence inrnthose days, when the South’s problemsrnseemed to be simpler.rn—^The good little museum in the OldrnCapitol building, with its evenhandedrntreatment of the state’s often troubledrnpast. On one of the building’s splendidrncurving staircases, a stunning blonde in arnbridal dress was being photographed.rn—A Kappa Alpha “convivium,” wherernmy friend Douglas, in a dinner jacketrnand the tartan of his clan, spoke onrnRobert E. Lee as a Christian gentleman.rnThe Knights and their ladies concludedrnthe evening with the traditional toast tornthe General, the “spiritual founder” ofrntheir Order, in pure water.rn—^A visit to Tougaloo College, a smallrnblack institution with a distinguishedrnhistory through the civil rights movement,rnnow sadly down at the heels,rnscrambling for federal funds, and seekingrnsome coherent mission in the wake ofrnthat movement’s success.rn—^A conference at the University ofrnMississippi in Oxford, where our tweedyrngroup joined several hundred drunkenrnundergraduates to hear a Memphis retrornband called the Bouffants. Halfwayrnthrough “Chain of Fools,” C. VannrnWoodward of Arkansas and Yale, therndean of Southern historians, leaned overrnand shouted, “They’re not bad.”rnAll in all, I returned to North Carolinarnbetter informed, if not wiser. Yes, Mississippirnis different from the upperrnSouth, but mostly just in the same waysrnthat the upper South differs from, say,rnMassachusetts. The people are evenrnfriendlier, the Protestant churches arerneven more conspicuous, the homicidernrate is even higher, the food has evenrnmore cholesterol, and so forth. Some ofrnthe differences are big, but not manyrnare qualitative. Except perhaps in thernDelta, I felt—in some primal sense—atrnhome in Mississippi. W. J. Cash wrotern50 years ago that, “If it can be said thatrnthere are many Souths, the fact remainsrnthat there is also one South.” He wasrnright about that.rn]ohn Shelton Reed usually writesrnfrom Chapel Hill, where hernteaches at the University of NorthrnCarolina.rn48/CHRONICLESrnrnrn