Eat Drink Delta: A Hungry Traveler's Journey through the Soul of the South

12. Yazoo City: Half Hills and Half Delta

233 6 12 yazoo city Half Hills and Half Delta In his 1967 memoir North toward Home, Willie Morris succinctly describes Yazoo City, the town where he grew up: “half hills and half delta, only forty miles from the Mississippi, as the crow flies.” When you see the giant clouds billowing from the smokestacks of the fertilizer plant along Highway 49, you know you’re getting close. While Mississippi Chemical Corporation has been integral to the area’s economy, its less-than-picturesque presence has undoubtedly kept more than a few passersby from ever seeing the more charming parts of this city. Straddling two vastly different terrains, with industries that include oil and cattle in addition to cotton and catfish, Yazoo City is at once whitecollar and blue-collar, genteel and hardscrabble. With a population of fourteen thousand, Yazoo City is the seat of Yazoo County, Mississippi’s largest. The Yazoo River, a tributary of the Mississippi, flows hard by both. French explorer Robert LaSalle in 1682 discovered a small tribe of Indians called the Yazoo living near the river’s mouth. Linguists have studied Choctaw language patterns to figure out what “Yazoo” meant, but it is most often translated “River of Death.” 234 Yazoo City The name certainly fit in the beginning. Infested with disease-carrying mosquitoes and venomous snakes, the Yazoo River claimed untold numbers of the settlers who paddled into port with dreams of cotton fortunes only to succumb to yellow fever or some violent encounter with man or beast. Underwater mines planted during the Civil War by the Confederates sunk dozens of federal ships, including the uss Baron DeKalb, whose hull can still be spotted not far from Yazoo City when the water’s low. Willie Morris perpetuates the Yazoo’s deadly reputation in his autobiography , Good Old Boy: A Delta Boyhood, with a harrowing account of the legend of the Witch of Yazoo City. He tells how “a mean and ugly old woman” who lived alone on the riverbank in the late 1800s would lure fishermen into her house and poison them with arsenic. The law eventually found out and the sheriff chased her through the swamp until she became trapped in quicksand. As she sank to her death, she threatened to break out of her grave and burn down the town on May 25, 1904. The townsfolk wrapped her coffin in heavy chains before burying her in Glenwood Cemetery downtown. But on the date she’d promised to get her revenge, flames engulfed most of the city, destroying many of its beautiful old homes. (The fire was actually started by a boy playing with matches, but the myth of the spiteful witch persists.) Morris is buried—per his request—exactly thirteen steps from the grave of the Witch of Yazoo City. The site remains one of the city’s most visited attractions, especially around Halloween, and a popular field trip for local schoolchildren. The cemetery is part of downtown Yazoo City’s Triangle Cultural Center, which includes Mississippi’s oldest library; a literary walkway with names of writers from Yazoo County; and the Sam B. Olden Yazoo Historical Society Museum, featuring memorabilia from the 1904 fire, the Great Flood of 1927, the train wreck immortalized in “The Ballad of Casey Jones,” and other local events. The museum also pays homage to Morris and other native sons and daughters: comedian Jerry Clower, actress Stella Stevens, Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, nfl Hall of Famer Willie Brown, and motivational speaker Zig Ziglar. About fifteen miles southeast of Yazoo City toward Jackson, blues tourists often make a pilgrimage to Bentonia, where a Mississippi Blues Trail marker stands in front of a humble storefront with Coca-Cola signs called The Blue Front Café. Opened in 1948 by an African American couple named Yazoo City 235 Carey and Mary Holmes, it attracted field workers who came there for buffalo fish, moonshine, haircuts, and entertainment. A distinctive style of blues music took root there, characterized by minor guitar chords and droning strings. One of its practitioners is Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, who today runs his parents’ store as a juke joint where he sometimes performs, along with other blues artists. It has in recent years been the site of the Bentonia Blues Festival held in mid-June, with concerts, food, and games. Though Yazoo City is not a culinary destination, there are a handful of unpretentious places where you can...