The Blues

The Mississippi Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel in Memphis and ends on Catfish Row in Vicksburg.

- David Cohn. Where I was Born and Raised.  The Delta Land

Not all of the cenotaphs in town are of Civil War locations.  Vicksburg is also on the Blues trail - it is located at the very bottom of the Mississippi Delta region that made the blues famous.  Washington Street, the road that passes through the middle of downtown, is the famous Highway 61.  There are a number of markers in Vicksburg that call out famous locations and people: Marcus Bottom, which is a juke joint in one of the poorest areas of town; the Red Tops, a local blues/jazz/pop band from the 50s (formerly known as the Rebops), and Willie Dixon, one of the most famous of the bluesmen to come from the area.

"Willie Dixon, often called "the poet laureate of the blues" was born in Vickburg on July 1, 1915.  As a songwriter, producer, arranger, and bass player, Dixon shaped the sound of Chicago blues in the 1950s and '60s with songs such as "Seventh Son," Little Red Rooster," "Hoochie Coochie Man," "My Babe," and "Wang Dang Doodle."  Dixon traced many of his works back to peoms and songs he wrote as a youth in Vicksburg."

I don't know about you.  But suddenly, I have a need to hear Wang Dang Doodle.  Howling Wolf does it justice....

The more I looked around town, the more of the Blues Highway markers I saw.  The one honoring the Red Tops is located downtown in front of The Strand - an old-timey movie theatre that doubles as a community theatre.  The marker details some of the highlights:

"Between 1953 and 1974 the Vicksburg-based Red Tops entertained legions of dancers with their distinctive mix of blues, jazz and pop.  Under the strict direction of drummer ad manager Walter Osbourne, the group developed a devoted fan base across Mississippi and neighboring states.  Most of the ten original members had played with an earlier Vicksburg band, the Rebops.  Vocalist Rufus McKay's rendition of "Danny Boy was a crowd favorite."

Each of the markers provides a little extra background on the performer or the location: the famous performance, the recordings they made famous, the first place they performed.  So the nearby town of Bivona gets a shout-out for its Sequoia Club where the Red Tops performed.  And the one single that they recorded: 'Sewanee River Rock/Hello, Is That You' (Sky) recorded in 1957 in Memphis.  

The Blue Room was a community center.  Not in the normal sense of the word, but that is what it was.  It had a ballroom, restaurant, casino, and rooms - both for guests and for the owner, Tom Wince, Jr (and his family, which included seven wives and 14 kids - but obviously not all at the same time).  All of the blues greats apparently came through there to perform - from BB King to T-Bone Walker and Muddy Waters. 

Now, the building is torn down, and there is a nice gazebo on the spot.  And nothing but eroded bricks and a blue cenotaph to mark the location. 

There is a website that provides information on the markers along the trail.  The link: http://www.msbluestrail.com/ provides good information about blues locations and performers across the state.  More markers everywhere I go....

Locations of the markers:

Marcus Bottom marker: Halls Ferry Road at Military Ave

Blue Room marker: Clay St at Mulberry Dr.

Willie Dixon marker: South Street and Willie Dixon Way

Red Tops marker: Clay Street and Walnut

61 Highway marker: Hwy 61 and Jackson St

Douglas "Sopwith"

I love cemeteries.  I find them peaceful, and I love the beauty with which people honor their dead.

I don't, however, ordinarily spend a lot of time in Confederate cemeteries.

This one was worth it.

OK, so before the Civil War, Jefferson Davis advocated the use of camels as beasts of burden for use in the arid area of the US West.  It made sense, as horses were dying for lack of water (presaging the water supply issues of today.  But I digress....).  He obtained funding for his project, and bought camels in 1855 (more complete story here).

Camels don't get on well with other animals, and the camel project was a failure.  The last of the camels, Old Douglas, ended up seeing action in Vicksburg, having gained mascot status for Company A of the Forty Third Mississippi Infantry - who subsequently became known as the Camel Regiment.

The Vicksburg Siege lasted 90 days, and during that time, one of the casualties was Old Douglas, who fell to a Union sniper bullet.  There is some dissension about what happened next, whether Douglas was slaughtered and eaten by hungry Confederate soldiers, or whether he ended up on a Union plate.  But his cemetery marker (which is empty, in true cenotaph style) marks an empty grave, in either case.

I ran across the reference to the marker on the site http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/41405, and found it exactly where the site sent me.  And even Kathe got excited, taking pictures to send to our family in Dubai.

Location of Old Douglas' gravestone.

Kathe had not even been to this side of Clay Street in Vicksburg.
The cemetery is quite lovely.

I believe I will save an ebay search for "Old Douglas" and see if any of the bones ever come up for sale.  Even a fake one would be fun to have....

CS Cumming's Brigade

Driving home yesterday, and saw a nearly invisible red plaque at the top of the hill.

Proudly, prominently displayed monument.  No, seriously. If you squint you can see it....

This one is located on Confederate Drive, a windy road that roughly parallels the interstate.  Everything else in town seems to follow a decent grid, or at least a pie-wedge.  But Confederate seems to have been created for an amble.  The houselots are irregularly shaped - some quite large, and there are some beautiful homes on the street.  And a number of them have red bronze markers on the front lawn (red markers are Confederate markers.)  I have yet to wander into any of the back yards to see whether there are markers there as well.  Vicksburg has a bit of a history with guns...

So as I was driving along, I spotted the sign, unreadable from the road, and went to investigate.

It is fun to look through the history of groups like this, figure out where they had been assigned, look at who the leaders were, and discover a little more about them.  In the case of the 39th Georgia, there is a neat website run by someone who had a family member who fought in the 39th, and it gives some interesting background.

The end result was the same as everyone else on the 'red' side of the line.  The 39th, under the command of Brigadier General Alfred Cumming, surrendered on the 4th of July 1863, one year before the end of the conflict.  Four days later they were paroled back to Georgia, and were eventually exchanged (exchange rate discussed here).

Cumming's Brigade was also memorialized in a sign immediately adjacent. I love the vagueness of the text,  Something happened here, with some people from some brigade, and it might or might not have been with a piece of unknown artillery.  But we might be wrong.  And it might not have been here.



But we have it commemorated in perpetuity.

"We're not entirely sure". 

The location surprised me.  I suspected that when I got to the top of the hill (puff, pant, wheeze) that it would be a nice little plateau, with a wide flat area extending back into the woods.  Instead, what I found was a knife's ridge, only ten feet wide, with a steep drop on either side.  A nicely defensible position.  I am just not real clear which way I would have been defending.

On the ridge, looking down on the traffic on a Friday afternoon

Like many of the other locations I have seen with historical markers in town, the area is nicely turfed and sodded, with regular grasscutting as maintenance.  All around it are woods.  So the area is specifically cared for only because of the marker. The overhead from google shows how the area of the marker is carved out from the surrounding woods.  It amuses me, but it also means that I get a nice clear signal when there is a marker.  Just follow the green carpet into the woods.

Or maybe that ends up at the house made of gingerbread.  Not entirely sure....

Military Park

3,521 rounds of ammo fired in 90 days.

Remi, Gabi, Brittany, Kathe and I went to the Military park this past weekend.  When I started the blog, I consciously decided that writing the blog about the monuments in a park where there are more than 1800 monuments is probably not the way to go.  If you want the description of that park, go check out the National Park Service website.  I focused instead on the monuments outside of the park.

But the park is incredible, and I would be doing a disservice if I did not pay at least passing homage to the incredible remains and the memorials.  The work that people have done to recreate the sense of the battlefield is simply amazing.

Earlier in the day, Remi and I had been running the streets, and drove on a road that passed through the park.  Deep woods on either side.  We talked about what it would have been like to try and fight uphill in an area you couldn't see, against an enemy that owned the high ground.

We agreed that pacifism would have been a very noble goal, and that we would have probably pursued those ends, rather than being cannon fodder.

The park is well trimmed.  The Park Service does a yeoman's job of keeping the entire site accessible by beating back the wilderness that encroaches at every opportunity.  I repeated my statement of fact that the fields are a new thing. Original battle would have been done in the woods.

And then had to retract my statement.  A very little bit of research showed me wrong.  These were ag fields during the Civil War, and all the trees would have been cut down to make room for crops.  So when the battle began, the combatants would be fighting with little cover at all.

Gabi in the tunnel, heading away from the battlefield.
Photo by Brittany Beltram

Which makes the bravery even more shocking.  It also made the engineering of the attacks and the fortifications and the positioning of the cannon even more impressive.  Cannons on top of the hill, pointing downward.  Soldiers working their way up the hill, with gabions to take the impact of the cannonballs, digging trenches as they climbed the hill.  Trenches and embankments and earth moved to suit the needs of battle everywhere.  A tunnel that extended beyond a ridge to the supply lines, protecting the lines while protecting the supplies (see figure).

In the early part of the 20th Century, the states that had sent soldiers (and sailors - the biggest monument at the park is an obelisk raised in honor of the Navy) raised memorials in the park to commemorate the battle.  It is an equal opportunity memorial, with Confederate and Union monuments along a 19-mile course (although in the early 20th C, southern states were still struggling economically, and it shows in the monuments).

Location of 3d battery, where the Ohio Light Artillery had their cannons.
Almost the entire upper left quadrant of the picture is pure National Park.

The park is amazing.  It is a fantastic place for biking, walking, running, or just walking.  It is also a great place to learn about history.  The USS Cairo (pronounced Kay-Row) was recovered in the early 1960s; its museum sits next to the reconstructed ironclad, with much of its original wood still in place.  The museum houses an amazing collection of items that were recovered after the ship was rapidly abandoned after hitting a torpedo.

The layout of the entire park provides you with a sense of context that you simply cannot get from reading.

There is also a lot of nature, all around.  As we were driving around the park, there was a cedar tree that seemed to be moving...On two sides of the tree, a swarm was working to cool the hive.  And thousands of bees just covered the surface of the tree. (I LOVED that little bit.)

We had a great time, even with the grumpy NPS guy shooing us away from the Cairo ("SEVEN minutes remain for the park to be open."  "FOUR minutes remaining for the park to be open.")  The place is is serene, beautiful, and provides context for the battles and the siege for which Vicksburg is so famous.

When you come, we will go.  It is worth it.

You're standing WHERE?

Years ago, my marido David Anderson told me about research he did for his college thesis.  In it, he looked at perspective of the viewer.  Who, exactly, is seeing the monument? Where are they looking when they see it? How does that affect the nature of our interpretation of the monument?

He was looking at carved stone monuments in Maya sites.  And it poses an interesting question - what is the ruler looking at while the subjects are looking at him?  

I just didn't expect to be asking the same question in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

The image above is taken from across the street - at the local Taco Casa - on Pemberton Avenue.  Lieutenant General John Pemberton was the commander of the forces in Vicksburg during the siege, and there are a number of places in town that are named in his honor.  The picture is not terribly clear, so I will provide a close-up of what you see from the street when you drive by the bronze plaque.

That's right.  The plaque is intended to be read from the other side.

Also in the grassy area between the Newk's parking lot (a McAlister's deli kind of sandwich shop) and the beloved Taco Casa (replete with its Ty-D-Bowl blue fountain out front) is a slight rise, with a circle of carved monuments and obelisks.

You can just make out the circle of monuments in the grassy area.
The yellow pin at the top shows the location of the bronze plaque.

None of them - not the monuments nor the cenotaph -  are visible from any convenient area.

This is the point in the narrative where the hero has an opportunity to discuss the personal risks taken

Opening Salvo, Vicksburg Monuments and Cenotaphs

Cenotaph to the 1st Missouri Light Artillery.
 Located at the intersection of the I-20 Frontage Rd and Halls Ferry Road, in front of the gas station.
Where you can get any size fountain for less than a penny.

Vicksburg is lousy with monuments.  I have never lived in a place that has as many commemorative markers in so many places.  When I first came to Vicksburg, I noticed it in a place or two, here and there. Then I went to the Military Park, and drove/wandered through the more than 1300 monuments, markers, tablets and plaques.  It is overwhelming, and astonishing.

The park is no glorification of war. Nor is it a museum of horrors.  It also does not whitewash the harsh realities.  It does describe the strategies of the two sides, the ways in which they worked to achieve their objectives. It tallies the dead, and each state built monuments in the early 20th century to honor those who fought.  But the monuments are not only relegated to the National Park (meaning there are more than 1,340 of them in Vicksburg!)

Vicksburg - all of Vicksburg - was the site of one of the more decisive conflicts in the Civil War.  And now I find I can scarcely go to the grocery store without having to dodge a marker or twenty.  Sometimes they are right along the road