"Learning about Mississippi from the outside, you never get the whole picture," she wrote. "There's a lot about Mississippi you are not taught in school, which tends to focus on the negative."
No joke. Bill Cosby once said that when he heard Mississippi mentioned, all he thought of was dirty pickup trucks. The Magnolia state regularly fights Arkansas and Louisiana to stay out of the economic and educational cellar. We are No. 1 in something – obesity.
I could go off on a tangent about how many of Mississippi's problems – many of the South's problems – are the heavy residue of Reconstruction. But I'm here to focus on the positive, people.
Bo Diddley just died. OK, that's not very positive-sounding. But the McComb native is one of several musical geniuses from this state. B.B. King, Robert Johnson, Elvis, Tammy Wynette, Conway Twitty, Jerry Lee Lewis, Marty Stuart, 3 Doors Down – we've produced them in all genres. Except New Age.
Athletes? Jerry Rice, Walter Payton, Archie Manning, Brett Favre, Chris Jackson, Ruthie Bolton, etc.
Writers? Oh man. Faulkner, Grisham, Welty, Foote, Locke (ha!).
We are a gifted bunch, and we're smarter than we get credit for. Ole Miss churns out Rhodes Scholars like MSU students churn butter (sorry, couldn't resist). And our women are stunning.
Do we have dirty trucks? Of course. And many of them have really big mud tires. The better to run over Yankee snobs.
2 comments:
Hey Brad--
You can't claim Jerry Lee Lewis. He's from Ferriday, along with his cousin Jimmy Swaggart. You can claim their other cousin, Mickey Gilley (of Urban Cowboy fame). He was born across the river in Natchez.
Hmm. I guess Lewis is in the Mississippi Music Hall of Fame (or whatever it's called) because he's lived here so long. Poor reporting on my part. :{
How's the baby? Send more pictures.
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