Money Road

There's nothing like it in all the world. Scenic, lonely, dangerous. No where else I’ve been do you go from town to country in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, and not even see the change coming. When you drive north over the Tallahatchie Bridge off Grand Blvd, you drive out of one world and into another, literally and metaphorically, all in the span of two tenths of a mile.

On the south side of the bridge is town: small, Southern, upper-middle class, at least as far as the boulevard goes. On the south end of the boulevard are old, stately homes, several of which have appeared in movies, and a few more that ought to. The northern end of Greenwood, Mississippi’s prettiest street is lined with newer houses and on the extreme north east corner sits Bankston Elementary, a light tan brick building that houses 303 students during its academic year. Me and my friend Poot were once among them.

And then the bridge. It is an arched concrete road that hides one’s view of the other side until one traverses the tree lined Tallahatchie River via the bridge. Then Grand Blvd spills onto Money Road which winds through seventeen-miles of cotton, corn, and soybean fields, through woods, besides river banks, and past an old frame church and cemetery that is the final resting place of the musical legend, Robert Johnson. Although many area residents know nothing of our celebrity, as a frequent runner of the road, my workouts have often been interrupted by people from all over the world who ask me in broken English, “Where is church, Robert Johnson church?"

To local officials it is County Road 518, but ever since I was a little boy, the only thing I heard it called was Money Road after what is now a little ghost town ten miles north of Greenwood.

As a child my dad hauled me up and down that stretch of asphalt in a 1966 Chevrolet pickup truck, six cylinders with a three on the tree. We fished the McIntyre Scatters, a swampy lake my dad seemed to think was heaven itself. We caught a lot of fish, and we caught them at first on poles and trot-lines, later on rod-n-reels.  Sometimes we spent the night at the landing so we could run the lines several times before daybreak.

I remember an old, leaky, wooden boat dad owned when he first started taking me fishing. I remember him speaking of the day when we would have a motor and be able to run the boat, with the aid of a mechanical engine, onto the shore. That dream came true in the form of a three horse power Johnson outboard that moved us slowly but surely over the water for many years.

In those days Money was a real town, small but a town nonetheless. That old, white, closed up building on the left when you drive into town from the south was open then and the sign read: Ben Roy’s Service. There we bought gas, drinks, moon pies, crickets, and ice.

Many years later but still a long time ago, while working in the pest control business, I did some work for Ben Roy. I remember his wife, who was in her eighties, if a day, being so incredibly attractive I could only stare and wonder. That was the first and only time in my whole life I saw a woman her age that I thought was physically beautiful. She was stunning, and I remember thinking how could Ben Roy and the little town of Money contain such a creature? How was it that I had never heard of her? Why was it not a proverb: as pretty as Ben Roy’s bride. How had Hollywood failed to find her? Why did Ben Roy not have to battle hordes of smitten suitors for his wife’s attention? How did he keep her safe from predators, from dangerous men? It remains a mystery in my mind until this day.

Ben Roy’s wife in some ways is the manner of life and history here in our Mississippi Delta. An incredible beauty crouches unexpectedly, often hidden from common view, sometimes crusted over with the mundane, with the dead foliage of a past both fascinating and repulsive. Some of that history took place in Money itself.

The beauty comes in part from the land. The unending flatness can at times be dreary, especially in winter when the fields are bare. Spring time, however, with the greening of trees, the plowing of cropland, and the busyness of tractors brings a charm, a familiarity to the landscape that is somehow charming and comforting. We survived the winter; we plant in hope. Animals are a frequent sight if one walks, runs, bikes, or drives the road: deer, raccoon, possums, coyotes, squirrels, and fox, to name just a few, can appear without notice and disappear just as quickly. Elvis is occasionally seen walking the flat highways around here but always disappears when an automobile stops to offer a ride. Really, I hear this, but I have never heard of a Bigfoot sighting in our parts. Go figure.

The very things that help display beauty, however, also contribute to the area’s ugliness. In my far too infrequent travels, I have noticed that road kill occurs everywhere, but it shows itself nowhere like here in the Delta. One can scarcely cover a mile without crossing paths with death. There are of course always the small animals who fail to get to the other side, but larger animals like deer are often mutilated and their broken carcasses are smeared, scattered, and spewed along the roadways. Recently I saw a large, black hog, wild I presume, lying in a state of semi-decay in the bar pit not far from town. Buzzards, which most of my life lived only in the hill region of our state, now soar in the sky above, seeking carcasses but failing, even with the help of coyotes, to clean the pavement of mutilated death.

But the ugliness of this region goes far beyond the unfortunate accidental deaths of animals, large and small. Mississippi’s history is stained with a racist past that inflicted damaged on the bodies and psyches of both blacks and whites. The blacks of course suffered the most by far, first under slavery and then under a Jim Crow South that kept them in povertr, deprivation, and shame. This very road was the site of one of the ugliest of our sins. Even today, on my frequent ramblings on the road, I am sometimes stopped by motorists and asked, “Where is the Emmitt Till store?” 

The store partly stands, partly lies, in ruins long neglected and allowed to slowly collapse upon itself. I can remember when it was still open. I forget what it was called then, but I ate lunch there one day many years ago when out working for All-Delta Pest Control. The building’s lack of upkeep sadly betrays the area’s lack of guardianship over its own history.

For most white people, it represents a shameful past they were not a part of and long, long ago tired of being assaulted with and judged over. They, we, just want to move on. It’s a new world, Mississippi has changed, let’s not look back.

From what I can tell, African-Americans seem to fall into one of two categories concerning this and other horrors from our past. Some act like it happened yesterday and all whites are guilty of all crimes committed against their forefathers. Thankfully, this position is not as pronounced as it once was, but it still shows itself far too often. Others, judging from the students I teach at MDCC, know nothing of Robert Johnson or Emmitt Till or hardly anything concerning their, our, history. Both positions trouble me.

I like to think I stand somewhere in the middle, but probably I’m not a good judge of myself. I must confess, when it comes to Robert Johnson, I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Is he famous for being famous? Or is he famous for being extraordinary in some way. I bought a CD of him once and eagerly listened to every song. My confusion remains. Nevertheless, whatever he is famous far, he is still our celebrated enigma and when I teach Film as Literature, the first thing we do as a class is make a field trip to his marker and gravesite. He provides an wonderful introduction to the Faustian Bargain.

When it comes to Emmitt Till, well, that really is shameful even though I was about one-year old when it occurred. Like most of the other white folks around here, I would like to forget it ever happened, but I know that is not the proper response either. It is important to remember the darkness of the human heart as a guard against our baser nature.

It’s our history, whether we like it or not, and we should have some familiarity with it, with them, with the good and the bad of our past and present. And although I know Robert Johnson and Emmitt Till are just a part of the history of that road, when I think about it, I realize how ignorant I am of even some of the rest of that history. Why is the town called Money? Who settled it and when? How long has that church, Little Zion MB, been there? What about that place called Craigside? What was along this path during the Civil War? Who lived along this road and cleared the forests and fought the beasts and hacked out a living? Who established the plantations we now know the names of like Wildwood, and Star of the West? Speaking of Star of the West, that plantation takes its name from a Union ship captured by the Confederates during the Civil War and sunk in a bend of the Tallahatchie River on the outskirts of Greenwood in an attempt to prevent Ulysses Grant from travelling the river to Vicksburg.

Questions abound as do the history and ignorance we Deltans live immersed in daily often unawares. Much of this history is sad, some of it is ugly, but a bit of it is just as fascinating, beautiful, and as enigmatic as Ben Roy’s wife.