The Journey Back

After my blues trip took me from Texas through Arkansas to Memphis, Tennessee, and from there down to Jackson, Mississippi, I thought that the journey back would be a bit of an anti-climax, particularly since Interstate-20 accounts for almost all of the 400 miles to Dallas. Interstate highways are great to get you where you want to go quickly, if you don’t mind the boredom of endless driving punctuated only by the occasional truck stop.

Whenever a major highway crosses a state line, there is always a tourist information centre close at hand. So, when I entered Louisiana, I pulled into one. I asked them, as I often do, “If you only had one day in the state, what would be the one place you’d have to visit?” And, again as usual, they were stumped. But I noticed on the huge map on the desk that Route 80 shadowed I-20 all the way across Louisiana, and passed through all the small towns. This held much more promise, and, in spite of a longer journey, I side-stepped onto Rte 80 at the first available opportunity.

Tallulah mural

"Expect the Unexpected"

I have a particular penchant for collecting murals. Every small town seems to have at least one, though sometimes you have to search carefully for them. I found one in the first town I encountered, Tallulah. I also found a very aptly named beauty shop. Rte 80 follows the railroad, which is no great surprise, because this is how these towns came to be here in the first place. And many of the towns are in a state of neglect – I’d never really thought about it before, but I imagine that this is the result of the town being bypassed by the highways. Motels, cafés, shops and gas-stations for whom through-traffic was once the lifeblood have been boarded up one by one until the town is sucked dry, devoid of their livelihood. The coin of progress is definitely two-sided.

Mural in Delhi

From Tallulah, the road took me through Delhi, which, despite its dereliction, sported the quite avant-garde Anding Thompson Plaza, complete with mural, in its centre.

The next town was Rayville, the “White Gold Capital of the South”. White gold is otherwise known as cotton. Here I found an interesting mural that looked almost chalk-like, enticingly labeled “Riddle 97”. Since Riddle seems to be a local name, I think that this refers to the artist, rather than being an invitation to solve some carefully concealed puzzle.

Chalk mural in Rayville

Barber shop in Start

Soon after Rayville, I encountered Start, the home of “Country Music Great Tim McGraw”. Whatever you might think of Tim McGraw (assuming you’ve heard of him) or country music, he has the enviable distinction of being married to another country singer, Faith Hill. However, I don’t think he gets his hair cut locally.

It was near here that I encountered a road-side fruit stand, and stopped to buy a deliciously ripe cantaloupe. $2.50, but I gave them $3 on condition that I could take a photograph (and they were more than happy to oblige).

Fruit stand st the roadside

 Beyond Monroe, the landscape is very much more built up, and not as sparsely populated as the eastern half of the state. At the gambling capital of Shreveport, I crossed back on to I-20 to complete the journey to Dallas.

Small town America is still one of my favourite places to visit, even if I think I might not actually want to live there. With mobile phones, wireless internet, and the onslaught of technology, it may not be around for too much longer.

PS. In case you’re interested, the larger murals are composed of, typically, five or six separate photographs “stitched” together using the free autostich package, available from http://www.photo-freeware.net/autostitch.php.

Hany's funeral

Last Sunday, a work colleague died of cancer. Today, I attended his funeral, held at the Coptic Orthodox Church of St Mary in Colleyville, Texas – he was originally from Egypt, where Christians are in the minority, and apparently persecuted. I don’t know very much about him – he was a policeman in Egypt, and came to the States essentially as a refugee; he’s worked for American Airlines for at least 6 years, but got worried after the layoffs associated with 9/11, so that he took on a second job managing property, which subsequently burgeoned to the extent that it provided more income than his “day job”; he was married, but relatively recently, and had no children; he was told, last July, that he had six months to live, but insisted on coming to work every day that his visits to the hospital in Houston would allow; he didn’t tell his parents (in Egypt) about his prognosis because they are old and frail; he had an uncle in Seattle; he was mostly easy-going, and usually smiling, except when discussing political issues, when he would become animated, and, sometimes, strident – he had first-hand experience of a society which was not the democracy that we take for granted.

The church was not, as I had imagined, instantly distinguishable from the numerous other churches in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. It was a modern building, with the plasma television screens at either side of the altar looking out of place against the Christian icons that filled the walls, as did the mobile phones just visible underneath the priests’ vestments. The air was clouded with the pungent smell of incense, in spite of the air conditioning; and the atmosphere, reverent, in spite of the priests’ constant back-and-forth between the altar area and the “vestry”.

The service itself was conducted in Arabic, Greek, Latin and English, switching smoothly (though with reason unknown to me) between each. I was unable to follow most of the service, which was largely chanted, sometimes with the musical accompaniment of a lone pair of cymbals, until the Nicene Creed (“We believe in one God the Father Almighty …”), spoken in English, provided an anchor.

Maybe it’s a cultural thing, and maybe they have a different way of grieving – for us (western Christians), a funeral service provides closure, a path to acceptance, and to moving on. Music is an almost essential component – it moves us to the tears that are an inevitable part of grief; the eulogy is also important – we need to feel uplifted by happy thoughts, happy memories of a life lived to the full. Neither of these are part of (what I assume is) a traditional Coptic funeral service.

After a service that lasted 90 minutes, most of which required the participants to be standing, after an interminable sermon that preached Christianity in spite of the fact that many of the congregation were of a different faith, after minimal mention of anything personal relating to the deceased, I left feeling empty and unfulfilled.

I will always remember Hany walking into the teamroom, his chubby face beaming from ear to ear, happy to be at work, happy to be alive.

Sulphur Springs

For once, I’m almost speechless. I started the day heading towards Paris, TX, but got sidetracked along the way to visit Sulphur Springs. This is a typical example of what can happen to the downtown areas of “small-America” when Walmart moves in. I don’t want to single out Walmart, because there are plenty of others – they just happen to be the largest and most influential. I’d love to be able to say: “Thank you very much, Walmart, Braums, Pizza Hut, CVS, McDonald’s, Popeye’s, BlockBuster, Subway, Dollar General, Sonic, Brookshire’s, Burger King, Lowe’s, Starbucks, Family Dollar, Home Depot … and the horse you all rode in on.” But the truth is that not one of us escapes responsibility for the rape of our towns and countryside.

My photography is functional, at best, but I present the following montage of downtown Sulphur Springs to tell their own story of a town that has had its soul cut out, and lacks the moral fibre (and probably the finances) to do anything about it.

The courthouse looks ok, though, doesn’t it?