Road Dogs U.S.: Where the Southern Cross the Dog

“Lord, I’m going to Rosedale, gon’ take my rider by my side”.

We headed to Rosedale, driving on the Great River Road. In the 1930’s and 40’s the town was typical river town- with juke joints, loose women and bootleggers serving the riverboat men. Today, it’s another Delta town with boarded up storefronts and no activity.

South of Rosedale is the Delta town of Greenville. It's claim to fame-- the place where the levee burst causing the Mississippi River Flood of 1927.Floodwater covered 26,000 square miles of the Delta, killing hundreds and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.
Today, the city is fairly lifeless. We read all the warnings about the infamous “Nelson Street”- once the prime commercial street of Greenville’s black community- now most of the businesses are abandoned and daytime is definitely the preferred travel time.

At the far end of Nelson Street is Doe’s Eat Place.

Normally open at 5:30 PM, we saw the door open and peeked in.

The cook was there getting ready for the evening crowd and told us that we could order some homemade tamales for take-out. They were the best tamales we have ever had. It’s hard to believe that this grocery store, turned restaurant is listed as one of the 10 best steakhouses in the country. You walk in the front door and think that you’ve accidentally walked into the kitchen. The sign on the refrigerator:

After a great meal, we wandered over to Walnut Street – where they claim the live music scene has been revived – we found Jim’s Café.

It’s a local meeting place with walls covered with photos of Greenville in better times. Jim not only serves up good food but also makes his own hot sauce, bottled in old quart whiskey bottles.

"Jim"
Heading east, we found the town of Leland – home of Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets—and the Highway 61 Blues Museum (closed, like most everything else in town).

Leland Murals
Just outside town we found the gravesite of James “Son” Thomas – a Delta blues musician (and grave digger and sculptor). His tombstone inscription was fabulous: “Give me Beef-steak when I’m hungry, Whiskey when I’m dry, Pretty Women when I’m living, and Heaven when I die”.

B.B. King is the biggest thing to happen to little Indianola. He was actually born outside of Itta Bena, but moved to Indianola at the age of 13 and they have embraced him as their favorite son. They’ve put a mural at B.B.’s favorite busking spot when he was an unknown teenager singing gospel and blues.

He learned quickly that singing blues earned him more tips. In 2008, the B.B. King Museum and Interpretive Center opened. Part of the museum is in the brick cotton gin where B.B. used to work.

It was getting late and we’d been on the road most of the day, but we had one last stop to make in Moorhead—“Where the Southern Cross the Dog”.

According to blues legend, W.C. Handy first heard this line at the Tutwiler train station in 1903. It refers to the intersection of the Southern and the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley railroads. The Yazoo and Mississippi Valley was known as the Yazoo Delta (nicknamed the “YD” or “Yellow Dog”).