Hello America

So, my penultimate stop, the vibrant boom town of Cleveland Mississippi, home of Delta State University, my improbable friend Ian (it's not improbable that we're friends, he is just improbable as a human, in all respects), and precious little else. Cleveland is a small, entirely note worthless grouping of approximately twelve thousand individuals, 2600 of them enrolled college students. Not much happened while I was here- mainly I spent my time with Ian's roommates, a motley crew whose total numbers constantly shifted (it took me about a week to nail down whom of those who consistently spent the night actually lived there in a legally binding way- there's this general crowd of about half a dozen folk who sleep over at least several nights a week, sometimes in a bedroom and sometimes on the couch), and who have the standard collegiac appetite for intoxicants and video games. Outside of reliving my glory years as a wastrel on Ian's couch, there were only a few events/people who brook notice.

Mr. Ian

Ian's father also lives out there, but in a town with a population of about eight (that's not a joke either). Mr. Ian is a certified Southern Culture expert, and immediately upon my arrival drove me here:

Which is awesome, but had absolutely no segue or planning at all. Ian wasn't even around, his dad just drove up and asked if I wanted to go for a ride, which could be creepy in other circumstances, but with one of Ian's clan is merely predictably random. In addition to unannounced trips to presumed graves, we also took a couple of better planned trips out to Mr. Ian's house, which is an old sharecropper's house that has seen little revamping since it's construction save running water. We spent the evening in the time honoroed southern tradition of shooting shit with guns, then drinking and playing with fire all night.

Fire preeeetttyyy

The Pig Poke

Apparently in an effort to impress on me how wierd the south actually is, DSU threw a yearly festival, called the Pig Poke, a day or two after I arrived. The Pig Poke is a thing where all the well-off white people in town slaughter everything porcine in a twenty mile radius and cook it in a field, while drinking poorly and dancing unfortunately.

The South is weird

Turns out that the Greek system is huge in southern college culture, to the point that even the band nerds have their own frat. In addition to being super weird by Yankee standards (yes, they still call us that), it seems to have driven the preppy frats to even further levels of bro-ness in order to compensate. That means that shit like this is pretty prevalent;

Pictured: still a thing here.

La Cabana

No words. Should have sent...a poet

If, for some godawful reason you ever find yourself in Cleveland Mississippi, perhaps through some sort of self-imposed exile or as the result of a catastrophic bus crash that leaves you stranded and paraplegic, this is the one shining bastion of comfort. Two for one margaritas on happy hour, an extensive vegetarian menu of items as large as a small child, and a staff that drinks on the clock. Nuff said.

As a final comment on Cleveland, allow me to show you where Ian and his roomies went to pay rent;

I'm not kidding.

After ten days in college town limbo, the Ian's and I drove the four hours to New Orleans, and the first city I've spent more than a couple weeks in since June.

Final Thoughts: Mississippi

This isn't the first time I've visited the delta, so it wasn't much of a revelation, but the South is definitely a different kind of place from the rest of this country.  When I first got to Greenwood (the closest train station to Cleveland), I had to find a laundromat before I got in the Ian's car (there was a bedbug scare in Brooklyn- apparently that's a thing now). I ended up chatting with a guy hanging outside of a sandwich shop he owned with his brother, who gave me a ride to a laundromat run by a friend of his. All this started because I waved at a stranger as I was walking pass. This is not a thing that happens literally anywhere else on this continent. The south is super weird, and often uncomfortably xenophobic in every conceivable manner, but for every off-putting, gut-wrenching offense to equality and humanity that you find here (and you find them whether you're looking or not) there's a polar opposite trait, equal in intensity but on the other side of the scale, possessing a strangely magnetic charisma. This polarity makes it difficult to decide how I actually feel about this region, but certainly keeps it from being dull.