Vicksburg or Bust May 24, 2011

Vicksburg or Bust

© Gordon McCall, May 24, 2011

They tell us hwy 61 is closed by flooding from the backed up Yazoo River but we’re determined to get there. This morning in the hotel coffee and continental breakfast area a young man approached me and said he was sure he’d seen me before. We determined that he hadn’t and it was simply the doppelganger affect. There are other people out there who look like me. Turns out Marcus is the new assistant basketball coach at Delta State and we exchanged coordinates. Also discovered he’d been in the military for 4 years and is a Christian evangelist. A nice guy who was raised in Biloxi, Mississippi and he gave us invaluable directions to avoid the hwy 61 flood and get to Vicksburg – Hwy 8, 49, 12, 220 but it’s a long haul. It’s lucky we took 49 east, we found out later they closed 49 west. Oddly enough both 49 east and west take you to the same place.

Rockpoint Plantation – farm country – very rural, very much economically depressed.

Today is the 50^th Anniversary of the Freedom Riders. The Mississippi Governor finally recognized them and apologized for their bad treatment by the state of Mississippi 50 years ago. Giant fields of corn, quite mature for May. Massive farm fields with huge irrigation apparatus.

Sunny, very hot and humid – in the 90’s.

Crossed the Yazoo River near Greenwood – it's level seemed normal. Flooding must be downstream.

Tula, Mississippi – 11:45 a.m. – a tiny, depressed rural town. We pass a chain gang of about 15 prisoners walking toward us on either side of the main street collecting refuse from the streets. They stare at us with some curiosity, as do we at them.

We’re in a very poor part of the state. It reminds me of the movie, Cool Hand Luke with Paul Newman.

12:35 p.m. – 5 miles from Jackson, Mississippi, the capital. Country has turned from massive farm fields to wealthy, horse country, McMansions, golf clubs. More hilly and forested. We notice the deadly imported vine that is covering everything in site called kadzu, I think. It’s scary to see what it’s doing to the landscape. Apparently exactly where we are between Jackson and Yazoo City is the worst outbreak in the US. We seem to have just driven by it.

2 p.m. – we make it toVicksburg, population, approximately 26, 000. Talked to Deborah at visitor and convention bureau. She tells us about a special town hall meeting to be held by the mayor at the auditorium tonight. Also tells us where the Red Cross shelter is.

Later, when we arrive at the Red Cross shelter in a local church, we discover there’s only a few people staying there. But the disaster has displaced 800 families. Where are they? We find out later that the character of this town is very different from Tunica. It seems that here in Vicksburg people operate more on rumor than fact, they stay away from town hall meetings, there are those among them who are stealing life saving items like generators from one another and more. On the other hand, we also discover later on that there are some amazing people giving way above and beyond their resources and the call of duty to help others.

Weather is still hot and humid – incredibly so. But it is the deep south, after all. We’re running out of time so we plan Vicksburg as our deepest point south in the trip. Tomorrow we’ll visit the famous battle field on the way out of town.

We eat lunch in Eddie Monsoor’s, inside the Biscuit Company Restaurant, on the waterfront near the Mississippi Valley Railroad Company that is half submerged in water. We talk to a local police officer, Walter Harris, and he tells us that no one is allowed on the river or back to their homes except first responders and commercial fisherman. Snakes, poisonous water moccasins and alligators have begun to move into areas along the riverbank where they’re not normally found. We also discover that a man drowned right here last week.

I ask Officer Harris if we can interview him for our story. He tells us we’ll have to get permission from the police chief.

We walk the six or seven steamy blocks to the Vicksburg police Dept. and meet up with Chief Walter Armstrong, an amazingly spic and span, chiseled body, be-medaled police officer. He is a true professional but, also we discover, a nice man who gives us a great interview about the conditions in the town and what lies ahead. The indomitable spirit of the community is present in his demeanor and discussion. Inspiring.

At 6 p.m. we arrive that the town hall meeting. It proves to be hugely informative, full of character and color, and we manage several great interviews with officials and people directly affected by the flood.

Our final interview of the evening was perhaps the most inspirational – Dr. Erves, a retired educator with a Phd in education was there on behalf of an organization called Helping Hands. They reach out to people in times of disaster. She was there specifically for that purpose but the real story for us was that of her 90 year old mother. Her mother has been displaced from her life long home and homestead that has been in the family for generations. She doesn’t understand she can never go back to that home and way of life. She keeps talking about when she’ll go back and wanting to know how soon she can get there. She had lived in this old mobile home in the woods on their 40 acres for years and when they tried to move the mobile home to higher ground in the days leading up to the flood it broke apart. Everything was lost except some of her belongings. She’s now staying with Dr. Erves sister but she thinks that’s only temporary. It’s not.

The moment that brought tears to all of our eye was when Dr. Erves told us her mother goes down to the flooded river every day and simply looks out at the high water.  It seems to bring her comfort of some kind.

There were hopeful people at the meeting, people with a never-say-die attitude ad also angry people, particularly angry at FEMA for not giving them enough relief money. I’ll tell you one thing, I never want our family to be in this situation. The red tape is incredible and many families are denied relief. Each case has its own unique circumstances of course but some decisions appear unjust.

It’s going to be a long recovery period in Vicksburg, after the media, the relief agencies and researchers like us leave. The community will have to look after themselves completely. Thankfully they have a great young mayor, amazing people in the community and a good police chief. And, as one woman told us – God will take care of the rest, he always does.

And yet again, no one we talked to blames the river. Dr. Erves hated the river when she was teenager and was in the 1973 flood but she tells us that's because she was more interested in teenage interests like being a cheerleader, boys and hairdos than the more serious aspects of the flood. For her, the flood was more a major inconvenience than a tragedy at that time in her life. Now, of course, she sees it from an adult perspective and realizes the river is never to blame. It's unpredictability is part of its nature and people have to take that risk into account always. And as for anger at the Army Core of Engineers, it's not there. In Vicksburg they celebrate the levee system, which the Army Core has painstakingly built over decades. It’s doing what it’s intended to do holding back the river, even with this record flood. Now everyone is praying more bad weather and a tropical depression weather system don’t settle in over the south. This could cause more flooding and cause breaches in the levees. There is still a possibility of one of the major levees breaking. That is a very scary thought, especially now that we've been on and beside some of the levees ourself. A fragile system but one that is ingenious in its engineering. However, it seems that Mother Nature’s calling the shots all the way on this one.

Tonight we found out 129 died in the Joplin tornado and 10 died in the Oklahoma tornado yesterday. And the summer’s only beginning.


9 p.m. we head back to our Motel 6 near the battleground, meet in the hotel bar for a drink and share our thoughts and emotions about this powerful day. We now have the bookends for our story - the very personal Tunica stories and the public relief effort of the town hall meeting. In between are hundreds of indelible discoveries and moments of hypnotic power.