Atlantica - 01.02.2006, Side 47

one involved in the recovery effort
has an extra two hours on the road.
RECOGNIZING MISSISSIPPI
MASTERS
I follow the evacuation route north
into Mississippi, switching talk radio
channels between heart-breaking
broadcasts of the Katrina victims’
testimony in front of Congress and
a bewildering debate over the lack
of the use of the word Christmas at
Wal-Mart.
If I have the Northerner’s ten-
dency to stereotype Southerners,
listening to eleven hours of talk
radio on the Mississippi interstate
hasn’t helped. By the time I pull
into Oxford, Mississippi, I am afraid
to ask the locals for their opinions
on New Orleans. Still, eating at a
hip-as-can-be southern fusion res-
taurant in Oxford’s town square, I
broach the subject. The response
is a profound sense of guilt from
the locals, and an invitation to the
evening’s New Orleans benefit show
– one in a series of benefits the town
has played host to. It turns out the
opinions of the interstate do not
mirror that of the towns throughout
the south.
In Oxford, home to Ole Miss and
William Faulkner’s home, Rowan
Oaks, I’m reminded again of the
1927 flood and of the effect that had
on Southern culture. A bookseller
tells me about the original “exodus
WITNESSED a
AT L A N T I CA 45
Few Led Zeppelin fans realize that “When the Levee Breaks” was an angry
rebuttal by blues singers Kansas Joe McKoy and Memphis Minnie in the
1930s to leaders’ failures to evacuate the poorest of the South.
Mississippi native Robert Johnson sang about emigration after the
Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.
042-047 New Orleans.indd 45 21.2.2006 12:59:13