The 'Sip | Fall 2016

FALL 2016

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Experience a ‘Sip of the South

CEMETERY

EPITAPHS

From humor to hostility, every grave tells a tale

Return to

Pluto Author Richard Grant journeys back to the land that inspired his best-selling book

BRENNAN'S CHEF

SLADE RUSHING

Tutwiler native cooks up Southern favorites in New Orleans

Also: Tupelo Artists' Colony

• Ocean Springs LIVE • Margie's Mixing Bowl

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PHOTO BY MELANIE THORTIS

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CONTENTS

features Page 8

Richard Grant The award-winning author ventures back to the Delta land that inspired him.

COVER SHOT

Dispatches from Pluto author Richard Grant stands on the front porch of his former house in Pluto, where he lived while writing his highly acclaimed book.

Photo by Melanie Thortis

Page 18

Page 42

Tupelo Artists' Colony

Historic Cemeteries

Ke Francis helps young artists develop their craft at Hoopsnake Press.

Epitaphs honor the dead in often unusual ways.

Page 56

Page 26

Culinary Crusader Tylertown native's flare for food lands him a gig as top chef of New Orleans' legendary Brennan's.

Ocean Springs LIVE A new outdoor music series brings locals downtown to hear eclectic bands and enjoy the nightlife.

Page 36

Portrait: Charles Riles Funeral director looks back on more than 50 years of life in the business of death and dying.

Fall 2016

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CONTENTS

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departments IN EVERY ISSUE

4 « Editor’s Note

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5 « Sipmag.com 7 « Spotlight: Contributors 25 « ‘Sip Kitchen: Roasted Turnips 32 « ‘Sip Trip: Hattiesburg 50 « ‘Sip of Nature: Lantana 62 « Small-Town 'Sip 64 « The Last ‘Sip

LIFESTYLE

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14 | Blue Magnolia Films Filmmakers spotlight creative businesses and start conversations to help move Mississippi forward.

FOOD 22 | Margie's Mixing Bowl Meridian baker gets cozy with cupcakes in second location.

Contents page photo by Jeremy Murdock

LITERATURE

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34 | Beth Ann Fennelly State's poet laureate puts down roots in adopted home.

Contents page photo by Danny Klimetz

OUTSIDE 48 | Water Feature Nathan Beane builds a pond.

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MADE IN THE 'SIP 52 | Mane & Co. Bearded Clintonian offers product to maintain the mane.

MUSIC 60 | Law of Nature Legendary group continues to make music 'magic.'

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www.bcbsms.com Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi, A Mutual Insurance Company is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. ® Registered Marks of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, an Association of Independent Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans.

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EDITOR'S LETTER

from the Front Porch

"Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides."

- Lao Tzu

PHOTO BY MELANIE THORTIS

Cemeteries are beautiful and mysterious places. In true Southern "Being Dead is No Excuse" fashion, my family often spent Sundays strolling through Vicksburg's Cedar Hill Cemetery, one of the most beautiful and historic cemeteries in the state.

The majority of my (deceased) family is buried there ­— from great-great grandparents to grandparents and even my father.

Family names fill tombstones in several different sections of the hilly cemetery. I'll never forget the first time I saw my name on the grave where my great uncle, for whom I was named, is buried.

It was more than a bit surreal seeing "Lauchlin McLaurin" carved in marble under the gigantic cedar trees. As a child, visiting the cemetery offered me lessons on local history and genealogy.

Every visit to "City Cemetery," as my Vicksburg native dad always called it, connects me to my roots and heritage.

Gordon Cotton, the author of several books about historic cemeteries, lends his knowledge and humor to this issue in a special story about the unique scenes and epitaphs that fill Cedar Hill and other cemeteries across the region. The final words for many of Vicksburg’s departed give insight into lives well lived. Gordon's profile of Vicksburg undertaker Charles Riles, another local cemetery historian, highlights the business of death and dying through the eyes of a man who has truly seen it all.

Since so much of my family has taken up permanent residence in plots at Cedar Hill, Mr. Riles once joked that my sisters and I should be able to direct a funeral almost as well as he does.

Touché.

The ’Sip honors the lives of the talented and creative people of this region. After all, they make Mississippi worth celebrating.

From filmmakers and authors to artists and chefs, the following pages focus on the beautiful (and sometimes mysterious) people and places that keep us connected to who we are.

This issue celebrating life is dedicated to the newest bundle of joy in my life, my son Henry Aden Foshee Fields. Henry's name, like mine, was taken from family headstones in Cedar Hill Cemetery. He is a great example of the circle of life and love that continues for all of us.

Cheers, y'all,

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Publisher/Editor Lauchlin Fields Photography Director Melanie Thortis Consulting Editor Karen Gamble Copy Editor Olivia Foshee Associate Editor Elizabeth Grey Music Editor Jim Beaugez Outside Editor Nathan Beane Writers Gordon Cotton Kate Gregory Susan Marquez Photographers James Edward Bates Jeremy Murdock Lauren Wood Design Consultant Erin Norwood Graphic Designers Lauchlin Fields Illustrators Jamie Runnells Sally Green Proofreaders Sarah Hearn Mary Kent-Walshire Marketing/Sales Director Cortney Maury

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SPOTLIGHT

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a big thanks to this issue’s talented contributors MAGGIE INGRAM WRITER A native of McComb, Maggie started writing for her hometown newspaper at 13. She studied print journalism at the University of Mississippi and worked as a features reporter at The Enterprise-Journal and The Vicksburg Post. Maggie has had work featured in The ClarionLedger, Mississippi Christian Living and Parents and Kids Magazine. She and her husband live in Madison with their three children.

DANNY KLIMETZ PHOTOGRAPHER Based in Oxford, Danny K is an artist and self-taught photographer. A naturalborn explorer, Danny uses his photographic storytelling from small towns to bustling cities to capture moments — with skill, authenticity and wit. While he majored in geological engineering, Danny now travels the world with his photography. He also freelances for regional and national newspapers and magazines and covered President Barack Obama’s first inauguration.

cortney@thesipmag.com

Account Executive Amelia Perdomo

amelia@thesipmag.com The ‘Sip is a registered trademark of Front Porch Fodder Publishing, LLC. The ‘Sip magazine is published four times a year. Some pieces in this issue were produced in partnership with the Mississippi Arts Commission.

Owner: Lauchlin Fields 1216 National St. Vicksburg, MS 39180 601.573.9975 www.thesipmag.com editor@thesipmag.com Copyright 2016 The ‘Sip

by Front Porch Fodder Publishing, LLC Reproduction of any part of this publication is strictly prohibited.

G.E LIGHT WRITER G.E. lives in Starkville, where he presents a bi-monthly blues radio show as part of WMSV's The Juke.

G.E. serves various social justice organizations, including Casserole Kitchen and Helping Hands of Oktibbeha County. He regularly attends live music events and has written for Catfish Alley, Stanford Magazine, Perfect Sound Forever, Stylus.com, Dusted, Renaissance Quarterly, Text, Albion and Journal X. Headshot Photo by Luisa Porter for Catfish Alley magazine.

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h Return to

Pluto h

A literary wanderer plants roots on another planet — the Mississippi Delta

d Pluto, Miss. — Richard Grant pilots his dustbowl-gray pickup down Bee Lake Road, a faded blacktop buffered by flat Delta farmland and its namesake serpentine oxbow, a swampy memory left by the Yazoo River after it changed course years ago.

Grant grew silent a few miles back, somewhere around Yazoo City. Moving away from Pluto, Miss., the setting of his bestselling memoir, Dispatches From Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta, was as difficult for him as living here was joyous. Since selling the house in April 2015, he’s been back only twice.

Selling the house “was very painful for me,” he admits. “I'm not looking forward to going back right now. It just makes me sad that I don't live there anymore.”

Just before he dropped off the levee road of U.S. 49 East, Grant picked up his narrative again, pointing out the shotgun-scarred sign welcoming drivers to Holmes County. Now, as he threads the line into the corn fields, he sinks to Delta level, where the heat and dirt settle and the stalks rise, blocking the horizon. The domed sky is enormous, nearly cloudless, with a lightly hazy atmosphere.

“Now we’re on Pluto,” he announces.

After a dusty mile, the truck eases to a stop at the low-slung ranch home of Bobby T., who’s enjoying the summer sun from his wheelchair in the front yard. Grant talks about the crops and the Thompson clan, the family that calls this place home and who welcomed Grant as their own when he moved from New York City. Bobby is friendly, but his eyes continually retreat to a thousand-yard stare that reaches beyond the fields.

The road extends past Cathy Thompson’s home, nestled in a grove of majestic oaks, and the installed pool where Isobel, Grant’s daughter, took her first swim. We meander past a cluster of whitesided buildings and lean-tos stocked with farming equipment, and then immediately back to wide-open fields and endless sky.

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“It was a beautiful day in April, and I'd been miserable in New York,” Grant recalls of his first trip here with Martha Foose, the renowned chef and author who convinced him to visit her family’s homestead on Pluto.

“I just laid under the shade tree, ate fried chicken and drank wine and listened to the birds,” he said. “It just felt happy. I felt relaxed. I fell in love with the place."

As they toured the area, Grant remarked about an old home they passed. Foose’s father owned it, and it was for sale at a price that would make any Manhattanite think twice. On his second trip to Pluto, he brought his girlfriend, Mariah, and by the time they returned to New York, Grant was running options on how he could buy the house. bbb Grant, a natural wanderer, grew up in Malaysia, Kuwait, and, finally, London. He is the son of a British businessman with Anglo-Scottish roots. The move to England never settled with him and, after graduating college with a degree in history, his wanderlust grew.

“I always felt I was on the outside of things looking in, trying to make sense of it,” he said. “It's pretty much been like that ever since. "

Feeling claustrophobic in his appointed homeland, Grant worked as a security guard to save enough money to reach New York, where he had friends. He migrated to Philadelphia and painted houses, amassing enough to travel to Los Angeles, then spent time criss-crossing the country doing odd jobs before settling in Tucson, Ariz., and eking out a meager living as a freelance writer.

“You could rent a little adobe house for $300 a month, which is what I did,” he said. “I lived on rice and beans — on an absolute shoestring — for years and years and years, selling stories mainly to magazines in Britain.”

Grant contends he didn't work too hard, by design.

His camping trips, river expeditions and ventures south of the border gave him ample writing material. Gradually, his journalism led to books, such as God’s Middle Finger, an exploration of virtually lawless rural Mexico, and Crazy River, concerning travels in East Africa — and those led to a documentary for the BBC. Such a winning streak caused him to reconsider New York, the literary capital of America, where many of his friends lived and where he expected to stay busy. He and Mariah decided to leave Arizona for a downtown Manhattan

h

TOP LEFT: A dusty typewriter sits at Richard Grant's former home in Pluto, top right. BELOW: Scenes from the home and property that inspired Richard Grant's book.

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“This is an extraordinary place that sort of defies explanation.It causes people to try to explain it through writing, through music. I think it has one of the deepest, richest, most contradictory cultures in America." — Richard Grant

ANOTHER WORLD

Author Richard Grant soaks up the scenery at the site of his former home in Pluto.

The Delta town was the inspiration for his best-selling book, Dispatches from Pluto.

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Author Richard Grant walks through a patch of bamboo at his former home in Pluto.

basement apartment with a single sidewalk-level window.

"I had just made this documentary and had some money and was like, 'Let's blow this money, let's live in New York for a year, just for the hell of it,'” he said. “I had another documentary lined up. I had a book proposal in the works.

I had my first commission from The New Yorker magazine.”

But within two weeks of being in the Big Apple, the documentary and book proposal fell through and The New Yorker rejected his story. While staring down square one in one of the most expensive zip codes in the country, Foose’s invitation to visit Mississippi promised at least temporary relief. bbb Approaching the driveway, Grant flips on his turn signal (he picked up the habit again after moving to Jackson) then laughs at himself and eases it off. Gravel crunches under the tires as he turns off the paved road onto the driveway.

Up close, the trees that surround Grant’s former home on Pluto yield to a verdant explosion of muscadine and ivy. Cypress trees shade a pair of small ponds next to blossoming crepe myrtles that have been allowed to grow naturally into trees. A shower of pink flower petals floats through the air when the wind blows while scores of dragonflies give chase above the corn stalks.

Just beyond the house is a canebrake, then the levee along Tchula Lake where Grant used to walk during bouts of writer’s block. The cottage he used as a writing space sits in the shade of the cane on the edge of the property.

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The new landlord has sealed off the spot where snakes used to get in, he observes. His biggest invader was a five-foot chicken snake that crashed down a shelf in the back room.

That first night on Pluto, Grant remembers the windows being covered with insects. They made a noise that rivaled the sounds of the squeaking brakes and traffic he was accustomed to hearing in the city. For weeks after he and Mariah moved in, the shock of trading New York for the remote Delta felt surreal.

Grant’s plan was to get a book out of his experience in the Delta as a way for him to support Mariah as she finished school. He found inspiration in such Pluto’s residents as Albert Johnson, a tractor driver on nearby Stonewall Plantation who grew up in a sharecropper’s shack. Johnson, along with others, helped Grant understand how complicated the relationships are among whites and blacks who live and work in the Delta.

“This is an extraordinary place that sort of defies explanation,” he said. “It causes people to try to explain it through writing, through music,” Grant said. “I think it has one of the deepest, richest, most contradictory cultures in America."

After a year, his publisher wanted a book, but Grant needed more time.

"I told him, ‘This place is really complicated.’ He said, ‘No, we need the book in six months.’ So I had this pile of notes and newspaper clippings, and I'd been thinking about how to structure the book,” he said. “I basically wrote it in

Albert Johnson, left, shares a laugh with author Richard Grant and Jerry Kimble. Both Johnson and Kimble, Grant's neighbors in Pluto, were mentioned in his book.

a horrible, sweaty deadline panic."

Grant increased his usual writing output from one to four finished pages per day. That kept him writing for 12 to 15 hours daily, running on coffee all day and then shutting down with whisky at night. But the results gave him his biggest successes to date: a bonafide New York Times bestseller and the Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize. bbb Today’s visit to Pluto isn’t just a trip down memory lane. The house’s new owners are here, and the camper shell Grant needs to retrieve turns out to be more than a two-man job, so he heads over to Stonewall and finds Johnson and Jerry Kimble, who follow him back to the house.

Soon, Jaime Peaster, the grandson of the man who built the house in 1910 and who bought it from Grant, pulls up. He and Johnson wager on the corn harvest in front of the shed where, piled five and six high, sits leftover firewood Grant chopped during those two harsh winters spent here.

Although the Grants moved to Jackson’s Fondren neighborhood to be closer to work, a big part of them never really left. They’ve stayed connected to Pluto

through the Thompsons, who have become their surrogate family. Cathy, who orchestrated Richard and Mariah’s Delta wedding detailed in the closing chapter of Dispatches From Pluto, even delivered Isobel. She considers herself Isobel’s “Delta grandma.”

“I said in the book we got adopted into the Thompson family — I wasn't exaggerating,” Grant said.

“I would hate to break that connection, you know? It's a fantastic thing for our daughter to have Pluto right around the corner with a loving set of grandparents."

Grant’s first book, American Nomads, published in 2003, chronicled his travels among fellow itinerant adventurers across the American Southwest. For a man who has claimed 19 different addresses in 25 years, perhaps what Pluto gave him most was that sense of permanence, as his own new family takes root in the fertile Mississippi soil.

STORY Jim Beaugez PHOTOGRAPHY Melanie Thortis

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S T AT E W I D E

Blue Magnolia Films

Filmmakers document, inspire creative economy

Alison Fast and Chandler Griffin, center and pictured below, of Blue Magnolia Films pose in downtown Water Valley with subjects of the 25 short documentary films they are creating around the state to celebrate Mississippi's bicentennial.

As Mississippi approaches its bicentennial year, filmmakers Alison Fast and Chandler Griffin are looking to tell the stories of revitalization to show how far the state has come during its 200-year history.

They hope to inspire that change to continue.

The couple is in the midst of a project to make and screen a total of 25 short documentary films focused on innovative projects and creative businesses around the state, many in Mississippi’s small towns.

The creative duo makes up Blue Magnolia Films, a company that has deep roots in Mississippi. Chandler is a Jackson native who studied film at the Savannah College of Art & Design in Georgia before he made his way to New York and traveled to remote parts of the world. During a filmmaking workshop in South Africa, he met and married fellow filmmaker and Boston

PORTRAIT BY RORY DOYLE

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native Alison Fast. In 2005, the couple founded Barefoot Workshops, an annual immersive documentary workshop held at the Shack Up Inn in Clarksdale.

When Ward Emling, director of the Mississippi Film Office, asked Chandler and Alison what they planned on doing to commemorate the state’s bicentennial, the couple put their heads together and came up with the documentary series.

Now Chandler and Alison are all but living in their car as they roam the state with their recording equipment. So far, for this project, they’ve filmed in Oxford, Clarksdale, Tupelo, Corinth, Hattiesburg, Water Valley, Jackson, Holly Springs, Greenwood, Pascagoula, Shaw, Batesville, Lorman, Senatobia, Friars Point, Ocean Springs and Sumner and hope to film in McComb, Natchez, Philadephia, Turkey Creek, Wiggins and Lumberton.

"This is such an important moment in Mississippi,” Alison said. “It’s not often that you can see the past while imagining the future. We have a generation coming behind us, and they are asking questions.

We want to have intergenerational conversations. We feel that that’s the key to unlocking the vision and potential in the state.

"There are some very positive stories in the communities around the state," she continued. "We can tell those stories and screen them back to the communities. But, usually after a screening, people go home and that’s that. We decided we want to take the excitement that comes with a screening and determine what action we can take to mobilize the eyes that saw it. The film is merely an excuse to start the conversation."

Thirty screenings of the bicentennial films have happened so far, with more to come. Chandler said he’s seen the economic impact and community development impact the films have had on their subjects. Hugh Balthrop’s company Sweet Magnolia Gelato Company in Clarksdale had a 20 percent spike in sales the first four weeks after Blue Magnolia’s film, "Delta Flavor," debuted online. The ice cream company grew from having three employees to seven and new markets opened up both in-state, as well as out-of-state.

"It’s been a great marketing tool,” Balthrop said in a case study about the film and its impact on his business. “It will pique folks’ interest in trying the product who have not tried it before. That’s something I’ve been trying to do. It’s not just about us but connecting all these farmers and families to get behind the product."

Chandler said most Mississippi stories are told from outsiders looking in. Blue Magnolia’s approach, however, is different and focuses on the stories of the individuals.

"During the bicentennial, we will be working with small towns to show them how they can reclaim the narrative and grow what’s working," he said.

Blue Magnolia has partnered with Mississippi Main Street Association to tell the stories of people who are generating opportunity in the state without a lot of money.

"We ask ‘Who are those creators? Who are the people who are creating new ways of doing things?’ We want to tell the stories that haven’t been told — emerging stories that will ignite people’s beliefs in the state,” Chandler said. “We want to stimulate conversation that will grow the creative economy."

Growing Mississippi’s creative economy is an effort that Malcolm

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THIS PAGE: Alison Fast and her husband, Chandler Griffin, of Blue Magnolia Films shoot footage at the Mississippi Children's Museum in Jackson recently.

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White has championed since 2009, both as the director of Visit Mississippi and as the executive director of the Mississippi Arts Commission (MAC). Mississippi’s creative economy consists of creative individuals and enterprises that fuel jobs, revenue and quality of life. More than 60,000 people work in Mississippi’s creative economy — in industries that include visual and performing arts, design, literary and publishing, film and media, culinary arts and museums and heritage.

"Blue Magnolia’s films spotlight the creative people and businesses that are moving Mississippi forward,” White said. “The bicentennial year is a fitting time to be having the conversations initiated by these short documentaries, a time to reflect on where our state has been and where it’s going.

The creative arts have always been a vehicle for bringing people together."

Alison said that each story in the short film series has multiple layers.

"One story may touch on mentorship, race healing, community and the creative economy. Each story is a means of reflection and celebration," she said.

The next step in the project is to create an online component, where the couple will host a curated collection of short Mississippi-made documentaries, all dedicated to the theme of small town revitalization. Chandler said they will make the collection available for people to share during the bicentennial with the hope of inspiring people through the examples in the films.

"Phase Two is to embed actionable toolkits and resources for communities to inspire people to grow these examples around the state, wherever they live, and to access a network of other people who are learning by doing and sharing their example in the state of Mississippi," he said.

Alison said Sweet Magnolia Ice Cream is a prime example of what the team calls “story solutions.”

"It’s a local product that is now being sold across the state," she said. "How can other businesses replicate that?

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What starts to move the needle? Our biggest challenge is to inspire people to think of solutions that are outside of the box."

A key part of Alison and Chandler’s work is connecting people as they go. They recently invited two STEM teachers from Brown Elementary School in Jackson to host a "pop-up makerspace” at Fondren's First Thursday to help share their work with the broader Jackson community. The teachers provided hands-on interactive activities for children and families to explore VR technology, 3D printers, coding, robotics and announced the opening of the first Mississippi makerspace, a community-operated workspace where people with common interests meet and collaborate.

"We showed a five-minute film about their work and encouraged them to connect with other innovators of learning around the state," Chandler said. "The challenge in Mississippi is connecting the dots and helping communities of practice come to life. If community innovators were more connected, working toward similar goals, we could see more regional initiatives and sharing of resources and expertise.

By telling next-generation stories, we hope to spark those informal networks and give them life."

This new series of films focuses on catalyzing community in areas of New Literacy, Placemaking and Arts, Race and Reconciliation, Creative Economy and Health and Wellness, such as food systems and access to healthy foods.

Blue Magnolia Films recently received the Mississippi Tourism Association’s Travel Media & Broadcast award at the 2016 Governor’s Conference on Tourism, a testament to Chandler and Alison’s ability to bring Mississippi’s best stories to light.

"We are like community weavers," Alison said. "Our mission is to highlight people to make sure their stories grow."

STORY Susan Marquez PHOTOGRAPHY Melanie Thortis and Rory Doyle

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Presses

artist sets new roadmap for former students

Ke Francis is like the Pied Piper of artists.

T U P E L O — He had such a profound effect on his students at the University of Central Florida that a group of them followed him to Tupelo when he moved back home in 2014. These talented young “associate artists” create their own work alongside Francis at Hoopsnake Press, a large studio producing new art with old technology.

"About the same time I was retiring from the academic world in Florida and preparing to move back to our family home in Tupelo, they were graduating from college,” Francis said. “We had several long conversations about what's next for them, and they suggested they follow me to Tupelo!”

Hoopsnake has plenty of room for the artists to work with its seven presses, which include four letterpresses, two etching presses and one bookbinding press.

"While (the associate artists) were still in college, we had many discussions on what it means to be a working artist," Francis said. "That first five years or so is tough to get established and to make a real living from art. They decided on their own they'd like to move to Tupelo to begin their careers and to continue learning from me. After all, I have 50 years of experience."

Born in Memphis, Francis moved with his parents to Tupelo when he was a baby. He grew up there, graduating from Tupelo High before studying at Mississippi State University, Memphis State University, the Memphis College of Art and, finally, the Cleveland Art Institute.

“I started out in engineering at Mississippi State, but quickly decided that was not for me,” he said.

It was art that got and kept Francis’ attention.

“As a child, I had an uncle who painted as a hobby,” he said. “He was a businessman, and he always encouraged me, supplying me with paints until he saw me copying Picasso.

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He came up during the Depression, and he thought I needed to do something more stable (as a career).”

After Francis graduated from the Cleveland Art Institute in 1967, the school offered him a teaching position.

“I taught for two years, then they offered me a tenured position, but I decided not to take it,” he said.

He had something else in mind. Francis had already started building the enterprise on his grandfather’s farm in Tupelo that would become Hoopsnake Press, which he founded in 1970. At first, it consisted only of a Charles Brand etching press and technical facilities that he used to print small-scale etchings and woodcuts.

For the next 26 years, he showed his art nationally and internationally, in galleries and museums. Over time, he broadened his craft to include the written word and expanded the operation at Hoopsnake to include typecasting equipment, large etching and relief printing presses and two letterpresses to handle the design, illustration and printing of books. Francis evolved into a narrative multimedia artist who creates limited editions of beautiful collector books that he writes and illustrates.

“What’s unusual about the books I make is that I do it all,” explained Francis. “I’m the writer, editor, publisher, artist, designer, printer and binder. It’s a different thing that I do. My paintings are narratives. There are characters who have interactions with the paintings. You can find the text in the work.”

In 1996, the press moved to the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando, where it established a collaborative publishing venture with Flying Horse Press, the fine art press established by the university’s art department.

Francis was the director of the press, which came to be

“They decided on their own they'd like to move to Tupelo to begin their careers and to continue learning from me. After all, I have 50 years of experience."

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9 KE FRANCIS, Owner, HOOPSNAKE PRESS 0 known as Flying Horse Editions. When Francis decided to retire to Tupelo in 2014, he and his family decided to revamp his original studio in Tupelo and move the presses there.

While at UCF, Francis was a professor in the School of Visual Arts and Design, and he served as chair of the art department. When he announced his return to Tupelo, several students from his painting and printmaking class decided to move there with him after graduation.

“They came and helped me set up the studio,” Francis said. “They helped run plumbing, and I showed them how to plant a garden. They now eat what they harvest. That’s a new thing for them, as most of them grew up in large cities.

They do a good bit to help me out and, in return, they use my equipment when they’re ready to print. We do shows together.

“This is an interesting bunch of young artists,” Francis said. “They are trying to proceed with their careers.”

Francis said everyone who moved to Tupelo was able to find places to live and part-time jobs, and they work on their art when they are able.

“One even bought a house in Tupelo,” Francis said. “Most all of them have studios in their homes, and they come here to print. Some don't live in Tupelo, or even in the state, but they come here from time to time to work. Others have left to go to graduate school, but they're coming back."

Francis is not only providing a place for his associates to work but also a chance to learn the business end of being an artist.

"I'm sharing with them how to do spreadsheets and project management, and they see how I get rejection letters just as they do — and I keep on moving forward,” he said.

“I have a whole backlog of information on how to negotiate

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TOP: Ke Francis pulls down one of his etching prints inside his studio he shares with former students who moved to Tupelo as associate artists.

BOTTOM: The Hoopsnake Press studio in Tupelo, where Ke Francis' former students have come to create work and learn from the artist, has seven different presses.

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"We are working with Ke to build a program where people from all over the country will want to come and use the presses."

— Jager

Palad, former student and associate artist

Shanna Stiles. contracts, and I share that with Francis said that this organic them. They are also learning the migration of artists parallels what importance of networking, and they happened in the 1950s at Black see me preparing and giving lectures Mountain College in North and demonstrations, and they're Carolina. learning how to do that."

"Several of the Bauhaus artists left Jager Palad, whose work includes Ke Francis' book "Celestial Hitchhikers" Germany after the Nazi occupation painting, etching and woodcuts, is and ended up at Black Mountain,” one of Francis’ former students. he said. “Many famous artists came “Ke taught us the last couple of out of that. At Black Mountain, the semesters we were at UCF. We got artists worked in the garden and lucky. He took a liking to us,” he helped cook meals.” said. “We were making our own As they develop their craft at body of work, doing our assignments Hoopsnake, Francis’ group of young and more, and he took notice of that.” artists is making a positive impact on The Baltimore native moved to their adopted state.

Tupelo from Coral Springs, Fla., 13 Hoopsnake Press studio in Tupelo is filled with supplies.

"These associates are each months ago. contributing to Mississippi's creative “I love living here. I have gotten economy in a major way,” Francis to know people in the community said. “Many have settled in Tupelo, and, to be honest, I don’t have plans making it their home, paying rent, to leave anytime soon,” he said. buying gas and groceries. They have “We are working with Ke to build a participated in community arts program where people from all over projects in Tupelo, which add to the the country will want to come and quality of life here and, gradually, use the presses.” they are expanding to other parts Since moving to Tupelo, Palad A collection of etchings created at Hoopsnake Press of the state to conduct lectures, has been involved with community demonstrations, workshops and art projects and has shown his exhibitions. Their presence here has already enriched so work at the Gumtree Museum of Art and in the Tupelo Arts many lives."

Showcase at the Link Center. His work will be part of an For information on Hoopsnake Press and upcoming shows, upcoming show with other associates at Ittawamba Community visit www.hoopsnakepress.com.

College.

While some of Francis’ former students have come and gone — and, in some cases, vowed to be back — the core associate artists in addition to Palad include Lujan Perez Hernandez, STORY Susan Marquez Anthony Mancuso, Corin Robideaux, M.J. Torrecampo and PHOTOGRAPHY Lauren Wood

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FOOD

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ME R I D I A N S T A R K VI LLE

Margie's Mixing Bowl

Cupcake maker mixes it up in two locations

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Meridian Location 4920 Poplar Springs Drive, Meridian, MS 39305

Starkville Location 330 Highway 12 W Starkville, MS 39759

margiesmixingbowl.com

After a childhood of traveling the country due to her late father’s naval career, baker and business owner Margie Mire considers herself to have two homes.

Born in Meridian and graduating from high school there, Mire received a bachelor’s degree in business administration at Mississippi State University in Starkville.

As an adult, she moved to North Carolina and later Arizona before heading home to Meridian.

“Meridian is definitely my home,” she said.

Since 2014, Mire has built a career providing sweet escapes, from gourmet cupcakes to custom cakes and other treats for the families and children of her hometown at Margie’s Mixing Bowl.

Two years after finding success in Meridian, she opened a second location, in Starkville, her second home. Mire and her family have regularly attended MSU ballgames for years.

In October, she brought Margie’s Mixing Bowl to Highway 12 West in Starkville, where she has seen lots of small business success stories. That is what inspired her to make her move.

Margie’s interest in baking began five years before she opened her first bakery. It all started with her daughter’s first birthday.

“I couldn’t find a baker in town to make her a birthday cake,” Mire said. “So I decided to try baking it myself. I put pictures of it on Facebook, and the reaction was really positive.”

Requests to make cakes for others started rolling in. One of her earliest was for her nephew — in the shape of a twoheaded dragon.

Soon, Mire found herself running a bakery out of her home kitchen.

“There was sugar everywhere,” she said.

She and her husband finally decided it was time to open a storefront, in the Broadmoor neighborhood of North Meridian.

“I sold out by noon on my first day,” Mire said.

During the week, when days and baking begin at 4 a.m., Mire’s focus is on cupcakes.

“Cakes are a weekend thing,” she said. “That’s when parties and weddings are. I wanted to be able to offer something else on weekdays.”

“My bestselling flavors of cupcakes are wedding cake, chocolate chip cookie dough and strawberry, which is made with fresh strawberries,” Mire said.

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MUSIC FOOD

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ABOVE: Margie Mire, owner of Margie's Mixing Bowl, helps a customer at her new location in Starkville. Mire's original bakery opened in 2014 in Meridian. Mire, who attended Mississippi State University, considers Starkville her second home. She hopes to open more locations soon.

Her daughters, ages 8 and 6, say their favorites are wedding cake and cookies and cream, while her husband, Scott, prefers the key lime pie flavor. Mire likes chocolate chip cookie dough and the Mississippi Mud Pie cupcakes.

At the Meridian location, Mire also offers wedding cakes and French-style macaroons. She even hosts birthday parties for small groups of children, where they decorate their own cupcakes and share pizza.

Mire said she owes much of her success to the people of Meridian — “the support of the people there has been just phenomenal” — and Starkville, where “everyone is so nice.”

"Plus, I bleed maroon,” she said, “and having gone to college here, it feels like my second home."

For now, the main focus in Starkville is cupcakes but Mire hopes to expand.

"Once we get our footing, I hope to be able to include all of our services," she said.

The bakery also offers seasonal flavors, such as

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strawberry lemonade in the summer, Bailey's Irish cream for St. Patrick's Day, chocolate covered strawberry and red velvet cheesecake for Valentine's Day, pumpkin spice and chocolate bourbon pecan pie in the fall and gingerbread and hot chocolate at Christmas.

While Mire’s short-term goal is to be able to expand her custom cake services to include the Starkville location, she has her sights on more Margie's Mixing Bowls in the long term.

"It’s personal," she said. "It lifts you up. I love the smiles I get, especially from kids. I am hoping to build Margie's Mixing Bowl into a successful business that maybe I can pass on to my daughters someday and hopefully enrich others' lives while I do it."

STORY Kate Gregory PHOTOGRAPHY Jeremy Murdock

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Roasted Turnips WITH Alabama WHITE BARBECUE Sauce AND Pickled RED Onions

Recipe by Chef Jesse Houston

4 cups turnips, large diced 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil ½ teaspoon kosher salt 5 garlic cloves, smashed 2 sprigs of thyme ¼ cup white barbecue sauce, plus more for garnish (see recipe) 2 tablespoons chives, minced 1/3 cup pickled red onions (see recipe) Preheat oven to 450 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, toss the diced turnips in olive oil, salt, smashed garlic and thyme sprigs. Lay the turnips on a cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes. Take the turnips out, drizzle with the 1/4 cup of white barbecue sauce and then place back in the oven for another 10 minutes or until the turnips are tender and caramelized. Remove the turnips from the oven and scoop into a large serving bowl. Drizzle them with more white barbecue sauce and sprinkle with pickled red onions and chives.

Serves 6.

WHITE BARBECUE SAUCE 2 cups mayonnaise ¼ cup, plus 1 tablespoon, apple cider vinegar ¼ cup lemon juice 1 tablespoon apple juice 2 ½ teaspoons powdered garlic 2 ½ teaspoons prepared horseradish 2 ½ teaspoons coarsely ground black pepper ½ teaspoon mustard powder ¼ teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon finely ground cayenne pepper In a large mixing bowl, combine all ingredients and whisk together well.

CHEF JESSE HOUSTON PICKLED RED ONIONS 1 cup, plus 1 tablespoon, apple cider vinegar ¼ cup, plus 1 tablesppon, sugar 2 ½ teaspoons kosher salt 1 red onion, thinly sliced In a large pot on medium high, bring vinegar, sugar and salt to a boil. Pour this liquid over the sliced red onions in a bowl. Allow to cool and store in an air tight container and refrigerate.

SALTINE, JACKSON

Named after the popular cracker served with seafood, Bon Appetit “Top 50 Best New Restaurant” winner Saltine fulfills Mississippi native Jesse Houston’s personal mission to bring oyster heritage and culture back to Jackson. He previously worked at Mississippi staples Parlor Market and City Grocery before opening Saltine, his first restaurant. Houston is a 2015 James Beard Foundation semifinalist for “Best Chef: South” and has been featured in Southern Living, Garden & Gun, The Local Palate and Taste of the South.

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417 Royal St., New Orleans 26 Brennan’s,mag.com

Culinary Crusader Mississippi-born Chef Takes Southern Cuisine from the Big Apple to the Big Easy

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Take a piece of fried rabbit and top it with an egg cooked over easy. Drizzle a pickled pork jus and add some creamed collards and you have what sounds like a gussied up version of what your grandmother might have made. Growing up in rural Mississippi, Slade Rushing ate plenty of fried rabbit, and it serves as the inspiration for his now more sophisticated dish, Rushing Rabbit.

Rushing spent his childhood roaming his family’s 90-acre property outside of Tylertown, catching fish and skinning deer and rabbits for dinner more often than not.

“That freshness — taking something straight from the field to the kitchen — was imprinted on my brain,” he said.

“My mom would bake blue channel catfish with just lemon, pepper and butter, and it was amazingly fresh. My dad and I would fry rabbit all the time.”

Those memories of time spent in his parents’ kitchen secured the anchor that allowed him to roam the country while honing his culinary skills but eventually putting those skills to the test close to home.

New Orleans is about an hour’s drive from his native Walthall County, and Rushing now serves as executive chef at Brennan’s, the famed flamingo pink landmark on Royal Street. Rushing Rabbit has become one of the more popular dishes on the menu.

“I grew up with an appreciation for all the resources that make great food,” Rushing said. “Opening this restaurant has been the hardest opening I’ve ever done. It’s so much like a birth for a chef. But when there’s something I’m afraid of, I know that’s the thing I need to do.”

Brennan’s opened in 1946 but was sold at auction to Ralph Brennan, a cousin to the first owner, and his business partner, Terry White. They reopened in the fall of 2014 with Rushing leading the way in the kitchen.

“We are having fun tweaking the Brennan’s menus and operations to the wants and needs of our guests,” Brennan said. “A restaurant continues to evolve, especially in the first few years, and the chef ’s voice and ideas are critical to the restaurant’s success.”

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King's Room, Brennan's

That voice and those ideas come to life in Rushing’s kitchen and have earned him nominations in 2015 and 2016 for the James Beard Award for Best Chef: South. That voice and those ideas also are the harvest of the two decades of training, education, sacrifice and grit Rushing brings, most literally, to the table.

After graduating from high school, Rushing studied mechanical engineering at Mississippi State University.

Gifted at taking things apart and reassembling them, he made good grades and enjoyed his classes. In his spare time, he was drawn to a show on the Discovery Channel called Great Chefs, Great Cities.

“At one point, I had this moment where I realized I could do this,” he said. “I’m realizing there’s an entire world out there that’s so different from what I’ve always known. I had to explore it.”

After some research on culinary schools, Rushing settled on Johnson and Wales University College of Culinary Arts in Providence, R.I. “I think my parents thought I was bluffing until the moment I drove away in my Jeep with only an Atlas and my U-Haul behind me. I mean, I’d never been farther north than Gatlinburg, but I never turned back.

“It was the most exciting moment of my life, and I felt free to pursue a passion I couldn’t wait to dive into.”

Rushing sailed through his first culinary school class: butchery.

“I’ve always believed that when you’re good at something, you don’t really have to study,” he said. “I was absorbing every detail of my classes without really trying. It all came so naturally to me. I was ready for this.”

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Brennan's Kitchen

He interned for six months at the Palace Arms at The Brown Palace Hotel in Denver and graduated from Johnson and Wales in 1996. He moved to New Orleans where he worked at Mr. B’s Bistro and later at Chez Daniel.

“You kind of learn as much as you can at a place, then it’s time to move on,” he said. “Actually being in a kitchen and learning from chefs who have been doing this for decades is really where your education of food takes place. Culinary school is a foundation, then you get in the kitchen.”

Rushing moved to San Francisco, where he worked with Traci des Jardins and Bruce Hill before moving back to New Orleans. Back in the South, he worked at Gerard’s in downtown New Orleans and met a fellow chef named Allison Vines, who was from West Monroe, La. They both wanted to get to New York. It was the spring of 2001.

“We moved to Manhattan on a 24-hour train with two duffle bags, a little rent and deposit money,” he said. “Both of us were working very intense jobs. Then one morning in September, it all changed.”

From their window overlooking the East River, they watched the Twin Towers fall. While many people left the city in the coming months, they stuck it out.

Rushing was working at Fleur de Sel with Cyril Renaud, whom he credits as his most influential mentor.

“I bring his vision with me here at Brennan’s,” he said.

TOP LEFT: Eggs Benedict and Eggs Sardou TOP RIGHT: Sazerac Project BOTTOM LEFT: Smoked Pepper Seared Tuna BOTTOM RIGHT: Barbecue Lobster

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The couple got engaged and while planning their wedding, Vines received a job offer as chef for Jack Lamb, who was opening an oyster bar called Jack’s Luxury Oyster Bar in the East Village. In 2003, Southern cuisine was gaining momentum in the city, and Rushing and his soonto-be wife were perfectly suited to ride the wave.

“We had a skill set that gave us the tools to create excellent oysters and gumbo, that traditional Southern cuisine,” he said. “New Yorkers love Southerners. We’re witty, we’re good storytellers, and our food is great.

“We have the most in-depth culinary profile in the country. Every country has their own version of soul food, and ours is found right here in the South. And when you cook from the soul, it just tastes better, whatever it is.”

The couple worked together to create the menu at Jack’s, a sort of marriage of hearts and of culinary skill. Vines became Vines-Rushing, and Rushing joined her at Jack’s.

The restaurant skyrocketed to success, and Vines-Rushing received a James Beard Rising Star Award in 2004. They grew concerned, however, that the city’s obsession with Southern cuisine was a fad that would soon fade.

“I loved creating stuff with her, but it came time to move,” he said. “The pressure of Manhattan started to get to us, and we started looking at real estate in New Orleans.

“In the South, Southern food isn’t ever going to go out of style,” Rushing said. “Our food could live on forever where it came from.

“Southerners are by far the best storytellers,” he said.

“Who are you going to choose to sit on a front porch with and swap stories? A Yankee or a Southerner? Some people in Mississippi tell their stories with words, some with art or pictures. I tell my stories, and the stories of the people here, with food.”

They found a property in Abita Springs, just north of New Orleans, and spent months renovating for an early September opening. They named their restaurant Longbranch and carefully planned a menu and upscale atmosphere with dreams of planting herb and produce gardens and raising chickens. It was August 2005 and Hurricane Katrina was looming.

Thirteen trees fell on the property, and their freezer of meat was lost.

“We had a decision to make,” Rushing said. “Do we stay or move back to New York? We decided to push forward and do what we went there to do.

“We were able to give people jobs and a place to feel like they were escaping the realities of their life at that time, a slice of normalcy in a wrecked world.”

They closed Longbranch just short of two years.

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“Business just kind of faded,” he said.

Another offer to open a restaurant called MiLa near the French Quarter brought them to New Orleans, where they worked together for seven years. They published Southern Comfort: A New Take on the Recipes We Grew Up With, which was nominated for a James Beard Award in 2013. Then Rushing heard Brennan’s was looking for an executive chef.

“If you’re going to re-imagine a dish, it better be as good as the original or better,” Rushing said.

“Brennan’s was known for decades for its brunch, so this eggs Benedict better be the best eggs Benedict they’d ever eaten. Keeping these traditions alive is so important.”

While in the renovation process, Brennan and White invited him to prepare a dish for them, a chance to show the new owners what he was made of. He spent weeks perfecting a homemade English muffin and worked with such best-inclass ingredients as Plugra butter. He cured his own bacon and used fresh eggs.

“I was looking for a chef with the talent to create a menu that would both honor and update the classics,” Brennan said. “The result was delicious, and he got the job.”

Rushing now leads five sous chefs, 38 line cooks and one pastry chef.

“When you’re reopening an institution like Brennan’s, you’re under a ton of pressure,” he said. “You have to be fearless and a little crazy and willing to take chances and hope for the best. It’s like suddenly getting behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler when you’ve been riding a bike.”

Oren Walker, who used to work at Brennan’s, calls Rushing the best employer he’s ever had.

“I’ve never seen him break down under pressure, no matter what the situation was,” Walker said. “He always kept a cool head — always detailed-oriented. When you work with him, he doesn’t make you feel like you’re working with a boss. It’s more like working with a friend and y’all are just hanging out cause he’s so easy to get along with.”

Rushing said teamwork is the key to their success over the past two years. Brennan is pretty tickled pink, about like the outside of Brennan’s.

“In New Orleans, we are blessed with a bevy of local and regional seafood, meat and produce,” he said. “Slade’s Mississippi roots and Southern heritage inform his vision, technique and most importantly his palate. Our guests are the lucky beneficiaries of that marriage of place and purpose.”

Visit thesipmag.com/slade-rushing for more.

STORY Maggie Ingram PHOTOGRAPHY Submitted/Chris Granger

Brennan's Chanteclair Room TOP CHEF: For an exclusive Q&A with Chef Slade Rushing, visit thesipmag.com/slade-rushing

Brennan's Banana Foster

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'SIP TRIP

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Take a weekend road trip to visit...

Donanelle's Bar & Grill 4321 U.S. 49 South 601-545-3860 This "classic South Mississippi roadhouse" originally opened in 1940 to serve ice cold beer to the soldiers of the WWII era. It now serves steaks, barbeque ribs and yellowfin tuna.

Hattiesburg Zoo 107 S. 17th Ave. 601-545-4576 zoohattiesburg.com A small 12-acre zoo located within Kamper Park Lucky Rabbit 217 Mobile St. theluckyrabbit.com Features items from local artists and craft vendors.

Open the first Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday every month.

University of Southern Mississippi Campus 118 College Drive 601-266-1000 usm.edu Characterized by history and tradition, the Hattiesburg campus sits on 300 acres in the middle of the city.

Camp Shelby/Armed Forces Museum Bldg 850, 1001 Lee Ave W (601) 558-2757 armedforcesmuseum.us Mississippi's only state-operated museum dedicated exclusively to military history.

Southern Prohibition Brewery 301 Mobile St. soprobrewing.com A craft beer brewery with tours.

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ZOO LIGHTS &

Dec. 16,17,18 | Friday - Sunday & Dec. 22,23 | Thursday & Friday 6 - 8 PM | $10 per person Fall 2016

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LITERATURE

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OXF O R D

Beth Ann Fennelly

State's poet laureate writes her way home

Mississippi has made a career out of producing writers. Some are born into the family; others join later. Beth Ann Fennelly is one of the transplants.

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Originally from Chicago, Fennelly moved to Oxford when her husband, Tom Franklin, was named the Grisham Writer-in-Residence for the University of Mississippi, and she accepted a position as assistant professor in the English Department.

They expected to stay for nine months or so — just long enough for Franklin to complete his residence. That was 2001. About a year ago, Fennelly’s family made a show of commitment and permanence to their adopted home.

“We have three born-and-bred Mississippi children, and last year we bought five plots in the Oxford Cemetery, just down the hill from Mr. Faulkner and a beer can’s throw from Barry

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Hannah, so I think it’s fair to say Mississippi is my home, my geographic and spiritual home,” Fennelly said in her acceptance remarks August 10 at the state Capitol when she was named Mississippi’s poet laureate. “And I am thrilled to be chosen to serve this home I love through the transformative power of poetry.”

Fennelly is Mississippi’s fifth poet laureate, a distinction most recently held by Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey. Gov. Phil Bryant appointed Fennelly to the role after a selection committee facilitated by the Mississippi Arts Commission recommended her as one of three finalists. During her four-year term, Fennelly will make poetry more accessible to Mississippians by creating and reading poetry during state occasions and participating in school and community events that celebrate poetry as an art form.

In the fall of 2017, Fennelly will also release Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs, her latest book of poems written

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in her witty and approachable style that takes readers into her life as a mother, wife and writer. Early in her career, as Fennelly was learning to listen to her voice and pay attention to her own interests, she was trying to tackle what she considered big, serious poetry, but it wasn’t working.

“Those weren’t good poems I was writing, and I think it was because the impulse was adopted, forced in a way to achieve an effect,” she said. “I honestly think I finally learned that writing is not some type of gift bestowed as luck. Writing well comes through practice. Also, I learned to trust my own interests and subject matter.”

“Realizing that gave me confidence to just pay attention to what I was paying attention to,” she said. “After I started doing that, I started honing the impulse a bit more. Now I don’t question when it comes; I just start writing.”

Now, she builds from common subjects.

As poet laureate, Fennelly will be a voice for poetry and literature throughout the state.

Mississippi Arts Commission Executive Director Malcolm White says Fennelly's rock-star status as a talented poet and a talented speaker will put the state in the best light.

“There are people who are great writers but can be clumsy when it comes to public speaking,” White said. “Beth Ann represents literature and arts and culture in a magnificent way.

I’ve never seen her step to a podium not well-rehearsed and ready to rock.”

White said poetry can be seen by some people as an otherworldly art form, but Fennelly's work invites readers in.

“Beth Ann writes in a user-friendly way. It is complex but not overly complicated,” he said.

“Oxford’s literary society was made famous by William Faulkner, and when Willie Morris and Barry Hannah settled there, they perpetuated a literary culture in Oxford,” White said. “Beth Ann and Tom are the contemporary torchbearers leading the way for literature in that town.”

Much of that leadership has been showcased in Fennelly’s

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work as director of the masters of fine arts program since 2010. She has handed over the reins to Dr. Derrick Harriel, who credits the school’s top-20-in-the-nation status to Fennelly.

“Students regularly talk about how compassionate and thoughtful she is and how she challenges them to work outside their normal practices, adding additional layers to their work,” Harriel said.

Fennelly will continue teaching in the program while serving as poet laureate.

Molly McCully Brown, who will graduate in the spring of 2017, said Fennelly is the reason she considered the university’s M.F.A. program.

“She has fostered a community where all the writers are invested in each other,” Brown said.

“Ambition and energy are incredibly high, and this is a program that takes care of its writers both personally and professionally.

“Beth Ann is incredibly infectious, incredibly smart," Brown said. "Poetry is a thing that she loves desperately, and I know whatever she does out in the world will be about trying to bring that delight and pleasure of poetry to more people.”

Fennelly appreciates living, teaching and writing in a community that revels in its literary reputation.

“It's amazing to live in a town where Square Books anchors social life, and Rowan Oak (Faulkner's home) is always available for a walk or a picnic,” she said.

“We have a very literary culture and, because of this, writers like to live here, so we have an amazing faculty, truly worldclass. And also because of this, we are able to get students who have true talent. It's a pleasure to teach them.

“There’s nothing sweeter than choosing a home that chooses you back," Fennelly said. "Being selected as poet laureate is one of the sweetest pleasures of my life.”

STORY Maggie Ingram PHOTOGRAPHY Danny Klimetz

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A big undertaking From washing hearses to owning them, funeral director knows his business

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Vicksburg

— Like the proverbial cobbler’s child who goes barefoot, Charles Riles, undertaker, has not made his funeral plans.

But, he’s thinking about it.

And, he knows what his epitaph should be: “To Help the Brokenhearted.”

“That is all I have ever wanted,” he said.

Riles’ legion of friends knows him for his quick wit and sense of humor, but they also know he is caring and genuinely compassionate.

He turned 70 recently and has been in the funeral business at various levels since he was 14 — that’s 56 years and longer than anyone else in the state. Others may be older, but they are no longer active in the profession.

Riles was born in Vicksburg in 1946. His mother died suddenly when he was 9, “and from that time on I knew I wanted to be a funeral director.”

Charles Finane buried Riles’ mother, and Riles remembers him “because of his dignity and his kindness to me. He brought me a pad and a pencil and said, ‘You’re going to help me.’ Well, I never helped him do anything, but I certainly felt important.”

Many years later, Riles directed Finane’s funeral as well as that of Dr. R.A. Street, the attending physician when Riles was born, “So it looks like the entire cycle of life and death blended,” Riles said.

While other children played with toys, Riles had a fictitious funeral home. Its name was Pine Forest Memorial, and he still has the drawings.

From his desk in the classroom at Carr Central High School, he could see Fisher Funeral Home.

It was a time when funeral homes also provided ambulance service, and he would strain to see what was going on when the siren sounded.

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“Charles, if they need you, they’ll call you,” his teachers would say, and he believed some of them thought he needed guidance or psychiatric help.

Then, as the years passed, he buried most of those teachers.

Riles began his life’s work by washing the hearses when he was 14 — too young to have a driver’s license — so his friend Joe Loviza would take him to the job. Riles slowly worked his way inside and, in

He considers his profession a calling, for it isn’t an 8-to-5 job as “people don’t die at convenient times.

Death is God’s business.”

Before there were funeral homes, family and friends of the deceased prepared the body for burial, often built the casket, dug the grave and planned the service. Undertakers sold caskets and provided the embalming service at home and horse-drawn hearses.

Funeral homes came into vogue around 1900.

Death is God's business. people don't die at convenient times.

1965, he was licensed as a student embalmer.

“It has been a learning process,” he said.

He has learned from many: Hardy Katzenmeyer first hired him and taught him. He also learned from the older clergy, from other funeral directors and from Mrs. Carmen Fisher — “a great person to learn from.”

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They provided services in a comfortable setting. There can still be home funerals, Riles said, “if you can get the casket through the doorway.”

Funeral traditions also have changed. There was a time when family and friends sat up all night with the deceased, but, sometimes, maybe at 2 in the morning, they would go home, “and that caused a problem

with insurance, because the coffee pot would be left on and the building open.” So, the local funeral directors agreed on regular hours of visitation. Another decision was there would be no more Sunday funerals, a move welcomed by the ministers “though they said they would do what the people wanted.”

A closed casket is not unusual today, though Riles always gives the family the opportunity to view the body.

In times past, the casket would be open in the sanctuary during the services and sometimes again at the gravesite.

“That was bad,” Riles said, quoting Clifton McInnis Sr., an undertaker in Clarksdale who said, “There will be no daylight showings.”

The figure in the casket “is not just a body, and it must be treated with dignity,” Riles said. “That is something I insist on.”

Little things the families want are important, such as should one be buried with their glasses or in hunting clothes? He has buried people with cigarettes, sandwiches, whisky and photographs.

One lady was buried with a bottle of fine wine in her hands, and Riles told her children he would have to tape the bottle to her hands so that it wouldn’t roll over, making bumping noises inside the casket “or we would lose all of our pallbearers.” A few days later, when he told the lady’s daughter he forgot to include a corkscrew, she said, “Oh, Mr. Riles, don’t worry. A good Episcopalian can always get into a bottle of wine.”

Another friend was buried with golf clubs in the casket, and the priest, who knew the deceased wasn’t a very good golfer, told the family, “I appreciate what you have done, but they didn’t do him much good down here.”

Some things are unintentionally funny. Riles recalls the funeral of an extremely large lady, so big that a special casket had to be built for her.

“It seemed we had to get half of the congregation to be pallbearers. The minister was presiding in all his ‘ecclesiastical dignity,’ as I recall it, and he prayed, ‘Dear Lord, we know that yesterday you opened wide the gates of Heaven to receive Mrs…” Riles said.

Sometimes Riles has borne the butt of the humor, such as the time he went to a Delta community to bury an urn containing the ashes of the deceased. It was a dreary, rainy day and as he knelt to place the urn in the ground, he slipped into the grave. The next morning, one of the family called to see if he was alright, and he told her that only his dignity was bruised, “but why didn’t you come help me?” She replied that her doctor had told her not to lift anything heavy. It was also Ground Hog Day and another friend called to ask, “Did you see your shadow?”

GOD'S BUSINESS THIS PAGE: Funeral director Charles Riles, the owner of Riles Funeral Home in Vicksburg, refelcts on his past 56 years in the funeral business.

LEFT: Riles has become a historian of local funeral homes and cemeteries.

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BURIED IN HIS WORK Riles Funeral Home showcases photos and memories of historic funeral practices in Vicksburg.

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An incident of several years ago makes Riles think there should be restrooms in cemeteries. He was conducting the funeral of an elderly lady, who was also a close friend, when her husband told him, “I have to go to the restroom,” and Riles assured him that he would take him “just as soon as this is over.” The husband said, “You don’t understand me. I’ve got to go now.” Riles said he will never forget that as the funeral procession was coming up the hill in Vicksburg’ Cedar Hill Cemetery “he and I were going down the hill looking for a tree.”

Riles said he has used his sense of humor in certain cases because, “With a majority of the people I know, I can tell you something funny about them. A touch of humor is usually comforting, and always the family has something funny to tell me. Just for those few minutes, we are remembering the good times. There’s a therapy in that.”

A sense of humor is important, he says, for working with death is hard. “You are usually burying your friends, for in most cases your competitor is burying those who don’t like you.”

Being able to laugh doesn’t mean that undertakers

cost about $450, and, if there was an $800 funeral, “We joked ‘we’re going to light the chandeliers.’” Because of the escalating price of wood and steel, plus local cemetery charges, the cost now is $7,000 to $8,000, depending on the type of service, the cost of the casket and possible cash advances. The cost of building and operating a funeral home also is expensive, and Riles pointed out that a Cadillac hearse costs more than $100,000.

Cremations weren’t talked about too many years ago in the South, he said, though they were common in the North. A half century ago, the closest crematory was in Alabama, but Mississippi is now home to 18 or 19. About half the burials in the country are cremations.

“You can be cremated and still have a traditional funeral,” he said. “But you won’t need but one pallbearer.”

Riles’ interest in the past hasn’t been just in burials.

He has researched and accumulated a library of histories of the funeral business in Vicksburg and the Religious Sisters of Mercy. He admired the nuns’ customs, their work and “their great dignity in death. It was a rough job because you got to love those little ladies in their old age — and then they would die — all of a sudden, they were gone.”

He's just buried in his work. a funeral director never retires.

don’t cry, and Riles will tell you he has wept at times, such as when a child was murdered by her mother “and people lined the street all the way to the cemetery in tribute. I cried for that.” He’s likely to shed tears for a baby, for a young person, even for someone who has lived a long, happy life, as death of a friend often comes as a surprise “but it is still hurtful. You can’t justify, but you can accept.”

He also remembers that at a dear friend’s funeral, tears were running down his cheeks when another friend asked, “What’s wrong, Riles? Did the check bounce?”

Charles Riles graduated from mortuary college in Nashville and since has owned Fisher Funeral Home, which he sold. He built and has operated Riles Funeral Home since 2002. He has also served as the chairman of the Mississippi State Board of Funeral Services.

The funeral business operates under the rules of the Federal Trade Commission, he said, “because there were some dishonest funeral directors. The FTC requires that all bills be itemized, which is not a problem with ethical funeral homes.”

A big change in the last 50 years has been the cost of a funeral. When Riles began his career, a nice funeral

Riles doesn’t claim to be a journalist or historian — “I’m an undertaker” — but he has collected and published funeral stories from Vicksburg. His latest book, which he co-authored, is “Just Passing Through.”

Riles hasn’t done his work alone. On Jan. 18, 1969, he married Cil Hossley. They have three daughters and several grandchildren. In addition to being a wife and mother, Cil has been beside Riles in life.

“She’s quite the businessperson,” he said. “There’s nothing she doesn’t know about the business. She is a guiding force.”

He tells of the conversation he once had with Willis Jefferson, who established the first black funeral home in Mississippi. In speaking of undertakers, Jefferson said, “If we didn’t die, it wouldn’t be fair to anyone else.”

A funeral director never retires, Riles said. “He’s just buried in his work.”

STORY Gordon Cotton PHOTOGRAPHY Melanie Thortis

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Out of this world epitaphs chisel out a look at lives past

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“see,

i told you i was sick.”

VICKSBURG — That’s the last line on a tombstone in Vicksburg’s Cedar Hill Cemetery and, though the one who penned it lies beneath the sod, he still brings a smile to the living.

Beneath that monument is a story — though the epitaph carved in stone seldom gives even a hint of the accomplishments or character of the one buried there. Most simple ones state names and dates, while older ones sometimes tell the place of birth, especially if they were Irish and proud of it.

Some epitaphs are sad, some humorous and some have a message. But, most are as dull as the dirt that covers the caskets.

At Cedar Hill Cemetery are some prime examples of all the above categories. I especially like the one — quite lengthy — that extolls the man’s fine virtues, tells of his educational background and family heritage, his achievements in public life and concluded upon his death in 1835 that he was “lamented by all who valued Human excellence.”

And, at the bottom is an engraving showing that the marker was erected by his two friends.

The monuments over soldiers’ graves often tell of their roles and patriotic deeds in various wars. James H. Walsh, a Confederate soldier in Swett’s Battery, was described as “A brave soldier, a loving husband, a devoted father and a loyal friend.” Marmaduke Shannon II almost made it through the war, only to die April 6, 1865 “in the last struggle for Southern independence.”

Some stones tell about one’s life’s work — or lack of it. A man who obviously had a good time in life was memorialized with the words “Adverse to the plow, prone to the fiddle and jug.”

The words “To be a nurse is to walk with God” are inscribed on Bobbie Burt’s tombstone, and others tell of various roles in life, such as being a locomotive engineer.

Tom Wince of Vicksburg wrote his own epitaph, and he wasn’t shy about how he wanted to be remembered. The inscription reads “An Internationally Known Night Club owner who established and operated the famous Blue Room Night Club from 1937-1972.”

Carl White McRaven’s actions in saving someone from a burning building, only to be a victim himself, is why the following words are on his Cedar Hill tombstone: “Gave his life that another might live.”

Being a newspaper editor in Vicksburg in the 1800s was sometimes a dangerous job. James Hagan and John Jenkins are examples. Hagan died in 1843; Jenkins, five years later, also the poorer shot in a duel.

They are beside one another, Hagan’s epitaph telling of his purity of heart, of his “incorruptible integrity as the conductor of a Public Press.” On Jenkins’ stone are words, “He died as bravely as he had ever lived,” and also spoke of his “unsurpassed ability, fearlessness and fidelity.”

When Elizabeth Murphy died in 1904 at age 53, the marker placed at her grave bears this poem:

“Warm summer sun Shine kindly here Warm Southern wind Blow softly here Green sod above Lie light, lie light Good night, dear Heart Good night, Good night.”

The simple inscription on the tombstone of Louis Hoffman tells more about the character of one of his three wives than it does about him. “Our husband” is carved on his stone and on each side are identical stones with “My Wife” engraved in the marble. His third wife was buried on top of his casket.

When Mary E. Smith died in Vicksburg in 1878, her final words were carved on her stone: “See that my grave is kept green.”

Sometimes there are warnings on tombstones, such as the one on the grave of Dr. Solomon Phillips, who was buried in 1830 on his plantation south of Vicksburg: “Stranger, Beware! I left my native home.

I found no better, but I found a tomb.”

My great-grandfather, Reuben Rainey Morgan, has an oft-used admonition over his grave in Pike

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County, Alabama: “As you pass by so once was I. As I am now, you soon will be. Be prepared to follow me.” There’s a variation of this message on a modern stone at Cedar Hill, and there’s a reply, in rhyme, which I’ve forgotten, but it is to this point: I’ll not follow you until I find out which way you went!

I’ve seen two cartoons of tombstones that I think are great: “Ha! Ha!” (he got the last laugh) and “He died of dyslexia — he kept dialing 119.” But, there is one at Cedar Hill that reads, “Paid my own way in life and death, including this tombstone” and another has the stoical observation, “I thought it would end this way.”

It isn’t just the epitaphs that make old cemeteries, especially those with moss-draped trees and fancy iron fences, my favorite haunts, but it is also some of the beautiful sculptures. There are roses and angels and crosses, weeping willows and seashells, doves and anchors and little lambs.

There are some that make the deceased look so natural!

At Cedar Hill is the life-size statue of Grace Lawrence Martin and her little girl, also named Grace, carved of Carra marble in Italy. In the Utica City Cemetery, there is Frost John Kelly, all dressed up, everything down to the finest detail, such as the watch fob, carved in marble. In Crystal Springs, there is the man and his dog, also in marble, also life-size.

Among my favorite tombstones is one in the graveyard at the Episcopal church in Prairieville, Alabama, just the other side of Demopolis. The 10-foot-tall obelisk is for Mrs. Mourning S. Bocock who allegedly was married three times — once for love, once for money and once for fame. The bottom line of her marker sums it up: “She Hath Done What She Could.”

So what do I want on mine? Major W.E. Palmer, buried in the Printer’s lot in the early 1900s in Vicksburg, was memorialized as “A philosopher, scholar and printer.” I was a printer, I like to philosophize (I can spell it but have trouble saying it), but too many friends would dispute the scholar line.

So, I’ve come up with the following, which my tombstone marker has minus the expiration date:

By the Grace of God Gordon A. Cotton was a Southerner and a Primitive Baptist “Don’t blame me.

I voted for Ron Paul.”

STORY Gordon Cotton PHOTOGRAPHY Melanie Thortis

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OPPOSITE PAGE TOP: A tombstone in the shape of a piano at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Vicksburg OPPOSITE PAGE BOTTOM: The epitaph of a craftsman whose gravesite is adorned with log chairs at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Vicksburg THIS PAGE LEFT: Soldiers Rest at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Vicksburg TOP RIGHT: City Vault at Cedar Hill Cemetery BOTTOM RIGHT: A craftsman has log chairs next to his grave in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Vicksburg.

HEADLINE Copy here for both photos.

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O F C U LT U R E Friday, Nov. 25 - Sunday, Jan. 1 Closed 12/24 and 12/25 Gates open 5:30 - 9:30 p.m.

Show ends nightly at 10:30

Saturdays on MississippiToday.org

For a $5 admission fee — or $40 Holiday Savings Pass — guests will be able to enjoy the sights and sounds of the Gulfport Harbor Lights Winter Festival Light Show.

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Admission Includes:

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This event is made possible by the City of Gulfport, the Island View Casino Resort and the Coast Transit Authority.

For more info, call Leisure Services at 228-868-5881 or visit us on Facebook at facebook.com/GulfportHarborLights

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Visit MississippiToday.org every Saturday morning to read original stories on music, art, food, lifestyle and much more.

You may also view the 'Sip of Culture stories and photo galleries online at thesipmag.com/culture.

Don't miss your all-access cultural pass to exclusive cultural content, provided by The 'Sip!

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OUTSIDE

the ‘

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VI C K S B U R G

Water Feature

Adding a pond likely will add down time

On Beane Farm something is always happening. From acquiring heritage hogs to trimming giant oak trees to churning ground and tending my year-round garden, I simply never relax. With the latest improvement on our little homestead, however, I just might have to sit peacefully beside the water and enjoy the view.

T

PORTRAIT BY MELANIE THORTIS

That’s right, we are building a pond.

As an avid outdoorsman and fisherman, I’ve always wanted a pond.

Having water right outside my back door is a dream come true. Without a drop of water collected in the contoured earth, I’m already envisioning a stocked pond with catfish, throwing a cast-net at dusk to catch live-bait before heading out to the Mississippi River for some nighttime flathead catfishing. The icing on the cake, beginning this spring, will be the evening chorus of frogs and insect life around the water’s edge. It will be music to this country boy’s ears.

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the‘

I grew up on a 5-acre farmstead where my brother and I, as young children, desperately wished to have a pond. With my father’s lack of interest and the necessary investment looming, my brother and I started to build one on our own, using only shovels. He was 12, and I was 10. Naively, we spent months taking every free opportunity we had, which, as kids, was a lot of time, digging and laying out the perimeter of our one-day pond. As we trenched a 3-foot perimeter tunnel over about a half-acre, we had the dimensions of our dream pond slowly transitioning into reality. As our outline was polished and evenly dug out, we worked our way inward, standing on top of the high ground and, with each shovel full, our walk to the outer perimeter grew longer. And in the south Arkansas heat, even tough boys grow weary.

As my parents surely found pleasure in watching us literally kill time creating a pond by hand, they eventually saw the physical toll and our real desire. My dad gave in and, with help from a friend, he borrowed a backhoe and bulldozer and finished the job. In two days, he finished what would have taken us two years by hand, and he dug it to 10 feet versus our arms-length depth. My passion for having a pond never died, but I’m certainly thankful I didn’t have to use a shovel to kick off the effort this time around.

When my wife, Heather, and I bought our property in Vicksburg, several areas immediately adjacent to our home posed extensive erosion concerns. We live within the Loess bluffs of Vicksburg and, as a result, have steep slopes contrary to the flat areas of the Mississippi Delta. With our house, outbuildings and pens bordering the eroded areas, my goal since move-in day has been to find a way to fix the problem areas. The issue has always been that a lot of ground needed to be worked, and it would require heavy, earth-moving equipment. All the problem areas are adjacent to or in densely forested areas. The sheer expense was scary to think about, particularly with a mortgage, regular bills and seemingly never-ending school loans.

As I researched ways to affordably address these pressing erosion concerns — we were literally losing ground — I discovered the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), a program within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, that offers landowner assistance programs, called Conservation Plans. These plans include cost-share programs designed to aid farmers, even small-time farmers like me, in protecting the land and resources they manage.

sip

OUTSIDE

This is a valuable program not only to the farmer enrolled in a Conservation Plan, but it also benefits water quality onand off-site by minimizing erosion of sediments by improving highly erodible areas.

Once I discovered the programs, I jumped at the opportunity to get Beane Farm in the queue. I performed all the necessary paperwork and, within a year or so, our farm property was selected for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQUIP). Our land was surveyed and the results led to the installation of a grade-stabilization structure. The structure is designed specifically to assist with stopping erosion. Upon award of the EQUIP contract, my role was to identify a contractor to perform the dirt work, levee and spillway construction and someone who could also clear the trees. This would allow the ground to be graded and sloped to minimize erosion.

This summer, the land-clearing commenced and, over the course of a month and a half, we cleared debris, cleaned up trash dumped years ago in the eroded gullies and began the dirt-moving to create the pond. Although our pond will be only about an acre in surface water, the footprint to perform the slope stabilization was roughly three acres. Needless to say, the densely forested property had a major makeover. But the end-product was well worth it and my dream of having a pond is coming to fruition.

Although I’m impatiently waiting for rain to fill up this large hole next to our house, I’m also excited at all the opportunities that lie ahead.

Deer have already begun to skirt the woodline to investigate their new watering hole. Heather, although not too excited about how open it is around our house due to the massive tree removal, has begun discussions of new trees to plant, where a sitting area near the pond will go and where the fence line will be so our dogs can roam the fresh ground and pond.

With all the travel I do for my job, getting the pond installed and all the timelines worked out, sometimes in my absence, was a huge undertaking. The reward from the efforts one day will provide a perfect venue to relax.

The cost-share assistance programs made the opportunity possible, and I’m grateful that, while protecting natural resources and limiting erosion concerns, I will also be able to fish right outside my back door.

STORY Nathan Beane PHOTOGRAPHY Submitted by Nathan Beane

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ILLUSTRATION BY JAMIE RUNNELLS

the ‘

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'SIP OF NATURE

mag.com

the‘

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'SIP OF NATURE

N LANTANA: a perennial essential for Southern landscapes

Lantana, sometimes referred to as shrub verbenas, is a native species found in tropical regions of the Americas but also grows well as a perennial in Mississippi.

The joy of growing lantanas is they bloom well into the fall and usually last until winter’s first frost. I grow several patches of this shrubby plant around my home and am always amazed at their display of colors. My lantanas are covered each fall in bright red, yellow, orange, blue, purple and white blooms.

Butterflies can’t seem to resist the sweet nectar, especially at the end of summer when few options are available because Mississippi’s hot and dry weather has devastated most plants.

A lantana’s growth form is shrubby and either low statured from approximately one foot off the ground or it can grow in a massive thicket reaching heights up to 6 feet. This is dependent on the type of lantana. Many are hybrid species and offer a range of growth and color forms. The leaves of the lantana are poisonous to herbivores, meaning you have to keep them away from livestock and pets that would chew on them. However, deer won’t eat them, a luxury to Southern gardeners.

Lantanas are an easy sell. The beautiful display of color alone is enough to convince me to transplant them in new areas around my home each year. They are drought tolerant, love heat and full sun conditions and do not require added watering, sprays or fertilizer. In fact, I never have to water these plants around my home, and they thrive every year.

Enjoy your fall bloomers!

g by nathan beane Fall 2016

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MADE IN THE 'SIP

the ‘

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C LI N T O N

Mississippi Mane & Co.

Necessity drove businessman’s balm for beards Joseph Creel is a trendsetter, though he didn’t set out to be. He simply fought a battle with facial hair since junior high and was mastering the big, bushy beard look long before it was considered hip.

I

“I was sporting a light mustache in the seventh grade because my parents wouldn't let me shave.

My mom didn’t want me to grow up so fast,” said Creel, 28. “But I went to an academy that didn’t allow facial hair, so they made me shave it – with a rusty, single-blade razor. So I’ve hated shaving ever since.”

While still in high school, he experimented with other styles of facial hair – mainly thick Elvis-like sideburns, and once he graduated, it was finally time to let that hair just grow.

And grow, it did.

“It was wild. It was ugly. It was very unkempt,” he said. “I knew nothing about it except that I wanted to grow a beard just because I could.”

Creel spent his college summers backpacking through states in the North, and it was while on one of his adventures that he first discovered beard oil. It seemed to be a relatively low-maintenance way to keep his beard from being dry and itchy.

“People don’t realize it, but if you take care of your beard, it actually insulates your face during the summer. It’s not hot like you would think,” he said.

He tried a few different brands of beard oil that he found online. At the time, the beard trend had not yet hit Mississippi, and no one had heard of this type of product.

“Everything I tried left me feeling really greasy; they were really heavy; and all the scents were the same. I guess they just assume every guy wants to smell like the bark of a tree,” said Creel. “I just thought I could do it better.”

So about two years ago, Creel decided to try it for himself. He started researching different blends and experimenting with oils.

“It wasn’t about selling it — I wanted to use it for myself, so

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I wanted it to be good,” he said.

With a full-time job teaching high school biology, Creel knew he had only nights and weekends to work on his new hobby. Finally, however, after a good bit of trial and error, he perfected his formula — and his business model.

With marketing and design help of friend Carrie Chennault, 26, the newly formed Mississippi Mane and Co., soon started manufacturing small batches of about a dozen bottles at a time.

Mississippi Mane now has 13 scents on the market, in addition to a limited edition seasonal autumn orchard blend and several other fragrance combinations in the testing phase.

“With so many products now you just look on the label and it says ‘fragrance,’ which can include up to 3,000 different chemicals that make up that scent,” said Creel. “It was important to me that we made sure all of our scents were essential oil based, from plants, cold-pressed, steamdistilled. All of our scents are made that way.”

Each scent is designed to appeal to both men and women. Ironically, he said, it’s often more women who purchase the products than men.

“Some are sweeter scents, like honeysuckle, and some are more woodsy, like pine,” he said. “Each one moisturizes the beard as well as your skin and leaves your beard softer, more manageable and less tangled.”

It’s not just beard oil that Mississippi Mane creates.

The company also has lip balm, butter balm moisturizer, beard wash (which can also be used as a body wash) and cedarwood beard combs handcrafted by Creel’s brother, Caleb.

He sells his products inside Paxton Peak outdoor outfitters in Clinton, as well as directly from his website and a shop on the online marketplace, Etsy. He also hits the streets for local farmers’ markets and festivals.

“It’s great to be able to talk to the customers face to face and explain what the products are and how they work. I like

#

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MADE IN THE 'SIP

ABOVE: Joseph Creel is the owner of Mississippi Mane & Co., the makers of handmade and natural beard oil products.

RIGHT: Creel sends out hand-written notes with each purchase.

ABOVE: Joseph Creel has sported a beard since seventh grade.

LEFT: Mississippi Mane & Co., products are individually packaged.

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the ‘

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MADE IN THE 'SIP BELOW: Joseph Creel, owner of Mississippi Mane & Co., makes his natural beard oil products.

TOP LEFT: Mississippi Mane & Co., offers beard oil in various scents and sizes.

BOTTOM LEFT: The company offers other products for regular beard maintenance.

“I've been growing a beard long before it became popular, and I'll keep growing it long after the trend has passed.” ~ JOSEPH CREEL

Mississippi Mane & Co.

the personal contact,” he said.

Creel said one of his goals with Mississippi Mane and Co., is to help reverse some of the stereotypes and misconceptions about beards.

“In the South, the trend is relatively new. For a long time, people might have just looked at you like you were dirty or from the country if you had a big beard. I want to change that perception. It can be groomed. It can smell nice,” he said.

Regardless of the peaks and valleys that come with running a business based on a trend such as bushy beards, Creel hopes to keep Mississippi Mane and Co., small and personal.

“I don’t ever want to outsource anything. I want to keep everything handmade in a small batch. That’s how you ensure it’s what it needs to be,” he said.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad it’s a trend, but I’ve been growing a beard long before it became popular, and I’ll keep growing it long after the trend has passed,” said Creel.

STORY Elizabeth Grey PHOTOGRAPHY Melanie Thortis

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Fall 2016

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APPROACHING THE

Magic Hour When the sun sets, downtown Ocean Springs comes alive with an eclectic music scene

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W

alter Anderson first put Ocean Springs on

the cultural map with paintings and murals that captured the pastoral beauty of the town, its

neighboring marshes and offshore barrier islands.

The modern image of Ocean Springs may still be heavily indebted to Anderson’s legacy, but the coastal town is also becoming known as a haven for musicians and music fans.

Ocean Springs

- "We're experiencing a lot of good organic growth in Ocean Springs, and there's lots going on,” said Vicki Applewhite, a media professional who this year established the Ocean Springs LIVE music series. Applewhite, who recently joined the board of the Mississippi Arts Commission, wants the series to enrich her hometown’s creative economy by expanding its music scene and boosting business at the same time.

On any given night, visitors can catch live music at 14 venues within a single square mile, centered around a rapidly growing, walkable downtown. On the west end of Government Street, interspersed with specialty shops near the oak-shaded intersection at Washington Avenue — the original center of this town of 17,000 — restaurants and bars cater to widely varying musical tastes.

"You might see a jazz combo down at Mosaic, a Top 40 band at Leo's, then funk or rock at the (Government Street) Grocery, maybe a DJ at the Juke Joint, or a singer-songwriter at Kwitzky's,” said Corey Christy, bassist for the 10-piece jam-funk group Blackwater Brass, a local fixture. “You can see whatever you want down here."

Applewhite saw an opportunity to add to the music scene by attracting music fans downtown early and bringing artists that local audiences wouldn’t ordinarily get to see perform. She founded the Ocean Springs LIVE series at Rosetti Park, a green space she and her husband own on Church Street, two blocks from the heart of downtown.

The first season in 2016 featured such acts as Wet Willie and Cyril Neville, and Blackwater Brass opened every show as the house band. Applewhite’s biggest coup was bringing in The Swampers, the Muscle Shoals, Ala.-based backing band heard on recordings by Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” — no small feat, considering they’ve always been a studioonly band.

“Those guys are studio musicians, and the really cool thing is they do not tour,” Applewhite said. “It was a cool experience for them to come down and be treated like rock-n-roll royalty, and get exposure to the area. They had mega fans show up to see them.”

Applewhite set up the shows so they would end by dusk, intending that they would add to the nightlife experience by attracting large crowds of people who could continue their evenings at the restaurants

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ABOVE: Flow Tribe, a high energy band based in New Orleans, took the stage in September as part of the Ocean Springs LIVE free music series.

This summer's series was the first of its kind in Ocean Springs.

and bars downtown. Revelers could bring their families for the free events, which would open the experiences to more people.

“People are looking for something new all the time,” Christy said. “They expect the venues to bring something special to the table."

Government Street Grocery, the longest-running downtown music venue, is one of the spots where audiences can count on finding something a little off-center. Bluegrass bands, Americana artists such as Cary Hudson and New Orleans-inspired crews like Blackwater Brass give music fans a taste of the eclectic. Late-night crowds hit the Juke Joint, where bands go on as late as midnight and play well into the early morning.

Strong musical scenes have one thing in common: an equally strong sense of community. The Mississippi Songwriters Festival, which has brought hundreds of songwriters and fans to the town over the past seven years, is a key part of the mix in Ocean Springs. One of the annual event’s main goals is to give local songwriters a way to network with professionals who work in the music industry.

"We're trying to develop a community down here, that way you'll have people to write with and listen to,” said Mississippi Songwriters Alliance co-founder George Cumbest. “It's like anything else — if you have a community, you'll stick with it and get better. We want to build a bridge from here to Nashville. " Brent Anderson, a Pascagoula native who writes and performs with Brad Paisley, performed at the festival this year, along with fellow Jackson County native Matt Hoggatt, whom Jimmy Buffett discovered and signed to his label. Tricia Walker, who heads Delta State University’s

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Delta Music Institute and has written for Faith Hill and Alison Krauss, has made two trips to the festival.

"I think people who write songs, just by the oftensolitary nature of it, they feel like they'd like to go out and get some tips from other people who are doing the same thing, or other people who have made it farther down the road, someone who's a professional who has had a hit,” Walker said.

Cumbest and the other Mississippi Songwriters Alliance members work to “keep everybody’s fire lit,” he said, by hosting weekly open-mic nights at venues around Ocean Springs, as well as the monthly Songs and Stories performance series held at the Mary C. O’Keefe Cultural Center on Government Street.

Helping those up-and-comers is part of the mission that extends to the festival itself. This year, that included artists such as Brandon Green, a Lucedale native who earned the runner-up spot on the second season of CMT’s “Can You Duet,” and was picked by Keith Urban as the winner of Guitar Center’s “Your Next Record with Keith Urban” competition.

"When you become part of an audience, you become part of a community and people experience things together,” said Applewhite, who plans to coordinate a festival with the Mississippi Songwriters Alliance in the spring. “We've been creating this tent pole to say Ocean Springs is Mississippi's live music capital.”

For more information on Ocean Springs LIVE, visit www.oceanspringslive.com.

STORY Jim Beaugez PORTRAIT James Edward Bates EVENT PHOTOGRAPHY Submitted/Fred Salinas

"We've been creating this tent pole to say Ocean Springs is Mississippi's live music capital.� — Vicki Applewhite, founder Ocean Springs LIVE

ABOVE: Vicki Applewhite, founder of the Ocean Springs LIVE music series, sits in Rosetti Park, the green space she owns and hosts music events. BOTTOM LEFT: Jamell Richardson performs at an Ocean Springs LIVE event this summer. BOTTOM RIGHT: Musician Jimmy Hall was one of the performers in the popular series.

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Law of Nature

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Not many high-school bands make it out of the garage — and far fewer can claim a quarter-century legacy. College-circuit legend Law of Nature counts itself among the exceptions.

“I needed something to channel my creative energy into,” explains band co-founder Chapman Welch. “At that time [1989], you kind of had to create your own things to do. I think that’s why there are so many creative people in every little town in Mississippi.”

Formed in Corinth around the talents of 15-year-old Welch as songwriter and guitarist and 14-year-old Jennifer Knight on lead vocals and acoustic guitar, Law of Nature made it out of the garage, farther and faster than most.

“The first gig where we got hooked on playing shows was at the Cannery in Nashville — the first time people got up and danced — [when] we were 16,” said Welch. “From that time, we were playing shows in Nashville and Memphis on the weekend.”

Welch’s musical tastes veered between the classical music he played on piano and the bands he listened to at the time — REM, 10,000 Maniacs, Pixies, Sugarcubes, Edie Brickell and Concrete Blonde. He said the band’s early records, made when they were still in high school, sounded like a combination of those influences.

By 1992, Chapman was a student at Mississippi State University and, in 1994, the band recorded its first widely distributed album, Four Points in the Valley. The band drew a following playing Starkville bars like Mulligan’s, Rick’s Café and Dave’s Dark Horse. They followed up with More in 1996.

Recorded at Duck Tape Music by Johnny Sandlin, who previously manned the console for Widespread Panic and

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the Allman Brothers Band, More showed the band stretching out. New percussion and subtle banjo added depth to the band’s songs, which served as melodic vehicles for Knight and tapestries for Welch’s expansive guitar soloing.

Amanda Garriga, a close friend and roommate of Jennifer, joined the band and contributed to the next album, Hot Pants and Pop Rocks. She soon moved to Nashville to pursue songwriting full time, where her talents were cut tragically short after an undiagnosed heart condition caused her death.

“Amanda was one of my dearest friends,” Jennifer said. “At one point in my life, I lived with her, worked two different jobs with her and spent more of my free time with her than anyone. The band became a family, so it was like losing family.”

After growing tight through years on the road, playing gigs across the Southeast and beyond with bands like Widespread Panic, Los Lobos and the Neville Brothers, the members of Law of Nature eventually drifted to other careers. Knight and Welch married and settled in the Houston, Texas, area. Today, their bandmates are scattered around the country, but their creative spark still burns hot. Through it all, the band has kept performing. Recording the band’s latest album, Automagic, released earlier this year, posed logistical challenges, but there was no lack of chemistry. It was a true labor of love.

“Since we live so scattered, recording Automagic was very quick and somewhat effortless on my part,” said bassist Andy Sherman. “Some of the tracks I played on were first takes and the first time I heard them. Chapman was playing the chords on guitar next to me while being recorded.”

Drummer Michael McGrath, meanwhile, wrote his parts at home in Las Vegas from rough guitar tracks, working out

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Opposit Page: Law of Nature is, from left, Chapman Welch, Jennifer Knight Welch, Andy Sherman and Michael McGrath This Page: Law of Nature performs songs from their latest album, Automagic, in Tupelo this summer.

different ideas and grooves for the songs, before bringing his drum kit to the studio in Houston.

The album shows the band’s range, from a straight-ahead rocker like “Anything I Want,” propelled by the rhythm section of Sherman and McGrath, to the Dusty Springfield in Memphis-feel of Jennifer’s vocals on “You’re Not Alone,” to a 1970s Laurel Canyon groove on “Tame.”

On Automagic, Welch was also able to indulge his professional life as electro-acoustical music specialist with REMLABS at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music.

“I invited a lot of students, real players, from Rice to perform on the album,” he said. “And on the track ‘Into the Fading Light,’ the thing that sounds like an organ is actually my Tele run through some software I created.”

Jennifer said the group’s newest album is their best yet.

“It’s the best thing we’ve done,” she said. “Chapman’s songwriting is amazing, and the arrangements are deeper than any other Law of Nature album.”

The band is currently working on its fifth album in Houston.

Sherman and McGrath recently flew in to lay down basic tracks.

“I really do enjoy playing with these guys,” Sherman said. “I wish we could do it five times a week and make a living at it. I think we keep on because we love each other. The band gives us a reason to do that. That’s a lot of history. It shows every time we pick up our instruments.”

STORY G.E. Light PHOTOGRAPHY Lauren Wood

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SMALL-TOWN 'SIP

Planting Seeds This fall, I started teaching a gardening class at my kids’ elementary school. Thanks to the wave of urban farming and FoodCorps members and sites like Gardenista, this sounds much more hipster and locavore than it actually is.

Mention the words school garden, and people seem to envision a type of plant-based Nirvana for children, where vegetables spill over raised bed borders, friendly chickens cluck while being patted by smiling children and an array of kids hold big metal colanders of freshly harvested goodness — all set to feed their peers, who will cheerfully demolish zucchini fritters and beet-based pancakes.

This is not what my school garden is like.

My school garden is a 25-foot by 65-foot rectangle of overturned earth that the doit-all Craig King plowed up for me earlier this summer in the middle of a grassy field adjoining the school. Currently, it’s surrounded by a droopy electric fence. And within? Within we have a series of beatendown bare-earth pathways and mounds of dirt, sparsely adorned, at the moment, with turnip and chard and cabbage seedlings.

It also has four zinnia flowers, which receive an inordinate amount of praise by the 80 or so kids I see every Thursday morning, and a diminished pile of mulch donated by Andy Hall and Jerry Gordon, my absolute favorite Water Valley electric department people. The children like the mulch less than the zinnias because fire ants have taken up residence in it.

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By Alexe van Beuren

I’m two months into teaching kids about gardening and, so far, all we’ve actually produced is a small pile of pumpkins and enough basil for every kid to take a bite. I’m going to blame the dirt (terrible! But I’m working on making it better!) and the weather (I sure am tired of dragging the sprinkler around — has it forgotten how to rain?) and definitely not myself (I have an enthusiastic thumb, but it may in fact be black).

Fortunately, I have an easy-to-please crowd. I love my Thursday mornings with the elementary kids of Water Valley. Judging by the hugs and amazing thank-you notes I get, they enjoy them too. We talk about nutrition and plant seeds and daffodil bulbs and, then, we usually play Red Light Green Light and do jumping jacks while hollering out the names of our favorite vegetables. It’s chaotic, ridiculous and a lot of fun.

What I enjoy less is the adult input about my gardening class.

“Are you going to feed the school with what you are growing?”

Hmmm. Feed 600 children with one medium-sized gardening plot, tended intermittently by me, a full-time working mom, and a rotating cast of 40-at-a-time school children?

Seems unlikely.

“I know a great place to get cow manure! All you have to do is—” and here I stop listening. Because, I already know what I have to do. If you’d like the school garden to have cow manure, please bring it some.

“You should plant fruit trees and

bushes!” I was actually listening to this guy, because this sounds like a good idea, and he happens to be someone with serious gardening credentials and a father to boot. Then, he said, “Bomb-proof things like blueberries and figs.”

I have blueberry bushes and fig trees at my house. They ripen in June and late July, respectively. Being a mother of two, I’m eminently aware that children are not, in fact, at school during those months. Instead, they are reading comic books at the store with me, complaining about being bored before I give them each a dollar to get ice cream at Turnage Drug Store and tell them to be bored somewhere else on Main Street.

As for chickens, I’ve heard tales about chickens that enjoy being petted by people.

I’ve had chickens for close to a decade now, and that has not been my experience.

My chickens enjoy dropped food scraps, wiggling worms and making dust bath areas for themselves (generally next to tender, delicate, newly planted things). They have shown absolutely no interest in being petted by children, much to my kids’ friends’ disappointment. Plus, did I mention I teach 40 kids at a time? Forty kids — plus a small vulnerable live animal — just seems like it could go terribly wrong.

So! The Water Valley School Garden welcomes donations of seeds, rotted manure and any easy-to-grow fruiting vines, trees and shrubs that ripen between August and May. Seeds and bulbs can be mailed to 301 N. Main St, Water Valley, MS 38965; truckloads of any soil improvements will be accepted only if delivered and shoveled out adjacent to the garden itself. And, please, don’t bring us any chickens.

Alexe van Beuren grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She moved to Water Valley, Miss., in 2006 with husband Kagan Coughlin of Vermont. They have two Mississippi-born children, Annaliese and Caspian. In 2010, Alexe opened the B.T.C. Old-Fashioned Grocery, which has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Southern Living, Garden & Gun and, most importantly, Miss Betty's Week. Alexe and her business partner, Dixie Grimes, authored the B.T.C. Old-Fashioned Grocery Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from A Southern Revival in 2014. She contributes to The 'Sip regularly as a columnist for SmallTown 'Sip.

ILLUSTRATION BY CLAIBORNE COOKSEY

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LAST 'SIP

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THE LAST ’SIP

birds on a wire

photo by Melanie Thortis TH OR T I SP HOT OGRAP HY.C OM

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find the spirit O F O U R H I S T O R Y.

As the birthplace of magnificent musicians, literary legends and famous folklore, Mississippi is also the final resting place to the characters that created our living legacies. Buried in St. Peter’s Cemetery in Oxford, author William Faulkner used Lafayette County to conjure up his fictional Yoknapatawpha County in numerous writings, including “As I Lay Dying.” In Yazoo City, known as the “Gateway to the Delta,” you’ll find the chained grave of the infamous Witch of Yazoo. Buried beside her is the man whose writings made her famous, author Willie Morris.

B.B. King, world-renowned “King of the Blues,” is interred in the nearby Delta region, while Robert Johnson, fabled to have made a deal with the devil for his guitar prowess, has no less than three locations staking claim as his final resting place. Come experience Mississippi’s unique sacred spaces, and leave with a lore of your own.

Start your story at visitmississippi.org.