I pulled into the parking lot of the Malouf Furniture Showroom near the banks of the Yazoo River and didn’t know what to expect. I looked over at the big SuperTalk RV. My first radio remote. I was too tired to be nervous.
The best thing about working at SuperTalk is that the people behind the scenes are top notch. Gary and Houston were in charge of getting the show up and running technically. The station manager up in Greenwood, Jim, lined me up a great line-up of guests. All I had to do was ask good questions.
Good luck there. But the questions came easy. The guests all had a great story to tell.
After three hours of talking about the town of Greenwood, I had a better idea about the small Delta town. And myself.
To sum the show up in one word, it would be “Reinvention.”
Greenwood was born as a trading post and developed on the back of king cotton. Civil rights tempered it. The Blues became its theme music. The cotton trade waxed and waned. People left and leaders emerged. Today thanks to businesses like Viking Range Corporation, the town is on the rise. It’s bucking a trend that has many Delta towns starting to wither. Greenwood is surviving. You can go to a world class resort (the Alluvian), listen to world class music (the Blues), eat world-class food (and learn to cook it at the Viking Cooking School) and buy world class furniture (John-Richard Furniture.) Leaders like Fred Carl, Jr. and Alex Malouf are propelling it forward. Recently the movie “The Help” was filmed there. There is a level of cooperation between the leaders there that many towns would die for. And will die without.
The closing theme music played in my ears and I took off my headphones. I said thank you to my hosts and grabbed a few snacks. I cranked my car and drove east away from the setting Delta sunset. As I looked at the freshly plowed fields (that stretched on to the horizon), I began to to think:
Reinvention. Greenwood is figuring it out. It isn’t trying to stay the same. It’s changing — yet it’s honoring its past. It’s playing off its strengths. Greenwood isn’t trying to become something its not. It’s trying to improve on what it is. It’s not perfect. But its not sitting around feeling sorry for itself either. It has taken change and used it like the heat that turns iron to steel. It will be stronger for it.
I’m a radio host now. I hope for a long time. But I’m also a cartoonist. That’s what I am and what I do. As I drove up the bluff out of the Delta, I thought about my career. My reinvention. I’ll continue to use my talents. I’ll work hard and accept change not as a threat but as the catalyst to make me a better person. I’ll honor my past but look forward to a new, better future.
I’m going to set some goals today. One of my rewards will be to spend a nice weekend at a world class resort with my wife. Think I’ll go to the Alluvian. I hear Greenwood is nice this time of year.
Grateful for your reinvention. So nice to hear positive things about my hometown. After hearing the show, then reading your positive outlook on my old stompin’ grounds, I do believe the next time I’m in Gwood for business or go home to visit family in the area, I will def have to make a vacation out of it with the wifey.
Its easy to dwell on the negative about a MS delta town, but your way of shining some light on the positive is great. I do remember growing and only having to main fm radio stations in gwood. One ‘white music’ station and the other ‘black music’ station. But one thing about Saturdays in Gwood was that most pple & business’s would tune in to the ‘black’ radio station, in order to listen to the “all blues saturday”.
I hope the area & yourself continue to embrace this reinvention you speak of!
My parents are both from the Delta and it really is nice to hear good things about any part of it. I have been a fan of yours for so long and really love your positive outlook after everything you have been through in your professional life. You and the Mrs. deserve a great weekend at a wonderful resort!! Hope you get it soon.
i would like to know the name of some of the blues songs you play. if you have time could you post some of the names and artists names thanks!
Excellent post!
Reinvention, I like that. I hope to hear more positive things about my homestate. I grew up in and near the ‘cotton capitol of the world’, so I made sure to tune in to your show online, while I was working. Many good memories of growing up in the delta, helping out in the family business as a kid and as an adult, when our place was located on Carrollton Ave, with the RRtracks separating us from ‘baptist town’ on the backside of the property.
Crazy looking building to see, if your ever back in Gwood. The huge, akward shaped building that we ran our family business out of from 1975 till just several years ago, was actually one of the 1st cotton gins in Gwood. When my ol’ man bought it from an old cotton gin family, dad replaced the ‘metal’ exterior with cedar and replaced the old tin roof with a shingle roof. When they paved the gravel lot around the building we found a lot of horse shoes. We figured they from the horses that used to bring the cotton to the building, back when it was a gin.
We had customers from the surrounding black neighborhoods and from the little towns in the greater area of gwood that would come buy their vehicles from Dad, many of which had bought cars from my grandpa’s car lot a generation earlier, further out in the delta.
Customers would remind me how they appreciated buying cars from my folks because they knew they were honest folks to deal with. Maybe 10 yrs or 15 yrs so after running the car lot out that old cotton gin, Dad painted the entire exterior of the building black and put a green roof on it. Also changed the colors of the sign out front to black and green. Over the next several years customers (for a good laugh) would remember to ask Dad “How’d ya come up with the colors black & green for your business mr. perry?” and Dad would say “well…you know all you black people have made me so much green money, it just seemed right”.
If you ever get a chance to visit Gwood again, you can still see the old building alongside the tracks of baptist town. Its only a couple blocks east of a famous resteraunt called “Lusco’s”. I’ve heard it has great food, I wouldn’t know, even though I saw Lusco’s right up the street from our family business almost every day for 20 yrs, oddly enough I never ate at Lusco’s. Maybe it’s not so odd, I mean, I don’t think they ever ventured down to our place and bought a cheap car. That big crazy looking building is still in use too, it’s been reinvented into a black church.
anyways…thanks MR for sharing about your delta trip.
Reinvented into a black church. *with a green roof*
Some times when you live in a place all of your life it takes someone from the outside to make you see what you have. Thank you Marshall opening my eyes to a new way of seeing my home town. I have lived in Leflore co. for all of my 34 years and have never seen the town that I love in that way. When you live in a place and never experience any thing different you can’t always see the good, the exceptional, the unique. Thanks for giving me a look at my home from the fresh eyes of an outsider ( not that you are an outsider any more). Thank you for your vision.