I have just finished reading Richard Grant’s Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta, and yes, the title is perfect because not only is there a Pluto, MS, but the Mississippi Delta in many ways might as well be another planet. Or former planet. Or dwarf planet. Or whatever.
Regardless, Mr. Grant’s book about a British travel/adventure writer and his then girlfriend who move to the Delta on a whim, grabbed me by the throat. Having been born in Greenwood and having spent an inordinate amount of time on my grandparents’ place two-and-a-half miles north of Brazil and generally roaming around the Delta visiting my 32 aunts and uncles and numberless cousins, the book was somewhat of a travelogue of my youth.
But more than just a travelogue of places, more importantly it was a travelogue of the cultural, social, and racial geography of a place like no other. A place that one never quite gets out of their system no matter how many years pass or how far away they roam. I have not lived there in 54 years and presently reside in North Carolina, but I will always be a son of the Delta.
A place of friendly and open-handed people of all races, of wealth and soul-crushing poverty, of strangely institutionalized racism where people mostly get along with each other, the Delta makes me laugh until tears roll down my face, renews my faith in humanity, and breaks my heart again and again. Often all at the same time. And this is the part that Mr. Grant gets absolutely right, not just the dichotomies of the place and its peoples, but the polychotomies, if you will. People of the Delta cannot only hold two opposing views simultaneously but often several. With very little effort. That is just the way we are. That is just the Delta.
And this too is the Delta. I recently connected with a childhood friend that I have not seen or had any contact with since the third grade. He too has wandered far from the Delta, all the way to the west coast but has returned to land farmed by his great-grandfather. We have had a high old time catching up online, but that is nothing compared to the time we will have on my next trip to the Delta. We will travel some backroads, both actual and metaphorical, and continue to try to make sense of this place we still call home.
In the meantime, I suggest that if you get the time, correction, I suggest that you make the time, to purchase and read Dispatches from Pluto.
jamesgregorycatledge 