Our Next Adventure: The Delta Tamale Trail!

5/29/24 - Tomorrow, Clara and I get in the car and head north for the Delta Tamales and the Rhythm & Blues Trail.

We have 14 places picked out with some other things to do on the side.

 Day 1

We got up and celebrated not having a plane to catch by taking our time. We watched the news, cleaned up a bit, and watered the plants.

The plants are looking excellent! This is the first time I've had a gardening project where the plants didn't all instantly die. Of course, Clara's the one in charge, and she's had success in the past. Still, look at the hibiscus and the canna!

 We're fortunate to have friends in our apartment building, Josh and Joseph, who've agreed to water them while we're gone. They're the co-owners of Bourbon Pride, which I highly recommend visiting if you come to New Orleans. They design and make a lot of their own merchandise, so there's a lot of stuff you can't find elsewhere.

(As it turned out, it rained every day we were gone, so they didn't have to water. But, of course, if we'd not made the arrangement, it would have been a desert, and they'd all have died.)

So, Clara and I drank our coffee, checked we had all our power cords, and hit the road.

 

As Clara used to live in Hammond, our first leg was pretty familiar, New Orleans to Ponchatoula, where we found the Giant Strawberry.

Next, we headed to Kentwood to the Kentwood Museum, home of the Britney Spears Museum. Unfortunately, when we got there, we found it was closed. The owner explained that the building had been deemed unsafe and was undergoing repairs.  :-(

This was a bummer mainly because we were going to buy something for John and Joseph there, but the owner said she didn't have much for sale anyway. We'll have to find them a good gift later.

Next stop was Brookhaven to see the Coffee Pot Inn. Now, the inn isn't in business anymore, but wanted to see the Giant Coffee Pot on the roof of the building. Turns out, the coffee pot wasn't as big as the photos online made it seem. It was more like the Large Coffee Pot.

Yes, there I am, looking a little less than impressed. Still, it was cute.

Our next stop was the first place to get some of those Delta Hot Tamales that inspired the trip in the first place. You see, about a year ago Clara and I were looking at a couple magazine articles and I think there was a piece on TV about the Delta Tamale Trail. Here's a quote from the page I just linked to: "Unlike traditional Mexican tamales, the “hot” type commonly found in northwest Mississippi relies on cornmeal, not masa (a type of corn dough used in tortillas). The cornmeal, meat and water in which they’re cooked are more heavily seasoned. Plus, these hot tamales are boiled, not steamed."

A bonus in all this is that the Tamale Trail is paralleled in great part by the Rhythm & Blues Trail (and by the Coca-Cola trail, but more on that later). Of course, this is because they all follow the Mississippi River.

So, we decided that tamales, blues, and pretty scenery were enough to get us on the road.

Vicksburg was our first tamale place, specifically, Solly's Hot Tamales (it rhymes). First, I want to say that Vicksburg was picturesque, right on the bank of the river, and filled with historical markers.

 

I thought the tamales here were quite good, Clara not so much. But then, I was hungrier than she was. They were spicy and a little gritty, but what was a problem was that they were dry. And were they filling! We ordered a dozen and could hardly finish them.

After that,we found this huge flea market housed inside an old Coca-Cola bottling plant. Clara picked up a wood Santa, and I was deeply tempted by this thing.

Then we found a Blues Trail Marker.

 

 

 

and another one

 

We checked out the Coca-Cola Museum, but we didn't want to pay $3.50 to look at Coke things. We did get some ice cream, which really hit the spot after those tamales.

Next, Clara and I went looking for the plaque commemorating the Birth of the Teddy Bear. It marks the spot where Theodore Roosevelt was being hosted by people who knew he liked to hunt. The found a pretty shabby bear and tied her to a tree. Roosevelt was like, WTF? and refused to shoot her. There were political cartoons celebrating his sense of fair play, and these led to the toy bear named after him.

Well, all this took place in what is now Onward, MS, which looked easy enough to find on the map. IRL, turns out it's just this closed store. The GPS took us all over the place, but we did finally find it.

But there was no sign of that plaque! We looked behind the store, to the side of the store, over the store, under the--no, we didn't look under the store, but I was ready to! I wanted to find that damn plaque. So we give up and get in the car. I go to drive back on the road, and there it was!

To continue the Teddy Bear journey, we headed to Rolling Fork, which sports a number of Teddy Bear chainsaw statues. What we didn't know until we were told back in Vicksburg was that Rolling Fork got slammed by a level 4 tornado in March of 2023. Man, there were buildings that had been sliced in half, piles of rubble, and still some debris in the cut-off trees. I feel weird taking pictures of people's tragedy, so I don't have any photos. You can imagine it. Horrifying.

So, finding "downtown" Rolling Fork meant we went to a couple big buildings and drove around. We managed to spot two statues.

Whew! Hopes and prayers with the people of Rolling Fork.

We knew we wanted to spend the night in Greenville. The Hampton Inn wanted almost $200 for the night, so we ended up at the Holiday Inn Express was a little less. It's a nice room, but our target was Hot Tamale Heaven and Grille, which looks like a Popeye's, except they have tamales.

We ordered a dozen, and these, ladies and gentlemen, are what we came for! Delicious! Smooth and creamy and spicy without just being hot for the sake of it, juicy and just plain good.

The only irritating things was, as you can see, they didn't have little paper plates or something to eat off. We used napkins.

Seriously, they were good. We went back to the hotel, drank some wine we brought with us, and called it a night.

5/31/24 - Heading north!

Greenville had several things we wanted to do, starting with the Cypress Preserve Trust. Back in 1940. the Greenville Garden Club bought a cypress brake (a place that fills with water when the Mississippi rises) and set about making it a preserve with educational signs, benches, a path, and wooden bridges and an observation deck. A cool thing about cypresses is that they have "knees," which are root formations that help the trees breathe when the water is high, like with mango trees. It was free to go and very pretty.

There were signs all over telling us about the wildlife in the area, though all we saw were some mosquitoes and one very rare sighting of an abandoned water bottle in its natural habitat.

Ah, the purple-chested nipplehead.

Next, we were going to go to the EE Bass Cultural Arts Center, but when we got there a bus was dropping off about 100 elementary students, so we skipped it and went to the St. Joseph's Catholic Church, which was quite lovely. A funeral was going on at the time, so we stayed quietly in the back, and I took pains to take photos of the church but not the deceased or anyone's face.

Very nice church. RIP, "David."

We took a quick snap of the Blues Trail Marker.

 

Next, it was off Cleveland, MS. We were headed to the Martin and Sue King Railroad Museum, when we spotted a billboard for hand-dipped milkshakes. The place that makes them wasn't the place under the sign, somewhat confusingly, but a chain called Jack's. Day-um. They were excellent milkshakes. We agreed to hit them up again. on the way back home. (A quick Google showed there's also a Jack's in Tunica, though none in Louisiana.)

We couldn't walk into the museum with our yummy shakes, so we did a little window shopping and then some real shopping when Mom bought something I can't show yet.

The railroad museum was excellent.

 

 

What a labor of love and a half.

Found another Blues Trail Marker.

 Then it was definitely lunch time, and we went to the Airport Grocery and got the best tamales so far. Seriously, they were meaty and spicy without being HOT and juicy and good. And we could have a beer with them and ate with metal utensils for the first time on the trip!

The place really did start out as a grocery and went through four generations before it was bought out and eventually made a bar/restaurant with live music. Great decor.

So yeah, best tamales so far.

After that, we hit up the Moonstruck Flea Market, which was pretty meh, especially after that one in Vicksburg. I did approve of their toilet paper.

As I type this, we're in an American Value motel, which is half the price of the Holiday Inn Express, so we'll be staying here two nights. Ahhhh.

So, for dinner we went to Ground Zero Blues Club, which is owned by Morgan Freeman and looks like a Hollywood film set for a Southern blues club.

But it was fun. They played blues on a tape. The band for the evening came out and played "Fire on the Bayou." At least, I think that's the title of the song because that was the whole of the lyrics. We ordered bloody Marys and an order of tamales (surprise!).

The bloodies were good, but a $14 order of tamales was, count 'em, three tamales. And while they were pretty tasty, they were soupy. I mean, it was like cornmeal in water with some meat floating around in there.

So, currently, our ranking for tamales is: 1. Cleveland, 2. Greenville, 3. Clarksdale, 4. Vicksburg. We met a lovely couple from Switzerland, Melinda and Charlie and swapped travel stories. They're also headed to Tunica tomorrow, so who knows? We might see them again.

6/1/24 

Clarksdale has two things to see before we leave.

First stop of the day, the Delta Blues Museum, which boasts the largest collection of Blues memorabilia blah blah blah. 

 I confess, I wasn't thinking it would be all that, and when we walked and saw children (very nice, but children) behind the cash register and that the price for entry was $14, I wasn't hopeful. I did find a T-shirt  I wanted to buy in a nice gift shop.

Now, I couldn't take any pix in the museum itself, duh, but let me tell ya, it was pretty impressive! It was full of records and photos and clothes and instruments, which we must remember no one at the time would ever be "collectibles." These people were pumping gas in the daytime and playing dives at night. There were exhibits for Johnny Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson, B.B. King, the Jelly Roll Kings, Lillian McMurry, and many more. There was a whole room for Muddy Waters.

We spent about an hour in there, and then we headed to the Devil's Crossroads, where Robert Johnson soul his soul to the Devil to play the gee-tar. I had my own adventure.

 

So, evidently without a soul but with a kick-ass strawberry milkshake, we continued.

Clarksdale Blues Marker.

OK, so at the Devil's Crossroads is Abe's BBQ, which had good tamales but fantastic BBQ sandwiches. Chara got pork. I got beef. OMG.

Next, the day went a little off the rails, which was due to my insistence to visit Memphis, which kinda sucked.

We did have a good trip to the SpongeBob SquarePants 15-foot sign in front of a (sadly) defunct candy store in Lyon.

 And yeah, after that we went into Memphis, which is a big city, and we didn't have a clue what to do. We checked out a thrift shop, looked at downtown, and then we were done. Next time, I'll have a better agenda.

Anyway, we then returned to our hotel and found that right across the street was

Hicks' World Famous Tamales & Banquet Hall! 

Yes, these ruled!

Spicy but aaaaalmost sweet, smooth in the mouth. Perfect. That leaves the final ranking:

1. Hick's

2. Hot Tamale Heaven and Grille

3. Airport Grocery

4. Abe's BBQ 

5. Cleveland

6. Solly's Hot Tamales

Ta do!

Tamale Trail Info

Ponchatoula, Americana

Giant Strawberry, 126 W. Hickory St., Ponchatoula, LA

Kentwood, Americana

Britney Spears Museum, 204 Ave. E

Brookhaven, Americana

Coffee Pot Topped Building, S. 1st St. NE, Brookhaven, MS

Vicksburg

Solly’s Hot Tamales, 1921 Washington St, Vicksburg, MS 39180 

Onward, Americana

Birth of the Teddy Bear

Rolling Fork, Americana

Chainsaw Teddy Roosevelt Bears Statues

Greenville

Hot Tamale Heaven and Grille, 1427 MS-1, Greenville, MS 38701, 11-9, closed Sun Mon; Tamales, fried tamales, tamale pie, tamale nachos

Greenville Cypress Preserve Trust, EE Bass Cultural Arts Center, St Joseph's Catholic Church

Cleveland

Airport Grocery, 3608 US-61, Cleveland, MS 38732, 11–9, Closed Sun; Tamales, hamburgers

Sights: Martin & Sue King Railroad Museum, Moonstruck Flea Market,

Clarksdale

Abe’s BBQ, 616 N State St, Clarksdale, MS 38614, 10–8:30; 1950’s vibe, tamales, BBQ, chili-cheese burgers

Hick’s Famous Tamales, 305 S State St, Clarksdale, MS 38614, 11–7, Closed Sun Mon; Tamales, BBQ, rib tips

Ground Zero Blues Club, 387 Delta Ave, Clarksdale, MS 38614, 5–12, Closed Sun Mon Tue; Morgan Freeman’s very own juke joint; Tamales, BBQ nachos, fried green tomatoes

Delta Blues Museum, Devil’s Crossroads (corner of Hwy 322/N. State St. and Desoto Ave.)

Lyon Americana

Sponge Bob/Minion Sign & Candy Store