Leland, MS

We spent early afternoon Friday searching the area for a place to eat.  I am sure that sounds odd, but out here in the rural Delta, communities are strewn across the landscape. Some are tiny and some just small but all of them are the embodiment of pictures one sees of the poor South.  We had several names of cafes whose menus listed all the Southern favorites that were candidates for our lunch.  Our first stop was Big Fellas just down the road a piece from our camp site.  Opening time was not for several hours later so with growling stomachs we moved on to the next stop.  At first we thought that the GPS was malfunctioning.  Over and over it directed us to places that were boarded up or non existent.  Covid has hit this area pretty hard leaving business after business closed.  But some of the closures are a result of the young folks moving out of the Delta searching for a better life in a larger town.  The result leaves what remains a sad, rundown neglected shell of what once was a lively community.  It is an agricultural society out here with field after field growing corn and soybeans.

We finally ended up at Leland.  Leland once was a hub of activity.  It’s train station and bus station brought musicians and others into the growing community.  There is a placard on one corner highlighting how the meeting place for so many was the Leland Cafe.  As we walked through the dusty streets, we were delighted to find that the cafe was still in business.  At last, we could get some food.  Inside the air was cool and filled with smells that made my stomach growl loudly.  Jim had circled back to the truck to get his mask while I went inside and got us a table.  I was greeted by a large, rotund woman who could have stepped out of the pages of a Tennessee Williams book.  Her skin was midnight black and glistened with beads of sweat.  Her hair was piled high on her head and covered with two colorful scarves.  She wore black athletic shoes whose soles had collapsed from miles of walking under her heavy girth.  Her mask dangled from one ear revealing a smile that lit up the room and her smooth, alto voice greeted me with a welcoming hellooooooo.  Her assistant, if you could call him that was just the opposite.  Tall and skinny as a rail, he spoke so softly from behind his mask that I could scarcely make out what he was saying.  It was a Peter Piper and his Wife moment.

I settled in with the menu expecting to see fried chicken and other fixin’s.  The Friday specials boasted local, fried catfish with a host of sides like fried okra and collard greens.  Hooray, my kind of food.  When the plates arrived, they were piled high with fried fish, quite generously I may add.  It was in a word, delicious.  The sweet iced tea that accompanied the meal was ice cold and gently sweetened, not cloyingly sweet.  Yummy.  We ask the woman about where in the area we might catch some Blues.  She dropped her mask and began to give us a history lesson of times gone past and what we might find in Leland that day.  Her smile widened as she spoke of a Blues Festival that is held each fall.  She shared that in her younger years, she sang with a band.  I could only imagine what her voice must have sounded like.  She shared that the vacant buildings were an indication not only of commerce now gone but also juke joints no longer in operation.  

Even so, the Blues lives on if you know where to go.  In the midst of what to us was a sad, poor area, we found that Southern hospitality and kindness is alive and doing quite well.  We might not find Blues today, but tomorrow we will be in Clarksdale and there we know we will.