In the words of the immortal Howling Wolf, legendary Delta blues singer from White’s Station, Mississippi, just outside of West Point: “I’m going to hit the Highway 49.” While he was lamenting about Melv, his “darling sweet woman,” in his song of 1947, I’m remembering a little of my history on this long-reach road that runs some 516 miles from Highway 90 in Gulfport, the Old Spanish Trail, to Piggott, Arkansas.
Specifically, on a cold February day, about the 10th grade, I was sitting on the fender of a 49 Ford, coming out of Wiggins doing about 90 miles an hour; holding on to nothing but the hood ornament; bouncing up and down on every crack in the highway; just one tap on the brakes away from eternity. We were skipping school, headed to Gulfport to look at the banana boats, just because we could.
While my classmates at home were dutifully paying attention and taking care of business in physics class, I had blown out my flip flops and was stepping on pop tops. The day before, the teacher, who never liked me, had summarily rejected my science project before I even got up to present. I was going to demonstrate that aeronautically speaking, a bumble bee should be unable to fly. Their wings are too little to get their big bodies off the ground.
I thought that was better than the usual lame stuff, like baking soda and vinegar volcanos, or growing mold on bread, so I caught one, tied a string around it; took it to class; and was going to explain my thesis while the tethered bee circled the room. The teacher disqualified me on a technicality - I didn’t have a poster - which I though was bogus because I knew that the winner’s parents had made hers, anyway. That day pretty much summed up my whole high school experience. Not long after that, the principal called me in and told me that I had the highest IQ in school, the lowest grades, the worst attendance, was a disgrace to education, a bad example to the little kids, and would probably end up in Columbia Training School. I thought it was remarkable he didn’t say I was also a threat to world peace.
It seemed to me that I deserved a little credit – do you know how hard it is to catch a bumble bee? Try it sometime. There are two kinds. The one that drills holes in the roof of your porch won’t bother you, but the one that chases the hummingbirds off the flowers in your yard will turn on you.
As far as skipping school, a hot day a few months earlier I skipped football practice, and the head coach sent the assistant coach to my house to look for me. I was inside, asleep, but I heard him coming into the house. There was a large clothes wardrobe in my room that I had just constructed in shop class, so I hid in it. The coach came into my room, looked around, didn’t see me, and went back to practice. It was such a good story that I had to tell everyone. I went into the Navy right after graduation and didn’t get to attend many class reunions, but the coach, as one of our invited teachers, would always tell the attendees about how he “found” me in the wardrobe. Not true. He didn’t have a clue where I was.
To say that Highway 90 is the “Old Spanish Trail” is somewhat of a fiction. There was no single road trod by conquistadores from Florida to California. The “real” Spanish Trail, of course, runs from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Los Angeles, starting in the 16th century, with a northern route through Colorado and Utah. One could also make a good case that a “Spanish Trail” connected the Catholic missions of early California, from San Diego to San Francisco. Our coast version, running from St. Augustine, Florida, to San Diego, was so designated in 1919 as part of the “named” highway system which was developed nationwide to encourage transcontinental automobile travel. The first two were the Lincoln Highway from New York to California, and the Dixie Highway connecting Michigan to Miami. The coast road, running along Highway 90 from St. Augustine and then linking up with Highway 80 in Texas for the remainder of the route, was first called the “Orange Groves to Orange Groves” trail, then “Playgrounds to Playgrounds.” Some 250 “named” highways were eventually developed in conjunction with the “Good Roads” movement which encouraged interstate travel in the early 1900s.
Highway 49 was constructed in segments: from Gulfport to Jackson (1926-1927), Jackson to Clarksdale (1927-1963), Clarksdale to Brinkley, Arkansas (1963-1978), Brinkley to Jonesboro (1979), and Jonesboro to Piggott (1979-present). North of Jackson, 49 splits into east and west branches at Yazoo City, one looping through Greenwood and the other through Indianola, with both converging at Tutwiler. It’s not that well-known, but during the 1930s, there was a similar split in 49 south of Hattiesburg, with the east branch going to Brooklyn and McLaurin, entering Hattiesburg on James Street. The west branch came down Edwards Street, which during World War II was extremely busy with businesses catering to the soldiers at Camp Shelby, ran along Bay and Main Streets, and directly through Hattiesburg. In 1948, the highway was moved to the western edges of the city, in conjunction with the new cloverleaf, and now passed directly by USM. This was the iteration that passed the iconic but now long-gone Beverly Drive In theater and Wagon Wheel restaurant.
I don’t have absolute proof, but anecdotal evidence says that 49 was four-laned from the coast to Camp Shelby shortly before World War II to facilitate the transfer of men and material to and from the port of embarkation at Gulfport. The four lane was later extended all the way to Jackson, making 49 the only such wide road entering the capital until Interstates 20 and 55 were built as part of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1956 Interstate Highway System initiative. Ike was supposedly impressed by Hitler’s autobahns, or high speed, limited access highways, that he saw in Germany after the war. I don’t know if you’ve ever driven on a German autobahn, but if you haven’t and do, I recommend that you stay in the right lane, unless you have nerves of steel, a heavy foot and are driving a Porsche.
I go way back on Highway 49: helping my mama drag my daddy out of a roadside juke joint more than once; being left alone in a hot car at Cozy Corners when I was about 4 years old; digging a junk car out of a field alongside the road with a backhoe; the worst job I ever had; where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil, and the best barbeque in Mississippi. Let’s look briefly at each of the above.
Coming north out of Gulfport, a little past Red Creek and Perk Beach, there used to be a junk yard alongside 49 that featured some decent cars. I bought, dug out, and towed a 1951 Ford Victoria V-8 coupe home to Lumberton, and my brother was going to work on it for me while I was in Vietnam. For a whole year, he sent me bills for parts and labor: an engine overhaul, new brakes, body work, new tires, etc., and I sent him money. When I got home on leave, the car was sitting right where I had left it, in worse shape than the last time I saw it. He had just spent my money. You had to know my brother.
Just over the Forrest County line, there was a rowdy beer joint called the “Toot n’Tell It.” When I was a teenager, on more than one occasion I had to go with my mother and drag my daddy out of it, especially on payday. There was a similar place, on Highway 11 south of Hattiesburg, called “Miss Bartow’s,” that we often also had to retrieve him from.
A little further up on 49, where Highway 13 runs into it, there was a big country store that was called “Cozy Corners.” In fact, that whole intersection was referred to as Cozy Corners. One of my earliest memories is of being left in a sweltering hot car while my grandfather, who was the County Supervisor of the Beat adjacent to the highway, was fox hunting across the road in the Desoto National Forest. This was during World War II; my daddy was overseas, and my mama was running her Watkins route in south Forrest County. My granddad and his friends managed to revive me, and I was no worse for wear. On the other hand, that might explain a few odd “quirks” that I have.
There was no GI Bill when I started college in 1964 so, like most veterans I knew, I had to find a job working nights. My first was selling boats for Mr. Billups of the “Fill Up with Billups” gas station fame. I also had to keep his Cadillac washed and tuned up. People were not buying boats at night, so I went to work in downtown Jackson for Deposit Guaranty Bank. It was the worst job I ever had. This was back before computers, and data processing was done by key punch on little white cards. My job was to meet the Greyhound bus from Magee every night, which came up 49, and to key punch into the bank record system every check cashed, or deposit made in the Bank of Magee that day. I couldn’t go home until all the accounts were in balance. If you had money in the Bank of Magee in 1964-65, I kept your books. If I got to your account around 2 a.m., and it wouldn’t balance, I might have rounded you off to the nearest dollar.
While Highway 61 is more well-known as the route northward to such cities as Chicago and Detroit during the years of the Black Diaspora during the 1930s and 40s, the junction of 61 and 49 at Clarksdale is the site of the legendary “crossroads,” where tragic bluesman, Robert Johnson, reputedly sold his soul to the devil in exchange for fame and for becoming a guitar virtuoso. Although this intersection is marked, for tourists, with an oversized guitar sign, old timers will tell you that it’s not the right crossroads. Johnson died in 1938, apparently poisoned by a jealous rival, and until that year, the actual junction of 61 and 49 was on what is now 4th street (61) and Tallahatchie Street (49). My mother-in-law lived in Clarksdale, and my wife’s father flew crop dusters over the cotton fields, so I know the town.
What is in the shadow of that giant guitar sign, however, is the site of Abe’s Barbeque, an establishment known throughout the Delta for its excellent specialty as well as its tamales. The actor, Morgan Freeman, might have opened the very successful blues club, “Ground Zero,” in downtown Clarksdale, on the banks of the Sunflower River, but it hasn’t achieved as much popularity as Abe’s.
There’s another Highway 49 in the United States; it’s in California and it’s supposed to be “worth its weight in gold.” It’s the road to Sutter’s Mill, where gold was first discovered in 1848, triggering the California Gold Rush. Also on the road is Angels Camp, the mining town made famous by two American writers, Bret Harte and Mark Twain. This is where Twain wrote his short story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (1865), which is about two gold miners betting on a frog jumping contest.
One of these days, I will stop in Wiggins and check out the “Two Fat Friends” flea market on Mississippi’s 49. I suspect we are kindred spirits.
Light a candle for me.
Benny Hornsby of Oak Grove is a retired U.S. Navy captain. Visit his website, bennyhornsby.com, or email him: villefranche60@yahoo.com.
