Something was missing from Clarksdale last year.
Tourist from all over this great nation and the world were not walking our streets, in our restaurants and joints, shopping in our stores and sleeping in our hotels, motels and bed-and-breakfast inns.
And we missed them.
With good reason this community canceled the Juke Joint Festival -- a major spring money-maker for Clarksdale -- and other events, too. Most motels had a few construction workers in their beds. Most mom-and-pops simply closed up shop and hunkered down.
This community took a hit with the shutdown and you just have to talk to someone in the hospitality business (restaurant, hotel, niche store) to get the numbers prove it.
But some stayed busy and some dreamed and worked for a better day in Clarksdale.
We hope you read the story on Page One of your Clarksdale Press Register today. The 11th Annual Clarksdale Film Festival is slated for this weekend. It has a little something for everybody.
But the point this paper wants to press is things will and are getting better around here.
We have three industries in this community who are looking for labor and offering good paying jobs. Spring planting will soon be upon us. And Clarksdale is still the unequivocal Home of the Blues. No virus, economic crisis or natural disaster will ever change that.
And being a unique size and rural place on the map, we also offer the ideal venue for a quick road trip for folks from around Mississippi and the country.
Does anyone really want to go to New York, Nashville or New Orleans right now?
We also want to remind the locals that your dollars spend just as well in a local businesses as that tourist dollar. We hometown folk to come out this weekend, enjoy a “show,” eat in a restaurant and maybe pop in a downtown store and buy something from a local businessman or woman that lives in Clarksdale
So, let’s roll out the red carpet, let’s turn on the Southern hospitality. Let’s make a few wise decisions and open the doors to sunny days and visitors looking for that laid-back attitude that is a true Southern culture.
Let’s welcome back tourist to our town.
