My very first visit to Clarksdale, Mississippi was Juke Joint Saturday two years ago.
If you remember it was during a driving spring rain storm, but the streets of Clarksdale were packed and people just put on raincoats and opened an umbrella, smiled and had a great time.
I was being recruited to be your Editor and Publisher and Sara and I were spying on you.
Needless to say, we were impressed.
It’s a story people have told me repeatedly over the past two years.
They come to Clarksdale and something clicks in their heart.
I think we made the right move.
Festivals
I love festivals and firmly believe they are one of the best public relation tools for any community.
Think about it: People come to Clarksdale and have a good time and then go back home and tell their friends about this neat little town in the Mississippi Delta. Then they come back and bring their friends with them.
I was wowed by the number of festivals Clarksdale had in the summer of 2019. You had them scheduled just about every weekend.
I was also impressed by the number of international tourist I saw walking past my window that first summer.
They love the warm Mississippi Spring weather, they love our fried food and they love our blues.
I was even told this week that the Juke Joint website has a following from Nepal. I pondered why people from the most mountainous place on Earth are drawn to one of the flattest places on Earth.
Festivals mean fun. And that is what people from all over this globe find in Clarksdale this weekend.
COVID concerns
Wear your mask this weekend. It’s not a political statement, it’s polite Southern culture and despite all of Mississippi’s shortcomings, we are raised to be polite.
I got my second shot this week and I am 94-percent immune, but my mother is 88 and six percent is still a risk to her.
Please use the hand sanitizer provided by Juke Joint and please practice a semblance of social distancing as you juke in the joints.
You will read elsewhere in your Clarksdale Press Register where event organizers believe this year’s festival will be more hometown as tourist have not started jetting from places far away.
Maybe this is the year you fall back in love with Juke Joint.
Maybe smaller crowds will allow us to visit with friends we haven’t seen in a while since this COVID thing began.
Maybe this is the weekend we realize once again that Clarksdale is a great place to live and we should be very proud of our hometown.
Guests in our house
I was proud to see city crews downtown this week weed-eating the sidewalks (you have to do that in a place where the dirt will grow anything), picking up trash and even slopping paint on our curbs.
As I said earlier, Southerners are trained to be polite and I hope you will smile from behind your COVID mask and help Clarksdale put it best foot forward this weekend.
They are guests in our house and just like we have been taught, they have special privileges and they do things we don’t always understand and are glad to overlook.
I once had an economic development guy from Mississippi tell me if he could get industrialist and major corporations to come to Mississippi their stereotype of the state changed.
I have always been proud to tell folks I am from Mississippi. They seem to like my Southern drawl and the way I relate to someone I don’t really know.
Let’s welcome the world to Juke Joint this weekend.
Floyd Ingram is Editor of your Clarksdale Press Register. Call him on the phone at 662-627-2201 if you want to hear him talk that Southern thang!
