| By MARK COATNEY
This
is a lonely stretch of river, miles of tree-lined banks,
sand bars and barges. And us. We were speaking earlier of
history, and authenticity, and how to reconstruct your town
and remain true. We recoil — I recoil — from the
this mauling of America, from this leveling that is threatening
to make over every town upriver into a museum-piece downtown
for tourists surrounded by a strip mall shell that is the
new commercial and social center of the place. We're looking
for that idealized small town, unselfconscious about its
history.
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| DIANA WALKER FOR TIME |
| The main street in downtown Rosedale, Miss. |
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We find
it in northern Mississippi, passing through poor, small,
almost entirely black communities. Lulu, is three short
blocks that just scream out Walker Evans. The small black
towns are authentic — poverty is very authentic —
but is this the only alternative? The strip mall or rows
of crumbling buildings?
These
are the economic models we've seen so far: Agriculture,
which doesn't work anymore; the prices are too low and production
isn't labor intensive. There are the big processing plants
like the ones run by Tyson in Arkansas, but that only goes
so far. High-tech, which is what a lot of states crave,
is a tough proposition in states like Mississippi and Arkansas
that consistently fight it out for the lowest ranking national
rankings in education.
There's
gambling. The stretch of river around Tunica, Mississippi
has casinos as thick as mosquitoes and the road down from
Memphis is jammed with cars heading down. But it's a funny
way to make a buck. It's discretionary income, which is
vulnerable if the economy heads south. The social costs
are undeniably high, and what we've consistently heard on
our way down is that while people are happy for the increased
revenue, they don't particularly want to live near or think
about them too much.
There's
tourism. Tourism, which works in some places (Graceland
is a hoot, although a little spooky). But historical tourism
is tough in places like the south that have had an unpleasant
past. Cairo, Illinois should be thriving; it sits at the
confluence Mississippi and Ohio rivers, which means barge
traffic galore. It's the site of General Grant's first big
victory of the Civil War, with a long history, and is a
virtual ghost town because it remains mired in the bitterness
of the racial struggle there that destroyed the town in
the late 60's. What in the 60's was a town of 20,000 now
has less than 5,000, and residents may never be able to
move on. I'm surprised at the number of streets down here
that are named after Confederate heroes. So what can be
done? Maybe this isn't sustainable anymore. Perhaps people
will just leave, like they have done in the upper Midwest,
heading for cities and lives that more closely resemble
the ones they see on TV. And all that will be left is the
river, and the barges.
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