Delta Blues Museum - Hey Hey The blues is all right

1 Blues Alley, Clarksdale, MS (an hour and a half south of Memphis), 662-627-6820

I can't believe I forgot to write this up – I love this place! We were in Vicksburg and ready to turn north for home, when the Mab came to me as if out of a dream, whispering in my ear, "Go down to the crossroads."

I was stunned and amazed. "Are you saying what I think you saying?"

She said, Puhlease! In Mississippi is a town called Clarksdale, and I saw there's a Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale. Do you want to go?

Well, she knows that I'm a blues fiend from the southside of Chicago. I'd heard of the storied place of Clarksdale. What? I said, You really want to do this?

She rolled her eyes. I'm dense sometimes.

She'd read that a lot of big blues musicians came from here. It's the Mississippi Delta, after all, the birthplace of the blues. But the sheer number of these stars blew me away. I'd find that out later. From Vicksburg, we made a beeline north, following the river.

We drove past mile after mile of scrubby cotton fields, more than we'd ever seen. So much, that windblown cotton was strewn on the sides of the road like the whispers of early November roadside snow in Illinois. The plants themselves were thigh-high scrub bushes with snowy-looking leaves. Field after field, mile after mile on both sides.

Not only that, but then it sunk in, what road we were riding. It was US Highway 61 North. This is Highway 61. We are on the Highway 61, like from the Dylan song and album. So that's what's what about Highway 61. It's where the blues came from. It's the birthplace of rock 'n roll. Right here, under our tires, out in these miles of snowy bushes that brought all of the money and sorrow. Like I said, I'm dense. And up ahead, where Highway 61 meets Highway 49, is the fabled crossroads where you might meet the devil, sung about by Robert Johnson and all the people before and after him. Now those crossroads look like a busy intersection in Anytown, USA, but this place has history, it has roots. We put on the Dylan song to get us to Clarksdale.

The crossroads of Hgwy 61 & 49: where's Robert? where's Eric?

It's in the old train station in Clarksdale which Muddy Waters himself took out of town to Chicago and never looked back.

There's a long, completely safe concrete ramp leading in, but before I tackled it I had to check out the outdoor stage and performance space because I thought I saw a familiar face there. It was painted on the corner of the stage.

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Sure enough it was a painting of Robert Plant, who visited along with Jimmy Page when they released their album, Walking Into Clarksdale. Plant is a major donor. I was going to like this place.

The place is a huge collection of memorabilia, costumes and guitars from the vast army of blues musicians who came out of these parts. The list of them is dizzying: Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf, Charley Patton, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Son House, Sam Cooke, W. C. Handy, Koko Taylor, Ike Turner, Junior Parker, and that's only some of them. My jaw kept dropping everywhere I turned. You can't snap pictures because of copyrights. No pictures of the shack that was Muddy Waters' childhood home, that now stands in one end of the museum. No pictures of Alan Lomax's sedan, outfitted with a recording rig in the trunk that he used to tape blues songs in the field that are now legend. No videos of the concerts that were running on the museum's monitors either. Sure makes you pay attention though!

The woman at the front desk was a Southsider too, and there was a cool dude who took me around to the school space in back where lessons were in session for the next generation of bluesmen (and bluesbabes? because one was a girl).

The entire place is flat and accessible. There's even a ramp in the back room so I could join the jam session. They make sure the blues is for everybody, baby.

We also saw a telegram from the Rolling Stones to Muddy Waters, which was OK but it told us something outstanding. We used to live in Westmont, Illinois, and we knew that Muddy Waters had owned a home there too. We never knew where it was, although once Mab worked with a photographer who said he lived in the place. Well, we found out the address from the telegram, and he lived on the same street as us! Yeah baby.

I think anybody would like this place. I was a kid in a candy store.

Be Careful What You Wish For

That Crazy Little Thing Called Hugs

Maybe I'm getting to be a softie, but lately I wish I was like everybody else. Not about the walking thing - there's plenty of other people with disabilities too - but about something simpler and more basic.

I'm not a touchy-feely guy. I wasn't brought up that way. My family were not big huggers. In our working-class neighborhood I don't think most families were. Direct eye contact and a firm handshake was how you got around.

Times have changed. Guys hug guys, everybody hugs everybody. I think it's nice, but it has nothing to do with me, just like smart phones have nothing to do with me. Why? Because right before they both came in, hugs and smart phones, I done gone and got quadriplegic.

It's been years since smart phones became ubiquitous and indispensable but they're still as mysterious to me as Mr. Spock's tricorder. With hugs, I sort of tilt my head and study the way it's done, the same way I do with good dancing. (Raising hand. Terrible dancer. Still.) All the pieces seem to fold and fit together, like so. OK. Now I've got that stored away.

Your human rituals are most curious, Captain.

There are an intrepid few who try to hug me. These are sweet people, because it's hard to do. In my wheelchair I'm surrounded by a hive of switches and wires everywhere, and people don't know if they'll be hitting an ejection switch or messing me up positionwise or even hurting me. For the record, they probably won't do any of these, but what we're left with is a pantomime of awkwardness.

I give them so much credit though because at this point I go around like an iRobot. Everybody loves an iRobot. They clean up after you. They beep and squawk like R2-D2. Your cat can ride around on it. They bounce around the room like busy beavers, filling gaps in conversation. They can wear Groucho glasses like ours does. He's named Bob Roomba, after our friend, entertainer Bob Rumba, who also wears Groucho-type glasses. Me, I drive my wheelchair with a head array: My head presses on sensors in my headrest. People stare and wonder how's it moving - like an iRobot. I too run into walls. I too jerk back and forth like an iRobot, unless my headrest is in the perfect position. People stare at us in wonder, the iRobot and me, and stay the hell out of our way. Everybody loves an iRobot, but you don't hug one.

What the brave huggers are trying to do is puncture the force field around my wheelchair. There's a personal zone we all inhabit, and you just don't go traipsing into someone else's zone. I've got a big wheelchair, and it's got a big zone. My buffer is pretty large, I think it's the front-to-back length times the size of my large treaded tires raised to the power of the number of muted expletives overheard while wrangling the machine to go the way I want. I don't blame you people for keeping away. If I were in the same room with me, I'd hop on a piece of furniture.

Plus, truth be told, I was an awkward person even before the spinal column went wacko. Do you know that guy you come across on the sidewalk every five years or so who, when you go right he goes right, and when you go left he goes left, back and forth, back and forth? That was me.

Bob Roomba sees you.

In my buffer zone I observe you people with the hugs, and realize what related things I'm missing. Like goofing around with kids. Kids are the best. I get along better with them than anyone else. Kids like close contact play: chasing, hide and seek, making haunted houses, even reading to them you have to be right there with them. I do my best with what I've got, with jokes, noises, faces, but those are mind tricks and they see through those quickly. You don't form lasting bonds with mind tricks.
So for once, I wish to be like everybody else. If only for a day, a free trial.

There's a joke about a retired couple walking the beach in the morning and they find a lantern in the surf. When the husband picks it up, a genie pops out and says, "I'll give you one wish." Then the wife is horrified when she hears her husband say, "I want a wife who's 40 years younger than me." And presto, he turns 100.

Unfortunately, presto, now I am like everybody else. Nobody is hugging. And that's not the way I wanted this to go.

You can stay in the no-hug zone until the coast is clear but then I want you people out. Looks like you've got something good to look forward to.