Twenty-plus years of documenting the South's vernacular art, visionary environments and traditions….plus modern art exhibits, Faulkner and Eudora, and This Week's Various. Welcome.
Gino’s Hamburgers in Greenville: I noticed that they were voted one of the favorite hamburgers in the Delta, in the last ‘favorites’ issues of Delta Magazine (which is great, I subscribe).
This is the #2 hamburger, with chili on top and slaw beneath. Pretty good. Fries are just okay.
Av and I got back over to Doe’s Eat Place (the original) in Greenville – and I took lots of pics:
Aunt Florence seated us – she’s *always* there. This time we sat in the back – we got there early (about 5:30pm) because we had to be at something later that night. BTW, they open earlier in the day for people to come by and get tamales.
The interior is all oilcloth tablecloths, framed magazine and newspaper articles about Doe’s, football posters, and seed sacks.
The fries on cooking on the stove. They’re cooked the right way – in big cast iron skillets.
Above: the middle room is where the salads and fries are made.
Here’s the salad – the dressing is just fresh-squeezed lemons and olive oil. Yum!
We *of course* had to get a small order of tamales.
..and we shared this *huge* Porterhouse which we weren’t even able to finish (delish)…our dog Bagel will looove this bone. Also in the picture are Av’s french fries, which are always amazing.
…here’s Doe cooking the steaks. Doe’s daddy (also Doe) started the restaurant.
…in the front room. These are steaks that have just been cut.
Everything, as always, was fantastic!
Just a few miles north of Greenville, Mississippi are the Winterville Mounds. Mostly, the civilization that built and utilized the original twenty-three mounds used them as ceremonial mounds from about 1000 CE to 1450 CE. A little bit more about them can be found here.
The setting there is just beautiful!
Well, Greenville *does* have the Holiday Inn Express there now, but it didn’t show up at TripAdvisor and I totally forgot to check to check the corporate website to see if it was open, so we wound up at the Fairfield Inn (again).
The person that checked us in was really, really nice, and she gave us a welcome bag just like last time (an orange, a couple of bags of snacks, etc.).
A couple of weeks ago, we visited the original Dreamland in Tuscaloosa. There are several other Dreamland locations now – a couple in Georgia, a new one in Northport, and four others around Alabama.
…so on our way to our trip this week, we visited Archibald’s in Northport:
…you could sit inside at the counter, but there’s three or four picnic tables out front by the road, too.
…here’s a pic of the pit (above). The inside is the blackest thing you’ve ever seen.
Earlier in October when we went to Kentuck, I posted (here) a couple of pictures of Myrtice West at the festival…so just last week, I got a very nice card from her, thanking us for buying one of her paintings. In the card, she said that she had lost a book that she was in due to a house fire, and she asked me if I knew where she could find one. Well, guess what!? I had it right in my living room, so I called her up and said I was going to mail it over to her. She was *so* nice on the phone, and she wanted to pay me for the book (Revelations: Alabama’s Visionary Folk Artists) but I told her that it was my gift, and that I wouldn’t let her.
Anyway, I mailed it off on Monday, and on Thursday, she sent me a huge package with a book that’s about her (and she signed it with a really nice message):
…it’s called “Wonders to Behold, The Visionary Art of Myrtice West” *and* two big paintings – bigger ones than even the one that I bought from her! She also enclosed in the box a wonderful letter telling me how much the book I sent her meant, and talked about how her husband passed away on June 9th when he was 85, and that they had been married 64 years last December 24th. (wow!!) She asked me to pray for her and her family, and she says that she prays that G-d blesses each house her art is at.
More pics of her artwork can be found here and here. What a wonderful lady.
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