Betty Everett began playing the piano and singing gospel music in church, until moving to Chicago in 1957 to pursue a career in secular music.

Viking Range

Bob Dylan performs outside Greenwood, MS, in 1963.

Hand grabbing flathead catfish on the Yazoo River 

The hand-grabbing technique exploits the catfish’s tendency to nest in protected areas within structure.

“People wade around looking for the best sites, such as hollow logs, where catfish spawn,” John Skains, a MDWFP fisheries biologist, said in describing the activity. “Or they put out structures in the water, such as logs or boxes, for the catfish to spawn. When they reach into the log or the structure, the catfish bites them on the hand, holds on — and they pull it out. It’s addicting!”

Hand-grabbing may seem like it might be a little hard on the hand, but by wearing a protective glove, you can prevent lacerations.

Just how big a fish can a hand-grabber expect to land? Pretty big. “The biggest one I’ve grabbed was a 52-pound flathead catfish,” Skains offered. “But hand-grabbers routinely get up to 60- to 70-pound fish. And that’s a handful!”

Wading back to the boat with that size fish can be tough — but it’s worth the effort.

What do hand-grabbers need to be successful? It’s fairly basic stuff: Any type of neoprene diving glove is the main gear needed. “It’s smart to wear a glove,” Skains emphasized. Also, he added, some people also use scuba gear for hand-grabbing.

Hand-grabbers catch different species of catfish, according to which one is spawning at the time. “Usually channel cats come in first to spawn, and are the first catfish to catch during the season,” Skains explained. “As they’re finishing up, then the blue cats and flathead catfish come into the area, looking for any log or hole or anything they can back up into. That’s where the female lays the egg mass and the male fertilizes it. The female will stay with the eggs until they hatch, and guard them and the fry for a short time.”

Skains also noted that though Mississippi has bullheads, nobody really targets those for hand-grabbing.

Why does hand-grabbing work so well during this time? It’s a matter of fish behavior unrelated to feeding. “Catfish don’t feed during the spawn,” Skains said. “Fish are defending the nest at this time.” The fish grabs on to something that it reads as dangerous to the nest and doesn’t let go; the angler just pulls it out.

The Crystal Grill 

Tallahatchie Flats

The Alluvian Hotel 

Lusco’s Restaurant 

Little Trump

In 1994 Jo Ann Ussery found herself in the market for a new home. A huge storm in winter made huge trees loaded with ice, fall on her 1400 square foot wood-frame house, nearly flattening it. When she was looking for a mobile home, her brother-in-law Bob Farrow, an air traffic controller at Greenwood Airport, suggested she might look for a retired jetliner. After all, she didn’t live very far from the airport in Greenwood.

Most of the interior remodelling was done by Ussery. Floors had to be built up in the bathroom and kitchen because they were uneven. Conventional padding and carpeting were installed, and linoleum was laid down in the kitchen. One original lavatory was kept functional as an aircraft lavatory. A garage door opener was used to open and close the rear air stairs. Overhead luggage compartments were retained, providing an abundance of storage space. Lighting was converted to house current. 

Ussery named her dream house “Little Trump,” as reference to Donald Trump’s $16-million corporate jet, which happens to be a Boeing 727 as well. When asked why she lived in an airplane: “simply cost effective, once it was set up, it required no maintenance’. Repairing the roof of replacing rotten boards or having it eaten by termites are all out of the question. Living in a jetliner, to her grandchildren, makes her the coolest grandma on the planet. 

“The Greeks were different. They had a passion for order and symmetry, much like the Romans, but they knew how foolish it was to deny the unseen world, the old gods. Emotion, darkness, barbarism…Do you remember what we were speaking of earlier, how bloody, terrible things are sometimes the most beautiful? It’s a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our moral selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown back, throat to the stars, ‘more like deer than human being.’ To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls that we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.”

William Eggleston - Greenwood, MS 1973

Also the cover for Big Star’s Radio City.

Pitchfork pays homage today.

Greenwood Leflore 

Mississippi Masala 

is a romance comedy-drama starring Denzel Washington, Sarita Choudhouy, and Roshan Seth. Set primarily in Greenwood, Mississippi, the film explores interracial romance between African-Americans and Indian-Americans in the United States.

The Gants