Friars Point

Rolling into Friars Point, I found a truly pretty little town. It was the place where Joe Willie Wilkins and Houston Stackhouse, MBC charter members, used to occasionally hang when they were playing on KFFA’s King Biscuit Blues Show with Sonny Boy Williamson in Helena, Arkansas, across the river. The town itself nestles against the levee on the west and the Stovall Plantation to the south. Its streets wind, mirroring the bending river a half-mile to the west. Main Street ends at the levee itself.

Defying a sign prohibiting any motor traffic on the levee, I drove up and parked on the top. Facing the river, to my right and left, the levee stretched on and on. Broad as a city street. I was standing about thirty feet above the town that lay at my back.

Standing there, I got a sense of the tremendous size of the thing and thought of all the effort that went into its original construction. And it was all done by hand. I turned from the river and looked back into the town. I thought of Joe Willie and Stackhouse and our days on the road together. I could see them as young men, strolling down Main Street in Friars Point, guitars in their hands. Women giving them shy looks. More ghosts.

Then back west, to 61 and up to Memphis.