"…where the Southern cross the Dog"

On the way to Parchman I drove through Tutwiler, MS. When I saw the sign, I wheeled off the road and headed into town, looking for the railroad crossing. It was in the train station in Tutwiler that W.C. Handy first heard the real-deal blues, played by some guy with a guitar using a jack knife for a slide. It was 1903. Handy was blown away. "…I'm goin' where the Southern cross the Dog…" the only verse Handy remembered from the tune he heard, was a reference to the intersection of the Southern Railway and the YMV (Yazoo Mississippi Valley Railroad), which was known variously as the Yellow Dog or just The Dog.

Maybe I wasn't alone in the car, but for some reason I thought of a verse Furry Lewis used in his version of John Henry, "…That Big Bend Tunnel on the YMV, gonna be the death of me" as I headed down Front Street, past The White Front Café & Joe's Hot Tomalleys, and the Tutwiler Funeral Home (a former garage), straight to the crossing. No station any more. No trains either. Not for thirty years. I took a picture of the overgrown, crooked tracks, northbound, headed for Memphis, the tracks that carried Mr. Handy, his head spinning with a new sound, on up to play a date somewhere, 96 years ago.