{"id":20684,"date":"2015-01-14T14:40:02","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T19:40:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=20684"},"modified":"2015-10-27T23:36:28","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T04:36:28","slug":"the-great-magnolia-vagabond-no-1-by-rafael-alvarez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/the-great-magnolia-vagabond-no-1-by-rafael-alvarez\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Magnolia Vagabond – No. 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spent New Year\u2019s Eve 2006 in a small motel in West Point, Mississippi, <\/strong>some 50 miles due south of Tupelo<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"WestPointRafael\"<\/a> Why West Point, home to 11,300 souls and the seat of Clay County?<\/span><\/p>\n

Not because Howlin\u2019 Wolf <\/strong>was born nearby. Nor to see the place where America\u2019s favorite sled\u2014the Flexible Flyer\u2014was in made from 1973 to 1993.<\/span><\/p>\n

[Though I\u2019d give anything to see the great bluesman\u2014born Chester Burnett<\/strong> 114 years ago just north of West Point\u2014howling down a North Mississippi slalom on a wooden sled!]<\/span><\/p>\n

I was simply on the road again, wandering from the ocean on the right to the ocean on the left in a Toyota pick-up.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019d spent the previous day in the birthplace of the King, finishing up a network pilot (Panic In Detroit<\/em>) that never got made and\u2014in a t-shirt proclaiming Robert Johnson<\/strong> the king of the music without which Elvis<\/strong> would not claim his crown\u2014befriending a grade school classmate of Presley as I slowly made my way to Tinseltown.<\/span><\/p>\n

All alone in West Point, Mississippi on New Year\u2019s Eve with a bowl of noodles from a Chinese joint near the Holiday Inn at the corner of Route 45 and Lewis O\u2019Neal Road, listening to a New Year\u2019s Eve recording made 40 years earlier in Pittsburgh<\/strong>: Elvis and 16,000 acolytes singing Auld Lang Syne.\u00a0 \"The<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

This article was originally printed in The Local Voice<\/em> #220 (published January 8, 2015).<\/span>
\n To download a PDF of this issue, click here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent New Year\u2019s Eve 2006 in a small motel in West Point, Mississippi, some 50 miles due<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":249,"featured_media":20685,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[314],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-history"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/rafaelmagnoliaFEAT.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/249"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}