{"id":22175,"date":"2015-02-16T15:37:57","date_gmt":"2015-02-16T20:37:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=22175"},"modified":"2015-02-16T17:26:43","modified_gmt":"2015-02-16T22:26:43","slug":"the-great-magnolia-vagabond-no-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/the-great-magnolia-vagabond-no-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Magnolia Vagabond \u2013 No. 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\">About a year ago, late\u00a0February 2014,\u00a0I was\u00a0driving\u00a0north through Mississippi\u00a0from New Orleans\u00a0to visit artist friends <strong>Pati D\u2019Mico<\/strong> and <strong>Bill Warren<\/strong> in Water Valley, population 3,400.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\">On Saturday the 22nd, I showered at a truck stop in Purvis and treated myself to a couple <a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/RafaelVagabond2.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"1381\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-22178\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/RafaelVagabond2.jpg?resize=600%2C1381\" alt=\"RafaelVagabond2\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/RafaelVagabond2.jpg?w=600&amp;ssl=1 600w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/RafaelVagabond2.jpg?resize=130%2C300&amp;ssl=1 130w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/RafaelVagabond2.jpg?resize=445%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 445w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a>of chili dogs at Ward\u2019s on Old Highway 11. They were fabulous and, belching mustard and onions, I napped contentedly in the back of the truck on the restaurant parking lot.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\">That night, I ate a plate of awful Chinese food at a strip mall in Hattiesburg while talking with <strong>Steven Barthelme<\/strong>, an old friend and University of Southern Mississippi writing instructor whose new book is <strong><em>Hush, Hush<\/em><\/strong> from <strong>Melville House Books<\/strong>. Steve is a man of few words and I have none to quote here.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\">The next morning, to paraphrase the Texan T-Bone Walker, \u201cthe next day I went to church to kneel down and pray&#8230;\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\">Passing through Jackson, I stopped at St. Peter\u2019s Cathedral on West Street for morning Mass. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\">I don\u2019t recall the name\u00a0of the priest who celebrated Mass that day but I will never forget the rhetorical question he asked from the altar and the nettlesome answer that followed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\"><strong>\u201cWhy love our enemies as we do our friends?\u00a0Because often they are the same people.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt\">And then it was Communion: \u201cGod was here, right here Rafael, while you were in a corner counting your sins\u201d; and back to Interstate-55.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/TheLocalVoiceLigature-25web.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"25\" height=\"16\" class=\" size-full wp-image-14544 alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/TheLocalVoiceLigature-25web.jpg?resize=25%2C16\" alt=\"The Local Voice Ligature\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About a year ago, late\u00a0February 2014,\u00a0I was\u00a0driving\u00a0north through Mississippi\u00a0from New Orleans\u00a0to visit artist friends Pati D\u2019Mico and Bill<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":249,"featured_media":22176,"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-22175","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\/02\/222vagabondFEAT.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22175","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=22175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}