{"id":33402,"date":"2016-05-08T10:00:01","date_gmt":"2016-05-08T15:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=33402"},"modified":"2016-05-02T11:43:30","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T16:43:30","slug":"the-great-magnolia-vagabond-no-11-mississippi-meat-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/the-great-magnolia-vagabond-no-11-mississippi-meat-man\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Magnolia Vagabond No. 11: Mississippi Meat Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

I took some criticism for this bit of travelogue. Not for participating\u2013after all, the Meat Man was giving away advice and pork chops in the front yard of a house that may or may not have been his\u2013but apparently for the way in which I shared my host\u2019s enthusiasm. At least one fellow champion of the blues and the 20th state in the Union<\/strong> thought I had unduly embarrassed an obviously drunk, addled\u2013and to-this-day, anonymous\u2013man.<\/span><\/p>\n

But it didn\u2019t feel that way as it happened and I reported the moment precisely as it happened.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was spring of 2012\u2013right about this time of year, the week Levon Helm<\/strong> died\u2013and I was sleeping in the truck and cruising Clarksdale<\/strong> en-route to Tinseltown<\/strong> with the taste of pig meat on my mind. It was too early for the jukes to open so I just started taking lefts and rights through streets named Choctaw<\/strong> and Catalpa<\/strong>. Soon, I saw smoke rising and followed it to the corner of Denison<\/strong> & Edmondson<\/strong>, where a middle-aged man tended a rickety, heavily rusted grill.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like a suburban punk chasing contraband at the strip mall, I asked: \u201cYou selling?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Nope, he was sharing <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCome on,\u201d he said, welcoming me into the yard with the best Southern hospitality, minus flatware and utensils. \u201cWhat you want?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And together we ate grilled pork chops with our hands, wiping them with old newspapers before shaking fare-thee-well.\u00a0\"The<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I took some criticism for this bit of travelogue. Not for participating\u2013after all, the Meat Man was giving<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":249,"featured_media":33403,"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":[96],"tags":[7078,6128,8509,8510,3819,3,753,6129],"class_list":["post-33402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-writing","tag-creative-writing","tag-magnolia","tag-meat-man","tag-pork-chops","tag-rafael-alvarez","tag-the-local-voice","tag-tlv","tag-vagabond"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/2016-05-02-magnoliavagabond.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33402","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=33402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}