For many months, I wait for this time of the year to roll around: the fall. I’ll always associate this season with growing up in the Mississippi Delta as the memories are extremely strong.
A week ago, some friends joined us for dinner at our home and I asked each to name their favorite time of the year in the Mississippi Delta. Everyone told me fall was their favorite time of the year except for one person.
“Why,” I asked.
“The restaurants here seem to be better in the fall,” a guest beamed. I wanted to probe a little more on this strange comment, however a raised eyebrow from my wife at the end of the table told me, “don’t!”
Other responses…
“Shopping”, and “I’ll finally get a break because my husband will be away hunting on the weekends”, also “cooler temperatures and no mosquitoes”, then “music and the outdoor festivals”, “Ole Miss football and Oxford”, were some of the comments.
Ole Miss and Oxford indeed play into my memories of fall because it seems as if it was yesterday that four of us from our high school here in Cleveland traveled to Oxford for our freshman year in 1980 and moved into our dorms and apartments. My stop was the Oxford Square Apartments and the freedom I felt from cutting ties at home and moving into my own “home” at Ole Miss is a memory I’ll never forget.
Perhaps that is how most freshman feel…leaving home – FINALLY!
In any event and however you slice it, we people in the Delta like the fall. Maybe it goes back to our beginnings when this time of the year cotton was picked, sold, and the money flowed throughout the region which put a lot of people in a good mood.
Growing up here, my other fall memories are of Friday night high school football games; the smell of leaves and fields burning; the breathtaking sky that still stretches from one horizon to the next; the time change; the sound of a high school marching band practicing in the distance, and of course hunting season.
Fall also brings with it the best memories I have of spending time with my late father in the woods and other memories of family and friends no longer with us. I also like fall because this is the only time of the year I can slow down at work and finally find the time to think, remember, absorb and contemplate…while sitting on a deer stand.
“When is the best time of the year to visit the Delta,” my far away friends often ask.
“The Fall is THE only time to see the Mississippi Delta like it should be seen and taken in,” I respond.
I hope the arrival of this unique season works its “specialness” on you too.
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Scott Coopwood, a seventh generation Deltan, lives in Cleveland, Mississippi, with his wife Cindy and their three children. Scott is the publisher and owner of Delta Magazine, one of the South’s leading lifestyle publications, the Delta Business Journal, the first business publication in the Mississippi Delta; and Cleveland’s weekly newspaper, The Cleveland Current . Scott’s company also publishes two weekly e-newsletters. Coopwood publishing concerns now reach 250,000 people. Scott is also a 1984 graduate of the University of Mississippi. He can be reached at scott@coopwood.net
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