I got a gal in Cincinnati
Got a woman in San Antone
I always loved the girl next door
But any place is home
By day Chuck “Hard Luck” Schimpf is an insurance man, but on this blustery, gray Saturday morning, he’s pouring his soul into “Freeborn Man.” Schimpf is lead singer for Cedar Creek Ramblers, an electric bluegrass band, the opening act for the Cotton District Arts Festival in Starkville.
As the morning progresses the crowd will swell, but for now it’s mostly stragglers from the 5K run in flimsy shorts, contestants from the pet parade and volunteers. Still, the bustle of anticipation in the air.
As the scent of boiling crawfish wafts down University Drive, Sheida Riahi takes a reed pen and begins to write in Farsi the name of Cathy Williams’ 33-year-old son, Joseph.
Schimpf is now begging Daddy to take him down to Muhlenberg County. Larry Wallace is near with his electric banjo. They really sound good.
A red-headed Boy Scout named Clay Turner, 13, tries to sell a cedar bird house to a passerby for $15. Squirrel feeders and bat houses are also available. The Scouts — Troop 14 — use the proceeds to fund their camping exploits.
As Riahi begins another piece of calligraphy, her husband, Shantia, shows up with an envelope containing her $100 merit award. They come from Iran, though she prefers to call it Persia. He’s a mathematics professor at Mississippi State University. She teaches calligraphy and illumination, an art used to illustrate religious manuscripts.
Up the way, milliner and occasional food writer Cherri “Miss Moonpie” Golden pauses to watch the Golden Triangle Celts, a local bagpipe company, parade by. Cherri, who lives in Columbus, is assisted by her sister, Madeline, of Starkville, who is locally famous for her roles in theater productions.
Cherri calls sis Crabpuff because, as she says, “She’s grouchy sometimes, hates seafood, and I enjoy annoying her. It’s a sister thing.”
If she’s annoyed, Madeline doesn’t show it.
Cherri figures her inclination for hats is rooted in childhood.
“I grew up in an era when mamas plopped little hats on their daughters.”
An older woman in a bright red raincoat and matching glasses spies Cherri’s wares and makes a sudden course correction, leaving her Bulldog maroon clad companion back on the trail.
Golden grew up in Eupora next to a grocery story her grandparents owned and lived in the back of. Cherri’s mother, concerned about her daughter’s too frequent raids on the grocery’s candy section, limited her sweet’s sweet consumption to a nickel a day.
It was then, when she was around 5 or 6, Cherri developed her Moon Pie habit. To grandfather she became “Miss Moonpie.”
Golden’s day job is with the U.S.D.A. APHIS, a division of the Department of Agriculture that, as its website says, works to “resolve wildlife conflicts and create a balance that allows people and wildlife to coexist peacefully.”
One of those conflicts the agency has to resolve is skunks in Davis Wade Stadium. With the lack of activity in the summer, the empty stadium becomes a summer palace for at least one family of skunks.
“Mama Skunk thinks, ‘This is the perfect place to have my babies,'” says Golden.
Her coworkers are responsible for their eviction.
On a side street, Amy Richardson of Crawford is selling gourds on which she’s decorated with patterns, some geometric, others botanical. The resulting objects are beautiful and distinctive.
Richardson says she was introduced to gourds by the father of a musician boyfriend.
“He was always shaking stuff to make sound,” Richardson says of her former boyfriend.
The father gave Richardson an egg-sized gourd she kept for a couple of years before breaking it open. She planted the seeds and soon had 75 gourds, which she started painting and giving to friends. That was 12 years ago.
A MSU graphic design major, Richardson is passionate about the vegetable — gourds are a member of the squash family and are technically a fruit — she uses for a canvas.
“I think gourds are beautiful. They are Mother Nature’s pottery. They’ve been used for centuries.”
Organizers of the Starkville’s Cotton Arts Festival should be proud. They’ve managed to keep the culinary, musical and artistic offerings uniformly high; the event seems to get better each year. If you missed it, I urge you not to make the same mistake next year.
Birney Imes is the publisher of The Dispatch. E-mail him at [email protected].
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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