The eye of the beholder

H.L. Mencken may have called the South the Sahara of the Bozart, but we beg to differ.

Where others see a weathered brick wall, we see the possibilities for a pebbly palette.  Art can spring from even the driest wells, as Faulkner brilliantly proved.  In our town, built around trains that long since left the station, creativity springs from the familiar and commonplace.

And we didn't need a marketing firm to survey, develop graphs, and give us the plan.  Some enterprising, anonymous paintbrush thought for itself.

The Coca-Cola mural has been a part of my landscape for so long I don't remember why it's there. Not to advertise the business on whose wall it resides.  There once was a grocery store on that corner, and it perhaps dates from a time when groceries were, in fact, within walking distance and not a five-mile drive to the nearest Wal-Mart.

Lest you not feel welcome as you enter our small community, we've also got the art to tell you how happy we are to see you.  And, by the way, you can park in the rear for a commercial enterprise that no longer exists.  

Making efficient use of the space, we also advertise the annual Labor Day arts festival, letting no one forget we're an oasis of the bozart.

But perhaps my favorite wall mural in our town is one I can't really explain.  My cloudy and possibly faulty memory recalls that a class of high school arts students used their talents to give us these images, ostensibly capturing the symbols of our life in small town Mississippi.  Make of it what you will. 

I see the windmill that has become a city trademark; a blues guitar that no dobut represents one of our city's most famous citizens, Howlin' Wolf; children pointing in wonder at something far beyond my ken. 

The fact that I don't understand it is of no concern.  That, too, is a symbol for life in our town.