"I have never been to a place in Mississippi that I liked."

Was my boss's comment yesterday when our (his) plan went to all shit. You see, we headed off for a short day trip to Yazoo City, MS to do some testing. We were supposed to come home last night. We missed it by only 24 hours. Close, but no cigar. I obviously haven't been to Mississippi in several years, and I was quickly reminded of why. It is every bit as desolate and just plain crappy as I remember it being.

What are we doing in Yazoo City, MS? And what the hell is there to do anything to? Yazoo City is home to a Federal Correctional Institution. Or "jail" if you aren't writing up a resume. Here it is:By the way I noticed a southeastern states visitor's guide in our hotel room later that day. It had several pages devoted to each state's main tourist attractions and such. And Mississippi had listed damned Yazoo City as one of its top places to visit! I guess the pickings were kind of slim though, because they also listed Memphis. Memphis, TN! But on with the story...

I must say I noticed that the prisoners seem to spend all day out in the beautiful weather playing various sports and being generally jovial. I commented on this to my boss at every opportunity while I was sweating my ass off carrying large items around.

Anyway...we are supposed to do some testing for a future facility. Luckily the future facility is across the fence from the criminals (as you might can see from the above photo). So we find our test site by following Hazzard County Dirt Road 329 and here is what we see:
No, this is not a photo I found on the internet under a search of "barren African wasteland". This is Mississippi in all her glory. Five foot tall undergrowth as far as the eye can see. The survey crew is a bunch of locals and they haven't shown up to locate our specific test area for us. We can't speak to our contact at the correctional facility because he is out at Low (that's minimum security for you laymen) and they can't call him on the phone because there aren't phones in Mississippi. And we are stuck.

So I guess we aren't coming home as planned. I scored this sweet brown paper bag from the Black and White department store in downtown Yazoo City with the purchase of a pair of socks and a pair of drawers:
A short stroll down Main Street (no shit, Main Street) led me to the local druggist who traded me a small bottle of contact lens solution for 9 of my dollars (no shit, $9). Just one more stop by the store where the local ballers get their Jordans for a pair of extra long, and all they had was extra long, and they are EXTRA LONG, gym shorts to sleep in and my paper sack was getting pretty damned stuffed.

For dinner it was across the hotel parking lot to El Sombrero whose bar tender will kindly whip you up a "jumbo" 75 ounce margarita. DAMN! We finished up the night with a little football and I was lucky enough to sleep on a cot. But at least I had a climate controlled room with one of those new fangled color televisions.

Oh, and with the help of the locals we were able to conduct our tests today: