the Best of Jackson

There are plenty of conversations about what art is and isn’t, who it is and isn’t for. I’m interested in this conversation, but I can’t answer that question, unless I answer it for myself. This September, I painted a mural that is now one of the first things to greet you when you arrive in downtown Jackson. Nestled just past Grubb’s Grocery and the Jackson Walk on North Highland, it’s a bright and idyllic scene, and I’m not oblivious to the fact that it’s an even more idealistic message: Love your neighborhood.

Why do we create monuments to the past? What is it about physical reminders—be they statues or plaques—that move us? Why do we feel the need to travel to the places of great historical events and walk the same ground? I am struck by the words of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the hero of Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg: “In great deeds, something abides. On great fields, something stays.”

When I was young, my family would take vacations to different cities to watch baseball games. While I loved baseball, the thing I looked forward to the most was seeing the skyline of whatever city we were visiting. In my single digit years, it was always St. Louis. Driving past the multitude of Drury Inns in the suburbs and waiting for the skyline to materialize in the distance never got old. Seeing the Arch stretch across the sky is something I can still see in my mind today. As I got older, the cities became larger: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York.

Maybe it will be a high school production of the musical Camelot. An exhibit of stunning photography by a local class may catch your eye. Perhaps you’ll just want to see the downstairs museum, where dozens of photos, plaques, awards, and costumes recall the acting careers of Dixie Carter and her husband, Hal Holbrook. What will bring you to The Dixie? The Dixie Carter Performing Arts & Academic Enrichment Center is a historical performing arts and enrichment center in Huntingdon, Tennessee.

My dad had a Jeep when I was very young. Riding in it was one of my earliest memories. I don’t remember the model or the color (it could have been brown) or if there was a lift on it. I only remember that it didn’t have a top and that the wind would blow in my face as he drove. The sky was over my head, the clouds directly above me. I knew that I liked the feeling of having nothing blocking my senses. Light poured in. The breeze slapped us silly. We could see everything above and around us.

What will a person not do because of love? With love, the seemingly absurd and impossible becomes logical and likely. Love is what drives us to actions and accomplishments, from the noblest and greatest to ordinary and poignant. To paraphrase the famous early twentieth century English author G.K. Chesterton, something becomes great or beautiful or indeed lovely because we love it. Not because it was great, beautiful, or lovely before we came. This is because love is transformative.

“Now, I don’t want to see you on the news tonight,” Bart Horton jokingly warned as he handed bottles of wine to his customers at the tasting bar. The two women were on a Southern road trip, a little respite from the six feet of snow packed around their homes in Montana. As they drove down I-40 on their way to Nashville from Memphis, they noticed a sign for Century Farm Winery.

It’s a muggy June evening, and a small crowd of about thirty gathers outside the J. R. Hyde Science Building at the University of Memphis at Lambuth. The crowd represents all portraits of life in Jackson: families with multiple small children, retirees, and a small group of teens looking to break the monotony of their typical summer drudgery by doing something singularly unique.

All my life I have heard people talk about how time flies. I have never actually witnessed a clock sprout wings and take off, but as a child, that's the only way I could picture time flying. As I got older and little bit wiser, I knew clocks did not really fly and understood it was just a figure of speech—but to me, it seemed like a joke because time felt like it was crawling. For many, it becomes a reality when children are born. One minute, you're holding your precious baby; the next, they are having babies of their own.

When you interview a guy you’ve known for years—a guy who has had dozens of articles and interviews published since the launch of his business—the thing you are probably the most aware of is the desire to be original in what you put on paper for the whole world to see. If nothing else, don’t be cliché about it. So that was my goal as I mentally prepared myself to interview Sam Bryant, owner of Samuel T. Bryant Distillery here in Jackson.

A morning ritual, a conversation piece, a shared bond: coffee adopts whatever role its faithful consumers may assign. It’s one of the few addictions that our local cultures openly embrace. Even just the word “coffee” can be seen on decorative signs for the home, on t-shirts, on mugs. Coffee has transcended its place as a drink to an idea: the symbol of incentive in an increasingly demanding world. “I can’t do anything before I have my coffee” is not a personal statement; it’s a cities-spanning mantra.

We've all been there: It's a Friday night, and you're craving a burger like nobody's business. Fast food won't suffice, and while local staples like Burger Barn always hit the spot, you're looking for something a little more unique. It begs the question: What is Jackson's best burger? Well, in honor of the upcoming National Cheeseburger Day, we're taking you on a tour of three of Jackson's most creative and tasty burgers—but only you can decide which reigns supreme!

In March of 2016 I began dating my girlfriend Natalie, a girl who was born and raised in Jackson and who had the knowledge to back it up. Me being an out-of-town transplant, she thought that it was of great importance for me to learn a little culture and history of this city that we know and love. I gladly complied. Usually these lessons were unplanned and casual. As things came up in conversation she would explain to me the history as best she knew it. One of those things was Waffle House.

Walt Disney World, Gulf Shores, Baton Rouge, France, the Bahamas, the Yucatan; these are places we go to retreat from the normalcy of life. These are the destinations of our vacations, our free week off from work to do what we want. Yet retreating to something different doesn’t have to mean venturing beyond state lines. As native West Tennesseans, we forget the vast culture and history that surrounds us.

As I walked into the bustling and brightly colored waiting room of Pat Brown’s dance studio, I was immediately hit by a rush of memories from my days in leotards and tights. I heard the combinations being called out with extreme zeal in the studio, an extremely familiar sound for the sixty dancers who make up the Ballet Arts of Jackson troupe. The older group of dancers were hard at work rehearsing a routine to Thriller for a Halloween event while younger girls peeked in from the hallway.

An expansive flock of slate grey clouds span the sky as I drive along the narrow highway. The landscape rolls beside me, before me. The hills and subtle ridge lines guide the highway that bears my passage. Rural fields are dotted with gigantic cotton gins, dilapidated barns. Small colonies of trailers and rented houses populate gravel side roads, sprouting like branches from the main highway. I am northward bound, driving into an increasingly brisk wind.

For years I’ve been hearing the name James Cherry. I first heard of him when I was a student at Union University (also his alma mater) and then continued to hear about this guy as a Jacksonian interested in writing. It’s clear that locals are proud to have this Jackson native around. He’s the president of the Griot Collective of West Tennessee, a monthly poetry workshop, and is, upon meeting him, very obviously cool. He has an easy going temperament and a steady, unquestionable passion for the written word.

After you crank your car down from the sixty-five miles-per-hour speed limit, you’ll make a turn onto a shaded, gravel road, and if you are lucky you’ll catch your first glimpse of the exotic: radiant peacocks, enormous camels, ancient buffalo, and vibrant zebras. In a way, you will feel that you have just stepped into a new world filled with wonder and excitement. And you’ve only just pulled in. Tennessee’s only drive-through safari park is truly a captivating place.

“Crows are family.” This wasn’t precisely the first utterance from Denton Parkins, but it was certainly the most arresting. He’d already gone through a list of remedies for crows and mice, his major competitors in the pumpkin and strawberry market. Crows, it seems, are wily creatures and sociable; he proposes to me that, “the crows scope us out.” I sense that he and the crows, from long dwelling together, have become familiar with one another’s faces.

One of the most well-known attractions in Jackson is Brooks Shaw & Son Old Country Store, a place both residents and visitors love. One of my earliest memories of the Old Country Store is from a field trip I took in kindergarten, where I was so excited about the barrels upon barrels of candy! The main draw of the Old Country Store is definitely the traditional Southern food buffet, which ranges from $8 to $13.

One of the most perplexing and discouraging realities the modern world confronts us with is a disconnection from our past and the past in general. We are separated from the first European settlers of West Tennessee by just less than 200 years, but we have less in common with those ancestors than they themselves would have had with the Ancient Greeks or Romans. Time is a relative construction in this sense, just like it is in physics.

When the white-tailed deer show up in my backyard, it’s like witnessing a direct link to an age almost forgotten. I freeze in my tracks, and I can’t help but think about their unbroken chain of ancestors going back into the ancient past. These animals were here long before any settlers arrived from Europe. They were the hunted long before rifles replaced bows and arrows. They knew these lands when the waters were still clean and the air was still fresh. They knew these lands when there were no cars and no railroads.

Paul Latham’s Meat Company, commonly known as Latham’s, is a name familiar to almost everyone in the Jackson area. Since 1991, Paul himself has been providing our city with a variety of quality meat and a high level of service. The friendly atmosphere of his current location on North Highland Avenue is felt immediately upon entering the combination butcher shop, barbecue stand, and cafeteria.

One of the many reasons that I started Hello Jackson was to create a resource for people traveling through West Tennessee to find local businesses to support. One of the places that is already pretty popular with travelers is the I-40 Exit 87 BBQ Stand. It is a food truck-style establishment with a lot of character. Growing up, I always associated barbecue with family gatherings. Any time we all got together, we went somewhere to get some delicious pulled pork and all the sides.

When you talk to any business owner, the word “niche” will probably come up at some point. Finding a niche is essential to success, and today’s featured business, Woodstock Bake Shop, has definitely found its niche! You can tell from the name that the theme is based on the culture and music of the 1960s. Woodstock Bake Shop opened in September of 2012 and serves a variety of delicious cupcakes, candies, and box lunches.

The third Hard Rock Cafe in the world was opened in Jackson, Tennessee, on January 29, 1983 in the Old Hickory Mall, and although it was short-lived, people still get excited about the idea that for a brief time in history we were listed among cities like London, Los Angeles, and Tokyo. The first Asian location was actually opened the same year as our own, officially making HRC a worldwide enterprise.

It wasn’t until I experienced fine dining that I truly appreciated it. Splurging on a full-service dining experience may not be your cup of tea, but to me it is worth saving up for. It’s not only the unique flavor combinations and artful food preparation that I enjoy, but also the atmosphere and attentiveness of the servers. My fine dining experiences have always been on vacation, but as of this fall, I can get this kind of experience right here in Jackson.

Buildings, like last time with the Greyhound Station, are the expression of ideas that find a place in the imagination or consciousness of a culture. American and European culture in the early decades of the twentieth century were fascinated by the concept of speed. In the lifespan of the of a single person men went from moving at the speed of a horse to being able to leap over oceans in the space of hours.

Buildings matter. This is a concept that is foreign to us now. As anyone who spends more than a few minutes driving around our city can easily attest to, the vast majority of the buildings (houses, stores, banks, even—I cringe as I write this last one—churches) look like they have come out of some factory where they are mass produced on an assembly line. Buildings used to mean something. There was some idea, value, universal concept that held the building together and directed its growth and form.

There is something comforting about ritual. Of course there’s also something comfortable about the familiar, but ritual is different. The repetition that comes with ritual isn’t out of habit. It’s not something you slip into, like ordering the same dish every time you go to your favorite restaurant. It’s done with intention, with reverence, and with appreciation. For many Jacksonians, Saturday mornings at the West Tennessee Farmers’ Market is one such ritual.