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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Some schools offer student trips to places like Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, the state capitol, or even abroad to Mexico or Europe, but not many schools offer a "Books, Blues and Barbeque" tour of the Mississippi Delta like The Altamont School in Birmingham, Ala. does.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]For one week each October, students in grades five though 12 get to take the classroom out into the world during "Fall Project Week." While students in grades nine and lower take trips as a whole class with parents and teachers, older students get to pick and choose between smaller-group trips to a myriad of places, such as Spain, Italy or France, college tours, mountain climbing or service projects. Or, they can choose the "Books, Blues and Barbeque" trip organized and led each year by Altamont English teacher and director of admissions Jimmy Wiygul.
The annual trip is one of the school's most popular and is filled on a first-come, first-serve basis. This week, Wiygul brought 13 high school seniors to experience the unique culture of the Delta, with the main portion spent in Clarksdale, where the group took over the Shack Up Inn for three days.
"When we started these trips in the early 1990s, we used to just drive through Clarksdale and I remember going to the Delta Blues Museum when it was in the back of the library, but as time has gone on, now we spend one night in Memphis, one night in Oxford and three nights in Clarksdale and we day-trip out of here," Wiygul said.
In addition to their visit to Memphis, the group went to Oxford for lunch and a reading seminar with Southern noir novelist Ace Atkins; and cookies and lemonade with blues photographer Dick Waterman.
"We wish we could have stayed here for the whole week," Suzanne Sarver, 17, said. "The Shack Up Inn is amazing, and we all love being out here because it's a time for us to hang out and get to know each other better. When we were in Memphis, for example, we went to Beale Street, and it was very touristy. We live in Birmingham, where we get a lot of that, but down here, it's real laid back and we're having a great time."
Some of the highlights of their Delta visit included: A tour of Parchman Farm, the state penitentiary featured in a number of blues songs; the store on Money Road, where Emmett Till allegedly whistled at the white proprietress, which later led to his murder by her husband and brother-in-law in 1955; an afternoon performance by former Jelly Roll King Big Jack Johnson, backed by local musicians, at Red's Lounge; dinner at Madidi; a tour of the Delta Blues Museum; being guests on the King Biscuit Time radio show in Helena, Ark., with "Sunshine" Sonny Payne; a visit with 80-year-old drummer Sam Carr in his yard on Powell Road; a visit to Uncle Henry's on Moon Lake (a former casino featured in some of Tennessee Williams's works) and a night of music and dancing at Ground Zero.
Wiygul said seeing different parts of the world and combining fun, travel and education is a theme at Altamont.
"Some of the trips cost quite a bit of money, and while our school is private - I like the word 'independent' because in Birmingham, we're more diverse than anybody in town - we have about 25 percent on financial aid. We have a lot of middle-class families and you can't just jump off to Spain every year, so I started doing this as something that doesn't cost much."
There is also a memorial fund set up specifically for travel that helps financially needy students make these trips. A testament to the popularity of the trip is a group of alumni who paid $3,300 at a school fund-raising auction for Wiygul to take them on the "Books, Blues and Barbeque" trip this past July.
Sharing his love for the Delta to his students, Wiygul watches as they complete the circle by sharing it with others, saying, "There's so much history in the Delta, and the kids have been reading a lot: they've read an Ace Atkins novel, and short stories by William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams. When they get home, they have to turn in three 'images' from this trip, however that comes. It could be a poem or a photo essay, something with meaning."
One image of the Delta that stands out for Sarver is the traveling.
"Driving down Highway 61 in our little yellow school bus, with all the windows down, because there's no air conditioning, the wind blowing, listening to blues music [the Jelly Roll Kings, Big Jack Johnson and Sam Carr's band with the late Frank Frost], and all around us is open cotton fields," she said. "It was great."
Sarver said she and the other students area already talking about coming back to Clarksdale for a reunion before they all take off to college. [/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]For one week each October, students in grades five though 12 get to take the classroom out into the world during "Fall Project Week." While students in grades nine and lower take trips as a whole class with parents and teachers, older students get to pick and choose between smaller-group trips to a myriad of places, such as Spain, Italy or France, college tours, mountain climbing or service projects. Or, they can choose the "Books, Blues and Barbeque" trip organized and led each year by Altamont English teacher and director of admissions Jimmy Wiygul.
The annual trip is one of the school's most popular and is filled on a first-come, first-serve basis. This week, Wiygul brought 13 high school seniors to experience the unique culture of the Delta, with the main portion spent in Clarksdale, where the group took over the Shack Up Inn for three days.
"When we started these trips in the early 1990s, we used to just drive through Clarksdale and I remember going to the Delta Blues Museum when it was in the back of the library, but as time has gone on, now we spend one night in Memphis, one night in Oxford and three nights in Clarksdale and we day-trip out of here," Wiygul said.
In addition to their visit to Memphis, the group went to Oxford for lunch and a reading seminar with Southern noir novelist Ace Atkins; and cookies and lemonade with blues photographer Dick Waterman.
"We wish we could have stayed here for the whole week," Suzanne Sarver, 17, said. "The Shack Up Inn is amazing, and we all love being out here because it's a time for us to hang out and get to know each other better. When we were in Memphis, for example, we went to Beale Street, and it was very touristy. We live in Birmingham, where we get a lot of that, but down here, it's real laid back and we're having a great time."
Some of the highlights of their Delta visit included: A tour of Parchman Farm, the state penitentiary featured in a number of blues songs; the store on Money Road, where Emmett Till allegedly whistled at the white proprietress, which later led to his murder by her husband and brother-in-law in 1955; an afternoon performance by former Jelly Roll King Big Jack Johnson, backed by local musicians, at Red's Lounge; dinner at Madidi; a tour of the Delta Blues Museum; being guests on the King Biscuit Time radio show in Helena, Ark., with "Sunshine" Sonny Payne; a visit with 80-year-old drummer Sam Carr in his yard on Powell Road; a visit to Uncle Henry's on Moon Lake (a former casino featured in some of Tennessee Williams's works) and a night of music and dancing at Ground Zero.
Wiygul said seeing different parts of the world and combining fun, travel and education is a theme at Altamont.
"Some of the trips cost quite a bit of money, and while our school is private - I like the word 'independent' because in Birmingham, we're more diverse than anybody in town - we have about 25 percent on financial aid. We have a lot of middle-class families and you can't just jump off to Spain every year, so I started doing this as something that doesn't cost much."
There is also a memorial fund set up specifically for travel that helps financially needy students make these trips. A testament to the popularity of the trip is a group of alumni who paid $3,300 at a school fund-raising auction for Wiygul to take them on the "Books, Blues and Barbeque" trip this past July.
Sharing his love for the Delta to his students, Wiygul watches as they complete the circle by sharing it with others, saying, "There's so much history in the Delta, and the kids have been reading a lot: they've read an Ace Atkins novel, and short stories by William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams. When they get home, they have to turn in three 'images' from this trip, however that comes. It could be a poem or a photo essay, something with meaning."
One image of the Delta that stands out for Sarver is the traveling.
"Driving down Highway 61 in our little yellow school bus, with all the windows down, because there's no air conditioning, the wind blowing, listening to blues music [the Jelly Roll Kings, Big Jack Johnson and Sam Carr's band with the late Frank Frost], and all around us is open cotton fields," she said. "It was great."
Sarver said she and the other students area already talking about coming back to Clarksdale for a reunion before they all take off to college. [/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
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