The point of an interstate highway is not beauty, or connection; it’s speed, and transport. If you have a parent in the hospital and need to cover a few states in a day, by all means take the concrete path. But if you are looking to make some pictures or write some stories, head down the exit.
Egypt, Mississippi, Polaroid SX-70 (2017)
For about fifty years now, Mississippi has been quartered; bisected vertically by I-55 and horizontally by I-20. This is great if you want to get to Memphis or New Orleans in a hurry, or catch Bama at home in Tuscaloosa,1 or go to whatever there is that’s West of here. But we all know the real action is on the backroads, or the little towns that were cut off when they put the highway in, or even where there is no longer a real town at all.
Rodney, Mississippi, SX-70 (2017)
A few years back I realized that much of my art was clumped around these major roads and the towns clustered closest to them (or which adapted to move closer). I had also begun to rely really heavily on digital maps, which can work great, but are very elliptical in what they tell you. To the exact inch, GPS will read out to you the coordinates to get to the place you’re looking for. But what if you don’t know what you are looking for? Or are interested more in what you find along the way?
Kokomo, Mississippi, Polaroid 600 (2018)
We all joke about it, but to my delight the aggressively Southern mode of giving someone directions remains both utterly ridiculous and persists despite our digital connections. Just head down that road for a while, then hang a right at the burned down gas station, the more recently burned down one I mean.
The further away you get from the interstate the more vital this is and more useful than a pin dropped on a map, especially when you’re talking to another photographer. You are going to need to slow down when you see the sign for Friendship, no I don’t know if it’s really a real place but there’s a marker, and if you stop right after seeing it there is a place that sells catfish and they have all these hand-lettered signs, but you have to stop right off the bat or you won’t see them. [This is a real thing I am telling you right now].
Friendship, Mississippi, SX-70 (2017)
Your bigger gas stations and all your rest stops also maintain an incredible resource I had ignored for many moons. I started picking up maps again, real paper ones, maps that wouldn’t re-fold right no matter how careful you were with them, no matter how old you are. They were filled with cartilage and muscle I couldn’t name, descriptions of a foreign anatomy for the strange animal whose shape I generally knew. There were details and towns the magic rectangle in my pocket didn’t display. Because what computers show you is a choice, and if you’ve inputted “Greenville” into the go-box, why would it show you a route that took five hours when you can get there in two?
Location unknown, north Mississippi, Polaroid 600 (2018)
It’s in those five hours, though, that you find the crumbling mansions, the corner store with the scrap of paper boasting FREE WORMS WITH TANK OF GAS,2 the gas station advertising boudin and fax machines.3 You know some of them—you’ve maybe seen them in the distance from the four-lane, or hurtling down an ancillary artery like 49 or 51, maybe even saw them on the news—the challenge is to pump the brakes and really see.
The Collins Zoo, Collins, Miss., Polaroid SX-70 (2018)
Even once I’ve chosen a place to point myself towards, I just let it be a suggestion, not a rule. I mean, I want to get there by dark, but sometimes there’s just so much to look at.
Like this El Camino, which I met when I was in residence at Slow Exposures, in Zebulon, Georgia. I was just riding around in the middle of nowhere when I see a pretty red Chevrolet with a “for sale” sign taped to the windshield. That’s more than enough to stop, even in July, when stepping out of the car means sunburn and soaked shirts.
The windows were down and I poked my head in. Two things. First, there was a black widow spider just chilling on the driver’s side mirror, right by where I was leaning. Second, the headliner had fallen down, and into the soft foam on the top of the cabin someone carefully inscribed with their finger Robin Hood + [Maid] Marian. (Don’t take my word for it, just zoom in.)
Wherever this was in Georgia, Polaroid 600 (2017)
Yes it was dumb to lean in to make the photo of the lovers’ graffiti because of the spider and yes this was parked at a trailer park in rural Georgia so I could have probably gotten shot at but lord, look at that red vinyl, what there was left of it, and I already told you it was the summertime in the South, do you remember what hot vinyl smelled like? This old car, $4,000 firm, not running,4 it smelled like growing up, look at that little power window switch installed higgledy-piggledy, do you remember their flimsy connection that nonetheless carried so much authority, remember how fascinating making the window go up and down was, and maybe you got yelled at like me for using it too much, don't play with that, you’re going to break it, yes a command informed by and arisen from precarity but also the fact that much of the world wasn’t as simple as this, hadn’t been as simple as this, that opening a window and turning a steering wheel took muscle and friction, that something this easy might not last.
This wasn’t a car, this was a story, this was a picture book of my childhood. That’s what you get when you hit them back-roads.5 You get to see all of it, not just the pine trees hurtling past at seventy five miles per hour.
“SECOND STAR TO THE RIGHT” is this week’s installment of GORJUS, a newsletter devoted to art and life in the South on instant film. If you like it, consider sending it to a pal. Just like anything, some weeks are better than others. I’m gorjusjxn on Instagram, and you can see more Polaroids at McCartyPolaroids.
Several of y’all sent links to friends or posted about this newsletter the past week, and I really appreciate it. And welcome if you are new here, may you get a little warmth in the winter and shade in the summer.
Sometimes the only thing that makes driving east on 20 acceptable is singing Jason Isbell’s “Alabama Pines” to myself.
This one is made up but plausible.
100% real and I have the photo to prove it (obviously it’s in Louisiana).
I agree it was way overpriced.
The back roads are my continuing obsession and theme and a while back now I wrote about our great artist laureate, Bob Dylan, and how his ceaseless roaming of America inspires me.
"...that something this easy might not last."
Oh, so painfully and wonderfully familiar.