Po' Monkey's

After an emotional day of Emmett Till study, we spent the evening at Po' Monkey’s lounge.  It’s the last juke joint, and the most famous building, in the delta.  The NYTimes has done several stories on it and it is a huge draw for blues aficionados.   The proprietor is a man named Po' Monkey (his mom gave him that nickname and it’s the only thing he goes by), who is 70, and still lives in the same shotgun shack he lived in as a sharecropper.  He’s now salaried on the same farm, but “allowed” to live in the house he’s had his whole life.  More upsetting than that is the fact that he received an award from the local university a few years ago, but his boss would not give him the day off to accept it (he is apparently one of those "I don't get what all the fuss is about" white southerners.)

Po' Monkey lets the public into his home on Thursdays for some soul music, cheap beer and awesome ambiance.  Some notable things happened when we were there: 

1. There was a couple from Vienna who sat rather still, yet contentedly, and were the most awesome inadvertent photo-bombers ever!

 

  The general feel of the place.

2.  When we decided to leave, there was a man who had been there for hours waiting to get Po' Monkey to autograph a small model of the juke joint that he built.  Coincidentally, Po' Monkey showed up right then (late from working in the fields at 11 pm), and I have possibly the worst picture taken on vacation to prove it!

 

Here's the place during the day:

A Vietnam Vet friend, who builds things out of discarded machines, built the fence and small robot protector to the lower right-hand side of the sign.  He also put up the American flag.   These things serve as guardians to this blues trail marker (others sometimes get vandalized).

It’s actually really comfortable inside, with full-on air conditioning and the vibrant/colorful lighting.  People often bring things to give to Po Monkey, which he then displays in his house.  

Wait, what’s that you say?  “But Lee, I thought you brought your super cute baby to the Delta?  Where is he?  Did you take him to the juke joint?”  To which I would respond: of course not—juke joints aren’t for babies!  No, no—he was in the hotel, where he was being babysat by a Delta teenager who, though she was recommended by someone at the workshop, we had just met that very night!  Pruett-Ben-Yonatan parenting for the win!