Photo courtesy of Visit Oxford
Oxford's legendary independent bookstore, Square Books.
The question all the way to Oxford was: Begin with words or tunes?
No matter what else, Mississippi has gotten music and literature right for a very long time, especially the hill country town that is home to the University of Mississippi. In fact, as I approached Oxford’s crowded historic Courthouse Square, the question evolved: should my first stop be at the state’s finest record store or the finest bookstore in perhaps all of America? It was a decision made easier by the first available parking spot appearing near a sidewalk sign that read, “The Record Store Of Your Dreams Is Up These Stairs.” So, I parked, mounted those stairs, and commenced my visit to Oxford, where I’d come to spend three days taking in the best of the town that some folks call, “The Little Easy.”
Those stairs delivered me to The End of All Music, located on the second floor of the historic Duvall’s building. The door was wide open. If a good record store turns visitors into explorers, The End of All Music offers a fine frontier. It has a varied (and neat) catalogue of new and used vinyl, as well as old CDs and music-themed DVDs (which, as someone who grew up in the ’90s, held equal interest for me). At the same time, something about the hardwood floors and abundance of natural light conveys a welcoming authenticity that no doubt mirrors the personality of David Swider, the Mississippi Delta native who opened the shop in 2012. He came out to chat during my visit, and by the time I left I had decided that a good record instills trust in visitors. As in, I trusted the instinct to go back and snag that Isaiah “Doc” Ross record, Call The Doctor, at some point later on my trip.
My next stop was across the Square at the bookstore that longtime resident Richard Howorth opened in 1979. Four decades later, Square Books is one of two reasons why Oxford is a fixed point on the literary world map (the other being that Nobel Prize-winning writer William Faulkner lived in town). Timing played a part in its ascension. The Center for the Study of Southern Culture opened at the University of Mississippi about the same time as Square Books, and Willie Morris came to teach around then, too, bringing with him a near-constant stream of nationally acclaimed writers to town. These developments certainly helped establish Square Books as a cultural hub. But it’s also just a really good, well-stocked, independent bookstore (with a fine upstairs café), owned by a smart businessman (Howorth is a former American Booksellers Association president) who hires knowledgeable employees (I’m told applications are akin to entrance exams)—and often works alongside them.
Joy, my wife, bought a dinosaur-themed print for our son during our visit and, when we got outside, mentioned that “some random older guy in glasses” had stopped to explain the best way to care for it.
“That was Richard Howorth,” I said, having seen him tidying displays earlier, and we both laughed.
As for me, I departed with a signed copy of Beth Ann Fennelly’s new book, The Irish Goodbye: Micro Memoirs. Fennelly is a former poet laureate of Mississippi and University of Mississippi professor. Something about her latest work, with its focus on finding big meaning in life’s small moments, felt appropriate for a visit to Oxford, home to Faulkner, who said his artistic vision arrived when he discovered “that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about.”
[Read Chris Turner-Neal's review of Beth Ann Fennelly's The Irish Goodbye: Micro Memoirs, here.]
We stayed at The Oliver Hotel, a boutique hotel that opened in 2023. Located at the busy corner of University Avenue and South Lamar Boulevard, it sits at Oxford’s figurative middle. From our third-floor patio, above South Lamar, we faced The Velvet Ditch, a sports bar and restaurant that seemed perpetually packed with college students. To the left, we could see “Falkner House,” longtime home of Maud Butler Falkner (her son, William, added the “u” to the family name), while, to the right, was the line of bars and eateries and upscale shops that lead to the Lafayette County Courthouse, the Square’s center.
A little after 5 pm on the Thursday we checked in, Joy and I walked to Miscellanea Spirit House, a speakeasy-style establishment that opened last fall. Behind a lobby that fronts like an old-school clock shop, we had drinks in “The Study,” a dark barroom decorated with books and taxidermy mounts. Afterward, we walked over to the Powerhouse Community Arts Center to take in the Thacker Mountain Radio Hour live show.
Photo courtesy of Visit Oxford.
The Thacker Mountain Radio Hour live show at Powerhouse Community Arts Center.
On most Thursday evenings since 1997, the show has featured a writer reading from his or her work, as well as a guest musical performance, with everything recorded live and broadcast on the radio. Along the way, Oxford legend Jim Dees (coiner of “The Little Easy” moniker) became the host and Paul Tate and the Yalobushwhackers came on as house band. As a public radio devotee and longtime Thacker Mountain listener, I need to emphasize that nothing else like it ever happens on American airwaves.
The show started at 6 pm. Arriving a few minutes early, Joy and I joined a welcoming and lively crowd making its way toward chairs in front of the stage. That night’s show featured Tommy Womack, a Nashville-based singer-songwriter, and Peggy Sue Hemphill, a Mississippi Delta-born blues singer known as “Lady Trucker” (a nod to the profession she recently retired from), and novelist Jonathan Miles, a former Oxford resident, reading from his latest, Eradication: A Fable. Thacker, at its best, is both sincere and irreverent and shot through with passion. The show that night hit all those notes, especially Hemphill’s performance, a foot-stomping set that included an earthy ode to full-sized men.
After Thacker wrapped, we walked over to City Grocery, the restaurant John Currence opened on the Square in an old livery stable in 1992. Famous for pairing white tablecloth elegance with downhome Southern fare, City Grocery has been written up in Southern Living, Bon Appetit, The New York Times, and other publications, and Currence won a James Beard Award in 2009. Iconic is the word. Joy and I had somehow never been, a lapse we looked forward to correcting.
It is hard to explain, but William Maxwell once wrote that a true gentleman's manners do not change depending on who he encounters. I think part of what makes Oxford special is that its open appreciation of arts and culture extends to aficionados and practitioners, novice and master, always with the same enthusiasm, like a true Southern gentleman.
We started with the black-eyed pea hummus. About the time I encountered trouble deciding on an entree—pork or duck?—Jon “JD” Davis, City Grocery’s chef de cuisine, stopped by to chat. When I asked him for guidance, rather than offering a recommendation, he began detailing each dish’s ingredients and the process of its creation. I am hardly a foodie but appreciate detail, and know enthusiasm, and the hand motions Davis made regarding the catfish sold me. While we waited for its preparation, he brought some bourbon and black pepper BBQ shrimp, the taste of which caused Joy and I to sit in silence for a moment, dumfounded with pleasure.
Joy ordered grilled salmon with Brussels sprouts, while my catfish was fried and served atop a coconut milk stew and rice. We could not decide which was better. By the time we got back to The Oliver, we agreed that the meal stands as one of the best of our lives.
The next morning, we ate at Big Bad Breakfast, another Currence creation. Named after the late local writer Larry Brown’s short story collection, Big Bad Love, the restaurant is a mile or so north of the Square on North Lamar Boulevard. After cleaning our plates, we returned to the Square, where I left Joy browsing to meet with Lucy Gaines, executive director of the Friends of Thacker Mountain Radio, Inc., at Heartbreak Coffee.
Gaines and I chatted about Thacker’s changes over the years, like moving from Off-Square Books (sort of an overflow Square Books space) to the roomier Powerhouse in 2022, and how the show’s list of performers is now established months prior to each season. In the early days, artists might land a spot by calling up and asking to be on. Nonetheless, nearly thirty years on, Thacker’s original appeal remains—it is this free and eclectic, live, weekly showcase of actual (and mostly Southern) artists engaged in creative pursuits. A sense of togetherness has always surrounded Thacker. From its guests, to the people involved in its production, to its many far-flung listeners, to its literal broadcasts (actually lowkey parties), the show amounts to a community gathered around the arts. Gaines said she might actually be most proud of that, especially in this age of digital isolation.
Photo courtesy of Visit Oxford
he End of All Music record store
Our conversation left me thinking about how Oxford itself has changed during the last quarter-century, too. Since 2000, the town’s population has risen more than one hundred percent, from about 11,500 to 27,000, and more condominiums are always hugging the Square—our walk to the Powerhouse the previous night had taken my wife and I near a construction site. Yet Oxford’s essential character seems to somehow have remained intact.
It is hard to explain, but William Maxwell once wrote that a true gentleman's manners do not change depending on who he encounters. I think part of what makes Oxford special is that its open appreciation of arts and culture extends to aficionados and practitioners, novice and master, always with the same enthusiasm, like a true Southern gentleman.
For lunch, I went back up North Lamar Boulevard and ate at Good Day Cafe, which opened in 2022. By the time I learned the most popular menu item was The Good Burger, I had already ordered the Reuben.
While waiting for my sandwich, I chatted with Joe Stinchcomb, one of Good Day Cafe’s owners. “Small but mighty,” he said of his shop, adding that he loved the location. Apartment construction a little further north would soon add seven hundred new addresses, Stinchcomb said, and the area around Midtown Shopping Center, right across from the café, might be considered a “mini-Square.” He had a point. The center includes Big Bad Breakfast, as well as Snackbar—yet another Currence establishment, and other businesses including Chicory Market, a locally-owned, locally-sourced grocery stirring up a sustainable foods movement (definitely worth a visit).
Good Day Cafe seemed quintessential Oxford, not just because it is located in an old gas station and wine bottles cover the walls, but because a lively mix of college students, workers on lunch breaks, and retirees packed the outdoor patio. After finishing my Reuben (recommended), I went back to The Oliver to rest a bit before heading to the Department of Archives and Special Collections at the University of Mississippi.
Oxford in fall is magic, especially on weekends when the Ole Miss football team plays at Vaught Hemingway Stadium and tailgaters cover the legendary ten-acre Grove. Still, for my money, spring is the season for a leisurely visit. The rain that had followed my wife and I into town on Thursday had departed by Friday afternoon. The weather was perfect, so I walked the mile or so down University Avenue onto campus, to the J.D. Williams Library, where the university houses its archive.
On the third floor, I talked with Greg Johnson, who, in addition to heading special collections, is lead curator for the university’s Blues Archive, a position he has held since 2002. If there is ever a “Seven Wonders of Oxford” list, the Blues Archive should be included. Founded in 1984—and kickstarted a few years prior when B.B. King donated his record collection to the university—the archive is perhaps the largest collection of blues-related material in the world. All told, there are more than 60,000 audio recordings and 20,000 photographs, as well as thousands of other historical documents, all related to blues history, all open to the public. There are wonders, like five original Robert Johnson 78s, as well as endless pieces of fascinating minutia, like, say, a ticket stub from a King concert in 1979.
Photo courtesy of Visit Oxford.
The circa-1872 Lafayette County Courthouse sits at the center of Oxford's iconic square.
When I asked Johnson, a musician himself, what item held the most interest for him, he deferred, saying he interacts with the material on a daily basis, so his answer is always changing. Then the archivist in him piped up, and he talked about the business papers of Trumpet Records, a short-lived Mississippi-based record company owned by a woman named Lillian McMurry in the 1950s. Its papers include the first recording contracts that blues musicians Elmore James and Sonny Boy Williamson II ever signed, something Johnson noted as an example of the Blues Archive's esteemed holdings.
That night, Joy and I had drinks at Nightbird, a speakeasy-style bar hidden within The Oliver Hotel, and a dinner at Saint Leo, a jam-packed, popular Italian restaurant beside the Square. Then Joy went back to the hotel, and I strolled over to Proud Larry’s, a restaurant/bar that has featured live music since 1993. I had bumped into novelist Michael Farris Smith, an old acquaintance, earlier that day, and been invited to see his band, Michael Farris Smith & the Smokes, open for Billy Allen + The Pollies. The tunes were so good, and I had such a good time, I stayed for both.
The next morning, we joined a line for breakfast at Bottletree Bakery, an Oxford institution that has made everything from scratch since 1995. Why would a grown man order a brown sugar pop tart? Because he was a bit wobbly from the night before and it looked amazing (and was). Joy also ordered us a cinnamon roll, a honey cheese Danish pastry, a Gruyere and pepper roll, and some monkey bread to snack on while we sat on a bench outside the Lafayette County Courthouse, watching the Square come alive on a Saturday morning.
Just before noon, I was given a driving tour of Oxford. That excursion might have been my favorite part of the visit, as Terry Hawkins, my guide, offered the kind of commentary that only a seventy-five-year-old Oxford native who retired from the police department could.
[Read this next: "Mississippi History Along the Natchez Trace—The past presses in"]
We went by Rowan Oak, Faulkner’s old home, where signatures on the guestbook, Hawkins noted, are a global affair. We wandered through the university, which Hawkins mentioned has produced twenty-seven Rhodes Scholars, and we stopped near the spot in the Grove where the Manning family, of Ole Miss gridiron fame, tailgate (a spot chosen, Hawkins said, for its proximity to “good bathrooms”). We went down many beautiful, tree-lined streets. Along the way, Hawkins interspersed his historical narrative with personal memories, like one from his childhood, when he and his mother passed Faulkner at the Post Office. Hawkins said he was dressed a little like a dandy, smelled of tobacco and bourbon, and doffed his hat in perfect motion at the sight of a woman.
The most stirring part of the stories Hawkins told involved the ways Oxford and the university are embracing their complicated African American history. On campus, he told the story of James Meredith, the Black man whose 1962 enrollment in the then-all-white institution led to a campus-wide riot that left two people dead. In 2006, the university placed a statue of Meredith between The Lyceum and library, a monument to the man who broke the school’s racial barrier.
We stopped at the Lafayette County Courthouse, beside a historical marker that describes seven lynchings of African Americans that occurred in the county between 1885 and 1935. “That’s not justice,” Hawkins said of the marker, but explained that it’s a needed step toward unveiling the truth of the region’s history.
Photo courtesy of Visit Oxford.
Bottletree Bakery, an Oxford institution.
While parked on the Square, Hawkins marveled at all the nearby watering holes, restaurants, and shops. He described how the place used to just be where a fellow went to get some groceries, fill a prescription, and visit the hardware store. There was a fondness in his voice, and when he pointed to the J.E. Neilson Co. Department Store, which opened in 1839 and is known as the “oldest store in the South,” pride emanated from him.
I should say that this was hardly my first time in Oxford, as I am a University of Mississippi grad. But that was twenty years ago, which means I am obligated to remark on how much has changed. But so much remains, alongside so much that is new; Oxford will always be a special place to visit.
Having previously lived in Oxford for a bit also means that when time came to leave, I knew where to go—back up North Lamar Boulevard to Handy Andy Grocery. It has been open since at least the 1970s. I had a hamburger. Joy had a barbecue sandwich. We split a basket of tater tots. We were then prepared to depart.
The question all the way home was: When can we go back?
