Hush(puckena) Town, USA
This weekend, I went out exploring the beautiful, urban decay of the Mississippi Delta. Not sure of what I may find, I stumbled across Hushpuckena, Ms and when I say its a real life ghost town, I mean it.
Right off our modern highway, concealed in a thin layer of trees, lies Old Highway 61 and what used to be a tiny Delta town, now reclaimed by nature. Shocked by how a town like this was just up and left to rot away, I was also pleased to see that no matter what damage we cause, Mother Nature will eventually prevail and take back what belongs to her.
With its General Store still standing and doors wide open, I couldn’t help but want to explore its history. But first, I decided to do a little research of the place and what I found was a little disappointing, to say the least. Just four years back, another photographer happened upon this same town but what he experienced was far beyond that of my own. Due to nature steadily taking its tole and others finding this living piece of history, things had changed quite a bit. One of the main houses was still standing, whereas when I visited, the whole roof had caved in. The General Store had once held tons of old medical records and antique arm chairs in its lobby but I was a little too late to see this for myself. If it wasn’t for this fellow photographer who was interested in documenting the urban decay in our area, I wouldn’t have known how much things had changed over the years.
This taught me a very valuable lesson. Document.
Document everything that is going on around you. Document those near and dear to you. Document your hometown, no matter how irrelevant it may seem. Document life as you know it because eventually everything changes and others who follow will wonder what our lives were like “back then”. We owe it to ourselves to make our lives apart of history.
Don’t be afraid to tell your story.
