The Tight Lies Tour plays Tupelo this week (May 13-19, 2002).
Tupelo's biggest claim to fame is that it's the birthplace of THE KING!,
and the Elvis Presley Festival
is just around the corner (two weeks off). Tupelo is in North Central Mississippi,
within the ambit of Memphis and the Delta Blues of Clarksdale. Faulkner's
Oxford and Ole Miss are close by, too, and Tupelo has its own Ole
Miss campus. And Tupelo is about Midway along the Natchez Trace from
Nashville south. This part of the continent was formerly Chickasaw country.
The Battle of Tupelo in the Civil War was an engagement of
14,000 Federal troops protecting Sherman's supply railroads in his March
to Atlanta against a Rebel force of 6,000. The Federals destroyed a number
of tactical assaults by the Rebels, but the weather was too hot and supplies
too short for any follow-up, so the Federals went back to Tennessee. Sort
of a bloody stalemate, but of course Sherman's March went on unimpeded.
TODAY'S FIREANTS FOOTBALL
Tupelo Native Dietrich Lockridge now wears the FireAnts colors!
