Street Talk
Can Do Attitude Makes Our Town Different
Doddsville, Mississippi is a very small town in the Delta. It is on Hwy 49W at the intersection of Sunflower County Road 442. There’s a water tower and a few houses with right at 100 people living there, down from almost 300 folks in 1970.
David Ruffin is the mayor. He’s an able bodied retired military guy. He’s trying to do a few things to help the folks that are still living there. I asked him if he had any old commercial buildings, many of these small towns still do and most sit there abandoned. He said no, there had been some but they were torn down. He’d like to do something with the land they sat on, as it is the crossroads of the two main streets in town, but the people who own the land don’t live there anymore and some of the property is tied up in a succession.
It seems the property owners don’t care. The mayor seemed frustrated about the situation, which is too bad, because some spark of life back in Doddsville would be a good thing.
Ashland, Mississippi is bigger than Doddsville by 450 people. And it is the county seat of Benton County, up on the Tennessee line. It is a very rural place, just shy of 9,000 people live in the county, down from a peak if 11,000 in 1880. It’s a place where not much has changed. And not much has happened, either.
There’s a nice old courthouse in Ashland and a square surrounding it. Most of the buildings on the square are newer and metal and one story. It’s one of those rural counties that never had a boom, those rural booms brought on by timber or cash crops or railroading. Benton County and Ashland never really had that moment of economic glory. And the local politics seem a bit weird also, two brothers ran against each other for the mayor’s position. It was close; one beat the other by 17 votes.
Why am I writing about these small places? What bearing does it have on Water Valley? Because sometimes Water Valley gets lumped into the category of places that small. – the under 5,000 population. It’s a big group, some 250 communities in Mississippi are in the under 5k category. Many are very small. Places you leave young and never come back. Places if you’re passing through, you can’t imagine yourself ever living there. Places where the population is leaving or dying off. Most of those 250 towns are like that and it does not seem very sustainable.
What can be done? Doddsville is trying, but it seems a very tough situation.
Ashland isn’t trying, or to be fair, very few folks there are. The Valley seems to have got that downward spiral situation beat slowly. Just about everyone here gives it a solid effort and cares. We’re not a place where young folks leave forever or others cannot imagine it as a place to move to. I’ll refer you to page 3 in last week’s paper. The article about the combination of an old house, a young family that moved here, and vibrant downtown. That’s our lucky combination. That’s where we have it over places like Doddsville and Ashland.
