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#639 – Engulfed by Biloxi #9 – The Road to Ruin, Part III
THE DELTA PLAN – HOW DO YOU CHOOSE BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND ERICK LINDGREN?
While B.J. Nemeth was telling me how, as bad as Biloxi could be, it sure beat Tunica, I expressed the opposite view. Mississippi, I told him, was one of the few states I had never visited (he correctly picked the Dakotas as two of the others). In preparation, I had carefully researched my voyage, focusing on Mississippi’s claim to birthplace of the Delta Blues. The most holy of Blues shrines are in Clarksdale, from the Delta Blues Museum to the Riverside Hotel where Bessie Smith died after an auto accident (it used to be a hospital) to, most famous of all, the Crossroads.
The Crossroads is where, in the late 1920s, a young man named Robert Johnson was instructed to take his guitar at midnight. He was met by the devil, in the form of a giant black man, who tuned the guitar and handed it back to him in return for his soul. In exchange, the devil granted Johnson blues immortality.
Johnson died in 1938 when he was just 27 and his entire recorded output consisted of just 29 songs. But the devil was good to his word. His songs are still being covered and guitar legends like Keith Richards and Eric Clapton revere him. (Clapton recorded two albums in tribute to Johnson’s influence.)
Even apart from Johnson’s music, his whole existence is other-worldly. Three marriage certificates in his name put his birth at three different dates. Only two photographs of him exist. Three locations claim to be the resting place of his remains.
But Clarksdale is in the northern part of the Mississippi, 360 miles from Biloxi (and only 40 miles from Tunica). Nevertheless – and B.J. Nemeth witnessed this – I swore that if I qualified for the Main Event and found someone with a fast car, I would immediately make the 720-mile round trip, stopping just long enough at a Church’s Chicken parking lot (one of several places that claims to be the actual crossroads) to offer my soul to the devil in exchange for a WPT title.
I sensed that B.J. thought that was drastic. “What’s my alternative?” I ask him. “See if I can find some rich guy to just hand over a sack of money?”
“Funny you should say that, Michael. I just saw Erick Lindgren walk into the bar. I heard he backs a lot of players.”
Hmmmmmmm. There have more been ridiculous schemes. “When did you see Erick go in?”
I was disappointed when B.J. told me Lindgren had just walked in. With my satellite starting in just a few minutes, I figured no way was E-Dog drunk enough to take a flier on me.
Not only that, but there was the matter of my expenses. Full Tilt was paying them. I’m not sure if they were paying them with the idea that I was a player first and a writer only when I ran out of chips, but I did know one thing: They were definitely NOT paying me to pester members of Team Full Tilt for money.
I ran upstairs to my date with destiny, or at least with Mr. 200.
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