Driving to Brazil

Photographer John Allison came upon a downright hospitable message on the road to Brazil during a recent photo shoot in the Delta

By Michael Harrelson, editor, HottyToddy.com

michael.harrelson@hottytoddy.com

Like the old West, Mississippi has its ghost towns, hidden away along state roads that follow rusting railroad tracks that seem to be going nowhere.

They are the places that time forgot, locales given over to the elements of nature again, standing silent and all the more mysterious for their emptiness.

One of these is Brazil, Mississippi, home to an old cotton gin, a church, a post office, all shuttered now and in a state of abandon.

To get there, photographer John Allison took Highway 35 to Route 32 and then followed 321, along the railroad track to Brazil.

As he remembers the scene he captured in late 2012, “I was driving to Brazil, Mississippi, and this was just on the outskirts of Brazil. The Delta landscape “looked so barren, and all of a sudden, there was a message for people. As if it was written just for you.”

The abandoned town lies between the communities of Cowart and Webb.

Tagged Brazil, cotton, cotton gin, john allison, Photographer John Allison