Avoid Greenville at all costs (Jackson, Laurel: movers, limo, dangerous)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 1.5 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
the whole city is dark and dank, and i don't just mean the lighting. better lights would only show the neglect at night, enough folks see it during the day as it is.
I don't think the city looks as awful as people are saying. There have always been abandoned houses coming up to the downtown are and I don't know why people are acting as if this is brand new. I really want to know what has happened to the 100 K that was supposed to be used to beautify the city? I think another aspect of the 'look' of Greenville lies in the fact that we only get 1 day a week for garbage pickup instead of the 2 that was standard in previous yrs.
I've had the experience of walking to stores at nite and yeah, we need some street lights. A lot of people on here have been complaining about crime and that's one way to curb it. It's a fact that crimes are more likely to occur in the absence of light.
i won't argue that fact about light helping to deter crime. but look how well it detered the break in at the pawn shop next door to the PD.
it's not just the abandoned houses, look at the houses/businesses along the highways that everyone passing thru the city sees. most all of them look like the last time they saw a fresh coat of paint was when it still contained lead. folks live in poverty and cannot afford to fix up many of these homes, but there is no excuse for the businesses. this town suffers from a lack of pride, and that is it's biggest hurdle to overcome. i cannot be proud of my hometown in the shape it is in, and not matter what folks say a few people CANNOT make a difference here. it is going to take everyone working together to correct the problem. unfortunately the ones that need to change the most are the very ones that refuse to do so.
In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory,[2]extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[3] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.[4] The noun troll may refer to the provocative message itself, as in: "That was an excellent troll you posted".
i won't argue that fact about light helping to deter crime. but look how well it detered the break in at the pawn shop next door to the PD.
it's not just the abandoned houses, look at the houses/businesses along the highways that everyone passing thru the city sees. most all of them look like the last time they saw a fresh coat of paint was when it still contained lead. folks live in poverty and cannot afford to fix up many of these homes, but there is no excuse for the businesses. this town suffers from a lack of pride, and that is it's biggest hurdle to overcome. i cannot be proud of my hometown in the shape it is in, and not matter what folks say a few people CANNOT make a difference here. it is going to take everyone working together to correct the problem. unfortunately the ones that need to change the most are the very ones that refuse to do so.
I get what you're saying...especially after spending some time in Indianola and I noticed how nice the town looks when you first drive into it.
The mayor's holding a contest for suggestions in improving the city and I think I'm gonna forward him this thread so that he can see what he's really up against.
I get what you're saying...especially after spending some time in Indianola and I noticed how nice the town looks when you first drive into it.
The mayor's holding a contest for suggestions in improving the city and I think I'm gonna forward him this thread so that he can see what he's really up against.
Dear Mr Mayor,
Don't know who you are, but "Good on ya, Mr Mayor." Good on ya.
I was born and raised in Greenville. True when I got old enough I wanted to leave but now I want to come home. For me it's taking what I have learned from living other places and bringing them home to Greenville. I still have a few friends that still live there and I know they could have left. But when you live other places and think about home...then for me it's always been the Delta. There's going to be problems any where you live and maybe we can't fix them all but a lot of the problems are with ourselves as much as where we live. We have our ideas of our childhood homes and I'm no different. I remember the fire works on the levee for the 4th of July. I remember the smell of magnolias on Washington Ave. I remember the Christmas parades where the Greenville High School band marched in pride. I remember when I got my licenses from the State Trooper at the court house. I remember the drive in on Main Street where my brother and his friends hung out. Can't remember the name as it was a long time ago. I remember shopping at Hafter's with my mom and Nelm's and Blum's. I remember Joy drive in. I remember Frost Top where the burgers were the best. All these places are gone now but there's nothing I wouldn't do to go home again if I could. But my husband could never find a job there. Maybe if those of you who still remember the Greenville I just recalled you could get it back for just a few minutes yourselves. Every day I pray that God will send to me the means to get back home to Greenville. There's an unmistakable ache in my heart to live my last years there for however long they are. So if you have the opportunity to be in Greenville or better to live there then know there's one person in this world who envies you so much.....
Trisha, the city you remember isn't there anymore. It's just not there. I'm just glad I saw it before the hedges were cut down. We've stayed in Southampton, New York, Palm Beach proper, Greenwich Connecticut, Beverly Hills... and I have to say that the Greenville I remember had that same flavor...world class. BUT IT'S GONE.
Gamwyn Park? Wilzin Park? Washingon Avenue? Pale ghosts of what they were.... especially since the big ice storm a decade or so back. The beautiful trees are gone. And the new population has little appreciation for anything they can't eat or make noise with... so not many trees are being planted in Greenville, these days.
There was a beautiful Connecticut-style white brick townhouse on either Main or Washington...near where the old Negus family mansion had been, I think. Must have been built in the Twenties. I wanted that house so bad. Not that there was any economic reason to live in Greenville. But It was my dream to do so, like some people dream of California or Florida or NYC.
I counted money for a bootlegger when I was a kid. We rode in from the Hills, to pick up an Eldorado Biarritz for his wife. It was like driving from the Third World to America. The Delta was part of America, and Greenville was right up there with the top places in America.
I was so awed by Washington Avenue, and was told that the Cadillac Dealer's wife had made a PENTHOUSE on top of the dealership. Wow. Imagine being a little girl who lived in a shack without running water and looking up at the ceiling of this roomful of Cadillacs...and imagining a huge PENTHOUSE overhead.
Well, that penthouse was built at the expense of the Victorian mansions on the side street, behind the Dealer's. One by one, they were torn down, so that the Cadillac dealer's car lot could get bigger. I've seen the pictures. It was a private street, once, lined with miraculous mansions. But Greenvillians let them slip away.
And all over town, little by little, the housing stock changed. Long before crime sent people out to the edge of town, fashion, conformity, and cluelessness led people out to Bayou Road. And even though the town had organizations out the wazoo (Civitan Club, Triad Club, Jaycees...), none of those clubs did much. Some ladies' club saved one dinky old house, but let the grand mansions slip away.
I think of the moment in Baby Doll, when Archie Lee describes his belonging to every organization in the Delta... being led away in handcuffs, however, powerless, at the bidding of a Sicilian who had real power. I think of the impotence of all those pointless organizations, which did nothing, it seems, but absorb the time and resolve of the town's middle classes.
Anyway, the declining quality of the housing stock contributed to the exodus of the better young people. With the loss of every mansion, the city lost a bit of its mystique. It lost a neat place for someone with moxy to live. The exodus of the young created a vacuum. You-know-who moved in, and it was all over.
Another problem was the lack of a college. I know the Eisenbergs and the Percys were fearful (way back in the early 1900s) of 'teachers' colleges'. They might attract the wrong element (White Trash). So Delta State went to Cleveland. Bad mistake. Young people were forced to go out of town to school. Most went far away, and many never came back.
Plus, there was no way to stay in Greenville, work your way through college, and improve yourself. You could do that in Jackson or New Orleans, though. So 'non-traditional students' were forced to move elsewhere (or to sit in Greenville and stagnate). I followed that route upward, and know that temporary jobs lead to permanent jobs. So, a lot of Greenvillians who moved to Jackson to work their way through school never moved back.
A group of aristocratic white girls from the Delta took me under their collective wing, when I arrived at college, and I absorbed what they'd say, like a blotter. I heard about how depressing the job market was for teens in the Delta. The feelings of worthlessness that such a situation can create stay with a person. We're all still friends. And none will even consider moving back to the Delta (even though most own acreage there), because they all have bitter memories of being unable to get summer jobs.
Anyway, I'm saying the Greenville you knew is GONE. The people who made it special have moved away. The new people probably hate you. Imagine being an Identity Theft victim and living in Greenville. One of the first things you're supposed to do is to notify the police your identity has been stolen. Imagine trying to communicate with a police department which is both hostile and incompetent.
Someone told me about the robbery, maybe eight years back, of the Book Inn (one of the classiest bookstores on the Planet, BTW). I think I remember the key details: A customer chased the robbers...shootout en-route...a trail of blood led into a City Councilwoman's home... Police found a robber's body in the house... "I din' knows dat was dere!"
And Greenville has gotten much worse since then. I wish I could put you in a Time Machine, and take you back to the days when little Greenville Girls would call Strazzi's and the FrostTop, and impersonating Gerti Kirschner orThyrza McCollum, would have fictitious people with hilarious (and subtly obscene) names paged over the drive-in loudspeakers. I wish I could re-create for you, the days when Washington Avenue's shopping district was lined with Cherry Laurels. Wish I could revive Miller One, HafterBlum, Hafters, Joel & Bergman, Greenlee's, Nelms & Blum, Farnsworths....even Schlom's. Wish I could materialize the men's store with the black walls hung with Paul Klee paintings...and Miller One, with it's white inverted pyramid ceiling. Wish there were still a Tennenbaum's, so little girls in private schools could still sing "Oh Tennenbaum's, Oh, Tennenbaum's, how tacky are your dresses!" (Not really tacky, I'm sure, but it was the place for Grandes Dames to go for blue and violet tinted mink...maybe to go with their Bluepoint and Lilacpoint Siamese...or violet hair rinse...and as long as their granddaughters were sitting in German class, why not improvise on O Tannenbaum?).
Alas, it's all gone. They've torn down the bank whose beautiful arched colonnade was a copy of the Florentine building where illegitimate babies were dropped off, rather than being thrown into the Arno ( something like 'Ospedale degli Infanti'?), and replaced it with a neo-Roman caricature in plastic stucco over styrofoam. Weinberg Building is gone, too. The Scottish Rite building with the giant rusticated stone columns is gone. The library is now a place to go, if you want little boys of a certain variety to graphically and loudly describe vile acts they'd like to perform on your dying body.
I wish I could put you in a Baby Blue Lincoln Convertible, with 4 center-opening doors, and send you sailing along in the dappled light, beneath the overarching Oaks of Washington Avenue....listening to the Supremes. I know that for you Greenville Girls, it was "Motown or No-town"...
My children actually found hemselves behind thanks to the private schools of Greenville. I grew up in the delta and the way yo have your head i the sand is characteristic of the Delta mentality. In my opinion Greenville's hard times are ongoing and the city leadership is oblivious to the ultimate demise of yet another Delta town. Do yourself a favor and put a Mound Bayou sign up and acknowledge the inevitable. No one industry will come, not even chain restaurants (thanks Al Rankins). My family shook the dust from our feet and as for weeds I will gladly take them anywhere but Greenville. Maybe the Mississippi River will claim the Queen City and save the people of Mississippi the burden of another failed town. "Stay and fight to make it better" makes me further understand how blind some people can be to what is actually a cancer that is consuming all that are infected after moving there.
I'm pretty sure Meridian is known as the Queen City and Jackson is the King City of this state.
This is sort of off topic, but not really. I was watching an ep. of 'dead men talking' a couple of years ago and was surprised to see a crime from Greenville being featured. From what i remember, a nurse killed her husband and burned her house down. I know the house was on Camelia Dr.cause it's just a vacant lot now. Anybody else know more about the case that I'm referring to??
I'm pretty sure Meridian is known as the Queen City and Jackson is the King City of this state.
Actually, there used to be a sign, over the street at the entrance to the Business district, which read "Greenville, Queen City of the Delta".
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $53,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 1.5 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I don't think the city looks as awful as people are saying. There have always been abandoned houses coming up to the downtown are and I don't know why people are acting as if this is brand new. I really want to know what has happened to the 100 K that was supposed to be used to beautify the city? I think another aspect of the 'look' of Greenville lies in the fact that we only get 1 day a week for garbage pickup instead of the 2 that was standard in previous yrs.
