well, having mentioned the sheriff's cars with "Free State of Jones" on them on the page here with images of my Bob Dylan Nashville weekend, and establishing my veracity being of such keen importance in the universe and all, plus finding myself less than twenty miles from the county seat of said Jones County Mis'sippi, and with camera in hand decided to seek out evidence, not proof mind you, just evidence that what i said was true.

now being a dinosaur myself, you know, long hair, long beard, sometimes barefoot in the summer-time -time -time and all too keenly aware, from tom's astute posts, of my precarious existence, i thought it best to proceed with some caution. i mean, being from mis'sippi born and raised ya know, i naturally had heard rumours that there were some folks claiming not to be citizens of this here united states. dinosaurs, i heard 'em called. but being as folks around here are so clannish i never could pin these rumours down.

well, i had more or less forgotten these rumours when i left home for the first time back in early '98. i was carrying a runaway girl and her friend back home to oklahoma, and went back home via arkansas. (went through texas and took another yungun home on the way; he was a bona fide rainbow person and that's another story.) anyway, this highway patrol officer pulls me over in arkansas and when he walked up i had my driver's license in my hand out the window there and he walks up and takes my dl and it's one of the old kind made from a sheet of plastic and he snaps it in half as he glares at me. and i said to myself, uh-oh, a dinosaur hunter. 'cause by '98 i was definitely a dinosaur and the way this guy was acting he was a dinosaur and the only things big enough to satisfy carnivorous dinosaurs is other dinosaurs. needless to say, i escaped his grasp, God is Great and more, 'cause a written warning was all i got besides the heebie-jeebies. but it reminded me of those rumours about Jones County.

actually i forgot 'em again until i headed up to Nashville last friday, when i got pulled over by a natchez trace ranger type who more or less told me as he was letting me go that he profiled me is why he pulled me over but decided not to really hassle me. so that was why i remembered jones county when i posted those pictures.

so anyway i put on some teal trousers (containing spandex, to stay sharp) and a brand new free 2do.com tee-shirt and a new black cap, thinking it might tone down my dinosaur image a little bit, since real dinosaurs the last thing in the world they want to do is stand out in a crowd (because of dinosaur hunters) and drove to ellisville, county seat of jones county, and found the courthouse right away but there weren't any sherrif's cars. as a matter of fact, there was no jones county sheriff's office listed in the ellisville section of the phone book. (see photo at bottom of page for partial explanation of these phenomena)

but rather than call the search off, i decided to drive on into much bigger laurel, which Steve Forbert called "a dirty stinkin' town" in his song Goin' Down to Laurel, and i did. stumbled on the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art and went in and saw a new exhibition of maybe twelve small Goya's (awesome stuff; an inspiration of James Ensor [Christ’s Entry into Brussels] i don't doubt; see Greil Marcus' comparison of that painting and Dylan's Desolation Row at http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/marcus_sp00.html) and a great exhibit i thought of Joan Miro and there were five small Picasso pieces maybe though only one i'd call fine and there was such a nice guard there he stayed with me almost the whole time i was there. and told me how to find the sheriff's office when i left.

he didn't lie either. took a couple of surreptitious pics and remembered i forgot to ask the museum guard about the rumour. so i took a deep breath and put my best non-dinosaur look on my face and walked in the courthouse which is conveniently right in front of the sheffif's office and the guy standing in the hall hemmed and hawed and gawked and finally allowed as he'd heard the story but couldn't remember it so i walked in the circuit clerk's office and there were like five or six ladies behind the counter and me and this lady who happens to appear to be of what some call the African-American persuasion steps to the counter and asks if she can help me and i explain i'm curious about the roots of that "free state of jones" on the sheriff's cars. she looks over toward the other ladies and back at me and says she doesn't know and i realize that maybe she's a slave and she's supposed to cover up the truth about these people who salute the battle flag of the confederacy instead of the stars and bars and she asks this other lady who when i go on about how i'm sure they get this all the time around there says that when the civil war ended and mis'sippi rejoined the union that the people in jones county didn't agree with it and technically jones county is not part of the state or the country. i was feeling pretty lucky so i asked if there was a referendum on the issue or what, and nobody seemed to know that or what i was doing there so i left. got clean away in fact.

don't know what they do about taxes and such, but i can vouch for the fact that there are no customs stops or duty declarations or passport checks. so feel free, ya know, to come on down . . .

oh yeah, while i was in ellisville i took this shot right across the street from the courthouse; no sign of any firemen(???); pretty slow day in general for like 10:30 in the morning i was thinkin'...also thought it was pretty clever to put a USofA flag in front of city hall like that...