New Albany and Ripley: Where the story begins.

In New Albany, after you find a marker at Faulkner’s birthplace, take some time to explore the Faulkner Gardens at the Union County Heritage Museum, the county’s official repository of history and lore. The museum’s showpiece exhibit is an interpretive timeline that takes visitors from fossils to Faulkner to the beginnings of the area’s burgeoning furniture industry. As an affiliate of the Mississippi Museum of Art, the museum is also able to offer a year-round calendar of acclaimed arts exhibits.

You’ve got another treat waiting in Downtown New Albany, a National Historic District chockablock with quaint shops, galleries and cafes. The beautiful outdoors that captivated Paul Rainey are yours to enjoy in several spots around New Albany, along the Tallahatchie Trails and the Park Along the River. You don’t have to be a millionaire or be friends with a millionaire to enjoy Hell Creek Wildlife Management Area—it’s open to all. No foxhounds, but there are beagle and bird dog field trials, as well as hunting, fishing and hiking—servants and champagne glasses optional!

From New Albany, you’re nearing the end of the trail where the Faulkner story first begins, in Ripley.

When you’re planning a trip to Ripley, it’s a great idea to go the weekend before the first Monday of the month, so you can get in on the action at First Monday Trade Days. By the time Faulkner was born in 1897, First Monday was already an established tradition; it is the oldest continuous flea market in the United States. In the days when Faulkner was a boy, farmers drove in on mule-drawn wagons for what was essentially a large swap meet—a tool for a goat, a shotgun for a treadle sewing machine (the height of fine technology in those days). Today, the items have changed, of course, but for those so inclined, the thrill of this hunt can be almost as exciting as Mr. Rainey’s sporting adventures.

A small town—yes, a hamlet—Ripley is big on hospitality and charm and generosity. Blue Mountain College was founded five miles south of here just after the Civil War for the purpose of educating women; at the time, it was a fairly revolutionary thought, especially coming from an ex-Confederate Brigadier General, Mark Perrin Lowrey.

At the Tippah County Historical Museum, you’ll find out more about M. P. Lowrey and other leading figures in Ripley history, like William Faulkner’s great-grandfather, Colonel William C. Falkner. Planter, lawyer, railroad builder, successful politician, and, not insignificantly, a best-selling writer, the Colonel’s legend played a pivotal role in the formation of young Billy Falkner’s imagination.   The Colonel’s novel, The White Rose of Memphis, scandalized the public when it was published in 1881 and helped finance the Colonel’s other great creation, the Ripley Railroad.

The Colonel had been dead eight years when Billy was born; on the night he was elected to the state legislature he was shot down by his former business partner, right on the street in downtown Ripley. The crime went unpunished; the partner was acquitted.

Today, you can walk down the same street where the shooting occurred, and you can see where the Colonel’s original railroad tracks ran. You can also see where his body was laid to rest, although even in death, the man refuses to lie down. Instead, his statue, 8 feet tall, sitting on a 14-foot base, looms large over the cemetery, just as his legend surely hovered over the mind of his great grandson.

To understand the world, Faulkner once said, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.

Indeed there is no other place like it, and if it was going to take Faulkner more than a lifetime to explore this “little postage stamp of soil”—well, then, you’d better get started!