In The Dark - Coronavirus in the Delta E4: Watermelon Slim

Episode Date: May 21, 2020

In the middle of a pandemic, with so many people suffering alone, it seemed an appropriate time to hear from a Delta blues singer. Enter Watermelon Slim.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Are we down at Red Lounge? Kudos to you joining America. Clarksdale, Mississippi. Just tell me why y'all need to come on down to Clarksdale. To party, baby! Dozens of music venues. At Ground Zero, everybody likes to party. Live music every night.

You could go out every night, and your liver would hit you, and you'd go broke. Because there's so much, you know? A city centered around the blues. Specifically, tourism related to the blues. A place where every year, thousands of people come from all over the world to listen to live music and walk in the footsteps of Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson. And then in March,

the pandemic hit. And all of this stopped. The clubs closed. The tourists left. This is In the Dark, Coronavirus in the Delta. I'm Madeline Barron. I've spent the past two months, along with the rest of the In the Dark team, reporting on coronavirus in the Mississippi Delta, the poorest part of Mississippi and one of the poorest places in the entire country.

In this series, we're bringing you stories of people trying to live in this really hard time, trying to make decisions, trying to get by in a situation that none of us have faced before. In this episode, a story of just one man. A man who, in the middle of the pandemic, came to understand something. Not about the virus, but about himself. Episode 4, Watermelon Slim. A few years ago, I spent a few hours in Clarksdale, Mississippi, with our producer Natalie. We'd stop by the Bluesberry Cafe to get breakfast, and our waiter was this older white guy, kind of weathered-looking, messy hair, disheveled in an approachable kind of way. As best I can recall, he was wearing a dirty white apron and corduroy pants. He didn't sound like he was from the Delta. When he cleared our plates, he scraped off the extra grits with

his hand. He seemed like the kind of guy who knows he's a total character and just goes with it. After breakfast, we went to this really tiny rock and blues museum run by a guy from the Netherlands. It was crammed with all kinds of old records, Charlie Patton, Lead Belly, displayed in glass cases along the walls. Every inch of extra space was covered with layer upon layer of ephemera. There's even a little curtain you could pull back to see a sketch that John Lennon had made of people having sex. And in all of this, a face on a poster jumped out, the face of our waiter. And that's how I learned that our waiter was also a blues musician named Watermelon Slim. Ooh, ooh, ooh

Please hear my old anguished cry Night by Wilbur Downs, Lord There was something about this man that was hard to forget. I looked him up online and went down a rabbit hole. I learned that Watermelon Slim was born William Homans III in 1949, that he'd grown up in Massachusetts and North Carolina, that he'd been married and had been a soldier in Vietnam, and an anti-war activist who'd once chained himself to a Navy ship, and a farmer, and a grad student,

and an environmental activist, and a trucker, and a leftist blogger, and a self-styled expert on the Oklahoma City Bomb. And on top of all that, Watermelon Slim was also a guy who played the blues. He'd released a bunch of albums that are pretty popular, especially in Europe. Albums with names like Travelin' Man and Escape from the Chicken Coop. And he toured all the time, sometimes

more than 100 shows a year. Nice to meet you and welcome to Europe. Well, we always enjoy coming to Europe. You're nominated for a couple of blues awards. Oh, I'm nominated for four more at this point. So when the pandemic hit, I wondered how Watermelon Slim was doing. Hello? Hi, this is Madeline. I'm the reporter who's...

Oh, are you Madeline? Okay, I've been waiting for your call. Yeah, so I actually met you with a friend. We went and got some food in Clarksdale, and I think you were Madeline. Okay, I've been waiting for your call. Yeah, so I actually met you with a friend. We went and got some food in Clarksdale, and I think you were our waiter. And then later, we were at the museum there, and we saw your photo on a poster, and we're like, oh, I think our waiter was Watermelon Slim. Well, thanks for coming into our little joint. So yeah, what's it like in Clarksdale today? Well, it's a beautiful, sunny day. I've got a cloud in the sky. It's a lovely spring day.

I'm out here on my back porch. I'm looking at my garden grow. That's good. Are those wind chimes I'm hearing? Oh, you hear the chimes. Yeah. That's my wind chimes. And they're remarkably pleasant and calming, no matter what you're doing.

You hear the chimes, and it focuses you. Watermelon Slim told me that the other night, they'd had 70-mile-an-hour winds come through. Yeah. Well, we had a hell of a storm. I had a couple of pieces come off my fence. And in front of my house, my flagpole snapped clean in two. I found my American flag sitting on the ground the next morning. He told me he'd been keeping to himself, mostly staying home, trying to protect himself from getting the virus. he'd been keeping to himself, mostly staying home, trying to protect himself from getting the virus.

I've known from the beginning that I'm a high-risk candidate. A, I smoke. B, I'm almost 71 years old. I have no illusions that if I go out and I catch it, the chances are better than 50% that I'm going He told me he'd been doing some reading. And he was trying to get better at playing the drums. Watermelon Slim had a ton of time on his hands. Frankly, we both did. So we talked for a long time. I asked him how he got his name. Ah, a long, many times told tale.

He told me that the story of his name began in a watermelon field in Oklahoma in 1980. It was the third week of July, he said. He was a farmer then, and he was there tending his field. It was hot, he was eating a slice of watermelon. At the same time, he reached into his pocket with his other hand and pulled out his harmonica. And that's when the idea hit him. And I looked at the watermelon, and I looked at the harmonica, and suddenly, I called on the Damascus Road, ma'am. Bing, bada-bing, bada-boom, I had me a blues name.

It was, he said, a mighty revelation. It was, he said, a mighty revelation. Watermelon Slim told me that blues songs, at least the way he sees it, come down to three themes. Work, relationships, and death. Work, relationships, and death? Yeah, work, relationships, and death. Watermelon Slim told me that the pandemic had wormed its way into his songwriting. It's given me the basis for a monstrous new song that needs to be gotten out now while it is at its most relevant. So you've written a song like in the last week?

Ah, you bet your little bimpy I have. Any chance I can hear this song? I can play it for you. I've got it right here. I don't know how it would sound over the... Let's try it. One, two, three. Rona Vara, you're sneaking up my back stairs. Rona Vara, you're messing with all my friends up there.

Rona virus, you just can't turn out good. Seems like you infected my whole neighborhood. Rona virus, you can't get out of my door. Rona virus, you got the idea. Yeah, thank you so much. Tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety-tickety- in front of an audience. It's not so much the loss of money. Living in Clarksdale is cheap. And he said he's been able to get by on his $1,000 a month or so Social Security check without much trouble. It's the feeling of a live performance

that he misses. The closeness of the crowd. All those people pressed up close together. People are shaking hands all over the place. There are kisses exchanged. All this stuff. You can't kiss anybody anymore. And that's radical stuff. He'd done some online shows recently, streamed on Facebook.

But it wasn't the same. All the warmth and spirit of a live performance, the abandon, the noise, the vibrations from the speakers, all those things that make a person's heart beat just a little bit faster, had now been reduced to just a video you can watch on your phone. Like so many parts of our lives now, it felt small and pathetic and just boring. Oh, so you, like, performed to, like, an empty room?

Yeah, I performed on an empty stage. It's the first time I've ever done it. We kept talking in that way that we all talk now, each of us knowing that the other has nowhere to go, nothing else to do, knowing that all the normal ways that conversations used to end, hey, sorry, but I have to go to work, I have to run to quick errand,

can I call you back later, are gone. And so we just continued. Do you think it's possible that you've performed your last performance before a live audience? Man, that's a horrible question. It's possible. It wasn't just a question about performing. What we were talking about was this larger question.

How do you know whether something has come to an end? How do you know that something is gone forever? That things aren't going back to the way they used to be? When do we realize that something is over? That that was before and that we're now in after. As we talked, Watermelon Slim

told me he'd been thinking not just about blues music and the shows he's missed, but about his life. His entire life. Work, relationships, and death. I was without him in June after 30 years. I knew her for 48 years. She died last year in June.

Watermelon Slim told me that he considers himself widowed, even though he and his wife hadn't lived together in years. My wife and I were separated on New Year's Day 2002. There were trust issues, and my wife was a drug and alcohol abuser, and I never could completely pull her out of the self-destructive tendencies that she had. He'd found himself thinking more about his wife lately, about how much of his life he'd spent with this person is now gone. And that made him think of other absences too.

The loss of his brother, who killed himself a few years back, and how he didn't make it to his brother's memorial service because he had to be somewhere else. And one more loss, the loss of his beloved dog, his sidekick, a lab mix named Pino. That was the greatest dog I ever had, and he was just, he was only average smart intellectually for a dog, you know. At eight years old, we were working on rolling over. But he was an emotional genius.

I really felt like I was coming home when he was here. He was so special. Lately, cooped up in his house alone, Watermelon Slim said that he sometimes has moments where he forgets that Pino's gone. I'll be thinking and doing nothing in particular, sitting in my computer carrier, and some part of the house will creak,

and I'll look around thinking to see it. Standing out on his porch, Watermelon Slim told me the story of how Pino died. Watermelon Slim had been on tour in Europe about two years ago when it happened. A friend who was checking in on Pino waited until Watermelon Slim got back from tour to tell him. I came home and bang, Pino's gone. And I could bear death, death I've seen, death I've been close to. But this was murder.

Pino didn't just die, Watermelon Slim said. He'd been shot. He died from three bullets in him. Somebody came over my fence, shot my dog, and then went back over the fence. Shot and killed in Watermelon Slim's yard, maybe by someone who's trying to break into the house. They never did figure it out. While we were talking, Watermelon Slim left his porch and walked across his backyard.

I'm looking at his grave right now. I'm sitting, he just planted a box of petunias on the grave. But the gravestone is beautiful. I got this gravestone, and for $204, I got an absolute monstrous piece of art. He told me he'd sent a photo of Pino to a place that turns photos into gravestone etchings. That's the way they do it, by nature. of Pino to a place that turns photos into gravestone etchings. forever in my heart. But I will always, always, always take care of, take care of Pino's grave. This grave for Watermelon Slim

didn't seem to be just for Pino, not exactly. This grave in Watermelon Slim's backyard seems to stand in for all the others, the grave of his brother, his wife, his parents. I got nobody else's grave to take care of. My mother never had one. My father, she's in a huge cemetery in Cambridge called Mount Auburn Cemetery. And my brother, who committed suicide in 2015, I have no idea where he's buried. But there was something else that Watermelon Slim had been thinking about.

Something else that he wanted to tell me. One last thing. And it didn't have anything to do with dead people or dead dogs or graves of any kind. That's after the break. the news that I'm Not a Robot, a live-action short film from the New Yorker's Screening Room series, has been shortlisted for the Academy Awards. This thought-provoking film grapples with questions that we can all relate to about identity and technology and what it means to be human in an increasingly digital world. I encourage you to watch I'm Not a Robot, along with our full slate of documentary and narrative films, at newyorker.com slash video.

There's a time for being a man of action, and I've been thinking there must, at some point in time, come my time for reflection. In his solitude over these past few months, living in quarantine, with no audience to impress and nowhere to go. Watermelon Slim hadn't just been mourning his dead loved ones. He'd also been finding himself returning to a thought that he'd long had. I had girlfriends. I had two marriages. That's just what everybody did. A thought for how his life could be,

something he's known that he's wanted for many years. And toward the end of our conversation, he finally said it. At this point, I don't mind anybody knowing. As a matter of fact, I want anybody to know because the right person might end up hearing. I want a husband if I ever get married again. A husband. I want to take the chance to make a try at being a properly married gay man. Watermelon Slim told me that he had had a relationship with the man. It was such a long time ago. My only male lover that I ever really had. He and I, neither of us considered ourselves gay.

We were primarily comrades. He said they were more like friends, fellow activists, than partners. It was a sort of relationship that was more common back then. Together, but not really. If I had been growing up in this day and age, instead of in the 1950s and 60s in the South, if I'd have grown up today, I'd have just been gay and been done with it. But if I have to do it again, well, I'd like to meet a man that I really get along with and have a partner, not die alone. And now, now that Watermelon Slim actually had time, not just to think, but also to plan,

he finally had clarity. He finally knew what he wanted his life to look like. It may have taken him seven decades and a global pandemic to fully come to this realization, but Watermelon Slim doesn't see that as the worst thing. The way he sees it, there's still time. I'm almost 71 years old. to fully come to this realization. But Watermelon Slim doesn't see that as the worst thing. The way he sees it, there's still time. I'm almost 71 years old, but I've got plenty in the tank.

And I'd like to have a husband, but he'll have to find me. We talked for so long that Watermelon Slim's phone was about to die. So we said our goodbyes. God bless you. Thank you. Nice to talk to you. Bye. Until that day, when Watermelon Slim can finally live the life he wants, he'll be sitting on his porch in Clarksdale, practicing the drums, tending the grave, humming a tune, and waiting. In the Dark, Coronavirus in the Delta

is reported and produced by me, Madeline Barron, managing producer Samara Fremark, producer Natalie Jablonski, associate producer Raymond Tungakar, and reporter Parker Jesko. This series was edited by Catherine Winter. The editor-in-chief of APM Reports is Chris Worthington. This episode was mixed by Corey Schrappel.

Original music for this series by Gary Meister. To see photos that accompany our series, you can go to our website, inthedarkpodcast.org. Photography for this series by Ben Duff. Hi, this is David Remnick. I'm proud to share the news that three films from the New Yorker documentary series have been shortlisted for the Academy Awards. And they are Incident, Seat 31, Zoe Zephyr, and Eternal Father. Seat 31, Zoe Zephyr, and Eternal Father. And they all immerse you in the finest cinematic journalism,

exploring themes of justice, identity, and the bonds that shape us. These extraordinary films, which were created by established filmmakers, as well as emerging artists, will inform, challenge, and move you. I encourage you to watch them along with our full slate of documentary and narrative films at newyorker.com slash video.