tell me church, where are your citizens?

After we feasted at the local Rainbow co-op for free (courtesy of an incredibly supportive and friendly staff), the BFP headed out of town for the afternoon with Adam Hammack, a Morrisey-loving, yellowjacket-fearing, Monte-Carlo-driving, soda-pop-prescribing, enthusiastic musician from Jackson who took it upon himself to introduce us to a town called Rocky Springs. As we passed through the thick woods and interspersed corn fields of the Mississippi outskirts on the way to this abandoned town from the 19th century, the BFP was treated to Adam's first album: an electronica interpretive 40 minutes that takes synthesizers and recording technology to its limit through a self-admitted drug-induced musical trip. He mentioned something about peyote, if I recall, but concluded that the synthetic drugs (much like his music) were preferable in his mind. Adam's generosity of spirit and expertise on the area gave us a much better idea about the state. Notably, he told us that Mississippi leads the country in statistics for teen pregnancy, crime, and segregation, but was also careful to mention that it is also the #1 state for charitable contributions per capita--turns out, it truly is "the hospitality state."
(Adam and his lovely wife Jackie)
When we arrived at the abandoned town of Rocky Springs, whose remains include no more than a church, cemetary, and a few artifacts, Adam brought us to a historical recording that described what happened in the area through a Garrison Keillor-esque inquiry to the church itself asking questions of the building like, "tell me church on the hill, where are your citizens? Are they sleeping?" Seeing as how the church could not answer save for standing silently above the recording machine, we decided to go up and take a look around. I think the church would have probably responded with "I don't really care about where the citizens are or if they're sleeping, as long as I'm here to provide a sanctuary to all passersby."