Abandoned House on MS 27, Vicksburg, Mississippi

In early 2021, a friend told me about his grandmother's country store on MS Highway 27 somewhere northwest of Utica. I did not find it initially, but came across another abandoned house with an address of 6494. It was accessible because the power company had trimmed the trees and brush under the power lines. 

There is nothing too special about this house; it is an example of a modest domicile of the type built in large numbers in the early 20th century. It still had siding of asphalt shingles, similar to roof shingles. This was common on mid-income housing, and I recall seeing many triple-decker apartments in Medford and Chelsea, Massachusetts, with this type of shingle exterior.

The first photograph is from Kodak Panatomic-X film in a Hasselblad with 50mm ƒ/4 Distagon lens. The two lower photographs are 4×5"Tri-X negatives using a 90mm ƒ/6.8 Angulon lens.

Small towns in Mississippi: Utica (B&W film)

Gasoline station, White Oak Street, Utica (Kodak BW400CN film, Leica IIIC camera, Canon 50mm ƒ/1.4 lens)

Utica is a small town southwest of Jackson, Mississippi. Many people bypass it while driving on Highway 27 as they go from Vicksburg to Interstate 55 near Crystal Spring. Utica has fallen on hard times. My friends, who grew up there, told me that a clothing factory formerly sewed Izod sports clothing, but when the factory closed, the town's economy largely collapsed.

I passed through Utica a few weeks ago and stopped to take some pictures with a new (to me) 1960s 50mm ƒ/1.4 Canon lens.

Bible Barn, West Oak Drive, Utica

I am not sure what Bible Barn once sold, but it looked closed.

Main Street was once lined with turn of the (previous) century shops and commercial buildings. Some of these featured cast iron fronts that supported the weight of the upper facades and roofs while allowing large plate glass windows to display merchandise inside. Top grade construction over 100 years ago, in contrast to the crappy built-it-cheap structures that go up now.

Gas station, Hwy 27 and Ernie Martin Road, Utica

I came across another closed filling station at the corner of Highway MS 27 and Ernie Martin Road. Truck traffic regularly passes here, so I am surprised they were not profitable. A few miles west on Hwy 27, I photographed the Betigheimer Store many years ago. It has been gone for over 20 years.

Jack Road, Utica, Leica M2 camera (Leica M2 camera, 50mm f/2.0 Summicron-DR lens)

In 2018, I drove on Jack Road, which is really out of the way. I saw this interesting old house or possibly country store.

There may be more to explore in Utica. The old high school is still abandoned. I am not sure of the status of the unused Hinds County School.

The 2018 and 2019 photographs are from Kodak BW400CN film. This year, I was testing my new 1960s-vintage Canon 50mm ƒ/1.4 ltm (Leica Thread Mount) lens, and so far, it is fantastic. What beautiful, traditional craftsmanship.

The Betigheimer Store, Edwards, Mississippi

Country stores in Edwards, Mississippi. Map drawn with ESRI ArcMap software.

The Betigheimer country store on Betigheimer Road and MS 27.

The previous two blog entries dealt with Margaret's Grocery. These small rural stores are cultural elements of the southern scene that are rapidly disappearing. They are fascinating photographic subjects and I will show more examples in the future. The subject of this essay is the Betigheimer store, formerly located at the corner of Hwy. 27 and Betigheimer Road, near Utica, Mississippi. The first time I photographed it was in 1986, when it was being used as an antique store.

A coworker who grew up in Utica told me he used to shop there as a child. He remembered buying his first cookies there, two for a penny (I didn't ask what century this might have been). He was intrigued by the fact that Germans ran a country store in a rural African-American community. How did they end up in a place like Utica? At the time, it was a classic country store, selling hardware, seeds, food, tools, nails, and useful supplies. He could not remember when it ceased business as a general merchandise store. The Betigheimers lived in a large wood house just east of the store, but it was struck by lightning and burned down sometime in the 1980s. A modern house is on the lot now.

When I returned in 1997, the antique business had closed, but there was a lot of old-fashioned machinery (junk) strewn about the yard. Nice stuff, but not much was happening.

The store burned sometime around 2000. I rarely drove on Hwy. 27, and one day in the early 2000s, it struck me that the store was gone. Sad, another piece of our heritage gone.

1986 Tri-X photograph of the Betigheimer store taken with a 4×5" Tachihara camera and 180mm ƒ/5.6 Caltar IIN lens.

The first color photograph above is a Kodachrome 25 transparency taken with a Rollei 35S camera with f/2.8 Zeiss Sonnar lens. The next three are Kodachrome 25s taken with a Leica M3 rangefinder and 35 mm f/2.0 Summicron-RF lens (the famous 8-element version with the finder goggles). I scanned the transparencies as TIFF files with a Nikon Coolscan 4000 film scanner.

Update June 2020: the last photograph is a black and white Tri-X frame from a 4×5" camera.