Deep in the Mississippi Delta, I found sad towns and empty fields waiting to be planted with cotton. The Tallahatchie River, so famed in a great song by Bobby Gentry, was brown and swollen with recent rains. Fire Ants infested the red earth, and Kudzu vines climbed trees and blanketed old shacks.

I loved exploring this place, and it was this photograph that captured the old South better for me than any. It is an old general store, closed for years, just down the highway from a bridge over the Tallahatchie and within the hamlet of the same name. The weathered wood looks tired, but the lovely and aromatic Wisteria vines climbing and blooming over the structure lend a romantic feeling of a place and time so different.

LIMITED EDITION: This photographic print is part of a limited edition produced by photographer Lee Rentz. The edition consists of 250 prints, which includes all sizes and methods of printing.