Where the Sun Shines at Midnight : State of Mississippi Abounds With Offbeat Place Names

The population may be small but the name of this town looms large in the minds of postmark collectors.

In fact, postmaster Mary Robertson said, she receives several requests each week for the Midnight postmark.

To prove her point, she whips out a recent request from Ellender Stoner of West Los Angeles and rattles off the names of several businesses that have adopted the popular Midnight name.

There’s the Midnight Cemetery, Midnight Snack Bar, Midnight Laundry and Midnight Church. There used to be a Midnight School, but it no longer exists, added Robertson, 61, whose mother was postmaster from 1950-70; her father from 1917 to 1950.

Midnight Church is nondenominational, the postmaster added: “Whatever preacher comes to town on Sunday, from whatever faith, is welcome to use the church.”

She said almost everyone who wanders into town hears the popular saying: “Do you realize that on a clear day the sun shines at Midnight in Mississippi?”

The town got its name as a result of a poker game between local cotton growers, she noted. It was the turn of the century and the stakes were high. One player went broke, wagered his farm and lost that, too.

“The winner looked at his watch,” recounted Robertson. “It was midnight. The story goes that the victorious farmer announced: ‘That’s what I’m going to call my new place--Midnight.’ ”

The town grew around the Midnight farm and adopted its name. Today, 200 people live here.

Midnight is not alone. Mississippi is rife with quaint names. Several counties in the state have Indian names, tongue-twisters, like: Issaquena, Itawamba, Neshoba, Noxubee, Oktibbeha, Pontoloc, Tallahatchie, Tippah, Tishomingo and Yalobusha.

At D’Lo, population 482, Gary Hudspeth, 43, owner of the D’Lo Restaurant and Truck Stop, explained the derivation of the town’s name:

“D’Lo is in a gully. And everyone has always called the area that damn low spot in the road. When a post office was located here in the 1930s, townspeople wanted it to be called That Damn Low Spot in the Road.

“But the government said it could not use profanity in the name of a post office,” he said. “So, it was decided to use the community’s nickname, D’Lo.”

Paul Holifield, 44, mayor of Soso, Miss., population 525, told how his town got its name.

“Before the turn of the century an old man was the only resident living along a trail that led through this part of the country. He would sit on his front porch and people going through on horseback or horse-drawn carriages would stop and visit him.

“They would always ask how the old fella was doing. His stock answer was ‘So so.’ When the first settlers moved into the area and time came to name the local post office and town, they decided to call it Soso after that old fella,” said Holifield, who calls himself the “so-so mayor of Soso.”

Like Mississippi counties, many small towns in the state have Indian names, such as Eastabuchie, Pelahatchie, Pascagoula, Shubuta, Shuqualak, Toccopola, Toomsuba and Tougaloo.

“Ever since country singer Ray Stevens popularized the song about the day the squirrel got loose in the first self-righteous church and went berserk in the sleepy little town of Pascagoula, people have been coming here,” said Pascagoula Police Lt. Wayne McCarthy.

“We do have a lot of squirrels,” he added, “and it seems like there’s a church on almost every corner in Pascagoula.”

Itta Bena, the Chickasaw term for home in the woods, is another town with a catchy Indian name. “You should hear how people mispronounce it,” laughed Itta Bena Assistant Police Chief William Lacy, 47. Locals call themselves Itty Beanys, he said.

Television programs like “Alice” and “Mama’s Family” have picked up on Yazoo City, which is named after a fierce warlike Indian tribe that mysteriously vanished in the 1600s. Some theorize that Yazoo derives from the flute-like sound of wind passing through scalps which were kept on poles in Yazoo Indian villages.

Rich Davis of Rolling Hills, Calif., wrote city officials to say that he and his YMCA Indian Guides were so taken with the name Yazoo they adopted it for their troop.

Likewise, Kenneth Bediako Poku Fofie of Esaase Nia Dunkwa On-Offin in Ghana, West Africa, wrote to say he’d named his farm after Yazoo.

Coming from such a town can really get a conversation rolling, said Katy Clower, 17, Yazoo City High School junior and daughter of Grand Ole Opry humorist Jerry Clower. Upon learning where she’s from, people invariably ask: “Is there really such a place or did you make that up?”