THE Painted House

The temperature is in the upper 50s and there’s not a cloud in the sky.

I’m finishing a late lunch at Wendy’s in Jonesboro, having made a 80-some mile loop out into the flats of the Delta.

The bike seems to enjoy getting out of the garage and it feels great to get back into the saddle after a ridiculously cold and snowy (for here, anyway) winter.

There are signs at the Wendy’s cash registers saying you have to ask for tomatoes if you want them because the record cold in Florida has cut deeply into the quality and quantity of tomatoes on the market.

I had no particular destination in mind when I left home a little after noon. I took CR 762 east across U.S. 49 to the U.S. 49 Brookland business route, then turned south and quickly east to Dixie. By the time I had covered the 7 miles or so to Dixie, I decided I wanted to ride to Lepanto and look at the “painted house.”

Novelist John Grisham was born here in Jonesboro and spent his early years living out in the Delta. Although his first novels were courthouse crime stories, he returned to his roots with “A Painted

House.” It’s the story of a young boy living in poverty out in the Delta who longs to live in a painted house, a sign of affluence in a time and place where most houses went unpainted.

A Painted House was published in 2001 and was made into a movie in 2003. And the house used in the movie is at the south edge of Lepanto.

So here I am with the Painted House and the Lepanto water tower behind me.