Small-Towns Facts

Morgan Freeman and his lawyer friend were in Clarksdale, Mississippi, a town nicknamed Ground Zero for the blues, when two backpackers asked where they could hear some. Freeman says neither of them could name a single club. So in 2001 they opened one themselves in an abandoned cotton warehouse and named it Ground Zero. Live blues still plays there four nights a week.

In 1982 Vietnam veteran John Devitt went to the dedication of the Wall in Washington and wanted people who could never make the trip to feel what he felt. With other veterans he built a half-size copy carrying the same names and first set it up in Tyler, Texas in 1984. Two copies of The Moving Wall still travel the country, about a week in each town, from April to November.