THE TENT // Driving across Southern Mississippi in the final days before Fourth of July

In the final days before the Fourth of July, I drove through Central Mississippi photographing firework salesmen and their temporary tent homes. There had been a fabled decade of salesman lineage, undergraduates from Kansas State University who have followed suite year after year to earn the $3,000 flat rate of seasonal summer work.

For 3 straight weeks, salesmen live in their tents 24 hours a day, selling 16 hours a day. They sleep on cots and mats. Each tent has a port-a-potty. Tents on grass lots are plagued with fireant hills. It's humid and hot. There are no showers. Some tents keep a gun on hand.

By the final days the salesmen experience what is colloquially known as "tent madness."