Monday, March 3, 2014 – Malevolent Anime Gods

Rising, I head for the bathroom. I collapse onto the toilet seat breaking it. In horror, the boys name me the toilet terrorist. Fearing the seat destruction may have attracted undesirable supernatural attention, we speedily depart before Thor hurls a thunderbolt our way.

Today all three boys gang up on me, informing me that we will visit an airplane museum.  Anticipating my fate, I carry plenty of reading material. I finished the Laura plantation book yesterday. As we depart Louisiana, I plan to pick up Kit Carson again, mentally preparing for our reabsorption into the West.

Pearl cruises over to the Global Power Museum. She can’t breach the security fence and gate barricades, much less the anti-tank concrete and orange construction fencing.  Yes, Pearl could take out the orange construction fencing, but we would probably be shot by the US military. I’m not particularly interested in suicide by cop, and Pearl likes the way she looks now, sans bullet holes. Nervously, as if reading our thoughts, she interjects, “I’m not ready to die yet guys! I’m in the prime of my youth.” My personal suicidality mimics Anna Karenina, the romantic heroine who throws herself in front of an oncoming train. No self-respecting Tolstoy character would attack a fortified US military base. Boring!

All musing aside, and already impressed by the size of our country’s global power, we look for another entrance to the museum. We find the visitor center a few miles away. Personnel there inform us we must return to the heavily guarded gate, park Pearl, walk up to the gate and be granted admission. Following military directions exactly, we return to gate number one. A young soldier takes our drivers’ licenses and studies them intently.

We face a temporary construction gate with no cutaways in the curbs. Sven can’t climb the regular curbs and enter. The young soldier, ever helpful, volunteers to find his superior who would allow taking down some fencing, permitting my entry. Altruistically, I don’t want to make the guy work that hard. The cold handily abets my altruism. With the wind and the humidity, I’m chilled to the bone. More gratefully than I wish to admit, I return to Pearl’s relative warmth, settling in for a well-deserved read.  “Ah, Beaver,” mutters Pearl, “you’re back. Let’s nod.”  We bask in the heat and doze.

The boys spend about an hour looking at airplanes outdoors in the wet cold, proving their masculinity, I suppose. I think we keep nukes here at this base, but the boys don’t see any.  On second thought, they think they may have seen a nuke under a B-52.  Obviously, you can find anything you ever could need at the Eighth Air Force Museum.

Back safe and warm in Pearl, the boys and I debate the merits of Dallas versus Shreveport. The rural poverty in our country saddens and amazes me. I so live in the Denver bubble. We have no solutions to offer the victims of northern Louisiana’s dire economic straits, except moving. The poverty steals our souls, burrows into our guts, and profoundly depresses us. After a brief huddle, we decide to head west.  Naturally, by this time, we’ve missed the check-out deadline at our substandard hotel, and have purchased another night’s stay. Keith agrees to be part of our westward scheme only if our Dallas Airbnb host will take us tonight and tomorrow. Barkley calls and finds the efficiency apartment available. Yeah!

Further conferring, we decide to visit one last museum in Louisiana before striking out for Dallas. Barkley leaves tomorrow and must see the George W. Bush Presidential Center (located in Dallas), which occupies a prominent spot on his bucket list. We hear that Bush the Lesser has taken up painting dogs, on canvas, not on the animals. (Think about it. This is a logical question.) “All myths will be dispelled and I will truly know the man,” Barkley sardonically enthuses.  I can never tell when the boys are serious. Keith responds, “This will probably be like another sinkhole.”

Our path and destination determined, Pearl turns west once more, delivering us to the Louisiana State Exhibit Museum.  The wheel-shaped museum surrounds a courtyard containing a fountain. I suggest venturing outside to greet the fountain, in order to better appreciate its majesty. The boys opt to remain indoors, yet recovering from the awesomely cold Global Power Museum. The outdoor fountain beckons us spewing water in concentric patterns, defying our assertion that the mercury outdoors has dipped into the 20s. Huh, our blood must have thinned out again.

Safe inside the museum, we find an inner wall of displays and an outer wall of dioramas. We first explore the outer wall, moving from one scene to another. We see careful, thoughtful depictions exploring each of Louisiana’s industries, from cotton to corn, sugarcane, pigs, and chickens, all set on 1940s farms. We also see oil, salt and sulfur mines. Each diorama has models of appropriate machines along with human figurines, presented in sufficient detail that we learn something from nearly every scene.

Turning to the inner circle, travelling back around the wheel, we find an excellent signed-papers display. The museum has letters of Rochambeau and Lafayette from the country’s beginning, through letters of the Kennedys.  Aside from these luminaries, Andrew Jackson, Grant, Lee and numerous presidents’ signatures also grace the display.

Next to the signatures we find a fine collection of insects all pinned to the wall and quite dead.  Is there some hidden meaning in placing the insect display right next to the presidential signatures?  Keith views the bugs closely.  I squirm uncomfortably.   Pinned cockroaches give me the willies. Actually, all cockroaches flip me out; I can never believe that they’re really dead. I hurriedly turn away, worried that the bugs sneakily await, massing to march out and enter Pearl, ready to attack me while I sleep.

Completing the inner museum circle, we chat with a helpful guard who recommends lunch in Shreveport’s oldest restaurant. “Herby-K’s for real Louisiana food. That’s the place,” he says brightly.  By this moment in our journey, we find ourselves more than sorely tired of real Louisiana food, especially the mega-salt part, but the alternative is takeout Thai.

Pearl takes us over to Herby-K’s.  Spotting the 1950s neon sign, Keith parks across the street from the restaurant.  Sven and I gently descend onto a sidewalk only to find ourselves ensnared in a death trap. There’s no way off the sidewalk!  Swearing as he contemplates remaining on a Louisiana sidewalk for the remainder of our lives, Sven begins to pace back and forth, back and forth. Finally, he pulls his foot rests in high, as high as they go.  With great trepidation, we aim for the street.  But to no avail, we strand our main wheels, stuck on the high curb as the foot rests hit the street pavement. Straining their muscles, the boys push. With a metallic scraping groan from Sven, we land on the road. “If you guys keep this up,” snarls Sven, “there’s not going to be anything left of my feet!”

Entering the restaurant, Sven and I plow into nearly everything.  The small room holds three communal picnic tables, each of which Sven hits. The tables show no signs of damage from our impact, having withstood far worse in the past eighty years. Each table sports a roll of paper towels, centrally located, to be used as napkins. Herby-K’s has amassed a fine collection of neon bar lights, most bearing the name “Herby-K’s.” We order some fried food. I have shrimp. It’s okay. The fries are frozen, disgusting by nature. The decor and local appeal far exceed the actual quality of the food. But what the hey, we’re on an adventure, no?

Burping as our bodies attempt to absorb the grease load, we return to the lovely Super 8 to collect our belongings. We load Pearl and head for Dallas, three hours west.

As Pearl flies west, we watch the windowless trailers and bombed out buildings recede to the east.  A half hour’s drive deposits us in Texas once again. Crossing the state line, we already see a bit more wealth. People still live in trailers, but the trailers have windows and doors. Mentally, I take my hands and wipe down my arms.  Shaking out my hands, I leave the stain of hopeless poverty behind in Louisiana, hopefully not to be confronted or seen again.

Ah, Texas again. The first mileage marker reads 635. Wow, 600 miles across the top of Texas.  Can you imagine walking it, as the Anglo pioneers did?

Cruising by at 75 mph, we pass one sign ominously discouraging unnecessary travel. Before Thor chased us from the hotel earlier this morning, we heard the weather prophets name yet another winter storm. Glancing at the TV before we left, we saw rain forecast for our itinerary, albeit a cold rain. The Weather Channel cries wolf so often that we’ve long ceased to pay them any heed.

About halfway through our journey, we began to notice a plowed inch of snow on the berms. Crowded like all Texas highways, the I-20 traffic greatly exceeds the capacity of the small-four lane freeway. We slow as bridges become icy. Then we stop dead still for forty-five minutes. Bloodroot replaces Bear as driver. In an hour and a half we travel ten miles on the dry, bare road. We see skid marks and cars spun off of the road in myriad directions. I fear some stupendous cosmic being tossed vehicles toward the road, missing the mark often, much as a child would volley a handful of marbles toward a target. Most cars have been towed, leaving only tire ruts as silent reminders of their path through the roadside mud.

Stopping to buy gas at the sole open gas station, we stretch our legs.  Bloodroot, ever patient, wants to take a side road around the traffic mess. The clerk informs Bloodroot that all the roads are seriously iced and sternly admonishes him to stay on the freeway. Leaving the gas station, we merge back into highway traffic. We notice the big trucks begin to pull off onto the roadside, their drivers choosing to sleep out the weather.

Traffic halts again. We sit dead still for another thirty minutes. I become certain that the ice and snow on the road are not natural, but have really been thrown there by some malevolent god from an anime series.  We’ve already angered Thor. Could we be attracting the unwanted attention of various immortals? Noting that I have never read a single anime novel, much less a series, the boys ascribe my questions to the deranged rantings of a terminally syphilitic mind. They whisper nervously amongst themselves. I hear only the word “straightjacket.”

Slowly, as the semis exit the road, traffic begins to speed up, eventually reaching a colossal 40 mph.  We drive another twenty miles on a fairly icy road. Then the road clears and traffic resumes speed as if nothing had ever occurred, confirming my suspicions about the malevolent anime gods. We sail into Dallas on dry, clear pavement.

Our kind Airbnb host has waited for us and hands us the keys at a bit past 10 PM. We left Shreveport at four.  What a grueling journey! We close the door to our haven of rest and hear a deep throaty chuckle. The Bear sniffs the air. “Oh-oh,” he says. We look about discovering the absolute worst Airbnb we’ve ever rented. The efficiency apartment holds two hideous air mattress quasi-beds and a patio table with four chairs. Exploring, we find no TV, no microwave, no pots, no pans, no silverware, no dishes, nothing.

Wow, is this place massively overpriced! At least we’re not spun off the road in Texas. “Take that!,” I think at the evil following us, but not out loud since we’ve already had our share of bad luck today.

Making the best of the situation, the boys return to Pearl and wake her. She grumbles at them but opens her doors to allow them access to our cooking equipment. The boys tote our stuff upstairs. Keith creates a nice dinner under the most trying of circumstances.

We wash up after dinner and settle in for the most uncomfortable night of our journey. Air mattresses suck period and these have the added joy of attached air pumps that cycle on and off all night refilling the mattresses as they lose air.

We hope tomorrow brings a better day, a day where we attract no attention from angry deities!

Sunday, March 2, 2014 – Poverty Point State Park & National Historic Site

Today we plan to tour Poverty Point, the largest prehistoric mound area in the Americas, obviously an outdoor venue.  The day dawns sunny, temperatures heading to the high 70s.  Yeah! 

Inspired by good weather, we arise, opening the window.  We recoil as the grease-laden stench of fast food from our lovely neighboring Wendy’s once more bombards us.  Enough already!  Let’s get out of here.

Leaving Vicksburg, at long last Pearl points her nose to the west and begins to head home, albeit a few states away. Does Pearl’s pace quicken as she senses her proverbial barn? “Beaver!” snarls Pearl, “I don’t live in a barn. You know as well as I do that I have a nice modern garage analogous to your house. Don’t insult me!”

“My, are we touchy today,” I respond.

Bloodroot jumps in, “Stop this! Beaver, you don’t want Pearl to abandon us right here in Mississippi and Pearl you know better, Westward Ho!”

We stop fighting as Pearl begins the long journey home.

And, although she won’t admit it, her pace quickens.  I hush before I’m tossed out of the van.

As we travel west, we listen to the end of Huey Long’s audiobook biography.  In 1934, Long commanded vast popular support through his “Share our Wealth” plan.  Bemoaning capitalism’s failure, where 15% of the population owned 95% of the wealth (sound familiar?), Long proposed using taxation to limit all fortunes to $5 million dollars ($60 million today), distributing the excess to the poor.  Despite his reputation today, much of Long’s platform called for progressive reforms.  He supported education, vocational training, pensions for the elderly, shorter work weeks, month-long vacations, personal debt restructuring, veterans’ benefits and socialized healthcare.   Long’s popularity scared Roosevelt; many feel Long actually pushed Roosevelt further left.

Yet under Long’s smiling populist demeanor lay an obsessive, all-consuming quest for complete and absolute power. Using a senatorial filibuster, Long singlehandedly delayed the passage of the Social Security Act, legislation he hated because it wasn’t his bill.  Under his pitiless rule, Louisiana became his own personal fiefdom.  Using the Louisiana State Police as his private army, he intimidated opponents.  But he didn’t stop there; he destroyed their businesses and livelihoods.  Pretty scary.  We wonder, Would Long have become our Hitler had he not been assassinated?  Did only blind luck flying forth from an assassin’s pistol save this country?

An hour later, still sulking a bit, Pearl delivers us to Poverty Point National Monument.  A most excellent Ranger greets us and leads our tour.  An archaeologist, he carefully explains the science behind each theory and assumption about the peoples who once lived here.  We embark on a forty-five minute tram ride covering most of Poverty Point’s four hundred acres.

Poverty Point, named for a farm once located here, forms the largest mound group in the Americas.  Thirty-five hundred years ago, Mississippian Indians moved tons of dirt to create a concentric ring of six mounds, shaped like C’s, all facing east toward a large flat ceremonial space. Five paths cross each mound, the aisles allowing access to the center.  The five-foot high mounds have an outside diameter of three-fourths of a mile and inside diameter of three-eighths of a mile.  The Mississippians brought in more dirt to fill and level the ceremonial space.

People built dwellings on the mounds; archaeologists found middens (garbage dumps) behind the home sites.  Current science posits the people to be gatherer-hunters because no agricultural remains have been found in the middens.  However, little remains of the mounds and middens after thirty-five hundred years of erosion and one-hundred fifty years of cotton farming.  It stretches my credulity to believe that gathering-hunting could support this large site.

The Mississippians also created three high mounds across from their homes, the most spectacular being the 100-foot-high bird mound.  Too big to be plowed, the sculpted earth remained unnoticed until the invention of aerial photography.  The aerial photos revealed a bird with full outstretched wings poised to launch into flight.  Using archaeological research, scientists discovered the bird mound consumed 238,000 cubic meters of fill, constructed in about a month.

Altogether, archaeologists estimate the Mississippians moved 50 million cubic meters of soil. Presuming each cubic meter of dirt weighed 100 pounds, and people carried 50-pound loads in baskets on their backs, the construction would have required 100 million baskets of dirt, translating into an estimated five million labor hours.  Slack-jawed, I sit astounded, imagining a stupendous multigenerational effort.

Poverty Point was part of a huge trading network. The mounds and people sat up on a bluff, giving them the riches of the Mississippi Delta while avoiding the Mississippi’s flooding and her floodplain.

The tram ride terminates at the visitor center, where we find some of the thousands of artifacts recovered. We see arrowheads, atlatl weights, stone tools, soapstone bowls, beads and small carved owls.  And, I concede, no evidence of agriculture.

Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse park passport stamps. Bloodroot, highly excited, inquires about the stamp. Ae we’re in the South, the Ranger begins to tease him as to the location of our passports. “Are you sure you brought them?  Could you have left them in Vicksburg?  A thing not minded is easily misplaced.” Bloodroot runs to the car.  Searching desperately, throwing things about, after only a few minutes he uncovers the passports.  Triumphantly, he returns, presenting them to receive the coveted stamps.

Outside, we find picnic tables and the boys set up lunch.  A storm begins to blow in, changing the weather from sunny to scary.  Our new stove works amazingly well in the intense wind. The boys feed us a lunch of soup and hot dogs.

Leaving the park, Bloodroot remarks how much he loves the feeling of an impending storm. I recall feeling that way for years and years, now I just want to be inside watching the wind and the rain.  Aging changes us, eh?  Bloodroot and Pearl drive across northern Louisiana while the temperature drops 30°, arriving in Shreveport around dinnertime.

Locating our hotel, we enter. Tonight, the hotel has remembered to give us our handicapped room; however the hotel is also a Motel 8.  “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”  Surveying our tiny room, I realize that we need to step up a level, stop whining, and just cough up the cash for better motels.  To create room for Sven, he and I collaborate, ramming the beds about the tiny room. Bloodroot commandeers Sven and hits the walls a few times, prompting Sven to yell, “Cut it out!”  Unlike the bedroom, the delightfully spacious bathroom seems designed for cripples, replete with grab-bars surrounding the toilet.

After rearranging the room, we begin to think about dinner.  Barkley announces that he will treat us tonight. Researching with Urban Spoon, he finds a Thai place close to our motel, open on Sundays. 

Bounding into Pearl, dodging raindrops, we eagerly anticipate Thai food. Around a mile from the hotel, Pearl quickly zeroes in on the restaurant.  Oh no!   Restaurant closed! Urban Spoon lied!  The Internet has failed us.  “Is there any meaning to life?” the boys moan, wondering whether or not their misplaced faith requires them to commit seppuku (Japanese ritual suicide). 

Pearl rolls her eyes, dispelling the gloom of a potentially apocalyptic situation.  “Let’s go downtown, kids,” she offers.  Hope returns to the boys’ faces as we turn toward Shreveport proper. Recovering from the close call, they choose to live another day. Minutes later, garish lights assault us, desecrating the night sky.  “Casinos! Quick, turn again, Pearl!” Barkley commands.  “We must, at all cost, avoid the all-you-can-eat gambling-den feeding troughs.”

Safely downtown, escaping the casinos and their vile temptations, we seek our supper.  Pearl cruises past the sole open place. “That’s a piano bar, Beaver,” Bear says dismissively. We drive around for another twenty minutes. Except for the casinos, we find central Shreveport dark and deserted. The rain continues, picking up a bit of steam. Giving up, we return to the piano bar, park and walk in, for the moment simply glad to escape the weather.

Shaking off the wet, we peek about us.  No overplayed, horrid, ear-worming old chestnut songs assail our ears.  No piano.  No cigarette smoke attacks our nostrils or lungs.  Quickly shown a table, we order drinks.  Fortified by alcohol, we relax indoors away from nature’s fury.  We quiz our server who confirms our suspicions: “Outside of the casinos, we’re the only place open on a Sunday night.”

“Three cheers for stumbling through life AND through Shreveport, Louisiana,” enthuses Barkley, raising his glass to toast our success.

I order blackened snapper, delighted to find it actually quite tasty. The boys enjoy catfish and a shrimp dish. We luxuriate in the warmth as the cold and rain outside drench the city.  We slowly finish our meals.  The boys delay our encounter with reality by ordering dessert.  At long last, we rise and depart.  Outside, the rain begins to blow sideways.  We scramble quickly back into Pearl.  Sven rolls in first, happy not to have shorted out.  “That was a close one, Beaver!” he admonishes us.  We return to our cheap hotel room, now gratefully accepting the refuge provided from the storm.

The boys turn on the TV. I forgot how much I hate television. Fortunately, I soon fell fast asleep, hoping for better weather tomorrow. 

Saturday, March 1, 2014 – Dystopia in Louisiana

Like a pair of vampire bats, the boys blink and cower under the covers, hiding as we open the curtains, revealing a glorious rain-washed morning. “Remarkably accurate description,” admits Barkley.

I plan to look at the map and weather on the Nook this morning, but Keith hid it somewhere.  He departs, venturing downstairs for breakfast, informing me that I’m not permitted internet access until I dress and brush my teeth.

Obediently, I stand to put on my clothes but keep failing as I fall back into the chair before I can pull up my pants. Keith returns, sated by hotel food-like substances.  He instructs me to use my PT arm extension exercises to stand upright. This involves pushing my top body upward following my arms, the momentum carrying me up to stand.  Complying, I look somewhat like a deranged dolphin trying to escape from Sea World.  Keith begins demonstrating his idea of the correct PT form.  He resembles a demented Japanese person repeatedly bowing, ever lower each time.

At long last, dressed and my teeth sparkly clean, the Nook returns.  I check the weather, map and email.  All in order!

Early morning drama overcome, we actually leave the hotel by 8:45AM. Barkley and Bloodroot plan to visit a Coca-Cola Museum that opens at 9AM in Vicksburg.  On the brief ride downtown, they excitedly discuss the museum’s potential contents. The museum looks pretty sucky to the parental units so we opt out.

Pearl takes us downtown, patiently circling until we find appropriate parking.  Barkley and Bloodroot hop out of Pearl’s doors, barely saying goodbye, determined to be the first people in the Biedenharn Museum when the doors open at 9AM.   The museum, whose doors open a good bit past 9AM, disappoints the boys.  “Sadly,” opines Barkley with a sigh, “we just walked through a couple of rooms filled with old racist advertising.”

In the 1890s, a druggist named Biedenharn began bottling Coca-Cola syrup with soda water to take out to the surrounding countryside, starting the proud tradition of independent Coca-Cola bottlers. Bloodroot & Barkley rate the 1920s Coke models’ butts. Having avoided the museum, I can’t intelligently explain who won the competition. The advertising portrays blacks as puffy-cheeked red-faced happy darkies, per Barkley “probably drawn by 17^th-century people with gonorrhea who’d never seen a black person.”  Huh?  This is Mississippi, a place where skin color comes in a rainbow assortment.  

Leaving the happy darkies behind, the boys wander next door to a used bookstore, finding it much more to their liking.  Stereotypical nerds, they buy numerous books, grateful that we brought a car.  Fortunately, they surmise, an airplane remains far beyond our collective means.   From the bookstore owners, they learn that the Mississippi Delta for millennia has been very, very poor. The owners report, “We’d sadly watch Teach for America New Yorkers arrive in the Delta.  Altruistically intent upon teaching America’s poor, the volunteers would look about and just go home, completely overwhelmed by the magnitude of the sprawling misery they saw.”

Bear and I have our own adventure while the boys meander through theirs.  We explore downtown Vicksburg, walking downhill, scarily downhill, eternally downhill to the river. All Bear has to do is let go of the chair and down to the river I would fly, smashing into the murals lining the river’s edge.  Having a good bit of life insurance, I’m worth far more dead than alive. Good thing he loves me! 

Vicksburg, a cute little Southern town, commissioned wonderful murals at the river’s edge illustrating life in Mississippi. Forming a wall in front of the river, the murals depict cotton crops, schools, blues players, the river and floods.  Lines mark the water’s height during the great flood of 1927, when the Mississippi rose 6’2” above her bed.  The river may periodically flood, but fortune placed the battlefield nearby, allowing Vicksburg to turn the tourist trade.

We walk back up hill to greet the ever patient Pearl, settling in with her to await the boys’ return.  Parked on a steep hill, Bear has curbed Pearl’s front wheels (turning the wheels and backing them into the curb, stopping any downward slide before it starts), as we learned to do so long ago in Akron and Pittsburgh.  Chafing, Pearl complains, “I’m quite capable of remaining on this hill.  I’m not a Model-T Ford, for goodness’ sakes.  You guys are forever overreacting.” 

Scanning our future plans, I note that Bloodroot has us visiting the Chennault Museum in Monroe, Louisiana, tomorrow, Sunday, when it’s closed. (Does Bloodroot do this because he loves me and wants to spare me yet another military museum?)  A quick conference ensues when the boys return.  Acknowledging temporal reality, we decide to drive to Monroe today to visit the Chennault Museum and tour Poverty Point (today’s original plan) tomorrow.

Off we go to Monroe, Louisiana.  Scanning the route for a picnic table, we hope to have lunch before sightseeing in museum #2, cleverly avoiding grumpiness and meltdowns.  But to no avail:  we see nary a picnic spot during the hour’s drive from Vicksburg to Monroe. 

Reaching Monroe, we exit I-20 downtown near the “Civic Center.”   Pearl cruises a few blocks into the city.  The bookstore folks were right about the desolation—Monroe is the saddest ghetto I’ve ever seen, and I’m from Cleveland. Tijuana’s bustling humanity suddenly looks prosperous.  I suggest stopping at the hospital, an edifice housing the last functioning sector of the American economy and perhaps people who won’t rob us.  “We could ask the valet for directions,” I offer brightly. My fellow animals ignore me.

The hospital holds Monroe’s only sign of life. The unremitting bleakness of the metropolis’ former downtown stretches for miles. I wonder, has a neutron bomb exploded here, eliminating all life but leaving the buildings?  After fifteen minutes of driving about, we pull into an open gas station that has no outside windows, the only operating business we’ve encountered. The Pakistani/Indian worker standing at the register behind steel bars and the only sheet of glass in the building (bulletproof) has no idea of the museum’s location. Nor does he have a working bathroom. Nor ice. Loud rap music erupts from cars. No one speaks to us, our skin being the wrong color. One elderly gentleman crosses the color line and gives us very confused directions of where he believes the museum might/could be.

We leave the gas station for more futile cruising, eventually parking at the central police station. The boys exit Pearl near a sign stating “subject to strict surveillance.”  No one answers the door. Have even the police have left town, abandoning their station?

The urban blight amazes me.  Is this what our country has become as the factories fled? No work, no jobs, no stores, completely segregated and with the poor solidly black.  Post-Reaganomics Cleveland sported large swaths of wretchedness yet still maintained downtown office and shopping areas. 

Leaving the empty police station, we follow signs to several downtown museums, all closed on a Saturday!  We pass the large green metal tents I’d spotted from the freeway.  Perhaps an urban revival attempt at a flea market?  No one in sight.  I’m reminded of a post-apocalyptic movie where the survivors peep out, look about, then scurry back into hiding.

Determined to exhaust all possibilities, Bear continues traveling about in circles. Disgustedly, Pearl notes, “There’s where we exited the freeway, AGAIN.”  “Ask the hospital valet,” I repeat, a bit more heatedly, this time. “What?  Why?” I receive the growly response vented by a very frustrated Bear. “OK, OK.” We approach the valet who gives us the correct directions out to the suburbs and the museum.

Backtracking on I-20, we exit by a suburban mall this time.  Still seeking ice and a restroom, we drive into a different gas station, this one solidly white. The station has two handicap ramps.  While no rap music assaults us, an ice machine blocks the east ramp.  As Pearl pulls over to the west ramp, a redneck in a huge smelly white truck drives around us, cutting us off to park and monopolizing the three handicap spaces, completely blocking the west ramp. Keith’s jaw flaps, left completely speechless by the incredible rudeness. Pearl eggs Keith on, “Let’s ram him, Bear!” Keith’s foot shifts to the gas pedal.  Fortunately, just in the nick of time, Bloodroot and Barkley hop out of Pearl to intervene, kindly asking the young man to move his truck, appealing to his sense of politeness.  He does, after apologizing to us.  Sven and I gratefully visit the bathroom while Keith buys ice.  The boys buy some gas-station garbage food.

Whew! What an adventure!  Back on the road, following the valet’s directions through the ritzy suburbs, we at long last pull into the Chennault Aviation and Military Museum parking lot.  They have a picnic table! We are saved, cannibalism avoided, although we may not be speaking to each other for a while.  Out comes the cooler and stove.  Bear brushes aside all offers of assistance, creating a simple meal of sausage, peppers, onions and pasta.  He worries, “We’re nearly out of good food.  We’ll have to find a grocery store soon.”  Point noted.  Monroe easily qualifies as a food desert, but we’ll be in Dallas soon enough.

Sated, we enter the museum.  Fortune smiles upon us, after having abandoned us for most of the day.  We meet yet another completely obsessed museum guide who teaches us lots:

Claire Chennault, a boisterous, forceful Louisiana boy, joined the military in the 1910s.  Learning to fly, he progressed up the military ranks, but constantly told his superiors what to do—not a good move. (Chennault supported pursuit flying while the Army invested in high altitude bombardment.)  By 1937, Chennault, deaf and tired of fighting with his superiors, resigned his commission in the U.S. Army Air Corps.

Around this time, Japan invaded China, easily defeating the Chinese military, and began genocide in Nanking.  Chiang and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek hired Chennault to develop the Chinese Air Force.  Initially planning a three-month stint in China, Channault remained there nine years, through the end of World War II.

Chennault created the Flying Tigers, an American volunteer group who fought the Japanese in China with covert US support.  Faced with the Japanese Air Force’s numerical superiority and greater maneuverability, he trained his pilots to attack the Japanese bombers from above in groups. In various sorties his Tigers graphically demonstrated that a fighter could take out a bomber, conclusively proving his point in the old argument with his Army superiors.

Many of the Tigers aided Chinese troops through an absurdly dangerous airlift, carrying food and supplies from Burma to China over a mountains range they called “the Hump.” Shifting weather and high winds over this offshoot of the Himalayas claimed many American lives. (Building runways by hand, while almost starving, claimed many Chinese lives.)

Roosevelt loved Chennault, making him a general. McArthur hated him, retiring him again as soon as Roosevelt died.

Even today, the Chinese revere Chennault, nationalists and mainlanders alike, despite his air force accompanying Chiang Kai-shek to exile in Taiwan.

The museum itself honors people from all parts of Louisiana who fought in wars from WWI to Iraq, complete with uniforms and transcribed tales of close calls and narrow escapes. The boys are in heaven reading personal war stories from around the world; I’m terminally bored. How long can you stare at a bunch of uniforms?  It’s mostly dead white men, but I am happy to see one Tuskegee airman and a smattering of women. 

We leave as the museum closes, returning to Vicksburg, eating nuts and cheese along the way. We learn that the state of Louisiana, pleading poverty, eliminated all roadside rest stops. What?  Eating at YuckDonald’s is good for the American economy, you know!  Is there ever a thought regarding the social and economic costs of bad food?  That we all pay for the resultant diabetes, obesity and heart disease?  Apparently not in Louisiana.

Barkley investigates poverty statistics for Monroe on the Internet. He finds it to be the same as Detroit, around one third living in poverty, unless you’re under eighteen, in which case poverty claims half the population. The city of Monroe is entirely black and the suburbs resolutely white. What an American city this is! Raised up from obscurity through one man’s innovation in military aircraft; brought down and destroyed by racism and white flight.

We return to our Vicksburg hotel.  Back in our room, we make salads for dinner. The boys eat leftovers. Fate teases us with the penultimate irony—our open hotel window overlooks the Wendy’s drive-through.  People yak, pull through, and order gross food.  When I think of fast food, I think of Soylent Green (Soylent Green, a 1973 dystopian science fiction movie, depicts the grossly overpopulated human race subsisting on one food substance, Soylent Green.  In the film’s denouement, Soylent Green turns out to be made from corpses.)  Looking down at Wendy’s I wonder, “Are they ordering Soylent Red, Green or Yellow?”

Ah well, enough navel gazing.  After 9PM, Wendy’s drive-through blessedly falls silent.  We cut the lights and turn in for the night.

Friday, February 28, 2014 – Vicksburg

Oh, a brand-new morning, albeit a cloudy one.  Out and about, Bloodroot drives following his iPhone directions. I point out several helpful “”Vicksburg Battlefield” signs.  The signs contradict the iPhone instructions.  “The iPhone knows all, Mom; the new generation, of which you are NOT a member, eschews signs.  We have mastered technology!” Bloodroot proclaims, a rather portentous pronouncement for this early in the morning.  I fall silent, easily defeated.  Sanctimoniously, intent upon the iPhone, Bloodroot drives up to the rear of the battlefield. We can’t enter. I only snigger a bit up my sleeve as Bear opines, “Boy, iPhones really suck.”

Irritated, Bloodroot speeds around to the side of the battlefield. Driving Pearl rapidly (50 mph), Bloodroot begins the Paul Distad tour of Vicksburg. (My OCD father would have toured Vicksburg at least 50 mph, if not 70 mph, all the while shouting, “Did you see it?  Huh?  Huh? Did you see it?”  I recall a mid-1970s flyby trip through Yellowstone at 60 mph.)  Finally, we find the Visitor Center, precisely where the signs would have led us half an hour ago, had we bothered to follow them.

Bloodroot parks Pearl.  “Stop laughing at me!” he grumbles.  Pearls winks at the three of us as we exit.  Entering the Visitor Center, we learn about the Civil War campaign for the West and the Vicksburg battle specifically. 

The battle of Vicksburg pits Confederate Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton against Union General Ulysses S. Grant. 

From the war’s start, both sides recognized the Mississippi River’s strategic importance.  Whoever controlled the Mississippi could move their troops and supplies along it.  The owner of the Mississippi would win the war.

In 1863, the Union plans to end the war by taking Vicksburg, cutting the South in half, beyond any hope of resupply.  Marching south from Illinois and north from the Gulf,  Grant handily defeats the Confederates at every turn, scattering the inland Mississippi General Johnston’s forces. 

Only Vicksburg stands between Grant and total victory in the western field of war. By this time, the Confederates claim a mere 250 miles of waterway, bounded by Vicksburg in the north and Port Hudson, LA to the south.  Vicksburg, built high on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi, uses her artillery batteries to defend the vital river.  From this vantage point, the Confederacy shells any and all Union traffic on the river. 

Having earlier disposed of various Confederate armies, Grant turns his attention to Vicksburg.  He attempts conquest by digging a canal to divert the Mississippi around the city’s artillery battery.  He fails.  But now, Grant needs resupply.  On an April night in 1863, the US Navy runs the Vicksburg blockade, losing only one transport ship to heavy Confederate fire.  Grant now has fresh men, food and materiel. 

Seizing the day, Grant orders two assaults on the fortress, uphill. Both fail.  Refusing to lose more troops by storming the city, in May 1863, Grant begins a formal siege. 

Aside from breaking the South’s back and leading directly to the end of the war, the Siege of Vicksburg also marked the first time black Union soldiers defended something of vital importance. During the siege, General Grant had left behind around 1,500 troops, almost entirely black, to guard his rear at a place in Louisiana called Milliken’s Bend. These troops had no back-up or reinforcements, and many received substandard guns and equipment, but the siege suddenly depended on them in early June, 1863, when a Confederate force tried to smuggle food supplies past them. Although their rifles sometimes broke after a few shots, and although some troops, totally untrained, had only received firearms the day before, the black troops at Milliken’s Bend held the line—mostly with bayonets and earthen works, as it was all the Union had given them to work with. Their success at preventing the relief of Vicksburg convinced the (racist) leaders in the North that black troops could and would fight for their freedom; several more black regiments were created. Even the Confederate commander admitted that the troops at Milliken’s Bend had been “obstinate.”

In an eerie precedent to World War I, Grant’s troops build zigzag tunnels, slowly crawling to the fortress. At maximum, the tunnels creep to within ten feet of the fortress, primed to undermine the walls.

The Confederates hope against hope for another army (Johnston’s) to relieve and resupply them.  They pray for Johnston to surround Grant and lift his siege. In the Confederate dream world, Johnston would attack Grant from the rear while Pemberton charged from the front, turning the Union siege into deadly Confederate pincers.  Unfortunately for the South, Grant previously chased Johnston’s Army out of Jackson, Mississippi, dispersing Johnston’s men across the South. Johnston eventually regroups, but far past too late.

On July 4, 1863, forty-seven days after the siege began, Pemberton assesses his situation.  Viewing his exhausted food and medicine supplies, Pemberton surrenders. Vicksburg is the battle that ends the Confederacy, not Gettysburg.  The loss of Vicksburg opens the Mississippi to Northern shipping as Pemberton surrenders his army of 29,500 men, 60,000 small arms, 200 canon and tons of ammunition, all irreplaceable by the agricultural South.

120,000 people fought here, each side losing 10,000 troops.  Following Pemberton’s surrender, Grant takes the Confederate soldiers’ weapons and sends them home, most heading to states west of the Mississippi.

Leaving the Visitor Center, we return to Pearl, waking her up to begin touring the battlefield.  We begin with the Union side.  The tour takes us through many stops, showing us the back-and-forth of the siege.  The boys find this far more interesting than I do, but I am patient and have reading material. Our tour continues on the Confederate side, the boys jumping out of Pearl at every designated stop.

 As we drive about, we find ourselves following an ROTC group of college students.  We ask which college they attend. They reply in strongly accented black rural speech, “Northwestern” with some unintelligible word appended to it.  “Northwestern in Chicago?” we think, puzzled.  Listening more closely, we hear Northwestern State University (NSU), a college indeed located in Louisiana, near Shreveport.

At each stop, a different NSU student gives a report, augmented by their ROTC sergeant.  The sergeant speaks of the importance of “unity of command”, meaning that a command issued top side would be obeyed down to the very last private. We take this as inherently obvious now.  But 150 years ago… Strongly eschewing advice, relishing slavery, independence and states’ rights, the Confederate side sorely lacked unity of command.  We learn that Jefferson Davis, not on site, issued battle commands from his porch, only to find his incompetent orders routinely ignored. The ROTC sergeant speaks of lieutenants ignoring generals, and everyone doing their own thing.  Lincoln had the sense to stay out of Grant’s way.

The clouds portentously grow darker, building as we observe a battlefield littered with monuments to each group of people who fought. The Illinois monument has a long formal staircase leading up to a large rotunda (in reality a scaled-down Pantheon) with an eagle standing guard over the monument’s entrance.

The two states where brother fought brother (Missouri and Kentucky) have the most poignant monuments. Located where two Missouri regiments clashed in battle, Missouri’s monument, dedicated to both Union and Confederate soldiers, features a huge monolith fronted by an art deco angel (the Spirit of the Republic), who dares anyone to refute the courage of the combatants.

Situated between the Union and Confederate lines, Kentucky’s memorial contains life-size bronze statues of Lincoln and Davis, both Kentucky natives. Behind the two men we find quotes from each supporting the Union.

Both Barkley and Bear, Pennsylvania natives, solemnly pose for photos at their state monument. The Union side has many monuments to Ohio regiments, but no Ohio Monument overall. As a person born in Ohio, I feel we disrespect our fighters, probably for budgetary reasons.  I am embarrassed.

The clouds, having gathered sufficient strength, begin dropping rain.  Fortuitously we finish touring the outdoor battlefield. Pearl motors up to the USS Cairo museum (pronounced like Karo, the corn syrup).

By January 1862, the Union, flexing its industrial muscle, constructs seven ironclad ships for the war effort, naming each ship for a northern city, including one for Cairo, Illinois.    Later that year, the Cairo, while working on clearing the Yazoo River of mines, hit two of the “infernal machines” and sank in the resultant explosion, becoming the first ship ever sunk by electric torpedoes.  One hundred years later, people raised the sunken ship, giving it to the National Park Service as a museum piece.

The ship itself indeed rests outside, covered by a large tent-type structure that resembles the multi-peaked tent roof at DIA (Denver airport).  Remaining dry, we explore the ship, impressed by the technology.  I often think of the Civil War being so far removed from today.  But even 150 years ago, we built a steam-powered, armored watercraft bristling with cannons.  The boys closely examine the boilers and engines as we wander about the craft. 

We walk into the indoor museum adjacent to the ship.  The Cairo sank quickly and lay undisturbed for 100 years, creating a time capsule.  From various displays, we learn about life aboard the ship.  We see lanterns, cooking equipment and “irons”—hand and leg cuffs used on recalcitrant crew members.  Medical equipment includes scary surgical items as well as myriad bottles of medications. Hastily abandoning ship, people left behind their personal goods.  The museum houses the forsaken shoes, shaving gear, and most movingly, photos of loved ones.

As much as I enjoy exploring daily lives of people born long before me, by late afternoon hunger ambushes me.  Hoping for some sustenance, I enter the museum restaurant.  Disgusted by the smells of horrendous Sysco-truck quasi-food substances, I begin to melt down.  The boys, alarmed by my predicament, appease me by cooking real food in the parking lot in the rain.  I am fortunate to have such caring animals in my life.

Finished with the Cairo and Vicksburg National Military Park, we return to our hotel.  I find my feet swelling and begin legs-up-the-wall exercises.  Exhausted, I fall into a dreamless sleep.  Tomorrow, we explore a wee bit more of Mississippi.

Thursday, February 27, 2014 – Southern Pride & Northern Prejudice

We face even colder weather this morning.  Brrr!  Although certain that the mercury has fallen to 20°, I must admit that Pearl’s thermometer reads in the mid-40s. Today’s wan sunshine probably brings a dearly desired coolness to the area in summer, unwelcome now during the waning days of winter.

Bear, ever the morning commandant, rounds us up and chases us out of the door by 9 AM.  We leave our Airbnb nest reluctantly, worried about a week of inhabiting kitchen-less hotels and the bad restaurant food we will be forced to consume in desperation. But the boys soldier on, stuffing Pearl and her hat with our worldly belongings. We haven’t quite succumbed to refugee status.  Katrina descended upon the Gulf in 2005, not 2014.  But as we approach a month on the road, have we not become gypsies?

Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, Bear, our wonderful morning chauffeur, steers Pearl up toward Baton Rouge once again.  Passing Baton Rouge, we turn north on state route sixty-one, heading for the scariest place in the United States:  Mississippi. Where were the civil rights workers slain? Mississippi. Where was teenaged Emmett Till tortured and murdered? Mississippi. Where was Medgar Evans assassinated? Mississippi. What’s the locale for every scary movie about the Klan? Mississippi. Does driving a new car in the land of conservatives scream liberal? This place scares the bejeebers out of me.

Ten miles inside the state, my fears spring to life.  The Mississippi Highway Patrol, a police force whose cruelty knows no bounds (per the 1960s and Hollywood), stops all motorists. Pearl trembles as my heart rises to my throat, beating so loudly as to be heard a mile away. Ominously, to the right, on the road’s shoulder, we see a white boy cuffed standing behind his car. “Oh my gosh,” I think, shaking in panic, “we have Colorado plates. These boys will have a good old time looking for marijuana, ripping Pearl, her hat, and Sven asunder.”  Our inanimate partners quiver with barely suppressed terror.  We picture ourselves on the side of the road in Mississippi, our belongings strewn everywhere.  Sven, conflated with Pearl’s transmission, both in a million pieces, blow about in the wind.  We cry helplessly seeing our lives scattered all over the roadway, while the police laugh heartlessly.

The patrolman approaches.  “Good morning, sir,” he drawls, “license and registration please.” Keith hands over the requested documents quickly, the only sign of nervousness he displays.  The officer scans Keith’s driver’s license and examines Pearl’s registration.  Looking at the front license plate, he begins to guffaw. “Colorado, eh? Ha Ha Ha.  Cold out there, huh?  Enjoy your travels in Mississippi. Have a good day.”

Keith explains that “stop ‘em all” provides much needed money to rural police departments, now a standard revenue source in the South.  Ask every driver passing by to produce a valid driver’s license and registration while searching for unpaid traffic tickets and outstanding warrants, and no one can complain about discrimination.  People failing the checks face jail, requiring them to shell out more moolah to escape authority’s clutches.  Living in poverty, people allocating scarce economic resources between electric bills and traffic tickets will often leave the latter unpaid.   The rich, who would squawk and quash the practice, will sail through these tests; the Republicans will be glad to see the boys working at keeping the riff-raff in line.

A mere forty-five minutes later, my adrenaline level finally subsides as Pearl drives into Melrose Plantation of Natchez National Park. We find, wonder of wonders, a picnic table!  Exiting Pearl, we sit amidst blooming chickweed, enjoying the sunny, open space.  The boys heat our lovely lunch, prepared last night by the ever industrious Keith. We enjoy our chicken, zucchini and pasta. Unfortunately we couldn’t convince Bear to prepare meals for an entire week, no matter how much assistance we proffered.  “We don’t have a refrigerator Beaver, much less a freezer. You’re being ridiculous, worrying far too much about the Sysco truck.”  “But we have a cooler and ice,” I feebly responded.  And I hadn’t said a word about that darn truck!

In 1990, the National Park Service (NPS) acquired Melrose Plantation, including the Greek Revival mansion and surrounding buildings that once created the plantation’s wealth.  The NPS has busily restored the property.  Sven and I motor about on paved trails.  We see slave cabins and various outbuildings, entering the accessible ones.  Displays teach us more about slavery. 

We learn that the overseer, not the aristocratic planter families, determined a slave’s quality of life.  The planter would contract with the overseer for a projected profit. If the overseer failed to produce adequately, the agreement generally permitted the planter to dock the overseer’s pay.

Cotton plantations ran on debt, generally 70% of their value.  Planters borrowed heavily to buy slaves, land and seed.  A slave cost $500 and was expected to generate $100 to $200 each year.  With patience and luck, a plantation would eventually turn a profit. 

Success or failure depended upon the slaves’ survival and continued ability to work. People, both planter and slaves, would die in cholera and yellow fever epidemics.  Every plantation had a slave infirmary, where the mistress of the house’s duties included nursing people back to health.

The South welcomed many planters who had exhausted their Virginia land growing tobacco.  Selling their depleted northern land, they would move farther south to new land.  Borrowing heavily, they established cotton plantations, bound by both their new and old obligations.

For the enslaved, tobacco farming required the least amount of labor, cotton more, and sugar the most.  Sugar plantations subjected exhausted people to horrendously dangerous processes, often proving lethal. Succumbing to accidents and overwork, people on sugar plantations seldom saw forty.

Leaving the Melrose Plantation, Pearl cruises a few miles west to deliver us to the Longwood Octagonal house.  Jumping out of the car, we sign up for the tour. 

Sven comments, “Like we ever jump, Beaver.”

“Poetic license, Sven, poetic license.”

“Who gave you a license, Beaver?  You don’t even drive anymore.”

“Why the State of Colorado did!”

“Poetic license or a driver’s license?”

“Ok, you win, now hush.”

Sven subsides as the tour begins, focusing all attention on our guide.

In the 1850s, a planter named Haller Nutt developed an important strain of cotton.  Flush and arrogant, Nutt began contemplating Longwood in the late 1850s.  He planned a 33,000-square-foot, six-story octagonal masterpiece, larger than Thomas Jefferson’s mammoth plantation at Monticello.  Designed by northern architects, the house eschewed the currently fashionable Greek Revival style so often adopted elsewhere.  Nutt’s architects incorporated the then-current ideas of health into Longwood, specifying windows and a coal fireplace for every room.  Work began in 1860 but the outbreak of the Civil War quickly interrupted construction, as Nutt’s craftsmen fled north.  Hiring local workers, Nutt only managed to complete the 10,000 square-foot basement before dying of pneumonia in 1864, leaving his house unfinished and his affairs a mess.  His neighbors long ago renamed the uncompleted mansion Nutt’s Folly.

The Civil War brought economic collapse in its wake.  Nutt lost nearly all his wealth as both armies ravaged his plantations.  Julia, his widow, sold off land to satisfy debt and moved into the basement with her eight children, raising them there.

Being from Colorado, we are the seven-day wonder here.  Our guide, a large, fiftyish, balding, potbellied man notices our Colorado license plates. “Well,” he says “I sure wish that Mississippi would legalize pot. But we will be the last state to do so. Marijuana is a lot better for you than alcohol. What would somebody smoking pot do? Rob a grocery store for a Twinkie? I’ve smoked it before, and I would smoke some now, if I had it.”

Taken aback, we respond, “Well, we don’t have any marijuana with us.  But people and money are pouring into Colorado.  We want the taxes to fund our schools. We’re embarrassed to admit that we’re fortieth or so in spending on education.”

“I’m sure Mississippi is worse,” the big man opines.  (Correct: Mississippi consistently ranks 48^th.)  “Years ago, when the government told us we had to integrate, the people in power chose to send all the white kids to private schools and not spend a cent on public schools. That’s what generated the mess we’re in now. Maybe marijuana would be a way out,” he muses.

Leaving our guide to his fancies, Pearl drives off to nearby small-town Southern America: Natchez, MS. Though comprising only a few city blocks of handsome old brick buildings, Natchez has its own National Park downtown: the William Johnson house.

Johnson, a freed slave (presumably his white father manumitted him), founded the town’s barber shop. Over the years, guided by sound investments and his own good business sense, he became quite rich. As owning other human beings marked one as a person of importance, Johnson eventually bought several slaves; once, he even sold a frequent runaway down the river, an action that he records in his diary as keeping him from sleep one night.

Although rich, Johnson died at forty-two when he was gunned down in a property dispute. His assailant, another free black, claimed some 1/16^th white ancestry and got off scot-free – black people couldn’t testify against white people in criminal cases. (Later research showed the assailant to be part American Indian, not white, but the court ruled that evidence inadmissible.) William Johnson had straddled both worlds of the racial divide, rising to wealth in the antebellum South, but in the end his skin color still determined his fate.

Departing, we at long last reach the Natchez Trace, today’s goal.  Evolving from an ancient Indian highway, the Trace spans 440 miles from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee.  In the early 1800s, people in the Ohio river valley would load all sorts of trade items (cash crops, animals, anything they could sell) on a flatboat and float down the Mississippi. Reaching New Orleans, the self-made merchants would sell all, including their raft for lumber. Goods-free and cash rich, they would then walk back up the Natchez Trace to their homes.  The boys ruminate about the manhood-building potential induced by hiking the entire Natchez Trace, deciding right there upon a future vacation adventure.  Sven rolls his eyes.

The federal government began building the Natchez Trace Parkway in 1936.  Finally completed in 2005, the Trace greatly reminds us of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Did the Park Service employ the same engineers or just repeat success?  Ten miles into the Trace, Bloodroot stops Pearl near a huge earthen mound named the Emerald Mound.   Constructed by Mississippian Indians in 1200 CE, the second largest mound in the Americas (after Cahokia) looms over us, dwarfing us.  We climb to the top of the mound to watch the sunset.  Descending, we notice that the darkness has also descended.  Pearl insists upon leaving the park. “There’s nothing but bends and shadows, kids,” says Pearl.  “I vote for safety and expediency.” 

 Exiting the park, Pearl returns to Highway 61 for our last amazingly painful half hour’s drive of the day.  Ultimately arriving in Vicksburg, we find ourselves weary, sore and hungry. First stop, Fairfield Inn, where we reserved an accessible room.  At the front desk, we learn that we’ve arrived too late for a handicapped room. “We’ve rented them all.  It’s a good night,” says the desk clerk.  “Yeah, good for you, not me,” I think. 

Resigned to failure, we check into our room and I head to the bathroom. Ugh!  The room lacks bars around the toilet. Can’t we just put bars around all toilets? We’re all getting old!  From Sven, I must standup without support, turn around and sit on the pot. Scary!  We decide to use Tinky instead. I can spin him around, only banging in the walls a wee bit, and sit. Tinky also helps me stand when the time comes.

Enough about toilets and cripples already!

While I flounder in the bathroom, Bloodroot and Barkley busy themselves finding a restaurant. Consulting Urban Spoon and Yelp, the boys recommend a place called Roca’s.

Bloodroot drives, easily following directions downloaded onto his iPhone. (The more I age, the more I’m surrounded by technology I don’t understand, like iPhones.)  Venturing a bit out of town, up a winding road, we stumble upon what appears to be a country club.

We enter the restaurant and sit down for dinner amongst all the movers and shakers of Vicksburg, Mississippi.  The Springfield Grill in Youngstown, Ohio, comes to mind, home of the selfsame people and mediocre food.  Full of trepidation, I begin with a green tomato and crab cake appetizer, something I’ve never had before—and it’s good!  Appearances can be deceiving, yes?  The boys get an A+.

A table across the room erupts repeatedly into unrestrained cheering as some basketball team beats another. We think it might be Arkansas versus Kentucky.  Giving the server our dinner order, we struggle to be heard over the mayhem.  Concentrating on the appealing food, we attempt to ignore the increasingly enthusiastic shouting, the kind you’d recoil from in an outdoor football stadium. The table’s occupants appear to be somewhat trashed.

Fortunately, the game ends while we dine.  The loud people rise to leave. One of the gentlemen stops by our table to apologize for the noise — very Southern. He explains that he and his friends, all lawyers, went to the University of Arkansas, which has just very handily beaten Kentucky. Asked which team we support, we mumble that we’re from Colorado.

“Colorado!” The man exclaims. “I’ve been skiing in Colorado.” He then launches into a very long story telling us each and every slope he has skied down.  He begins demonstrating his schuss skiing techniques by jumping about at our table. We sit spellbound, watching this very drunken man regale us with skiing stories while flapping both his arms and legs all over the place.

“Once going downhill, at Vail, I crashed into a rock, losing my goggles, skis and helmet. I looked up to see people on the lift worried about me. I waved to show them I was alive…”  At this moment, his friends walk by and collect him.  Our storyteller’s friends presumably usher him to a waiting car, so we never get to hear the end of the story. How did he get off the rock?  I’m totally sucked into the magic of the captivating tale, told the way only a Southern boy can tell it, and poof, he’s gone. Shoot!  An eternal mystery!

We finish our dinner, enjoying a sumptuous dessert, and head back to the Fairfield Inn for the night.  The boys dream of the Civil War, planning tomorrow’s exploration of the Vicksburg battlefield while they sleep.