Natchez ‘n’ More

Happy New Year to you all! We be rolling through the south, headed to Georgia. I think it took us four days to get across Texas, but we crossed Louisiana and Mississippi in one day each.

We followed the Brazos Trail from San Antonio to Louisiana. Got likkered up before we left Texas and enjoyed a great meal. We asked the bartender where we were and he said, “Nacodoches.” Nacodoches? “Yeah, he says, the G is silent.” Nacogdoches.

Texas is full of new and different things, including the club you have to join to drink in Nacogdoches. Texas has beverage barns; you just drive through and pick up your hooch. Baton twirling is big here. It’s pansy planting time in Texas. The miles and miles of cattle are not Brahma and they are not Angus, they are, yup, Brangus.

I like to collect odd combinations of alleged businesses people advertise. They are all held up to the standard of our all-time favorite, “Fred’s Fill-dirt and Croissants.” Texas has offered a couple of good ones: “Creative Childbirth and Pony Rides.” We found “Boot Repair and Bait” in Louisiana.

Towns in Texas don’t give the names of service clubs on a sign at the city limits – they give the high school sports records. Bibles, Bass and Football are very big down here. We stopped in a tiny town for lunch one day (lunch in our house) and noticed an historic marker which listed every reverend of the little Missouri Synod Church since it came to be in 1900, but didn’t tell us why this little town is called Dime Box. The legend CHURCH appears on a diamond shaped highway sign about every mile.

I was thrilled to go through the charming little town of Lufkin, Texas and spot murals on main street by Lance Hunter, who teaches at COCC. His style is so distinctive and the murals are the best I’ve ever seen. They are very big; you kind of have to look at them from across the street.

Louisiana is very poor compared to Texas; you can really tell when you go from one state to the other. We are amazed at the roads. We took Hiway 84 across Louisiana, a fairly rural route but divided highway part of the way. There is no shoulder on the highway, and the grass grows right up to the road. But it is all mowed, mowed clear back to the stands of pines, so it gives a very clean appearance, very open and clean. The little towns are partially deserted, dusty and empty, with an auto repair place and maybe a cafe.

We stayed in a park right on the Big Muddy, in Vidalia, LA, right across the river from Natchez, Mississippi. Natchez is a stunning little town, full of ante-bellum homes and food joints like Hot Mama’s Tamales We went to the Sand Bar and I had catfish filet and cornbread hush puppies. The catfish was much better than my first experience last year in Bisbee, AZ. We’re having a little trouble with the dialect here. The Sand Bar is full of pictures of celebrities, and Dave asked every waitress who these people were. None of them knew, probably because the stars were old. Well, I guess they knew Bill Clinton. What was funny was Davey asking about one particular photo and the waitress said, “That ‘un thar, hit’s ar bouse man.” Huh? “Ar bouse man.!” Finally, we figured it out – it was her boss! My favorite still goes back to Texas and my new friend Darl, he’s in the “riil astyte bidiness.” Anyway, we also split an order of deep fried pickles at the Sand Bar. Dear heaven, everything is deep fried. Wuh. The women here are round and beautiful and obviously have no problem with their body image. We saw a license plate in the parking lot that said FATNBAD.

Today we crossed Mississippi on the Natchez Trace Parkway. It’s an amazing history, to think of a couple of hundred years of people walking a route, enough of them to wear a rut in the land some six or more feet deep. The Parkway is a National Park and beautifully maintained. It must be so beautiful in the springtime. Right now most of the trees are bare, and many of them broken and damaged from the hurricanes. The Magnolia trees are huge and still hold their large, waxy leaves, as do Laurel and some Water Oaks, but the Box Elders and others are bare. The pine forests are quite large, even though the trees are typical jack pine. We went through Willamette Industries forests at least once. And the roads are lined, of course, with cotton fields, bare now, except for tufts on the ground.

We have visited large Indian Mounds in Natchez and along the Trace. The history we have been able to pick up indicates the Natchez Tribe built these mounds, usually in multiple layers overs long periods of time. As late as the mid 1700s the Tribe was using them as ceremonial “altars,” and graveyards for the Chiefs (and the Chief’s wives who were routinely strangled so as to accompany the Chief into the hereafter)! Major Tribes in this area were the Choctaw, Chickasaw and the Natchez.

Tomorrow we continue on US 20, through Selma, Alabama, to Columbus, Georgia. We’re going to spend a couple of days with Angelo Cacciatore, a friend Dave met on the Ride Across America. We’re looking forward to it. We haven’t seen rain since we left Logan in November. We watch the weather channel every day and can’t believe the flooding in Bend. And Seattle-Tacoma has had rain ever since November, it seems. We are starting to feel a little humidity here in Mississippi (it will get down to 57 tonight), but it feels good.

We send love to all. Wish we could share very giggle.

Sam