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Posts tagged ‘Mississippi’

Oct 7

34 Comments

He Got It Up

A quick post with weak internet. We are at French Camp, Mississippi. In an ancient cabin. Too dark to see much outside.

The big lines from today:

(Note: Woman in bonnet in the Eisenhower photo in previous post is actually Miss Ethel. We found that out on the after-breakfast house tour at the B & B.)

Miss Ethel – “When in doubt, 1850.”

Miss Ethel – “I just don’t know what to think about people who don’t drink coffee.” (I don’t, either.)

Miss Ethel – “My cousin – who is INSANE – let that plantation go to ruin. He lived with goats and chickens. Bless his heart.”

Miss Ethel – “I opened this cabinet and found…….an entire set of Limoges!”

Miss Ethel – “My Yankee daughter lives in Richmond. She doesn’t like how much they talk about Robert E. Lee, and I told her she was never going to have any friends if she didn’t stop complaining about that.”

Miss Ethel – “We lived in Waterproof, Louisiana. I came home in fifth grade, and told my parents it was the best day of my life. My best friend was going to have a baby. We moved to Natchez the next week.”

******

MTM – “It’s no wonder all the great writers come from The South. In Wisconsin, where I grew up, nobody would even talk to you on one of these treks. Here, you get the whole family tree.”

******

I may get another novel out of this weekend. We shall see.

Oct 6

34 Comments

Sleeping with Barry Goldwater

It was a day. Waking up in New Orleans can jolt the system, even when a girl has had a couple of days to acclimatize. Going to sleep in a rambling farmhouse in Natchez, Mississippi is quite a change. Especially with a pumpkin hunting stop in Baton Rouge thrown in for good measure.

 

I wore the socks to impress Cayleigh. How did I do?

I piled in the car with Alice and, MTM on our tail, we headed up the dark stretch of road to Natchez. Our destination: Historic Hope Farm, a rambling shard of The South. The proprietress met us at the front door, and I wanted to stay a week.

“Breakfast will be served in theah in the mornin’, and right after, we’ll have a little tourah of the haus. If you like a spot a coffee, it will be set up out heah on the porch. The air conditionah is new. I think it’ll stay at 69, but use those button things if it shuts off. And, why in the world would anyone from Charleston come to Natchez?”

I want to be Miss Ethel when I grow up. I loved her instantly.

Alice’s room was an homage to American politics, with Old South jewels like this one on the walls:

 

How would THIS play in a campaign today?

Another entire wall was devoted to signed photographs of American presidents and almost presidents. Meaning Alice slept with Barry Goldwater last night.

Don’t tell anybody.

 

Apr 12

41 Comments

Hitching a Ride to a Dream

This Natchez Trace business has morphed into a series. A lost girl brushes the Trace today. If this is your first visit to the blog, or if you’re catching up, please go back to this post and read forward to digest it whole.

Hitchhikin’ ain’t for sissies. Unless you’re a sissy like me, a stringy-haired hippie chick with a dream of actin’ in New York City. In Natchez, nobody cottoned to my dreams, my as-pir-a-tions. They tole me to settle down. To grow up. To do my duty to my momma and marry a good ole boy, pop out a coupla runts, visit Momma’s house every Sunday for lunch after church. Since the good ole boys worth marryin’ are being shot up in Viet Nam, and the good ole boys whose daddies bought ‘em out of that place are too rich for me, and the hippies I hang out with usually all just want to live in sin, it looks like I won’t be gettin’ married any time soon in Natchez.

And, here’s the other problem with Natchez. My momma lives there. Whores act. That’s what my momma said. My actin’ was like being a hussy. Teasin’ people into believin’ I’m somethin’ I ain’t. Gettin’ them to caress me with their lustful eyes and thoughts of sex.

Even when I played Holy Mary Mother of God in the nativity scene at church, she said this. The first time I said a cuss word in a part, she cried and had to go home and take a shower because my performance made her feel so filthy dirty.

I said the word ‘dang.’ A slang word, I know, but my momma thinks the slang words are just as wicked as the real thing, because the real thing is what everybody hears in their minds.

You understand why I had to get out of that place. Run away. I’m seventeen and everything.

I’m hitchin’ a ride up the Trace to Nashville. Walkin’ through a stinking cypress swamp. Trees risin’ out of their roots in black water. Spanish moss reflected on the still surface. Gators honkin’ a powerful angry background tune against the brush of the wind. This place. This Trace. It gets in your skin, gives you the guts to tread over it into anything.

Even to walk all the way to your dream.

Apr 11

46 Comments

I’m All Shook Up

This Natchez Trace business has morphed into a series. Today, a character you may recognize, hiding within one you may not. If this is your first visit to the blog, or if you’re catching up, please go back to this post and read forward to digest it whole.

Nashville sure feels like a far piece from Tupelo, Mississippi. Even for a guy like me. Bigger ‘n life. Idn’t that what they say about people like me? Whoever ‘they’ be.

My brother, he’s only eight these days. Stuck in a no-count town in the middle-of-noplace. Tupelo. He takes hisself to school. He runs around outside. Chews some. Dips some. Ma don’t know none of that stuff, or she’d whup him good. To ever body, he’s just a regular kid.

I know better. I kin see things they cain’t, wanderin’ around out here in the wilderness. Like them Israelites. Down hollers and up hills. Back and forth. This-a-way and that-a-way. I don’t never git no rest. Don’t need it, anyways, in the shape I’m in.

It idn’t just that I see what he’s a-doin’ now, though. I’m what they call privileged. I kin see what he’s a-gonna be, kin peek through peep hole of time. That’s what the green leaves and all this open air does to a feller; it makes him see things, even when he don’t want to. When all they’re doin’ is showin’ him who he coulda been if he hadn’t been dead when he was born.

My twin brother, he’s a-gonna be somebody someday. He’s a-gonna git out of that podunk town, that beautiful boy who carries that face. That voice.

My face. My voice.

‘Cept nobody’s around to see. Just me, whistlin’ through the trees in the breeze, partin’ the confounded humidity like a tease, spyin’ on my twin brother Elvis like a whisper on the Trace.

Apr 10

52 Comments

The Archeology of Time

This Natchez Trace business has morphed into a series. Today, an archeology of sorts. If this is your first visit to the blog, or if you’re catching up, please go back to this post and read forward to digest it whole.

A ribbon of asphalt stretches for 444 miles to make the Natchez Trace. It follows a natural ridge line through three Southern states: Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi. The landscape rises and bends, shifts and sinks in its march to meet the Mississippi River.

The Old Trace is harder to find these days. It meandered across the highest earthen points. Because it was first mapped by animals who didn’t care about finding the fastest point from A to B, it took its time in maddening stalls and jarring twists upon itself.

We hiked on sections of the Old Trace, a path that was always broad enough to hold two passing wagons and teams of panting horses. It became a game of archeology to determine what was the Old Trace and what was just plain-old hiking trail.

Me: If I stumble on one more stupid loose rock, I’m going to scream.

MTM: Scream. Maybe the squirrels will hear you, and they won’t care.

Me: But, my iPhone just told me that we’re somewhere near Billy Ray Cyrus’ ranch. Maybe that wire fence over there is it. What would happen to us if we went over there and overheard him singing ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ while he shoveled horse poop?

MTM: Andra, we aren’t here to stargaze, and I’m sure Billy Ray Cyrus pays people to shovel his, um, refuse. Now, put your phone away. We’re supposed to be hiking. You know, enjoying the nothingness of the woods. The scenery. The wildlife.

Me: *Heavy sigh with eye roll* Lead the way to Nature. I wonder if any of this is the Old Trace?

MTM: I think this section is.

Me: How can you tell?

MTM: Well, see how wide the trail is, how the dirt is eroded around the edges? It took a lot of time and traffic to do that. Where we were before was narrower, not worn down. Here, we’re coming out of the trees to the Parkway. See? Over there?

Me: What? I don’t see anything but more trees.

MTM: But, do you see the gap in the trees? How wide it is?

Me: Huh. So, that’s where the Old Trace went before they cut the road through here.

All day long, the Old Trace shimmered through the trees like a glowing ghost. Sometimes under our padding feet. Others, adjacent to our trail. Always shifting, moving like it was alive.

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