A New Broom Sweeps Clean

I think about the future more and more.  I try to predict what life, both my own and the lives of those close to me, will be like in the years ahead.  Private and unspoken, I base predictions on what is happening now, politics and government, technology, how we interact with each other, the world around us.  I get my information from books, the papers on the driveway, the news delivered to my inbox and on my phone, and my own observations.

I try to gauge how  likely to happen these predictions really are.  When my predictions are dark I classify that thinking as worry and when they brighten I think of it as newly created hope.  I question how much time I devote to all this reading, thinking, worrying, and imagining.  I have a stack of topics I intend to write about, printed articles from newspapers and other content providers.  The future is fluid and the past gets old quickly.  Why am I not content to just live each day in the present?  Today’s blog tries to do that. 
        
As if it were a headline, the subject of this piece is actually a quiet labor of love.  I was given a handmade gift.  There is something about handmade gifts that makes them special.  Because it was made by a person I’ve come to know I realize exactly how it was made, what it was made of, and where it came from.  We own few things like that anymore.  When I do possess things with those qualities I value them immensely, regardless of cost or someone else’s idea of their worth.

This is what I’m talking about, a handmade locally sourced broom.

It was put together, crafted you might say, by Cynthia Main, of http://www.sunhousecraft.com.  My daughter got to know her, acquired this broom, and gave it to me.  She knows I don’t like a lot of things, but she also knows things like this please me. 

It’s not your mass produced broom from the cleaning supplies aisle at the grocery store.  Far from it.  It’s old school, starting with the bristles.  They’re made from broom corn.

You won’t see broom corn growing in the fields along Route 80, and its yield is not measured in bushels. It produces corn, kernels that form in small bunches at the ends of long stems.  That corn is stripped away and cut off.  What is important about broom corn, the real harvest, is the long resilient straw-like stems that make up the business end of the broom.  Before using the corn the broom maker soaks the large ends in hot water to make them more pliable for braiding. 

But the process starts with the handle, traditionally a branch cut from a sassafrass tree.  Sassafrass wood is lightweight and keeps it bark.  Its roots of course are dug in the spring and used to make a tea which is something of a spring tonic.

My Dad used to go to the timber on our farm with a spade and dig sassafrass in late March or early April.  He’d bring it home to my Mom who would shave the roots into little pieces and brew a pink colored tea to which we added sugar.  Sassafrass tea in early spring seemed to be a thing for my Mom and Dad, something they were annually happy about.  I’m just guessing it might have helped their marriage.  I digress.  Back to the broom.

The broom has four components.  Broom corn, a sassafrass stick, stout cord, and a leather thong.  At the top of the sassafrass handle a hole is drilled for a leather thong so you can hang the broom on a nail.  At the bottom of the broom, pieces of broom corn are tightly arranged in the preferred pattern; some round, others wide and flat, and attached to the handle.  The broom corn is intricately braided and secured with good strong string or cord.  On a flat broom that same cord is woven through the pieces of broom corn farther toward the end to maintain the flat shape of the broom and keep the broom corn tightly together.

It is said that broom makers can determine the maker of a broom by the pattern of the braid where the broom corn attaches to the stick.  Here is Cynthia Main’s braid, or at least the one she created the day she made my broom.

Some broom makers use wire for a more secure mounting, or small nails.  Mine appears to be just tightly wrapped with a blue string.  That’s the nice thing about these handmade brooms.  They are utilitarian, made to be used, and each contains the same basic elements.  But that same tool can be personalized, adding the maker’s art if you will.  Making brooms by hand is not just cranking out the same broom over and over.  Each broom has its own character.

My particular broom has an added dash of character.  When my daughter selected it among the many Cynthia had for sale she noticed a carving on the handle.

“What about this one?  Is it for sale?”

“Oh yeah.  That handle came from Gary Glasscock, an old broom maker and amazing human being from Missouri.  He and his partner Sherie might be angels, at least for my broom making.  They taught me a lot.  Gary’s father carved the face on that handle.  I think he’s probably passed now, Gary’s Dad that is.”

“You sure you want to sell it?”

“It’s for your Dad right?  I like his blog.  Sure.  I’m glad he’ll end up with that broom.”

I look at this face each time I use the broom and think of the carver.  I wonder who he was thinking of when he formed the face with his knife.  Maybe it was his face.  Maybe he made that same face over and over, trying to get it right.  Or maybe there was a cast of characters.  Whatever the case, I have this face now.

Thanks Moe, and thank you to Cynthia Main.  Thank you to Gary Glasscock.  Thank you to Gary’s Dad for passing along the broom making tradition to his son, and he in turn to Cynthia.  Thank you also for that small carving.  Your broom made it to the shack and is in good hands.  In complicated times, its not a bad idea to occasionally tune out and focus on good things around us.  Thanks for creating something solid and simple to latch onto. 

  

Care, Resist, Vote

Do you know when children are taken from the care and custody of their parents in the United States?  When they are sexually abused and the offender is still in the home.  When they are physically abused and a professional believes no adult can or will protect them.  When children are abandoned.  When children are so neglected their health or their very life is threatened.

When children are removed from their parent’s care in order to protect them they are placed first with relatives, then with foster families who are screened, trained, and undergo extensive background checks.  As a last resort, when proven they cannot be served in a less restrictive environment, they may be placed in residential or congregate care.  Only in extreme circumstances are children ever placed in a locked setting. 

When children are removed from their parents’ care an inordinate amount of attention is paid to ensuring that parents and children visit one another regularly, that siblings who are not able to be placed together in the same home visit each other frequently, and that whole families meet so that neither children nor parents nor families are alienated from each other.

The federal government provides dollars to the states mandating all these practices.  Family preservation and family reunification are the bedrock of child welfare services.  In addition, juvenile courts across the country go to great lengths to uphold the rights of children and parents to remain together.  Judges order the termination of parental rights only after prosecutors and social workers prove in a court of law that making families whole is impossible. 

Do you know why?  Because we have found that disrupting families, taking children away from the love and care of their parents, breaks a special bond and causes trauma that is very hard to overcome.  Children who suddenly find themselves deprived of the adult or adults who nurture them are sorely challenged to form such an attachment again.  That is why your country’s child welfare system, and the systems of most countries throughout the world, works so hard to repair broken families and keep them healthy and whole.   As Americans: North, Central, and South, we hold creating family, protecting family, and supporting family as perhaps our highest values.  Our culture, our laws, our religions, our very lives all reflect that value.

That is what is so heinous about the deliberate separation of children from their parents at our borders.  It was done willfully, deliberately, and by design.  It was done with the stated intent, by more than one member of our current national administration, to deter our neighbors from seeking legal asylum, in a country that has for many years stood as a beacon of human rights in the world.  It uses children as weapons against their parents, at the risk of doing irreparable harm to those children.  That deliberate separation of children from their parents is a calculation that says this:

“What is the well-being of 3,000 foreign children compared to carrying out new and extreme anti-immigrant policies?”

This is just the latest turn our country has taken against immigrants.  In the Republican nominee’s campaign for president, immigrants were characterized as “rapists, criminals, murderers, drug traffickers.”  In subsequent campaign-style rallies held across the country, our president has called immigrants affiliated with gangs “animals.”  Our acceptance of refugees from war-torn countries, many torn by our intervention, and stigmatized by their religion, has slowed to a trickle.  Workplace raids in harsh low-wage industries across the country where the undocumented labor force is common have swept immigrant parents into detention and deportation while leaving their U.S.-born citizen children to fend for themselves in decimated neighborhoods. 

Making humans among us out to be “the other,” distinct and separate from us, as if we are not all people, God's children if you will, is the first step in justifying brutality against them.  This is your country adopting these policies and practices.  They do this in your name. 

Is this what you signed on for?  Is this the United States of America you imagined it to be?  Do you condone uniformed agents of our country taking children from the arms of their parents?  Was I in their position I would resign rather than carry out such an action.   But here, removed, I search for some meaningful response, some way to show I care, to do something that will make a difference.

I protested family separation at our borders on a hot day in downtown Ottawa Illinois, along with others across my country in more than 700 such protests.  I inform myself, as much as I can, and I try to gauge what my friends and acquaintances are thinking.  But in truth, they are quiet, as I have been up to now.

Is that how it works?  Is this how your country goes off the tracks and runs amok, defying the will of its citizens?  This can’t be the will of the American people, can it?  Surely this is not the United States of America we imagine ourselves to be.  If we believe it to be different what do we do?  We show we care, we resist loudly, but more importantly, we vote.

In 118 days from this writing, November 6, we vote as a country in what is normally known as the midterm elections.  However, this upcoming election will be known as the referendum on the Republican Party.  Our elected legislators in Congress who have failed to speak up failed to stop the actions of our executive branch of government, failed to pass legislation to curb the direction our current administration is headed, and failed to represent our values are responsible for what our country has become.  I almost wrote, "is becoming."  But that’s not true.  Our country has changed in the last year and a half under this administration, and it is up to us to change it back.  We do that by changing those who represent us.

Early voting will begin before 118 days are through.  If you are not registered to vote please do so.  With your right to vote secured, go to your local polling place and cast a ballot for candidates who will make the United States the country you imagine it to be. 

End of the Road

I find the last day of a solo road trip a little sad.  I knew the following day and from then on I would be in the company of friends and family, which is far from a bad thing, but that feeling of traveling alone, being one with your thoughts, free to do whatever you chose without compromise, is gone until the next time.  I assume there will always be a next time, but in truth travels end.  There is a last trip somewhere out there for all of us.  I hope mine is far off.  Yours too.

That last day all I had to do was angle across the bottom of Mississippi, cross over a tiny part of Alabama and head into the panhandle of Florida, where I would settle into Pensacola and meet my golfing buddies from Ottawa the following day.  The end was in sight.

From Natchez I got on Highway 61 (Dylan anyone?) toward Fayette, took 28 to Union Church and then 550 to Brookhaven.  I was in the Mississippi boondocks;  pine trees, pickups, and coon dogs.  Not much else.  I began to wonder if I’d waited too long to fill up on gas.  Then I happened upon the Community Grocery and the oldest gas pump I have seen in quite some time.

As you can see there was no credit card slot in that pump, so I went inside to pay, a rare occurrence for me anymore.  They were cooking lunch in there.  Aptly named, Community Grocery was less gas station and more general store/restaurant. 

“What’s for lunch?”

“Beans, greens and ham hocks.  Fried chicken if you want it.  But it’s not ready.”

“That’s OK I had breakfast not long ago.  Not to be nosy, but who are you cooking for?  There’s not a lot of traffic heading your way where I came from.”

“They’s loggin’.  Come noon will have hungry loggin’ men in here.  Truck drivers, skidder operators, chain saw men.”

“Well, it smells good.”

“Don’t matter how good it is.”

She got a lot louder.

“They got nowhere else to eat anyway lessen they bring their own lunch.” Ain’t that right Audrey?”

Audrey, an older woman in a hair net who was standing over a huge steaming stock pot, let out a big laugh and the woman I was speaking to joined her.  They made me feel like they were glad to see me.

I cruised the shelves for a snack to go, picked up a few cans of V-8, but couldn’t find the moon pies.  I settled on a bag of peanuts.

When I took my stuff back to the counter the woman looked at my V-8 and immediately went to the kitchen for a dish towel, returning to vigorously clean off the top of the cans.

“You don’t have to do that ma’am.”

“Yes I do.  That’s filthy.  You don’t want to put that nasty can up to your mouth do you?”

I hadn’t noticed.  But I think some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet live in the South.

“Thanks.  Say where are the Moon Pies?  I haven’t been seeing any in the stores.”

“I don’t know what’s happened to those Moon Pie people but my bake goods man hasn’t brought me any in months.  I don’t know if they went out of business or what but I don’t get any no more.”

I kind of wished I could have stayed for lunch at the Community Grocery but I had a ways to go yet on those slow two lane roads so I said good bye to Audrey and her friend and was off.

It was a beautifully bright day for travelling.  I passed through Brookhaven and Monticello on Route 84, then to 27 to 586.  I steered the Buick on a slow glide through the small towns of Darbun and Foxworth.  In Columbia I turned south on 13 which carried me to Lampton, Pine Bur, and finally Lumberton.

In Lumberton I was seriously held up by a train which did not move.  Even a train that it switching, moving up and back, changing cars, offers hope but that damned train just sat there.  I circled back downtown and found myself on a main street.  Lumberton was not jumping with activity.  But there on a corner, under a beach umbrella by a pickup truck, was the guy I’d been waiting to talk to the whole trip.  As old as me, he had on bib overalls and was wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat.

On the tailgate of his pickup truck and folding tables on both sides was a whole array of great looking vegetables.  I parked the Buick and went over for a chat.     

“How you doing today sir?”

He eyed me suspiciously.  I don’t know how I looked to him.  I was wearing a Titleist hat with a Cubs logo.  Could be it was how I sounded.  Or maybe he saw my Illinois license plates. 

“Not worth a shit.  How about you?”

“Is business that slow?”

“Business?  You mean selling vegetables?  Hell this is just a hobby.  Gives me an excuse to get out of the house.” 

He looked away.  He was chewing something.  Could have been tobacco but he didn’t spit.

“Well that train has me boxed in here so I figured I’d stop for lunch.   You got a recommendation?”

“Just two places really.  You got Wards over there (pointing), burgers and fries and shit.  But if you want a real meal, I mean plate lunch specials, a meal of honest to God food, you’d want to go across the street to Fiorella’s.”

“So have you lived here a while?”

“I lived here till I graduated high school and joined the Navy.  Made a career of it.  Been all around the world and couldn’t wait to get back to Lumberton.”

“Has it changed much?”

“Has it changed much?  Are you kiddin’?  It’s gone to hell.  All around here used to be full of pecan (he pronounced it pee con) trees.  Farmers on little farms, raising kids, good families.  It was a hustling town, Lumberton was, till they built the interstate.  Ruined the god damned place.  This town’s population is 2,226 and dropping like a stone.  Hell, nobody comes through here anymore.”

He thought for a moment, looked at the Buick, looked at me again.

“So what are you doin’ here?”

“I’m going to Florida the slow way.  Wanted to see a different part of the country.  Meet people like you.”

“People like me?  Who do you think I am?

“Southern man about my age living in a small town.  I’m a Northern man kind of like you, live in a little bit bigger town, hundred miles southwest of Chicago, have a garden.  I mean, we’re both Americans.  We can’t be that different can we?”

“Oh you might be surprised.  I’m guessing you’re a Democrat.”

“I am.  And I’m guessing you’re not.”

“No shit Sherlock, what was your first clue?”

He gave me a big smile.  He had giant teeth.  False I’m guessing.

“I dunno.  Might have been the hat.”

 He laughed. 

“How is your guy doing you think?”

“The Donald?  He’s tearing it up.  Making a big damn mess of things.  That’s exactly what I hoped he’d do.  Scare the hell out of both parties.  We’ve had it both ways down south here and there’s not been a dime’s worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats till now.”

“You think that’s the way to go?”

“Well nobody was doing shit for us before.  You know what it’s like to live in a little town in nowhere America these days?  Not like it used to be I’ll tell you.  Whole damn countryside is owned by lumber companies.  All you can do is work for somebody else.  No jobs that pay anything anymore.  I’m glad my parents aren’t here to see this.”

“Hell they’re dissolving our school district.  Half of its going to Purvis and half to Poplarville.  We won the 2A state football title in 2004 and 2005, now we’re 1A and they’ll probably end up closin’ the damn school altogether. 

“Why is that?”

“You know why as well as I do.  Nobody’s got any money.  You can’t tax a damn turnip.”

“Yeah, and God knows we can’t raise taxes on those lumber companies.  Might hurt them.  In fact he cut their taxes.”

He ignored that comment.  Had I ignored his?

“Lumberton is fading away.  And nobody does shit about it.”

“Do you think your president’s going to change that?”

“He can’t do any worse.  I hope somebody’s listening.  We’re tired of getting taken for granted. Something’s gotta change.  And I think he’s the guy to do it.”

“Yeah, well I don’t.  I think he’s going to do a lot of damage to a lot of people before he’s through.  Already has if you ask me.”

We were both quiet.

“Those are sure nice sweet potatoes,” I said.  “I’ve tried growing them but never had any luck.  I can grow regular potatoes, but sweet potatoes never seem to turn out.”

“You need a lot of heat to grow good sweet potatoes.  They grow good in red dirt.  Loose red dirt.  Not that hard clay.”

“If I had a kitchen I’d buy some of your produce.  It’s nice looking.”

“Thanks.  Keeps me sane, growing this stuff.  Like I say it’s mostly a hobby.”

A diesel engine revved up and we heard the boom of empty train cars jerking along the track.

“Guess  I’ll head over to Fiorella’s and get some lunch.  Nice talking to you.”

“Nice talking to you.  Sorry if I got carried away.”

“That’s OK.  Me too.  Lot of it going around these days, that getting carried away.  You got a legitimate gripe.  We just don’t agree on how to fix it.”

“Yeah.  Don’t suppose we will anytime soon neither. But enjoy your trip.”

We shook hands.  I should have gotten his name, like that woman who made the bread pudding in Arkansas.  They are the unsung voices, the undiscovered talent in today’s America.

At Fiorella’s, save for kids coming in to put money in a gumball machine, I was the only customer at 1:30 in the afternoon.  The waitress sat me at a table near the counter and told me about that day’s special.  Meatloaf with mashed potatoes and green beans.  Rice pudding or ice cream for dessert. 

“The mashed potatoes are real,” she said.

“That’s unusual.”

“Yeah, well that’s the kind of place we are.”

“Does your meat loaf come with have that canned brown gravy all over it?”

“Doesn’t have to, I can leave it off.  It’s fresh too.  This pan came out of the oven about 10:30.”

“I’ll have the meatloaf, skip the gravy.  Glass of milk.  Rice pudding for dessert.”

My lunch came up quickly and it was good.  As I ate the waitress sat at the counter with a giant glass of pop checking her phone.

“How’s that meatloaf?”

“I like it.  I like being in a real restaurant, and not a chain.”

“A chain?”

“Yeah you know.  Olive Garden.  Denny’s.  McDonald’s.”

“Well, Fiorella’s is kind of a chain.   We got three restaurants.  This is the original but we opened one in Purvis and another in Poplarville.  In Poplarville we got beer, and we’re trying new things on the menu.”

“Like what?”

“Like poppers.  Jalapeno’s filled with cream cheese and stuff.  They’re selling good.  I think we’re going to have them at all three places pretty soon.”

“I work all three restaurants.  I got three kids and need the hours.  Tell you the truth, I don’t much like the work but I love my customers.”

I could have stayed in Lumberton and talked to more folks but I knew I had to be on my way.  I was headed to the gulf coast, Mobile Alabama, and into the Florida panhandle where I would end my trip.  I gassed up before I left town.  Lumberton turned out to be my last stop before Pensacola.

From Lumberton I cut over on 13 through Carnes and Fruitland Park to Wiggins.  There I picked up 26 to Lucedale, then got on 98, which turned into 42 at the Alabama line.  Before I knew it I was into Mobile and on that long causeway which is I 10.  The sun was behind me on the bay and the water sparkled.  The causeway took me over to Spanish Fort, then Ensley, and finally Pensacola where the solo road trip ended.  I hope the Buick and I get out on the road for another trip next year.  I’m undecided as to whether I should keep telling you all about them however.  We’ll see what happens.

A Night in Natchez

I knew nothing about Natchez.  I went there on the recommendation of a good guy I’ve gotten to know from Louisiana.  Hearing I was roughly following the Mississippi down to Florida, he said if I was anywhere near Natchez it was worth seeing.  So I went.

From Bostrop I drove toward Sterlington and headed the direction of Monroe.  In Columbia I turned on 4 East following it through Gilbert, Jigger, and Ft. Necessity.  I picked up 425 S. again there and crossed the Mississippi River for the last time, entering the State of Mississippi into the town of Natchez.

I went up a hill from the river, and drove through a town that looked much like any other.  I pulled into a gas station, filled up while I was there, and made an inquiry of a guy at the pump across from me.

“Guy told me there were old mansions and stuff in this town.  Where would I head to see them?”

“You’re over the hill.  You want to  down the hill to see old town.  Did you cross the river just back there?”

He pointed in the direction from where I came.

“Yeah.”

“Go back that way.  As you head down the hill take a right on any of several streets. You won’t miss the old town.  It’s big and fancy.” 

That it certainly is.  When cotton was king in the south the bluff in Natchez, facing the river with views of the Louisiana shore, became the favored building site for rich plantation owners to put their mansions, outdoing each other with architects, sparing no cost for design or furnishing.  It’s a spectacular display of antebellum southern lavishness, if you’re into that kind of thing.  There is something about regular people marveling the rich, from any time period including the present, that I don’t understand.  But hey, using an old river saying, whatever floats your boat.

I turned onto a street that gently swept through old trees, huge yards, and gigantic stone buildings.  I guided the Buick into a driveway with a sign pointing the way to a parking lot, a property obviously open to the public.  It was close to five.  As I walked towards an outbuilding behind a split rail fence I encountered two people in period costume.  An older woman in a long gingham dress walked towards me.   Behind her a young man was locking a door.  They were obviously leaving. The woman spoke to me.

“You can come back tomorrow morning for the tour if you’d like, but we’re closed now.”

As her words ended she sucked on one of those electronic cigarettes whose tip glows blue when you draw on it.  Vaping is the term I hear.  When she exhaled a cloud of white curled up around her big bonnet.  The boy behind her, in knickers, high socks, and suspenders was on his cell phone texting.  He didn’t look up.  Something about people depicting life 180 years ago using modern devices is weird but I get it.  They were off the clock.  I caught them at a bad time.

“I’m just trying to get oriented.  I plan to stay the night in Natchez.  Can you suggest a hotel? “

“Darryl, get this man a pamphlet will you?”

Darryl looked up from his phone, not terribly pleased, offered a smile (fake, I could tell), turned back, unlocked the door and went inside.

“I could tell you about hotels but Natchez is a bed and breakfast town.  Your best bet is Googling a list of B+B’s.  They’re all in the old part of town, you can get a good deal, and the breakfasts are to die for.”

Darryl handed me a pamphlet.

“You’ll find some in there but there’s more on line.  Really.  It’s the way to go.  Enjoy Natchez.”

I took her advice and ended up at Choctaw House.   The host at the bed and breakfast, or more accurately, splendid mansion with breakfast, was a southern gentleman, previously from Marlsgate, a plantation showplace in rural Arkansas.  Choctaw House is a four story Natchez mansion.  Architects call it transitional, containing the general Federal style while blending Greek Revival details.  I don’t know what that means at all.

It’s a damned big structure though, tall and built right out to the sidewalk in 1836 for a guy named Joseph Neibert, a southern real estate speculator.  I was shown into one of four guest rooms found in the above ground basement that once housed slaves.  That floor, once simple and crude, is now decked out with huge four poster beds, elegant bathrooms, and antique furniture.  Everything above, three floors of it, is parquet floors, shiny hardwood, elegant wallpaper, sweeping staircase, high ceilings, you name it.  Mr. Neibert didn’t look to be worried about expense.  If it was expensive in 1836 it went into this house.  You got your double porches, formal garden in the back, a view sweeping down to the river, and a widow’s walk on top.  It’s a helluva of a place.

My host explained that he provided the bed in this bed and breakfast deal, and assured me I didn’t want to eat his cooking so he would give me a voucher at Dunleith Historic Inn down the street which qualified me for a tour of that mansion, and of course he would give me a tour of Choctaw House whenever I chose.  I told him I was mostly hungry at the moment and would most likely take him up on that tour in the morning .  He recommended Cotton Alley for supper, three blocks over and one block down the hill.  He was a smooth talker, dapper little southern man with a handlebar mustache and carefully combed white hair.  He looked like a shrunken Colonel Sanders.      

Cotton Alley was an old restaurant with a small menu and great food.  I had a cup of gumbo and crawfish etouffee with a glass of wine.  After dinner I asked the waitress if they served Sazeracs, a rye whiskey cocktail.   She leaned down and spoke softly.

“Our bartender is new and has been looking drink recipes up in a book behind the bar for a week.  If you want a really good Sazerac go up the hill to King’s Tavern and have Ricky Woolfolk make it for you.  He makes the best cocktails in town.  Tell him Sarah sent you.”

Why stop going where people send you and taking their advice when it’s working for you?  I paid my bill and strolled up the hill in search of some joint called King’s Tavern.

Natchez has live oak trees and pretty vines that climb up fences and posts and break out into blooms, some red, some purple, which smell wonderful.  That night offered a kind of quiet that wraps around you.  It was warm even though it was of February and a slow stroll up the hill on dimly lit brick streets seemed the perfect thing to do.

Kings Tavern, as it turns out, is not only the oldest building in Natchez, but the oldest in the entire Mississippi territory.  It was built in 1769 as some kind of block house attached to a fort and has operated as a tavern and an inn more or less continuously since 1789.  It was the favorite place for riverboat men to hang out after they had delivered their goods on the Natchez docks.

Before steam engines and the locks and dams on the river commercial traffic was carried out by wooden barges that could float down the river but had no power to return upstream.  So they dismantled the boats, sold the lumber, and returned north overland via the Natchez Trace Pathway.  Many of the first buildings in Natchez, including King’s Tavern, were built from that lumber.  Stepping into that tavern,  through a small wooden door over a raised threshold, into a big room with low ceilings of exposed hardwood joists, dim lights, wooden tables and benches, made me feel as if I was stepping back in time.

Behind the bar was a friendly guy framed by rows and rows of whiskey bottles.  There’s something about being in well stocked bar that I find very comforting. 

“Are you Ricky?”

“Yes.”

“Sarah down at Cotton Alley says you make the best Sazerac in town?.

“She did?  I’m going to have to buy that girl a drink soon.  What kind of whiskey would you like in that Sazerac  sir?”

“Pick me out a good one.”

He did.  Ricky Woolfolk’s Sazerac was so good I had another before making my way down the hill to Choctaw House.    Lying alone in that big four poster bed I thought it would be an excellent night to have a companion on the trip.  Travelling alone offers lots of freedom, an advantage not to be taken lightly, but it has its downside as well. 

I went to sleep thinking of Choctaw House as it was before the civil war, well aware that I was sleeping in luxury in a place once crude and inhabited by slaves, people owned by others, who were bought and sold, considered assets not unlike a herd of cows.  Funny how the past continues to affect the future.

Once my host heard that I was up in the morning he came down and inquired how I liked my coffee.  He made his with a New Orleans blend that included chickory.

“Not everybody likes it.”

“That’ll do fine.  I’ll take it black.”

He talked entirely too much for that early hour but I listened politely.  Southern history seemed to just roll out of his mouth.

He had purchased Choctaw House as a business venture to showcase his family’s art collection.  His family owned at its height a 7,000 acre cotton farm in Arkansas.  His great great grandfather (there is possibly another great there) just as short as he, was the original cotton planter.  He was awarded a land grant, given the land in other words, for most of that acreage and bought the rest for sometimes under a dollar an acre.

It was said in those days, according to my host, that if a man could plant and sell three consecutive cotton crops he would have made his fortune.  His grandfather did that, and following his success married a beautiful woman nearly six feet tall, took her on a grand tour of Europe that lasted nearly a year, and for three years following their return large wooden crates containing all manner of art, brocaded cloth, custom made furniture, silverware, dishes, and most importantly to him, fine porcelain all signed by a Frenchman named Jacob Petit were unloaded on the river docks and hauled up the hill by slaves to their plantation mansion, where the mere presence of those objects  loudly proclaimed their owners' wealth. 

“So did you become a cotton farmer?” I asked.

“Heavens no.  I studied art history.  My life has been devoted to the care and the preservation of these things.  I’ll show you after your breakfast.”

The Dunleith Inn is another imposing mansion on the Natchez river bluff.  Breakfast was served in a converted horse barn on the grounds of the mansion.  Fancy is the only word to describe that layout; heavy silver, nice table cloths, delicious omelet.  The staff there almost insisted I take the free tour of the mansion, but I figured one mansion was plenty, and I still had Choctaw House to get through.

My host began the tour outside by bringing me up the sweeping double staircase that leads to the big entrance and into the dining room of that old mansion, as invited dinner guests might enter the mansion.  The table was set with more dishes than I have ever seen in my life.  According to him his family owns seven sets of Jacob Petit dishes.  He also dropped the name of the silversmith who made the utensils.  There had to a dozen pieces of silver at each place setting.  A big ass crystal chandelier hung over the table.  I don’t know about you but I get nervous around all that breakable expensive stuff.  I know it was beautiful and valuable, but to me it was over the top gaudy.  If there is an opposite of Zen simplicity, the dining room table at Choctaw House is it.

It was that way through the entire house. Chock full of porcelain.  My host kept picking up pieces of it and showing me the signature on the bottom.  I believed him after the first one but he persisted.

One of his favorites was not a Petit piece but rather a figure of a pretty woman leaning out an upstairs window of a tall skinny house, waving a red kerchief.  He explained that the brothels in Amsterdam, in the red light district, gave their best and most loyal patrons a piece of this porcelain in gratitude for all the money they spent at their establishments.  The southern men, returning to America, often gave them to their wives who thought they were lovely, and were none the wiser.  His eyes twinkled when he told stories.  He was full of them I tell you.

He explained the origin of the curtains, the bedspreads, the step stools used to climb up into the canopy beds, the painting on the walls, the busts, the fireplace andirons.  By the third floor I’d about had it, but he just kept talking.

The fourth floor was the best, lots of windows and light, and a staircase leading to the roof. 

“If the weather is good on New Year’s Day we always have a party on the roof.  My serving boys hate those parties, they have to carry all the food and drinks up from the kitchen on the first floor.  But my it is a fine place to party.  Would you like to see it?”

On the very top of Choctaw House you realize the real beauty of Natchez.  It’s the valley, the bluff, and of course the river, the central feature of that part of the warm and rich south.  You can have the art, I’ll take the geography.

As we went back down the staircase I saw a curious painting on the wall.  It depicted a flood.  In the swollen river were black people on the roof of a building floating downstream.  One of the men was trying to pull a mule up on the roof.  A woman was reaching out to a child in the water.  And on the bluff, on a widow’s walk high above like the one I had just been standing on, was a handsomely dressed white couple, the woman in a long hooped dress, the man with a tie and hat.  They were waving at the struggling black people below.  Waving.

“You like that painting?”

“Not especially no.”

“A man wants to buy the rights of that painting from me and produce a set of prints.  I’m not sure I should let him.”

“I’d get as far away from that painting as I could if I were you.”

My host looked at me curiously.

“Well, you’re a Yankee and I understand how you might feel.  But it was a way of life.”

“How many slaves did your family own?”

“We can’t exactly tell, but we believe over 200 at one point.”

“How did your family and those slaves the Civil War and the end of slavery?”

“Well even though we lost the war we didn’t lose our money.  My great great grand daddy had confederate money of course but he also had money in European banks and Northern banks.  They hedged their bets.  And they adapted quickly to a new business model after their slaves were “freed.”

“What business model was that?”

“Share cropping.  The slaves had nowhere to go and no means to get there so the landowners sold them their mules, assigned them a patch of land, built them a shack and the cotton continued to grow.  And the people that owned the land still made money.  It would never be like before but the South still offered the rich a good life.”

That’s kind of what I was thinking when I went to sleep in the slave quarters.  The rich stay rich, and the rest of us look in from the outside.  I think that’s life in America.   

Lunch in Louisiana

Soon after I crossed the Louisiana state line, traveling south on Route 425, I stopped In Bostrop for an oyster po’boy sandwich.   I’d been imagining that sandwich for quite a while.  Sam’s Southern Eatery looked to be the ideal place.  Old.  Their sign could have dated back to the 60’s.  I realized Sam might be long gone, but there were lots of cars in the parking lot.  When I entered I was slammed by with smell of hot seafood in deep fryers.  Fried shrimp baskets were their specialty.  I had my mind on oysters.

Back in the nineties a couple from Louisiana bought Fred’s Carry Outs across the street from the YSB office on Madison and made a go of it for only a short time.  They occasionally put a spicy shrimp po’boy on special and I inquired about oyster po’boys.  They reported they wouldn’t serve them because they just could not find good oysters in Illinois.

Around the holidays I brought them a container of oysters from Kroger, the kind they sell for Christmas and New Years’s Eve up north, and asked if they could Cajun them up for me in a po’boy.  The woman cooking laughed, declared it was the first time anyone had ever walked in with their own sandwich makings, but made it for me.  She said the oysters were pitiful.  Claimed you had to have oysters just shucked from the gulf for a proper oyster po’boy.  I thought it was delightful.  She suggested I get the real thing in Louisiana, and that was exactly what I was doing.

My order was up.  On the plate in front of me were light tan nuggets of fried oysters laid in a row between two sides of a  fresh baked baguette.  They were dressed with lettuce, tomato,and mayo.  On top of it I added several shakes of Crystal hot sauce. 

As soon as I bit into that sandwich from Sam’s Southern Eatery I understood what my old neighbors across the street meant when they said you had to have fresh shucked gulf oysters for a proper oyster po’boy.  If you find yourself in Louisiana, get yourself to a good place like Sam’s Southern Eatery in Bostrop.  You’ll understand what I’m talking about.   

Sam’s Southern Eatery was ringed with trees busting with beautiful white blooms.  It was the end of February in Louisiana and spring had arrived.  I asked the teen age girl who took my order what kind of trees those might be and she didn’t know.  Halfway through my po’boy I inquired of the nice old couple at a booth near me what those trees were and they smiled, looked at each other, and replied

“We can’t tell you, but aren’t they beautiful?”

I agreed that they were.

“You lived in Bostrop a long time?”

They laughed.

“All our lives,” the woman said.  “You’d think we’d know what those trees are don’t you?  I guess we just take them for granted.”

As I walked through the door on my way to the car a man approached the restaurant.

“Excuse me sir, do you know the name of these trees that are blooming here?”

“No idea.”

I concluded if the people of Bostrop could enjoy those trees for what they were, beautiful and in bloom, without knowing their name far be it from me to wonder any further.  Who does it matter?  I resolved to simply enjoy them,  just like I enjoyed that po'boy sandwich.

I got back in the Buick and headed for Natchez. 

Leaving Arkansas in Sunshine

It’s amazing what a short whiskey and an hour and a half nap on a good bed can do to improve your mood.  I woke up hungry in another strange motel room.  It was dark and still raining hard.  I ventured down to the lobby. 

I asked the night clerk, the very cheerful woman who rented me a room, if there was a rib joint close and she suggested one straight out the parking lot blocks away.  As I guided the Buick through the rain I plowed water most of the way.  I couldn’t help but think of the flooded road I turned back from and whether I would have made it had I ventured into the pond around the Forked River Bridge.  I hunched over the steering wheel reading street signs, then turned, splashed through deep water at the curb, and parked in front of a little place called the Delta Q.

There weren’t many cars in the parking lot, and when I walked in a big garbage can was in the middle of the dining room, water occasionally dripping into it.  Only a few tables were occupied.  The waitress came right over.

“Excuse the mess.  It’s been raining for three days and our flat roof just stated leaking this afternoon.  I guess it’s a two day roof.”

She handed me a menu and set a small bucket of homemade pork rinds in front of me.  They had craft beer and I ordered one.  I used to love pork rinds.

The menu told me they served all the standard rib joint fare.  I have trouble deciding between ribs or brisket.  The waitress brought my beer. 

“It says you can get your ribs wet or dry.  Which is best you think?”

“Wet.”

She didn’t hesitate.  I like that.

“The dry have good smoky flavor but sometimes they’re a little bland.  The sauce they use on the wet ribs gives them more flavor, but they’re still not what I call spicy.  Course you can put the sauces on the dry ribs yourself but I don’t know, I just think the wet are better.”

“You smoke your own meat here right?”

“Oh yeah.  The owner is all about the hogs, the wood, how hot, how long.”

“Good.  I’ll have a slab of wet ribs with baked beans and cole slaw on the side.”

“Coming up.”

I got on Delta Q’s wi-fi and checked out their competition at a site called ‘The Best 20 Restaurants in Forrest City.’  I found a little of everything; Mexican, Asian, seafood, barbeque, and steakhouses.  Twenty restaurants?  How did a town of 15,000 hit that culinary jackpot? It seemed so ironic that seven hours earlier I was unable to find even a hot dog near Frog Jump Tennessee and here I had my choice of foods.  It’s literally feast or famine in America.  Find the interstate and you apparently find the food.

Of course you do.  That’s where people with money are spending it.  This is where they’re travelling, spending the night, being away from home without a kitchen.  It’s the interstate, a funnel with people pouring through it.  I’m sure at one time you could find a nice hotel on Route 51, and probably a good cheap meal.  But why would I expect to find either there now?  The only people traveling on Route 51 are locals.  They don’t need a hotel room.  And how much money could you make in a restaurant in Frog Jump anyway?

Apparently not much given the looks of that shuttered restaurant where I regrouped in the rain.   Meaningful commerce and services appear to be over in those communities.  If you need something drive to a community which corporations find worthy of investment.  I’m not sure they are going back to small town America anytime soon.    

My waitress brought the ribs and she was right.  They were none too spicy.  I added some sauce from the table.  I figured there was not much dry rub on them either.  I get it though.  It’s that understated smokiness they’re after in the South.  I still like the sauce we’re used to farther north.  I was hungry.  The ribs were gone pretty quickly.  Good smoky beans.  The slaw was so so, drowned in sweet creamy dressing.

The waitress came to clear the table.

”What’s for dessert?”

“You sir, are in luck.”

People had been calling me sir all day.  I must look old.

“I’m biased but I serve the best bread pudding in Arkansas.”

“Did you make it?”

She laughed pretty big at that one.

“God no.  And you’re lucky.  The owner, who like me doesn’t know the first thing about bread pudding, buys two big pans a day from a lady in town that makes it fresh in her own kitchen every day.  If you want dessert, try the bread pudding.  Plenty of vanilla, touch of cinnamon.  I’m telling you it melts in your mouth.”

Not many waitresses describe a dessert like she did.  She looked hungry just talking about it.

“Bread pudding it is.”

“Good choice.  I’ll warm it for you.”

Sometimes you get an unexpected surprise on the road.  I expected bread pudding that stands tall, all square and sharp edged, sort of stiff and heavy.  This plate of bread pudding looked different, shallow and slumped over, a little sloppy.

When I got a forkful in my mouth I sat unmoving, closed my eyes, and hummed.  I did that involuntarily, I’m convinced, to shut out all other sensations but taste.  Who would think scalded milk, heavy cream, eggs, butter, vanilla, and a few spices with bread cubes could result in such complex flavor and be so damned good?  It was light and moist, disappearing in my mouth with little need for chewing.  I almost ordered another.

Hats off to the woman in Forrest City who bakes that delicious bread pudding.  I’m still mad at myself for not getting her name.  You ma’am, whoever you are, make the best bread pudding I ever had.

The next morning was still overcast and rainy.  At the breakfast buffet, still eating those instant scrambled eggs with lots of hot sauce, I caught the weather report.  There were flash flood warnings all around me.  I headed for the Interstate again. 

I took 40 W to Little Rock, thought of Bill Clinton in his heyday but not enough to stop, and stayed on 40 to Pine Bluff.  As I drove the sky began to clear.  The rain became a sprinkle, and then went away.  I turned my wipers off for the first time in days.   Screw the floods.  I left the Interstate in celebration, taking Arkansas Route south 425 toward Monticello.

On the floorboard of the passenger seat were a batch of CD’s in a cut down brown grocery bag.  My CD’s live in the shack and rarely travel.  I pulled it up on the seat beside me.  Music on the road trip was way overdue.

“Love and Theft” called to me.  I had been thinking about those songs in the silence of the past rain filled days, trying to recall whole lines and not just phrases.  Sometimes you just need to hear good songs again.  It had been way too long since I had heard those.

I first unwrapped the “Love and Theft” disc the morning of September 11, 2001.  My son had just pulled out of the drive on his way to high school.  Moe was away at college.  I had a little time alone before leaving for work and I skipped the news, anxious to hear the latest from my old friend Bob Dylan.  Later when I later got the office I discovered all hell had broken loose. 

You never know what you are going to get in a Dylan album.  I was pleasantly surprised with this one.  For Dylan it was positively buoyant.  Strong melodies and great unexpected lyrics like always.  Even his voice sounded better.  I turned up the volume that morning, just as I turned it up 17 years later, the sun shining on my Buick, speeding down some two lane Arkansas road headed for the  Louisiana state line.  The world has changed entirely since the first day I heard those tunes, but the feeling I get will always stay the same.

I was waiting for the lyrics to “Mississippi”, a state I would get to eventually, and there they came.  Four line stanzas, two rhyming couplets each.  Here’s four of the twelve.

Every step of the way we walk the line
Your days are numbered, so are mine
Time is pilin' up, we struggle and we scrape
We're all boxed in, nowhere to escape

Walking through the leaves, falling from the trees
Feeling like a stranger nobody sees
So many things that we never will undo
I know you're sorry, I'm sorry too

Well my ship's been split to splinters and it's sinking fast

I'm drownin' in the poison, got no future, got no past
But my heart is not weary, it's light and it's free
I've got nothin' but affection for all those who've sailed with me

Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay
You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

Dylan recorded his first album in 1962 when he was 21 years old.  This one was recorded in 2011, nearly fifty years later, when he was 60.  That made him 77 years old wherever he was as I was on my leisurely tour of the sodden South.  I hope he’s taking care of himself.

As I drove through the little town of Hamburg, Arkansas, “Floater (Too Much To Ask)” came on.  It’s a stroll of a tune, four line stanzas again, lines two and four rhyming most of the time.  Dylan, like many of us, makes up his own rules.  The stanzas are related in subject only a little.  Great musicians hold it all together.  Here’s but a few.

I keep listenin’ for footsteps
But I ain’t hearing any
From the boat I fish for bullheads
I catch a lot, sometimes too many

They all got out of here any way they could
The cold rain can give you the shivers
They went down the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Tennessee
All the rest of them rebel rivers

My grandfather was a duck trapper
He could do it with just dragnets and ropes
My grandmother could sew new dresses out of old cloth
I don’t know if they had any dreams or hopes

I had ’em once though, I suppose, to go along
With all the ring-dancin’ Christmas carols on all of the Christmas eves
I left all my dreams and hopes
Buried under tobacco leaves

It’s not always easy kicking someone out
Gotta wait a while—it can be an unpleasant task
Sometimes somebody wants you to give something up
And tears or not, it’s too much to ask

Turned out Hamburg was my last Arkansas town.  Civilization gets sparse near the Louisiana line.  I drove between two National Wildlife Refuges, Felsenthal and Overflow.  The Ouachita River flows through there.  Wetland areas it sounds like, full of birds, slow water, and gators.  I’m sure it’s beautiful, but I wasn’t stopping.  I was into the music, the trees, and a bright blue sky.  It was still cold in Illinois, but springtime had come to the South. 

“Moonlight” came through the speakers.  I’d forgotten all about it.  How many other beautiful things in our lives do we lose track of never to revisit?   I played it too or three times, trying to burn the tune and the lyrics into my poor old brain.  I don’t want to lose it again.  Three line stanzas, with two rhyming, and one line so pretty he repeated it in six of the eight verses.

I’ll give you the first five stanzas, but you really should listen to this one.  It’s short.   Ask Alexa or your favorite, always listening home robot to play it for you.  Bob appears to have the rights sewn up, as he should, so I can’t find a free link to give you and you don’t want to listen to a cover. 

The seasons they are turnin’ and my sad heart is yearnin’
To hear again the songbird’s sweet melodious tone
Won’t you meet me out in the moonlight alone?

The dusky light, the day is losing, Orchids, Poppies, Black-eyed Susan
The earth and sky that melts with flesh and bone
Won’t you meet me out in the moonlight alone?

The air is thick and heavy all along the levy
Where the geese into the countryside have flown
Won’t you meet me out in the moonlight alone?

Well, I’m preachin’ peace and harmony
The blessings of tranquility
Yet I know when the time is right to strike

I’ll take you cross the river dear
You’ve no need to linger here
I know the kinds of things you like

Sometimes a day and a song complement each other.  It was one of those days.  The Buick and I were headed to Natchez Mississippi, and we had all afternoon to get there.