Month: November 2022 (Page 1 of 3)

No rain today, miraculously. It was 75 and sunny. Too hot for my tastes; I suppose I can’t be pleased. I stopped for breakfast at a local chain, Mr. Ronnie’s Donuts, which is perhaps the best name for a donut shop in existence. Good, cheap food, especially the buttermilk special. On southward, to where the land is slowly sinking into the sea.

The Mississippi Delta is experiencing the fastest-rising sea levels in the world. It’s currently clocking in at about 1cm of rise per year. That doesn’t sound very dramatic; the visual of losing a football field every hour to the Gulf of Mexico is more striking. It’s so quick here because the land is primarily sediment from the Mississippi, which is much looser and more prone to erosion than your run-of-the-mill coastline. The end result is a region that has, seemingly, been let go by humans. Nobody wants to build here, and the few structures that remain are junked or on stilts. Marshes surround Louisiana Route 1 on both sides, and by my estimate will overtake it within my lifetime. 

Egrets were out in full force, with their strange kinked necks, and so were commercial trucks and sportsmen towing fishing boats. I was the only sedan. I thought the area would be quieter, but the vehicles that do pass through were pure noise pollution, belching and squealing as they passed. I drove to the toll bridge and saw the road rise into the sky, renovated fifty feet into the air. Treat the symptoms, not the disease, I guess (although the Delta would still be sinking without the effects of climate change). I drove back to solid ground feeling less inspired than I’d hoped.

A quick forty-minute jog brought me to the New Orleans suburbs. I stopped at Waffle House, because I had to. The hash browns there were more like spaghetti, which was not an unpleasant sensation. I sat in the parking lot, marveling at my trip so far. It took me three and a half months to get to that Waffle House. I earned those potatoes.

Lastly, a programming note. Livi is once again flying down to join me for a Vacation-ception, so I’ll be off the grid for the next few days. I’ll probably be back on Thursday. Until then, I will be thoroughly ignoring my diet.

Today was all rain. I woke up to it—sharp, irregular, sounding like hail—on the roof of the car. If it wasn’t 60 degrees, I would’ve guaranteed it was hail. It picked up quickly until it blocked everything else out. Sure, you could see well enough to drive, but you couldn’t focus on anything else. It was constant and unyielding. People acted normally, though, so I supposed these storms were normal for Louisiana.

I drove south. The locations weren’t important. The differences in the landscapes were washed out. Towns came and went, and still the rain came down, strong enough to flood the sides of the road. Water sprayed from every car’s tires, and occasionally it gathered deeply enough that small ponds formed on the highway. I was grateful for the free undercarriage wash.

I think the static pattern of the rain lulled me into its rhythm, because when it finally stopped at sundown, I became irritable. Every bit of stimulus was too much. In a parking lot, the car next to me blasted Chris Brown. I have no strong feelings regarding Chris’s music, but I could not think about anything else. I couldn’t disengage. I missed the rain. Is that meteorological Stockholm syndrome? I’ll have to ponder that tomorrow with a clearer head.

Not much to report today, folks. I’m creeping infinitesimally closer to New Orleans, where I have a hot date on Monday. This is the travel equivalent of showing up to the party fifteen minutes early.

I stopped for a coffee in Opelousas, then continued to Lafayette. The morning’s soundtrack was Creedence Clearwater Revival, the best swamp-rock band to ever come out of San Francisco. I stopped along the way to write down some lyrics. By the afternoon, I’d thrown them out (too self-indulgent) but kept the frame and the tune. I once heard in passing from the preeminent director Matt Cahoon that a great artist sets aside ninety-seven percent of their output and highlights the best three percent. With the amount of absolute junk that passes through my head, I’m inclined to agree.

I stopped for lunch at the Judice Inn, which is not an inn but rather a burger bar. No fries or sides, just meat, cheese, and toppings. Simple and spectacular. I think New Englanders might be too uppity for this kind of restaurant, which is horribly depressing. I drove across the street to a local coffee chain and listened to the Bruins set the NHL record for most home wins to start the season. This may just be their year.

Groceries, laundry, gas, water. The rest of the afternoon struggled by. It has been desperately hard to limit myself to one restaurant a day, but I will hold strong. Tonight I have a delicious, scrumptious-looking salad to ingest. Tomorrow can’t come soon enough.

Today was strange. Not just because I wasn’t home for the holiday, but because I was out. I had moved to a Walmart to sleep last night—the forest was a bit skeevy for my taste—and I awoke to an empty parking lot. The streets of Alexandria weren’t deserted, but they were very, very quiet. It was a calm, reflective morning, perfect for Thanksgiving.

I didn’t care about missing Labor Day (mediocre) or Halloween (actively terrible except for the excitement of the little kids), but I am somewhat broken up about missing this one. If you’ve followed this blog, you can guess that I enjoy the food. But I also appreciate the sentiment of the day and its lack of pretense. There are no decorations, no Thanksgiving songs. The myth of Thanksgiving’s origin is dangerous, but I tend to associate that with the shortcomings of our public schools and not with the day itself. No, Thanksgiving is a wonderful day and an even better weekend. Best of all, it kicks off the halcyon glow of December, when the entire country celebrates the end of one cycle and the start of another. Christmas as a holiday is nice, but December in total? Incredible. A true blessing before we collectively nosedive toward the nadir that is February.

I decided not to try to replace Thanksgiving. Instead, today was a collection of short travel and pastimes. I bounced from spot to spot, walking around if able, then hiding in the car once a signature Louisiana storm blew in. I puzzled, I listened to music and podcasts, I read. It was a pleasant day out of context. My only two concessions to the holiday were a bowl of stuffing with lunch and a moment spent thinking about the gifts and blessings in my life. I think I’ll cook myself a miniature Thanksgiving dinner once I get back home.

After lunch (boudin balls, which are basically Cajun arancini), I drove south to Opelousas. I’ll be moving pretty slowly over the next few days, taking in the state. Enjoy your leftovers!

I didn’t sleep well last night. I think the rest stop where I stayed was too bright. Back into the forests tonight for a completely natural camp-out. My breakfast today was delicious—a simple donut that dissolved in my mouth like a breath strip. It may have been spun out of gold. I crossed the river into Louisiana with plenty of optimism.

The new state immediately felt different. Only five miles down the road, I saw my first drive-through daiquiri shop. There were no sub shops, only po’ boy emporiums. The earth felt just a tad swampier. I drove through several parishes, Louisiana’s equivalent of counties, and wound up in Alexandria. (I just realized I drove from Memphis to Alexandria—not bad.) I sat through an oil change and a tire rotation, then walked around downtown. Not the fanciest of cities, certainly not as posh as Natchez, but down-to-earth and likable. 

I decided to stop at one of the aforementioned po’ boy shops and get my Thanksgiving fix a day early. Everyone, there is something magical in the food here. The sliced turkey, which I usually find bland, had kick. The condiments and toppings were high-quality and complimentary. Maybe I’m the victim of a self-fulfilling prophecy. No matter. My stomach was very happy today.

I spent the rest of the afternoon reading in the library. I’ve been working through The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes as I go, tracking down a copy and banging out two or three stories every week. It’s an inspiring way to read a book. I’ll have more downtime this week than usual, so once I finish I might move onto Shirley Jackson or Flannery O’Connor. Or I might eat more. Time will tell.

Twenty minutes to the west of Jackson, I hopped on the Natchez Trace Parkway. This road is the cousin of the Blue Ridge Parkway, which I drove in Virginia, and it may well be even prettier. The direct sunlight filled up the morning, and the sheer variety of trees kept me interested around every turn. I stopped to walk along a dry creekbed filled with fallen leaves and was surrounded by animals. Squirrels cascaded across the trees, and a white-tailed deer sprang out of the leaves across the creek. What a delightful, natural place to spend the morning.

I spent two hours on the Parkway, which unsurprisingly ended in the town of Natchez. Initially, the streets were populated by chains of all kinds, but as I crossed over Highway 61 and neared the Mississippi River, a true downtown emerged. In many ways, it looked like a New England downtown, with venerable brick and wood buildings and cobblestone alleys. But the streets were gridded, not tangled, and the occasional dramatic mansion gave the area some local flavor.

The best part, of course, was the riverwalk. I took a small stroll in the early afternoon, then came back at sunset. It’s much quieter than I would have expected; the streets aren’t busy and the riverboats are silent. I had slipped a bit with my diet (extra fried chicken), so I needed to get my steps in. I walked a mile each way along the Mississippi, admiring the shifting views and the slow gradient of color as the sun tucked itself away. 

The weather is warm enough that I can start camping again. I’ve made the adjustment several times at this point, so it shouldn’t be too hard to get comfortable in the car again. I will try to return to a normal eating pattern tomorrow, but with some of the restaurants coming up, that may be an impossible battle.

Jackson, Mississippi has a population of almost 150,000 people, and I saw none of them today. That’s an exaggeration, but only just. The streets were as empty as the ghost towns in Utah and Texas. I walked around downtown for about an hour and only saw three or four other pedestrians. Occasionally, a car would drive by. For the most part, Jackson is silent.

I would guess the pandemic hit the town especially hard, and I’ve read inflation is especially high in the South as well. The boarded-up buildings and closed businesses are not ancient remnants—they seem fairly recent occurrences. It’s not unpleasant here; I don’t feel unsafe like I did in parts of Washington and Oregon, or unhealthy like I did in northwestern Arkansas. It doesn’t feel soulless or condemned. It feels empty, like a shed snakeskin. There’s potential here, and nobody around to fulfill it.

The first two restaurants I tried were closed. The third stretched the definition of a restaurant. The outdoor seating was normal, but inside were a row of folding chairs, a trash can, newspaper clippings on the wall, and two windows into the kitchen. The walls were painted orange, and a floor-to-ceiling window looked out into a parking garage. It felt like the waiting room at an oil change shop. The catfish plate, which I took back to the hotel, was just fine, but I will remember that restaurant forever.

The weather is warming up, so this may be my last night in a hotel for a while. I’ll enjoy the sheets and the shower, if not the expense. I’ll see you in Louisiana.

In Memphis, stopping at a red light is optional. I have never seen such blatant disregard for the laws of traffic as I did today. I have a shellshocked sort of respect for them; just as New Englanders jaywalk with impunity, so too do Memphis residents live dangerously.

I stopped at the Cupboard Restaurant, which the Food Bible refers to as one of the country’s best “meat and three” stops. The meat is your choice of southern staples like ham, fried chicken, or chicken-fried chicken. The “three” means you get three choices from a shockingly long list of vegetables. Some were simple—sliced tomatoes and buttered squash. Some were fancy—eggplant casserole and carrot/raisin salad. Some weren’t vegetables—stuffing, French fries, and mac and cheese. Those would be the three sides my dad would order here. I tried to be healthier with my meal. The food was tasty, but more importantly, it tasted fresh and robust. It was as close to a home-cooked meal as I’ll get out here.

I checked out the facades of the legendary Sun and Stax Records buildings. Sun Records is responsible for breaking musicians like Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and Elvis Presley; Stax recorded the Staple Singers, Wilson Pickett, and Otis Redding. I’ve been spending too much money to indulge fully in the Memphis Blues experience, so I enjoyed what I could see and returned to Mississippi on Highway 61. This is the big one, folks: the road where blues was born, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta.

The most important spot on US-61 is where it intersects US-49. This is where Robert Johnson, one of the first great bluesmen, sold his soul to the devil. This is the crossroads in Crossroads Blues, and the place where Ralph Macchio beat Steve Vai in a guitar duel. It’s a little different now in that there is no crossroads. There’s an interchange instead. Maybe that’s why I didn’t feel any thinning of reality.

I drove on until an hour past sundown, arriving in the capital city of Jackson. I had secured a very reasonable rate at the Hilton, so I decided to book two nights instead of one. I tried to find somewhere to eat dinner, but everywhere within two miles was closed by 7:30. Weird. I grabbed a soda and a frozen burrito from the hotel store and slumped back to my room. Not quite home-cooked.

I didn’t wake up until 10:30 today. I must have been more exhausted than I thought. I scrambled to make checkout and bounced into the car, then set off parallel to I-30 into Little Rock. Along the way, I stopped for a bagel and a Mayan latte (chocolate and cayenne). I also filled up my tank for $2.94 a gallon, which is currently a record. Arkansas has its points.

My activity of the day was to visit the Little Rock Central High School. In 1957, the Little Rock Nine, a group of Black students, enrolled in this all-white high school and endured bitter, nationally publicized opposition. The site is now a museum, like Monroe Elementary in Topeka, but my visit here was pedestrian. The staff were polite but busy, and the exhibits were passive instead of dynamic. The mood was definitely more “visitor center” than “ground zero”. I still learned from my trip, but I didn’t feel nearly as much.

I kept driving east, stopping in an isolated field to practice the saxophone. I was in the Mississippi Delta now, in a bottomland hardwood forest. The trees were tall, straight, and orderly. As the country flattened out and opened up, I started to appreciate it more. It felt better and healthier. Those good feelings continued into lunch, where I stopped at the chipper but awkward Craig’s Barbecue. The building is a small white shack, like the annex of a government building. The front door is undersized and scrapes along the ground, and the dining room was an odd mixture of barebones functionality and youth-birthday-party charm. There was no menu. I needed to trust the Food Bible on this one—and I was rewarded with a cheap, reasonably portioned pork sandwich that blew up my mouth with flavor. Deeply smoked meat, furious sauce and sweet crunch slaw—absolutely perfect.

After another hour and a half, I saw the Mississippi River again, fifty times larger than in Minnesota. I’ve stopped among the riverside casinos for the night. I considered going to Graceland tomorrow, but I’m not enough of an Elvis fanatic to justify the $80 tour. Instead, I’ll peek at a couple other spots in Memphis and start down Mississippi.

During my ceaseless observation of human nature, I have identified a peculiar phenomenon that occurs in restaurants. Let’s use last night as an example. I was in line to order, right behind a woman who told her husband she wanted the pork tenderloin sandwich. Not what I would get at a barbecue restaurant, but so far, so normal. She then flagged down a member of the staff and asked him which meal he recommended. He listed a few of his favorites: the slaw burger, the catfish plate, the chopped brisket. The customer’s brow wrinkled. What about the pork tenderloin sandwich? she asked. The employee gave a diplomatic answer, she thanked him, and she ordered the sandwich. 

Why do people do this? It breaks my brain. If you know what you want, that’s great! You’re happy, and it saves everyone else time. If you want to check if your preferred meal/restaurant/hike/whatever is any good, ask about it directly. That makes sense too! Yet people instead ask broadly and get upset when the employee doesn’t recommend the thing they already know they want. Douglas Adams would have a field day with this. Alas, this is not satire; this is my reality, and I grow more confused by the week.

Back to the trip! I didn’t sleep especially well, thanks to the lingering effects of the shot, so I rested for a while and left the hotel around 10. Fifteen minutes later, I had crossed into Arkansas, home of great musicians like Levon Helm and Bill Clinton. Some parts of the Ozark region are quite lovely—the fall foliage, the rolling hills, the long and winding roads. The manmade additions are less enjoyable. The rural houses are crumbling, shambly creations, and there’s more Confederate flags here than anywhere else I’ve been.

The weather was chilly, and I didn’t feel like doing much besides driving, so I stopped for lunch in Russellville and hightailed it into the Little Rock suburbs, where I found a cheap hotel. I spent the rest of the day playing music and recovering. I’m feeling much better now, and should be ready for a more rigorous tomorrow.