WOODEN BEARS AND THE PURPLE PARROT

From Jackson, we ventured into the deep South to Hattiesburg, home of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum at Camp Shelby.  We got reservations at Paul B. Johnson State Park, which had an interesting below-water-level approach.  This was more fun on the scoot.

It’s on a beautiful lake with inlets full of water lilies.

With carved bears standing sentry throughout the park.

The heat wave hadn’t let up, so we did our morning walks as early as possible.

Walks and ablutions over, we offloaded the scoot and set out for Camp Shelby, which was a huge training center during WWII, and now is mostly devoted to national guard training.  But it looked like a ghost town to us.  Not a soul stirring anywhere.  And precious little signage to guide us to the museum.  When they DID have signage close to the museum, it misdirected us to the back.  I hope they give better training to the guard than they do directions to the public.

Although this was supposed to be a national museum, it still was pretty Mississippi-centric, with a lot of coverage of units and individuals from the state.  We had the place to ourselves so we could linger over anything of interest,

and there was quite a bit.  We had to take this in honor of Mom, who was a Wave back in WWII.

The thing that fascinated Loni the most was the display about how they launched and recovered seaplanes from early battleships.  If the ocean was too rough for a landing, the ship would steam in a tight circle, creating a “pond” of calm water within the circle.  The plane would land, get hoisted up, mission accomplished.  I’d never heard of this before and am somewhat skeptical about how calm a spot you could create that way.  I was most intrigued by the exhibit concerning German POW’s.  Camp Shelby was one of the main detention centers.  Frankly, those guys lived better in detention than our troops did overseas.  They even had a soccer league.  We spent several hours enjoying the exhibits and the fine air conditioning.  Then it was back outside for the ten mile trip back to the park.  We didn’t linger too much on the outside displays of tanks and helos.  Hot hot hot!

Loni didn’t feel like cooking when we got back, so . . . enter the Purple Parrot.  We had picked up a Mississippi tourist guide at the border, and one of the articles was on cuisine.  They mentioned a chef in Hattiesburg who was doing pretty upscale stuff with traditional Southern dishes.  We phoned for a reservation at his place, the Purple Parrot, duded ourselves up (I’m sure there were some puzzled looks from the local campers) and motored out on the scoot for the 15 mile trip back to town.  For once, the guidebook puffery had substance.  This was a very nice place, equal to anything in LA for decor, most patrons dressed up (ignore the buffoon in the T-shirt across the way), and the food was great.  Found an excellent Spanish white (and at a reasonable price) on the twenty page wine list, which went well with our fish dinners and my appetizer of fried green tomatoes with lump crabmeat topping.  Yes, it was delicious.  We drank it all, ate everything put before us, including totally unnecessary desserts, and left very happy campers indeed, even though the pricing was LA quality as well.  We even managed to keep the scoot upright all the way home.

ACTION, JACKSON

Hard rain last night with threat of hail, so we took the runner carpet from the rig and I climbed on the roof to lay it over our solar panel for protection.  It has a rubber bottom, so I faced that up to avoid soaking the carpet.  Hah.  Plenty of splash bounce from the roof managed to get most of it soaked.

Jackson is MS’s capital, so we first visited the Old Capitol Building, which now is a historical museum, the “new” capitol having replaced it in 1903.  This building dates from the early 1800’s, and its restoration was an enormous task, but carried out beautifully, from the gorgeous dome

to the legislative chambers, complete with mannequins and recordings of famous debates taken from the legislative records.  It was a nifty presentation.

From there we walked a few blocks through an absolutely dead downtown to the governor’s mansion, which is a hybrid.  The 19th century portion is immaculately restored and furnished with period pieces and is used for public functions.  Attached to the back is a modern townhouse which is where the gov and family live.  Seeing as how this was a slow, hot day in the middle of the week, we were the only visitors and got a private tour which was really interesting.  Docents really warm to the subject when you show more than a modicum of interest, and she did a great job, with stories about the rooms, former governors, etc.  I particularly liked the one about the gov that walked off with the mansion’s furniture, and didn’t return it until he got re-elected years later.  And then he sold it back!  Unfortunately, no pictures allowed, but she did snap us on the front steps.

Our AAA guide listed a couple of “Gem” (must-see’s) sites in Jackson, one being “The National Agricultural Aviation Museum,” and the other the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame.  Fortunately, they’re located adjacent, as we were getting very hot and sweaty motoring around on the scoot with helmets.  Did I say they were having record heat/humidity just in our honor?  To be polite, I think AAA was stretching things a little with the Gem designations.  We enjoyed both, but we certainly wouldn’t advise making a special trip to see them. What they DID have was a ridiculously cheap and delicious cafe, which clearly was attracting locals rather than museum visitors.  Grilled Tilapia, corn bread, and sides.

 

The Ag museum was more Ag than aviation, but had some interesting displays.

 

I’m not quite sure what this had to do with either, but this incredibly detailed model train setup covered a lot of square feet:

The aviation portion consisted of a few crop dusters, a pilot mannequin that had fallen backwards eons ago and never righted, and not much else. 

Outside, there was the usual collection of old-time small-town buildings, including a pharmacy, which had a display of old vials, one of which tickled Loni’s blood-banker funnybone.  What the hell is . . .

The sports hall of fame was of interest principally to Mississippians, as it only featured displays relating to the state’s athletes and coaches, all the way down to the high school level.  Well, almost only.  Somehow, there is an entire floor upstairs devoted to Dizzy Dean, who wasn’t born here, never played here, and didn’t announce here.  What he DID do was marry a Mississippi woman, and die here.  So they got his memorabilia.  For me, the best thing was the collection of Olympic Games posters:

Today truly covered the sublime to the ridiculous.  It’s all good.

WITHOUT A TRACE

. . . old time commerce would have been a lot more difficult.  Today, it’s a National Scenic Byway and an All-American Road covering the 444 miles between Natchez and just below Nashville, TN.  But it’s origins go back to a series of hunters’ paths of the Choctaw, Natchez, and Chickasaw Indians. 

By 1733, had been mapped by the French.  In the late 1700’s, Ohio farmers who had floated their goods down the rivers to New Orleans returned on foot via the Trace.  By the early 1800’s, it became a wilderness road, punctuated by inns and brigands.

  The modern trace is two lanes rolling through forests with no commercial development.  It’s quite beautiful,

although it starts to get a bit soporific after a while.  I mean, how many trees can you take anyway?

It does, however, have historical and quirky stops along its way.  Quirky:

And historical:

It’s nothing more than a large hill, but when you think the Indians constructed it by hand, without tools or draft animals, it becomes a lot more impressive.

If it looks like we’re plodding, we were!  It wasn’t the climb, which was easy, it was the heat and humidity.  Mississippi was undergoing a heat wave with the heat index well over 100.  El sweato.  The view from the top was underwhelming, but at least we weren’t being sacrificed to the spirits.

We bailed the Trace at Jackson and followed Dora’s instructions to what we thought was our RV park for the night.  Turned out it was another one we’d not heard of.  The one we were heading for closed years ago, and this one just happened to be there.  Serendipity.  It was a little slice of Mayberry, with resident kids riding scooters and playing in the lane. 

The owner was a Blanche Dubois doppelganger, with an accent that dripped honey and magnolias.  Welcome to the Sahyouth, y’all.

MAVERICK AND THE FINGER

Riverboat ring your bell,

Faretheewell Annabelle,

Luck is the lady that he loves the best.

Natchez to New Orleans,

Living on Jacks and Queens

Maverick is a legend of the West.

And that’s from memory, not the internet!  The adolescents of the ‘50’s will need no interpretation.  For you others, that’s part of the theme song of James Garner’s first starring role on TV as the riverboat gambler, Bret Maverick.  I think it’s still his iconic image, more so than the Rockford Files.  Ok, dating myself.

Yesterday we scooted across the Big Muddy from our (excellent) camp on the Louisiana side

(the view from behind our site)

to the city of Natchez, which boasts a host of preserved/restored antebellum mansions.  These are the core of the city’s tourist appeal, as there’s nothing much else there.  The local industries have been dying off, the town population is shrinking, but the mansions soldier on.  We opted for the low-cost tour which consisted of riding the scoot up and down the streets to see the mansions from the outside ($10 a head to take an inside tour)

and then to visit the National Historical Park.  That’s made up of two sites:  The William Johnson House, and the “Cotton Kingdom Estate,” Melrose.  Freebies, both.

Johnson was born a slave in 1809, freed at age eleven, and became a successful businessman, slaveholder (!), and diarist during the heyday of the cotton kingdom.  Although “free,” he nonetheless trod carefully, walking a fine and dangerous line between the full rights of a white citizen and the bondage of slavery.  Freed men could be returned to slavery at almost any time.  By the 1840’s, he had acquired substantial land holdings and established himself as a farmer as well as an urban businessman.  He owned five barber shops as well as other enterprises.  He wrote extensive diaries of daily events beginning in 1835 and ending with his murder (over a boundary dispute) in 1851.  His home in Natchez remained in his family until bought by the government for the Historical Park.

For a black man in that time period, he was living large.  The house retains a lot of the original furniture that he and his family used 160 years ago.  This is the parlor (behind glass partition, hence the reflections):

His diaries are fascinating accounts of everyday life.  It would appear there was a lot of casual violence going on, as he describes fights, stabbings, shootings, etc.  He often illustrated his entries with drawings of the participants.  This was well worth the stop.

The other half of the National Park is about a mile away, on the edge of town, the mansion and grounds called “Melrose.”  There’s Spanish Moss hanging from

 

these trees, although it’s hard to see in the pic.  The long drive winds through the foregrounds to the mansion.  No pics of the exterior as it was undergoing extensive renovation and there was scaffolding and junk all over it.  They found that the coffered rain gutters were leaking into the interior and found widespread wood damage.  Whole beams and other wood have to be replaced.  The interior, however, is incredibly preserved.  The house was built by John McMurren between 1841 and 1849.  He moved to Natchez from Pennsylvania in the mid 1820’s, established a law practice, married the daughter of a Mississippi Supreme Court judge (attaboy!), and prospered.  There’s a portrait of Mary Louisa (Mrs. McMurren) at age 15, three years before their marriage, hanging in the parlor:

How cool is that?  Like she’s keeping watch over her house, or still welcoming guests through the ages.  They set out to, and succeeded in, furnishing the home with “all that fine taste and a full purse” could provide.  Here’s their parlor, which sports gold leaf everywhere, even the wallpaper.

The blinds are reproductions of the 1840’s originals. They were unique at the time, and the governor had them copied for the Statehouse Mansion. The house was sold after the Civil War to the Davis family, and it remained in their hands until 1976 (!), retaining virtually all of the original McMurran furnishings.  The whole house is filled with the furniture, paintings, knickknacks, and china.  There is a Spode china set that has over 1,000 pieces, part of which is set on the dining room table:

That big wood thing hanging over the table is a fan, servant-operated by the pull rope you see trailing to the left behind it.  The master bedroom was huge:

 

The day bed at the foot of the main bed was for lounging during the day and for giving birth.  The first Davis owner kept samples of the carpets, wallpaper, and drapes rolled up in the basement.  Everything of those that you see in the house are reproductions of the originals, so everything really is as it looked a century and a half ago.  Very cool.

But, wait, you say?  What about the finger?  Ah, yes, the finger.  This is the Bible Belt, brother, and it’s one magnificent old edifice after another.  They truly are beautiful.  It’s hard for one to really stand out in your mind, except for . . .

COKE, DEATH, AND GLORY FOREVER

No, we’re not snorting.  After leaving Little Rock, we thought we’d get in a little kayaking in our inflatable, so we headed for “The Oasis in the Delta,” Lake Chicot State Park, down in the southeast corner of Arkansas.  It’s a 20 mile long oxbow lake, formed from a cutoff portion of the Mississippi when it changed course long ago.  The brochures had pictures of nifty cypress trees in the water which gave us visions of bayou paddling.  Well, they weren’t quite what we expected.  They just hugged the shoreline and wouldn’t make for interesting kayaking.

Plus, the wind came up a bit and we didn’t want to hassle trying to launch from those high piers.  So, we just did what comes naturally.  We loafed.

We spent two nights at Chicot and then crossed the Big Muddy.  They have built a beautiful new bridge.  Unfortunately, it’s not open, so we traveled the one that presumably is too old and decrepit to repair.  Nice view of the new one, though.

The Mississippi is every bit as big as you might have thought, with lots of long barges being pushed by tugs.

Ah, now to our title.  Our destination was Vicksburg, the scene of one of the pivotal battles of the Civil War.

First, we toured around the town and stopped at the Coca Cola museum, housed in the late 19th century candy store where Joseph Biedenharn first bottled Coca Cola.

He didn’t invent the Coke formula, that was done by a Georgia pharmacist in the 1870’s who lived only two years after his invention.  Poor sap.  The guy who bought the rights was a marketing maven, and the rest, as they say, is history.  Prior to Biedenharn, Coke was available only as a fountain drink.  The museum is kitchy-cool.

 

It includes the original bottling equipment.  Initially, it was filled one bottle at a time, no automated equipment.  At the center-right, you can see a single nozzle protruding out:  that was the filler.

 

Of course, we had to take the “pause that refreshes,” and have a Coke float.  Well, I did, anyway.

Vicksburg sits high on bluffs with a commanding view of the Mississippi, and the Confederacy used it to control the river.  From the bluffs they could shell the Union ships with devastating effect.  Lincoln, Grant, et al. believed that they needed to control the river so as to cut the Confederacy in half, east-west.  Vicksburg was the key.  Attempts to take the city by land and river failed (with shocking loss of life),

so Grant decided to lay siege, and in 1863 did so for forty-seven days, ending in surrender of the city by Gen. Pemberton.  The city then became the base of Union operations in the area for the rest of the war.  Sherman began his “march to the sea” from there.  The National Military Park, established in 1899, memorializes these events, and originally encompassed the entire extent of the siege and defense lines.  It consists of a beautiful one-way loop drive through the picket lines and gun emplacements so you can see just how they faced each other and where various charges and battles were fought. 

Throughout, there are monuments to the “glory” of the various regiments and individuals who fought there.

So there you have it:  coke, death, and glory.

Another part of the park features the USS Cairo museum.  The Cairo was one of 8 or so identical, iron-clad gunboats operated by the Union navy on the rivers.  In 1862, it was steaming up the Yazoo, north of Vicksburg, when it had the ignominious honor of being the first vessel in history to be sunk by an electrically detonated mine.  It sank into the ooze, where it was preserved amazingly well, with its stores, armament, and personal gear of the crew all recovered in the early 1960’s.  It’s all on display here, as well as the boat.  The bottom still has the original timbers; the top is a reconstruction, with a cradling framework to keep everything together.  It’s amazingly big. This is taken looking directly at the bow.  As you can see, it was well-armored topside, but vulnerable under the waterline.

   Before leaving Vicksburg, it was time to get Albatross serviced as we had about 4k+ miles since the last oil change.  Fortunately, after looking mournful, I convinced the service manager at the local Ford dealership to squeeze us in right away.  Squeeze he did!