March 2023
Admittedly I did not give Mississippi a fair shot, spending only a couple of days albeit a lot of miles so did see a lot from my car. Perhaps I should have taken a day to recoup having flown overnight with a layover which meant only an hour or two of sleep with the added pleasure of my first in air use of a barf bag on flight 2 of my trip (sadly the likely culprit being the midnight meal on my first leg from SF to Houston – that bump to first class which allowed me that meal turned out to not be so great). Mississippi was also a casualty of my getting back into my travel groove and some pretty significant rain. I spent the first half of the first day getting my car serviced in Louisiana – though happy to report that I was successful in reconnecting my battery and everything worked without issue. From Metairie, LA I drove to Natchez, which I had visited a few months back, but was told I needed to go back to drive the full 404 mile Natchez Trace. I was questioning my decision as I watched the temperature gauge on my car go from the mid 70s to 60s to 50s and other than the pines, the green trees become leafless sticks, the winter having stripped all but a few dead brown ones that were still hanging on. I never really felt comfortable in Mississippi – though the rain may have had something to do with it or that people did not seem to say hello as they passed like they did in Louisiana and even Florida. I technically spent my first night in Mississippi in Louisiana having ended up crossing the river for my overnight lodging at an RV park and my nearby dinner consisting of boiled crab, shrimp, crawdads, and potatoes. I had to search YouTube to find instructions on how to open and eat the crawdads. Some things I found in Mississippi (many of these also in Tennessee, Alabama, well you get the drift) – confederate flags on things like back tire covers and merged into a collage of flags, a lot of crosses small and large, bible hymns playing outside the Chevron gas station, and lots of Jesus signs (including judgement day warnings). Also, the roads are red, colored with the red clay you see everywhere. The clay also turns white shoes red as told to me by the front desk clerk at the Olive Branch hotel who bemoaned the lack of sidewalks and pavement outside the city centers that ended her ability to buy white sneakers.
NATCHEZ. This is now a charming and historic place on the Mississippi river, the entire town being a National Park. Natchez was also once a port town for the slave trade and the visitor center is a must stop place to get some of this history. A lot of work has gone into restoring buildings and posting narrative signs as you stroll about town explaining its history, well mostly the history of the buildings and the positive aspects of the town. But walking along you also see the disparity between those with money and those without. At the visitor center you will get more of the not so pretty side of Natchez with copies of newspaper ads to buy/sell slaves and bounties for those who escaped among other exhibits to make real what words of explanation cannot about the cruelty and the unfathomable allowance of one human being owning another. Natchez is also one of the rare small towns in the south where you will find a Jewish synagogue in the town center, the first services in Mississippi being held there in the 1800s. The population is near zero again, after having peaked in 1905. Following the civil war, Jewish merchants were able to gain wealth through their ownership of stores and services as they further integrated into confederate society and entered politics in the early 1930s.
NATCHEZ TRACE AND HIGHWAY 9. I found myself driving the Natchez Trace with few other cars which makes sense as at the end of winter there are mostly sticks for trees but just enough hint of a bloom here and there to taunt one about how beautiful it would be with full foliage. I was again running on little sleep, having a deficit from my flight and then another from my first night in the car with giant mosquitos buzzing about. The Trace put me in a trance. There is no variety so I was bored. I did stop at one spot to hike and gaze at the cypress trees in the swamp, but while taking this lovely photo, I heard the loud chomp of a reptile emerging from the murky water so ran to the other side of the bridge only to realize I was now on the shore almost level with the swamp and an easier target than I was on the low bridge. So I ran back across the bridge, hearing another chomp as I passed the same spot and jetted to my car to be on my way. After that excitement, growing bored with the unvarying landscape, I exited the Trace to take Highway 9 which allowed me to see small towns, run down homes, large estate homes, and the actual living part of Mississippi as I took a random person’s advice to see Ole Miss. Finding the campus underwhelming, I took a quick drive into Memphis and finding it fairly empty on a cold Wednesday night, ended up looking for less expensive lodging and landed in Olive Branch, Mississippi.
OLIVE BRANCH. I would not go out of my way to come here, but it is more reasonably priced than Memphis and I did not have to worry about where I parked my vehicle. I found a great burger place, SideStreet, where you order your burger and then eat it next door at the Mississippi Ale House, a craft beer bar. They also happened to have live music that night, a very talented female singer / guitarist. I find that in the south, you find these fantastic musicians everywhere, much better than what you find at a small bar in California. It just highlights how many great singers there are out there trying to make it and how few will.
Yea, that is it for Mississippi. Next up, Tennessee and Alabama.