“Well, I’m goin’ to Jackson”

Monday, August 13, 2012

I sailed through Mississippi to Jackson. Part of the guidelines I had set for this trip was to stay off the interstates. This was a rule I had to break. I had spent a little too much time in Austin, slept in in New Orleans, and I had to be in the tail-end of Virginia and back home within a week, with plenty of stops in between.

A note about Steinbeck’s travels through Mississippi: there’s almost nothing known. What we do know is that he sent a postcard on December 3 from Pelahatchie — a little town on the other side of Jackson — and was at his home at Sag Harbor, New York just a few days later.

One thing is certain: Steinbeck was right about interstates. In Travels, he wrote about the “great high-speed slashes of concrete and tar called ‘thruways,’ or ‘superhighways'” and said with an air of prescience, “When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.”

Vicksburg, Mississippi

Monday, August 13, 2012

I came up on Vicksburg all at once. Here was a town I had heard of all my life but had never actually visited. The Civil War plays an active role in the consciousness of the South. It is not so much that every person thinks “The South will rise again” like some sort of breathless mantra, but the history, and the stories, and the places are often still living, breathing parts of everyday life. In my hometown, there is an old inn calls Pope’s Tavern, which served as a hospital and meeting center to Confederate, and, in time, Yankee, soldiers. Same as Weslyan Hall on my college campus. And standing half-way across the Tennessee River is what we call “Train Bridge.” The story I’ve heard told is that at some point during the war, the Union troops took Florence, which stands on the north side of the Tennessee River. The Confederates who retreated south to Muscle Shoals burned the only bridge that crossed the wild Tennessee at that time. Today, half of the bridge still stands and serves as a romantic place to watch the sunset and/or shoot wedding and/or band photos.

One Year Later…

Okay. So it’s been a year since I left this blog out to dry.

Blame it on a post-grad slump. Blame it on a failed job opportunity in China. Blame it on laziness (most accurate). But, whatever the reason, I didn’t give a damn about writing on this thing.

Until now. I’m currently living in Changchun, China, and I have an unquenchable desire to start this baby up again and finish this journey.

I hope you’ll keep reading and follow me as I pick up the scent of my own trail again.

Also, if you are interested, I’m writing on another blog about my life in China. You can check it out at South By Far East.

My next post about Vicksburg, Mississippi will be out tomorrow!

“Graduated” or “(Far) Eastbound and Down”

Well hi there. Long time, no see.

I apologize for the extreme hiatus over the past couple of months. I hope you all will continue to follow me as I get back in to the swing of writing about my adventures of following Steinbeck through the South. There’s still a long way to go, and a short time to get there (I’m eastbound, just watch ol’ Bandit run). I’ve had some great developments over the past few weeks I want to tell you about first:

1. I graduated the University of North Alabama (applause)
2. Upon graduation, I slipped into a period of catatonic mental paralysis during which exactly zero creative things happened  (d’awww with a tinge of failure)
3. I was accepted for a job to teach English in Wuhan, China — to kindergarteners (d’awww because Chinese kids are freakin’ adorable)

So yes. I will be moving to China on February 23 for the next five months. I found this out last Thursday (January 24), so I’m still a little shell-shocked. I’m very much ready for a new experience, and I plan on blogging about it, so if you like this blog, stay tuned for another one about my experiences in the People’s Republic of China.

Because of the Great Chinese Firewall, my writing may become more sporadic (which would be ridiculous considering its condition right now). Many sites — including all Google sites, social media, WordPress, anything to do with freedom of speech, and other fun things — are blocked. If I am unable to post, my sister has agreed to post for me.

She’s a super-cool, awesome, plaid, fun-loving bundle of adorable, and you should most definitely check out her blog here.

ALSO, if you haven’t seen it already, check out my newest page at the top of the website. It chronicles my musical journey through the South. Some of it I have written about already. A lot of it is still to come. Either way, I hope you enjoy the tunes that carried me through this wonderful region of the U.S. The music along my trip was a road map, a cultural indicator, and a highway companion.

Now, I’m going to get refreshed on my trip and begin again. Next stop: Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Stay Tuned…

To all readers and followers,

Thanks to all of you who have been following me on the road chasing Steinbeck through the American South.

My writing, however, will have to take a brief hiatus while I do all of the those little, necessary things to graduate from college.

I hope that you’ll stay tuned for updates and continue reading once I’m able to write more in the next couple of weeks. Until then, please check out the archives and see where I’ve been on the trip so far. I’ve still got a long way to go, a lot of food to eat, a lot of people to meet, and a lot of music to hear.

Thanks for your support!

Sincerely,

Andy Thigpen

Sepia Streets and Silent Ruins

Monday, August 13

Natchez, Mississippi is one of the most pleasant towns I had experienced so far on my trip. I’m not sure if my early morning drive through the Louisiana and Mississippi borderlands had put me in a mood to appreciate small town aesthetics, or if the town was genuinely that pleasant, but I relished it regardless. I felt like the whole down town area should be shrouded by faded, washed-out sepia — as many small Southern towns should be.

I parked close to the river next to a pretty, white gazebo and cleaned myself up before finding breakfast. It was a little after 9 a.m., and the air promised me a warm, sunny day. The sun bounced off of the river — and the River. So many words have been written about the Mississippi River, I’m still not sure what to say. Nothing I write seems to fully grasp the feeling, the knowing, that America is embodied in this river. The unassuming power masked by a slow, dark gait. The opportunity for adventure. The great jugular of middle America. The boundary of East and West that is more tangible than the Great Divide. See? Nothing I say will do it justice. Go read Mark Twain.

A couple of ladies out walking suggested I try the Natchez Coffee Co. for breakfast. The interior of the place was done in Southern Chic style. There were a few chairs hung on the warm-colored walls. Sheer fabric draped over head off-set by faint Christmas lights strung above it. All Southern, cutesy and possibly from Etsy.

I had a meal named the “Little Richard.” I asked the waitress why the name, and she said she couldn’t figure it out either. I suppose Little Richard has eaten his share of omelets and grits. Just to mention: the omelette was delicious and huge, the grits were alright, and the coffee was great.

After breakfast, I strolled around down town, checked out some book shops and just soaked in the morning. It felt strange to be in Mississippi. There’s not usually a sudden change in psyche from one state to the next, but it felt weird to be in the Mississippi. I’ve grown up in north Alabama, less than an hour from the Miss. and Ala. state line, but this far south was a different vibe and a different context. I mentioned the streets should be shrouded in sepia, and that’s true, but with the old-timey vision comes old-timey memories. And in the South, our memories have long, dark shadows.

There’s a reason why Natchez native, Richard Wright, author of Native Son, said in his autobiography, Black Boy, that “This was the culture from which I sprang. This was the terror from which I fled.” The fact is, mid-20th century Mississippi — or anywhere in the South, for that matter — wasn’t cast in sepia. It was cast in black and white. Our history is steeped in the distinction between the two.

I don’t mean to say that we have nothing to be proud of, and that we should live in the shadow of our faults forever. We’ve got a lot of beauty and art and culture here. And every nation, every region and every individual has their own faults, shortcomings and crimes. To live in the past would be to deny the future. And while we frequently fall on our faces, there are those in the South who actively try to embrace the future. To do so, we must acknowledge the memory, take responsibility and offer no excuses. We must pick up and move on.

That said, I found myself following historical marker signs to a place called “Forks in the Road.” To be fair to my Mississippi readers: I had no clue what this place was. I wasn’t going to seek out racial history so that I could beat your state over the head with it. Forks of the Road was Mississippi’s biggest slave market prior to the civil war. Where there is now a line of trees, an information booth about the site and an open, grassy area, thousands of slaves would be auctioned off to landowners each year. The roads that intersect there would carry slaves from nearby towns, all the way east to Georgia, and all the way north-east to Alabama and Tennessee via the Natchez Trace.

I was particularly impacted a memorial next to the information booth. There was no marker for it. It was simply a concrete square with iron shackles and chains emerging from it. All open and broken. Something about the barrenness of it, the way it just lay there with nothing to call attention to it, left an impression on me. It said all it needed to say.

————————————

I drove on, and I was sad to leave Natchez behind. For as dark as I depicted it, it really was a pleasant town that I would’ve loved to explore more. It had charm and novelty, and if it were to be embodied in a person, it would be in a rocking chair on a front porch, knitting and softly humming a hymn.

While I regretted leaving so soon, I was anxious to press forward. I needed to be in Jackson that night, and I still had to hit Vicksburg. It wasn’t Jackson or Vicksburg I was excited about, though. Somewhere about halfway to Vicksburg on Highway 61, a small county road turns left and wanders off into the woods. From that little rivulet of asphalt, a dirt road delves deeper into the pines and empties out in front of the Windsor Ruins.

The Windsor Plantation was built in 1861 and cost $175,000 at the time (that’s the equivalent to approximately $4,797,515 in today’s economy). The plantation home was occupied by Confederate and Yankee troops during the Civil War, as well as Mark Twain after the fact. It’s life was cut short in 1890 when it burned to the ground after a party guest allegedly dropped a cigarette. The state now owns the ruins, and they have been used in several films.

What stands now are the massive columns which are characteristic of antebellum Greek revival architecture. It was eerie walking between the columns. They stood black, silhouetted by the sun, and there was no sound. No sound. I walked over to a column that had wandered out a little distance into the woods somehow, and my feet self-consciously crushed the leaves under them. No sound. Any birds that chirped did so sparingly. I heard no squirrels, and the wind never shook the leaves. I sat down on the column with ruins standing through the trees in front of me. And I sat. I had been moving so fast that it was good to sit in silence for a little while and feel everything sit still with me. Here was a place where history stopped, and I was happy to stop with it.

————————————

When I got back on the road, I felt cleansed. Call it prayer, call it meditation, call it sanctuary, call it hippie-talk: there is nothing better for the soul than a few moments of silence, alone, on a sunny day in August in the heart of the Delta.

Wrong Side of the Mississippi

Monday, August 13

Last night, I knew I slept somewhere past Baton Rouge heading toward the Mississippi line. This morning, I woke up on the wrong side of the Mississippi River. I’m not sure how it happened. Even after staring at maps and retracing my steps via Google, I still can’t figure out where I went wrong. This was the first time I blatantly went the wrong way and was far off-course. Of course, it wasn’t a huge issue. The biggest problem is that from where I was, the next place to cross back over the Mississippi was in Natchez: my destination. Another, minor issue was more of a novelty. I really wanted to drive up Highway 61, if only for Bob Dylan.

There’ll be no killing done on Highway 61 this time.

But there I was up Highway 1, a good thirty minutes out of the way. I could’ve gone back and wasted an hour going on the “right” road, or I could’ve pressed forward and deviated from my plans and arrangements. I chose to go on and follow this road north. They both went to the same place anyway. And maybe there’s a bridge that has been built and the map hasn’t been updated, I thought. I was using paper maps, keep in mind.

I kept driving and pushing north through back roads. There were few, if any, road signs, and many of the communities I passed through had no names I’ve seen on any maps. In one of these intersections, I made another wrong turn. The road curved through low hills, and just when I thought This isn’t right, the road went over a hill, past a driveway and fell abruptly right into an inlet headed toward the Mississippi. An old man on a big riding lawn mower was riding by as I backed out of the watery dead end. I rolled down my window as he killed the engine.

“‘Morning. I believe I’m a little turned around,” I said.

“I b’lieve you’re right,” he said. His humor was as dry as his red, cracked hands.

“What’s the best way to get up to Natchez? I got turned around last night and ended up on the wrong side of the river.”

“Well, you could turn around and go back the way you came.” The pragmatism of old Southern men runs so deep it makes the roots of live oaks as soft as onion grass. “Otherwise the next place to cross over is right before you get to Natchez. In Vidalia.”

This is not the Vidalia of onion fame.

“Alright. I wanted to keep on this road, if possible.”

He gave me the classic road directions any local will give to city-folk, which will inevitably make almost no sense. The spiel changes depending on locale. It usually features a bridge, a barn or silo; a river in wetter places; any number of hills and/or tree lines; churches, a series of shops or business in cities; other towns and local landmarks like a water tower or an ancient, junked car. Also, any one of these things can fill the void of: “Now if you hit ________, you’ve gone too far.” This one involved a couple of barns, road signs and a barber shop with a sign in the front yard. The most defined thing to look for was the levee road, which I was to follow all the way to Vidalia.

I thanked him mightly (we thank people mightly in the South. You’ve got to really be mightily with it, because we’ll know if you don’t put your back into it) and drove on. I looked in the rearview mirror, and the old man didn’t stare or watch me drive away. He hit his ignition, turned the mower around and puttered back up his driveway. I was barely a speed bump in his day, and I’d be surprised if, when he sat down to a breakfast of biscuits, preserves, bacon and coffee, he even mentioned it to the wife.

I saw only one barn, no road signs and the barber shop with a white, plywood sign painted in red and blue letters: “Barber Shop: Call for appointment.” Somehow, I found my way to the levee road and set out for Natchez.

I can’t lie and say I took all of this in stride. I was frustrated and speeding. I didn’t want to lose time by getting lost. I only had a week to get to Virginia, and there was a lot to see between here and there. Once I got on the levee road, my frustrations slipped out my open windows. It was fifteen-past-eight in the morning, and the sun was up, but there was still dew on the grass and fog on the ponds and levees. The Great Mississippi Vein would swell up close to the highway on the right, glitter for a few miles, then curve wide and disappear behind a wall of trees that I didn’t have names for. To my left, pumpjacks were nodding in agreement with each other, but not the Earth, in fields of dirt behind fields of green that looked like cotton not ready to bloom. Some of the jacks were stopped and rusted like seesaws on a forsaken playground, or a rocking horse collecting dust in the attic.

The sun and I kept climbing perpendicular to each other. Today I was determined to make it all the way to Jackson. That meant hitting Natchez and Vicksburg today, soaking up everything along the way. I needed to rush because tomorrow I had an interview in Jackson with none other than Mrs. Jill Connor Browne, more popularly known as The Sweet Potato Queen. If you aren’t familiar, you will be. She is very familiar and very particular.

The Sweet Potato Queen (A.K.A. Jill Connor Browne)

“Baby, Please Don’t Go”

Sunday, August 12

I woke up, peeled my eyes open and stood in the hotel room. Why am I here? What’s going on? Is this real life? 

I checked out almost an hour late. The lady at the desk made a comment about it, but nothing was done in the end. I was so exhausted, I didn’t and don’t know how I was walking. The suitcase lolled behind me, and it took me much longer than it should have to find my car. Once found, I loaded up and sat in the driver’s seat to plan. I knew I wanted to go to Cafe du Monde, and I knew I wanted some real New Orleans food. Go, team, go.

Song of the day: “Cheap Sunglasses” by ZZ Top.

I found my way to a long white building that said “Riverwalk” in all caps on the side. I realized the GPS on my phone was wrong only after I parked (paid for it) and wandered around this giant mall for thirty minutes. The receptionist at a… food museum?… informed me that there was a different branch of Cafe du Monde that opened up nearby, but that the original was farther down the river. I wish I would have stayed for the food museum, but I desperately needed coffee and food, so I really couldn’t.

After a few pass-bys and round-a-bouts, I finally found a parking space in the general vicinity of Cafe du Monde. The place was packed to the brim with people, and the protocol for getting a table was lost on me. I tried to ask several hostesses what I should do, when a server finally told me to just grab a table and wait. I spotted a table next to a column and nabbed it before they even had a chance to clean it off. The roar of the place was almost unbearable, and I swear every other living person in the place was a screaming child. Or so it seemed.

Now, this is entirely due to my own ignorance and lack of research, but I was under the impression that Cafe du Monde served food. Not heavy food, but light, lunch items like chicken salad or pimento cheese sandwiches. That was one of my first thoughts that morning: Man, I’m going to go to Cafe du Monde and get a huge cup of chicory coffee, a nice lunch and just veg out all afternoon.

Nope. They only had the coffee and beignets, which I have to look up every time I want to spell it.

“Long night, huh?” A waiter dressed in black with an apron splattered with a constellation of powdered sugar stood over me.

“Yeah. Or an early morning. I think the sun comes up faster here.”

“I’ve thought the same thing. What can I get you?”

“I’ll have the biggest cup of coffee you can give me, and I guess the beignets, right? That’s what I’m supposed to do, it seems.”

I think I sounded more bitter than I meant to, but the waiter was a good sport. I leaned back against the column and fought sleep while people-watching. There were a lot of families there, as well as a lot of out-of-towners. To my left, a tuba player and a freestyle rapper were doing a pretty funky routine for everyone who sat on the edge of the tent. Behind them, Saint Louis Cathedral stood watching over Jackson Square. In front of me the French Quarter began. Somewhere over there, Bourbon Street was picking himself up out of a gutter, vomiting, and heading to Sunday confessional. Or sipping from a flask and checking the empty cigarette boxes on the street to test his luck.

My coffee and pastries came promptly for such a large crowd. I scarfed the beignets down without even really tasting them. Maybe I don’t have a refined enough palate, but I think I would just rather have a funnel cake at a fair. Call me a hick. Call me uncultured. The coffee though. That was, by far, some of the best coffee I’ve had. It was so smooth with a bite of chicory that lingered on my tongue long after I had finished it.

I was starving, and those beignets just couldn’t do anything for my ravenous hunger. I went to a restaurant right across the corner called River’s Edge. I should have probably looked around more, but it looked easy and tasty enough. I was wrong on both accounts. I think I came in at the change in wait staff, so I was virtually ignored. Normally, I’m okay with this, but not when I was eating myself from the inside. When I finally got my food, it was food. I feel I’ve done New Orleans a great wrong by wasting my time on the jambalaya here. I should’ve gone to a greasy hole for some good, spicy jambalaya. This was like Zatarain’s without the jazz.

If I sound pissed or bitter, it’s because I was tired and ready to get on the road or stay forever. New Orleans is definitely a city where I could live for a long time, but as it was, I was ready to get on with the adventure.

By the time the waitress paid enough attention so that I could pay my bill, it had begun to rain in bursts of torrents. I would normally walk in such circumstances, even though my car was about 200 yards away, but I had my camera with me and I wanted to protect it. I waited for a lull in the rain, stuffed my camera into my shirt and ran for it. I made it about 30 yards and another slap of rain came through and soaked me. When I finally made it to the car, I changed to dry clothes and reclined back. I don’t care how much this paid parking costs me, I’m taking a nap. Research has shown that sleepy drivers are more dangerous than drunk drivers, and I refuse to be a vehicular statistic.

———————

When I woke up, the sun was going down, and I left. I don’t feel that I’ve done New Orleans justice. I wish I had been able to stay a week and fully experience every aspect of it. Sadly, the road kept calling. I drove non-stop. I saw the lights of Baton Rouge go by, and I wished I could stay there for a time too. Something about Louisiana made me want to stay. The people, the music, the food, everything is just so–infectious. So inviting.

But I was headed to Mississippi, a state I know very little about outside of Civil Rights history and the blues. On the radio as I passed Baton Rouge headed toward the state line and then on to Natchez was Lee Dorsey’s “Ya Ya” from 1961. Somehow it was perfect for the night as I blindly sped on to find the rest of the South waiting for me.

Southern Nights

Saturday night, August 11

I was staying downtown at the Cotton Exchange Hotel, which I later found out to be the subject of a Degas painting. The hotel was situated a block away from the gaping entrance of Bourbon Street. It was inevitable that I would be going to make my rounds, and I’m not sure it’s possible to avoid it as a tourist in New Orleans. As I mentioned earlier, I haven’t been to NOLA since I was little and having different kinds of fun.

If the mood of the Degas painting is warm and posh with a little cool exclusion from the hatted men in the picture, the Cotton Exchange has lost all of that except perhaps the exclusion. The place was nice, by any standards, and I got it as a deal to be so close to the French Quarter on a weekend. But the staff were some of the rudest I’d encountered thus far. I imagine it must get old dealing with people coming off of Bourbon day in and day out, though. Regardless, I was just happy to have my own bed that wasn’t covered in toy animals and a nice, hot shower.

I stayed in the room for awhile, watched some TV (which I never do) and did some writing and work. I knew I had to go out, but I could feel myself getting into another introspective slump. There’s something to be said for travelling alone. When you’re with another person, you have road company and an additional decision maker. Of course that can lead to the circular: “What do you wanna do?” “Well I don’t know, what do you want to do?” “Well I don’t know, what do you wanna do?” I think three is the ideal number. It’s democratic and not as burdensome as four or five. But here I was in the hotel with me, trying to psyche myself up for the holy weirdness I would try to find on Bourbon Street.

—————–

As I walked out of the hotel and down the street, I noticed something: there were hardly any red dresses on the streets. Of course, I left the hotel at 10 p.m., which would mean some of those people would have been going at it for about twelve hours. I don’t know, though. I feel like if you’re going to put on a red dress and start drinking that early, you probably already hate your liver anyway, so you should have the self respect for your image as a hardass (male or female) and ride that train (your liver) as far as it will go.

I made it as far as the intersection of Canal and Bourbon before hearing the first live music. A guy was pounding a bass drum, a tuba was bumping a bass line, and a trombone soared and slid around over it all. They could’ve been playing jazz. They could’ve been playing hip-hoppolka. It was too hard to say. Either way, the crowd was diggin it, and so were the players.

I kept moving down the road and finally picked a bar at random. I still can’t remember its name, but I thought the mechanical bull in the corner made it promising. After ordering a drink, I stood forlorn in the crowd and watched. Again, here is an argument for travelling with people: I couldn’t talk to anyone. When I don’t have anything to say, I don’t say anything, and it makes it hard to meet people. The music was too loud to talk anyway, and a girl was getting up on the bull. I could tell she was one of the workers at the bar by the signature red lace-trimmed, black lingerie. All of the “Shot Girls” had them on. She had a flurry of tattoos, long black hair, and something told me there was a kid somewhere. She was a champ on the bull though. I think every single guy in the place stopped what they were doing and watched. Let’s be real, the girls did too. The guys wanted to watch her move and fall off. The girls just wanted her to fall off.

I left after one drink. I didn’t come to see attractive mothers on mechanical bulls — though there is some pull there. But my mind was talking to me like a parent: “Listen, we have a mechanical bull at home. Why don’t we go somewhere new?” I came for jazz and blues — the true American music. New Orleans has a breed of blues all its own, and it is one of the cradles for jazz, and I’d be damned if I didn’t catch the real deal.

I bounced around a few other bars before finding an open-air patio with jazz combo under a little tent. They just finished a song as I took a seat on a bench next to an elderly couple. The singer/trumpet player said a few words about the next song which was a “New Orleans staple.” He put the trumpet up to his lips, the bass thumped once, and he began the Louis Armstrong classic, “St. James Infirmary.” The clarinet backed the melody and carried it gently as the trumpet stopped and began to sing.

Well folks I went down to St. James Infirmary

Saw my baby there.

Saw her stretched out on a long white table

she looked so cold, so sweet, so fair.

Let her go, let her go, God bless her,

wherever she may be.

She can look this wide world over,

but she’ll never find a sweet man like me.”

And he picked up his trumpet, heavy with sorrow, and filled us with song. They kept the song flowing so that some could get up and sway, but most sat and soaked in the music. I looked up at the night sky, and I couldn’t see any stars. But it didn’t matter because with the neon lights lining both sides of Bourbon, with a cold gin and tonic and with that trumpet running up and down the halls of St. James, the night was shining.

The set ended, and the trumpet said they would be back in thirty minutes. As happy as I was to be there, I was restless and kept moving. I stopped a little farther down the street in a deep, dark bar with bricks that looked as old as the city. A blues band was on stage, and they were playing one of the most solid versions of “Voodoo Chile” I had ever heard. If had been feeling homesick — which is rare for me — I wouldn’t have any more. Florence, Alabama isn’t known for it’s blues bands, but there was this damp, greasy place called LaFonda’s where I would go to hear some amazing local blues players. This brick bar wasn’t LaFonda’s by any stretch, but it felt good to be in a familiar place, even if it was just the music. I sat at the bar and tried a Hurricane, which the bartender said she made special for me. I just hoped for no roofies, because the drink was too good.

The guitarist tore up a full set of Jimi Hendrix and went on to Stevie Ray. I always dig the guitar players that get into their music. Some might say it appears conceited, but there’s a difference between being obsessed with yourself and being obsessed with the music you make. I think any artist should be obsessed with making the art the best it can be, and that involves making the artist the best they can be.

Again I wandered. I had been told to check out Fritzel’s European Jazz Pub. I had also been told to try a Hand Grenade at a place called Tropical Isle. I had been told to do a lot of things in this city that I couldn’t remember, but those two things stuck out. The Hand Grenade is supposedly the strongest drink in New Orleans. I saw Tropical Isle before I saw Fritzel’s, and I wish I hadn’t. The bar glowed green, and there was a band on a tall platform behind the bar. They were playing a mix of Jimmy Buffett, The Eagles and AC-DC. Don’t ask me, I just wanted a drink.

I opted for the small grenade, and it’s a good thing. It was so sweet, I could barely drink it. The scary thing was, I couldn’t taste the alcohol. I heard a girl’s voice next to me order one for her and her boyfriend.

“Watch out for that. It’s dangerous,” I said. There’s my feeble attempt at conversation.

“That’s the idea,” she laughed. They were from Australia, but I felt compelled to ask.

“Where y’all from?” No extra emphasis on the “y’all,” but it was there.

“Australia,” she said. Her boyfriend walked away to finish a conversation he was having.

“That’s great. How do you like it here? New Orleans, I mean.”

“I love it. And he does too. I swear he’s like a magnet for old people though.”

She told me every where they’ve been so far, he gets into conversations with old people and can’t get away. Sure enough, he was talking to three of them right then.

“It’s like he can’t help it,” she laughed.

“Bizarre,” I said. I wasn’t sure what to say to that, to be honest. “So where else have you been in the States?”

They had been all over before, but now they were just going through the South starting in Florida and working their way up. So far they loved it, and they weren’t looking forward to going back home in September. I told her I was kind of doing the same thing, but I spared the details.

“And you know, it’s so weird, I feel like Australians are everywhere,” I said.

She gave me a look.

“No really, hear me out. I just studied in London over the summer, and there was an entire pub owned and operated by nothing but Australians. Okay, fair enough, it’s London. I went to New York on my way back. I ran into Australians three different times, and one guy was staying in the same hostel as me. I just drove through Austin, Texas and heard some in a coffee shop there. And now I’m here, and I meet you two. I think it’s a sign.”

“Maybe we’re taking over, and I don’t even know it,” she laughed. “And it probably is a sign. You should go down there sometime. It’s only like a 20-hour flight.”

“Eeesh. That’s pretty bad. Well maybe that’ll be my next trip.”

So it’s official. I’m going to Australia before they take over the world.

We talked for a little while longer while I choked down the Grenade. Her boyfriend popped in and out for commentary on the old folks. They were both good people, and I hope the rest of the South treated them with as much hospitality as possible.

I slid down the street past what looked like a Christian vaudeville act. I think, in retrospect, they were just handing out tracts and leaflets about the wages of sin, pertaining specifically to alcohol, while doing a small act between two characters. But it seemed so much more theatrical as I passed by. I won’t criticize their tenacity. They were going right into the den of iniquity and sharing their truths. I have respect for them, but I do have to wonder how effective it is on a Friday night, on a street that is named for one of the poisons they were preaching against. Why not try it on a week night when people are more susceptible to sober states of mind? And maybe on St. Peter Street, or even St. Louis.

Finally, I found Fritzel’s. And finally, I found where I wanted to be. I want to grow old in this place. The building was long and narrow with a courtyard in the back. The walls had jazz memorabilia covering them, and the lights were cool and dim. The main room had a small stage where a jazz combo was crammed, upright piano and all. I took a seat on one of the benches that stretched across the room and watched. The piano player’s name was Richard Scott, and he was by far one of the best piano players I’ve ever seen. Aside from all of the great music, decent drinks and brilliant atmosphere that “The Oldest Operating Jazz Pub in New Orleans” has to offer, Richard Scott’s playing is worth a trip to Fritzel’s. The only thing that could have made it better would have been if he had just set the piano on fire and rolled it down Bourbon Street.

At one point during a break, I was standing next to the bar when I thought a pretty girl with an accent asked me to watch her seat while she went to the restroom. I think she was actually speaking to her friend, which would’ve made more sense, but the space was so tight in the bar it was hard to tell. Anyway, her friend and I started talking. She looked Indian, but she was from Norway, which was a great combination. Her Norwegian name was too hard to pronounce at the time, and she was used to it, so we settled for Vicky. She told me Norwegian was a very difficult language for foreigners to learn, and judging by her conversations with her friend, I believe it. We all swapped some travel stories. They were over here on vacation like the Australian couple, and they loved it.

The three of us decided to stick the night out and roam around. We left Fritzel’s and wandered toward Decatur Street. Kyle back in Houma had told me to check it out, but it seemed to be pretty quiet. It was actually kind of relieving to get away from the neon and noise. But we veered back toward Bourbon and popped into whatever places looked interesting. Vicky’s friend left soon after, but we kept roaming.

Much to our surprise (mine, at least), Bourbon Street actually stops the party somewhere around 4 a.m. I had always pictured a place where it’s as common to find whiskey as it is coffee when the sun came up, and maybe it is. I just didn’t know where to go. And that sun came up fast. The sky lightened for a minute, and then there it was.

We decided it was past time to leave. I helped her find her hotel, and she helped me find mine. Bourbon Street. has a way of turning everything around, and my hotel was a lot farther than I thought it was. By the time I got in, the sun was up and out. I showered, packed and slept — for a minute.

Foreign City. Southern State. Awesome Granny.

Saturday afternoon, August 11

“Hi, my name is Cathy. But everyone around here calls me Granny, so that’s Granny to you.”

That was Catherine Kahn, A.K.A. Granny. My friend Jim from Lafayette had set up a meeting with his wife Katie’s grandmother. Today she turned 82, and while she might have looked like the definition of Granny, what with her permed white-gray hair and height that came to a solid foot below me, she was as sharp as a razor. Her voice was difficult to place. I was told by people in Lafayette that folks in New Orleans sound different, and that they often sound like they’re from New York. I think that is true, and Cathy is a perfect example. Her pronunciation is like a Manhattan Jew, but her cadence and tone was born, bred and taught which fork to use in New Orleans. It was a mix of two voices which belonged to two specific people in two specific places.

Cathy has gained, from what I understand, a great deal of notoriety in New Orleans. The Jewish Women’s Archive says she has served as the “archivist at the Touro Infirmary, the oldest private hospital in New Orleans.” She’s also the “President of the Southern Jewish Historical Society and on the boards of the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience and Temple Sinai.” And as if she needed any more qualifications, she has also spent “many years in the manuscripts division of the Historical New Orleans Collection, where she held every position from registrar to curator.” (All info found in the link above or here).

To put it short, Granny is one of the last words on Jewish culture in New Orleans. She is also a poodle enthusiast. I say enthusiast, it probably would not be too bold (it may not be bold enough) to say that she is a poodle expert. She had pictures and art of poodles everywhere: from coasters and dish towels, to watercolors and a guidebooks. At my feet, a little black curly ball of fur she called a teacup poodle was very interested in my shoes. Jim had told her a little about my trip, and she definitely remembered about John Steinbeck, but she remembered Charley more. I’m sure that if she had wanted to, and if I had had a picture, she could have classified his exact breed.

Jim, Katie and I wandered out into the garden while Granny (and yes, I’ll call her Granny) tended to some things inside. She lived in a modest-sized house only a stone’s throw away from Tulane University. This area was a far-cry from where I had been only an hour earlier. Here were the older, more educated and liberal New Orleanians, and thereby the richer. Of course I don’t want to, in any way, insinuate that one part of town is better or worse than the other. I can only comment on what I saw and try to be as unbiased with myself as I can.

After we had done a little catching up and talking about New Orleans and my trip, we stepped back inside to meet with Granny. It was great to actually sit and talk to people, though I felt that I was tripping over my words. When driving and traveling, it’s very easy to fall into deep, deep thought, which is generally traded for basic brain function. So if you are to speak to people after existing in that frame of mind for an extended period of time, none of the words seem to come out right or sound like they usually do. And we wonder why some homeless people talk to themselves. Spend a week on the road, alone, and see what kind of conversations you have in your head.

But, with or without words, we sat. We sat in her hazelnut-crème living room under a wall of old, framed maps of the New Orleans coast, the Caribbean Islands and others. Civil War soldiers sat frozen in photos on the sidetable, and Granny took her seat across from me with an oblong cherry wood table between us. The words came from Granny, and being a good Southern boy, I listened.

She handed an iPad to Katie who sat on a couch with Jim beside her: “Look up Google while I tell him about the Frantz school. In fact, Norman Rockwell did a painting about that.”

We had already been discussing the integration during 1960 earlier, and Cathy Kahn knows how to cut right to the chase. Her voice.

“Yeah, that’s The Problem We All Live With, right?” I asked.

“Yes it is.”

“Cause her name was Ruby, right?”

“Ruby. Yes indeed, you’re right, you’re right on. At the same time that that was going on, Newman school was going out looking for bright, black kids to get them to come in. Of course they picked a fine basketball player, they’re not nuts.”

We laughed because she was probably right. She was referring to actor and writer, Harold Sylvester. Cathy said the Newman school was a private school with Jewish money that had started as a children’s home but had developed a reputation for giving a good education. The fact that Newman school was working on integrating at the same time as the Frantz school said something to Cathy about the demographics.

“When you’re looking and seeing pictures of Frantz School you can see some of the white women had their hair rolled up in curlers,” Cathy said. “Does that tell you what kind of a background they come from?”

It did, and I had noticed that. If not in curlers, they had their hair tied back with a kerchief or pinned down tight. They all looked like mothers who had just run out of the house in time to protest. Only younger, teen protesters in the pictures I saw had something that resembled a style.

“Yeah, okay, and they’re screaming at these little girls, and we were so horrified… I can tell you that white uptowners were down there trying to stop it. And my cousin George Dreyfous got kicked in the stomach and had to go to the hospital.”

Dreyfous was also the president of the Louisiana Civil Liberties Union. While I couldn’t find evidence of assault, he was definitely heckled by protesters when he came to the school to make sure everything okay. More than that, when the Board of Education cut funding to the two integrated schools in a last-ditch effort to keep them segregated, Dreyfous and several other prominent individuals cut checks from their own private accounts in order to pay the teachers and keep the lights on.

“New Orleans is a foreign city, but it’s in a Southern state,” Cathy said.

Cathy said that the history and the way the cultures have blended have generally allowed for tolerance.

“New Orleans is overly tolerant of a lot of things,” she said. “Crooked politicians, lax police… Potholes. Hurricanes. We’re very tolerant and include in that: live and let live.”

“But it hasn’t always been that way,” I said, skeptical.

“Always,” she said. I had barely finished my sentence.

“Really? Except for the, like you said, the lower class whites. The ones who were less educated?”

“Yes. Even in the uptown public schools, it didn’t happen. It’s down with the uneducated, intolerant people who were resentful to begin with. Blacks getting their jobs, maybe. It never ends.”

“It’s a shame that Frantz school is the most memorable image of integration in New Orleans,” Cathy went on. “And it was that and down in Plaquemines Parrish with Leander Perez, and maybe up in the Bible Belt part of the state—the non-Creole, the non-French part of the state.”

“The Mississippi side?” I asked.

“The Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas side—I don’t know that there was much to-do in Cajun country. They’re pretty easy going.”

Katie mentioned that the Cajuns might have had an easier time with integration and harmonious living because of the way the education system imposed itself on their own culture and language. In the early 20th century, there were still many Cajuns in the Lafayette and New Iberia areas that spoke only French. The schools, from what Katie and Cathy said, were fairly brutal in breaking the Cajuns of their language.

“That was something I was going to ask,” I ventured, “just to correct the terminology… now, Creole—”

“I knew it.” Cathy said, and we all laughed. She had been waiting for this one.

“There are so many definitions of creole. Okay. There’s Creole Jamaica. There’s Creole cooking. But when you get to people, okay, there is Creole of Color, and around here it was hyphenated as Creole-of-Color. Because Creole in New Orleans meant “white of European ancestry.” French and Spanish. I don’t think any Germans could be called ‘Creole.’ Our earliest immigrants were the French and the Spanish. And those were the Creoles.”

“So when you say that somebody is Cajun, then?” I asked.

“That’s different. Entirely. That’s a whole different ball game. I’ll turn it over to you.” Cathy gestured to Katie.

“Cajun is specifically people who came from Acadie, who were French, who were residing in Canada, but then were kicked out when the British took over Canada. And then there’s a whole diaspora where they dropped off all along the coast. And a lot of them were dropped off in Louisiana—a very inhospitable place. And then the brunt of them—well, a lot of them anyway—kind of trickled down here.”

“So Cajun and Acadiana are the same thing?”

“Cajuns are in Acadiana, and–” She paused and looked to her grandmother. “I don’t know what the word is for the people who live in Acadie.”

“Nova Scotians!” Cathy said.

Silence. Oh. Right. Laughter.

—————————————

Our conversation rambled and wandered from family to politics to history, and all with culture interwoven between. She told one family account that I thought was particularly interesting. As I’ve said previously, I didn’t want this trip to become a huge commentary on race relations in the South. I’m not qualified for such a responsibility, and what does that even mean anyway? “Race relations in the South.” Either way, since Steinbeck encountered the racism and hate that made him leave the South in New Orleans, it is fitting that race be a topic of importance.

“Sicily Island is up river on the Louisiana side, opposite Vicksburg,” Cathy began. “The Vicksburg side is nice and high, and the Louisiana side is a swamp. This whole group of Russian Jews came over here, and my ancestors and all my family friends’ ancestors decided they didn’t want those little Russian Jews running up and down Canal Street breaking up their Mardi Gras balls and things. So they set up the Sicily Island agricultural utopia, and I’ll quote from their wonderful annals: ‘In our garden of Eden, there were only the snakes.’

“They came back with malaria and yellow fever. And then they were quarantined here. Even the ones that weren’t sick were quarantined. Nobody can be as anti-Semitic as a classically reformed French or German Jew,” Cathy said. We laughed, but there was weight behind it.

“I’m kinda embarrassed that I have to say that my ancestor, Felix Dreyfous, is one of the ones who sent them down there,” Cathy admitted.

“Is Felix related to the guy that got kicked in the stomach?” I asked.

“Yes, that was his son. They were much more tolerant about—I can tell you this, absolutely—they were crusaders of black integration, but they would have nothing to do with Russian Jews.”

“That’s really interesting,” I said.

“That is interesting. In fact, I should write a paper about that some time,” she chuckled.

She went on to tell another story about her relatives in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. In her family, the story had been passed down that her great-great-great-grandfather had been gravely wounded in the siege of Vicksburg but recovered and was considered, from my estimation, fairly heroic. At a dinner party one evening, Cathy’s father Leon asked his cousin, a historian, to tell the story of how his ancestor had been shot.

“Leon, are you sure?” Cathy impersonated her relative.

“Of course!” Her voice grew deep and cocky.

“Well,” she said, “He was shot by a Confederate farmer stealing chickens.”

Again, the conversation ranged from why they are all of French heritage but all have red hair and icy green-blue eyes, to the fact that one half of Granny’s family is as ugly as sin. We had been talking for well over an hour and our conversations had broken up when she stole a glance at her watch and addressed us all at once.

“The sun is over the yardarm, gentlemen and ladies — could I make you a drink?”

Pause. It was a little after 3:00. Pause.

“What… what kinda drinks are we talking?” Katie asked.

“What do you mean what kind of drinks are we talking? What kind of drink do you want?” We all laughed again as she listed off an arsenal of spirits and an off-the-cuff list of cocktails.

Gin and tonic for Katie. When she got to me, I froze for a moment. I didn’t want to be the jackass to order Jack and Coke, and I didn’t want to be boring and just order whiskey straight.

“Geez, I’m not sure. I’ll have the most New Orleanian thing you can make me.”

“Sazerac.” No hesitation. Jim has one as well, and even Granny treated herself. Happy Birthday to her.

My new favorite drink.

I wish I could put her recipe on here. She made it very clear that they don’t make Sazeracs like the one I had anywhere on Bourbon Street, and if I could even find a good place (on Bourbon Street or otherwise) I would have to pay for it. I believe it, too. It was delicious. Something about the way the absinthe blends with the rye made the drink dangerously easy to drink. And I don’t know if that sun was way past the yardarm or if it’s New Orleans custom, but Granny has a hell of a heavy hand.

We sat and sipped Sazeracs or gin, and finally Katie and her Granny had a chance to catch up. They discussed familial going-ons and a couple of Granny’s apparent suitors who she may or may not have been kicking to the curb.

We sipped until the blood flowed easy to our faces and the laughter flowed easier. The sun started to turn the crème walls gold, and I felt it was time for me to go. It was her birthday after all, and they had been gracious enough to let me stay this long. I said my goodbyes, thanked them profusely and went off to find my hotel.