“Wid da Massah lookin’ doone on oonuh.” -Man at the food mart in Yemassee, SC
“NO TRESPASSING: Violators will be SHOT, Survivors will be SHOT AGAIN.” Every fifty feet or so, the bright orange signs glared out from the swampy woods. Part of me was tempted to travel down one of the sandy lanes to see who would put up such a hostile sign. The better part of me decided tonight was not the night to get shot. But where to sleep? The Old Sheldon Church Road was becoming an increasingly darker tunnel under the live oak and cypress trees arcing overhead.
A brown sign appeared: “Historical Marker, ½ mile ahead.” Saved! Just like the man had said at the gas station 6 miles back-- someone was looking out for me.
It was the ruins of the Old Sheldon Church, built in the 1700s, burned by the British, rebuilt, torched again by Sherman. Brick arches and columns remained, crumbling under enormous old trees dripping Spanish moss and ferns. Eighteenth century gravestones dotted the solemn park. In the reverent evening dusk, it felt appropriate to hush my steps.
But I still camped there. Slept right in the nave. When I woke early the next morning, clouds floated above me through the lightening, pale blue sky, a fluid Michelangelo without the pointing hands of man or God.
“Hold it right there.” –Frank, Old Sheldon Church
I heard the lawnmower, looked up, and saw a man kneeling with a camera. The ruins caretaker was here to mow the grass, and someone was trying to take photos in the morning light. I jumped up and started packing my bike, thinking again how badly I needed to get to a shower and a laundromat.
The photographer came over to chat. I noticed his cameras- very nice, very classic. Both used 120 film, and one had a top viewfinder. I asked him about his job. He said he used to do a lot of work for expensive resorts, a lot of photos of beautiful people in beautiful places. He also freelanced for magazines. Today he was on assignment for an article on southern food stops between Savannah and Charleston. He took some more photos then paused. “Here,” he said. “Stay there.” He backed up, looked down, and clicked the shutter. “You can smile for this one,” he said, and snapped a few more.
“It’s too bad you aren’t eating,” he told me while he worked. Apparently this shot already had a caption picked out: “Old Sheldon Church- a great place for a picnic.” I told him I’d just had breakfast. “Damn!” he swore. “What’d you have?” He took a light meter reading, and I tried not to think about that shower. “A protein breakfast drink.” He laughed. “I don’t think that’s really the Travel and Leisure crowd’s style. Maybe some lox and capers.” I offered to eat my remaining strawberries, but apparently those were also too provincial.
We finished the photo shoot, and Frank gave me his card. He said he was headed up in a helicopter after this, then down to St. Kitt’s, but “Email me and I’ll send you these,” he told me. The article is supposed to come out in the next couple months, so who knows-- check out the June issue of Travel and Leisure.
"Do a good deed daily." -Boy Scout motto
"You camping at Givhan's Ferry?" I look up from the white line. An older guy on a motorcycle has pulled alongside me. He asks me about my trip, catches me looking over my shoulder. "Don't worry, I'm watchin' my mirrors." Anytime a car comes, he speeds up, waves them by, then putts along until I catch up again.
"Ah'm a hillbilly myself," Tom tells me, "grew up in southwestern Virginia." His dad was a professor at Virginia Tech who taught "anything in business" and had his office in the same building where the shootings happened. Tom shudders.
"Look," he says, "about 10 miles down the road there's a real good barbecue place. I'll take you there if you want. I even got an extra helmet." His cheek creases into a long dimple when he smiles.
Tom is waiting at my campsite when I return from the shower house. His helmet's off, and his gray hair sticks out from his head at odd angles. He plunks down a big plastic Juicy Juice jug. "Some ice water if you want. If you don't mind it tastin' a little like cherry." There are two more frozen jugs in the back of his bike. "You know how some people have phobias? I have a phobia of runnin' outta ice." Tom says he carries ice water with him everywhere he goes, even in winter. He credits his years as a Boy Scout for involving him in the outdoors and giving him two mottos to live by: "Be Prepared," and "Do A Good Deed Daily."
Tom hands me a gray helmet with silver flames. "This here's the Cadillac of sports rides," he says when I climb on the back. It's a silver and maroon Gold City Honda. He got it at Christmas, and it's all paid for. So is his house, and his car, and his other two motorcycles. He pops a jawbreaker in his mouth and turns the ignition. "I despise those loud Harleys," he tells me.
Zipping along through the golden hour light, I feel almost giddy. Tom talks. He tells me about his job as a pressure cleaner salesman, the Edisto River, carving a cabinet door out of a big old cypress tree, the factory plant we pass. He's lived in this area for almost 30 years. "You'll like Duke's," he says. "It's a real local place."
There's a line for the buffet when we walk in and folks sitting at every long, family-style table. It's Friday night. Tom explains what some of the food items are- "That's hash, the brains and the head of the pig"- and piles my plate with fried corn balls and hushpuppies (fried cornbread). He himself doesn't eat much. He hunches his shoulders over his plate and tells me about the many different times he's stopped to help folks in distress. "I don't care what race you are, man, woman, whatever," he says. But if he gives a man a lift, Tom always tells him two things: "Look, I'm not gay or nothin'. I'm not tryin' to pick you up," and "If you in any way make me feel threatened, things are gonna go bad real quick. I've got two guns in here closer than you are." Tom's owned guns since he was a boy, but he's never once trained one on a person. And he hasn't always stopped to help. He passes on by if he's outnumbered, or it's late at night, or if it just doesn't feel right. "Trust yer gut," he says, "cuz 99% of thuh time it's right."
Driving back to the campground, it's nearly dark. The stars are coming out, but the breeze is still warm enough for a tank top. Tom looks back, then kicks it up to 65mph, briefly, just for fun. "I tell you what," he laughs, "I love going down a road where I don't know what's around the next bend."
The mailboxes look like deer in the twilight and he slows it back down. Tom was 10 in the passenger seat when his mother hit a pedestrian running across the highway on a dare. He saw the kid flip up into the sky and disappear above the roof before he fell with a thud behind them. When Tom ran over to him, the kid's back was still "all white," the skin peeled back. Then he saw the blood begin seeping out.
Hazard headlights appear around a curve. A thin black man, stoop shouldered in a red t-shirt, shuffles toward the road and jangles his keys from his outstretched arm. His red pick-up flashes behind him. He's run out of gas. We take the plastic jug and promise to bring it back full from the station down the road. Along the way, Tom points out two stores, telling me that the owners work with guns strapped to their hips. "Just like how people put their pants on, they put on their guns.” He shrugs. "I guess it makes ‘em feel safer."
We deliver the gas, and Tom refuses the man's money. As we pull away, he turns his head and tells me over his shoulder, "That's how you rescue someone."
"Holy mackerel, it's a globular cluster!"
They seem like nice, friendly folks, Tom had told me. You should walk over and check it out. In an open field at Givhan’s Ferry State Park, the Low Country Stargazers have set up their telescopes.
I walk over. About 15 people hover in the dark around the hefty, cylindrical scopes. They look like military guns, just as Tom had said. Red lights glow from the attached GPS units.
Within a few minutes I’ve worked my way into a small group, and Chris is folding down a small chair for me. “Want to see something cool?” he asks me. I lean forward and cover my left eye. A small yellow-green dot glows in the center of the viewpiece. I look closer. It seems to become rounder, 3-dimensional, and rings emerge. It’s Saturn, 70 light minutes in the past. Every time you look into a telescope you’re looking backwards. The closest planetary body is the sun, and it takes 8 minutes for its light to reach us here on Earth. “Basically if the sun goes out,” Jim quipps, “you have 8 minutes to sing, dance, and eat pizza before you call it a night.”
Neither Chris, Carol, Jim, or Ed offers a detailed explanation for why each has spent thousands of dollars and logged countless late nights stargazing. It seems readily understandable to them. They looked through a telescope at some point and were hooked.
Chris punches in new coordinates and the telescope swings slowly to the side, mechanically whirring in the nighttime quiet. This time it focuses on “The Whirlpool Galaxies.” I watch the brighter, older galaxy suck in its neighbor.
I tell them I don’t want to keep them from their gazing. “The stars’ll be there tomorrow night,” they insist. Usually it’s a possum that wanders through, Jim jokes, but a long distance biker who biked up from New Orleans? That’s entertainment. Jim and Carol laugh about their 20-mile rides, and Jim resolves to go home and pedal between the kitchen and the living room, trying not to hit the cat. For two hours we talk about biking and the South’s lack of stress over the economy and bad drivers and the Hercules constellation. Despite a momentary flash of headlights, I never see what anyone looks like. We're just voices sparking the darkness-- "like a firefly," Jim says.
We discuss maps, and they inform me that you can now get on Google and look at a street corner in Nebraska and see which restaurant you want to eat at. No need to go there or phone. It’s a smaller world every generation, Jim says, and his hands close down in concentric circles.
We pause to gaze at “The Ghost of Jupiter,” a planetary nebula. They tell me you can see Hubble images of the nebula online, beautiful images, far better than what I’m seeing right now. I swat at the mosquitoes biting my ankles. Pretty soon everyone will just be sitting at home, Jim says, “Your world through an iPhone.”
At the crossroads of 41 and 51. –Rhems, SC
"Good morning, Miss Katherine!" A woman paying for her gas calls over to the lunch counter and waves. Ms. Katherine waves back, then continues her conversation about sausage biscuits with a black woman in a rust colored skirt and matching hat.
It’s Sunday morning at the H&S Mingo Shop. Four gas pumps keep busy outside, a kerosene pump waits in the shade. A black GMC pick up with “Lil’ Rebel,” printed across the top of its windshield is parked near the door. Someone’s tucked a turkey feather under its wiper blade. Inside the store, a cricket cage chirps beneath hooks and lures, and a green lottery stand sits at the end of the convenience food aisle. At the other end, Ms. Katherine fries bacon behind a long, L-shaped counter. Above her head, an old Pepsi sign advertises egg sandwiches for $1.59, BLTs, HLTs, fish dinners, fried chicken. Styrofoam carryout containers are stacked near bags of hamburger buns.
Ms. Katherine scrapes the scrambled eggs, one hand at the small of her back. Her white hair is rolled into neat rows running back into a bun of curls under her hair net. It stands out against her dark skin. “What you havin’ for dinner?” she throws the question across her shoulder. Three generations of camo-clad hunters face her at the counter. They sit in a line, father, son, grandson, elbows on the counter, shoulders hunched. They’re drinking Yoohoo! and waiting for breakfast. “Supposedly turkey,” the middle one answers. He has the same nose as his father and his son. The bacon sizzles and Ms. Katherine flips it.
A man in a royal blue t-shirt and ball cap slides onto a wooden stool at the far end of the counter. His face is sunburned and his accent thick. “Miss Katherine, you shoulda had thuh day off, too!” he exclaims. She mutters about tomorrow’s schedule. There’s a “Help Wanted” sign on the front door. “I’m tired eatin’ my cookin’,” she admits. “Ya know what ya got tuh do, donchya?” the blue shirt man tells her. “Ya gotta tell yer man tuh get back there an’ cook.” Ms. Katherine laments that her husband cooks but doesn’t clean. “I go back in there, I wanna see my kitchen clean.” She sets down the man’s breakfast. “I can’t eat no sunnyside up eggs," she tells him. “Why not?” he asks. She eyes the plate. “Cuz they’re lookin’ at ya smilin’.”
Ms. Katherine asks him about his kids. He says he’s thinking about bringing his babies home some of her chicken. “What ‘bout your wife?” she asks. He wasn’t planning on it. She leans toward him, emphasizing her words. “Well, I hope an’ pray you get in thuh house.” She pulls back and taps the counter. “You take your hat off, throw it in,” she advises, “and if she throw it back out, you in trouble.”
A black family walks in the door, and she turns. “Good mornin’,” she greets the two girls who have wandered over to the fried chicken case. They look slightly uncomfortable, like strangers. She looks down at them over the top of her glasses, her pen poised to write down their order. They mumble a response, then walk away. Ms. Katherine purses her lips. She pulls off her glasses, holds them up to the light and squints, wipes them on her apron. Pinned to the top is a name card: “Hello, my name is…” Underneath she’s handwritten in spidery script, “Katherine, Thanks for shopping with us.”
More folks walk in-- a tall black man in a navy pinstripe suit, an older white man in a blue bow tie. Outside, the sun is already heating up the pavement. A red Chevy pick up with “Shut Up and Drive” on its windshield pulls up and parks. “Brown-eyed Girl” plays a moment longer on the stereo before a woman with short blond hair and a tattoo on each calf gets out. She pulls up the window with one hand while she cranks the handle. Shots pop in the woods across the highway. A man walks toward the shade, cradling a puppy and murmuring to it like a baby. “Watch ‘em, an’ I’ll go getcher drink,” his wife calls out. She heads into the store.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
The Southern Appalachians.
Yes, that’s right. After my WFR re-cert plans for
Maybe it was the gray day, but upon crossing the border, drivers didn’t seem to wave as frequently, gas station clerks seemed more guarded, logging trucks rumbled by, and the smell of roadside trash was noticeable. And those twisty mountain roads with their banked, hairpin turns! Well, I finally got off and walked up one. It was either that or topple into the ditch.
So the second benefit of a
“I love getting up early.” It’s 7:30 am. A tall, thin man is already talking business on his cell phone from the Mountain View Citgo parking lot. I eye him suspiciously-- I spent last night squeezed into a shadowy corner behind the Jasper Library. The man looks about 50, leans with one hand on a cherry red Corvette. I note his fancy sneakers and sunglasses. I continue eating my granola bar and yoghurt. He hangs up, comes over to ask the usual questions. I ask him if he rides. “No, I run. I’ve got a young wife, so I run.” That figures, I think. I smile politely. He continues making friendly conversation, extolling the merits of Peter Pan honey peanut butter. “It’s like dope for me. I’ve got some in the car right now.” He gets the jar and peels off the seal. “Go on, I don’t care if you’ve licked your spoon.”
The adopted son of a retired Navy father and a Mexican mother, Roy grew up “in the back hills of
“She’s not a mountain climber.” The Visitor Information woman eyes me from behind the counter. She’s on the phone with the Hiker Hostel, arranging for my free pick up. I’m in the small town of
The Hiker Hostel feels more like a bed and breakfast than a hostel. It’s refreshingly clean and kitsch-free. I recognize photos of Western ranges and spots along the AT. The other guests are cyclists, enthusiastic hikers at the start of their Appalachian adventures, and a 19-year-old flight attendant escaping
Josh and Lee have run the Hiker Hostel for the last four years. They met at the local college, got married, and decided to hike the AT four years later. Three weeks into it, they were planning their hostel. Lee has cropped hair and can discuss the finer points of raising hens at length. She loves biking more than Josh, and I’m sure she could probably beat me in any race. Josh looks like a
Breakfast is a line-up of scrambled eggs, country ham, pancakes, and oatmeal, as well as bagels and some fancy cream cheeses, compliments of a return guest. He sits at the head of the table, round glasses over a gray mustache, a
Floating downhill to Dahlonega without panniers that morning feels almost like flying. The festival is in full swing when I arrive, and there are folks “pickin’ and grinnin’” on every corner. Overalls, banjo cases, and cowboy hats; musicians tote their instruments from one jam to another. Buck dancers with their tap shoes and portable wooden stages follow. Potters turn clay, a blacksmith fires up a forge, painters sketch folksy farm scenes while pedestrians meander by. I watch the clog dancers for a while, then sit outside the tent where the official band line-up performs. While I didn’t pay to actually see them, the Claire Lynch Band sounded pretty darn good.
In the evening, the hostel crew comes down and we move about in a tourist clump, sampling wine and eventually swinging a few rounds at the contradance in the square.
“Would you like to dance?” A man in a cowboy shirt holds out his arms. We waltz the last song together, then chat for a bit. He’s up from Kennesaw, has followed mountain music festivals all over the south. “I was going to grab some dinner, would you like to come?” Turns out I’m being asked on a date by the National Champion of Buck Dancing. Thankfully I was blissfully ignorant of this fact when he tried to teach me the basic steps. I was already an awkward enough date with the hostel entourage in tow and chaperons waiting up for me on the porch.
I’m in
In the north, pine forests line the highways and brush fires smoke alongside the BBQ. Mobile homes, church signs, and garages lie broken under the tornado destruction of two weeks ago. Blue tarps cover roofs and insulation sticks like cotton balls in the trees. Yellow SCDOT trucks trundle load after load of debris.
Descending into the low country, the air becomes sweetly saturated with pockets of honeysuckle, and sometimes I think I catch whiffs of licorice. I start smelling the humidity. It’s almost salty. Water pools in the forests, and houses climb back up on stilts. The air warms and condenses. My hair gets bigger with every mile I pedal to the coast.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
"Everything around here's either a hill or a holler." -Anita, Lynchburg, TN
Tennessee.
It’s bright green. Creeks and waterfalls trickle through countless gray rock fissures. Cows graze on 45 degree slopes. Houses either perch on the rounded summits or hide in the valley folds.
Driveways run straight up-- clearly this is an area that doesn't get much snow.
The hills are numerous, steep, and unavoidable. Long ridges push up from the valleys to block the horizon and keep me scanning hopefully for a route around them. Biking in southeastern Tennessee goes something like this: I puff up one incline in my granny gear, railing against fried pie and fried cornbread and efficient TN road planning that does not believe in switchbacks, and I vow to eat only fruits and veggies from here on out. Finally I crest the ridge, coasting just long enough for a glimpse of the next summit, so close yet— down, down I plunge into the holler. And I begin again.
"What's your cause?"
The first question people ask me is, "Where are you biking from?" The second is "Where are you biking to?" About half the curious voice the third question, "Why?"
Most Northerners don't understand why I chose the South, and the majority of Southerners don't understand why I'm on a bike. My "route" meanders and backtracks; it's overall arc shifts on a weekly basis. Some days I think I should turn north and bike home-- point toward a definitive end and just bike. But the point is to be in the South. Growing up in New England, I heard very little about the United States below Washington, DC; my knowledge of the South ended with my high school history lesson on Reconstruction.
Sometimes I have to remind myself to stop and talk, particularly on the days when there are no blazing personalities, just an ensemble of minor characters that pause to chat. So I sit on a Collinwood bench and listen to Durrell recount stories of living on a Florida houseboat and hopping a mail freighter to the Bahamas; learn about regional weather patterns from a country store proprietor wearing a housewife apron and a 40s hairstyle; laugh with Lynette about my accent in the Lawrenceburg Walgreens; discover that Rhessa, the carefully-coiffed auction school director, used to be a whitewater kayaker and that the promise of blueberry pie in Bryson City was the only thing that kept her hiking along the southern half of the Appalachian Trail.
It's the South. Just about everyone here waves hello and tells me to take care and be safe. And pretty soon someone offers up a story.
“Honey, we’re Southern. We’re supposed to be nice. We’re jus’ tryin’ to live up to our reputation.” -Linda, BBQ Caboose, Lynchburg, TN
I turned into Lynchburg’s downtown square and checked my watch. 6:45pm and getting dark. It looked like I wasn’t going to make Tim’s Ford State Park. Where the heck was I going to sleep?
The fast-picking strains of bluegrass tripped out from the far corner of the square. I peered around. “The BBQ Caboose Cafe- Home of the best food you ever ate.” When I saw the city park behind it with RV hook-ups, I rolled my bike to the front door.
“How’s the music sound?” A man with a neatly trimmed white beard was checking the outside sound equipment. I told him I’d biked over because of it. “Well, come on in!”
Old kerosene lanterns hung from the ceilings, red-checked tablecloths and styrofoam plates, Spur of the Moment playing in the corner, folks “buck-dancing” in the other, everyone loving where they were. The 12 dollar dinner special: a full BBQ dinner, fresh-squeezed lemonade, peach cobbler and ice cream, 2 hours of local jokes and pure TN bluegrass, and a personal welcome from the owner to “the lady who biked up here from New Orleans” before he played the spoons against his thigh.
With that introduction, I became a mini-celebrity and folks sat down at my table throughout the evening to ask questions about my trip and offer advice about roads. One man asked if I was going up over Mount Eagle. “Mount Eagle? No, no. I’m going to Mon-tea-gle and then on to Chattanooga.” “Yeah,” he said. “Mount Eagle. Up the mountain through Sewanee and on up to Mount Eagle.” Uh... I looked at my state road map. Monteagle, TN, right after Sewanee.
When Leo sat down, he told me he’d grown up in Nashua, NH. When he heard I was planning to sleep in the park, he shook his head in dismay and told me to come right on up to his house. He and his wife, Anita, had several empty bedrooms and wouldn’t take no for an answer. If he hadn't hosted me, Linda from Huntsville, Alabama wanted to take me home to her house. I left my bike at the cafe, planning to pick it up when I returned for the live bluegrass radio show the next morning, and up the mountain I went, to wash my laundry and sink into the luxury of a bed with pillows. The next morning, Leo left to deliver Murfreesboro's mail, and Anita made me an omelet and biscuits. Anita is about my mother's age. She makes a delicious "sugarbooty" ham, is the proud mother of 3, wears an Easter appliqué vest, decorates with moose and lighthouses, looks after her elderly parents. She also told me that she went backpacking in California once. "I would have really liked your job," she confided, talking about outdoor instructing. "But by your age, I was married with babies." She can't wait to go skydiving for her birthday.
Hallelujah!
"No, this is pretty much it. We're a small community." The cashier in the Monteagle Market, a glorified convenience store, explained that I would not be encountering the music metropolis I was expecting. On a cold, overcast afternoon, Monteagle gave every indication of being just a highway through the woods. Another customer tried to think of some local hikes and natural sights. The next day was Easter, though, and I didn't want to celebrate alone. I biked around, trying to figure out which way to go. I turned into the Post Office to check my maps.
"Hello!" I looked around. The Market customer was walking toward me with an older man. "I was just telling Bishop Millsaps that I had met this girl who had biked up from New Orleans, and--" "And here I am," I smiled. Bishop Millsaps had a scruffy gray beard and round glasses. He punctuated his conversation with enthusiastic outbursts. Saint Patrick, he informed me, had long ago lit fires in honor of Jesus Christ. The authorities demanded he extinguish them, since fires could only be lit for the king. Saint Patrick refused, declaring that he was lighting them for the King of Kings. Millsaps got into his SUV and leaned out the window. If I was headed toward Sewanee, he told me, I should stop by the blue church with the red door. He’d be there lighting the fires. He waved a bundle of fireworks out the window and drove off.
After a 12 mile jaunt to Sewanee with the misguided hope of finding a university town with a bigger cultural life, I returned to Monteagle hoping to catch some fireworks and free camping behind the church.
The festivities were about to begin when I rolled into the Episcopalian parking lot at twilight. Bishop Millsaps was running around. “Where’s my hat?” he looked around for his green fedora. “Martha, where’s my prayer book?” Finally he called together “all who can hear me” and about 10 of us gathered around a small campfire. He reviewed the story of Saint Patrick and read some Bible passages, then headed for the fireworks. The first few swung unnervingly close to nearby parked cars. The next ones made it up into the sky. The Bishop donned a pair of heavy leather gloves and grabbed two Roman candles. A deacon rushed forward to light them. Silhouetted against the street lamp, Bishop Millsaps stretched out his arms and threw back his head. “Christ is risen!” he shouted. Fireworks shot up from each hand and exploded above us. “Hallelujah!”
After the fireworks, the small group of us filed into the darkened sanctuary for a short service, each bearing a lit candle. The scent of Easter lilies hung heavy. “Have you ever seen anything like this?” Martha, Mrs. Millsaps, whispered to me. “No, not quite like this,” I answered. “This is a unique church,” she giggled. “Because the bishop is a pyromaniac.”
“I’ve had a fascinating, interesting life,” Bishop Millsaps told me after the service. I murmured something about how great that was. He looked down at me. “Well, you had to be there.”
“I grew up in a very small town in Mississippi,” he began. “I thought I was black until I was 5.” He continued with the story of how, at age 10, he and his father had come upon a family feud. Dad went to get the sheriff, and young William was left to keep an eye on the couple. The wife had a shotgun trained on her husband and was more than ready to blow him away. “Now, why you wanna do that?” William asked her. “You’re married, you’re supposed to love each other.” By the time his dad got back with the sheriff, William was holding the gun and had decided he should be a preacher. The only question he had for them was, “Can I keep the gun?”
“I’m going to miss you. Don’ know why, but I am.” -Matt, Monteagle, TN
“How does a cold bed sound?” Matt asked me as I watched the fireworks. What? “I just called the lady I live with and she has several upstairs rooms you could sleep in. They’re unheated, but it’s better than out here in the wind.”
Matt is a Vietnam Vet, a VFW member, an amateur IT specialist and an enthusiastic photographer. Every morning he gets up at 5am for coffee with his buddies and then checks on the church “to see if it’s still standing.” He’s been a securities administrator, lawyer, and truck driver, in that order. “I started driving trucks while I figured out what I wanted to do with my life when I grew up,” he says. I ask him what he figured out. “That I should retire.” He laughs a raspy smoker’s chuckle.
Matt’s been a member of A-A for 22 years. “Of course, it took me a while to figure out I had a problem,” he explains. “Problem was, every time I got near alcohol, I’d break out drunk.” Probably in his late 60s, Matt hobbles pretty nimbly, despite his broken foot. He lives with one of his several “adopted” mothers, Mrs. Haley.
Mrs. Haley is 92. She lives in a yellow clapboard house within the Monteagle Sunday School Assembly, a community based upon the Chautauqua model. Her grandmother started bringing her up for the summer lectures when she was two. She says she always wanted to live in the School Assembly. When someone told her in 1958 that the yellow house was going to go up for sale, she called up the owner and bought it that night. She spent everything she had, her aunt’s inheritance money-- $4,000 for the home “with furniture and linens and everything.”
Sitting next to her in church on Easter Sunday, I feel like I could be her visiting granddaughter. She tells me about her life while we wait for the sermon to start.
“My father died in a car accident when I was 10,” she explains, her voice soft. The arthritis in her neck keeps her looking straight ahead. Her hands rest in her lap. “So money was tight.” Even so, she was able to attend the Mississippi Women’s College at a cost of $400 dollars a year, including board. “I was studying art, but my teacher told me I didn’t have enough talent, so I switched to history.” One summer she went to New York City with a college group and heard about a teaching opportunity at a special education school. “I hadn’t even heard of a retarded child before,” she says, but the school was only 60 miles from West Point, where her “husband-to-be” was in school. She took the job, and two weekends a month a fellow teacher drove her down for dates. She’s worked with special needs children her whole life. When she says she lived in Venezuela for her husband’s military assignment, I ask her how it was. “It was heavenly,” she remembers. “The dictator at the time was a military man and the military were treated very well.”
Mrs. Haley doesn’t walk without assistance now, and the only pair of shoes she owns are white diabetic sneakers. Reading the prayers and hymns hurts her eyes so she recites from memory. “I think you were meant to come to us,” she leans over and whispers to me in the pew. “I would’ve had a hard time finding someone to help me to the bathroom.”
Both Matt and Mrs. Haley wanted me to stay. Matt checked the weather and the forecast was rain. “You’re going to lose two days somewhere,” he told me. He offered to drive me down the road to make up for the lost time. But I was antsy to get biking. When I said goodbye to Mrs. Haley, I told her to take care of herself. “Matt does that,” she said. She pressed a papery kiss on my cheek. “I’ll be praying and hoping for sun,” she told me.
It’s bright green. Creeks and waterfalls trickle through countless gray rock fissures. Cows graze on 45 degree slopes. Houses either perch on the rounded summits or hide in the valley folds.
Driveways run straight up-- clearly this is an area that doesn't get much snow.
The hills are numerous, steep, and unavoidable. Long ridges push up from the valleys to block the horizon and keep me scanning hopefully for a route around them. Biking in southeastern Tennessee goes something like this: I puff up one incline in my granny gear, railing against fried pie and fried cornbread and efficient TN road planning that does not believe in switchbacks, and I vow to eat only fruits and veggies from here on out. Finally I crest the ridge, coasting just long enough for a glimpse of the next summit, so close yet— down, down I plunge into the holler. And I begin again.
"What's your cause?"
The first question people ask me is, "Where are you biking from?" The second is "Where are you biking to?" About half the curious voice the third question, "Why?"
Most Northerners don't understand why I chose the South, and the majority of Southerners don't understand why I'm on a bike. My "route" meanders and backtracks; it's overall arc shifts on a weekly basis. Some days I think I should turn north and bike home-- point toward a definitive end and just bike. But the point is to be in the South. Growing up in New England, I heard very little about the United States below Washington, DC; my knowledge of the South ended with my high school history lesson on Reconstruction.
Sometimes I have to remind myself to stop and talk, particularly on the days when there are no blazing personalities, just an ensemble of minor characters that pause to chat. So I sit on a Collinwood bench and listen to Durrell recount stories of living on a Florida houseboat and hopping a mail freighter to the Bahamas; learn about regional weather patterns from a country store proprietor wearing a housewife apron and a 40s hairstyle; laugh with Lynette about my accent in the Lawrenceburg Walgreens; discover that Rhessa, the carefully-coiffed auction school director, used to be a whitewater kayaker and that the promise of blueberry pie in Bryson City was the only thing that kept her hiking along the southern half of the Appalachian Trail.
It's the South. Just about everyone here waves hello and tells me to take care and be safe. And pretty soon someone offers up a story.
“Honey, we’re Southern. We’re supposed to be nice. We’re jus’ tryin’ to live up to our reputation.” -Linda, BBQ Caboose, Lynchburg, TN
I turned into Lynchburg’s downtown square and checked my watch. 6:45pm and getting dark. It looked like I wasn’t going to make Tim’s Ford State Park. Where the heck was I going to sleep?
The fast-picking strains of bluegrass tripped out from the far corner of the square. I peered around. “The BBQ Caboose Cafe- Home of the best food you ever ate.” When I saw the city park behind it with RV hook-ups, I rolled my bike to the front door.
“How’s the music sound?” A man with a neatly trimmed white beard was checking the outside sound equipment. I told him I’d biked over because of it. “Well, come on in!”
Old kerosene lanterns hung from the ceilings, red-checked tablecloths and styrofoam plates, Spur of the Moment playing in the corner, folks “buck-dancing” in the other, everyone loving where they were. The 12 dollar dinner special: a full BBQ dinner, fresh-squeezed lemonade, peach cobbler and ice cream, 2 hours of local jokes and pure TN bluegrass, and a personal welcome from the owner to “the lady who biked up here from New Orleans” before he played the spoons against his thigh.
With that introduction, I became a mini-celebrity and folks sat down at my table throughout the evening to ask questions about my trip and offer advice about roads. One man asked if I was going up over Mount Eagle. “Mount Eagle? No, no. I’m going to Mon-tea-gle and then on to Chattanooga.” “Yeah,” he said. “Mount Eagle. Up the mountain through Sewanee and on up to Mount Eagle.” Uh... I looked at my state road map. Monteagle, TN, right after Sewanee.
When Leo sat down, he told me he’d grown up in Nashua, NH. When he heard I was planning to sleep in the park, he shook his head in dismay and told me to come right on up to his house. He and his wife, Anita, had several empty bedrooms and wouldn’t take no for an answer. If he hadn't hosted me, Linda from Huntsville, Alabama wanted to take me home to her house. I left my bike at the cafe, planning to pick it up when I returned for the live bluegrass radio show the next morning, and up the mountain I went, to wash my laundry and sink into the luxury of a bed with pillows. The next morning, Leo left to deliver Murfreesboro's mail, and Anita made me an omelet and biscuits. Anita is about my mother's age. She makes a delicious "sugarbooty" ham, is the proud mother of 3, wears an Easter appliqué vest, decorates with moose and lighthouses, looks after her elderly parents. She also told me that she went backpacking in California once. "I would have really liked your job," she confided, talking about outdoor instructing. "But by your age, I was married with babies." She can't wait to go skydiving for her birthday.
Hallelujah!
"No, this is pretty much it. We're a small community." The cashier in the Monteagle Market, a glorified convenience store, explained that I would not be encountering the music metropolis I was expecting. On a cold, overcast afternoon, Monteagle gave every indication of being just a highway through the woods. Another customer tried to think of some local hikes and natural sights. The next day was Easter, though, and I didn't want to celebrate alone. I biked around, trying to figure out which way to go. I turned into the Post Office to check my maps.
"Hello!" I looked around. The Market customer was walking toward me with an older man. "I was just telling Bishop Millsaps that I had met this girl who had biked up from New Orleans, and--" "And here I am," I smiled. Bishop Millsaps had a scruffy gray beard and round glasses. He punctuated his conversation with enthusiastic outbursts. Saint Patrick, he informed me, had long ago lit fires in honor of Jesus Christ. The authorities demanded he extinguish them, since fires could only be lit for the king. Saint Patrick refused, declaring that he was lighting them for the King of Kings. Millsaps got into his SUV and leaned out the window. If I was headed toward Sewanee, he told me, I should stop by the blue church with the red door. He’d be there lighting the fires. He waved a bundle of fireworks out the window and drove off.
After a 12 mile jaunt to Sewanee with the misguided hope of finding a university town with a bigger cultural life, I returned to Monteagle hoping to catch some fireworks and free camping behind the church.
The festivities were about to begin when I rolled into the Episcopalian parking lot at twilight. Bishop Millsaps was running around. “Where’s my hat?” he looked around for his green fedora. “Martha, where’s my prayer book?” Finally he called together “all who can hear me” and about 10 of us gathered around a small campfire. He reviewed the story of Saint Patrick and read some Bible passages, then headed for the fireworks. The first few swung unnervingly close to nearby parked cars. The next ones made it up into the sky. The Bishop donned a pair of heavy leather gloves and grabbed two Roman candles. A deacon rushed forward to light them. Silhouetted against the street lamp, Bishop Millsaps stretched out his arms and threw back his head. “Christ is risen!” he shouted. Fireworks shot up from each hand and exploded above us. “Hallelujah!”
After the fireworks, the small group of us filed into the darkened sanctuary for a short service, each bearing a lit candle. The scent of Easter lilies hung heavy. “Have you ever seen anything like this?” Martha, Mrs. Millsaps, whispered to me. “No, not quite like this,” I answered. “This is a unique church,” she giggled. “Because the bishop is a pyromaniac.”
“I’ve had a fascinating, interesting life,” Bishop Millsaps told me after the service. I murmured something about how great that was. He looked down at me. “Well, you had to be there.”
“I grew up in a very small town in Mississippi,” he began. “I thought I was black until I was 5.” He continued with the story of how, at age 10, he and his father had come upon a family feud. Dad went to get the sheriff, and young William was left to keep an eye on the couple. The wife had a shotgun trained on her husband and was more than ready to blow him away. “Now, why you wanna do that?” William asked her. “You’re married, you’re supposed to love each other.” By the time his dad got back with the sheriff, William was holding the gun and had decided he should be a preacher. The only question he had for them was, “Can I keep the gun?”
“I’m going to miss you. Don’ know why, but I am.” -Matt, Monteagle, TN
“How does a cold bed sound?” Matt asked me as I watched the fireworks. What? “I just called the lady I live with and she has several upstairs rooms you could sleep in. They’re unheated, but it’s better than out here in the wind.”
Matt is a Vietnam Vet, a VFW member, an amateur IT specialist and an enthusiastic photographer. Every morning he gets up at 5am for coffee with his buddies and then checks on the church “to see if it’s still standing.” He’s been a securities administrator, lawyer, and truck driver, in that order. “I started driving trucks while I figured out what I wanted to do with my life when I grew up,” he says. I ask him what he figured out. “That I should retire.” He laughs a raspy smoker’s chuckle.
Matt’s been a member of A-A for 22 years. “Of course, it took me a while to figure out I had a problem,” he explains. “Problem was, every time I got near alcohol, I’d break out drunk.” Probably in his late 60s, Matt hobbles pretty nimbly, despite his broken foot. He lives with one of his several “adopted” mothers, Mrs. Haley.
Mrs. Haley is 92. She lives in a yellow clapboard house within the Monteagle Sunday School Assembly, a community based upon the Chautauqua model. Her grandmother started bringing her up for the summer lectures when she was two. She says she always wanted to live in the School Assembly. When someone told her in 1958 that the yellow house was going to go up for sale, she called up the owner and bought it that night. She spent everything she had, her aunt’s inheritance money-- $4,000 for the home “with furniture and linens and everything.”
Sitting next to her in church on Easter Sunday, I feel like I could be her visiting granddaughter. She tells me about her life while we wait for the sermon to start.
“My father died in a car accident when I was 10,” she explains, her voice soft. The arthritis in her neck keeps her looking straight ahead. Her hands rest in her lap. “So money was tight.” Even so, she was able to attend the Mississippi Women’s College at a cost of $400 dollars a year, including board. “I was studying art, but my teacher told me I didn’t have enough talent, so I switched to history.” One summer she went to New York City with a college group and heard about a teaching opportunity at a special education school. “I hadn’t even heard of a retarded child before,” she says, but the school was only 60 miles from West Point, where her “husband-to-be” was in school. She took the job, and two weekends a month a fellow teacher drove her down for dates. She’s worked with special needs children her whole life. When she says she lived in Venezuela for her husband’s military assignment, I ask her how it was. “It was heavenly,” she remembers. “The dictator at the time was a military man and the military were treated very well.”
Mrs. Haley doesn’t walk without assistance now, and the only pair of shoes she owns are white diabetic sneakers. Reading the prayers and hymns hurts her eyes so she recites from memory. “I think you were meant to come to us,” she leans over and whispers to me in the pew. “I would’ve had a hard time finding someone to help me to the bathroom.”
Both Matt and Mrs. Haley wanted me to stay. Matt checked the weather and the forecast was rain. “You’re going to lose two days somewhere,” he told me. He offered to drive me down the road to make up for the lost time. But I was antsy to get biking. When I said goodbye to Mrs. Haley, I told her to take care of herself. “Matt does that,” she said. She pressed a papery kiss on my cheek. “I’ll be praying and hoping for sun,” she told me.
Monday, April 6, 2009
"This is the story of people on the move." -Natchez Trace Parkway brochure
The Trace.
Dogwood and redbud-lined, the Natchez Trace is a 444-mile national parkway betweenNatchez , MS Nashville , TN. Natchez Ohio River Valley Mississippi River to New Orleans North America ’s RV-cruising retirees, and a few bicyclists.
My first full day on the Trace, and I was feeling pretty good. The pavement was smooth, the traffic light. The sky didn’t look so promising, but what was a little rain with this tailwind? At least it wasn’t hellishly hot. Arnound mile 46, a southbound pickup flashed its lights and pulled toward me. An arm flapped out the driver’s window. It was a park ranger. “You know there’s a tornado watch on til5 o’clock tonight.” She looked me and my bike over. “And you don’t have a radio." I agreed. "Rocky Springs Campground is just up the road. There’s a bathroom there with no windows. You may want to just wheel your bike in there and hang out til this blows through.” She looked at the sky before driving off. “Be safe.”
I had a big day planned—90 miles. The idea of sitting in a windowless ladies’ room was less than appealing. Plus, what would my outdoorsy friends think? But the warning had unnerved me a bit. I tried to remember tornado procedure—lie down in a ditch in a field? I looked around. Trees everywhere. Not so great. I thought back to when I was in a tornado inMaryland Louisiana
I parked my bike in the handicap stall and sat down to wait on a bench outside. I ate lunch. I quizzed stopping motorists for weather updates. One had a static-laced radio: “…tornado warning [crackle]…effect for southeast Louisiana and southern Mississippi [crackle]…60mph winds and quarter-sized hail…moving north at 35mph…” “Warning,” another listener said. “That means they’ve seen one.”
It started to rain. Another traveler came out of the men’s room, pulling a roller suitcase behind him. He walked quickly by me, then tossed a question back over his shoulder like an afterthought: “Your mother coming to get you?”
What? For a moment, I thought I was a high school freshman, waiting for a ride after soccer practice. Not 27 in southern Mississippi.
He stopped, turned around and looked at me. “How far to your next camp?” “Oh,” I said, still feeling slightly confused. “I’m on a month and a half long bike trip.” “Really.” He thought this over. “Very good,” he said, then turned and strode to his car.
I never saw the tornado. By 2pm, the sun was returning, and by 3pm I was on the road again. I still got 90 miles in before dark.
Dogwood and redbud-lined, the Natchez Trace is a 444-mile national parkway between
My first full day on the Trace, and I was feeling pretty good. The pavement was smooth, the traffic light. The sky didn’t look so promising, but what was a little rain with this tailwind? At least it wasn’t hellishly hot. Arnound mile 46, a southbound pickup flashed its lights and pulled toward me. An arm flapped out the driver’s window. It was a park ranger. “You know there’s a tornado watch on til
I had a big day planned—90 miles. The idea of sitting in a windowless ladies’ room was less than appealing. Plus, what would my outdoorsy friends think? But the warning had unnerved me a bit. I tried to remember tornado procedure—lie down in a ditch in a field? I looked around. Trees everywhere. Not so great. I thought back to when I was in a tornado in
I parked my bike in the handicap stall and sat down to wait on a bench outside. I ate lunch. I quizzed stopping motorists for weather updates. One had a static-laced radio: “…tornado warning [crackle]…effect for southeast Louisiana and southern Mississippi [crackle]…60mph winds and quarter-sized hail…moving north at 35mph…” “Warning,” another listener said. “That means they’ve seen one.”
It started to rain. Another traveler came out of the men’s room, pulling a roller suitcase behind him. He walked quickly by me, then tossed a question back over his shoulder like an afterthought: “Your mother coming to get you?”
What? For a moment, I thought I was a high school freshman, waiting for a ride after soccer practice. Not 27 in southern Mississippi.
He stopped, turned around and looked at me. “How far to your next camp?” “Oh,” I said, still feeling slightly confused. “I’m on a month and a half long bike trip.” “Really.” He thought this over. “Very good,” he said, then turned and strode to his car.
I never saw the tornado. By 2pm, the sun was returning, and by 3pm I was on the road again. I still got 90 miles in before dark.
Out of shape and holding steady.
Many people have asked me what I’m doing to keep from losing weight. They see weight loss as the inevitable result of daily pedaling. So I keep checking my love handles to see if they’re disappearing, but then I eat another Snickers bar, or some fried catfish, and well, I don’t think I’m in any danger of emaciation.
Soon after I started biking, in between various seat adjustments seeking the least painful angle, I realized that, not counting a 45minute stint on Grandma’s exercise bike, it’d been a good 6 months since this butt had been on a bike. Let’s just say there’s been a break-in period, and it hasn't been easy.
And lung capacity? Stopping to chat with an afternoon recumbent rider, he asked me if I was headed to Little Mountain. Little Mountain? I thought I was in Mississippi. “We call it a mountain ‘round here, but you’d probably call it a hill,” he explained. “It’s about 600 feet.” Sir, that’s a bump. Halfway up it, I was in my lowest gear and panting. Maybe I can detour around the Appalachians…
Third morning on the Trace, 2 90-mile days behind me, looking to get to the bike shop in Tupelo before closing. I planned to leave early.
“Yuh want some coffee?” A short, bandy-legged man in a blue plaid newsboy cap and black cowboy boots hollered over at me. He was standing with a skinny guy in a red flannel coat. I hesitated—derailleur help, meet new folks. Heck, I had time. I grabbed my mug and headed over.
James had a propane burner set up on the tailgate of his red pickup. The back bed was neatly arranged, complete with a scrap lumber bed frame. He used to sleep in the cab, but “It got so that front seat wuz gettin’ smallah an’ smallah." So he bought a cover for the bed and made it home.
He’s been living out of his truck for the last 6 months, traveling around and returning to
Mr. Rose is biking to
Mr. Rose is tall and thin, and his grey hair curls out from under his green John Deere cap. He’s from
On a bike?! I exclaim my disbelief. He strides over to it. He walks with a limp, his left leg swinging off-kilter from his right. “Yeah. Look at these tires.” They’re fat and knobby. Mr. Rose’s bicycle is a blue and silver Mongoose mountain bike from Wal-Mart. He carries his gear in a child’s roller backpack, the kind with the molded plastic wheels and the extendable handle. He has a green sleeping bag tied to the front handle bars, for added protection he says. A ranger tried to get him to wear a helmet, but after a few days he tossed it in a dumpster. “I don’t wear all that garb,” he says. I note the skinny blue jeans he bikes in. He admits, though, that “that seat ain’t too comfortable. It gets to be about 30 miles an’ I want ta up an’ sling it into the woods an’ start walkin’.”
Mr. Rose says he’s been doing 100 mile days on the Trace. He only did about 40 along the
I chatted with James and Mr. Rose for about an hour, then shook hands and headed off to pack. They never indicated any surprise or amazement or fear over the fact that I was a woman biking alone through the south. To them, I was just one more person on the move.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
You can always depend on the kindness of strangers.
Acadiana.
Cajun Country. Bayou Country. Where tire treads lie like alligators on the side of the road and front porches with rockers, rubber boots, and a cigarette are indispensable. I’ve never traveled through a place where people are so vocally proud of their landscape, their homes, their music, and food.
“You doin’ okay, boo?” -Henderson, LA
People have been extraordinarily kind and generous. In Thibodaux I ended up spending 3 days waiting out the thunderstorms and tornadoes. I started running into the same people around town. At the university there, I attended a poetry reading and ended up having dinner with the poet and the Frenchman who organized it. Mark grew up in Chicago, lived in Europe for several years, and now teaches at Loyola. Jean-Marc grew up in France and has lived in the south for the last 14 years. They took me out for etouffee, fried catfish, wine, and creme brulee. We talked about southern living and immigration and the reasons behind provincialism. Then Jean-Marc drove me and my bike through the torrential rain to my motel.
I met Dustin on the university campus. “I like it,” he said when he saw me roll up to the library on my bike. He pedaled out with me the next day, breaking the wind ahead of me for 50 miles. With a strong southern accent and a deep guffaw for a laugh, he discussed roadside trash and recycling programs, the loss of coastal lands, methods of crawfishing and frogging, carbon fiber seat posts, documentaries and Prairie Home Companion, and how an acquaintance got shot in the back while bicycling in the next town over. We were chased by a water moccasin, and he saved me from being hit by a kid in a dune buggy. His campaign against unfriendly drivers involves getting a tattoo on his butt that reads “Go Around.”
At Angelle’s Old-Fashioned Burger Café in Breaux Bridge, Angelle was the first person who did not temper his excitement for my trip with many words of caution. He boomed his enthusiasm from the moment I walked in the door. With his dark slicked back hair, he looked like Travolta in Grease. Before he left for his grandbaby’s birthday party, he called out, “If I’m not back before you leave, the burger’s on me.” It was quiet after he left, and Dessa the waitress said, “It’s nice now, huh?” She was manning the antique store, burger grill, and ice cream parlor by herself. Whenever the doorbell rang, she would run from the grill to the store, leaving me alone to handle the customers who came in for ice cream. Each time she rushed by me, she’d put a hand on my shoulder and apologize, “I’ll be right back, boo.”
I was tired. It was a beautiful day. -Breaux Bridge, LA
I rolled into Lake Fousse Point State Park about 9pm the night before. It was Saturday night. The swamp invaded the campsites, and RVs outlined in lights seemed to float on their own little islands of pavement. Campfires smoked. A song about Elvis and blue suede pumped out of a pick up. I spent the night out on the dock, listening to the turtles plop and alligators flip. I was up at daybreak to beat the rangers.
When I reached the outskirts of Breaux Bridge, I was tired. My ass was sore. I was sick of headwinds. The cemetery looked inviting. So I sat down, had a little snack, and then lay down. Just for 15 minutes. It was the kind of spring day that invited you to lie in the grass and stare at the clouds. As I was packing up, a cop car, lights flashing, rolled onto the grass toward me. A tall, thin policeman unfolded out of the squad car. I couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, just his hands tapping an unlit cigarette against his lighter. “How you doin’?” “Good...” “How long you been here?” “Oh, I was just having a snack and resting a little bit.” “Well, we got a call that someone was lying down out here.” I started to explain. Tap, tap went the cigarette. “People here are lookin’ out for you...” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two more cop cars, lights flashing, pull up on either side of me. More cops got out. I now found myself surrounded by flashing squad cars and wary cops. I fought the urge to laugh. “She was just restin’,” the first one called out. He looked back to me, stuck the cigarette in his mouth, and turned to go. “You be careful, ma’am.”
“But you started at the wrong end! Because it doesn’t get any better than this.” -Paul, upon hearing I was headed to NC, at Angelle’s Whiskey River Landing, Henderson, LA
“You’ve come all the way up here into Cajun Country just to hear the music. Now is not the time to wimp out.” Biking toward the levee in Henderson, LA, I was trying to psych myself up for the bar. “It’s crazy there,” the burger café owner had said. “They dance on the tables.” Now I was headed for that bar, attempting to bolster my flagging courage. I crested the levee and surveyed the pick ups that stretched out all along the levee. It doesn’t matter that I’ve never been to a bar by myself before, I counseled. The swamp pop thudded from within the wooden building. I squeezed my bike between some cars and pushed through the door. Geno Delafose and his band were on stage and in full swing. The accordion squeezed, the washboard scraped, the snare drum tapped the beat. The deer head and the wild pig mounted on the wall wore mardi gras beads, beer cartons wallpapered the walls. I peeked down to the room below that overlooked the bayou. The dance floor was a jam-packed jumping, twisting, swirling mass of cowboy hats and hunting caps. I headed straight for the bar. I asked for a water. It was bottled. I asked what they had on tap. “This is Louisiana.” Right. I ordered a Bud Light, can. Close enough to water, I reasoned. Then I pushed my way to the edge of the crowd below.
Everyone at Angelle’s loves to dance. It's a hip swiveling, syncopated foot tapping, bouncing extravaganza. I never did quite get the hang of it. My first few partners tried desperately to count out the beat, but as the night progressed, I either got a little better or they got a little drunker. “Look at this place," one exclaimed. "It’s all races, cultures, ages. This is the best place on earth.” He was right. I’ve never been in a room with so many people who are so enthusiastically happy to be exactly where they are. Some of the folks:
Paul, the Altar Boy: Paul found me with the introduction: “You’re the girl on the bike! We passed you when we drove in. I wanna dance with you cuz you must be in good shape.” Baby-faced in his late 30s, Paul loves to dance. After he got divorced, he says he wore through 3 soles of cowboy boots coming here to Whiskey River. Sometimes his enthusiasm for the dance could only be expressed in spontaneous whistles and revved up booty-shaking. He loved it when I tried to dance. “With your dark hair and your dancing, everyone looking at you thinks you’re Cajun,” he claimed enthusiastically. “Except that you don’t have a big butt. But they’ll just think you ate some bad crawfish.”
Paul was there with his brothers, and they, along with Judy the bouncer, became my protective surrogate family for the night. “You don’t have a gun?” Paul cried. “I’m gonna get you a gun. I’m gonna give you one with the serial number scratched off. I have one in my truck.” When I refused the gun, he bent over and pulled a knife out of his cowboy boot. He shoved it at me, insisting I needed a good knife. When I wouldn’t take it, he shoved it in my bag. I’m not going to lie– when I slept out in the Simmesport park the other night, I had two items next to my pillow: my prepaid cell phone and Paul’s knife.
Paul’s brother: Older than Paul, he has a ready smile and enjoys his whiskey. He was easier to dance with because as he said, he “didn’t dance too well either.” When he heard I’d studied English in college, he laughed and said, “You’re gonna have to write a ticket for folks down here, for slaughtering the English language. I never heard it so bad... Call up English, tell ‘em they forgot a state.”
Darren: Fifty-seven and bald, as muscle-bound in his Under Armor tee as a 22-year-old, Darren is one of the best dance partners I’ve ever had. Even being shaky with the steps, it’s the closest to gliding I’ve ever come. But Darren doesn’t go easy on newcomers. When he spun me around, he told me to hang on. I tried. And barely made it. I’m ashamed to say I even yelped, and more than once. When the song ended, an onlooker leaned forward and said, “You deserve a medal for that.” Darren got divorced 8 years ago and started dancing here 6 nights a week. “If they took away this place, it’d be like takin’ away my drugs,” he said.
Demetrius: Young, black, and ultra-thin, he can bend his tall frame down to dance with the shortest of partners. When he asked me where I was from, I told him, “I’m just passing through.” “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I’m trying to learn how to dance.” “It’ll take more than passing through to learn how to dance.”
“I was born on the levee.” -Bert, Henderson, LA
While I was taking a photo of the Henderson Crawfish Plant, a man wearing the usual camo baseball cap comes up to chat about what beautiful country it was. “I was born on the levee,” Bert tells me. “You could jus’ jump off your back dock and go swimmin’.” He talks about his childhood there, before they kicked everyone off the levee in the 70s. “We were huntin’ squirrel and deer and possum. You ever eat any of those?” He asks with a grin. “What about reindeer? Don’t they have reindeer up there in NH?”
Bert tells me his job is to keep the grounds clean. He asks if I want a tour of the crawfish plant. “You wanna see da inside?” I follow him in. “Dis is where you wash da crawfish, den you boil ‘em. In there, they’re peelin’ ‘em.” Bert’s distinctive Cajun accent is hard to reproduce, but it’s great and he knows it. “You like my accent?” he asks once with a sly smile. He takes me out back to show me the bayou. “See those sticks out there? Those are my brother’s fishin’ poles. You have your line and you tie a liette.” He looks at me. “That’s French. That’s what we call a loop. And den you put your hook on dat, and you have the sinker, and you drop it in.” I ask him what he’s fishing for. “Catfish. Not the salt water ones, not the little ones in your aquarium. Big ones. Seventy-five, eighty, 130 pounds.” He stretches his arms as wide as they can go. “This big. They eat all day, they don’ sleep.”
Back at my bike, a few more crawfish peelers come out on break. We talk about family, and how reunions become less frequent as people get older. One observes that it’s when the grandparents die that folks start splitting off. Bert says he’s glad his brother and sister “aren’t foreign. They jus’ live in the next town over.” He decides that biking must allow me time to appreciate family. He taps his head and nods toward my bike. “Gives you time to think on it.” He smiles knowingly. “I bet you I hit the nail on da head there.”
As I prepare to leave, Bert stares at me, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, cigarette in hand. “What?” I ask him. “I’m jus’ thinkin’ you’ll be comin’ back here.”
Back to the Mississippi.
As I bike north, the landscape dries out and the bayous give way to deep green alfalfa fields and horse pastures. Every house has a dog. I lost count after the twentieth dog came out charging and barking. I tried to formulate a solid “Dog Bite Prevention Plan,” something that would involve some clubbing with my bike pump. But when a dog actually did lunge for me, all I could do was yank my ankle out of the way and yell, as loudly and deeply assertively as I could, “Go home!” He settled for my panniers instead, ignoring my commands until he’d gotten in a few good chews. So much for the plans.
At the bank of the Mississippi River now, it’s time for the Natchez Trace.
Cajun Country. Bayou Country. Where tire treads lie like alligators on the side of the road and front porches with rockers, rubber boots, and a cigarette are indispensable. I’ve never traveled through a place where people are so vocally proud of their landscape, their homes, their music, and food.
“You doin’ okay, boo?” -Henderson, LA
People have been extraordinarily kind and generous. In Thibodaux I ended up spending 3 days waiting out the thunderstorms and tornadoes. I started running into the same people around town. At the university there, I attended a poetry reading and ended up having dinner with the poet and the Frenchman who organized it. Mark grew up in Chicago, lived in Europe for several years, and now teaches at Loyola. Jean-Marc grew up in France and has lived in the south for the last 14 years. They took me out for etouffee, fried catfish, wine, and creme brulee. We talked about southern living and immigration and the reasons behind provincialism. Then Jean-Marc drove me and my bike through the torrential rain to my motel.
I met Dustin on the university campus. “I like it,” he said when he saw me roll up to the library on my bike. He pedaled out with me the next day, breaking the wind ahead of me for 50 miles. With a strong southern accent and a deep guffaw for a laugh, he discussed roadside trash and recycling programs, the loss of coastal lands, methods of crawfishing and frogging, carbon fiber seat posts, documentaries and Prairie Home Companion, and how an acquaintance got shot in the back while bicycling in the next town over. We were chased by a water moccasin, and he saved me from being hit by a kid in a dune buggy. His campaign against unfriendly drivers involves getting a tattoo on his butt that reads “Go Around.”
At Angelle’s Old-Fashioned Burger Café in Breaux Bridge, Angelle was the first person who did not temper his excitement for my trip with many words of caution. He boomed his enthusiasm from the moment I walked in the door. With his dark slicked back hair, he looked like Travolta in Grease. Before he left for his grandbaby’s birthday party, he called out, “If I’m not back before you leave, the burger’s on me.” It was quiet after he left, and Dessa the waitress said, “It’s nice now, huh?” She was manning the antique store, burger grill, and ice cream parlor by herself. Whenever the doorbell rang, she would run from the grill to the store, leaving me alone to handle the customers who came in for ice cream. Each time she rushed by me, she’d put a hand on my shoulder and apologize, “I’ll be right back, boo.”
I was tired. It was a beautiful day. -Breaux Bridge, LA
I rolled into Lake Fousse Point State Park about 9pm the night before. It was Saturday night. The swamp invaded the campsites, and RVs outlined in lights seemed to float on their own little islands of pavement. Campfires smoked. A song about Elvis and blue suede pumped out of a pick up. I spent the night out on the dock, listening to the turtles plop and alligators flip. I was up at daybreak to beat the rangers.
When I reached the outskirts of Breaux Bridge, I was tired. My ass was sore. I was sick of headwinds. The cemetery looked inviting. So I sat down, had a little snack, and then lay down. Just for 15 minutes. It was the kind of spring day that invited you to lie in the grass and stare at the clouds. As I was packing up, a cop car, lights flashing, rolled onto the grass toward me. A tall, thin policeman unfolded out of the squad car. I couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, just his hands tapping an unlit cigarette against his lighter. “How you doin’?” “Good...” “How long you been here?” “Oh, I was just having a snack and resting a little bit.” “Well, we got a call that someone was lying down out here.” I started to explain. Tap, tap went the cigarette. “People here are lookin’ out for you...” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two more cop cars, lights flashing, pull up on either side of me. More cops got out. I now found myself surrounded by flashing squad cars and wary cops. I fought the urge to laugh. “She was just restin’,” the first one called out. He looked back to me, stuck the cigarette in his mouth, and turned to go. “You be careful, ma’am.”
“But you started at the wrong end! Because it doesn’t get any better than this.” -Paul, upon hearing I was headed to NC, at Angelle’s Whiskey River Landing, Henderson, LA
“You’ve come all the way up here into Cajun Country just to hear the music. Now is not the time to wimp out.” Biking toward the levee in Henderson, LA, I was trying to psych myself up for the bar. “It’s crazy there,” the burger café owner had said. “They dance on the tables.” Now I was headed for that bar, attempting to bolster my flagging courage. I crested the levee and surveyed the pick ups that stretched out all along the levee. It doesn’t matter that I’ve never been to a bar by myself before, I counseled. The swamp pop thudded from within the wooden building. I squeezed my bike between some cars and pushed through the door. Geno Delafose and his band were on stage and in full swing. The accordion squeezed, the washboard scraped, the snare drum tapped the beat. The deer head and the wild pig mounted on the wall wore mardi gras beads, beer cartons wallpapered the walls. I peeked down to the room below that overlooked the bayou. The dance floor was a jam-packed jumping, twisting, swirling mass of cowboy hats and hunting caps. I headed straight for the bar. I asked for a water. It was bottled. I asked what they had on tap. “This is Louisiana.” Right. I ordered a Bud Light, can. Close enough to water, I reasoned. Then I pushed my way to the edge of the crowd below.
Everyone at Angelle’s loves to dance. It's a hip swiveling, syncopated foot tapping, bouncing extravaganza. I never did quite get the hang of it. My first few partners tried desperately to count out the beat, but as the night progressed, I either got a little better or they got a little drunker. “Look at this place," one exclaimed. "It’s all races, cultures, ages. This is the best place on earth.” He was right. I’ve never been in a room with so many people who are so enthusiastically happy to be exactly where they are. Some of the folks:
Paul, the Altar Boy: Paul found me with the introduction: “You’re the girl on the bike! We passed you when we drove in. I wanna dance with you cuz you must be in good shape.” Baby-faced in his late 30s, Paul loves to dance. After he got divorced, he says he wore through 3 soles of cowboy boots coming here to Whiskey River. Sometimes his enthusiasm for the dance could only be expressed in spontaneous whistles and revved up booty-shaking. He loved it when I tried to dance. “With your dark hair and your dancing, everyone looking at you thinks you’re Cajun,” he claimed enthusiastically. “Except that you don’t have a big butt. But they’ll just think you ate some bad crawfish.”
Paul was there with his brothers, and they, along with Judy the bouncer, became my protective surrogate family for the night. “You don’t have a gun?” Paul cried. “I’m gonna get you a gun. I’m gonna give you one with the serial number scratched off. I have one in my truck.” When I refused the gun, he bent over and pulled a knife out of his cowboy boot. He shoved it at me, insisting I needed a good knife. When I wouldn’t take it, he shoved it in my bag. I’m not going to lie– when I slept out in the Simmesport park the other night, I had two items next to my pillow: my prepaid cell phone and Paul’s knife.
Paul’s brother: Older than Paul, he has a ready smile and enjoys his whiskey. He was easier to dance with because as he said, he “didn’t dance too well either.” When he heard I’d studied English in college, he laughed and said, “You’re gonna have to write a ticket for folks down here, for slaughtering the English language. I never heard it so bad... Call up English, tell ‘em they forgot a state.”
Darren: Fifty-seven and bald, as muscle-bound in his Under Armor tee as a 22-year-old, Darren is one of the best dance partners I’ve ever had. Even being shaky with the steps, it’s the closest to gliding I’ve ever come. But Darren doesn’t go easy on newcomers. When he spun me around, he told me to hang on. I tried. And barely made it. I’m ashamed to say I even yelped, and more than once. When the song ended, an onlooker leaned forward and said, “You deserve a medal for that.” Darren got divorced 8 years ago and started dancing here 6 nights a week. “If they took away this place, it’d be like takin’ away my drugs,” he said.
Demetrius: Young, black, and ultra-thin, he can bend his tall frame down to dance with the shortest of partners. When he asked me where I was from, I told him, “I’m just passing through.” “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I’m trying to learn how to dance.” “It’ll take more than passing through to learn how to dance.”
“I was born on the levee.” -Bert, Henderson, LA
While I was taking a photo of the Henderson Crawfish Plant, a man wearing the usual camo baseball cap comes up to chat about what beautiful country it was. “I was born on the levee,” Bert tells me. “You could jus’ jump off your back dock and go swimmin’.” He talks about his childhood there, before they kicked everyone off the levee in the 70s. “We were huntin’ squirrel and deer and possum. You ever eat any of those?” He asks with a grin. “What about reindeer? Don’t they have reindeer up there in NH?”
Bert tells me his job is to keep the grounds clean. He asks if I want a tour of the crawfish plant. “You wanna see da inside?” I follow him in. “Dis is where you wash da crawfish, den you boil ‘em. In there, they’re peelin’ ‘em.” Bert’s distinctive Cajun accent is hard to reproduce, but it’s great and he knows it. “You like my accent?” he asks once with a sly smile. He takes me out back to show me the bayou. “See those sticks out there? Those are my brother’s fishin’ poles. You have your line and you tie a liette.” He looks at me. “That’s French. That’s what we call a loop. And den you put your hook on dat, and you have the sinker, and you drop it in.” I ask him what he’s fishing for. “Catfish. Not the salt water ones, not the little ones in your aquarium. Big ones. Seventy-five, eighty, 130 pounds.” He stretches his arms as wide as they can go. “This big. They eat all day, they don’ sleep.”
Back at my bike, a few more crawfish peelers come out on break. We talk about family, and how reunions become less frequent as people get older. One observes that it’s when the grandparents die that folks start splitting off. Bert says he’s glad his brother and sister “aren’t foreign. They jus’ live in the next town over.” He decides that biking must allow me time to appreciate family. He taps his head and nods toward my bike. “Gives you time to think on it.” He smiles knowingly. “I bet you I hit the nail on da head there.”
As I prepare to leave, Bert stares at me, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, cigarette in hand. “What?” I ask him. “I’m jus’ thinkin’ you’ll be comin’ back here.”
Back to the Mississippi.
As I bike north, the landscape dries out and the bayous give way to deep green alfalfa fields and horse pastures. Every house has a dog. I lost count after the twentieth dog came out charging and barking. I tried to formulate a solid “Dog Bite Prevention Plan,” something that would involve some clubbing with my bike pump. But when a dog actually did lunge for me, all I could do was yank my ankle out of the way and yell, as loudly and deeply assertively as I could, “Go home!” He settled for my panniers instead, ignoring my commands until he’d gotten in a few good chews. So much for the plans.
At the bank of the Mississippi River now, it’s time for the Natchez Trace.
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