I haven't spent a dime with Holiday Inn for at least 15 years..since whenever it was they decided to no longer fly the Mississippi state flag on their Mississippi properties.
The state voted on it...and by a staggering majority(75%+) we, the state with the largest proportion of black folks in the country, voted to keep it.
Get over yourself...you're a low rent road-side motel with stupid television commercials.
You could call it race politics I guess, but it's not really about race. It's really about the insistent, sad and cloying U.S. need to be loved. They can't fathom that a group of people who, though they really don't deserve it, have the glorious privilege of being citizens of the United States of Uh-meeerica would still harbor separatist sentiments...that's all it is...FULL STOP.
Needy b****es.
Well I don't need to be loved (I'm well taken care of at the house thank you just the same)...
I NEED A CUP OF COFFEE!!!!
I've been in L'usiana all week workin'...with a co-worker who's trying to break the Guiness Book Record for loyalty points with Holiday Inn. So, here I am in one of their rooms...for now that is...until I need another cup of coffee. Then I'll be across the street (not a small feet when you're on Causeway in Metarie) at the curbstore standing in line behind 25 construction workers...all waiting to pay a buck fifty for a hot cup of bilge water marked Gourmet.
These morons have decided to remove the coffee pot from the lobby.
Today is my last day with my current employer. I took another job a couple of weeks ago and it starts on Feb. 1st.
I'm excited about the new gig but kinda sad to leave the folks around here, but it's time to go.
Not to worry I'll still be traveling...the 2011 ticket challange is still on. In fact, I'll be on the road more than I have been.
While we're at it, and for the record, I have already taken two road trips this year travelling over 1000 miles without a ticket....BUT not without a scrape. Slid through a mound of ice (made from clearing the roads) between Tupelo and Aberdeen...I made it through fine, but the front of the volvo took a beatin'.
It's at the shop now so we've been car-pooling this week. As we're gettin' in the car this morning I realized I'd forgotten my computer bag...
"Aw crap I forgot my bag."
I'm a pro, a veteran, at rushing back in the house for things I've forgotten...so in no time I was back in the front seat when I hear from the back..
"You got you crap Daddy?"
Ooops.
Anyway, I wont be havin' as much time to stalk my favorite blogs (even the one's that have apperantly gone on hiatus), or deal immediately with my Sisters slurs, or perry the blows that Adam tries to land against rocknroll. I'm not going anywhere though...I'll still be blowin' up your stat-counters and dealing with these two...I just won't be as ninja-quick about it.
I've got my crap together and it's almost time to go.
Tupelo again...for the last two days. I've spent so many nights up here that I get a Christmas card from the motel every year.
It's always the same in these places...up an hour before the alarm..rollin' around trying to find a comfortable configuration for the 15 tiny pillows they give you...it's noisy in the morning. Somebody above me turns on the shower. It's a creeking echoing sound with pings...like I'm in a submarine that's changing course. Construction workers and electricians, already up and at it, yelling at one another in the parking lot...slamming the doors to vans that are rumbling and ready to get going...the muffled sound of an infommertial.
(This morning it was some kinda body suit that hides your "muffin top"...say what now?)
At some point in the night I'll turn the television down, but not off. So, everytime I wake up it's just loud enought to be a curiosity. It doesn't take long to get sick of that and I'll break out of my pillow nest and swing my legs over the bed...Coffee.
That means I have to make my self presentable...sorta. I operate on the assumption that anybody in the lobby at 6am is gonna be as groggy as me and wont notice that I've come down in a sweatshirt, slacks and no socks...or that my hair hair is sticking out in every direction like it's scrambling to get away from my head.
This is how it starts...an issue that I will be dealing with for the rest of the day. I'll drink four or five cups in the room before I head out...to breakfast and more coffee. Then I'm in the car for the rest of the day. Doesn't take long before I'm huntin' a bathroom...and there's only one place for that on the road...gas stations. If I can find a busy truck stop it's no problem...I go in, I handle my business and I leave, but...
There aren't a lot of busy truckstops on the roads I travel. Mostly small stores where the proprietor is staring you in the face as you walk through the door...and he's not offering his bathroom up as a public service. You gotta buy something...more coffee. I know better, but it's cheap...it gives me something to do in the car...besides havin' a cup a coffee in one hand and the other on the steering wheel is being on the road.
And so it goes...from cup to curbstore until I finally pull in the drive.
At which point I make a mad dash for the bathroom.
(Hey Martha...sounds like she's eatin' dinner at noon...how could that be?)
among others...like the fella playin' guitar on this..
Hubert Sumlin playin one of the greatest lines of g'itar in the history of electricity.* It's also the home of Guitar Slim, and if you've never heard The Things That I Used To Do...you can find it on this blog. Flimsy Cups has ranked it at #9 on the all time list of Blues Songs.
You reckon anybody still plays the g'itar in Greenwood?
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Of course, when people think of the Delta...Clarkesdale is probably the first place that comes to mind. It's the home of the Delta Blues...the Blues that most people are familiar with. Robert Johnson and all that...the Crossroads are at Clarkesdale.
More importantly, to me, it's the home of Cat Head Records...maybe the best record store in the state.
There was nothing 12 bar about the rythmic clang he was beating out of that old guitar. Cat Head has much more of Hill Country feel to it than Delta...afterall Hill Country blues is still alive and kicking. Besides Clarkesdale has always been more than Delta Blues...Sam Cooke's from there, Ike Turner, and John Lee Hooker. He learned to play from his uncle that had a one chord style very similar to what you find in the Hills.
Can't forget Tunica.**
And we can't leave the Delta without some of this...
These are the same fields that fed Liverpool when textiles were employing around 4 million Britons. If Eric Hobsbawm is to be believed (always a cautious proposition...even when he's not going out on a limb) this was the fuel for the engine that ran the British Empire in it's first phases.
Or this...
* Howlin' Wolfe is actually from around West Point in the Columbus area...south of Tupelo and not far from where Tennessee Williams was born.
**The pictures of Cat Head and Tunica were taken last year, but better than anything I got on my last trip.
Over the last few weeks the car has become like a silent team member for the blog and I thought maybe a proper introduction was in order.
I would just direct you to the Mississippi Highway Patrol website, but I don't know how to post links.
If you've been reading you already know that my turn signals aren't working, and that I have a coat hanger for an antenna. There's more...
There's Tinny the radio...I hesitate to call it a stereo. Sounds like a transistor in a coffee can... And it's got a governor on it. There's a point where turning the knob does as much good as callin' it names and yellin' at it to get louder.
If it's legal to put a governor on a stereo it should be illegal to play certain songs over the airwaves...
No Scrubs - TLC
Twang - George Strait
Country Grammar -Nelly
You can just wipe the whole Skynrd catalog from the rotation.
Workin' for MCA calls for 11...I get about a 4.
The driver side back door lock sticks. At first I thought it was because, other than the driver door, that's the door I use the most...throw the computer bag back there, load and unload the boy...but were talkin about a remote key. Why should it matter how many times I open the door...just the cosmos pickin' on me...AGAIN.
Of course, when it sticks I don't just press the button again...I mash it, squeeze it, shake the remote at the car, swing it around...like I'm attacking it with an imaginary samuri sword.
There's goldfish crackers piled into every crevice and pocket in the back seat..and toys hidden somewhere back there that squeak and squall and then go silent until the very moment that I've forgotten they're back there. Creepy toys.
I've got a cracked windshield, but clean windshields have the same life span as a double A battery around here.
That's the car...I spend almost as much time in it as I do in the house...and it's responsible for at least half the posts around here.
P.S. Adam reminded me yesterday that I may have a broken speedometer..and that's why I keep gettin' speeding tickets. Thanks brother...that might be just the defense I need in court.
Goin north from Jackson you don't really get out on the road 'til you clear Canton which is about 20 miles from the city limits. Then it's another 20-30 miles to the Lexington/Pickens exit where I take my first smoke break at an old truck-stop...
oooops.
It's a cryin' shame too...one of the few honest truck-stops left on the road. The kinda place that sells bumper stickers and t-shirts, that say "I spent most of my money on women and booze..the rest I just wasted" or "It's not a Belly it's a Gas-Tank for a Love Machine"...little cedar boxes with a picture of Robert E. Lee on the lid...ashtrays and shot glasses decorated with Battle Flags, cut-glass figurines and dream catchers...rubber-band guns with clothes-pins for a firing mechanisms..
The bathrooms were down a long wood paneled hall...at the corner was one of those old cylindrical ashtrays, gun metal grey with a chrome top, under a pay phone...not much call for either of those these days. The bathrooms had cinder block walls and cement floors...no automated anything and it wasn't uncommon to find a bottle of dish-washing soap on the sink when the hand soap had run out.
Now it's gone. I'm sure to be replaced with another Love's or Flying J...fresh deli sandwiches, a mocachino machine, a Red Box and clean bathrooms. Yawn.
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Como Mississippi is a tidy little town just South of Senatobia and not too far from Southaven.
It was the home of Mississippi Fred McDowell and Othar Turner...both legends of Hill Country Blues...a more rythmic, driving, get-down form than the kind that comes out of the Delta. McDowell is the undisputed king of the slide (Womm?) while Turner led the Drum and Fife tradition.
That's from the Square at Holly Springs...another Hill Country Blues town. It's the home of Fat Possum Records, Junior Kimbrough and the irreplaceable, gigantic R.L. Burnside.
A man that looms larger in my own mind than William Faulkner and Elvis...both from the area.
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Those with a map may have noticed that we've skipped over Southaven and are half way to Tupelo.
Southaven is the Mississippi part of Memphis...there's lots of manufacturing and shipping because taxes are much lower in Mississippi. It's a pleasant livable place...there just isn't much to tell. There was work to be done and once I finished it I headed out...stopped in Holly Springs. Then on through New Albany to Tupelo.
Tupelo, Mississippi the birthplace of Elvis Presely.
That's the house where it all started...and they've turned it and a couple of acres around into a park. There's a gift shop and a museum, a chapel. Recently they brought over the Pentecostal Church he attended as a child. It's a lovely quiet spot in the same working class neighborhood where he was born.
Tupelo is also the home of...
There was trouble at the mall
And trouble with the internet connection in my room...
That's my perplexed to the point of irritation face...with shrapnel.
Y'all already know what happened the next day on the way back.
For those keeping score that's two speeding tickets in three weeks. I got one back in June, but I didn't have a blog back then so that one doesn't count. Before anybody starts...and you know who you are...in the last three weeks I have driven over 2600 miles.
How many trips to the club or drop offs at the Day School is that?
So really it's not quite as outrageous as it sounds...besides there's no way I was doin' 70 miles an hour. The Trooper made that up. I know I wasn't drivin that fast because I kept havin' to slow down and dodge cars that were passing on double lines (where was dudley doright then)...it's real hilly where I was (between Calhoun City and Grenada...that's Gre-Nay-duh in Mississippi). People get impatient. You can see 'em up ahead passing and then they disappear behind the hill you're getting ready to top...and there's no shoulders on these roads.
Anyway...me and him'll be talkin' about it in court.
Of course, that means I'll have to go to court twice...because when your accuser is the po-leese they don't have to be there for the actual court date...they get a mulligan.
After a few days back from up north...I was on the road again.
This time headed south to the Mississippi Gulf Coast on business.
A little beer and cigs store north of Saucier where I usually take a break...
For those of you who don't live in the U.S., every state has it's own peculiar liquor laws. In Mississippi you can't buy cigarettes or beer at a package store (liquor store)...so a lot of times owners will set up a c-store next to their booze stand. You can usually get a moonpie or a pack of nabs in these places, but really they exist to sell cigarettes and beer. Dixieland, obviously, is just such a place.
Did y'all know the Queen of England get's her hair did in Biloxi?
Biloxi is really a pretty little place. There are still some empty lots here and there but...it's cleaned up real smart.
They've done a nice job on this old building.
The back door of Spanish Trail books...great collection of old Modern Library books. The owners a little touched maybe
"Do y'all sell mylar covers?"
"No..you know you can get mylar now and make your own."
Yeah well I reckon I could buy fabric and make my own pilla cases too, but...
Anyway, I picked up a clean copy of English Poetry 1900-1950: An Assessment by Chsisson.
Ocean Springs...just lovely, that's all.
Reckon they'll sell you a cokecola in that place? Get you a pretty good cheeseburger and milkshake too I imagine.
I don't know how people live without havin live oaks around...
An old spread headed out toward Pascagoula.
Hard to think about it, but all these places were nearly erased five years ago...not because of a busted levy either, but a 30 ft. storm surge.
I did some business in between takin' my point and shoot pictures...then it was time to get on back...
I've got a hole in the sole of my shoe. I was aware of it but I don't think I had really internalized the fact until a minute ago when I tried to stomp out a cigarette...like bein' struck by lightening on the ball of my foot.
Let's set the scene for next sales call.
I've pulled up and gotten out of the car...
"Mr. Bottums. There's a man holding a gift bag..hoping around on one leg in the parking lot. Oh, he's just taken a tumble...he's spread eagle on a pile of what looks like...pecans? He's got a hole in his shoe...brown socks? With those pants? Reckon we should call somebody?"
My turn signals have mysteriously stopped working...meaning I'm risking, if not life, a limb everytime I have to make a left turn.
My antenna doesn't work either...meaning I have to stop and wrap a piece of coathanger around it between sales calls (stopping to take it down before pulling in someones parking lot of course). This bit of redneck engineering mortifies Martha and the Sister, but they don't spend 5 hours a day in a car that doesn't have a radio.
Yeah I get some funny looks. Maybe if it was an old truck (I wish) people wouldn't think twice about it, but it's a zippy little volvo with a big Yale sticker across the back window...and a coat hanger waggin around off the antenna. They stare sometimes...
"I'm sorry I can't hear your puzzled look over Britney...Hold on a cecond...OOOps I did it AGAIN...OK What? What are you lookin at?"
Once in New Albany an old man drinkin' coffee at a curbstore asked me "if it only got reception in the closet?"
I need a personal assistant...and not just because it would be cool.
I need one.
I'm on the road again...in a motel room. I'm pretty handy with these places. I know how to get all the lights on (if you think that's a snap you haven't stayed in many of these rooms)...know how to deal with fickle ac units...I can make an actual potable cup of coffee with the packets they leave for you on the bathroom sink.
What I can't do is pack for these trips. I'm just incapable of getting out of the house with everything I need. It's always something...razor, toothbrush, wallet...this morning it's grey socks.
I got a pair of pressed charcoal slacks and some brown socks. I know how it happened. I was wearin' tan britches when I packed yesterday...and packin clothes is just not the kinda thing that's ever gonna get my full attention. In the morning I look at my britches while I'm gettin' a pair of socks...simple. It works well for that day...not so well for the next.
I ended up buck naked from the waist down in a Walmart bathroom in Alabama once because of distracted packing. I had a pair of seersucker pants and had packed some RED boxers...that was a no go. Two things that don't work with seersucker pants...red boxers and going without. I didn't have a choice...I had to find some drawers and I didn't have time to go out and come back. I had a sales pitch to give in an hour. So, thirty minutes later, and thirty minutes before tryin' to sell 100 thousand dollars worth of software, I was standing in a Walmart bathroom puttin' on a fresh pair of boxers.
I gotta go find a pair of socks...pity I don't have somebody to send out for 'em.
I've been on the road the last four days...down one side of Louisiana and up the other.
It did exactly what it looks like it's about to do...I was still an hour and half on the interstate from where I was goin'. It was blinding rain, in the dark, on Louisiana roads...and was about as much fun as it sounds.
I know the roads in Mississippi are like a washboard, but at least they weren't drawn up by a blind man at an OTB taking instructions from a witch doctor sittin' in the corner eatin on a buttered, purple candle. I've been in New Orleans a hundred times...I had a map y'all and a compass in the car and still it took me 40 minutes to figure out how Canal and Carrolton related to one another...I'm still not sure I got it figured out.
Anyway, I made it...got a Central Grocery muffaletta, carried it around for a couple of hours...hmmm hmmm hmmmm...washed it down with an ice flecked root beer.
