Blue Goose ~ Days 270 - 274

February 21 - 25, 2015 ~ Vicksburg, MS

On Saturday I went to the National Military Park, only two miles from the motel. I first went to the Visitor Center to get the lay of the land (and buy two books).

There were four staff: a friendly volunteer of retirement age who wanted to talk and share information; a man at a computer who did recommend a couple of general books on the Vicksburg campaign but wanted to get back to his computer; a handsome young African-American man who seemed ready to help me check out the books I bought, but before he could, the fourth person, a young and efficient fair-complexioned woman came briskly out of an office to do it, which seemed a little weird as the gentleman then just deferred to her and stood quietly in the background.

National Military Park - Vicksburg - MS

The Park is sobering, very much like Gettysburg, with monuments and historical markers and 17,000 graves; 12,000 of these interments are unidentified. The physical landscape also reminded me of Gettysburg with hills and gullies and fields and trees. Today, all is pristine and quiet; the blood and guns and screams and smoke and horses and mud only in books and movies and artwork. The actual cemetery is an area adjacent to the far loop of the auto route, next to the USS Cairo Gunboat and Museum. The Cairo was one of seven ironclad gunboats and was sunk in the Yazoo River near Vicksburg by the Confederates where it lay in the mud for over 100 years before being raised and restored. It is a tale very similar to that of the steamboat Bertrand on the Missouri, which also sunk and was found 100 years later and is now at De Soto NWR in western Iowa. A Japanese family was visiting and three young girls were frolicking on the short wall at the Cairo site.

USS Cairo Gunboat and Museum - Vicksburg - MS

Thousands of the grave markers are modest weathered four to six inch stubby stone squares. They are not in one grand field but in orderly groups of hundreds on the hillsides and under the trees. One of the books I bought was specifically about the battles at Gettysburg and Vicksburg.

The Park should be a wonderful birding venue in a month.

I ate out once, at See's, which offered "hibachi or Chinese" as I walked in the door.

Starting to get cabin (motel) fever, I found an independent bookstore downtown - Lorelei Books, whose logo is of a mermaid reading a book. I went there twice and now have enough books about the South for several months of reading....on politics, trees, the blues, cotton, bayous.....and I also got the Kristof / WuDunn book, Half the Sky.

The owner is a woman named Laura who moved to Vicksburg from Virginia Beach 10 years ago after visiting her sister several times when her sister lived here. The bookstore was perfect...really a lovely place with light wood, a few solid pieces of furniture, good lighting, a great book selection, a couple of stealthy resident cats, and a few non-book products. One was made by Uncle Goose from Grand Rapids, Michigan....handcrafted wooden blocks using Great Lakes sources. Another product was beautifully sewn little quirky fabric dolls made by a Vicksburg lady who inherited a sewing machine and her mom's button collection....(Eunice, I thought of you with your sewing skills and creativity and an inherited button collection...)

If anyone ever goes through to to Vicksburg, please stop by. The store is on Washington Street, a couple blocks up from the river. The owners live upstairs. There is a coffee shop next door where folks were playing chess, working on computers,  reading.... It was like a West Coast or college town coffee shop, at the other end of the spectrum from a Starbucks but with good coffee and an efficient barista...a dark, cluttered, cozy place with used books and eclectic stuff on the walls. Local, both of these businesses.....

Laura and I talked about small town politics and Mississippi and how the Vicksburg "ex-pats" hang out together. She had just started a book club but had to reschedule the first meeting due to the hazards of ice and snow. She loves poetry and hosts poetry readings. One poet she mentioned was Gail White, a medical technologist who also writes poetry. Laura said how people enjoyed Gail's visit because many people are afraid of or dislike poetry "as they expect a metaphor to come out from every bush... but Gail's work isn't like that."

I told her Vicksburg was seducing me and she said I should move down and "join us."

She knew of Politics and Prose in Washington DC. In fact, one of her customers, now a retired lawyer, used to live there and frequented P and P.

Lorelei bookstore - Vicksburg - MS

How does she select books?  "Well, that is an interesting matrix of a discussion...." Reviews of course; her own and customers' interests; prepublication galleys; trade magazines; best sellers....

A white, multilevel paddle-wheeler, The American Queen, was tied up in Vicksburg that day, so I got to see it and the several tour buses who were bringing passengers (most under black umbrellas) back from the Military Park and the Historic District or wherever else they went.

A couple at breakfast in the motel one morning were driving the Natchez Trace. I laughed when I heard a woman  say that the waffle was probably "infinitely better" than the sweet roll and thus started a conversation. They lived in Portland, Oregon, and we spent some time sharing traveling stories. The gentleman had been in the Coast Guard, at sea for six of his 24 years. He had a very courteous intelligent
demeanor and listened as much as he spoke.

He had been in every state and also told me about Canada's Red Coat Trail running through Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta, an 800 mile route used by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1874 as they moved west establishing law and order for the settlers who followed. Their next grand adventure (they said) was Australia or maybe a "slow boat to China...." The lady was attractive with a teasing twinkle in her eye as they talked about ex-Govenor Kitzhaber (Oregon) who joined the cadre of men who get in trouble because they "follow their who know what" she said.

The American Queen - Vicksburg - MS

The motel had a nice pool right off the lobby where I went every afternoon with my computer, sitting under plastic trees by the blue blue water. No one ever used it, though I was tempted.

I have been called Ma'am at least 200 times lately and even "Mum"by one of the sweet housekeepers who kept me supplied with coffee and fresh towels and would have gladly done any upkeep I asked. All of the staff were African-American....but the owner was East Indian.

On Tuesday morning, my car was completely frozen shut with an inch of snow/ice covering it, but it thawed by noon enough to open the doors.

One evening I chatted briefly with a guy in the lobby who works for a utility company down here but lives in Traverse City and is looking to move his family to Holland. "In fact, we just starting looking last week for a house...." He had iPhone photos of this year's snow caves on Lake Michigan and I showed him Big Red on my phone.

Mostly I worked and read Unbroken by Hillenbrand, a truly incredible tale.

And I watched the Academy Awards.....Lady Gaga and Sound of Music tribute and Julie Andrews; Neal Patrick Harris's grand opening number....the nuttiness of the Red Carpet and the gowns, many beautiful but some seriously weird. (Some bitchy woman on a different show said that the necklace Scarlett Johansson wore looked like a bunch of "seaweed" and I sort of agree.) I hadn't realized Reese Witherspoon had been a nominee for Best Actress and was happy for her as I loved the movie Wild. And just all of the hoopla leading up to the final awards. Why are so many of those who work behind the scenes to get a movie made foreign born?

Vicksburg Military Cemetery - MS