Greenville, Mississippi: Cypress Reserve 2014

  

Cypress Reserve, Greenville, Mississippi, November 2014

On my way from Louisiana to Missouri for my annual relocation layover, I stopped for the night in Greenville, Mississippi. 

Cypress Reserve, Greenville, Mississippi, November 2014

The next morning I strolled through the Cypress Reserve, which I first visited in 2011.

Cypress Reserve, Greenville, Mississippi, November 2014

The Cypress Reserve is a lovely place for a quiet walk.

Cypress Reserve, Greenville, Mississippi, November 2014

Louisiana Road Trip 2011, Part 11: Going Home B

The last day. It's a cliche, but it's true: Time flies.

My vacation from Teach and Learn with Georgia has also flown by; I leave for Rustavi on the 12th.

On January 17, I'll learn if I will be a 2012 member of Teach for America.

Getting started

On Highway 1 in Mississippi, I listened to some rousing morning gospel music on the radio:

Missed turn

Whoops, missed my turn back onto Highway 1 from a Highway 49 leg. So I ended up taking the l-o-n-g way to Jonesboro, Arkansas.

On the bright side, if I'd turned when I supposed to, I would have missed seeing thousands of birds:

And this old-fashioned hellfire and brimstone tract carried by an Arkansas service station:

 

Or this really bizarre situation:

When I first drove by and saw this in my peripheral vision, I thought it was a hawk somehow snagged in a tree when it swooped for a kill. I turned around and came back for a closer look. Not much left except the beaks and wings of a duck.

So concludes my Louisiana Road Trip.  

Louisiana Road Trip 2011, Part 10: Going Home A

Cottage in Arnaudville. The one on the right.

Piddled around this morning, but made steady progress toward my departure from the cottage. Finally took off just before noon.

Highways 77 and 10, Louisiana

I wanted to retrace some of my route that I'd taken down because it was so pretty. The green, green fields. The marshy waters in people's front yards, with herons. Between Fordoche and Morganza.

I entered new territory when I took a left onto Highway 1 instead of right. By doing this, I forfeited my second view of the beautiful Audubon bridge, but I was drawn by new lands.

Highway 15, Louisiana

I found myself driving along a levee, moving from Hwy 1 to Hwy 15. It's a damned good thing I gassed up in Morganza before I got onto 15. It was a l-o-n-g way between gas stations.  I drove aside a levee and a series of locks, dams and hydroelectric projects (or something) the entire way. The Old River Control Complex. Some interesting sites about same, most with cool pictures: 

Credit: USACE per Urban Decay

Credit: USACE

America's Achilles' heel: the Mississippi River's Old River Control Structure

Morganza Spillway/Floodway and Old River Control Structure

Where Does the Water Go? The Old River Control Structures, Louisiana  (Interesting, this article is from Urban Decay, which I stumbled upon earlier in my trip re: Margaret's Grocery in Vicksburg. I see he has a recent article on Tallulah, LA, a town I also found intriguing. Maybe I should see about linking him to the sad but beautiful disintegration of Old Rustavi.) 

I saw large white birds with black-tipped wings taking in the waters at the auxiliary structure. High fencing, barbed wire, big padlocks, and what looked like a thick electric-shock cable prevented me from getting a closer look. But I was able to use the office lavatory. Someone had written a sign inside the ladies' room: "If you can't clean up after yourself, then use the woods." Reminds me of a motel room in Memphis, Missouri, that had this sign in every bathroom: "Don't clean game in the sink."

Anyhoo, after an in-car lunch of hard-boiled eggs and a satsuma orange, I proceeded along my way.


Things I saw on the way

• Logging trucks
• Three dead hawks roadside
• Men collecting pecans (evidently a bumper crop this year)

Louisiana - Log yard

Tallulah, Louisiana

On Highway 65, I drove through Tallulah. Two things I noticed right off. A very pretty, wide bayou rolling through town. In the middle of the bayou, for awhile along its length, were wire Christmas trees with lights. I'd love to see those at night reflecting on the water. The other thing I noticed were the lightpost banners marking Black History Month. They were a striking design: red, black, and white with a drawing of Martin Luther King, Jr.  I wish I remembered what the poster said exactly, because whatever it said gave me the impression of a town that really celebrated the month in a wholeheartedly, appreciative way. Whether or not that's the reality, who knows?

Lake Providence, Louisiana

Lake Providence is another pretty town in Louisiana. Highway 65 (just north of Translyvania.) I liked the fishing huts, piers, and later, houses, that jutted out over the water.  Another place I'd like to revisit some day.

Back in Greenville, MS

I made it to Greenville, Missisippi for the night. Stayed at a Days' Inn that had a surprisingly nice room. Newly remodeled. Decent bed, nice looking furniture, new TV. Fridge. Free wifi. Alas, no microwave. Very clean. Only $60, including tax.

Louisiana Road Trip 2011, Part 2: Gators and Greenville

Alligator Lake, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Leroy Percy State Park

I awakened this morning to a beautiful lake and wood view from my cabin at Leroy Percy State Park. (Remember the Percy name for later.) The lake is Alligator Lake, and gators do live here, though this time of year, they're likely snuggled under mud for a long winter nap. Still, the park staff told me that on especially warm and sunny winter days, some gators emerge to enjoy the sunshine.

Cabin 2, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Cabin 2, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Cabin 2 porch, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

View of Alligator Lake from Cabin 2 screened porch, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Cabin 2 backyard, Leroy Percy State Park, Mississippi

Beautiful, yes?

Alas, the two park trails were too sodden for walking, so off to Greenville I went.

Greenville

Greenville is on the Mississippi Blue Trail ...and the Hot Tamale Trail.

Remember, a week or so ago, Carol and I made an abortive attempt to get us some Delta-style tamales. Today, mission accomplished at Greenville's Hot Tamale Heaven.

Yes, they tasted good. Pretty much like tamales in the Southwest, I think. But I'm not a tamale connoisseur.  

I ate them in the parking lot of the Winterville Mounds, a mildly interesting Indian site from the 1300s-ish.

I climbed atop one of the mounds. Reminded me of the ruins near Tlaxcala that I visited with Kate and Pam. What a walk that was from one set of ruins to the other! The Xochitécatl ruins looked so close!

View of Xochitécatl ruins from the Cacaxtl ruins, near Tlaxcala, Mexico

The endless walk.

The long walk from the Cacaxtl ruins to the Xochitecatl pyramids, near Tlaxcala, Mexico

And finally. The view from one of the Xochitécatl pyramids:

View from Xochitecatl pyramid, near Tlaxcala, Mexico

The view from the Winterville Mound isn't as dramatic as that from the Xochitécatl pyramid. But it was fun remembering that day in Mexico while I looked out over the green Mississippi flood plain.

Despite my recent epiphany about museums, the 1927 Greenville Flood Museum looked intriguing. The museum is in the carriage house of a former plantation. In fact, this carriage house is believed to be the oldest structure in Greenville (the oldest still surviving, that is). Mike Bostic, the museum docent, screened a PBS documentary about the 1927 Greenville flood, called Fatal Flood, which told a disturbing story about how economics, man's inhumanity against man, and family betrayal factored into the town's flood response. Remember Leroy Percy? He and his son, Will Percy, played a prominent role in the story of the flood. One of the people interviewed in the documentary was John Barry, who wrote Rising Tide: The Great
Mississippi Flood of 1927 and how it Changed America. Apparently, the surviving Percys were livid about Barry's portrayal of them in the book.

Mike and I had a short but interesting conversation about "Southern writers." I didn't know this, but there is evidently so much cachet attached to being a "Southern writer" that there are authors who perhaps exaggerate their Southern ties so they can self-identify as such.  (When will the stalwart Midwesterners get their deserved glory?)


Next I went to the Cypress Preserve, a pretty park with a trail through a virgin stand of cypress. As I walked, I breathed in the pungent fragrance of fallen cypress needles.


 















Getting rid of stuff. It was almost dark when I returned to my cabin. I spent an enjoyable evening decluttering the music list on my laptop and mp3 player, culling songs and musicians I no longer wanted to hear.
For example, I could not abide the no-nuance voice of blueswoman Susan Tedeschi one more day.

And though I love Carolina Chocolate Drops, I have come to despise Trampled Rose, one of the songs on their Genuine Negro Jig album. (I loathe the song so much that I had a story in my head that went like this: One of the Drops guys didn't feel as if he'd gotten his share in the group's limelight, so he complained and complained to the other two about how he'd written this song, and they owed it to him to record the awful thing, and they gave in. I didn't know til today that the damn song is actually an old standby and multiple artists have covered it. For God's sake, why?)

Now gone, all gone. Very satisfying.

Talking about Carolina Chocolate Drops gives me the excuse to play a favorite, Snowden's Jig: