NOLA

Wednesday, January 20, 2010. New Orleans.

Went first to the French Quarter, then here and there until I ended up at the New Orleans Museum of Art. The museum has a decent medium-sized collection, particularly of French paintings from the Renaissance through the 19th century.

What a charming city this is, particularly in its older parts. The lure isn't so much to see lots of specific tourist items such as museums, as to simply be here, surrounded by the architecture and in the shade of the gigantic oak trees. In the French Quarter of course their lifeblood is tourists, but I always wonder when I look around what it is I am really missing while being directed at restaurants and souvenir shops and balconies hung with Mardi Gras decorations. It's like a magician's sleight of hand. Watch over here, while the reality takes place behind my back. That's why I like walking past junkyards and warehouses and housing projects, too. But like anyone else, I would rather live on St. Charles Avenue than out on Chef Menteur Highway.

Day 69: The Big Difficult

Bayou Sauvage NWR to New Orleans. 20 miles/1230.2 total

Tuesday, January 19. 2010

Here I am at the garbage-strewn intersection of U.S. 11 and U.S. 90, heading down 90 toward New Orleans, whose far eastern edge I should reach in a couple of miles, and then more or less into the center of the city, to the intersection of Broad Street and Conti.

Finding a place to leave the motor home was a bit challenging today. The area down around the cutesy touristy section didn't seem a likely place because of narrow streets and metered and residential parking restrictions, so I got up onto Broad Street, north of downtown, and found an empty parking lot in front of an abandoned store of some kind, where they have a flea market a couple of times a month. As always, it's an act of faith leaving that thing behind for the day.

So I'll get about halfway through New Orleans. Tomorrow is a day off for sightseeing, and the next day I'll walk the rest of the way through the city. This is symbolically an important day, since it represents the completion of the first leg of the entire journey--from Michigan to New Orleans and then west to Los Angeles. It's probably about the one-third point.

Let me start out by saying a couple of things about Hurricane Katrina. In August 2005 it devastated the city and its suburbs, killing people, displacing them, and causing property damage. The levees failed, for one thing, and for another, it was a goddamned hurricane, in an area of the Gulf coast that is prone to hurricanes, and much of which is only being kept dry in the first place by artificial means. And it could happen again next summer or the summer after that. In the words of Dick Gregory from an old substance abuse public service spot, "When nature comes to collect her debt, you can't go to the door and say, 'Mama's not home.'" If you want to visit a blog about Katrina, go to the address listed in the comment by "judyb" following yesterday's post. And thanks for all the info, judyb.

Early on, it's the wildlife refuge on the north of 90 and a series of auto junkyards and small houses and shacks on the south. This road is also called Chef Menteur Highway. There are several explanations for this name. The one I like best is that it means "chief liar" in French, a translation from the Choctaw "oulage mingo," and was given by the Indians to the French colonial governor, named Louis Billouart, Chevalier de Kerlerec, because he reneged on a treaty. Kerlerec was in charge of Louisiana during what we call the French and Indian War, after which France lost the territory to Spain. He was recalled to France in 1763 and thrown into prison for a few years, but was eventually exonerated.

There's no sign welcoming me to New Orleans, but according to the map I'm carrying I have entered after crossing Recovery Drive. I pass the Diamond Jubilee Casino, a small brick building a half mile or so inside the city limits. I go in to bet five dollars, but come back out after a few minutes, down $1.10. It was a rinky-dink place with nothing but poker machines. I'd rather play slots, where you don't know how high the odds against you are, than to play video poker, where you do.

I am in what is called Eastern New Orleans or New Orleans East. This is part of the Ninth Ward that was severely damaged by flooding from Katrina, although there's another part, the Lower Ninth Ward, that got hit even worse. There's a NASA facility off to my left, probably a tracking station. The first residential area I come to is evidently filled with Vietnamese people. Almost all the stores have Vietnamese names. This place probably has some clever name like Little Saigon.

The south side of Chef Menteur must be zoned industrial/abandoned motel/junkyard. With the exception of the Vietnamese places, which look quite sharp and well-financed, the rest of the area, except for some factories, is pretty dingy, and probably wasn't much better before Katrina. I would liken it to entering New York City from the south end of Staten Island, down by Perth Amboy. I pass a factory that smells like burnt toast. Then the prevailing smell becomes that of burnt plastic. Then sewage.

After I cross Read Street things are decidedly more residential. Relatively new brick houses, hip roofed, with decorative terra cotta tiles along the roof edges. On down the highway I go, getting ever closer to the Intracoastal Waterway Canal, which separates New Orleans East from the central part of the city. And that is the problem I face today, and the reason why my walk only takes me halfway through the city instead of most of the way. The bridge on U.S. 90 is closed for construction, and it's one of only two bridges that a pedestrian can use. So I must go north to Lake Ponchartrain and take the Leon Simon Bridge across, then south again to Chef Menteur, adding almost four miles.

I pass the convent of the Sisters of the Holy Family. There's a marker in the median of the highway. It says Henriette DeLille, 1812-1862, founded the order in 1842. It is an African American order, with a number of facilities in the city.

On the street map I'm carrying it looks as if there's a street called Almonaster that crosses the
canal just under the I-10 bridge, only a bit south of Chef Menteur Highway. If that were so, I could save quite a bit of time. Like a short route to the Indies. But I'm skeptical, so I ask a guy at a convenience store. But he's not from around here (not even from this side of the planet), and can't help, although he sincerely wants to. So I walk on down to Downman Street and ask a guy in front of a car dealership. He doesn't think Almonaster goes across, but he's not sure, and doesn't believe that Almonaster runs parallel to Chef Menteur until I show him on the map. Then I ask a third guy who's just standing on the street, but he doesn't speak English. I think he might be from South America. At last I decide to walk a few blocks to the south and see if I can find this part of Almonaster that the map shows as a very thin black line going across the water. No dice. It dead ends, as far as I can tell, and I can't afford to take any more time walking around behind warehouses. So I've just taken yet another detour from my original detour.

Now I'm on Jourdan Street, heading north through the warehouses along the canal, past the Luzianne coffee and tea place, which gives off a delicious roasted coffee aroma, definitely the best industrial smell of the day so far.

At last I'm on the Leon Simon Bridge, which is anything but pedestrian-friendly. To the left of the skimpy shoulder it has an elevated concrete strip about eighteen inches wide on which I can walk, even though that means the guard rail only comes up to my waist. Motorists speed by, desperate to get out of the city and home. In less than a mile I'm on the other side, and glad of it. Finally I turn left onto Press Street to go back south to Chef Menteur. I'm on the campus of Southern University at New Orleans, which looks as if its student body is predominantly black. Apparently most of its buildings and the adjacent areas were damaged by Katrina, and there's a great deal of construction going on here now.

South of the university is Ponchartrain Park, which the internet says was the first African American subdivision in the country. One wonders about a claim like that. What about Inkster, for example? A large sign says "Established 1955, Reborn 2009." Of course the buzz words around here are rebirth and recovery. Unless I miss my guess, many of these houses were used up messed up and boarded up long before Katrina.

Down at the corner of Press and Chef Menteur the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary sits behind black iron fences and gates, resplendent and prosperous-looking in the same ecclesiastical red brick that most of the big downtown Baptist churches in the south are made of.
Across the street is the God is Good Car Wash. Underneath its name on the sign it says "All the Time," which I assume refers to the hours during which God is good, not the hours the car wash is open. Toward the end of the seminary grounds Chef Menteur Highway turns into Gentilly Boulevard.

At Eastern Street I enter a neighborhood of larger, older houses. This looks like a pretty stable middle class area. They're having elections in the city soon. Lots of signs.

The next institution of higher learning I come to is Dillard University, founded in 1869 as one of the post-war colleges for blacks, along with Howard, Fisk, Hampton, and a number of others throughout the south. Like the seminary, it's well-gated and walled off from the outside, but its buildings are mostly white. The oak trees around here are old and wide and imposing, their roots claiming portions of sidewalk and street.

It's become completely overcast and the temperature has fallen ten or fifteen degrees since mid-afternoon. Gentilly finally connects with Broad Street and I turn right. Only a few blocks to go. At 5:30 there's only a little light left. At Toulouse Street I catch sight of the motor home. All is well.

Day 68: The Bridge of Size

Slidell to Bayou Sauvage NWR. 20 miles/1210.2 total

Monday, January 18, 2010

I'm leaving from the Walmart parking lot in Slidell, going through the city then south and across the east edge of Lake Ponchartrain, ending in the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge.

This is the spectacular sunny day I thought yesterday would be. Right now it's about 50, with a slight breeze out of the west, going up into the low 60s.

I turn south off of U.S. 190 onto U.S. 11. Yesterday Mandy from Mandeville told me the Mardi Gras parades had already begun, and sure enough I'm seeing lots of leftover plastic beads on the roadside, along with plastic tokens and foil-covered chocolate coins here and there.

Highway 11 is called Front Street here, and I'm going past what is termed the Antique District, which includes a few old storefronts converted into boutiques and shops. It's only about a block long, with antique stores that take what they do a bit more seriously than the places I like to frequent.

Signs here and there indicate that this is Old Towne Slidell, founded 1888. The Slidell of today is a pretty big city, over 25,000, and I'm just skirting it, heading south and out of town quickly. The city was founded along a railroad line that was being constructed between New Orleans and Meridian, Mississippi. One of its earliest industries was a creosote plant, which burned down in 1910, was rebuilt, then polluted the waters for three-quarters of a century more, finally being torn down and becoming a Superfund site in 1986. (Sounds like it was a fun place to work while it lasted, though.)

Slidell was named for John Slidell, who was born and grew up in New York, but went south to become a congressman from New Orleans, a diplomat, and later a U.S. senator from Louisiana. He was sent by the Polk administration to negotiate with Mexico before the Mexican War. That didn't work and war broke out, but I don't think Slidell was too disappointed. During the Civil War Slidell was one of two Confederate diplomats captured by the United States while aboard a British ship. This was the so-called Trent Affair. It seems that in 1861 an energetic U.S. Navy captain boarded a British ship called the Trent, out of Havana, carrying Slidell and a guy from Virginia named Mason, who were going to Europe to try to get diplomatic recognition for the Confederacy by England and France. They were taken prisoner and held captive in Boston, but the British objected so strongly to their seizure from their boat that they threatened to recognize the Confederacy. Lincoln eventually agreed to release them, noting that what the U.S. Navy had done in boarding the British ship was pretty much what the U.S. had objected to the British doing to us during the War of 1812. Slidell and Mason went on to Europe. Slidell stayed in Europe after the war until his death in 1871, and is buried in Paris.

Further down Front Street there's a mostly-abandoned strip mall called the John Jay Centre. I'm not quite sure why they would name a shopping center here for the first Chief Justice of United States, a New Yorker and abolitionist. Maybe it's a different John Jay. Anyway, there's not much left of the place but this huge Jetsonesque black and white sign built on a tripod of black steel legs, much in need of paint, topped with a large oval on which, in fancy lettering, is the name John Jay Centre. The sign looks like a friendly robot. In the background are the remnants of a demolished store of some kind, mostly consisting of concrete slabs.

I officially leave Slidell, passing the sign facing the other way that welcomes people to "Camellia City." Another sign says "Happy Mardi Gras Slidell. Laissez les bon temps rouler."

As I continue south the land on the east side of Highway 11 becomes marshy, dotted along the roadway by houses built high on stilts--at least ten feet above the ground. But from what I understand, ten feet wouldn't have been enough to stay above the Katrina storm surge around here, which was closer to twenty feet. Over on the west side of the road, off in the distance, there's a tremendous amount of new construction--condos and large single family houses. All since the hurricane. I guess people just like tempting fate. Well, anybody who would live in this region obviously knows the risks.

At about nine miles I reach the five-mile-long bridge across the eastern end of Lake Ponchartrain, on which I'll be making the crossing. This bridge has a shoulder about two and a half feet wide, and nowhere to stop once I get on it. The good news is that there's a fifteen ton weight limit for trucks, which means no semis should be on it. And because today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the traffic will be lighter than usual for a Monday. At least it's a little wider than that bridge up in Cairo, Illinois.

Off to the west lies the open expanse of Lake Ponchartrain. To the east is the I-10 expressway bridge, about a mile distant. At about ten minutes out I am convinced that the shoulder is wide enough, although oncoming cars and trucks do try to swerve over the line when they can. This is what this plan of going around the north shore of the lake was all about, so that I could take this walk on this bridge.

After about a mile I'm past the first of the two drawbridges. The woman in the drawbridge tower came out and asked me if I needed her to call anyone for help. I said no and thanked her.
So far the traffic has been light, and I've seen nothing wider than a large pickup.

It's now been a little over an hour since I started, which means that I am more than halfway across. Tedium mixed with a sense of danger characterizes the walk so far, but I must say that feeling has been ameliorated by the phenomenal number of coins I'm finding. I stop every fifty yards or so to pick one up, and they're not just pennies.

Ahead in the distance is the hazy New Orleans skyline. I'm picking up so many coins that my right front jeans pocket is bulging with them, and I'm having to hitch up my pants every so often.

I think I'll call it America, I said as we hit land,
I took a deep breath, I fell down, I could not stand.

I'm off the bridge, but I still have another shorter one to cross yet, over I-10. When I'm finally off that one I sit down to rest and count my money. It's over $3.50, all but about thirty cents of which I picked up on the bridge. Apparently these folks in Louisiana have had so much federal money thrown at them that they toss it to the four winds to see if anything happens.

There's a Texaco station here, at the entrance to a community called Irish Bayou. I go in to spend a little of my loot. Irish Bayou is a narrow fishing village about half a mile long, with a motley collection of shacks and docks and vacation houses, many built high off the water. There's one oddball house that looks like a castle. To check it out, Google "Irish Bayou Fisherman's Castle." This place survived the hurricane, just to show you that nature is no respecter of good taste. It looks out of place here, but then, it would look out of place almost anywhere.

I enter Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge. It gets quieter here, with water on both sides. An egret walks about fifty feet ahead of me on the side of the road, flying forward when I get close, then landing again. Ducks of all kinds ply the marshes. Through the tall grasses I can hear things moving and jumping into the water.

I come across the remnants of a black plastic bag that must have contained a dead dog, and a pretty good sized one at that. Now the only thing that's left is bits of the bag and clean bones. I pull a canine tooth out of the mandible as a souvenir.

The intersection of U.S. 11 and U.S. 90, where the motor home is parked, is right next to a large vacant lot that has been used as a dump for quite some time. It's littered with all kinds of refuse--a child's playpen, plastic toys, mattresses, yard waste, books. There are about twenty large screen tube televisions, all lying face down, their tubes broken in the back. I suppose that whatever is valuable in them has been removed. It looks like maybe a motel dumped their TVs here after they switched to flat screens. I just love garbage like this. And right in the middle of a national wildlife refuge. Doesn't get any better than that.

Day 67: Parishes and Counties

Mandeville to Slidell. 20.8 miles/1190.2 total

Sunday, January 17, 2010

This morning I'm departing from the Winn Dixie parking lot a few miles north of Mandeville, headed down there, then east to Slidell. It's overcast, but the weather report calls for a sunny day, in the high 50s.

The first part of the walk takes me down the treacherous Louisiana Route 59, with its almost nonexistent shoulder. It's a good thing it's a Sunday morning and the traffic is very light. Right off the bat I pass by Fontainebleau High School, home of the Fighting Bulldogs. Go Dogs, or as they like to write it down here, Geaux Dawgs.

As in Mississippi, possums are the most frequently run over animals on the road in Louisiana, by a country mile. Old Brer Possum's gettin' his ass kicked down here in the Sportsman's Paradise. A distant second is birds of all kinds, although I should say that I'm not counting every little dead bird as roadkill, only the ones that have obviously been hit. I understand that when it freezes hard the way it did a couple of weeks ago the birds can stiffen up and fall right out of the trees, or off the wires. So I don't include the birds that look like they just plummeted--and there are a number of them, especially, for some reason, goldfinches.

I arrive at the intersection of 59 and U.S. 190, but I'll continue south a little more, because Mandeville is built right on Lake Ponchartrain, and I want to see the lake. Most of the cities I've been through on the North Shore aren't right on the lake. Mandeville is a city of about 12,000, which has long been a resort and getaway for people from New Orleans. Before the causeway was built in the 1950s, boats used to ferry people up here to Mandeville, where they would vacation and sail their yachts and listen to jazz and generally kick back in affluence. Now Mandeville is at the northern terminus of the Lake Ponchartrain causeway.

From what I can see it's a civilized little place, filled with Sunday morning joggers and bicyclists, and copies of the Mandeville Picayune in plastic bags at the ends of driveways. I haven't seen a cutesy resort like this since I went through Saugatuck and Douglas, in Michigan. And that's just the kind of place it is. I stop in a little antique shop and buy a couple of pocket knives. Down by the lake there's a restaurant where people are eating out on the porch, although I think it's a little too chilly for that.

Down at the lake there's a breakwater with a sidewalk, and a biking trail. The lake is brown and roiling with whitecaps, due to the stout wind. To the west I can see the Lake Ponchartrain Causeway, and when the sun comes out briefly, I can spot the New Orleans skyline, 26 miles or so to the south.

At the end of the breakwater there's a historical marker that tells of the Battle of Lake Ponchartrain, in 1779, in which the Americans engaged the British and won, under Captain William Pickles, leading to the surrender of the British living hereabouts. I guess this little area was under British control at the time. But that raises the question of how the area got back into Spanish hands in time for the great revolution of 1810 that led to the 90-day Republic of West Florida.

I'm back out on 190 now, heading east. The shoulder is getting a bit wider. The gravel on the roadside is beginning to include an admixture of tiny mollusk shells, together with acorns, the spiky seed pods of sweetgums, and lots of pine needles. I can hear, in the water-filled ditches, a rich glottal chirping from some animal, not mammal or bird. Maybe frogs, or maybe the reptile that dare not speak its name.

I pass the entrance to the Southeast Louisiana Hospital, and from the looks of it, this isn't a medical center, but a nuthouse. I can't even see the place, but there's a guard house about fifty yards down the drive. It turns out that it is indeed a mental hospital, and it's where Louisiana Governor Earl Long (brother of Huey) was confined, in 1959, while still in office. But he continued to run the state from the hospital, including firing the head of the state hospital system and replacing him with a crony.

About nine miles into the walk I enter Big Branch, which is little more than a sign on the road. Here I stop at a place called Bayou Moon Antiques, and spend a pleasant half hour talking to the woman working there, Mandy from Mandeville. (Or is it Mandie, Mandi, or Mande? I forgot to ask.) She gives me lots of local information and tells me some good places to go in New Orleans, and where to get the best boudin (in Lafayette). I also buy several more pocket knives. If you're reading this, Mandy, thanks for the conversation and for taking an interest.

The next town I come to is Lacombe, a city of about 7,500 of which I don't get to see much from Highway 190. The people of Louisiana seem to be crazy for what they call "snowballs," which I assume are snow cones--shaved ice with flavorings. About every two or three miles I see a snowball shack by the side of the road--all closed for the season now.

Here's something confusing to contemplate. I'll bet that every school child in Louisiana is told, "Now boys and girls, in every other state they have counties, but here we have parishes, and that's because we used to be owned by the French." And indeed, that's about what kids in other states are told, too. Louisiana has parishes instead of counties because it used to be French. But consider this for a moment. It was in France, not in England, that the geographic unit known as the "county," or comte (with an accent aigu over the "e") originated, over which noblemen called counts, or comtes, held sway. It wasn't until after the French conquered England that what the English had previously called "shires" came to be called "counties," although English noblilty never did adopt the rank of count. The legal officer in charge of a shire was called the "shire reeve," which became "sheriff." Furthermore, England and France both continue to have parishes as ecclesiastical districts covered by individual churches, as does the Roman Catholic Church everywhere, but they are generally much smaller than counties or Louisiana parishes. So those of us from outside Louisiana could as easily say we have counties because of the French, and here they could say they have sheriffs because of the English.

At the east end of Lacombe I stop into a charming little family cemetery, La Fontaine Cemetery, filled with dead people named LeFrere, Cousin, and Robert.

After a whole lot of nothing past Lacombe, except for a neat sculpture store, the Acts One Tax Service (offering salvation along with financial help), and Billy's Lounge featuring a Drag Show January 23 with Big Mama Coca and Guest, I at last reach what is designated on the map as Colt. Less than a mile to go now.

The sunshine never happened today, and it remained overcast and chilly.

At 20.4 miles I enter the corporation limits of Slidell. Today the motor home is parked at Walmart just inside Slidell, on Northshore Drive, I think the first time my journey has ended right where I will spend the night.

The North Shore

Covington, Louisiana. Saturday, January 16, 2010.

This is an unscheduled day off, due to steady rain. But here in the Covington Walmart parking lot my internet connection is unusually strong, and it takes only moments to import photos into the blog, which isn't always the case when the signal is weaker, which is why I don't include photos more often. Sometimes it can take ten or fifteen minutes to load a single picture. So I offer you, in no particular order, a few aspects of my recent travels.

As to the map photo, I apologize for its amateurish quality, but I still haven't figured out how to import the maps directly from Google. And people seem to want maps. So here you are. Or here I am, as the case may be.

In spite of the fact that this whole project is voluntary and, after all, intended to be fun, I can't help feeling as if I should be out there walking--progressing, for God's sake, like Pilgrim, in spite of the rain. Baseball players know that a rainout will bring a double header somewhere down the line, or the loss of an off day. In this vein I think of walking extra days without rest, but the rational, less driven, side of my brain tells me this will probably not happen, nor should it. There's some connection here to my Calvinistic upbringing, no doubt. There was none of that dolce far niente nonsense in my house (or in yours, I'll bet). But that's probably good, because when there's really no other reason for doing a thing, and one can't even come up with a good one after three months, the old superego has to kick in and take charge. Otherwise, well, who knows what kind of frivolity and mischief might ensue? Mayhem. Loss of social order. The elevation of indolence over industry.

Somehow all this puts me in mind of a quote from Thomas de Quincey: "If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination."

So let's have no more nonsense. Walk!

Day 66: Praying to St. Tammany

Lorraine to Mandeville. 19.8 miles/1169.4 total

Friday, January 15, 2010

I'm starting out from U.S. 190 near Lorraine, headed through Covington and Abita Springs to I-12 a little north of Mandeville.

Right now it's cloudy, temperature in the low 40s, expected to get up near 60. Rain is expected later today. It would be nice if it held off for the whole walk.

At about a mile and a half I leave Tangipahoa Parish and enter St. Tammany Parish. On the other side of the parish line sign it says that U.S. 190 here is designated as the Ronald Reagan Highway. I suppose there are a few worse people for a highway to be dedicated to--like Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee.

St. Tammany Parish has an exotic sound to it, like I'm really getting into a different world. It turns out that it was named for a Lenape Indian chief, Tamanand, who made peace with the English on the east coast in the 1600s, in what is now Pennsylvania. He had nothing to do with this area. In fact, St. Tammany isn't a Roman Catholic saint at all--that's just what white people in Philadelphia started calling him, along with King Tammany, during the 1700s. By the time of the Revolution there were St. Tammany groups, like lodges, in several eastern cities, including New York's Society of St. Tammany, out of whose hall the Democratic machine operated in the early days. It was President Madison's delegate to the newly-annexed Florida Parishes who, in 1810, gave St. Tammany Parish its name. So if anyone is tempted to pray to St. Tammany, don't bother. You won't get jack.

The accent of many of the people hereabouts is less twangy and southern than it is in Mississippi. It has a gentler sound. This might have to do with the influx of so many people into this area from outside over the decades and centuries, and with the fact that these folks weren't all Scots-Irish doofuses who slithered down out of the hills.

In case anybody's wondering, the terrain is flat and wooded, with the predominating trees being the tall southern pines, whose dead relatives stand alongside the road holding up utility wires. Also various southern oaks, especially the water oak, and an occasional blackjack oak, which, like the water oak, has an elongated unlobed leaf, shiny on top, that is wider at the end than at the stem. Only the blackjack oak's leaf is considerably wider at the end, so that when held with the stem up it is bell-shaped. I'm getting these names out of my little tree book, but I wouldn't be surprised if the local names for these oak trees were different.

The first little town I pass near is Goodbee, where I stop in at the Goodbee Quick Stop for a cup of coffee. I must say that these gas station convenience stores are my favorite places to stop on my walks.

So far the drivers in Louisiana are not very attentive to pedestrians. They very rarely yield when they should, or even look both ways before pulling out of driveways. So I am on the lookout not only for alligators but for motorists down here. Also, I haven't had any ride offers yet.

Well, practically no sooner had I said that than I get my first ride offer. It's from a young guy of about thirty named Abe, a former Ohioan who grew up Amish. Very nice fellow, with red hair and freckles and an exceptionally pleasant personality. I wind up spending fifteen or twenty minutes talking to him through his truck window. If you're reading this Abe, thanks again for offering me the ride, and for taking time out of your day to chat.

At 8.6 miles I take the right fork onto the business route of U.S. 190, down into Covington. I pass a cemetery, Pinecrest Memorial Gardens, one of those places with all the grave stones flush with the ground. I usually don't wander through these because they're not that interesting. But off in the back part of the place is a section with the above-ground vaults and mausoleums, too. I take a look around to get a sense of the ethnicity of the folks, and the surnames are about evenly divided among French, German, and English. And that reminds me that I read once that there was an influx of Germans into this part of Louisiana.

Covington is the seat of St. Tammany Parish. It's a city of about 8,500, which was named for Brigadier General Leonard Covington, a guy from Maryland who was mortally wounded in New York in 1813, during the War of 1812. The City of Covington and St. Tammany Parish have increased in population since people began moving up here after Hurricane Katrina. The parish is now pretty affluent and burgeoning.

I'm well into the city now. Past Los Sombreros Mexican Restaurant and the CVS Pharmacy, the sidewalks begin and the pine trees give way to the more stately and urban-appropriate oaks, whose limbs spread out wider than the trees are tall. The buildings in the old downtown have high second-story balconies overhanging the sidewalk, vieux carre-style.

I take the local road out of Covington over to Abita Springs, a town of about 2,000, with a traffic rotary and a couple of gazebos. Also some cutesy shops.

I head off to the south on Louisiana 59, toward Mandeville. The shoulder is treacherously narrow and the traffic extremely heavy and I have about five miles to go. At about 3:45, as I'm on this last long rather uninteresting suburban part of the walk, it starts to sprinkle. I have been fortunate that the rain held off this long, and it's still not too heavy as I walk under Interstate 12, approaching the Winn Dixie parking lot where the motor home sits.

It's been a good day for coins--I've found three quarters and a few of everything else. Already I'm up over $2.00 in Louisiana. What the motorists lack in courtesy on the road they make up for by tossing me money. Thank you.

Progress Report: Sunshine and Water

Hammond, Louisiana. Thursday, January 14, 2010.

To the left is a photo of the obelisk I've been seeing all over the former Republic of West Florida, illustrating (and describing on the base) the florid history of the region. This version is in the middle of Hammond, near the train station.

Today the weather is exceptionally fine. Very sunny and warm, probably in the low 60s. It occurs to me that I'm squandering a good day for walking, since it is supposed to rain for the next two days. But if it's too wet to walk tomorrow, so be it.

This morning I got the water tank filled, and it looks as if all is well and things are back to normal. There was a little leaking around the water pump, which I managed to almost eliminate by tightening certain connections. A bit of thread tape would have been in order, but I didn't have any, so I put a liberal glob of duct tape over everything instead. It's all on the outer part of the motor home, anyway, so a trickle won't hurt. In my experience as a laissez faire home handyman, small leaks in plumbing joints usually seal themselves by means of the accretion of deposits of the minerals in the water around the area in question. And considering that the problem could have been much more dire, I am now basking in my good fortune and my half-assed repair job.

Now it's on to the laundromat, where the real fun awaits.

Day 65: The Bonnie Blue Flag

Tickfaw to Lorraine. 20 miles/1149.6 total

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

I'm just south of Tickfaw, heading down through Hammond, then east to near a place called Lorraine. I originally planned to go south on Highway 51 to the western suburbs and enter New Orleans heading east, then double back through the city and head west again. But I discovered that 51 merges with I-55 as it goes along the isthmus between Lake Ponchartrain and the smaller Lake Maurepas, and that walking there was out of the question. So the alternative is to go east around Lake Ponchartrain on the north side, through Covington and Slidell, and then down into the eastern end of New Orleans.

It's colder today than it was yesterday, maybe in the low 40s right now. The skies are blue with just a few high clouds. I doubt if it will get much over 50.

Shortly after starting out I enter the Tickfaw town limits. It appears that this town, like Independence, has a large Italian population. Indeed, the Italian flag flies just below the U.S. flag at the entrance to this narrow village that runs along the railroad tracks, now owned by the Canadian National Railway, or CN, as it styles itself, lest people think less of it for being foreign.

The official welcome sign to Tickfaw says the mayor is Anthony Lamonte and Jimmy Speracello is the chief of police. And right next to the town sign is a manger scene left over from the holidays, a plywood lean-to with figures inside of Mary, Joseph, the three wise guys, and of course the baby Jesus. Outside looking in are a few farm animals. But most prominent, and quite a bit out of proportion to the rest of the figures, are a couple of large white light-up reindeer, one of which has fallen over.

Of course I cringe at the very real possibility that the Town of Tickfaw itself sponsored this religious display here on the town green. But I can imagine what the response of the goombah city fathers would be if someone pointed out to them the unconstitutionality of their ways. Probably something like this: "Who the fuck are you? You got a fuckin' problem with the baby Jesus? What are you, some kind a communist? Goddamn lawyers, they don't respect nothin'."

For devotees of historical geography, I should mention that a flag other than those of France, Spain, Britain, and the U.S. (and here and there Italy) once flew over this region. It was called the Bonnie Blue Flag--blue with a white star in the middle--and it was the ensign of the Republic of West Florida, which lasted for 90 days in the year 1810. It seems that this portion of Louisiana, above Lake Ponchartrain, was not part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, but was instead part of West Florida, an area that belonged at various times to the Spanish, the French, and even the British. (Picture the present-day Florida panhandle extending all the way to Baton Rouge, and you will get the idea.) At the time of the Louisiana Purchase the Louisiana Florida Parishes were under Spanish control, but the English-speaking citizens of the area actually staged a rebellion, culminating in the short-lived republic. And for you deep trivia buffs, the first (and only) Governor of the Republic was a man named Fulwar Skipwith. Following the Republic of West Florida's declaration of independence, the U.S. quickly moved to annex the area, and after a bit of comic-opera posturing, Skipwith acceded, and the territory became part of Louisiana.

The next place I come to is Natalbany, a community of about 1,700 people. I don't know what the name means, except that perhaps, since there's a city called Albany not far from here, people here wanted everyone to know that this town wasn't that one. We're Natalbany, they may have said. (That, I admit, was bad. Worthy of my brother.)

At the intersection of Louisiana 1064 and Highway 51, the center of Natalbany, there's a little store that advertises "HOT LUNCH / PROPANE / LIVE BAIT." I guess that about covers it. If you've got the live bait and the propane, you can make the hot lunch. As Johnny Keats would say, "that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

I pass a nursery school called the ABC Academy. The little ones are outside playing on the swingsets, and it makes me miss my grandchildren. But it wouldn't do for me to stop and look at them over the fence for too long, where they play under the watchful eyes of their schoolmarms. And rightly so. Would I want some drifter who looked like me to linger and stare at my own little ones? No, decidedly not. So the sound of their laughter will have to suffice as a tonic, as I move on. And that is the way of the world.

At 5.4 miles I enter Hammond, a city of just under 18,000, the largest in Tangipahoa Parish, but not the parish seat, which is Amite. Hammond was founded in 1818 by a guy named Peter Hammond, a Swede who had changed his name from Peter av Hammerdal. Hammond bought the land around here for practically nothing and made a fortune growing and selling timber for maritime purposes. In the 1850s the railroad came through. Now Hammond is at the intersection of I-55 and I-12, which makes it very commercially viable. Hammond also is the home of Southeastern Louisiana University.

There's money around here, and I don't think it's just from this second-tier university. I leave Highway 51, perhaps for the last time, and turn left into the city on U.S. 190. Shortly after making the turn, I see that 190 splits into eastbound and westbound one-way boulevards through the city. Approaching downtown from the west, the area is quiet and residential, with some mansions and large homes, well-manicured and landscaped. After a half dozen blocks the business district begins. There are a few bistros, boutiques, coffee shops, bookstores, and an organic food market, all of which I suppose are open due to the presence of the university. Thriving little downtown. Also, one of the things that I swear is common to every single university town I've ever been in--lots of one-way streets. Why is that, I wonder? Just to confuse people and make them feel uneducated?

Here in the middle of Hammond is the old train station, on W. Thomas Street, and a historical marker. Hammond was a shoe making center for the Confederacy during the Civil War. By the early 20th century Hammond was known as "Strawberry Capital of America." Who knew? Hammond, Louisiana--strawberry butcher for the world. City of big strawberry shoulders. Strawberryopolis.

Near the marker is another of those funky homemade wooden obelisks, relating the history of the Florida Parishes, just like the ones in Amite and Kentwood. Nearby is the Columbia Theater, an old brick beaux arts building that probably used to be an opera house. It's still a theater for the performing arts. The Louisiana Philharmonic is coming soon.

Out in the parking lot of the Hammond Police Department, prisoners in yellow jail garb are busy washing and polishing municipal vehicles. And on I go. I pass (without knowing it at the time) the graves of old Peter Hammond and his family, under several huge spreading southern oak trees, in a fenced-in yard behind an old partially-restored building.

The eastern outskirts of Hammond dribble away with considerably less fanfare, and the city is soon gone. Without a doubt the west side of Hammond is the money side. Over here we have the Higher Heights Fellowship Church, Pastor Jarvis Crockerham leading the flock onward and upward.

So the old man who goes west finds himself going east for a few days, in order to negotiate Lake Ponchartrain. It's a little odd not having the sun in front of me at this time of day.

The money keeps pouring in. I'm up over a dollar now, thanks to a couple of quarters. The road kill has been plentiful, too. I guess that's why they call Louisiana the Sportsman's Paradise. If your sport is nailing animals with a vehicle. Or in my case, cataloguing the dead beasts. And here's a first for road kill--an egret, or white heron. I see a lot of them, fishing in the ditches for god-knows what, then lazily climbing into the air. But for the most part they manage not to get killed.

At about 15 miles I enter the village of Robert. There's not much to say about it. A Church of God, a Baptist Church, a Catholic Church--Regina Coeli. A place called Seatrepid, specializing in applied underwater robotic solutions in connection with oil rigs (does that sound familiar, Greg?), a crawfish restaurant, a gas station. But the crown jewel of greater Robert, at least from the standpoint of its tax base, has to be the Walmart regional distribution warehouse, set far back from Highway 190 on an access road from which emanates a steady stream of those familiar white Walmart trucks.

An hour from the Walmart warehouse entrance I reach the motor home, and I'm off to the Hammond Walmart for the night.

Day 64: Badda Bing

Tangipahoa to Tickfaw. 19.2 miles/1129.6 total

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

I'm leaving from the side of the road just south of Tangipahoa, heading down to a spot in front of an empty real estate office just north of Tickfaw, a distance of 19.2 miles.

It's 10 a.m., another late start, because I just didn't feel like getting out of bed early today. It was 36 degrees in the motor home first thing in the morning, although I was warm under the covers. It required a leap of faith, as it were, and a quick start of the generator, followed by ten or fifteen minutes of waiting for things to warm up. It doesn't take long for the motor home to heat up, but it also doesn't take long for the thing to cool off.

Still no water today, but I'm waiting until I get to Hammond, a bigger city, where I can take my off day, Thursday, to check things out and find a place to dump the tanks, fill the water, and (I hope) fix the leak. In the meantime, there's plenty of bottled water and a stove to heat it up, so things aren't bad.

It's another perfectly cloudless sky, and it's already approaching 50. The temperatures around here are becoming more seasonal. The January daily average is a high of about 60.

I think I've mentioned before that there seems to be a fad among the young folks in the south of smoking tiparillo-type cigars, the kind my friend Jimmy and I smoked in the hut in back of my garage when we were nine years old. The little ones with the plastic tips. They come either five or two to a package, and sometimes you can buy them singly. I've seen girls as well as boys buy them. Often they seem to be flavored--peach, cherry, and so on. I guess they're cheaper than cigarettes, and if you inhale them you can get a heck of a lot of nicotine for your money. (Nicotine, by the way, was named for Jean Nicotin, a Frenchman who, in 1559, sent tobacco to the Medicis in Italy. No, it wasn't a long-term assassination plot; the stuff was thought to be medicinal.) Another trend I've noticed, based on the discarded containers along the roadside, is the 8-ounce beer can, a tiny little thing. The logic of that one escapes me entirely. What the hell is the point of drinking only 8 ounces of beer? That's not much more than a swallow. So I'm picturing kids, girls mostly, riding down the road, smoking their tiparillos, drinking their dinky little cans of beer.

The first little place I go through is Fluker. In fact, it's so small that I don't even see the sign for it. The next place is Arcola, a little larger. In Arcola I pass a Purina animal feed plant, from which comes the most delightful smell of anise. I'm not sure what they're cooking for the livestock in there, but it sure smells good.

Next comes Roseland, a town of about 1,200, which is the birthplace of the late Justin Wilson, the Cajun cook and raconteur who was on television. Roseland has sidewalks, which is something. They're cracked and choked with weeds, but they are sidewalks, and I like to walk on them when they're available. I always wonder when I walk through a village like this one, and there is maybe 500 total feet of sidewalk in front of a dozen or so houses, just what they were thinking when they laid that sidewalk. Was it a lick and a promise, or part of some grander project that never quite came to fruition, or just a small gesture in the direction of urban comfort, of civilization?

Now here's something puzzling. Zip codes, as we know, go generally up in number from east to west. The zip codes in New England, for instance, start with zero, and the ones in California start with 9. Beverly Hills 90210, and all that. Michigan zip codes start with 48 or 49. Okay, fine. So why is it that in Mississippi, a state that lies almost completely to the west of Michigan, the zip codes start with 3, and in Louisiana, immediately to the south of Mississippi, the zip codes start with 7? One of life's mysteries.

So far the streets of Louisiana are paved with gold, so to speak. From when I entered the state about 24 hours ago, I have picked up four nickels and about nine pennies. That's a hell of a good start. At this rate I'll make enough in change to buy a gallon of gasoline. Or I could buy a couple of those little cigars the kids are so crazy about.

At about the halfway point in today's walk I come to the city of Amite. About ten feet past the sign officially welcoming me to the city is another one, a bit taller, that says, "Jesus is Lord Over Amite." I sincerely hope the state didn't put that one up, but with a wack job like Bobby Jindal as governor, you never know. So anyway, if anything goes down here in Amite, I'm going straight to Jesus. Not putting up with any powers or principalities.

Amite is the seat of Tangipahoa Parish and a city of about 4,000. The business district is laid out on both sides of the railroad tracks, with Highway 51 on the west. Of course the real action is in the mile or so of Louisiana Route 16 that goes west to I-55, where Walmart is, but the downtown is making a decent showing. They still have their train station, but it's being used as a senior center and I think also as the police station. On the way past the station I stop to chat with a guy named Jose who is sweeping the front steps, to ask him how the name of this place is pronounced. Turns out it's "ay-MEET." I would never have guessed that. But when you think of it, that's not too terribly off from the French pronunciation. Assuming there was no accent on the final "e" it would have been "ah-MEET." I'm just saying it could have been worse.

The next five or six miles south of Amite are nothing much, until I arrive at a town of about 1,700 called Independence. Like Amite it's long and narrow, laid out on both sides of the train tracks. The first thing I notice is that the water tower is green, white, and red, like the Italian flag. Then when I get a little closer I see that the tower says that Independence is the Home of the Italian Festival. So I guess this place is, or was, filled with Italians. Sure enough, when I get to the town hall there's a historical marker that says the place was originally called Uncle Sam when it was settled in the 1830s, and that Italians began to settle here and in the surrounding area in the 1880s. Now there's an Italian festival every April. The town is known as Little Italy.

It's hard to get a sense, from passing cars, of the ethnic makeup of a place, except for the obvious black and white thing, but I did get a feeling that there were fewer blondes than you'd expect in a southern town. Italian women--bad hair, bad makeup, bad attitudes. It reminds me, having lived for 24 years in Connecticut, of one of the things I don't miss about that place. So maybe Independence is filled with people from the witness protection program, learning to talk with southern drawls and to put up with ketchup in place of marinara sauce.

A mile or so south of Independence I come to my first real New Orleans style cemetery, with all the graves in cement vaults and crypts and mausoleums above ground, crosses on almost every one. Only these don't have many French names, just mostly Italian ones. Yes indeed, there were and are a lot of Italians hereabouts. The men are all named Anthony or Joe and the women are all named Mary or Rose. Many of the graves have little round photographs of the deceased on the stones. The guys look like hoods and the women look like Martin Scorsese's mother when she played Joe Pesce's mother in Goodfellas. "Why don't you find a nice girl and settle down, like Henry here?" In the photo of one of the men, the guy is wearing a V-neck cashmere sweater with nothing underneath, they way they did a couple of decades back. Around his neck are a couple of gold chains. He's got this menacing look in his eyes, under black brows and salt-and-pepper hair combed straight back. Badda bing. Wonder how he died.

Day 63: Oh. My. God.

Magnolia, Mississippi to Tangipahoa, Louisiana. 18.7 miles/1110.4 total

Monday, January 11, 2010

It's late. After 10 a.m. I'm leaving from the roadside south of Magnolia, Mississippi, heading down Highway 51 to Tangipahoa, Louisiana. It's a day of lasts and firsts. Last day in Mississippi, first in Louisiana. First day walking in the new year. First day back from winter vacation. Got into New Orleans on Saturday, then went immediately to a hotel to sleep off the the tranquilizer I took for the plane ride. Yesterday took a leisurely ride up here and picked up the motor home in Summit, a few miles north of McComb.

My fear was that there would be damage to the plumbing because of the hard freezes they've had down here over the past week or so, and that turned out to be the case. There's a leak in the plumbing somewhere, and once things thawed out the water all drained out. The good news, I think, is that it's back by the water pump where all the drains are, and easily accessible. The other good news is that all the plumbing in this thing is threaded PVC--no metal or epoxied plastic--and therefore fairly easy for someone like me to repair, assuming I can find all the leaks. The bad news is that I don't have any water for now. But this morning I made do with the drinking water I bought last night, heating some of it up on the stove. I just don't feel like fixing it right now, and I still have to find a place to fill up the tank, so I'm waiting until I get to Hammond, a much larger city than Amite, where I am now.

This morning as I walk it is about 35 under cloudless skies and will probably get up to about 45 or 50. Plenty of frost and ice in the areas that are in shadow.

Coming back from the Michigan winter I'm struck by the greenness of things down here. The bushes, the pine trees, the myrtles and holly bushes everywhere. It occurs to me that spring is really just around the corner down here. Winter's lease hath all too short a date, to paraphrase the Bard.

At just under eight miles I come to the first town of my walk, which as it turns out will be the last town in Mississippi. It's Osyka, which the sign says was founded in 1858. We all know what that means--a railroad town. Thinking about all the railroad towns I've gone through on this trip, starting with the succession of them in northwestern Indiana, it's amazing to contemplate what a revolution of building up of infrastructure took place in this country in such a short time. Most of these "western" railroads were build within the decade of the 1850s--really in the period from 1853 and 1858. Literally hundreds of little towns and thousands of miles of track. It's hard to think of a six-year peacetime period in this country in which so much has been done. Think of the clearing of the land, the leveling of the road beds, the manufacture of the steel for rails, the cutting of the timber for ties, the gravel, the water towers, the platforms, the stations, the villages--all within a period that is barely longer than Brad Pitt has been with Angelina Jolie. There's been nothing like it before or since in terms of sheer volume of frenetic activity. By contrast, our highway system took several decades to build.

On the other side of the tiny village of Osyka is a sign meant to be viewed from the south, that says, "Welcome to Mississippi. It's Like Coming Home." Or leaving home, in my case.

So I enter Louisiana, and Tangipahoa Parish. The sign says, "Welcome to Louisiana," and underneath the fleur-de-lis, it says, Beinvenue en Louisiane. Now I must call on my French speaking readers to enlighten me here, but I always thought the correct pronoun to use after beinvenue in this context was a, not en. But then, I am really no expert. Is this an older form?

So in the early afternoon I bid adieu to Mississippi. Time for a few statistics. I spent a long time in Mississippi. I first entered it on November 15, walking for 16 full days and two partial days in the state, for a total of 317.3 miles. On the full days I averaged 19.8 miles a day. I picked up $1.62 from the side of the road in change, and was offered a ride 24 times. In the all-important category of roadkill, the leader was possums, with 53. Then there were 21 birds; 16 dogs; 14 frogs; 12 raccoons; 11 armadillos; 7 snakes; 5 skunks; 3 each of deer, squirrels, and turtles; 2 bobcats; and one cat, mouse, rabbit, and coyote.

On the whole the people of Mississippi were kind and deferential, with a tendency, in the convenience stores, to call you "honey," "darling," "dear," or some similar term. Patronzing perhaps, for you cynical types, but to a lonely guy on the road, generally welcome. I must also acknowledge the kindness of the Reverend Kenneth Patten of the New Life Apostolic Church, who gave me a place to put my motor home for three weeks, and indeed the good people of Clarksdale who let me keep the motor home at the Coahoma County fairgrounds during Thanksgiving.

And now on to the new. There's nothing like opening a new spiral notebook and beginning the process of making hash marks in the familiar categories--a penny here, a dead rabbit there.

It was of course the French, led by our old friend Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, who first explored this area back in the 1600s, and named it for the Sun King, Louis XIV. Between LaSalle and the Spaniard DeSoto, they explored a hell of a lot of territory on this continent. And they got to do it in nice cars that were named after them, along with their pal Antoine Laumet de la Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac, whose car was really the nicest one of all, and is still being made. You don't see anyone driving around in Lewises or Clarks, do you?

The first town I come to in Louisiana is Kentwood, a city of 2,200 established in 1893 and named for Amos Kent. But get this. I'm like oh my god oh my god oh my god. Kentwood is the home of Britney Spears. Now you Britney Spears fans probably already knew this immediately, and when I said Kentwood you were like, Britney Spears. But I was, like, Oh. My. God. No. Way. (But to show you what a loser I am, at first I'm picturing in my mind Jessica Simpson, even though I'm reading Britney Spears on the sign. Then when I get back and look up Britney Spears I'm like Duh!) Well, it turns out that Britney Spears was born in McComb, Mississippi, but was raised right here in Kentwood. Which makes sense, because McComb is probably the closest place with a hospital.

So right now I am probably walking where Britney Spears walked, because maybe one time she had to walk home from the game or something, because her mom was being a butt-head and wouldn't give her a ride and her friend Jen couldn't get the car and this really cute guy left with somebody else on a motorcycle or in a pickup truck and anyway she had to totally WALK. Oh my God. Right here on the side of the road where I am right now.

Aside from the rather dazzling fact that it is the home of Britney Spears, Kentwood is unfolding inauspiciously. In fact, it's a dump, at least the part that runs along Highway 51. And in my experience places like this usually don't have gardens of earthly delights hiding along the side streets. Usually if a place has anything to offer, it puts it right out there on the main thoroughfare. So I have to say that Britney was lucky to get out of here. But then again, I feel the same way about myself whenever I go back to Drayton Plains, where I am from. In fact, I think that unless you're from some dazzling center of world culture, like Paris or Manhattan, you probably feel lucky to have escaped your home town, if you're reasonably sane.

On the way out of town there's a cheesy six-foot plywood obeslisk with lots of amateurish painting on it and some bits of local history written along the base. In 1810 this area was part of something called the West Florida Republic. Then in 1819 Washington Parish was made from parts of St. Tammany Parish. Then finally in 1869 Tangipahoa Parish was created out of parts of several parishes, including Washington Parish. Tangipahoa is from an Indian word meaning cornstalk or ear of corn, or something. So there you have it.

At about 17 miles into the walk I come to another historical marker, this one for the Camp Moore Confederate Museum, just over the tracks. It says Camp Moore was one of the principal Confederate induction centers during what the marker refers to as "the war for Southern independence." Now there's a new low in euphemistic obfuscation and self-deception. Independence my ass. Whose independence? No African Americans, that's for sure. I'll bet with a buildup like that, this museum would be a real barrel of laughs.

I enter the village of Tangipahoa, my destination for today. Behind the green state-issued sign is a special town-made one, a big white job with a red heart in the middle of it. It reads, "Welcome to Tangipahoa, Louisiana. Absolutely No Littering. Obey All Traffic Signs. Established 1853. Welcome. Welcome." Okay, there you go.

But wait. Over to the east of the road, through the pines, there are two water towers. The older and smaller one is in need of a paint job. The larger one is blue and spiffy, and bears this legend: "Tangipahoa. The Place Where Everybody is Somebody." Man, you just can't make this stuff up. Wonder what was in the Kool-Aid at the town council meeting the night they came up with that one?

Over the tracks I can see a restaurant called the Robin's Nest. "Food for the Soul." Which I guess is another way of saying soul food. And I feel like Somebody, especially because the motor home has come into view, along the shoulder. I am somebody who is getting the hell out of here. But I'll be back tomorrow.

Carb Loading

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

The Price is Right is on. Jesus, do I miss Bob Barker. Legions of hardworking people, like my wife's Uncle John, got to retire and watch old Bob for almost as many years as they toiled at the shop. What do I get? This endomorphic lout who talks too fast and can't enunciate and bumbles his way through the show. Bob Barker, wherever he is, must have one of those tears running down his cheek like the Indian from the old anti-pollution commercial.

So maybe you're thinking along these lines: He's blogging, but he's not walking. Just loafing around. What's up with that? Does he think we're that interested? What is this--Twitter, where people go on the internet for no other reason than to say they've cut their toenails and are sitting on the couch eating Cheez Doodles?

For what it's worth, in my imagination I'm already back down south, having just finished reading Frances Hunter's historical novel, To the Ends of the Earth: The Last Journey of Lewis and Clark. Much of it takes place in the woods of northern Mississippi and western Tennessee, not far from parts of my own route, only minus the good roads, the convenience stores, and the comparatively reliable social order. The kind of traveling they did in those days makes what I'm doing look ridiculously easy, which has inspired me to complain less and appreciate the manifold comforts of my walk. And I recommend the book--it is entertaining and imaginative, well researched and written. I hope to have an opportunity to meet the author when I get to Austin, Texas.

Meanwhile I am accumulating small things for the resumption of the walk. Moleskin. A supply of emergency ponchos from Meijer, which for some reason I can't find at any Walmart--at least not the kind I like, which resemble thin yellow garbage bags with hoods and arm holes and cost less than a dollar each. To be sure, I have more substantial rain gear, but these little plastic things have the virtue of being compact and lightweight and comparatively cool.

My other major preoccupation has been loading books on CD from the library into iTunes for eventual use on the iPod. Music has served me well so far, but I'm ready for something more substantial, so I'm stocking up on unabridged tomes. I rarely listen to the iPod for more than a couple of hours during a walk, but it's often just the ticket to break up the monotony of the day. I'll bet Meriwether Lewis would have appreciated an iPod, and it might have helped to keep him on a more even keel.

Finally, I am soaking up as much cable television as possible. Call it cultural carb loading. On the road I get a couple of channels here and there, but they're usually the broadcast networks, showing things I wouldn't watch if you paid me, like shows about serial killers and special bullshit scientific investigative branches of law enforcement where the IQs of the police are easily twice what they are in real life. But here at home I've been watching the primo stuff I rarely get to see out on the trail, such as reruns of I Dream of Jeannie and The Beverly Hillbillies, and the lovely Pastor Melissa Scott doing endlessly digressive close textual analysis of the Hebrew scriptures in the wee hours of the night. And Andrew Zimmern saying things like, "Boy, I've eaten a lot of sheep's eyes over the years, and they're usually just bland and chewy, but these have a really pungent muttony flavor that's just fantastic." And big doses of the MLB network, which I would watch even more of if it weren't for that nimrod Bob Costas (who died and left him in charge of baseball, anyway?). And finally, that zany spike-haired Sham-Wow dude. Are you following me camera guy?

Twenty Ten

Sunday, January 3, 2010

In the immortal words of James Brown, "It's a new day, so let a man come in and do the Popcorn." Good God.

Are you going to say "two thousand ten" or "twenty ten"? Just wondering. I would like to start saying twenty ten because it's shorter and punchier. But who really gets to make these decisions so that one thing catches on over the other?

Of course the idea that it's a new year is merely an artificial construct, shaped and refined over centuries by kings and popes and the occasional astronomer who didn't get burned at the stake. Until the European world went over to the Gregorian calendar, New Year's Day was celebrated on March 1st, and from the standpoint of weather, this made sense. Who would ever mistake January 1st for the beginning of anything new if it weren't necessary to hang a different calendar on the wall on that day? It also explains why the last four months of the year as we observe it now are named for the Latin numbers seven, eight, nine, and ten. They were never intended to be the last four months of the year. Duh, as the kids say. Nevertheless, though we are stuck with these names for the months that don't match their ordinal positions, there's something to be said for the idea of starting the year off close to the time when the days begin to lengthen. Pope Gregory XIII and his guys evidently thought so back in 1582 when they hatched this current deal we have, although it took several hundred years for everyone to get on board with it. For instance, the English-speaking world didn't adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1752, believing for a long time that the change was part of a Catholic plot. By the time they did it, it was necessary to skip eleven days to bring them even with the rest of Europe. This was because one of the reasons for the change in the first place was that the leap year thing, which had been around for a long time, wasn't quite keeping even with the actual solar year. So they decided that three times in every four hundred years there shouldn't be a leap year where there had previously been one. Some of you who were around in 1900 will no doubt remember that it wasn't a leap year, unless of course you were living in Russia, where it was, since the Russians didn't get around to changing over until after their revolution, in 1918. This is why the glorious October Revolution of 1917 is celebrated in November. Or was celebrated. I'm probably the only one who still celebrates, and some years even I forget. So they could as easily have called their submarine Red November, and then who knows what would have happened? Maybe Alec Baldwin would have done more Tom Clancy movies, which wouldn't have been a bad career move on his part, not that he's done too terribly, what with TV and everything. But we might have been spared so much of Harrison Ford, whose emotive range runs the gamut from A to B. Alec Baldwin does pissed off in a so much better and more nuanced way, for my money.
It's probably because he is pissed off, which might have something to do with having a bunch of brothers who look like cavemen. Hell, the Baldwin brothers should be doing those Geico commercials. They wouldn't even need to put on makeup--just tell them not to shave for a day or two.

The French did experiment with a new calendar during their revolution, and it really was revolutionary. They started the year on the day of the Autumnal equinox (around September 22). Then, not only did they begin to renumber the years (starting with Roman numeral I), and rename all the months, but they also changed the weeks, days, and hours. Each month had three ten-day weeks, and each day had ten hours, divided into one hundred minutes, which were divided into one hundred seconds. This was way too cool and sensible an idea, and of course it didn't last too long, and the French went back to doing what they really excel at, which is figuring out how to make almost anything that grows or moves into something really delicious to eat. Like the Chinese, but much more expensive.

Prior to the French Revolution, New Orleans had been ceded to the Spanish under the Treaty of Paris, in 1763, and didn't return to French control until 1801. So it was spared the disruption of the French Republican calendar. Then two years later Napoleon dealt it off, along with about a third of the continent, to the United States, for $24 worth of beads and trinkets, or five magic beans, or something. Anyway, I think we got it cheap.

Progress Report: Michigan

Saturday, January 2, 2010

The sound of the snow is an agreeable crunch under my boots as I go down to the street late this morning to get the newspaper. The air is dry and cold, about 10 degrees (-12 C for my Euro-followers), and the sunlight bounces off the white ground like something off of something else--similes elude me at the moment.

According to my original schedule I would be in New Orleans at this moment, shuttling out to the Hilton across Highway 61 from the airport, to retrieve the car and head north to Mississippi. But a couple of days ago I decided to do what I thought I'd end up doing almost from the moment I got to Grand Rapids two weeks ago--I put off returning to the walk for a week. Two weeks of respite at any other time of the year probably would have been enough, but this fortnight has been so filled with comings and goings and family dramas (and some fun, to be sure) that it feels as if I got home only yesterday. This afternoon Laurine and I take our 13-year-old grandson Mario to the airport, where he's headed back to Clearwater, Florida. After that the house will be just ours.

My original return time having passed, I'm beginning for the first time to look forward to getting back to the walk. Funny how that works, but it does. The tiny increases in the daily allotment of sunlight are stimulating, too. Even though I'm outdoors all day when I walk, the shortening days began to get to me during December. Don't think I'd do well in the Arctic.

For now I am beginning to accumulate bits of information about New Orleans. The history of the city has been written, of course; I'll try not to reiterate too much of that. And I have very little interest in all that Ann Rice/creole voodoo/Spanish moss/sacrificing chickens/"drums beatin' cold English blood runs hot" crap. As always, I'm more intrigued by things like the fact that New Orleans was named for Phillipe Charles, duc D'Orleans (1674-1723), who was the second son of the younger brother of Louis XIV. Not least because naming a city after the Duke of Orleans, rather than after the city of Orleans itself, is quite like the way New York was named--for the Duke of York, not for the city of York. In effect, the cities were sort of given to them as gifts. Here, your grace--a city for you. I can find no evidence that old Phillipe ever personally gave a rat's ass about the city of New Orleans, but he might have. Also, it seems that in the French monarchy duc d'Orleans was a traditional title (and duchy) given to a second son, just as in the English monarchy the title of the monarch's second son is Duke of York. In England the Duke of York became king, as James II, while in France the duc d'Orleans became Regent of France for a time before Louis XV took power, and was acting in that capacity the city became his namesake. Also, for you trivia buffs, this Phillipe Charles is a direct ancestor of several reigning monarchs--King Juan Carlos I of Spain and King Albert II of the Belgians, not to mention Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg.

Those who might have been concerned that I was losing too much weight on my walk can rest easy. I'm in the process of gaining it back. Around here we follow the suggestion of another member of the French royal family: "Let them eat cake." Of course Marie Antoinette was really from Vienna, where they specialize in cake. Had she been French she might have said, "Let them eat cheese and pate de foie gras with truffles." In an effort not to favor the Habsburgs over the Bourbons, I have been eating everything.