Cycling Across America #29
Part 29 of the Cycle-Across-America series relayed day by day, exactly ten years after it happened. (Read from the start in Boston)
Ten years ago today I was in the Deep South in between hurricanes and avoiding thunderstorms:
Friday the 30th. It’s the evening. I’m in Oxford. I guess it’s six o’clock. I got over here shortly after four.Today was short. I did sixty-one, sixty-two miles. I just didn’t want to chance going the extra twenty miles to Batesville, which would’ve then put me in a good position to get to Helena in Arkansas, in case of a storm, yet there is now no storm. And if I get caught tomorrow what does that mean?
How did today go? Reckoned a big waffle with two eggs and a hash brown was enough just to get me to Pontotoc. Rolled down the continuation of Gloster Street, right down into Verona. Very different to the Verona in Italy I’ve cycled through. The road was narrow and I had to go into the drain a few times. Most cars are polite and will slow up, but some aren’t.
When rednecks go past you in a car they, well they don’t go around you they go up to you very close, and they roar out at you, or they bark at you, or they howl at you. Or even in town here, which is a busy four-lane street, cars coming the opposite direction, some of them roar helpful advice at you.
The Natchez Trace. I passed a couple of good plaques. One, about the Pontotoc Creek Treaty, which was when the Chickasaw, whose National Council House was half a mile or five miles east of where the plaque was, they signed a treaty ceding six million acres to the United States. Seems like quite a lot of land to give away, but there ya go. That was in 1835, if I remember rightly.
Pontotoc was quite a nice town. Historical centre, with a CSA, Confederate States of America, Memorial. Another plaque about when the Chickasaw defeated some French guy a few days after defeating some other French guy. You were cheering them on but the problem was it was about a hundred years before the previous plaque. Thirty miles to get to Pontotoc so I was looking for food.Outside Pontotoc was a garage and they did Creole chicken. The Mississippians are certainly the most friendly people I’ve come across. Mississippi and Alabama are predominantly white, in terms of the small towns and places I’ve gone through. Maybe there’s black people indoors but the cars and everything are white. Whereas the Carolinas and Georgia were inversely black.
So I had –what did I have? A three-piece chicken meal covered in gunk. White meat. You can have white or dark. With a biscuit, which is as bready as any of the biscuits I’ve had. Most of them are more sconey. And two big wedges of potato covered in a golden spicy crumb. And a 44oz cup of something. People were talking to me. There was an old guy chatting. It was hard for both of to understand the other but we chatted briefly.
It was about three or four miles out of Pontotoc proper that 334 turned off. And that was it then. That was the main road of the day, about thirty miles. From there all the way into Oxford, to here, I stayed with it.
This road is a great road. I went through very strange, very contrasting lands over a short distance really. I twisted and turned. I went up and down a lot. It increased it’s up-and-down-ness as I approached Oxford. Trees and bushes. You’d get them covered in kudzu. You’d get no kudzu. You’d get swamps. Swamps right up to the road on both sides, so you’re nervous if anything comes around ya –trafficwise that is. A few rednecks.
You would get banks of red soil, covered in dried up grass with lizards from three to six inches scurrying up them all the time as you go past them. Lots of grasshoppers still around, and then they flutter their little kind of clockworky horrible wings that these ones have. These are an ugly yellow wing, a dirty yellow.
I got a smack of an insect, which has either bruised me or stung me. It was a big one and hit me in the arm and hurt me. It left a mark. Then there’d be thick vegetation, there’d be trees, pine trees, deciduous ones. There’d be dead ones, and swamps. And then you go past them and it opens up into a field of grass, and cattle, and distant trees, and maybe a field of cotton. This would happen regularly.
There wasn’t much there, apart from Tacopolo. Oh, and Yacuna, which was quite close to Oxford, maybe five, seven miles away. An encouraging thing to by-pass it is the fact that there’s a ball game on, I was told, so it could be difficult getting a motel tonight. I’m in the only independent one so it’s probably not great value for money. I’ve got a big twenty-five inch television, which I don’t really care for. A king-size bed but like I mean my body isn’t any bigger. The Asian motel guy lived in Zimbabwe and England for a while and recognized my accent, which is a rare event.
–Are you here for the ball game?
–I’m with my bicycle going across the country. Would it be cheaper if I was here for the ball game?
–No, it’d be dearer. That’s why I’m asking you.Just before I came in I parked the bicycle outside –bicycle? Americans have got me saying bicycle instead of bike. There was a black chap, who said,
–Hey, you doin’?
–Hey ya doin’? I said,
He asked me where I was coming from. I told him, and he mentioned something about rednecks, and I volunteered that I don’t like them at all, they shout out things at me. He said,
–Yeah, you gotta watch them.
He’d already told me to watch people in Mississippi,
–They’re a bit crazy.
He then said,
–Look what I’m reading.
And he showed me his newspaper as he took it out. It was a Nation of Islam one. There was an article in there by Louis Farrakhan. He told me he was a Muslim. Now he had a drink and he had what looked like a bag of food. And then he put his hand out and said,
–Do you want to share some food with me? Do you want to give the brother some food?
–I’m just gonna get some lodging, I said confused.
–That’s good man.
–Good to talk to ya.
–It’s good to talk to you, man.
And off he went.Tomorrow if I go my planned route to Batesville, I’ll miss Dublin by six miles. And I’m not making a detour to go through some stupid little town just because it’s called Dublin.
I saw a half large snake today. It looked like its head had been run over. It was only a foot long. The rest of it was still moving. The other snakes I saw including another three-footer was dead. Didn’t see much in the way of birds.
This morning’s news I heard that there’s been sixty-seven churches in Mississippi burnt but not all of them are arson. There’s a campaign at the moment to get them, the burning of a church changed from second degree arson, which carries a sentence of from one to ten years, to first degree arson, which is from five to twenty. Or at the very least, to bring in a minimum sentence.
The Dukes of Hazzard is on the box. Maybe I should flip on the weather.
[Weather Channel]
What have we got? It looks like Edouard is going to ruin people’s holiday weekend. Edouard the hurricane. But Fran has been downgraded to a tropical storm.Sunday, what’s the weather like? Scattered storms and showers. That’s, I’m right in the middle of that. That’s the dark green. The light green is the isolated stuff. I’m not sure why scattered is worse than isolated, but it looks worse. On Monday it looks like no escape. The nearest bit of light green, which even is rain, is millions of miles away. Really rainy, she said, and she put her hand right where I’m going to be. That’s Monday.
[…–Carter and Monroe counties of southwestern Alabama had over eight inches of rain. These are the Doppler rainfall estimate amounts since eight o’clock this morning, and the colours on you legend here –you’ll see the bright oranges and reds where six, seven inches of rain has already fallen. An additional three to four inches of rain could fall tonight, so that’s where the heaviest rain is occurring along the Gulf coast. And other heavy rains over the centre part of the country…]
I can see the thunderstorms. There they are. In the north they’re going to the west. And in the south they’re going east –which means they’re following me.Later…
‘Blind Jim’s‘ 8.45 p.m.
Drinking Abita beer (golden) from Louisiana - the nearest thing to local that they have here. About to try some corn bread. She said she couldn’t describe it - it’s just wonderful. I said I’d hold her to it. Behind me the boys are wiring up.
She apologised for my starter and main arriving together. It didn’t matter - I devoured them. Main was good - stewed potatoes with some onions and pepper, and large slices of juicy tomatoes, served with some corn bread - tough, requires dipping, I can see why they serve it with milk as a starter, could be good in a trifle. Perfect for leaving a completely clean plate. The starter was sensational. Sausage bread, it was called. A spiced minced beef and tons of some creamy cheese cooked inside a bread loaf and sliced. Delicious.
And now rather fittingly I’ve switched beers. To Samuel Adams, which I started on in Boston. Like the Kudzu, the saddle cover, and the Guinness, I like the continuity. This though is a Golden Pilsner. Their other beers, bottled and draught, I had were more ale-ish.
The lads only did half a tune so we’ve been listening to excellent tapes instead. I wish some friends from home were here to hear this. The atmosphere is so good. I see an old poster for Buddy Guy on the wall. Wasn’t he in Temple Bar just before I left home? The floor is covered with peanut shells. They encourage you to throw them there.
This square here in downtown Oxford is quite lovely. So good to be able to walk to it. Really towns like Tupelo are simply too big for staying in with a bike. There’s a plaque in the square which says Oxford was on the Chickasaw Trail of Tears. There was a feature on the news about the commercial success of the Mississippi Band of the Choctaw down near Philadelphia, Mississippi. All sounds very similar to Údarás na Gaeltachta.
Things aren’t so busy. She came over and asked about me. I told her. She said it was a fun town and I should stick around for the band. They’ll go on ’til one or two in the morning and it’ll get really crowded. God I’m tempted. Indoors you don’t think about thunderstorms.
I notice my journal and tapes tend to document the practical difficulties. These practicalities do exist but ninety per cent of the trip is being out there. Just me and the bike, and dead hawks, and talking to animals, and swamps, and fears, and dreams. That’s what it’s about. The practicalities just make that happiness possible.
Read the Next Entry (#30) in my Bicycle Trip Across America
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