The Ride: Further On Down the Road

After a few days reveling in Clarksdale Mississippi, I woke up the third morning in my downtown motel singing a song, but not just any song.

As I lay in bed, still half asleep and more than a little bit hung over, I nonetheless happily, in my best 1968 Eric Clapton croon, hollered/croaked at my motel room ceiling; I’m goin’ down to Rosedale, tried to flag a ride…

Except I didn’t need to hitchhike, because I had my trusty 2021/1969 retro Harley Davidson eagerly waiting outside my room after two days, sitting idle, while I played Happy Delta Blues Tourist.

I repeated the same line probably five times, and with each repeat my hangover dissipated a little bit more, to where soon enough I hit the shower, hit the coffee machine, and then we, my Harley and I, hit the road.

The Rosedale line wasn’t a part of Robert Johnson’s original version—Cream added it to their run at Crossroads in a bit of poetic license. It ended up being my favorite verse of the song, as it always led me to visualizing in my mind's eye EC, or Robert Johnson, standing roadside just outside Clarksdale, maybe at the crossroads, a beat up guitar case sitting next to them, slightly slumping forlornly with their thumb out—as car after truck after motorcycle pass them by with nary a glance.

I know how it feels: I spent a lot of time when I was young trying to flag a ride, standing out in the glaring sun, pouring rain, or sleeting snow while they all just passed me by. Me and my buddy Rick once spent six straight hours standing by the Dayton Ohio entrance ramp to South I-75 in a snowstorm, with nothing but summer clothes on because we were hitching to Florida for Easter—so who needed winter clothes?

In any event, I went down to Rosedale, and it was a typical, cool little Mississippi town, with a bunch of Delta Blues references. But it wasn’t Clarksdale—it was a functioning community not nearly as dependent on its past. As I rode on, headed to Natchez, I cued Cream up on my motorcycle’s built-in-stereo and listened to Crossroads, loud as the thing would go, over and over and over again.

—

I’m in Destin Florida now, having just left New Orleans this morning. Previously, I road on down to Natchez, which is a beautiful ride, with ornate old towns that harken to a Delta past. In one that was typical, Port Gibson, Main Street was and still is lined on both sides with antebellum mansions squeezed into tight little lots that have been impeccably preserved, as well as a towering monument in the town square honoring the Confederate soldiers who gave their lives for Dixie in the Civil War.

Natchez is a beautiful city, hosting tons of history, amazing landscaping, lots of neo-classical architecture, and according to the owner of Mammy’s Cupboard’s husband, over 500 magnificent plantation-level antebellum mansions—the most in America. While really trying to stay non-political, I still feel that I’m not so sure I would be proud of that, but he was. He was an incredibly nice guy, who invited me to come back down to Natchez whenever I could, and he’d take me out for some of the best fishing and hunting in all of Mississippi!

[A sidebar: Mammy’s Cupboard has the most amazing pies ever! In fact, everything I saw coming out of the kitchen looked amazing, but I got stuck on the pie, eventually consuming slices from four different ones plus scoops of homemade ice cream. Each one was exquisite.

Meanwhile, Mammy, the colorful building that houses Mammy’s Cupboard, wasn’t always white, as I dug up an old historical photo and she was decidedly Aunt Jemima Mammy in her original incarnation. In my opinion Mammy is seriously politically incorrect even as a white woman, but I’m still glad she has been preserved, and continues to serve a purpose. According to her owner’s husband, Mammy started out as a sort of forbidden pleasure, just-out-of-town tearoom for the ladies of the “Blue-Haired Natchez Mafia." After they all died Mammy, the building, subsequently served time as a burger joint, a pizza parlor, and a beer and whiskey bar—before becoming an excellent pie and coffee/breakfast/lunch place. If it was still a bar, I would move to Natchez.]

But I got really sick with some sort of chest cold/virus thing in Natchez and spent four days holed up in bed. I tried to rally on the fifth day and rode hard down to New Orleans but after two days of trying to make the best of it in NOLA without much success I threw in the towel, dropped my motorcycle off at New Orleans Harley Davidson (thanks Keven-maybe the greatest Harley Parts Department guy ever!] and flew back to Minneapolis.

I spent two weeks trying to beat the cough, unsuccessfully, but I did beat it down to a tolerable level. I’m good with it all, because I got to experience my springtime lilacs, my peonies, and the once-a-year miraculous Mid-May greening up that Minnesota gives we all as thanks for enduring another brown and white winter.

And now, I’m back at it. I flew back into New Orleans three days ago and spent these last few days eating oysters and turtle soup, wandering, with one whole day spent at the National World War II Museum.

Pausing with my yammering for a second: the WWII museum is a treasure, and I don’t know how it eluded me all these years, and multiple NOLA visits. I spent literally one whole day exploring—and maybe saw 1/10^th of it. Now, I know I’m a museum rat who reads everything and sits and ponders the implications, but I don’t see how anyone can “do” the museum in less than three days.

For my part, it was a truly emotional experience, and I cried for what I saw more than once. The museum isn’t just an examination of the war itself, with an emphasis on the battles and strategy. Instead, it is an extraordinarily thoughtful analysis of all aspects of the war and its time in history, starting with the birth and blossoming of dictators, tyranny, and evil that overtook some of the world at large, as well as the after affects that the entire world experienced, and continues to experience to this day.

Talk about being as current as it is historical?!? I’ll be back. Soon.

I didn’t cry at Commander’s Palace, an old yet still excellent New Orleans epitome of southern cuisine—except the menu and service is so world-class as to seemingly be perfect beyond compare.

Anyway, I’m back at it, hanging in a beachfront motel in Destin. Today’s ride was a good back-in-the-saddle 200-plus mile excursion, and even though my ass is sore and my nose is sunburnt to a crisp, I’m ready for tomorrow morning. The Florida Panhandle, Apalachicola, and Southern Georgia await.