The Road Trip that Was and Wasn't

Photo taken by Hedgehog somewhere in Louisiana

It's nearly a year from the day that my sister and I and then-8-year-old Hedgehog set out on our epic road trip through the Deep South, and I've been reminiscing lately.

The most remarkable thing, in hindsight, is the fact that Hedgehog missed the trip in its entirety. When I say she missed it, I don't mean she wasn't physically there, a fixture in my rearview mirror, stoically passing the thousands of miles strapped to her booster seat. I mean that she wasn't there with us, looking out the window, marveling over the eternities of strange sights: the strangling forests of kudzu, the eerie dusklit swamps and marshes, the signs enticing us toward Stuckeys and boudin, fireworks, peaches, pecans, above-ground cemeteries, the old mansions and slave quarters, alligators, dancehalls, and boiled peanuts.

A committed and compulsive reader, Hedgehog saw the trip as nothing more than an opportunity to read all day every day, across the hours and through the states, all the way across the country, four thousand miles total: a great tipping, sliding pile of books at her side. For her, Mississippi and Alabama will be remembered as a land of dragons and battles, Louisiana and Georgia full of magical swords and brave girl warriors--all punctuated by momentary flights of reality in the form of waffle houses and bright truck stops, necessary leg-stretchings, and portable lunches of tuna salad crackers.

Just once I insisted she catch a glimpse, when we passed through the French Quarter, and she obliged, looking up from her book with glazed eyes. I'm not sure to this day what she actually saw--the ornate little houses and rambling streets, or something else entirely, her mind still in the printed word?

Often as parents we have expectations of just how we want our children to experience some event, outing, or even a sculpture, painting, or story we tell; the truth is that, often, it just won't go as we hope. It can be hard to let go of our expectations, hard not to badger ("put down your book and look at that amazing view!!!"), hard not to pressure, hard not to feel disappointed when things don't go as planned or the enthusiasm just isn't there.

The biggest lesson I've learned as a parent is to try as hard as I can simply to let Hedgehog be. Not to force experiences on her. Not to feel let down when she doesn't react as expected, not to be overly invested in her reactions. That road trip was a real turning point for me in this regard. I very quickly came to a decision to let her read as much as she wanted, and not to insist she look at, or even pretend to care about, the marvels of the road.

I like to think that she will look back with fondness and satisfaction on our odyssey. The voices laughing chatting and arguing from the front seat, the country music on and off as we passed through local bandwidth, all a background murmur. Free from parental vigilance and pressure, in a cozy car full of books she could lose herself in the intensity of her stories. We had our adventures...and I am very certain she had hers.

Aftermath

downtown San Antonio, Texas

The road trip is finished, and I have taken temporarily to my bed. No, really I have. I am so utterly spent that I have been unable to get up and be my usual self, full of vim and bustle, tidying and cooking and organizing everyone and everything around me (that may or may not be a bit of an exaggeration, but I'll never tell).  In between sips of my delectable Cafe du Monde chicory coffee, I have entertained myself with cackling over the Twilight books, forcing myself to read the dreadfully arch and affected New Yorker (a girl needs a little culture, however bitter the pill to be swallowed), and occasionally waving to Hedgie from the pillows.  Sarge rousted me for an hour this afternoon and took me for a walk like a recalcitrant dog, but aside from that, it's been bed and more bed.  In honor of this post, I have for the first time in two days made said bed, an accomplishment of which I am inordinately proud. My counterpane neatly arrayed, my coffee balanced, hair brushed into two pigtails (yes, it is the truth), the reclining is not quite so shameful, and if someone should happen to pop in on me I am at least presentable.

In an effort to take stock, I shall hereby abridge and truncate these previous long 12 days journey as follows:

Best: The New Orleans cemetery.  Oh how I loved it.  I might have to move in there...

Worst: gas station bathrooms.

Funniest: the donkey who fell hard for my sister, followed her around, brayed sweet donkey nothings in her ear, and stared wistfully after her as she tried to leave the little farm across the road from my MIL's.

Scariest: The hotel room we checked into,  and then out of five minutes later, that looked very much like a serial killer's abattoir might look after all the action but before housekeeping had visited.

Most Delicious Meal: a toss-up between Cleburne Cafeteria in Houston and Mary Mac's tearoom in Atlanta Georgia.  Both places, truly Lucullan.  And I'm sure I've used that crazy word before this, in a fit of exaggeration about something or other, but it really applies here.

Most Delicious Individual Food: bread pudding soaked in bourbon.  Hands down.

Most Disgusting Meal: Texas Land and Cattle.  I might take my dog there for scraps.  Then again, I might not.  Getting drunk and just slightly belligerent helped the teensiest little bit.

Most Disgusting Individual Food Item: The  "baked" potato at above.  Nothin' like biting unsuspectingly down on a forkful of crisp raw potato.

Most Boring: the un-politically correct lecture we got from the docent at the old plantation in Baton Rouge Louisiana.  You would think it might have been interesting, seeing as how he had a most peculiar take on the whole, er, slave issue.  But it wasn't.  He reminded me of Professor Binns from Harry Potter.  

Most Interesting: wandering into an old hotel in downtown San Antonio, and discovering that Robert Johnson had recorded some of my favorite songs in a room there.

Ugliest: the fussily be-ribboned china doll with the gruesome simpering expression given to Hedgehog by some relatives.

Most Beautiful: the eerie swamps and wetlands of Louisiana and Georgia.  Seen in dusk, just lovely.

Most Shameful: In desperation, feeding poor dear starving Hedgehog cold Chef Boy-ar-Dee ravioli straight from the can with a plastic fork, in a gas station parking lot.  Without doubt one of my lowest parenting moments.  However, she seemed to enjoy it.

Most Surreal: Purchasing my red beans and rice from Boudin King in Jennings, Louisiana, I went to pick up some napkins on my way out, and found myself staring down a gigantic pile of tracts that said, in big cheerful letters, "if you don't accept Jesus Christ as your lord and Savior you will burn in the fires of hell."  I became immediately convinced that they were trying to fatten me up for the slaughter, and hightailed it out of there.  However, I would still recommend Boudin King for all your boudin needs, if you ever find yourself in the backroads of backroad Lousiana.  Just make sure your Star of David is tucked all the way into your t-shirt.

Favorite souvenir: no contest, a true crime book I purchased at a Stuckey's in East Texas.  Written and vanity-published by a local sheriff, an account of a disturbing murder he had solved. I confess to being initially amused at the florid title: "So Innocent, Yet So Dead."  Yet to my surprise, it is actually rather well-written.  Score, a direct hit.

New Orleans, Louisiana: Saint Louis Cemetery Number One

I had so many random things I wanted to post, but this evening I'm sitting in an Atlanta hotel room, completely exhausted, unable to stop thinking about the New Orleans cemetery...

We blew into the French Quarter by car, this afternoon, just for a cafe au lait and some beignets--we spent less than an hour there all told--but it was one of the most intense hours I've spent in, oh, perhaps years. Chicory coffee--delicious. Oh, so very delicious. Beignets--well, I'm still finding powdered sugar, like sand, 12 hours later. In the car. On my nose. Everywhere.

A serendipitous parking spot in front of an above-ground cemetery yielded one of my favorite moments in life so far--perhaps it's the Goth in me, I don't know, but even in broad stark white blazing daylight, this place was--well, for some reason, I don't have words for my feelings about it. Unusual for me, to be struck speechless. I love graveyards anyway, and this was the very distillate of graveyard--the crux of it--stumbling about in the crowded crumbling little death houses was like making one's way through a crowd of the dead themselves...

I wanted to linger, but thought that if I did, they might catch me and keep me...even this little bird, the only other animate thing around, came to perch and was instantly held like a piece of statuary:



I tried hard to capture the heat and existential claustrophobia of the place, but couldn't quite...

Mariachi

I think I was a little bit in love with this singing fellow, but maybe it was the margarita talking:



I guess I just have so much respect for the people who make a living doing their music, whatever sort of music it is. I'm a little bit jealous, and wonder what my life would have been like if I had tried to do it with my fiddle.

Look at the beautiful faces. This is a job--maybe sometimes, I hope, a joy too, but a day job nonetheless:

Boiled Nuts, Alligator Meat, Texas Home Cooking, Visionary Art, and Donkeys: A Summary

We've seen some strange and wondrous sights as we crossed the American South. Sampled some culinary delights. Been educated.

Boiled peanuts are a strange, multi-faceted experience. You purchase a styrofoam container of them, under advice from husband and friend, ladling the roiling contents, burning your face with hot steam. You clamp a lid down on them so the steam can do no further damage. Back in the car, you sample one. It is burning hot, and the shell yields easily. The nut inside is so soft that it practically melts. But the taste? Disgusting. Yet...you have to try one more to ascertain just how disgusting it really was. Yes, disgusting. Then a third. Hm. Wait, maybe it's not so bad. At least the texture is kind of nice...a fourth. The taste isn't so bad. A fifth. Okay, it's good. A sixth. Delicious, even...Sarge says you need an ice cold Coke to go with.

As for the Alligator meat, we didn't. We wouldn't. We couldn't. And "fresh from the swamp," isn't that an oxymoron?

Cleburne Cafeteria was everything it said it was and more.

The Orange Show cannot really be explained, but if you're interested look at the link.


The donkey lives across the road from my mother-in-law; he is free-ranging with four other donkeys and a two goats. They have a shelter and a feed and water station, and their owners come by every few days. I've never met such healthy, lovable creatures. They will lean against you silently if you let them, waiting for a scratch behind the ears and a carrot.

Scenes from Along the Road

A long day on the road.

We began with some bad coffee luck. I am a true coffee addict, and I must must I tell you have a strong cup of coffee. Let's just say that I tolerate a triple espresso quite well. You can imagine my chagrin when I ordered an iced coffee and was handed this atrocity:



(of course, you can also see that in my desperation for some caffeine, any caffeine at all, I actually drank some of it. Feh. If I'd wanted a glass of iced milk, I'd have ordered it).

We drove and drove, through Georgia and Alabama. Not quite as long as yesterday, but still we are all exhausted.

We ended up in a long-haul truckers' rest stop--the sort of place that provides showers for the truckers and sells everything from beef jerky to tube socks to pillows to caffeine pills. (It was quite fun to browse the odd selection, and we even found a color-by-numbers velvet picture for Hedgehog. She completed this baroque masterpiece on the way to Mississippi) In the ladies' rest room, I came face to face with this machine--very convenient indeed, no?--does it say something about the truckers' diversions?





The third slot of said machine boasted "a variety of 6 different sensual items to create your fantasy," and of course I began guessing: a little feather? a duct tape sample? I couldn't resist making the purchase--and here's what they had to offer:



A little disappointing, but still, drive her wild with pleasure--do you think it can cash that check? Would you trust anything you'd procured in a truck stop bathroom?

"Road Tripping Downfalls" (or, Hedgehog's Catharsis)

Hedgehog says:

"This is a list of complaints:

Complaint #1. I objected to this trip. And I was right.

Complaint #2. Why I was right is because getting cramped in a horrible car for about 14 hours. Is that your idea of fun?

Complaint #3. I thought I had picked boring, lousy books to read on the trip. And I was right.

Complaint #4. It takes too long to get through the states.

Complaint #5. I fear that now whenever I enter the car, after this road trip, I will remember the road trip with precise detail.

And, dear readers, those are most of my main complaints."

Mama says: let's hope tomorrow's better than today.

And weren't the waffles at Waffle House tasty?

Road Tripping

We leave tomorrow in the early a.m. for parts unknown--well, parts known but not clearly.

I have abandoned my Easy Rider allusion as it becomes clearer that the upcoming epic will be more burdened than easy...but such is the privilege of traveling with a little one.

There is so much we can't do with Hedgehog--ghost tours, honky tonks, voodoo shops, getting drunk in New Orleans, buying and setting off fireworks in the Carolinas--but we're substituting swimming pools and alligators and this place so in the end it will be satisfactory, one hopes.

Well, we shall see, we shall see...

Easy Rider

Some might say I'm a glutton for punishment...some might say I'm an adventuress. Let's just split the difference and call me both.

My sis, Hedgehog, and I are going "abroad" in a few weeks on a road trip. It will culminate in Texas to visit some of the inlawish relatives, but the majority of the trip will be a drive through the deep South (Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and on the way back, Tennessee and Kentucky), stopping willy nilly, hither and yon, wherever the mood takes us within reason.

We'll stop at Stuckey's (do they still exist?), and see the giant peach and maybe Graceland and Fort Campbell, Kentucky, home of the 101st Airborne--Sarge was a Screaming Eagle, so I have an especial fondness. Plus, the Fort houses the 101st museum, with all the Hitler swag they grabbed from his Eagle's Nest (a sterling calling card bowl, among other oddities). I've been there once, but I'd love to show Hedgehog where her dad was for part of his army stint...

We have other desired stopping points, major and minor, but I am welcoming all suggestions for good places to check out between Brooklyn and Texas--if you've been somewhere cool, if you've heard of something odd or fun to look at or eat, let me know.