Rob and Susie’s Incredible Journey – May-June 2004

Leg 1. Cedar Crest to Nashville

We had a lot of fun writing our travelogue from New Zealand and even heard that some people enjoyed reading about our experiences and seeing the pictures. Well, we’re ba-a-a-ck. We recently spent seven weeks in America’s heartland, more familiar to you and much less remote than New Zealand, but maybe our report and pictures will still be of interest to some. If nothing else, this is a way for us to record and help remember what we have seen and done. And, it’s fun to do, maybe even therapeutic. Because of limited on-line access during our trip and lack of planning, we’ve written much of this after returning home and so this report lacks immediacy. We’ll also be sending installments out in short intervals, and thus apologize in advance for mailbox and sensory overload. Nevertheless, cheers and salutations from us to you.

The trip begins and ends with family, with a good mix of bluegrass music and history in between. Basically, this was planned as a trip from NM to the Virginia shore of the Chesapeake Bay and back. Brother Lael and wife Katherine live in a sailboat (yacht?) on the Chesapeake. Other family resides along the way. The planned trip back was to follow US Highway 60 from Virginia to Oklahoma because of my nostalgic interest in this highway. A separate report deals with the Route 60 per se part of the trip. Briefly, I recently heard a talk about this one-time Ocean-to-Ocean highway, which passes through my hometown of Tonkawa, OK, and also cuts across New Mexico, and decided to take a look at its eastern half from the front seat of our motorhome, Tuzigoot. [A word of explanation: On our second major motorhome trip in 2002 we went to Tuzigoot National Monument, near Cottonwood, AZ. We like the sound of the word – sort of a contraction of Susie and the Coot – and decided to dub our motorhome thusly.]

We began with Mother’s Day in OKC with my Mom. Then, it was on to Abilene, TX, to check out McMurry University, where, we decided, I will be teaching statistics in spring 05. McMurry is a Methodist Church-sponsored university (enrollment about 1200) and I look upon this as something of a dual mission for my church and my profession. ‘Twill be quite a contrast with the large universities where I’ve taught before. Stay tuned for next year’s report.

Our schedule left time for a meandering trip towards Nashville and we had decided on Natchez, MS, and its antebellum homes as a destination. It was a dark and stormy day as we crossed TX and entered Louisiana. For the most part, we listen to books on CDs as we travel, or nothing, but here we happened to have the radio on, and on a local station. An urgent weather bulletin interrupted the broadcast: blat, blat, blat! There was a storm capable of spawning a tornado near Mansfield. We checked the map and found that Mansfield was near our planned route. Fortuitously, we approached a routes-divide point. Our planned route SE to Natchez went across the path of the storm; straight ahead would take us across LA to Vicksburg, MS. We went to Vicksburg, which gave us the opportunity to tour this important Civil War site. Grant’s victory here gave the Union control of the Mississippi River and brought Grant to Lincoln’s attention as a General who could get him some victories.

We were struck by the numerous battlefield monuments – memorializing the service and sacrifice of numerous regiments and battalions. The large, domed Illinois memorial, with a hole in its dome, had remarkable acoustics. A whistle or a shout resounded for several seconds. Wouldn’t have known this except for the example of two guys in there just before we went in. The more modern Alabama memorial was dramatic in another way.

Another remarkable memorial featured statues of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, standing together, in apparent debate. Lincoln: What did you think you were doing? Davis: … ? Well, I won’t get any more flippant about this terrible and glorious part of our history. Susie and I just shake our heads and wonder, How could these, our ancestors, fight so fiercely against each other, as the Alabama memorial depicts? Devotion to a cause is not always easy to understand. You had to be there. (Later we visited Appomattox, where Grant and Lee ended their bloody war with great civility and compassion. Amazing.)

From Vicksburg, it was down to Natchez. We found a really nice RV park on the LA bank of the Mississippi. Natchez was celebrating a month of music and we lucked into an evening of Rogers and Hammerstein music, performed by a troupe of singers who had been performing in various productions during the month and led by a narrator/pianist who was really outstanding. R&H’s first show was Oklahoma, their last was Sound of Music, but in between, in my humble, but ignorant, opinion, there wasn’t much memorable. This night, though, was.

The big Natchez attraction is the antebellum homes and they are certainly imposing and elegant. These pre-Civil War homes were not touched in the war in part because Natchez businessmen and plantation-owners included many Union sympathizers. And after Vicksburg fell, there was no need. We took a bus tour, visited one home that is a National Park, and did some touring on our own. I think we were a month or six weeks too late to catch the azaleas and other flowering bushes and trees at their peak. Bus tour had identified a local barbeque joint and it provided a great lunch. On the LA side of the river I found a one-room museum honoring three cousins from the little town of Ferriday who all made their marks in music: Jerry Lee Lewis, Mickey Gilley, and Jimmy Swaggart (music and then some for Jimmy). No further comment. Ferriday is also the home of newsman Howard K. Smith.

From Natchez we followed the Natchez Trace Parkway that follows the trail/road used by traders returning north from doing business in New Orleans. The Parkway runs from Natchez all the way to Nashville. We went as far as Tupelo, MS, Elvis’s hometown. The Parkway is a pleasant, sedate tree tunnel and we enjoyed the respite from highway traffic. After Tupelo we toured the Shiloh battlefield and some of the sights of Corinth, MS, an important RR town in Civil War times. It’s a charming, friendly town – the nice lady at the museum pointed us to an excellent old-style soda fountain for lunch and ice cream. (I later suggested to son-in-law Paul that he should write a letter to Corinth – Paul’s letter to the Corinthians!) From Corinth, we traveled on to Nashville. There, Susie stayed with daughter Mandi and Paul and Tuzi rested while I flew to Gaithersburg, MD, for a conference.

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