American Sabbatical 96: 4/17/97

4/17.. Vicksburg.

Kosciusko Thursday was a laundry morning. While Peggy communed with Homer, I played patience with quarters in the local suds-o-rama. A skinhead with toos glared at me the while, but I figured that was his natural grimace, so I tipped him a nod, and kept rolling my eyeballs. A hairball in Miami costume is just as sharp as any guy in U-shirt and chains.

Then we ducked back onto the Trace for more heal-all. This section of the National Parkway is shouldered with blackeyed susans and what looks like baby’s-breath along with masses of crimson clover and carpets of the pale lavender heal-all. And the road unrolls like a dream.

We were skirting the Yockandokany river, and where it has been dammed to form the Burnett Reservoir we pulled into a picnic area. A romantic prospect of drowned islands with old cypress spiking up, and sleepy trollers in john boats. I traded lies with a ranger who had just seen “30 or 40” turkeys in the piney woods, and his eyes were still shining. He had tales of wild pig, too, and said the armadillos were commonplace. We’ve also seen roadkill coyote. We kept jawing slowly in an easy country way, about logging and wildcats, gators and turtles. I could just conjure his Mississippian, and he probably felt the same. We could have parled on indefinitely, but Peggy was pacing up and down, so we smiled at the impatience of women, and the Owlers moved on.

Not far, though. There was a swamp walk just down the Trace and Peggy was so apologetic about hurrying the menfolk that we back-winged and lit. The Boy Scouts had graveled a circle stroll around a slough, and bridged back across it to the lot. Our ramble brought us into a sunny opening where we saw a good sized gator sunning himself in the shallows. Back into the moody woods we hunted for a likely spot to draw a swampscape. This was a tupelo swamp, with only the odd cypress, and the ovate leaves were just broadening, so everything was dappled with shadows. A bright yellow-green algae covered the entire water surface around the swollen bases of the trees except for narrow channels of absolute black water. Bushy 4 inch evergreen clubs rose out of the level fabric, and cypress knees stood here and there like unfinished statuettes. Purple spiderworts starred out from their grassy stems at our feet, and great sprays of cardinal flowers edged the banks in places.

We broke out our colors on the foot bridge, and attempted the impossible. Into our meditations an iridescent blue-tailed skink investigated. All six inches of him. His slender tapered tail ran from an electric blue at the tip up to a deep violet at his midsection, then he was black and yellow striped to his nose, with yellow bulging eyes. First he clambered over my foot. Then, while I was busy trying to make bark crusty, he must have climbed my leg, because he suddenly appeared on the rail beside my knee. He lay down on the top of the bridge rail, warming his belly, and folded all four legs on his back. A shiny glowing clown. Honored, I’m sure, Mr. Skink.

The State of Mississippi may stint its school budgets, but it prides itself on its hospitality. The first ten miles of the 28 major roads entering the state have been planted with magnolia trees. 35,000 magnolias have been donated by such organizations as the Garden Clubs of Mississippi, Inc. And the state DOT has wildflower test plots where they try out mass planting of ox-eyed daises and the like, and apply the lessons to the state roads. We were welcomed with flowers all the way from Flora to the river.

At Vicksburg. It was too late to jump right into the trenches and redoubts, redans and lunettes, this afternoon. We settled on an early supper at a local bistro recommended by the tourist info office, where we’d scooped the local handouts. Peggy can vacuum up an armload of brochures in a motel lobby, restaurant, or tourist office in a blink. Don’t leave any loose papers around when she blows into your town.

The Walnut Hills proved to be yet another Southern fried delectorium. We did the four vegetables again, this time with okra and egg plant in the mix. I also had a cup of shrimp gumbo, just to dance on the edge. Southern cooking is sure good tasting, but it’s not exactly the diabetic’s ideal. Everything is saturated in either fats or sugar, or both. The okra was deep fried in breaded balls, and the eggplant was sauteed with bacon and then sugared. The carrots were CANDIED. I laughed when dessert was mentioned.

We waddled back to the bird and motored around this fortress town, trying to get a feel for the geographics. The Yazoo joins the Mississippi here and the high bluffs of Vicksburg make a wall along the east bank of the tributary to their junction, then the big river bends away west, edging the heights. The present day town is a sad looking place. Some grand old edifices.. private homes and commercial blocks.. stand forlorn in a sea of shabby. The old waterfront boasts 2 mock-steamboat casinos, Harrah’s and the Steamboat Casino, and some industrial terminals. Up the Yazoo (same to you fella) there’s a barge terminal, with empty barges jumbled whichaway in the marshes, and the backwaters are lined with a series of processing factories, bellowing smoke and nauseous aromas. Scenes from a watery Purgatorio.

The big bridge to Louisiana comes off the heights below the Yazoo outlet. A twin double-cantilevered truss affair tying Mizsippi and Looiezana together. Nobody seems interested. The restaurants on the bluffs look on the road while all that grand engineering is just a hohum out back. We stopped in a motel lot to watch the sun simmering over Louisianna and towboats pushing rafts of barges against the seething flow.

4/18 .. Armed engagements.

Our sleep shack backed on the National Battlefield Monument, so we tumbled to our feet at reveille, and trooped into the war zone. This one is very strange, to a contemporary eye. Because the battle and the siege lasted for months, without particularly memorable clashes.. except to the thousands who died here.. the 16 mile long park encircling Vicksburg doesn’t have hallowed perspectives. Unlike Gettysburg with the scene of Pickett’s Charge or the Little Round Top.. or the Sunken Road and the Peach Orchard at Shiloh.

More than chivalry died on the fields of Shiloh and Vicksburg and the rest. Being confronted with the lists of names here is just as sobering as those lists on black marble on the Washington Mall. All the Gileses and Jedediahs and Zachariahs. And at the Wisconsin memorial I was struck that these had all been farm boys. The whole war was fought by a rural people, self-destructing in the face of a new industrial destiny. Those Wisconsin boys probably had more in common with Johnny Reb than he did with the industrial wage-earner who was replacing them both.

Well, the trees have retaken these battlefields, and we have forgotten that only a short while ago we tore ourselves apart so a new paradigm could bury the dream of an agrarian democracy. And Sir Walter was unhorsed.

During the siege, Vicksburg civilians dug caves and took refuge in their cellars as well. There was rationing, sickness, battle casualties in the city. I had heard stories of people being reduced to eating rats and grass.

The Confederates surrendered on July 4th (the same day victory was won at Gettysburg, two battles that turned the tide for the Union impressing the superstitious by occurring on Independence Day). Interestingly Grant did not hold out for an unconditional surrender (his trademark which is what his initials are said to stand for). but accepted parole to the defenders.

One of the main objectives of our travels is to feel and experience the geography of historical events. Many terms are inexact and need clarification. What exactly does a “rise” mean, or a “gap”, or “bluffs”? It makes a huge difference to the people who fought or engineered or explored there if it is twenty feet high or a hundred feet high, if it is a gradual slope or vertical. The “ridge” at Gettysburg felt like a “rise” to me. The “mounds” at Ocmulgee and Etowah felt like huge earthen “pyramids”. What about the geography at Vicksburg?

The “bluffs” at Vicksburg on the river side are high and fairly steep, but don’t quite feel like “cliffs” since they are not of stone. This drop off on the river side is climbable and turf covered. Interesting that the strategy in the Civil War did not include scaling these riverside bluffs (Union soldiers scaled the far more imposing “cliffs” at Lookout Mountain). Why not? Was it impossible to land troops under the cliffs given the stiff resistance and artillery on top?

The ironclads were part of General Winfield Scott’s “anaconda plan” to strangle the Confederacy by cutting off its trade. The Cairo was designed by James Eads who got more fame for his later bridge designs.

I got a good sense of the land. It seems like impossible land to fight through on foot, very complex topography with ridges and gullies going every which way. In fact the North never did launch a full attack on the steep hills and deep gullies held by the Confederates at Vicksburg. Grant was realistic in choosing a siege over a general assault.

4/18.. cont.

Our friend Steve Stern had been stationed at the Army Waterways Experiment Station in Vicksburg when he was in the Army Corps of Engineers, and had described some of the modeling and testing going on there. We wanted to see what we could. River drainage models. Fanciful vehicles. Environmental recovery experiments. So we took the hike to WES, Vicksburg, and checked in at the info office.

Turns out that only a handful of demos are open to the public, and we weren’t willing to hustle our way past the guard, because we didn’t really know what we might see. So we did the self-tour. Saw the Niagara Falls model in action, and a relief map of the Mississippi drainage basin. Very discomfiting, that. Looked like a high school project, and someone had redirected the Tennessee into the Alabama so it drained into the Gulf at Mobile. Probably a football joke. But these guys are in charge of managing our waterways?

Our texts indicated there wasn’t much to see at the Grand Village, and we had reservations in the Quarter for tomorrow night. By cutting the corner we would get an extra day in the Big Easy. So we parted ways with the Natchez Trace around Fayette and dodged crosslots for the Homochitto National Forest near the southwest corner of Mississippi.

I take back everything I’ve said about enlightened highway planning in Mississippi. From Fayette to McComb they are ravishing the roadsides fit to make you gag. All the big line trees are gone, and everything else back thirty yards. But all they took were the big sticks. All the slash, big limbs and all, are still scattered along the ways. Sometimes there’s a smoldering pile, or the charred wreckage of one. It’s heartbreakingly ugly. I suppose it will all be wildflowers on day. Right now the grinning logtrucks keep coming at you like a train, piled high with dollars, if not good sense. The rape zone didn’t even quit when it hit the National Forest. There were a few elisions where you were back in the woods briefly, but whoever manipulated this boondoggle didn’t much care who had riparian rights. It was almost a relief to hit the mall strip of McComb.

We filled the larder with comestibles, and snuck off into the Percy Quinn State Park. Here at least the State of Mississippi has kept up her reputation for hospitality. Too much so, maybe. There was a long line of pickups and camper-trailers with Louisiana plates emitting at the gate. No sites available, the sign said. But we got waved through and directed to primitive camping, they had our number.

Friday night in the boonies, only 80 miles out from New Orleans, and it was a family scene.. going wild. Smoky campfires. Struggling with tentpoles. Lugging in tons of vital supplies and equipment. Untangling the dogs. Tired kids. Did you forget the...? Big Coleman lanterns to chase away the dark. Radios to scare off the silence. Don’t you love weekend camping?

Peggy and I wandered in the woods by the lake. Let it seep out some. Left Homer sleeping in his pack. Admired the waxing moon. Lay down on the ground.