Impressions of the Good old USA

The South

Mississippi

Mississippi was a pleasant surprise to me.

I had wanted to go to Natchez got as far as Vicksburg; crossing the Mississippi River from Louisiana.

Coming off the bridge to a view of cannons pointed toward the river, was the best visitor center I d ever wandered into. A young lady in colonial custume offered a tray of cookies with ice tea or mint julep. All I wanted was a washroom.

Impressive Civil War battlefield memorial at Vicksburg too.

Later that late summer evening I overheard a lady on the way to the football game, talking about a chill in the air . It was a warm breeze at about eighty degrees.

I ll never forget lunch the next day in Tupelo, Miss at a huge cafeteria style place where the feature dish was potatoes.

All the possible ways to make a potato. The placemats listed all the ingredients contained in a potato; claiming it had all the elements a human body needed, except for one, which I can t recall.

To this day, I regret not saving a copy of the place mat, if not the menu.

Alabama

Alabama, on the other hand, hold no such memories, but (with appologies to the good folks of that state), I have to admit I only cut thru a northern corner of it on the Nachez Trace , which is about the most boring highway on the continent.

I did manage a picture of the first Cotton field I d ever seen, though.

Louisiana

I didn t do Louisiana justice, abandoning a drive south to swing east into Mississippi.

Before I did, however, I did find time for a short walk along a boardwalk thru what I m claiming was a bayou ; with Cypress trees growing out of the swamp. (The lady at the gas station couldn t believe I didn t know what kind of tree that was.)

South Carolina

I bet South Carolina would be interesting. But I don t know because I ve never been there. If I were to go, I might like to check out places like Cape Hatteras and Myrtle Beach.

Georgia

Went to Atlanta twice for work; once for a seminar in 1980 and then for a conference in 1981. God, that was long ago!

About all I remember was that one of the prominent downtown hotels was round. Well, cylindrical to be accurate. That s kind of round; just not spherical . I hadn t seen many non-square buildings up to that point. Rectangular I mean, but you get the idea.

Four of us did play hooky one afternoon; to rent a car and drive to Stone Mountain. Rode the gondola over the cliff with the Confederate Memorial Carving. Nestled in the Georgia pines.

Better views than downtown Atlanta I can tell you; where the only scenery I saw was a cop astride a horse, arresting a vagrant. That was kind of interesting.

The next evening, we prairie boys were checking out the nightlife downtown, when we managed to get hustled off to a nightclub type theatre by someone attractively female who spirited us into a car and drove us to another part of town where we attended a kind of stand up comedy night hosted by the owner of the theatre (who looked like Kenny Rogers but wasn t). We were the ONLY people in the audience, so during intermission, ladies in tights came to our table to share a drink. In the taxi back to the hotel, we marvelled at how easily we had been waylaid, and how much worse that experience could have been.

Florida

My favourite memory of Florida, of course, is the time the family all gathered in Miami Beach to celebrate my Mother-in-Law's ninetieth birthday.

We even got her a ride in an airboat in the Everglades.

But thinking back to 1980 and trips for work, I remember stepping onto the sidewalk in front of the Miami airport, to jump into a cab that screeched to a halt in front of me. As it accelerated from the curb I suddenly noticed I wasn t alone with driver. A Cuban gentleman and a rather obvious looking large black lady were sharing the ride. Long story short, I did talk them into driving me to my hotel after a little detour to Little Havana to drop off the gentleman.

She expressed some insult at the cab driver referring to her as an entertainer ; describing herself instead as a booking agent for entertainers .

Between Florida and Georgia I learned to be less naive in 1980.