FRIDAY MORNING, JULY 9
MORNING

Well, I'm loadin' up the ol' wagon with provisions (most of them covered with chocolate) and gear. Headin' out with my sidekick, Amity, in a coupla hours. She don't eat chocolate, and I don't eat tofu, so we'll make good pardners.
Plan to make it to Vicksburg tonight, Memphis on Saturday night, and (maybe) pullin' into the ol' homestead by late Sunday.
Goin' northeast today, split up diagonal' through the state. NO INTERSTATES.

Did Clint Eastwood take Interstate Highways? Y' bet yer boots he didn't! And I can think of a few others who didn't: Cheyenne, Bronco Lane, Calamity Jane, Sugarfoot, Yancy Darringer, Bat Masterson, Cattle Kate, Wyatt Earp, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Annie Oakley, and that little wagon train on th' tee-vee, pulled by them dogs and rollin' right under yer kitchen table. (Awright. So maybe not all of these wranglers were from Texas. Maybe they weren't even wranglers. What the hell is a "wrangler," anyhow? I'll have to Google it.)
For now --while my daughter is doing yoga and I crave espresso -- I yell, "Rollin', rollin', rollin'! Keep them doggies rollin'!"

THURSDAY, JULY 8th
SOMETIME IN THE EARLY EVENING

I still don't have the hang of how to arrange photos on this blog. I just hope those of you who are following me note the box of cupcakes somewhere on this page.
They are Austin cupcakes: two chocolate ones and two carrot cake ones. It rained most of the day, and I stood in line to buy cupcakes.
Twenty minutes after I "woke up" this morning, Amity called into my room: "Mom, if we're going to yoga today, we have to leave in ten minutes!"
I didn't know what time it was, I didn't know what day it was, I didn't know which door to leave out of, I didn't know how not to bump into the wall.
But I stumbled down the steps and into the car, and Amity drove us to yoga class.
This Friday, tomorrow, will be Amity's 100th day in a row of going to yoga class, and I feel certain she wouldn't have made it these past four days without me. If she travels back home with me we'll have to wait until after her yoga class -- understandably. As James said today, "I haven't done anything in my life 100 days in a row!" Putting my clothes on, maybe brushing my teeth.
We had a great day today -- even in yoga class. James was working, but Amity and I drove around town, ate lunch, window-shopped. We went to a half-price bookstore and I bought a bagful of books, mostly about the African American experience in America. Then, to the cupcake stand.
Austin is a beautiful city (not only because it sells delicious cupcakes). It is a city full of creativity and youth and funk. I know there must be some old people here (besides me), but I didn't see any today. And it is the most dog-friendly city/town I've ever seen. Instead of "NO DOGS ALLOWED," it's "DOGS WELCOME ON PATIO!" and "YOUR DOG WELCOME HERE!"
Everyone seems to own a dog (several were lined-up with their owners at the cupcake stand), and everyone in this apartment complex seems to have one.
I'll miss being here.
Tomorrow, to Vicksburg. I think.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 7, MORNING SOMETIME

No, that is not I in the photo; that is James Clark. And that is a gin and tonic in the red cup, because glass is not allowed around the pool. And I am taking this photo, so what does that tell you? (You can take a photo with the camera in one hand and a gin and tonic in the other.)

I greatly fear that those of you who are following me on my journey to/from Texas do not believe that it is actually I who am writing it, because it seems so devoid of whines and complaints.

"That is just not like Wanda," you are saying. She sounds too relaxed, too happy, too optimistic. Someone else is writing these entries as she lies by the pool and/or takes naps."

Well, to prove that I am, indeed, the writer, here is a list of complaints about being here in Austin with Amity and James and Ruby (my granddog) and Holden (my grandcat). Take heed:

1) There are too many fruits to choose from in the grocery store here -- and some really strange ones that I didn't recognize. Exotic fruits. Colorful fruits. Just give me some of those delicious green grapes, some of those plump, red cherries, some of those limes (for gin and tonics), and let it go at that.

2) The pool water is just too warm here. I mean, when one goes to the swimming pool near my house in Canton, the water is cold and refreshing. (I guess. I mean, it looks cold as I drive by on my way to the salt mines every morning. At this apartment complex where Amity and James live, the water in the pool (which has a sort of fountain attached) is just too warm. What do I want? A warm bath, for god's sake?!?

3) Yesterday at the grocery I bought diet tonic water for the gin, and it wasn't quite as tasty as the other. Someone should have told me.

4) We haven't been to visit a cupcake stand yet. The last time I visited here Amity took me to a cupcake stand -- one of many such stands that dot the landscape. These stands are sometimes little shed-like buildings (like a hotdog stand at the fair), and sometimes they are a Silverstream trailer. But almost all of them have a big fabricated cupcake on the top, and all of them sell dozens of -- styles? -- of cupcakes: chocolate and chocolate chip; red velvet; carrot cake with cream frosting; vanilla (with vanilla frosting or chocolate, pick your choice); orange with orange frosting; strawberry; blueberry -- and some probably made with those strange fruits I mentioned before. I WANT A CUPCAKE!!!!!!!!!!

Now. NOW do you believe that it is Wanda writing, and not some stand-in?

Other than the other extremely annoying points above, I am pretty much in heaven here. Oh, an occasional thought rips through my mind ( 'In twelve more days you must return to work!') -- but I can usually brush those thoughts aside with a good book, something to eat, a rest at the pool (warm water be damned!), another gin and tonic. I do get by.

Yoga. I forgot to whine about yoga. I went to another class yesterday (Tuesday). On Monday it was the Restorative Yoga class; yesterday it was "Gentle Yoga." (I had previously thought all yoga was gentle, in a bizarre sort of way, until I saw photos of my daughter's body, twisted into positions that remind me of the cords under my computer table.) The class yesterday was more strenuous than the one on Monday. I mean, instead of lying on the floor relaxing and listening to gongs, I actually had to move in this Tuesday class. Like, I had to raise my arms above my head and stuff like that. It was exhausting, but I did rather enjoy it.

Yesterday Amity and I took Ruby to the dog park here in the apartment complex. (That's Ruby in the photo above, with her pal Pup. Ruby is the solid-colored one. They are looking through the fence toward another dog coming. "Oh, BOY!! Here comes another one of our species!") I had great fun watching Ruby play with her dog friends -- Pup, Mocha, and Addison -- while Amity and I sat and talked with their owners.

(I am extremely tempted to complain about the heat at this point -- you'll notice I didn't list that in my complaints above. It is as hot as hell here, but no humidity, which really makes all the difference. (I hope that, if I do end up in hell, it will be dry heat.) I have not whined and complained to Amity about how I can't breathe, I need a shower, my clothes are drippy, I'm dying here! -- and I think it worries her some.

Amity is going to be in her friend Rebecca's wedding in September, and we have gone to a fancy bridal shop Monday and Tuesday to choose her dress. That was fun, except that they had mirrors all over, and I couldn't help but see myself in them. (See "I want my cupcakes," above. Life is full of bitter irony.)

I am already planning my trip back -- don't know yet whether Amity will accompany me. I am currently reading The Eyes of Willie McGee -- but it's too late and too southeast to visit Laurel, Mississippi. However, I do plan to go through Money, Mississippi on my drive home. Minnie Watson (at the Medgar Evers home) told me that there is a small museum in Money (where the Emmett Till murder took place). I definitely want to travel through that section of the state.

You choose your ideal vacation, and I'll choose mine.

More soon.

MONDAY, JULY 5, 2010 Late Night

I have still not figured out this Time Zone thing. My cell phone says one thing, my car clock says another, Amity's clocks say another, my computer says something else. I am beginning to think only in terms of morning, noon, and night.

I didn't say much about the trip from Jackson down to Beaumont. I did travel the Natchez Trace Parkway -- from Jackson toward Natchez-- which looked almost exactly like the Blue Ridge Parkway, but without the mountains. I drove for miles and miles on that highway without seeing another car, which was good for pondering what I had seen and learned and experienced in Jackson. (I may take add to my comments on that later. I am still pondering.)

I had originally planned to see Natchez because the Mississippi River is there; I brought one of my copies of Twain's Life on the Mississippi to compare and contrast. Unfortunately there was no time to travel to the banks of the River. I did drive through Port Gibson, established about 1811, which still has numerous antebellum homes standing and in beautiful condition. There were lots of historic markers that I sometimes stopped to read, though I considered it prudent not to knock on doors and ask for tours.)

I passed by Alcorn College and again remembered Medgar Evers, who attended school there.

I can now say that I have seen Louisiana -- but mostly through a violent, driving rain with my windshield wipers on "Fast" and still not going fast enough. Traveling West on I-10 toward Beaumont (and a night of rest), I thought I might have to pull over to the shoulder of the road because I could see nothing but the emergency blinking lights on the car in front of me. It was the kind of rain, however, that discourages pulling over because you don't know exactly where the shoulder is. I figured it must be remnants of Hurricane Alex; I expected to find globs of oil on my car when the storm ceased, but did not.

It was good to reach Beaumont and check into the hotel, where I wandered around with my mouth hanging open (see previous entry).

After my night in Beaumont, Texas, I drove for hours toward Austin.

Having no desire to drive south to Houston and then northwest to Austin, I took Highways 90 and 290 across the state north of that city. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately for the Houstonians), that city is expanding northward and bumping into the roads I tried to take.

Phone call to Amity:

Me: I see a city in the distance, and I'm not supposed to be near a city. I think it's a mirage.

Amity: I don't think so. Maybe it's one of those Texan factories -- some of them are pretty big.

Me: This is not a factory. This is a city. It sort of looks like the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz, except it isn't green -- sort of foggy and gray, like a mirage. I don't know where I am. I don't like this. I've never seen a mirage before. And I'm concerned because I think it may be Houston, and I don't want to go to Houston.

The traffic became heavier and heavier, and there was BIG highway construction -- as in three levels of highway above me and three levels below.

I finally exited Super Highway of the Future and walked into a service station.

"Where am I?" I asked the clerk at the counter.

She seemed reluctant to tell me, because I think she didn't want me to stay there. "Uh, where you goin'?"

"I'm trying to get to Austin."

"Oh. Austin is THATaway."

I apparently was on the right road, but it was a detour. I hate detours.

Finally back on track, I began seeing signs telling me how many hundreds of miles to Austin. Highway 290 passes through what used to be cattle drive country, before railroads. I could almost see big clouds of cattle dust and hear the cattle bellowing. Scenes from Lonesome Dove, Days of Heaven, and Giant flashed across my mind. (Poor James Dean, poor Rock Hudson. Poor cattle.) I passed by gates that were obviously entrances to huge ranches -- again, no desire to stop and pass the time of day. I was too eager to get to Austin.

At the state line between Louisiana and Texas there is a mileage sign: El Paso, 858.

James says that Texans just want people to remember how big the state is. I'll give them that, and gladly.

I arrived at Amity's at around 4:00 PM because I overshot my mark and drove almost to El Paso. Amity's calm voice on the cell phone "Uh, Mom.... I think you've gone too far) guided me back in and to their place. (Remember phone booths? Where would I be on this trip if I had to stop at a phone booth every time I needed guidance?!?)

The photo above is taken from the balcony of their apartment.

This morning I attended a yoga class with Amity and James. Don't laugh. Some of those positions remind me of someone who has fallen off a high cliff and needs to be scooped up and carried home in a basket. But Amity loves it and is really, really good at it. The class I took this morning was a "restorative" class -- and there was nobody in the room who needed restoration more than I, after that drive of over a thousand miles. (Admittedly, some of those miles were backtracking. About four or five hundred of them, it seems.)

During one pose , where we put our hips against the baseboard and our legs high up on the wall, the instructor walked over and said to me -- in front of the whole class, and loudly -- "This position will help with the swelling in your feet." (Damn Mister. These are my feet's normal size!)

Later I will post more photos of Austin and my loved ones here. Amity hates having her picture made -- I think she is in the Witness Protection program -- but James, Ruby, and Holden don't mind.

Thanks for reading this, you guys who have told me you are. (Remember that our friendship does not require it.) I am just enjoying having a reason to journal more extensively than I might otherwise.

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!!
I don't know what time it is, so I won't post it. I do know that I'm at breakfast at the Holiday Inn in Beaumont, Texas, and that's about all I know at this time of morning. I know of know way to gauge the time except that I feel I should still be sleeping -- but I feel like that until about noon every day of life.
I am almost embarrassed to be staying in this Grande Hotel for "free." (Of course, it is "free" in only one sense. I have paid for it in blood, sweat, and tears, months of working the Tri-State market for the past eight or nine years.) At the risk of sounding like Country Girl Come to Town, I will say that the facility is HUGE; this ain't your Murphy, North Carolina, Holiday Inn Express. The lobby has fountains and several seating areas and a couple of glass elevators that go up and down by just pushing a button. ("I got to Kansas City on a Fridy. By Saturday I larned a thing or two! 'Cuz up to then I didn't have an idee Of whut the modren world wuz comin' to!" Remember that song from Oklahoma?)
I digress, which is what I do this early in the morning. Or not.
After finishing breakfast I plan to pack the wagon and drive West toward Austin -- straight through on small roads, cause I ain't tacklin' Houston.
Have a great Fourth of July!
I know I will, because today I see Amity, James, Ruby, and Holden for the first time in months!

SATURDAY, JULY 3, 2010 10:00 pm EST


Well, I didn't make it to the Eudora Welty house in Jackson, Mississippi today. And I didn't make it to the Vicksburg seige site / battlefield, and I didn't see the Mississippi River at Natchez.

All these things I had planned to do -- but I was so overwhelmed by my experience with Medgar Evers that, once I left his house, I just drove West to Beaumont, Texas, where I am staying the night.



You may recognize the house in this photo if you have ever seen film clips of Medgar Evers or if you have watched (I have begged you to watch :-) ) the series, Eyes on the Prize. (Actually, this series is currently being shown again on Monday nights -- PBS. )

The house is the site of Medgar Evers's assassination. He was killed in the driveway as he arrived home from a late-night meeting. His pregnant wife, Myrlie, and his three children were inside the house as someone shot Evers from across the street.

My GPS device, housed in my cell phone, is sometimes my friend and sometimes my enemy. I had entered the address of this house (on Margaret Walker Alexander Drive), and it took me through a labyrinth of streets in a rather delapidated section of Jackson. The GPS told me, "Your destination is on the right" -- but all I saw were houses that did not look like the Evers site, a couple of gas stations / convenience stores with bars on the windows, streets with potholes (a la Highway 240 in Asheville), empty lots with lots of concrete and no grass.



Several times I have found my White face in places where I saw only Black faces around me, but in those circumstances I have usually been with a friend. Today was different.

I drove for miles through small Black neighborhoods, carefully following the GPS instructions to "Turn right. Turn right again. Turn left, then prepare to keep right." I thought if I heard "Recalculating route" one more time I would throw my cell phone out the window into one of the grassless lots. Not only that, but I was very quickly running out of gas.

I stopped at one of those convenience stores to fill up. You couldn't use a credit card at the pumps -- cash only -- so I had to go inside to pay. I was going to ask the man behind the counter where the Evers house was, but he hardly spoke English, and I didn't want to spend time asking and explaining. My day was getting away from me, with all that turning right and preparing to keep left and recalculating routes through the neighborhoods for the past hour.

I almost decided to stop looking, but then I stopped at another gas station where a gentleman was putting gas into his car. I approached him, introduced myself (offering my hand to shake -- a habit I have learned from my job, I guess), and asked my question. He knew the Evers house was "over in that direction" but he wasn't sure of the street name. He asked another man who drove up in a pickup truck -- and who looked a lot like Taj Mahal -- if he knew the exact location. They gave me good instructions, and as I left them, the first gentleman said, "If you get lost, just go up there to Freedom Corner. Anybody standing around up there will know where it is, for sure. And they won't bother you none."

I didn't know what to say to that. I was embarrassed. Had I done something, indicated somehow, that I was frightened? I didn't think so. My embarrassment made me stumble over my response, "Oh, I didn't think anyone would bother me!" -- which seemed to embarrass him.

Why should such a simple exchange -- asking directions -- elicit such feelings from us both?

I pondered that as I drove back toward Freedom Corner -- which I couldn't find. I finally pulled over into a lot near a school and tried the GPS device again. This time it guided me directly to the house.



The Evers house was several streets from the neighborhoods I had been cruising. This neighborhood was neater, with lots of same-style houses surrounded by grassy yards and flower beds and trees. I recognized it immediately from film clips, from photos in magazines and books, from Myrlie Evers's book , For Us, the Living, which I had read in my mid-teens.

This street wasn't busy. I guessed that these houses were air conditioned and that their residents didn't have to sit on porches or in yards to try to escape the heat.

I parked across the street from the house. The internet had told me that the house was now a museum, but that it wasn't open except by appointment. I didn't have an appointment, but after searching all that time I didn't intend to make this a drive-by looking.



Then I noticed a woman at the house. She was sweeping the carport and driveway.

Minnie Watson is her name, and she is the curator of the house/museum. She told me that the only reason she was there today is that she expected a group to come for a tour -- a family reunion group. They were expected at noon (it was now about 11:45 -- Central Standard Time :-) ), and I was welcome to wait and tour with them, if I wanted.

She swept, we talked. The group didn't arrive.

"Come on in," she said, at about 12:10, "Let's get out of this heat."

She told me that Myrlie Evers (who was pregnant at the time of the killing but who lost that child) had sold the house after the assassination and moved with her three children to California. The house then fell into in disrepair -- and was getting worse every year -- until the producers of the movie, Ghosts of Mississippi, wanted to use the house in the film. They repaired it -- new roof, new floors -- and redecorated it much as it was when the Evers family lived there.

I stayed there, talking with Minnie Watson (age about sixty-seven?), for at least an hour and a half.

She had actually known Medgar Evers, and she knows Myrlie and Charles (Medgar's brother, who still lives in Jackson). She knows the ninety-five-year-old lady who still lives in the house next door, and whose husband it was who fired his gun into the air when he heard the gunshot in the driveway next door.

Minnie was a freshman in college when she met Medgar Evers. He often spoke to groups of young Black students about education, jobs, about the importance of registering to vote. "This is your country, too," he told them.

The first time he ever really thought about being Black -- about being different from Whites -- was the day his father seemed especially sad. When young Medgar (about nine or ten at the time) asked him why he was sad, his father answered, "Because they hanged one of my good friends last night." They.

The family reunion group never showed up. I toured the house, we talked.

I recommended a book I have been listening to on CD as I drive: The Help, by Kathryn Stockett -- and of course Minnie has already read it. Stockett grew up in Jackson, Mississippi and has written this astonishing novel about the relationships between the Black "help" and their White employers in Jackson in the early 1960s. A strange coincidence, that just last night I listened to the section in the novel about the killing of Medgar Evers and the effect it had on Jackson's Black citizens.

Seeing this site was worth the driving, worth the time, worth missing the other sites I had planned to see today. Except for seeing Amity and James, I think that seeing this house and talking with Minnie Watson mayh well be the highlight of this trip.

Saturday, July 3, 2010
7:34 AM

That is CENTRAL Standard Time, so in God's time it is really 8:34.
My body shrieked at me as I fell out of bed an hour ago, "ARE YOU CRAZY?! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!! IT AIN'T NOON YET, SO GET BACK IN THAT BED!!"
Nope. I have miles to go today, and many things to see before reaching Beaumont, Texas tonight. (That is, "If nothing happens." My grandmother used that phrase in regard to almost any future plan -- a certain way to guard against hubris.)
I staggered out of the elevator and felt my way along the walls to a booth in the hotel restaurant. There are small television screens at each booth, and all the tvs are muted until a man sits in the booth next to mine and turns the volume up. WAY up.
I prefer reading the captions scrolling across the screen, as this is quieter and less invasive this early in the morning and I have no newspaper.
"BAR ATTACK IN COLOMBIA KILLS AT LEAST EIGHT . . . . ." Oh my god! Eight people killed by a bear in Colombia?! I didn't know they even had bears in Colom . . . . . . . Oh. It was a BAR attack. Not a BEAR attack, as my brain initially signaled me. Is this mis-firing of electrons (or neurons or w-h-a-t-e-v-e-r) in my head a result of the early hour, or what? Too tired to think about it now.
It's beginning to get busier here now -- more folks coming in for breakfast. Occasionally -- and this is NOT a misfiring -- I hear just the beginning strains of "Dixie." (And it isn't a custom-made car horn on a pickup truck, as I have sometimes heard near Canton.) Where is that coming from?!
I hope my head clears before I pack my car and start out toward Jackson.