[Recovery Pen is an ongoing tale of a native Midwesterner living in the Big Easy.]
Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck gettin' dirty and gritty
-The Lovin' Spoonful, 1966
After living in New Orleans for many summers now, I've come to accept the heat, the humidity, and the bugs. Summer's intensity provides an excuse for so many indulgent behaviors: two-hour catnaps, daily doses of Brocato's ice cream, all-nighters at The Club, and weekends to the country. I'm a little embarrassed to say that for all my time down here, I haven't gotten to see much of the Deep South. When I do get away, I head for Gulf Coast beaches or the hipster island of Austin, Texas. Neither of these places, charming though they are, really give the traveller much sense of Deep South culture.
Last weekend, some neighbors invited me to go tubing, with a side trip up to McComb, Mississippi, for Sunday dinner at The Dinner Bell. Excited to try it, they told me about its charms: patrons share large tables with other diners and help themselves to plates of Southern country fare off a giant lazy Susan in the table's middle. Intriguing as this sounded, the practical side of me couldn't help but wonder if we really needed to drive an hour and a half just to eat out in the middle of nowhere. From New Orleans, you can get to a tubing spot within forty-five minutes; this place had better be good.
I would have eaten my words, had I any room left. Let me say this: the next time I have New Orleans visitors ask me where to eat, I will put them in a car and point them to Mississippi.
At The Dinner Bell, they sat us down at a round table for fourteen, glasses of sweet tea waiting. We chatted with our neighbors, who shared our enthusiasm for the gigantic spread already sitting in front of us. As the lazy Susan began her slow spin, we helped ourselves to ham, butter beans, field peas, smothered okra, potato salad, dressing with gravy, sweet potatoes, collard greens, potato salad, cole slaw, cornbread, and chicken & dumplings. One man recommended the fried eggplant, but I'm a fried chicken girl from way back. (For my fifth birthday dinner, we ate KFC on china.) After hearing everyone else groan about it, I gave it a try and I'll be damned: not often does fried chicken come in second to eggplant, but it was double-fried in a cornmeal batter. The summer squash, buttered up good and served partially mashed, won out as my other favorite. Again: when there's fried chicken on the table and I go for seconds on squash, you know it's worth a ninety-minute drive.
Along with the dinner items, plates of desserts were already out when we first sat down, tantalizing us from the lazy Susan's center. Clearly the staff knew we'd need these reminders to save room. Before long, I helped myself to a piece of coconut pie, and was happily surprised to find that it was also lemon flavored. The seven of us friends tasted each other's pieces of carrot cake, red velvet cake, pound cake, almond coconut cake, custard pie, ambrosia pie, and bread pudding until our engorged bellies pushed against our swimsuits. To close my palate, I managed to choke down a piece of yellow watermelon, a novelty to me, and found it to be just as mouth-tingling sweet as the pink variety.
Afterward, we headed to Tylertown, MS to float down the Bogue Chitta River on our innertubes, the most relaxing way to deal with the heat. Drifting along wooded banks, passing stands of elephant ears, I stared up into the sky and felt summer buzzing through my bones. Although it did rain on us for a spell, we then got to finish up our trip through the mist rising up from the river. We'd only been out of the city for ten hours total, but it felt like a week away.
For the long holiday weekend, I was supposed to visit a friend in Austin. When it fell through, I'd been disappointed but still determined to get away. Not often do I have five days off, and I wanted to make the most of it. Since I had to stop in Baton Rouge for work, I decided to go west. I'd heard that St. Francisville, about 30 minutes north of the BR, was nice - historic and quaint, and not far from a remarkable nature area in Mississippi called Tunica Falls, where one can actually find hills along with the waterfalls of Clark Creek.
After some searching, I found a place that would let me bring my dog: Lamplighter Suites, a stone's throw from St. Francisville's historic district. Duane, the owner, greeted us as we rolled up, and helped me carry my luggage to my suite. Although workingmen tend to lodge there, because of the apartment furnishings and free laundry, it's lovely for tourists, who are welcomed with blooming crepe myrtles along the bricked front gate, a colorful courtyard, and well-kept green space on the corner lot next door.
Exemplifying Southern hospitality, Duane gave me the lowdown on St. Francisville's restaurants and offered me the use of the pool at his other property, Historic Plantation Village. Along with the room keys, he'd left a personal letter addressed to me and my dog Maggy, listing all the conveniences of our new suite and his cell phone number. He'd also left dark chocolates for me, a pig's ear treat for my dog, and the new copy of Country Roads. Before he left, he warned me that his construction guys might be working early, and that they get a little rowdy in the evening after a few beers. "Just call me and I'll take care of it," Duane advised. Any worries I had about being a single woman travelling alone vanished.
That evening, Maggy and I went out for a walk. Around the corner, the Magnolia Cafe had a blues band playing to a full house. We continued our stroll down the red-brick sidewalk, and I marvelled at the absolute lack of trash blowing about. (Maggy, who eats lots of snacks off the New Orleans streets, was less than thrilled by the town's cleanliness.) Every few feet, signs cropped up to point out a house's historical or architectural significance. We window-shopped at used bookstores, art galleries, and garden shops.
After the sun set, I was startled by the primordial beauty of a gigantic full moon peeking through the moss-draped live oaks. In a Southern literature class in graduate school, we learned about the "Moonlight and Magnolias" myth, how Southern plantation life was romanticized by Southern writers after the Civil War as a way to preserve regional pride in the face of defeat. The myth depicted the South as a land of gentlemanly plantation owners, graceful ladies in hoop skirts, and happy, servile slaves. Of course, being a myth, the "Moonlight and Magnolias" way of life was primarily fiction. Life for most Southerners, black and white, man and woman, meant long days under a hot sun, toiling in the fields for little or no economic gain.
But as I ambled along the silent streets, in the humid, jasmine-scented air, I could see how the South's beauty could lead one to believe in the romance of a languid life amongst the flowers, sipping mint juleps and playing the banjo under the glowing eye of the moon. It's not real life, but it does exist, and I really should visit more often.
