9.11.2010

Where Were You A Weekend Ago Today?

We took a tour of one of the several antebellum homes in Natchez and our tour guide, who looked put together in a blue checkered short-sleeved button-up shirt and khakis (the outfit of choice for preservationists and docents I suppose), scratched his belly a lot, was rather kind when a grown woman asked “how did they bathe in those days?”, dropped southern gems like “we don’t call it the Civil War down here,” and told me not to take pictures on the first floor after I had already taken a few.

We ate a one of the oldest buildings in the city, an English Pub that is supposedly haunted (you can buy t-shirts). They tell you that you can go ghost hunting upstairs if you dare. The six year old boy at the table next to us came running back down stairs with his brother and sister completely ruined. We were much tougher on our own ghost hunt. Or at least B was, I am not into haunted houses and it isn’t because of my fear of the undead. I just don’t like being surprised and frightened by items from Spencer’s Gifts.

ghosthunterB

We drove out to Ferriday, LA to tour the childhood home of Jerry Lee Lewis. I’ve read different reviews of the tour experience – so I expected something between Graceland Too and the Hank Williams Jr Museum. Jerry Lee’s nephew gave us the tour and unlike other tourists, we didn’t get to see the short video (too bad, I love short orientation videos) but he did let us take one picture inside. The place is packed full of some rare photos and clothing and also some completely random things like Brillo pad boxes from 1956. His nephew was a swell guy, he made sure to point out a humorous George W. Bush pin and mentioned several times that Connie Chung had been to the house. Not a whole lotta of additional Jerry Lee info but you could say the tour was atmospherically valuable anyway.

We also got a peek at the Jerry Clower Museum near Liberty, MS.  Lots of southern football paraphernalia and several impressive taxidermy items. I passed out when I saw a license plate for The Fowlerville Fair, my old hometown county fair where I battled for 4H ribbons and risked my life riding midway rides put together with carny spit. Clower’s son gave us the tour and I gotta say you can tell he was bornt of a master storyteller. His stories made the whole trip.

therealJCmuseum

80 miles from home and on a busy highway, we got a flat tire, changed that, and the spare went flat. The truck from AAA showed up in 90 short minutes and it was actually just a guy in a truck. Like a standard pick-up truck with an extended cab. He stepped out smoking a cigarette, took a look at the situation, grabbed a giant hydraulic jack from his truck, jacked the car up, ripped the lug nuts off the spare, said “that ain’t gonna work”, threw the tire iron and the lug nuts on the dirt on the side of the highway, and told us to get in the truck and that he was taking us back to the Deer Lake or Deer Pond or Deer Guts service station. I could tell we were both thinking “you can’t just leave items out like that!” and he could tell we were thinking that so he said “I don’t think anybodys gonna take that" and we got in the truck. I got in the tiny seat in the extended cab and right away noticed a handicap hang tag on the rearview mirror with the name Rory McGurrery* and a small hatchet sticking out of a dollar store style gift bag. Handwritten on the handle: Attitude Adjuster. We pulled straight cross the highway and he gunned it for the median. “Shortcut?” I asked him. “Yes m’am” he responded in heavy deadpan. Not much of a joker this guy. B said something about how we were coming back from spending the weekend in Natchez and the dude gave B a once-over look like he’d said we had just come from maypole practice. He took us back to the service station, filled the spare up and hammered out the rim. We were back to our car in a few minutes. All of the lugnuts were still there. Rory was right. No one took them. “Should getchu to Walmart – if she goes flat again I’d just keep er running on that rim – you got nothing to lose.” We were going to ask him to follow us the two miles to WalMart but figured we wouldn’t risk showing any bad attitude for fear that it would get adjusted. We made it traveling 40mph for a few miles, praised WalMart and the southern states in general for not giving a flying rats ass about Labor Day or labor laws or driving with an open hatchet, and got a new tire (and some toothpaste – they have good deals there).

*name changed a bit

1 comment:

kfw said...

"I am not into haunted houses and it isn’t because of my fear of the undead. I just don’t like being surprised and frightened by items from Spencer’s Gifts."

Sara, that up there is a gem I wished I'd come up with. Hilarious.

While I understand smokers need to smoke, I don't understand how smokers light up in this heat. It somehow seems the same as eating chili in a tanning bed. G-R-O-S-S.