Southern Tier

Lafayette is one heck of a city. I really loved it there. It has about 100,000 people we were told. After we arrived and checked in to our hotel we drove around a little and then parked near downtown because we were told there was free music festival, which happens nearly every Friday night (well, I guess for like eight months out of the year or something). There were a lot of people out on this plaza, and there were all ethnicities, all ages, children in bathing suits getting splashed by a fountain that shot straight out of the ground intermittently. A sort of country/rock-ish ballad-type band was playing and it was sunny and hot and everyone there appeared to be having a good time of it. We wanted to know where to eat so we started up conversation with the people sitting next to us. The woman had lived in Lafayette for maybe 40 years and loved it. We took one of her recommendations and ate at a place called Don’s. I had Red Snapper. The waitress brought Eric cake with a candle in it. Afterwards we walked around and saw a big crowd of people at a converted gas station that is now a bar. A man was playing music and his four-year-old daughter was singing (kind of atonally) a song about rock-and-roll I think. It was cuter than you can imagine.


The bar that was formerly a gas station in Lafayette

The next day, I was going to go to the University of Louisiana library but it was closed for intersession. We went to the laundromat (I think down here they call them washaterias), looked at what the neighborhoods there are like, went to lunch at a neat place called Zea that had excellent hummus, went to a clothing store and a shoe store, Eric went to the cycle shop, and then we were pretty pooped. We ate salad in our hotel room and watched basketball and a conservative Native American scholar and columnist talking to a group of students at UMass Amhert, broadcast on CSPAN. That was interesting to watch. His talk was followed by a pretty hostile question-and-answer period.

Today I drove Eric back to Opelousas in the early morning so he could ride again. Afterwards I returned to Lafayette and got some exercise. Then I checked out and drove to Simmesport, which is where I am writing this from. Simmesport freaks me out. This hotel kind of freaks me out, but the woman who owns it with her partner was super nice. This room is in the cinder-block-and-flourescent-bulb style, made so famous by prison architects. In fact, we are near a very well-known prison, Angola.


Our room in the Sportsman's Motel. Take in the posh decor.

This afternoon we drove to Alexandria, LA, a fairly sizable town. I went to Target again as a mood elevator. It did elevate my mood, even thought the mint green pants I liked so much didn’t quite work out. I, again, bought nothing at Target. I think the planets might fall out of alignment if this happens again. We went to a casino for dinner. Yes we did. We went there because there was a buffet and being a picky eater (me) and an omnivorous but interestingly also somewhat picky eater (Eric) a buffet seemed to be the way to go. And the fact that it was in a casino made it more interesting. The fact that it is Memorial Day weekend meant long lines and a busy building. After filling ourselves, Eric played some poker and I decided to go wild and spend a dollar on the five-cent slot machines. Guess what though! I won $31.05. However, getting my money was something of a challenge because the machine totally broke midway through. It like shut down and showed an error code and I was like “WAIT! I never play this darn thing and I win and I get foiled!” But the attendant came over, another attendant came over, and then the tech, and some manager, and I got my receipt and cashed out and we walked out of the Paragon Casino into a torrential downpour, in which we drove back to Simmesport, which, again, is where I am right now.

On Thursday, Eric rode from Deridder, LA, to Opelousas, LA. In Deridder, we stayed at Skipper’s Motel. That was Eric’s birthday. I mentioned that in a previous post. See, that day ended in a slightly interesting way. It took quite a lot for me to find him, considering the aforementioned cell phone problem. So, after I finished up at the library (where the librarian thanked me for asking whether they had wi-fi, which I thought was odd), I headed back to the hotel that used to be the Best Western and no longer was. There was no Eric there. So then I went to the next motel down the street, and the motel situation got less and less promising as I went along. The next one was called something like the Red Carpet Inn. No Eric there. I almost didn’t even want to check at the third place, Skipper’s Motel, but I gritted my teeth and did and sure enough, the nice Indian man said “yes he’s here. He tried to call you. You didn’t get his message?” Uh . . . no. So the man told me the room number and I went and knocked with a scowl on my face. Not the nicest way to greet a man on his birthday who had just ridden 75 miles and the final miles were on city streets with no shoulder with crazy semis and unacceptable pavement. But after I had a bit of a mood adjustment, helped along by a trip back to the library, we drove to a nearby town, Leesville (home of the Army base Fort Polk I think?). There we did some sightseeing I guess you could call it and we were also propelled by the rumor that there was a movie theater there. After no luck finding it on our own with what we thought was some sort of built-in town navigating system in our heads since we’ve been to so many different ones, we asked a family standing in their front yard.

The front-yard family was nice. One of the couples was moving to Alabama soon. For dinner they recommended that we go to the Thai place, which was “very un-Leesville,” according to them, which, as they explained, meant that the service was very professional and the presentation was nice. They also told us where the fabled movie theater was. The Thai restaurant was very nice, and since there is a military base nearby, there were actually all kinds of people eating there. We finished just in time to dash over to the movie theater and catch Star Wars. I tell you, Anakin scowled very well and I think I could learn something from that technique.

The next day, I drove Eric back to where he’d stopped riding the day before and then I headed back to Skipper’s Motel to pack up the gear and make some time for running. I went across the street to a very nice public park, actually. It was one of those fitness track parks too. I ran the route on the park, starting at about 8 a.m. and I saw all kinds of people and they were all so friendly. Everyone greeted me with “good morning.” The best part, though, was an orange cat who was lying on the path, totally relaxed and nonplussed by the people walking by. It was clear that that cat owned that park. Every time I ran past him I said “hi kitty!” But I noticed a tiny dead field mouse about four feet down the path from the cat and so I told him “I know what you’ve been up to.”

The mid-point of that day was Mamou, Louisiana. Eric and I saw one of the skinniest men we'd ever seen in a gas station there. He also was very dirty but appeared to be a farmer. He walked in to the gas station/Subway sandwich shop, which is where I found Eric (almost by accident after having driven through the town twice looking for him), and headed for the wall cooler and grabbed a Bud. He was maybe 55. He turned to walk towards the cash register and then sort of turn on his heel back to the cooler and went back to grab another Bud. Must've been a hard day. It was the kind of day for a two-beer lunch. Eric said it looked like his shirt was hanging on a hanger; that's how skinny this man's shoulders were. He was like six foot six or something. His pants were even on a little crooked. Other than this man, we saw a group of ladies in the Subway, buying sandwiches and then there were some men, with whom the ladies worked it was obvious, and they were heckling each other in a very good natured way. All of the chairs were still on the tables, even though it was noon.


Eric and I at the gas station in Mamou, with me moving towards camera

That afternoon Eric and I arrived into Opelousas, LA, a town that had clearly, like my fair Detroit, seen better days as evidenced by the empty stores downtown. We didn’t spend much time in Opelousas. I did do a walk-around the court house area though and bought a Coke at a small and very cluttered restaurant and some pens and colored pencils at an office supply place. And I bought some spray for the windshield to dissolve the bug residue. As soon as Eric arrived though and we found each other, we drove to Lafayette for two evenings of city fun and one full day off.

I drove into DeRidder about two hours ago. Seems that the Best Western is no longer a Best Western. It is simply called the DeRidder Inn. Wal-Mart is right next to the DeRidder Inn and it appears that that side of town is the busy side. I am in the center of the town, in what looks like the old business district, right now. The public library I am in is nice, modern, cold because of the tendency to freeze people indoors who feel like melting outdoors, and equipped with wi-fi. Here's the problem du jour though. Seems Verizon, whose reliability of service I sing the praises of frequently, has let me down. I cannot make a darn call out. This wouldn't be too big of a problem, but I am not sure where Eric is going to ride to because I told him the wrong address for the library and the hotel he's expecting to find isn't exactly the way he'll expect to find it. So I used Walmarto's payphone and left him a voicemail on his cellphone. It appears also that Sprint (which Eric uses) doesn't serve DeRidder region so well either. So we'll see if I meet up with the birthday boy any time soon.

Yes, it's Eric birthday. And what I pulled together as a gift was a bottle of bright-green melon Boone's Farm and a bag of Hershey's milk chocolate chips. I am working with limited resources. I wrapped these elegantly in a handled gift bag with a bright illustration of a watermelon on it; I padded the delicacies in bright green tissue paper and tucked a birthday card shaped like a green pickle alongside the gifts. The card read: "Bet you didn't expect to get a card shaped like a pickle for your birthday." Or something.


Here's a photo of Eric with his gift, when I gave it to him in Bon Wier, Texas

Yesterday, the card selection in Colspring wasn't so hot. I actually had to buy a "welcome baby" card for my cousin and his wife that had baby versions of Disney characters on it -- something I would never do given ample shopping resources. That card read "A widdle something for your widdle someone." Ha Ha. What I am really going to give Eric for his birthday is a night out on the town in Lafayette, LA, tomorrow night. We'll go to dinner and then go see Star Wars. I am surprised his head hasn't exploded having not seen it yet and it's been out almost a week. But his head seems to be well intact. Good thing too because if it weren't it would be even more difficult to ride between 80 and 120 miles each day.

Tomorrow we go to Lafayette and then have a day off there.

I wanted to add one more thing about Beverly from the McCardell Cottage in Livingston. She was telling us about her excellent breakfasts and said that she gave one of her previous guests a choice between the smoothie and a coconut-and-various-other-miscellaneous-ingredients muffin. She said this guest remarked "it was so good it makes me want to slap my mother." Or maybe he said he didn't know whether to "have a muffin or to slap his mother." So Eric has been trying to use that expression for the last two days. It doesn't ever come out sounding quite right or quite southern enough for the real impact and import to be all there.

Last night for dinner we drove from Silsbee, TX, to Beaumont, TX -- a real metropolis. I actually went into Target and felt a legitimate thrill. It was enough just to walk around and look at all of the bright things. All I bought was a gift card for my cousin and his wife (that would be the "widdle something" to put in the card for their "widdle someone"). This is my cousin Jeff, who lives in Tarrytown, NY. He took me to the train last Friday night in Tarrytown so I could go to Brooklyn to stay at my friend Amy's and hit the town with her. He stood on the platform with me the whole time and talked to me. It helped me to deal with the fact that I hadn't had to pee that badly since I was in a car bound for Detroit (from Ann Arbor) in 1993, driven by a crazy girl named Renee who turned on her brights in the fog. That night we were going to the Shelter to something called "Sin." After peeing, or having to pee really badly, what I remember most from that night is this guy without clothes on walking around with his hand outstretched saying "You are HERE." Halima and I have been saying that ever since.

OK, no sign of Eric yet. I think I'll have to go look for him and roam the streets of DeRidder.

So I am sitting in the public library in Kountze, Texas. Next to me is a boy in high school, who is out for the summer (I just overheard him say). He is blond and bespectacled and not fit. He apprently is the student worker at the library. He is sitting next to me and across from him is one of his friends, who is brown-haired and is also wearing glasses. They are playing some game on the computer with "double-handed swords" and goblins and "drawfen mines." They are just speeking as freely as can be and while it is distracting it is somehow reassuring that even in this town, where I went down a bumpy-roaded alley by a ramshackle feed store to get to the library, there are super nerdy kids playing some D&D-like computer game. I do wish they had better library etiquette. The one across from the boy sitting next to me is named Kyle. OK, I've had it. They really are talking too much and in their "outside voices."

At 7 a.m. this morning we drove to Coldspring, Texas, so Eric could start his ride. We ended there yesterday but I had a bit of a fit at a B&B where I found Eric because it looked to me just like someone's house who wanted to make a few extra bucks by putting people up. It was called The Breezes Inn and I can't say anything about it other than that the people who owned the place had Astroturf on their front porch and an ashtray with two cigarette buts. There also appeared to be a pack of small motor oil cans on a table on the front porch. The proprietors weren't even there. I was tired and had gotten lost earlier in the day after taking a wrong turn in Roans Prairie. I ended up going to Huntsville, Texas, which was so big it had a JC Penney. From there I actually got on an interstate (which seemed so liberating) to get to Coldspring (or actually to take me to the road that goes to Coldspring -- it is definitely not the kind of town that is right off of an interstate). So after my fit, Eric agreed that we could go to Livingston, TX, a slightly larger town. There we saw a Holiday Inn Express, but before deciding to stay there we drove through the town. We ended up taking another wrong turn, but it was fortuitous. We saw the cutest red and yellow house. It was a B&B. So I called the number to find out the rate.


McCardell's Cottage

The woman who answered, Beverly, said (imagine a very southern accent) "is that YOU in that WHHHIte car out front?" And I was like, "uh, yes, um, we were just wondering if you have availability and what your rates are." She said "Well, COME on in!" She was so nice, we just found ourselves getting out of the car and going in, to be greeted by her two dachshunds. They are just about Eric's favorite dogs. So I knew the chances were good that we'd stay there. The house that the inn was in, McCardell's B&B, used to be the doctor's house in town. One of the rooms had the surgery light as a light fixture in the room. It was very comfortable in there and her hospitality was unmatched. She told of so much in such a short period of time.


McCardell's Dining Room

Beverly had grown up in Livingston as had several generations prior to her in her family. She was maybe 60 and had a few children and some grandchildren and had just returned from a week out of town in Austin, where her daughter lives. She had been running the B&B, which she opened and owned, for a year. This morning, before we left, she told us some more about herself, after I asked her who owned a colossal house (it really looked like the mayor must live there) three blocks from the B&B. She said it belonged to her cousin actually. You cannot imagine the size of this old house. It really looks like the south down here, because in fact, it is. I don't know what to think about that. But around this huge house, which belongs to Beverly's cousin, there is an iron fence about three feet high that Eric insisted looked like a graveyard fence. Before he said that, I said, now that's the kind of house that's bound to be haunted.

Beverly was the most hospitable and kind woman (that's what we gathered) -- she had been a teacher and had majored in home economics, and I tell you, that was apparent. He place was clean as a whistle and she was an excellent cook. She said that many of her guests are actually people visiting inmates at the prison. Her first guest was from Australia and stayed for a week. This guest believed in reincarnation and was a psychic.

There are lots of dogs who run around the neighborhoods in Livingston.

We went up to an old movie theater called "The Fain." They were showing the Paris Hilton epic "House of Wax."

Today it's on to Silsbee, TX, after I pick Eric up in Fred, TX. Tomorrow we are off to DeRidder, Louisiana. You know, it is clear to everyone I talk to here that I am not from around here. They all say "where you from?"

Today I woke up in the Comfort Inn in Bastrop, Texas. The last two days were spent in Austin. I flew there on Friday from New York Laguardia after spending a week sitting shiva for my Grandma Rose. She died on Friday, May 13th, after struggling against asthma for several decades. She was 86 when she died but she would've been 87 in July.

So, for those of you unfamiliar, sitting shiva means that a Jewish family mourns the deceased by sitting at home and welcoming into their home guests, relatives, and others who want to pay their respects. There is food, lots of sweets (to remember the sweet times), and there is a service in the evening every night for six or seven days. So, imagine all of us sitting together and all of the sadness and the tension and the unresolved issues. Everyone seems to evaluate the degree of everyone else's mourning. But yet, I think the week was good in many respects. First of all, it is so busy that one kind of forgets that the deceased is deceased, will not return, isn't just sitting in her house an hour away in the Bronx doing what she always did. So we kind of forgot that, or I did. Also, by sitting with one's relatives for a week, you spend a lot of time looking through photos and talking about a lifetime's worth of events. That is sad and makes you think that, overall, life really is sad. But despite all of this, when people came over to visit, we all were talking energetically, smilingly, and everyone created a mood like a party in the house, and the person who would've enjoyed that party the most was my Grandma. But I feel a stronger sense of family now and it is meloncholy that it takes someone dying to do this.

So, I am writing this from La Grange, Texas. E cycled this morning from Bastrop to here, where we had lunch outside of the public library, where I intended to do some work (but it was closed, it being Monday). This town of La Grange is just the cutest thing. I always thought I hated Texas, until I spent a few weeks here last summer, when E and I concluded the first part of the Southern Tier. He rode his bike, I drove support in the '89 Audi and wrote my dissertation as I hopped from one small-town public library to the next. My favorite was Clifton, Arizona. And I always thought I hated Arizona too. Anyway, La Grange has 4000 residents. It really looks very southern; it is very humid, very buggy, very full of small homes with well manicured lawns and old people tending to them. I am sitting in a cafe across from the main square. Between Bastrop and here I crossed over the Colorado River and in the median of the highway were lots of weeds with flowers the color of saffron. Everything was green and yellow all around. I wanted to get the camera out and take some pictures out the sunroof like I did last year, but the camera was too far away. I'll have to plan better tomorrow. At the hotel this morning walking across the parking lot was a man holding something cupped between his hands. He gestured to me with his eyes and his head a little, and I thought he was trying to sell me something. But then as he passed me he kind of smiled, or slightly softened his mouth, and said "wounded bird." Then I felt sort of silly that I thought he was trying to sell me something and hoped he interpretted my head-shake as dismay at the hurt bird and not the "no" to whatever I thought he was selling that my head movement really began as.

Tonight we sleep in a B&B called the Mariposa Ranch just beyond Gay Hill, Texas. I intend to finish a conference abstract this week, to work on an article, and to continue worrying about the academic job market and me.

Austin was fun. E's friends were/are fun. But dang, is it hot down here. I tend to get insufferably cranky in such weather, but I am going to do my best to be a good sport.

Here are some photos of the Mariposa Ranch.


View of the Mariposa Ranch grounds


Me across from the Ranch Hand's Bunkhouse


View from the Mariposa Ranch, out over the eastern Texas terrain