YES, I AM STILL HERE peeking out my window on Main Street, and I wasn’t kidding when I wrote last week about being unable to whip out a column. I got back from my annual Gulf of Mexico foray early Sunday night and I was facing a mountain of emails and articles that needed to be written — so Mine Creek Revelations was put on the back burner.
By my count this was the 18th trip to Gulf Shores since Julie and I took Jane’s ashes to a nearby beach place called Dauphin Island. Jane and I vacationed there many years. She loved the place and told me I should spread her ashes at water’s edge on the beach there.
Daughter Julie does most of the driving. We always keep up with landmarks and experiences of the trip.
Here are a few:
• Loretta, the voice for my buggy’s GPS, took us through Mobile by skipping the I-10 tunnel and going over some low bridges and thru industrial areas. But on the way back she took us through the tunnel. Also, she pronounces the city’s name like the gasoline brand, Mobil. We don’t fully trust Loretta yet because last year she took us home via some peckerwoods Louisiana highways that resembled game trails. That route added at least an extra hour.
• Unlike last year we didn’t see a single car with a Trump bumper sticker, or a single Trump yard sign. On our last day, however, a young man in a red Trump baseball cap came in the restaurant. I am sure that Alabama is still Trump country, just maybe not as expressive as the last couple of years.
• On our way home we usually stop at the nice Louisiana rest stop located just a mile or so inside the state line. This year the rest stop was closed and the I-20 service roads going into it were barricaded.
• Once again my driver said in mock humor as we passed the I-20 sign for Mound, La., “I don’t see the mound.” Well, when we got home I Googled “Mound, La.,” and learned that we were just looking in the wrong direction. There were originally seven large Indian mounds nearby dating back to 1200 Anno Domini. Only two mounds are left. One of the original mounds was bulldozed and carted away for fill for the I-20 construction, and the others were plowed under by Peckerwood farmers. Mound, La., may have lost those priceless historical possessions, but it was rewarded as the site for the Vickesburg-Tallulah Regional Airport. Tallulah, as I previously written, is easily Louisiana’s version of the Black Hole of Calcutta.
• We try to schedule our visit to Gulf Shores when crowds aren’t in town messing up traffic and restaurant waits. We thought we had avoided crowds again, but noooooo. There was a huge group of old Jimmy Buffet ‘Parrot Heads’ having a convention. They call themselves MOTM which stands for Meeting Of The Minds. Just a bunch of old hippies. One of them told me that they were going to be back in Gulf Shores every year, so now Julie and I need to find a different weekend for our own trip.
•Another ‘first.’ Next-to-last day was the windiest we had ever experienced. Even the ferry to Dauphin Island was closed for a day. I wouldn’t want to be on that ferry during high winds.
• But the wind didn’t smell like salt air. In fact, it wasn’t until the last night with wind whipping into our faces that we could smell salt air. Why is that? I always say I look forward to smelling the salt air, but I probably never stand in the right place.
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ONE THING you can safely say about the Razorback football team: They are dependable.
Admit it. At halftime when the Hogs were ahead, you were secretly dreading the fourth quarter.
If the job isn’t offered to Petrino, I hope we can lure some young up-and-comer from lower divisions.
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I AM SOOOO LUCKY.
Every year at the first cold front, I worry that when I thrust my arms into the sleeves of my jacket for the first time.
I just know that I will find a Black Widow or Brown Recluse spider nest. I’m showing no ill effects so far so I must not have been bitten.
The jacket has been on a clothes hanger in a dark closet since the end of last winter. A perfect hiding place for Black Widows or Brown Recluseseses.
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MORE THINGS I LEARNED from opening an email: We know the speed of light (670,616,629 mph), so what’s the speed of dark?
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WORD GAMES. I love oxymorons: Football coaching for the Razorbacks is a ‘MINOR CRISIS.’
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HE SAID: “There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.” R. Buckminster Fuller, architect
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SHE SAID: “I think that tolerance and respect and compassion and empathy is who my faith instructs me to be. I don’t have to agree with you to love you, respect you. And I think that I can bring more people to Jesus by how I live.” Jasmine Crockett, Congresswoman and lawyer (licensed to practice in Arkansas and Texas)
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SWEET DREAMS, Baby
