Posted on Friday 23 September 2005
Twenty years ago, my family vacationed in the South. We meandered in a borrowed truck and cab-over camper through Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. If I’m remembering right, and I might have melted trips together, we started by getting to Dallas, then San Antonio: this was before Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, so I couldn’t ask about the basement at the Alamo. Then came Brownsville and a couple of hours in Mexico. I had taken a little bit of Spanish and was wanting to use it, but didn’t really get a chance. I did get a dress which, for some reason, I never really wore. I liked it, but . . . Then came Corpus Christi and my first beach. It was wonderful (except for the smell in the hotel room as I learned not to collect living sea creatures. Oops.)
We ended up driving through Houston and had a blow-out. With a cab-over camper. On the third lane of a four lane highway. Then we headed to Bridge City, Texas, and, across the Rainbow Bridge, Port Arthur. It wasn’t a destination. I don’t think any of us, not even me, would choose to drive across the 176 ft tall bridge. Still, I wonder what Hurricane Rita’s going to do that bridge, if anything. But I guess when it floods, there’s the bridge to go to for high ground. Right now, they’re predicting the eye to pass right over Port Arthur around 1 a.m. I’m sure Port Arthur will be mostly underwater.
And then, New Orleans. As a child, I didn’t feel fear too often. But my parents were afraid. There was something just sort of off about New Orleans. Oh, the beignets were very tasty. I remember riding streetcars and loving it; I’m sure, even then, I was aware of A Streetcar Named Desire even though I didn’t know what it was about. I was positively fascinated by the graveyards. But mostly, I remember walking between my parents, surrounded by other tourists, and being uncomfortable.
In Natchez and Vicksburg, Mississippi, I fell in love with little plastic Civil War soldiers for a time, then got bored. I stared at the pictures in my first Civil War history book that we bought in Vicksburg. I became fascinated with the Natchez Trace too, and created days’ worth of Spanish moss filled fantasies involving something concerning an abandoned safe. It all had something to do with Rocky Springs, but I can’t remember what. I think we came back home through Arkansas, coming by Pea Ridge, another Civil War site.
It was at work yesterday that I finally took the time to look up when the hurricane hit Galveston in the 1980s (answer: Hurricane Alicia, 1983). It’s not surprising that in first grade I’d have that awareness. I always watched the news as a child, so it’s only fitting I’ve grown up to be addicted to Google News.