Day 4 - Gold Mine

If I could sum up today in one word, I would ask for 2 words. If I could sum it up in 2 words, I would say "gold mine." That's what today was; an absolute gold mine. From the delicious start to the..well...ok...the ending actually left a little to be desired, but the in-betweens MORE than made up for it.

Morning in D'Iberville meant that it was only a few hours until Doris' Hot Tamales opened. I decided to forgo breakfast in lieu of an early tamale lunch. I showed up about 30 minutes before opening and the guy running it was nice enough to slip me some tamales before he turned the sign on (something I was later thankful for). Sitting down to my first few tamales I was initially disappointed. Mostly because I have honestly never had tamales. I didn't know it was basically just corn meal (or masa) and ground pork (or whatever the meat of choice is). I stared at these slightly soggy eggroll-sized things wrapped in parchment paper wondering what the fuss was about. And then I tasted it. Their simplicity is their greatest strength. I learned from the man behind the counter, R.J. Reno - the son of namesake Doris Reno, that it's all about the seasoning of the meat. Doris, who sadly passed away about a year and a half ago, had been using the same family recipe to sell tamales there in D'Iberville for 34 years, which was passed down by her father who sold his tamales from a pushcart in Biloxi during the 1940's. This gave the Renos nearly 70 years of tamale experience. After my second batch of tamales R.J. turned the "Open" sign on and seemingly out of nowhere people began to show up, and minutes later cars were parked along the street and even in the Mexican restaurants parking lot across the road - something I'm sure kills them on a daily basis.

Hunger sated and thoroughly satisfied I was ready to leave D'Iberville behind. The first stop was in Gulfport, MS where I took a look at the Worlds Largest Rocking Chair. Now the title for worlds largest anything is bandied about a bit with little to no verification, there's even a contender for rocking chair in my own backyard in Belton, SC. It seems at some point this chair was disqualified (by whom I don't know) because of a noticeable lack of rockers, which on a rocking chair seems quite significant, and usurped in April by a chair near Lipan, TX. However, when I arrived the chair had rockers and the burly man in the Dedeux Clan Furniture Store, the builders of the rocking behemoth, said they had reclaimed the title (by whose authority, again I don't know). I have to admit that I was actually more impressed by the good old human-sized rockers than the giant 30 foot one in the parking lot.

After the brief stop in Gulfport I pushed on towards Louisiana. With the exception of a brief stop to walk along the beach in Pass Christian, MS (which quite by luck ended up being the last beach I'm likely to see on the rest of my trip) it was straight on to Abita Springs and the mecca of roadside awesomeness known as the Abita Mystery House (formerly the UCM Museum.) I have to admit that I was really looking forward to this stop, and what I had seen and heard online and what I will pass on to you could never do it justice. The "exhibits" of the Abita Mystery House are what I would think a habitual hoarder with a screw loose and a creative streak would come up with if they decided to stop just hoarding and make use of all that crap they had. They're part folk art, part installation art, part found art, part...well I just don't know. There are thousands of bottles caps; walls made of bottle; a building entirely covered in shards of pottery, mirrors, and glass; and what could be the largest collection of paint-by-numbers art in the world. There are tableaux of clay figures in elaborate - albeit crudely made - settings with motorized parts, music, and light. There are horrendous taxidermied amalgamations of animals, fused together to create various mutant creatures including Fiji Mermaids (made famous by P.T. Barnum in his traveling sideshow). All of it is done with a warped, but definite sense of humor and for the sake of entertaining. And all of it is the mastermind of John Preble, the man behind the museum.

When I first arrived and tried to talk to John he seemed like he had better things to do than talk to some guy who wants to see his wonders. But after a few minutes you realize that he's just a busy man who's trying to do a hundred things at once. He runs the museum, organizes the Louisiana Bicycle Festival, he deals with a regular influx of random junk and antiques that people drop of for him, he restores some of those antiques (he was in the processing of refinishing an old wooden jukebox while I was there), and he's an artist on top of that with a popular series of woodcuts of various Louisiana icons and legends. Of the donated junk he said that he uses some of it in the museum, but most of it he fixes. He seemed to have an ethical problem with selling stuff given to him, but trading was a different story. Once I mentioned my roadtrip, the things I had seen and those I wanted to, he lit up. He suddenly had a dozen stories of things that used to be around the highways, what was out there now (including pointing me in the direction of his unofficial sister museum in Albuquerque). How his youngest son had just spent the night before camping in someones backyard, without their knowledge, in Roswell while on a roadtrip of his own. During all this he went from a closed, strictly business person, to a funny and warm personality. He also kept my camera safe when I forgot it and came back a few hours later hoping desperately that he had it, and chastised me in an almost paternal nature that I really need to put my name and number on stuff like that so that people can call when I forget stuff. His museum was a gold mine, and he was the best part of it all.

Unfortunately I had to leave, even after spending a little over 2 hours there I was reluctant to go. While the rest of my day was enjoyable, it all paled when compared to the Abita Mystery House. A day which included lunch and freshly brewed beer at the Abita Beer brewpub (Abita being the brewers of Turbodog, Purple Haze, Andy Gator and many others), the smaller than expected World's Largest Ronald Reagan Statue, and the closed AND smaller than expected Kliebert Farms (supposedly the world's largest alligator and turtle farm). Even as the evening neared, I decided to drive on until nearly sunset since I had spent so much time in Abita Springs. By the time I was ready to call it a night I was so close to Natchez, MS (my next stop) that I pushed on a little further. I had made stops here and there for gas and drinks, and couldn't fail to notice that it was ridiculously hot and humid even as it was nearing 7pm. Looking up the temps online it was registering 90F and a head index of a little over 100. I was drenched in sweat in the short time it took to gas up and go and it seemed stupid to think I was really going to be able to camp comfortable. So I didn't even pretend to try and find a site...instead I found several since my path to Natchez took me through the beautiful Homochitto National Forest. Regardless, it seemed beyond masochism to try and subject myself to that so I waited until getting to Natchez to look for a hotel.

This is where it becomes obvious that I didn't really research my stops. Had I done even a cursory search for information on Natchez, I would have known that it was an upscale, historic antebellum town where even a room at a Super 8 goes for $90. Being too rich for my blood, I tucked my tell and drove across the bridge and across state lines into Vidalia, LA - where $40 gets you a hotel whose parking lot smells like boiled cabbage and rooms are loaded with all the amenities a 1960's traveler could want. If it means anything, I slept in my sleeping bag on the bed. And yet - it was still a great day.