Wigs and Wheelchairs

How do you think I look with long, brown hair? And the 1860s-style velvet jacket? It complements my ranger uniform pretty well, if you ask me. As you can see, yesterday afternoon I had a good time working on the historic clothing collection.

Right now I'm taking pictures of and cataloging the undergarments, so I've been dealing with a lot of chemises, petticoats, corded petticoats, cage crinolines, drawers (or pantalettes), and covered crinolines. I didn't know what any of these terms meant before I started working on this project!

Yesterday afternoon we had some crazy thunderstorms blow through! There was this constant thunder rumbling, and lightning everywhere. I told the rangers about my close calls with lightning in the past, and they decided that maybe it's best to not be anywhere near me during a thunderstorm. After my 3:00 tour, some visitors and I were standing out on the back balcony at Melrose while I was wrapping things up, and then there was this flash of lightning that was so close that it seemed like you could kind of feel the heat from it. Needless to say, the tour ended right then and there as the visitors ran to their cars and I tore off to the visitor center. Elder and Sister Hansen, a couple from Orem who are serving their mission here in Natchez, stopped by Melrose yesterday and went on my 3:00 tour, so that was fun. The rangers are very intrigued by the Mormon missionaries.

Today was a nice sunny day--a good break from the scary storms. I was at the William Johnson House all day, as were the Junior Rangers, so it was pretty wild down there. This funny little girl named Jessica has fallen madly in love with Ranger Nathan. She is, by nature, an affectionate child (she kept holding my hand the other day), but today she drew Nathan the cutest little picture of the two of them holding hands above a heart with the word "love" written in the middle. It said, "To Ranger Nathan, I love you. Love, Jessica." One of the Junior Rangers, Allyson, has a Pomeranian named Tiffany, so she loved that my name is Tiffany too. She was taking pictures of me and everything! She then whipped out some pictures of Tiffany the dog, and Angie and I decided that the Pomeranian has a lot more hair than I do.

For lunch today, since Ranger Melissa (she's our temporary museum curator who came over here for a couple of months from Fort Sumter) and I were both at the Johnson House and felt like eating some salad, we decided to go to this new restaurant over on Main Street called Breauds (pronounced "Brodes"). Melissa was given a per diem allowance of $39/day for food while she's on her temporary assignment here, but since she's staying at her mom's house (which is about an hour from Natchez), she hasn't been using the money. Her boss called from South Carolina the other day and told her that she needs to start using the per diem money, so Melissa bought lunch today with her government credit card. :-) We got appetizers, big yummy salads, and, of course, dessert. She had some tasty turtle cheesecake, and I went with the key lime pie, which was totally delicious. Melissa is a really cool lady, and we had a good time chatting and watching the funny people of Natchez go about their daily affairs.

This afternoon, Melissa got a crisis call from Melrose--someone ran over the original oilcloths in the home with their electric wheelchair, damaging the floor!!! Whoever was in the chair must have been cruising through the house at pretty high speeds to have missed the carpet and torn up the oilcloth! Tim is in a little bit of trouble because he let the electric wheelchair person go inside the house--when really we're supposed to have people switch to our non-electric wheelchair if they want to go on a house tour. Hopefully the damage isn't too extensive though. At other parks, a crisis would be something like having a person fall off a cliff, get attacked by a bear, fall off a boat, etc., but here in Natchez it's someone going too fast in their electric wheelchair! :-)