Figs and Kegs

It has been kind of a cloudy, rainy day here in Natchez, but the good thing is that the clouds have cooled things off a bit. Today at work Tim picked a fig for me from a fig tree out behind the privy (outhouse) at Melrose. The closest I'd ever come to figs was through Fig Newtons, so I didn't know what to expect from eating a fresh fig right off a tree. It was surprisingly juicy and delicious. People really aren't supposed to pick the figs on the park property, but Tim said that we could since we run the place.

All is hustle and bustle here at Routhland today. Catherine and Everett are throwing some kind of political shin-dig here at the house tonight. I guess that they have some friends who are running for office (hopefully the guy running for county coroner won't show up), so they are providing drinks and eats for a lot of people here tonight. I've never seen them work so hard on the yard and everything. Everett was even outside yesterday with his Clorox spray, hosing down all of the tables and chairs outside. When I came home for lunch today, there was a giant BUD LIGHT cooler (like you see at the grocery stores) in front of my door. Next to it were two giant BUD LIGHT bins stacked with packs of beer on top. I'm thinking they'll be serving beer this evening. Tonight would be a good night to steer clear of the place. I can only imagine how late they'll be partying, and the later it gets in the evening, the more drunk (and loud) everyone will be. I think that Nathan, Kate, and I will be watching "Lost" though, so maybe I can spend a few hours over at their place which is at least a little ways away from all the action. Who brings an entire beer cooler to their house for parties? I guess the answer to that is the Ratcliffes. It should be quite the fiesta out there tonight. I'll have to report on it tomorrow. Well, I'd best be off to work. Angie is going to be auditing tours this afternoon, making sure that we aren't spreading false information among park visitors :-), so I'd better be on my A-game!

Good Times!

Any time spent with Angie and Matt in Vicksburg is sure to be a good time--which it was indeed yesterday. On my way up to "the Burg," as it is affectionately known among the rangers, I took the Natchez Trace to Port Gibson. I had always been kind of afraid to try to cruise control feature of my car, but as I was driving along the Trace, I realized that this was the perfect place and time to try cruise control, so I did. You see, the speed limit on the Trace is 50 mph, and with it being a Thursday morning, I was the only one on the road, so once I figured out the cruise control, it was so fun to just let the car do the driving (don't worry--I still did the steering). Cruise control is kind of like autopilot--except that you still have to guide the car where you want it to go, but it was very helpful because sometimes it's hard to stay within the 50 mph limit on the Trace. It's such a pretty drive that your mind wanders, and then you look down and you're doing 75! So cruise control helps prevent unintentional speeding.

Once I reached Port Gibson, I decided to stop and have lunch at this place called Grant's Kitchen (named after U. S. Grant himself). Located in a brick complex with a laundromat, the restaurant looks pretty ghetto, and when I had driven past it before, I had thought to myself, "Don't think I'll ever be eating there!" But, one day I was talking with Ranger Sharon, who used to live in P. G., as she calls it (which is funny because that's what we call Pleasant Grove at home), and she told me that Grant's has really good food. I was super hungry, so I decided to give it a try. It was a funny little place, but I had an awesome cheeseburger and curly fries. On the outside of the building, the words "Good home cookin'" are painted on the bricks, and that is exactly what they have there at Grant's, so I was glad I stopped there. After lunch I drove over to Grand Gulf, about 15 miles west of P. G., and had a fun time looking around there. The photo at the left was taken atop an 80-foot observation tower from which you can see clear out to the Mississippi River! It was an awesome view.

After Grand Gulf, I took continued on the rest of the way up to Vicksburg and had fun at Angie and Matt's house. I'll admit that I have a lot of books--probably too many--but my collection pales in comparison to Matt's Civil War library! He seriously has more books than anyone I've ever seen. Every time I go to their house, he has some new set of books to show me. This time it was a 24 volume set called "Confederate Veteran." Matt had to stay and watch the Orioles game on TV, so he didn't go get sushi with Angie and me, but she and I had a good time at the Chinese restaurant, and we took some kung-po chicken home for him. The last time Angie and I tried to get sushi, the Chinese lady at the restaurant said, "Sushi man vacation Hong Kong!" But luckily he was there yesterday so that I could experience sushi--Southern style. It was pretty good. This morning Angie and I got up early and drove down to work, then I spent the day working at the Johnson House. I also had to drive over to Vidalia to take a picture CD to Van the Photo Man. The park is having some professional prints made of the William Johnson house, and I was commissioned to head-up the effort, so now I've got Van all set up with everything he needs to he can print the pictures, we'll get 'em framed, and we'll be good to go. Oh, today is Friday the 13th isn't it! I didn't have to worry about that because I already had my Friday the 13th on Monday :-)

The Peanut Ant

I have named a new class of Southern insect beasts: the Peanut Ants! Last night I was brushing my teeth when I looked over on the wall and saw what appeared to be a small peanut (still in it's shell) crawling up my wall. I went closer to investigate and realized that it was the largest ant I had ever seen! "You have gotta go!" I said as I whipped out my bug spray. (I've stopped using hairspray to kill bugs because it just wasn't being effective enough, and everything was getting really sticky.) It took a few sprays, but finally the peanut ant succumbed to the stuff and killed over. Thankfully he was the only one of his kind I saw in the house. Hopefully his buddies aren't camping out close by.

I ended up not going to Vicksburg last night, but I'm going to leave here in just a few minutes to head up that way. Angie, Matt, and I are going to go eat sushi tonight and watch a movie which should be super fun! Intern Mary wanted to go see "Harry Potter" last night (she's addicted), so Ben and I went with her, as well as a new intern named Meg. After the movie, Mary was really mad because she said it didn't follow the book at all, but the rest of us didn't know any better because we haven't yet read the books (it's on my "to do" list for some future time). I also haven't seen the other movies yet, so I was a little lost, but maybe sometime I can watch those too. Well, I'm going to hit the road. I'm planning to stop at the Grand Gulf Military Park on my way up to V-burg. It's located just west of Port Gibson, right on the river. That's the site where U. S. Grant and his troops cross the Mississippi River on their way up to Vicksburg. It should be a fun place to stop.

Rosalie

Hi everyone! Here I am at Rosalie, one of the antebellum mansions in town. A few weeks ago when I went to the Natchez antique show, I won a door prize--which included tickets to tour Rosalie. So, since I had the day off today, I thought I'd cash in the tickets. Rosalie is a really cool house--it's right on the bluff overlooking the river and is located on part of the site of Fort Rosalie--the French fort built in 1716. The Park Service owns the other part of the Fort Rosalie site, though no one is really sure exactly where the fort stood. Archaeologists have found parts of the fort, but we think that most of it was eroded away by the Mississippi River over the years. The Park Service is going to make a Fort Rosalie park sometime in the future. Anyway, it's cool to visit the house Rosalie which was built back in 1823 on part of the fort property. This is the house where Ulysses S. Grant stayed when he came through Natchez after the fall of Vicksburg, and the home was converted into Union headquarters when the army occupied Natchez beginning in 1863.

The people on the tour with me were really nice, and whenever anyone hears I'm from Utah, they ask if my family is near the big fires burning there. I tell them that thankfully we're a little north of all that, but unfortunately the air is grody and smoky wherever you go in the state. I'm not sure if I'm going up to Vicksburg tonight or tomorrow, but there will surely be some good shopping times in the future either way.

Back in Business

Here it is--yesterday's damage. As you can see, the branch that hit the car wasn't very big around, and it probably only weighs 10 or 15 pounds, but it must have hit the windshield at just the right angle and with enough speed that it pretty much wiped out the whole thing. The actual point of impact wasn't too big, but the spider web crack effect covered the entire windshield. You can click on the pictures if you'd like to see a larger version of them. This was not a good surprise yesterday morning, but we're back in business today. Angie picked me up for work, then one of the local windshield companies came over to the house and fixed it while I was gone. It looks really nice--especially compared to how it looked yesterday! My car stinks like glue now, but if that's the extent of the reverberations from this little incident, I won't complain. I'm going to start parking out away from the trees a little bit. The culprit tree has been identified as a pecan tree. I was tempted to boycott pecans all together, but then I realized all of the good things I would miss: pecan pie, praline pecans, pralines and cream ice cream with pecans, candied pecans, etc., so I'm not going to boycott pecans. Today at work, Kathleen (she's the big boss lady at the park) was telling me that pecan trees are known to be self-pruning. I said, "Yes, that's what I figured out . . . the hard way." :-)

Today Miss Melissa wanted to take me to lunch--especially since at this point my car was still out of commission. So we went to Uptown Grocery and had some delicious pizza! They had this really good veggie pizza with artichoke hearts on it, but my favorite was the bacon and tomato pizza--it was kind of like a BLT minus the "L" and in the form of pizza. It was awesome.

The water is back on here at Routhland, although at times it turns this disturbingly brown color. Nasty! Needless to say, I won't be drinking any of the water here at the house. I usually don't drink this water anyway, because Mississippi water can be a little questionable (they frequently issue "boiling notices" when everyone is advised to boil their water--not a good sign), so I usually just pick up some water bottles at Wal Mart. Hopefully the pipes will clear out here pretty soon so that the water can not be brown anymore.

This morning at work I took pictures of the historic clothing collection. I've made it through the undergarments, vests, shirts, jackets, shoes, and military wear--now Angie and I just have to do the hats, gowns, work dresses, and accessories. There were some gnarly spiders up there today, and some cockroaches that have probably been dead in there for about seven years. I was getting a little grossed out, but I kept plugging away at things. I think what the clothing room needs even more than to be organized is just to be cleaned out! Angie said it would be a lot easier if we could just take a wrecking ball to the building, but we decided that we might get in trouble if we did that. I spent the afternoon at WJ's house and almost fell asleep a couple of times, but I kept myself busy working on the clothes database. Today is my Friday, so I'll have tomorrow and Thursday off. I'll probably be heading up to Vicksburg tomorrow, then Angie and I are going to go shopping over in Jackson on Thursday--good times!

Friday the 13th a Few Days Early

So, this Friday is Friday the 13th, but in my world, Friday the 13th took place today on Monday the 9th. It has definitely not been my lucky day today. First of all, last night Nathan, Kate, and I were watching "Lost," when Tim came by and said that the water was going to be shut off to Routhland. A pipe behind his house exploded, so they were going to shut the water down until the problem was fixed the next day. Nathan and Kate said I could come shower at their house this morning (they're on a different water line than me), so that's what I planned to do today. At about 2:00 in the morning, I heard a big crashing noise, but it sounded like something in the house had fallen off the wall or something and, with it being 2:00 a.m., I decided to wait until morning to investigate. So this morning I got up, threw my bath robe over my pajamas, got my towel and shampoo, and headed out to the car to drive over to Nathan and Kate's to take a shower. I was thinking that this was quite an inconvenience, but little did I know what was waiting for me outside.

I left the house, and there sitting on my car's hood was a gigantic branch!!! I was sure that the whole hood of the car was going to be smashed in, but I pulled the branch off and there wasn't even a scratch. I was extremely relieved until I looked up and saw the windshield of the car. The branch had struck it over on the driver's side, and there was a large, shattered indentation on the point of impact, surrounded by more shattered glass. The front seat and dashboard were covered with glass as well. I try to control my language, but about the only thing I could think of to say when I saw it was, "Oh crap!" Thankfully I had the presence of mind to tape a garbage bag over the windshield even though it was sunny, because we're having quite the thunderstorms this afternoon, and I doubt it would take very much rain to cause the whole windshield to cave in. Needless to say, the shower got put on hold, and Angie ended up coming over to pick me up for work. Mom and Dad helped me work out some details, and I got an auto glass place lined up to come fix it in the morning. Even though it was not a fun thing to have happen, I am grateful because it could have been so much worse than it was. It could have totally smashed the entire car, or at least severely dented the hood or roof, but there isn't any other damage to the car. I also figured that I would rather be safely and comfortably in bed instead of driving the car when something like that happens. So I am very grateful that it wasn't a very serious thing, and it can easily be fixed. I learned a valuable lesson though--don't worry when you're inconvenienced a little bit (i.e. the water being turned off) because, remember, it could always be worse (i.e. a branch through your windshield)!

Since I was car-less today, and I was too upset to make a sandwich before leaving this morning, Angie took me over to La Fiesta and we had some yummy food there. On my 1:00 tour today, I had this drama queen guy from Key West who is writing a play about Mammy's Cupboard and the lack of political-correctness surrounding the building. Now that's a can of worms I wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole!!!

Singing Girl in Bathroom

Today I had probably one of the most random experiences ever at the William Johnson house. I wasn't able to go to church today, but I did enjoy having a quiet day to get things done there at WJ's. So, I was sitting there at the front desk working on the historic clothing database, when this family of four came in. They had kids who looked about 13 and 11, and they (well, the parents, at least) were really interested in everything, so they spent quite a bit of time going through the exhibits. The kids were just running around and acting kind of dumb, but then the girl--the 13-year-old--went into the women's restroom. She was in there for quite a long time, but I didn't really think anything of it until the singing began. Yes, it's true. All of a sudden someone is belting out tunes from the women's bathroom. I thought to myself, "You have got to be kidding! Is that girl really in there singing?" It wasn't even like just quiet little singing either. She was full-on trying out for American Idol or something. She sang for a few minutes, then she came out. I was thinking to myself, "Am I the only one who thought that was strange?" But she must do that all the time because the family didn't even seem to notice.

I have found some delicious new snacks! They are some reduced fat Pringles chips, but they are zesty guacamole flavored. They're delicious! Well, I'm off to Nathan and Kate's to go start Season 2 of "Lost" and eat chicken, so that should be fun.