We Did Not Learn Our Lesson

Notes from Margo:

We did not learn our lesson. We drove more than 7,500 to get from San Francisco to Boston, a 3,100-mile drive. We zig-zagged across the West and Midwest, trying to see everyone and everything. So on the way home, I thought we might just head west and drive hard in a straight line. We’re both a bit homesick, and a bit tired.

But no. We got as far west as Northwest Arkansas, and had second thoughts about skipping New Orleans, where my sister Marion lives with her son, Shafir. So, we wheeled around, headed back east and south about 12 hours – recrossing to the east side of the Mississippi River. We were rewarded with Shafir’s winning smile and several really nice visits with Marion and Shafir (that's them and me), and a visit with Shafir’s dad, Jim Wittenberg.

We also had the New Orleans treat of drinking coffee and eating beignets at Cafe du Monde in the French Quarter. A band played on the sidewalk outside for tips. The trumpet player and singer improvised "When the Saints Win the Superbowl" to the tune of "When the Saints Go Marching In." He pushed the band's CD, saying it's better than a souvenir T-shirt. You don't have to wash it. The band (at right) was mixed – black, white, young, older. But what caught our eye was the trombone player, an tiny old guy who appeared to be Vietnamese, snapping his fingers and bopping and nodding along to the rhythm.

The mileage takes its toll. But still, every day brings surprises and gifts. The distances across Arkansas and Mississippi and Louisiana are vast, reminding me of northern Wisconsin and the 11-hour drive to Lynn’s cousin Karen through the lightly populated flatlands of northwest Minnesota. The Mississippi Delta is also flat and seemingly endless, but it's totally different – lots of little towns, many in states of disrepair and deterioration, but lots of life nonetheless. The fields show the remains of the season's cotton and rice crops.

The radio stations carried us along – bluegrass and gospel, and more bluegrass and gospel. The Ludstadt team of atheist and Jewish travelers loves gospel music; we just tune out the sermons. Then as we got into southern Mississippi and Louisiana, closer to New Orleans, old-style blues came over the airways in the darkness. And we drove on.

In southern Arkansas, we stopped for coffee at a roadside café. The sign outside: “Catfish You Can Trust.” And how could we pass that up? While the white waitress poured Lynn a cup to go, the black cook asked how we were doing. He answered our return query with: “I’m still above the grass.”

In Northwest Arkansas, we had a really restful three-day visit with our old friends Jack Desrocher and Sheilah Downey. They are the only other couple we know where both played pickup basketball. Sheilah, once one of Lynn's students at SF State, was a reporter at the Examiner; Jack, an amazingly talented illustrator/cartoonist at the newspaper, was the best man at our wedding 20 years ago. Shortly after that, they packed up their daughters, Addy and Hannah, and moved to a former goat farm a few miles out of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. They lived there for about 10 years. We visited them once at their ridgetop home, where they had their own basketball court in the driveway. They had acreage, and they had created a dream playland for the kids – a zipline down the hill, full-size playhouses outdoors, ponies, dogs, cats.

They eventually tired of that, and moved to St. Louis, and then to Pensacola, Florida. After Hurricane Ivan came within a few yards of destroying their house, they sold out and moved back to Arkansas, this time to Rogers, about 30 miles from Eureka Springs. The area is the center of the Wal-Mart empire (more on this later, from Lynn). But our most peripatetic friends are about ready to move again – they are talking wistfully about being closer to the East Coast.

Through all the moves, Jack has free-lanced his illustrations, first by Fed-Ex and now by email. Sheilah has done free-lance writing and editing along with various odd jobs. They get by, although Jack says the illustration business pretty much dried up in the past year or so, as the economy has tanked. Illustrations seem to be something that publications can do without. (That's Sheilah, at right, feeding Itsie some broccoli with a fork. Their cat is bigger than both of their dogs.)

Notable: Pileated woodpeckers, with their bright red caps, were pecking at the suet in the bird-feeders at Jack and Sheilah's in Rogers, Arkansas. And a flock of white pelicans circled over us as we entered Louisiana.

Also notable: We crossed the Mississippi River for the second and third times on our trip. We crossed it going west in Northern Arkansas, and that felt great – a big step on the way home. Then after we changed directions, we backtracked across it going east from Louisiana into Mississippi further down-river.

We remembered the little creek that we crossed in Minnesota, with its big sign, "Mississippi River," and compared it to the river down here that actually looks like the Mississippi – a huge muddy waterway flanked by wide flat alluvial plains. We'll cross it again, for the fourth and last time, when we leave New Orleans heading west.

Mileage from Rogers, Arkansas, to New Orleans, Louisiana: 734

Mileage so far: 9,502