We said goodbye to the Mississippi and pulled out of Warford Point on a humid warm Christmas Eve and headed east to Starkville, a few miles from Miss State (football college) where we had booked a private campground so that we would have internet and human interaction on Christmas.
The drive was again through the wide open farmland of Mississippi, tillage mostly, cotton, soy and corn, interspersed with little towns that straggled along the highway. Mostly feed stores and machine shops, with pay day loan companies and barber shops huddled into cheap little strip malls. And the ubiquitous car dealerships. Along this road more than any other on our trip though, Himself oohed and aahed over old cars ‘just laying around’.
There were classic trucks from the fifties and sixties lying in people’s yards. There were little car cemeteries in fields in the middle of soybean plantations. There was an occasional auto shop with 50 parked in a field behind it.
“No rust, no rust”, he kept whimpering to himself, being from Nova Scotia where rust destroys everything precious in just ten years.
“The trick would be getting them to sell me one”
We passed a Walmart. I nipped in to get a bottle of the nice Columbia Valley pinot noir I’d been drinking, for Christmas dinner.
The Walmart only sold fruit wine.
As did the next one.
And the next one.
Three towns later I had resigned myself to a boring dinner when Himself spotted a large sign in Greenwood, down by the river past the cement plant. It was in the shape of a bottle with BOTTLE SHOP inscribed along it.
I went in. A woman stood behind a massive glass case. Behind her in the gloom I thought I could see bottles of wine.
“What kind of wine y’all want?”
I pressed my face against the glass the way I used to do against the glorious Brown Thomas windows of childhood Christmases.
“What kind of wine do you got?”
She reeled off a list of Australian and Californian chart toppers
“I got Yellertail Cab Sauv, I got Yellertail Mer-loh, I got Woodbridge Cab Sauv, I got Woodbridge Mer-loh, I got…..”
Eventually she stopped. I picked the least worst one.
Wine in hand, and with some steaks for the big dinner, we got to Starkville about lunchtime. It was a beautiful sunny day. The campsite was deserted except for a couple of trailers with no accompanying vehicles.
There was a note on the door of the office, saying that Hobie Our Host had to go to town but he’d be back soon. We got out a couple of beers and sat in the sunshine and watched three squirrels fight over who owned the tree we were sitting under. We were on a nice lake front and there were folks fishing off a bridge nearby.
By and by a couple of trucks pulling big trailers rumbled in and parked nearby. An extended family got out and hooked up and gathered in one of the trailers. I could see the tv flickering in the window.
Soon enough it was 5pm and the sun was setting over the lake, so I wandered out onto the little fishing pier and took some pictures.
Eventually, a truck pulled up and a big man got out and walked slowly over to the office door.
Hobie Our Host! I bounded over. I noticed he had a fuel pack in the back of his pick up. A woodsman. He was huge. He looked like Michael Madsen, if Michael Madsen had spent his life logging north east Mississippi.
“Hobie?”
“Hobie’s gone to some family aways, for Christmas. I’m a friend of his, just keeping an eye on the place.”
He headed back to the truck.
I broke my stunned silence just in time.
“INTERNET PASSWORD?”
He stopped. “Oh Jeez, I can’t remember.” He scratched his chin a bit. “I’ll text Hobie.”
We waited a while. “He’s deaf in one ear, sometimes he don’t hear the phone if it’s on that side.”
I stood in front of his truck in a manner that indicated that he was going nowhere until I got my internet password and eventually he called Hobie, who sounded a bit loaded but who gave up the goods.
“And firewood.” I stood my ground in front of the truck.
“There’s a pile over there by that dumpster, y’all take what you want. Murry Christmas!” And he was gone.
We had a bottle of wine.
We had a couple of steaks
We had the Internet.
We had firewood.
Christmas sorted as far as I was concerned.
The day itself came dark and gloomy with a warm wind over the lake that brought us the loudest thunder and lightening storm I have ever heard.
It held off long enough for the family group to emerge from their trailers and have a prayer circle before clambering back in to worship the television gods for the day. The storm rumbled and banged over and back over our heads for most of the day then suddenly cleared after dark so we were able to sit out under the full moon and enjoy the warm night air.
Next day was hot and humid and we hung around enough to figure that Hobie was still sleeping it off so we left without meeting him and drove east to Columbus, MS and then over the border into Alabama.
No comments:
Post a Comment