In retrospect, it’s difficult to know why we left Natchez after a half day when we had planned to spend two days there. In part it was the sanitised version of the history being promoted to us by the history trail developed by the Daughters of the Confederacy or whatever their descendants are called nowadays. In part, I think it reminded Himself too much of the small town of Annapolis Royal. The unbearable sleepiness. The over abundance of antique stores. The suffocating boredom he associates with the town. Anyways, we struck out for Vicksburg, famous for its 47 day siege during the Civil War.
We got to the city in a couple of hours and Himself had a look in the museum associated with the National Military Park there while I logged on to the free municipal wifi to suss out places to stay. There was an Ameristar near the company’s casino. I figured we could get a cab into town from the casino. We needed a night away from the campfire.
We hauled into what was essentially a carpark with rows of hook ups instead of meters. Nice clean showers and a tv room though. None of your charmingly antique State Park plumbing. We sat and had a beer and figured out where to go eat while the shuttle bus to the casino came and went. Elderly couples clambered on and headed over for the slots or the shrimp buffet or both.
After a while we caught it ourselves and went to the Bottletop Blues Bar at the back of the casino for a beer before we called a cab to the downtown.
The bar itself was pretty cool, decorated with thousands and thousands of flattened bottle tops, nailed into the bar. Underneath the counter top, old guitar fret boards and bits of coloured glass were set in cement and formed the base of the bar.
Inserted into the bar counter itself were poker machines. One for each stool. In case you got bored with your beer. Beyond the bar was the poker and roulette sections, tables crowded with people in Santa hats and beyond that again row upon row upon row of slot machines.
We think the buffet was beyond that again, but we didn’t venture that deep into the slot machines, so we’re not sure.
The doorman called us a cab and it took a good forty minutes to arrive so we were able to watch our elderly RV neighbours clamber back on board the shuttle between 7 and 7.30pm. Home in time to catch the news on cable and have an early night.
Eventually our cab came. It was a people carrier but the back seat was blocked off in some way so we crammed into the small seat behind the driver.
“I gotta go collect some money. Won’t take me but a minute.”
He swung out onto Washington and headed away from the downtown.
“I spent a hour today driving this lady from ATM to ATM and she promised me she’d have my money for me this evening.”
He screeched to a halt outside a 7Eleven and ran inside.
We waited.
After a couple of minutes he returned and slammed the car door shut. Swung us round and back in the direction of downtown.
“I’m MAD NOW, I’m MAD. She ain’t come to work.”
He sounded pretty mad.
The car in front of us slowed down at an orange light and we caught the red.
“That damned car in front, slowed down and lost me that light. I’m MAD about that too.”
I tried to change the subject a few times but he was too MAD to engage really. We approached another light and as we did it turned orange and he slowed to a halt.
I tutted. “You could have got that, man, easy.”
Finally, he laughed.
“I could have. But I got you in the back and you don’t need a broken nose now do you!
Where y’all from, anyway?”
After that he got quite chatty, showed us the liquor store where his mom used to work. Explained the circumstances of his missing fare. Told us what his kids were getting for Christmas. Finally he pulled up at an intersection towards the middle of the town.
We had chosen 10 South on the Roof for dinner. It was unsurprisingly on the roof of a ten storey building, a bank to be exact. The elevator opened to a loud buzz of music and laughter. After a number of days amongst trees and the almost deathly silence of boomer-dominated RV parks, it was a shock.
It was a great restaurant. They presented us with pretzels and a jar of dijon mustard sauce to dip them in and it was a culinary revelation. Then we had shrimp and catfish and a heavenly peanut butter pie that was made from fresh peanuts. Along with our beer and wine the total bill was $48.
If you’re ever in Vicksburg, check it out.
There was no live music anywhere except the restaurant. None of these cities had anything much going on during the week. Maybe because it is winter here, but maybe also they are ageing and fading away like many of their Maritime counterparts.
We got another cab back to our little van. The female driver was too busy taking calls to be entertaining but she was a masterclass in multi-tasking. We weren’t in bed twenty minutes when all hell broke loose over our heads and we drifted off to sleep grateful we weren’t in a tent during this thunder and lightening storm.
Little did we know we would be grateful for that for nights to come.
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