Days 21-23, June 10-12, Marathon to Memphis

In order to linger for several days in desirable fishing spots such as the Florida Keys, I have to bust a hump on certain other days to rack up miles on Excalibur, considering my ambitious national circuit.  So that's what I've been doing the past three days, rumbling over 1,300 miles from Duck Key, FL to Collierville, TN.

My first stop (more of a pause, really) on June 10 was Miami Beach, FL, where I dropped off Bill Nelson at the Raleigh Hotel, an Art Deco classic.  I intended to have lunch there with Bill's wife Lara, her parents and friend Terri, but it was impossible to find a parking spot that would accommodate my truck and boat trailer.  Instead I forged on through Miami traffic congestion and construction, aiming for I-75.  A couple of hours later I was profoundly relieved to reach the Everglades and leave the sphere of Miami influence.  I-75 across the glades is commonly referred to as Alligator Alley.  Fences that extend the entire length of the Alley keep the gators off the highway, but it's interesting to observe the egrets in the canals and the varying flora along the route.  Immediately west of Miami is a broad sea of grass, which gradually transforms into cypress, pine and palmetto forests along the western side of the glades east of Naples and Marco Island.  Near Naples, I-75 turns north, and I decided to roll on until late evening.

Near the junction of I-4 and I-75 just east of Tampa was a startling sight - a Confederate flag that may have been the largest banner of any kind I've ever seen.  Later in the evening when I stopped for the night near Brooksville, FL, I Googled the flag to see what it was all about.  Apparently the Sons of the Confederacy applied to erect a veterans memorial and raise a flag at that site a couple of years ago, and an inattentive town council assumed that the memorial was for American war veterans and the flag would be an American flag.  Wrong!  As you might expect, the flag is now highly controversial, heightening sentiments on both sides of a lingering racial divide.  When I was a kid growing up in the north, having moved in first grade from my birthplace in Mississippi, I was proud to embrace my rebel heritage, always fighting on the side of the south in make-believe playground civil war battles.  I still connect to that heritage, in some respects, but the fact is that such a bold and ostentatious display of the Confederate flag sends a terrible message to African-Americans, which constitute a very large minority in the deep south.  It's a clear statement that there are certain white people who refuse to accept racial equality.  The bigger the flag, the more powerful the message.  It made me feel sad.

Excalibur pulled out at the crack of dawn on the 11th, no longer bound to the interstate system.  Highway 19/98 north from Brooksville to Tallahassee proved to be a blissfully flat, smooth and direct route, skirting the gulf coast most of the way.  The human population thins out north of Crystal River and there are long stretches of tree-lined, development-free and sparsely-traveled road.  The drive was quiet and relaxing, and gave me a lot of time to think bittersweet thoughts.  At one point I was beset by simultaneous feelings of deep melancholy and pleasant humor.  I laughed out loud at my good fortune, and almost wept at the next moment, pondering my home, my wife, my friends and my cats, which I long to see again.  All those emotions churned up discrete childhood memories and by the time I resumed interstate travel on I-10 and passed Tallahassee mid-day, I had written an entire song in my head.  I'll post the lyrics to the song tomorrow.

Rolling west on I-10 I crossed a long bridge across the Blackwater River, which flows into the gulf next to Pensacola.  The river was an impressive body of water, but not so impressive as Mobile Bay lying a couple of hours to the west.  I wasn't taking the most direct route to my ultimate destination, but I thought it would be interesting to view the site of the civil war naval battle in which Admiral Farragut lashed himself to the mast of his ship and famously said, "Damn the torpedoes.  Full speed ahead!"  That's not exactly what he said, but it's a good paraphrase.  Mobile Bay was a broad blue expanse, shimmering in the high sun and lined on its east banks by dozens of high cranes and rows and rows of oil tanks.  The city of Mobile itself featured only three tall buildings, but the unusual spires on two of them lent a modicum of flair to the downtown area.  I exited I-10 there, taking a convoluted path through an industrialized area that reminded me of Long Beach, CA, which is similarly dominated by shipping facilities and oil storage and refining structures.  My reward was that I found myself on Highway 45, winding through a set of hills in southwest Alabama and crossing into my home state of Mississippi.

Considering that Mississippi is the poorest state in the union, I expected the roads to be in bad condition.  As it turned out, Highway 45 was my favorite road of those I've traveled since I left home May 20.  Traversing the eastern side of the state, it's a remarkably smooth, lightly-traveled and forest-lined four-lane divided highway that skirts, but doesn't quite pass through, every town it connects.  Along the way I stopped in Meridian, where I spent the night.  The next morning I passed signs for the Natchez Trace and, here and there, the Mississippi Blues Trail.  I floated by little towns such as Scooba, the name of which was embossed in a low, impeccably-trimmed hedge on a field of white stones.  A nearby sign announced that Scooba is the home of world champion turkey caller Jack Lewis Dudley.  Later I Googled him.  Sadly, he died in 2008, but it's good that he's still honored in Scooba.

North of Macon, the hills and pine-dominated forests lining the highway transition into flat farm fields brimming with catfish farm ponds, cotton, beans and corn.  I was surprised by the amount of almost-mature corn I saw.  The rise in corn prices due to ethanol demand and other factors must have attracted southern farmers to that crop.  If I hadn't known better, I might have thought I was in Iowa.  Further north and west, cotton asserted itself as the more dominant crop and the landscape assumed the character of my childhood memories.  Soon I bypassed Tupelo, one of the Mississippi towns where Elvis Presley first gained traction as a rock-and-roll pioneer at the county fair when he was just a gyrating kid with a growl and a greasy pompadour.

I took a slight detour as I angled toward Memphis.  As I mentioned earlier, I have rebel sympathies, the genesis of which was my childhood love for the Ole Miss Rebels.  When I was a kid, my cousin Bobby Franklin was an all-American quarterback at Ole Miss.  While I attended junior high and high school he was a defensive back and kick holder for the Cleveland Browns.  Bobby was the star of our extended family, and inspired me to want to attend Ole Miss.  In the long run my attentions turned elsewhere, but my emotional allegiance never completely faded.  So I decided to stop for lunch in Oxford, which is not only the location of the Ole Miss campus, but was also the home base for William Faulkner, one of my favorite novelists.  I looked for evidence of Faulkner's legacy while I was there, but saw none.  I strolled around the town's magnolia-lined square with its obligatory statue of a Confederate solidier standing sentry before a classic white courthouse.  I had intended to eat a traditional southern meal at the locally famous Ajax Diner, but found that it was closed on Sunday.  A friendly young couple at a gas station told me about Proud Larry's, so I lunched there instead.  No beer served on Sundays.  Oh well.  The calzone was really tasty - not southern American, but perhaps southern Italian.

On the final stretch from Oxford to Collierville I paid special attention to the congregations exiting the Baptist and Penecostal churches attended by black people.  When I was a child, those congregations were an amazing spectacle, creating a Mardis Gras atmosphere with women sporting brightly-colored dresses and hats that were at least as wide-brimmed and fanciful as those adorning the proper English women who attended Prince William's recent wedding.  Alas, the general American trend toward casual dress has apparently diluted that tradition in Mississippi.  The black congregations I saw were tidy but bland.

Finally, after being ridden hard for over 1,300 miles in 2.5 days, Excalibur sauntered into Collierville, TN, an eastern suburb of Memphis where my parents live.  I'm spending a few days with them now.  We'll have some private time together and most likely I won't write about it.  I probably won't have time to go fishing while I'm in the deep south, but it's been good to tap ancient recollections.  I'll resume my westward trek on Wednesday.

I'll leave you with this picture that Bill took of me writing my blog on the screened balcony at Dove Creek Lodge on Key Largo.  Y'a'll take care now.