Photos: here
Man it is fun to drive in Mississippi. There aren’t many people on the back roads because most of them are on the interstates. It's a bit like Australia: town, nothing for 30 miles, town, nothing for 30 miles, and so on.
So you can really do some ripping and tearing, with care, if you care to. And I cared to.
I wasn’t sure where today would be taking me, geographically. So I ask the barista at the Starbucks for guidance and asked him if he had any thoughts on Vicksburg, Mississippi. And this kid was born and raised in Vicksburg. So that was that.
After all, just yesterday I said “it is always better to find the end of a path than to always wonder where it may have led you.” And that’s been strong on my brain lately.
So I map out a little route on the Atlas that will take me about 50% longer then the freeway, but then again, I don't recall having a schedule.
And when I pull into Crystal Springs in Mississipi it looks like just about every other small town that I have gone through in the last couple of weeks, which is to say that there are only about 20% of the buildings occupied, and probably only a few cars parked on the main street.I'll be honest, they all appear to be ghost towns.
But there is a restaurant open, although its very difficult to tell, but I see the sign that says “soul food” and another that says “Home of the Big D Burger," which reminds me of some porn I may or may not have come across.
And it’s a big open building, not like a restaurant that you may think of when I say restaurant, and it has no décor really beyond a New Orleans Saints poster, and it has cafeteria type tables with plastic chairs and one of the waitresses approaches me and she says “How you doing baby?”
And I realize that people have been calling me baby since Hattiesburg. I crossed the baby line somewhere, the southern baby line at least, don’t know where the northern boundary is yet but when I do I'll let you know.And because I have no idea how this works at “The Palace”, which I later learned it is called, I tell her that I'm not sure what I want and just that Im hungry.
And she tells me ok baby, you want something to drink, you want a sweet tea? She also calls me sweetie once. Her name was Chasity. Not Chastity. Chasity.
Then she said that the buffet is right over there and to help myself.
Ummm, buffet?
Here's a little problem I've had for a long time and that is that I don’t eat at buffets and I also never have seconds. Something must have happened to me as a child to make me this way and one of those things was visits to my Aunt and Uncle’s house.
So I would go to their house there for a sleepover or something and after dinner they would always offer me ice cream. Which I loved then but I never eat now, well hardly ever.
My cousins were stupidly skinny kids. And they would make fun of me, I don’t know about outright fun but I do remember somebody asking me if I wanted some bowl with my ice cream once when I was helping myself.
I think that’s why I don’t like buffets. They make me feel gluttonous, pudgy, like I'm ten again, and I hear the mockery.
And the fried chicken, which I add some hot sauce too even though hot sauce generally cooks my stomach, is fucking delicious. And the corn bread, and the rice, yeah, its all delicious. And no one pays me any mind.
When I'm finishing up, a big black man in black pants and a black shirt and a black apron comes at me and asks me if everything was ok. I tell him it was delicious and I ask him if he was the man responsible and he says he was and I thank him.
And where do I eat my dinner? At that buffet in that casino.
That’s two buffets, one day, should you be counting. And yes, I would like some bowl with my ice cream.
