"Remember the Alamo" - Southern States  DAY 10 - Mon., 18 March 2002

The clock read  4:03  and while I didn't set the alarm, I was awoken.  While I don't mind waking up with the roosters, the chickens (or crying infants) in the next room I could have done without.  After tossing and turning for another 90 minutes, I figured I should wake the boy and get this showboat on the road.  I allowed the lad to have a McDonalds breakfast today, owing to him deserving a break or something.  Despite that corporation abandoning that campaign for the "We love to see you smile" thing, which I'm not completely loving.

So, from Pepsi-Cola to the Florida/Alabama state line is something like 16 miles.  Which takes us... 16 minutes.  I'm not quite sure, but it seemed the boy was actually driving slower than the speed limit, by a noticeable amount.  This distressed me, but we finally to the Alabama state line there at about 7 a.m.  Because everyone loves big ships, and the Bald One is a member of "everyone", we made the three mile detour to get closer to the USS Alabama for a moment, now a memory immortalized. 

We wandered around the streets of Mobile for a few minutes, passing a quaint brick firehouse, a cop directing traffic outside of a school, and the local primitive Baptist church (located just two blocks from the similarly fashioned Catholic church).  There was also a dilapidated building, obviously no longer open for business, with a hand-painted sign about "[name forgotten]'s Handy-man service- we repair anything!"  The irony was amusing to me.

In an effort to expand my reign of duckdom to others, I thought about having my own town, maybe Frankton or Duckville, something cute like that.  In seeing enough of these little towns, I've narrowed down the basic building blocks of a community.  First, we need a Waffle House.  I can't explain why, but it seems there isn't a place around without one.  Second, a Baptist church (not one of those primitive ones, neither).  Third, a water tower.  As a bonus, we should have our name on it, and if times are hard, rent it out to the local cellular company to double as a relay tower.  It's assumed that you'll have at least one Citgo gas station, since you can't swing a stick without hitting one.  It's also helpful to have a nice sign to announce to visitors when they've actually found the town.  (For this survey and documentation, we used Using Grand Bay, Alabama as our template community.)  And, if we find people have a hard time getting back home, we could contact the Department of Transportation to put out a sign with their name on it, so they know when to get off the highway.

And with that said and done, we left, and arrived in Mississippi.  Unlike the 57 miles of Alabama, we had nearly 100 miles of highway, and adjoining surface streets, to visit this cute little state.  Of course, had we done so with a map, we'd likely have fared better.  I found, in addition to waiting for the boy to get the oil changed (yes, again... it's already been 3,000+ miles since Knoxville on the Day 5, aka March 13), that Biloxi is a casino town, that spells ya'll differently than the alternate y'all spelling, and that it appears to be commonplace to have a pier very close to your front driveway.  But they have a colorful little sign (as noted in the requirements for a town, above).  We also tried to get a picture with the Biloxi cop, but he was in his car and gone before we could ask.

But don't let that fool you... it didn't mean we didn't get a chance to talk to one of Mississippi's finest before leaving the state at 10:48 a.m.  There was a gaggle of Mississippi state troopers right between mile markers 10 and 5 as we left the state.  There were two troopers stopped right around mile 7, and the boy changed to the number one lane (counting from the left, so to the rest of you, that's the "fast" lane).  You'll see truckers and others do this as to not kick up the dust and draft when passing directly by.  

Well, apparently this act of benevolence was done without signaling the lane change. Thus, Corporal Clayton L. Polk, a 15-year veteran (started in '87) assigned to Mississippi State Police Troop J pulled the boy over.  Corporal Polk asked for his license, indicated the reason for the stop, and was even helpful enough to stand at the rear of the Green Spam Can while the boy demonstrated that, sure enough, the turn signals aren't broken.  Well, five minutes later and there's no ticket, some idle chit-chat about being a cop (apparently the boy gives off this ex-cop vibe), and we were wished a safe journey, and only a FrankPen^® lighter for the experience.  (And as much as it's a cliché, as soon as he got out of her car, he spit his chewing tobacco.)

So as noted, we reached Louisiana at 10:48 a.m.  We hit New Orleans around 11:20 a.m., with a lovely set of gray clouds rolling in.  We first drove by some nice dome; apparently the locals have an over-inflated view of it, and prefer calling it a "Super Dome", but what can ya do?  I'll humor 'em, I suppose.  Despite the boy's distaste for large cities, he didn't seem to have too much trouble getting around the streets.  Even the cop writing somebody up was kind enough to pull off as far to the right as was reasonably possible.  We passed some period-esque houses on our way to the French Quarter.  We also learned that, according to this poorly parked vehicle, 'safety pays'.  I'm sure safety doesn't pay as well as fat city contracts, though.

We finally managed to park (legally) and walk down to the well-known Bourbon Street area, looked around the street a bit (and a bit more), and wandered back to the car.  The fact that last night was St. Patrick's Day, I suspect, was the reason there was vast amounts of garbage on the streets (mostly in bags or boxes) waiting for pick-up.  And after that kind of excitement, it was everything I had to lean over and take a picture of the Mississippi River (a while later, of course).  We stopped for gas in Baton Rogue, but that was about all I could say about that fine little metropolis. 

Yada, yada, yada, we end up back in Texas around 3:00 p.m. or so.  The original plan was to spend the night in Beaumont, Texas, but the review of the map was a stark reminder of that dream not coming true.  I thought we were getting closer, but it turns out the "skyline" was just a Budweiser plant.  Houston, we have a problem.  Traffic.  We hit Houston around 5 p.m.  And left around 6:15 p.m.  If nothing else, though, it turns out Texans also like IKEA. 

So, we stopped for gas in Brook-something, got dinner, gas, and headed for San Antonio.  It was dark, so obviously, no pictures.  But we landed in a Motel 6 to nest for the night.  We're 12 miles from downtown San Antonio, thus, we get to sleep in before remembering to see the Alamo.  Thus, g'night.