I have been a fan of the old fashioned American road trip since the many summers of my childhood, setting forth across the midwest en route to the Canadian border. There is some sense of freedom you get alone in a car, as day turns to night and night turns to day, lost in your own thoughts and the open road in front of you; there is something primal about this sense of exploration. These days, whenever given the opportunity, I take it. It is not a surprise then that in a sudden fit of spontaneity, I got in my small blue Nissan Versa and drove 800 miles to the Florida Panhandle to finish off my last week in the United States.
The first half is lost in translation, masked by fog and the gentle lull of the night. Eventually I rested in Vicksburg on the banks of the great river before the sun came up. I have issues with paying for accommodation on short trips, so I took my typical nap in the car, protected vaguely by a well-lit parking lot, before waking with the sun and continuing along. I was greeted that morning by a three legged dog, and its overweight owner waking out of his house shirtless. Besides this, Vicksburg is peaceful at such early hours, presiding over the Mississippi from its lofty bluffs. Looking out on the massive rush of water, I felt like a story could be written around that river and its ferries and bridges alone, and that is just what Mark Twain did.
Vicksburg was a childhood fascination of mine ever since the history club took a group of us there in seventh grade. The American Civil War turned on July 3, 1863 in this very spot at the same time General Lee retreated at Gettysburg. The Union victory gave it control of the northern half of the Mississippi after a long siege lasting over a month. Civilians had to ration food, living in constant fear of an artillery shell coming through their roof. There is a large white courthouse, famous in most old Vicksburg photographs that still stands as a museum. In some sick irony, large black communities reside by Confederate cemetaries, and I wonder their thoughts on things like this. My guess is that a majority of the communities around Vicksburg live without regard for what happened there. That is not a dig at Vicksburg, but something true of most places in the world where something important happened.
I took a short drive through Vicksburg National Military Park in the early morning hours. It is very well preserved, marking actual trench locations blue for North and red for the South. History comes to life with Confederate trenches often just a stones throw away from the Union lines. It would have been a very interesting forty days, indeed. The park was largely unoccupied at eight in the morning, as I passed only a few joggers starting their day. It would be a delightful place to run, if I happened to live in this city.
Many people did find a resting place here, and there is a beautiful cemetery to remember them. It is organized by alphabet with no distinction between North and South. I always thought this speaks to their original intention, though how needless it all was in the end. I always loved that line from the 1970s: "killing for peace is like fucking for chastity," but here we are doing the same things around the world 150 years later like nothing ever happened.
By the end of that day I sat on a balcony in Panama City Beach. I remained on that balcony the days that followed and napped and read about Spain while watching the sun fall onto the horizon every night at five. In the afternoon I would either run in the neighborhoods or walk along the white beaches and later drink cold imported beers. Talks were long at dinner, and they could go on forever, all to the pleasant hum of waves washing up on shore. Somewhere across the water is where I will be, but for the moment, those 800 miles were well worth the time and I was very happy to be where I was.
The first half is lost in translation, masked by fog and the gentle lull of the night. Eventually I rested in Vicksburg on the banks of the great river before the sun came up. I have issues with paying for accommodation on short trips, so I took my typical nap in the car, protected vaguely by a well-lit parking lot, before waking with the sun and continuing along. I was greeted that morning by a three legged dog, and its overweight owner waking out of his house shirtless. Besides this, Vicksburg is peaceful at such early hours, presiding over the Mississippi from its lofty bluffs. Looking out on the massive rush of water, I felt like a story could be written around that river and its ferries and bridges alone, and that is just what Mark Twain did.
Vicksburg was a childhood fascination of mine ever since the history club took a group of us there in seventh grade. The American Civil War turned on July 3, 1863 in this very spot at the same time General Lee retreated at Gettysburg. The Union victory gave it control of the northern half of the Mississippi after a long siege lasting over a month. Civilians had to ration food, living in constant fear of an artillery shell coming through their roof. There is a large white courthouse, famous in most old Vicksburg photographs that still stands as a museum. In some sick irony, large black communities reside by Confederate cemetaries, and I wonder their thoughts on things like this. My guess is that a majority of the communities around Vicksburg live without regard for what happened there. That is not a dig at Vicksburg, but something true of most places in the world where something important happened.
I took a short drive through Vicksburg National Military Park in the early morning hours. It is very well preserved, marking actual trench locations blue for North and red for the South. History comes to life with Confederate trenches often just a stones throw away from the Union lines. It would have been a very interesting forty days, indeed. The park was largely unoccupied at eight in the morning, as I passed only a few joggers starting their day. It would be a delightful place to run, if I happened to live in this city.
Many people did find a resting place here, and there is a beautiful cemetery to remember them. It is organized by alphabet with no distinction between North and South. I always thought this speaks to their original intention, though how needless it all was in the end. I always loved that line from the 1970s: "killing for peace is like fucking for chastity," but here we are doing the same things around the world 150 years later like nothing ever happened.
By the end of that day I sat on a balcony in Panama City Beach. I remained on that balcony the days that followed and napped and read about Spain while watching the sun fall onto the horizon every night at five. In the afternoon I would either run in the neighborhoods or walk along the white beaches and later drink cold imported beers. Talks were long at dinner, and they could go on forever, all to the pleasant hum of waves washing up on shore. Somewhere across the water is where I will be, but for the moment, those 800 miles were well worth the time and I was very happy to be where I was.
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