We Turn to the North

Saturday, April 6th. Birmingham South RV Park, Pelham, Alabama.

The weather was continuing crap in New Orleans this morning and there was no clear indication that it would be better anytime before Monday at the earliest. I looked again at the weather for a radius of about 500km and we decided that the best course would be to swing east again and further North to continue our exploration of the South as we slowly head home.  Maybe we’ll be another 10 days or 2 weeks on the road; we may even string it to 20 days but not more than that. I’d intended to do my income tax on the road but the tax software for IOS and the wi-if connections we’ve had just make it impossible. I’m ending up doing most of this blog posting with LTE on my phone as the wi-if in the campgrounds is almost non-existent.  I could buy a proper lap-top and find a place with good wi-if to work for the day it will take me to do the taxes but at this point it just seems easier to get home a little earlier than planned.

9am saw us earnestly packing up the trailer by 9:45 we were on the road in the fog. I really wanted to sneak through a break in the weather that might exist to the east so the route for the day was all Interstate — I10 through Slidell to I59 north and east through Hattiesburg, Laurel and Meridian then straight east to Tuscaloosa and I659 bypassing Birmingham to I65 just south of Birmingham. The fog in New Orleans became really severe as we approached the bridge out over Lake Pontchartrain. Thinking of my cousin Pete’s recent RV accident in the fog in Virginia we slowed it right down. Just past Slidell the fog disappeared and the rest of the day was typical Interstate travel - 65 mile per hour with patchy light rain off and on. A lot of trees, then some more trees. Near Hattiesburg we lost the subtropical climate — palms and Spanish moss disappeared and ever so slowly the process of spring reversed as we moved north and east. The deciduous trees went from full summer leaves to increasingly early spring and new foliage. The altitude climbed gradually as we went east as well — the trip was up hill all the way; I hadn’t considered that this part of Alabama would get hilly this quickly. By the time we got to Birmingham Dogwoods had been blooming in the forests for 200 miles and the early pale shades of new leaves dominated the hills.

We stopped in Laurel, Mississippi for lunch and we were fortunate to find a downtown with space to park the trailer just at the part of the day where the sun was trying to come out and the rain was just an occasional little bit of mist. Until a couple of years ago Laurel was suffering the slow death of a lot of rural southern towns but then a local phenomenon in the persons of Ben and Erin Napier turned things well around with the help of HGTV. They had a renovation and decoration business that turned into the HGTV show Hometown with a tagline to the effect of rebuilding our town one house at a time. They find buyers for beaten up old homes and then renovate and redecorate them completely. The show features local craftspeople and artisans. They are both cute as buttons — in their case the buttons on flannel shirts and overalls. They have a real southern charm that shows well on TV. Now the town attracts tourists to see the transformation and while Laurel is a long way from recovered it doesn’t appear to be on life support anymore.

Hometown is a favourite TV show for Lorraine and a guilty pleasure for me. We found their store the Laurel Merchandise Company; It was full of the usual kitschy decorator stuff at tourist prices. We bought a scented candle to help cover the increasingly annoying smell of wet dog in the trailer. Lorraine got to meet Erin’s Aunt and gush about how cute Erin is and talk about where we should go for lunch. The Aunt was terribly worried about us getting wet if it started to rain again

We walked through the downtown to Pearls Diner. The place looks like an old-time dinner that’s been there for years but it was really only opened in 2017 in what appears to have been an old men’s clothing store or something like that. Pearl is a 71 year-old former school teacher who runs around the place harassing customers and generally having a good old time. It is a meat-and-two veg, order at the counter and they’ll bring you the food on a tray shortly after kind of place. When we got to the front of the line it was a choice of Chicken, Baked or Fried and a few different sides; Ribs and Pork Chops came went from the menu as we were there.  The place was jammed — we had to sit in seats on the wrong side of the counter scorched in tight out of the way of the staff carrying plates of food from the kitchen. I had my chicken,  fried with spicy cornbread, Lima Beans, and Broccoli Cheese Casserole; Lorraine had baked with regular corn-bread, black-eyed peas, and Mac and Cheese. It was delicious.

After lunch we wandered a little around the recovering downtown — all the stores looked less than two years old and bore some of the branding associated with Hometown. Without that program I think the downtown could possible have been completely abandoned with the exception of an office or two. As we drove through town it was clear other businesses were all working to ride the phenomenon. I hope they can continue as I’m sure Laurel was once as charming as the name.

I hadn’t found a gas station I could get a trailer through on our way through Laurel so we pulled off and fueled in Meridican.  The old-guy at the pump next to us was worried about the popping and scraping noises that the Load Balancers make during tight turns and we got to chatting.  “We wanted to visit Canada once”, he says with a really rustic southern drawl, “But we were told that y’all don’t like people from Alabama. We’ve got too many guns. “ “You’ll never guess where I’m carrying the concelead gun I’ve got a permit for.”  He was right we couldn’t guess — he had a little .22 LR folding pistol, loaded, in his shirt pocket. I resisted the urge to tell him that statistically he was several orders of magnitude more likely to shoot himself than any bad guys that he seemed to be itching to encounter.

We got into the camp in Birmingham at 5 o’clock on the nose and found our spot on the crest of a little hill in the middle of the park quickly and easily. I set up the outside and Lorraine did the inside and started some laundry. We sat out and enjoyed the last of the sunshine before an approaching storm for 15 minutes or so. Then I ran to get dinner from a local BBQ Chain — BBQ pork, collards, mac and cheese, baked beans and more of that white-corn style cheese cornbread biscuits; I have to figure out how to make those and buy some of their white corn meal to take home. As we finished dinner the front edge of the storm finally arrived — looks pretty severe I hope we don’t get the half-inch hail that is being threatened in the weather warnings.