Home Again from Travel

I just returned from another trip to Texas and thus missed the rain in Atlanta that left my water barrel filled to the brim and over-flowing. The habanero pepper plants grew bushier, the native sunflower near the door grew a couple of feet taller, the basil is glossy and saucy looking, and a mushroom has sprouted in the driveway. And now it's raining again.

Of course, it will take more than a few afternoon thunderstorms to propel central and northern Georgia out of the drought, but any rain is welcome in the meantime. My drive through Mississippi and Louisiana reminded me of what naturally-irrigated landscape looks like. I can't seem to get anywhere near McComb, Mississippi, without going through a thunderstorm, often accompanied by a tornado alert. The rice fields along US Highway 190 through Beauregard Parish were lush and green, reminding me of the Chambers County, Texas, of my childhood, when the the land, now covered with suburbs or weedy plantations of Chinese tallow trees, were once irrigated for rice.

I drove to Texas with Mary-Margaret and returned home alone. In Austin, we stayed a couple of days with Benton, who was working with other members of the University of Texas Solar Vehicles team to meet a deadline in building a solar car. (They missed the deadline by three days but finished the car.) Mary-Margaret stayed behind visiting family and friends and will soon be on her way with her friends to a group work camp in a northern state, where teenagers and adult supervisors from around the country will spend a week painting and repairing houses. On the way from Belton to Baton Rouge, I stopped in Huntsville, Texas, and visited a few minutes with one of my good friends, Virginia Owens. I didn't decide to stop until I reached College Station, where I made the phone call to Virginia to see if she were home. We spent a little over an hour talking about all the changes in our lives and the aches--heart aches and body aches--of growing old.

My best friend and her husband are moving from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to California, in just a few days, so I stopped for two nights and a last visit in Baton Rouge with Chris and Jon. The day after I arrived, Chris and I drove to Denham Springs, Louisiana, where Tom and I had lived for four years while Tom completed his Ph.D. (I taught in the English Department at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge during those years.) Chris has lived all of her life--except a short while at the beginning when her father was in the military--in the Baton Rouge/Denham Springs/Hammond, Louisiana, area. She has been saying goodbye to her childhood haunts, and there was one last farewell ritual she wanted to perform. She and I drove east to Denham Springs and then north on LA 16, looking for access to the Amite River, where Chris spent many summer months as a teenager and young adult swimming and looking for Louisiana agates on the gravel bars in and along the river. We found that access through the gate of a gravel pit company, and though the sign said "Posted--Keep Out," the gate was open, so we drove in.

The day was hot and humid. Thunderstorms had been popping up every afternoon. A man in a passing gravel truck gave us nodding permission to park on a small bluff overlooking the river. We two white-haired friends carefully traversed the weedy and gravelly slope to the river, remembering other times we had looked for river agates. We were younger then, slimmer, brown-haired, and tanned. I found a couple of big agates; Chris found some smaller, pretty ones. We didn't stay long. The water was oily at its edge. The afternoon was very hot. We said our goodbyes and left for the cool interior of Dim Sum in Baton Rouge and a lunch of har gau, rice noodle rolls with shrimp, and coconut snowballs.

I arrived home last night at about 10 p.m.. Because Tom was in Savannah attending meetings, only the cats (and the green lawn and much taller herbs and vegetables) were here to greet me. I spent today recuperating from travel. Driving alone for eight hours is really no fun, especially along interstate highways where thunderstorms and poor visibility do not seem to slow down traffic enough for safe traveling. Driving from Baton Rouge to East and Central Texas, I usually opt for U. S. 190 and avoid Interstate-10 altogether. Yes, the travel time is longer because one has to stop at traffic lights in small towns with names like Opelousas, Singer, Merryville and Bon Wier and to slow down behind loaded pick-up trucks (such as the one full of fifty-gallon drums and a large leather saddle).

But I like the backroads; I stay awake more easily on these drives, remembering other times I've traveled through these towns and the family history connected with them. An ancestor of my husband's--Seth Lewis--was a judge in Opelousas. I've taken this route many times, opting for a detour from U.S. 190, north on U.S. 171 and then east on LA 110, which cuts through cultivated pine plantations, passes ranches with "Bobby Jindal for Governor" signs on their gates, and speeds by Buck and Nanny's Deer Processing business. Thus I avoid DeRidder, near where my Cole and Simmons ancestors settled before some of the families moved on to Texas, and reconnect with US 190 again near Bon Wier.

But yesterday's drive from Baton Rouge to Interstate 95 to Jackson, Mississippi, and then Interstate 20 to Atlanta, was not easy. Traffic was heavier than I have encountered on these highways recently, there were a lot of eighteen wheelers, sometimes grouped together in long convoys or across three lanes of the highway, and everyone drives too damn fast. But I'm glad we have a Toyota Prius, with its great gas mileage. This is our first new car in thirty years of marriage; we always purchased second-hand cars. I may have been surrounded by aggressive SUV drivers, but at least I was getting better gas mileage. One takes comfort where one can, I guess.

Two of our cats have entered the study where I am; one is right at my elbow. I know what he wants: tinned cat food instead of the dry cat food left out for him while I was gone. The cats are glad I'm home, too.