Collecting My Thoughts …
Before the Memories Fade
Having just returned from a two week tour I need to sit down and transcribe the impressions formed after looking through the window of a bus. Of course, we did a bit of walking, too, through various sites. I don’t want to call the journey one of looking at dead people’s graves, although we did a bit of that: Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, Elvis Presley, and the concrete tombs of New Orleans. Even though the tour was named Music Medley, I can’t recall that we heard much music, although the performance of the Grand Ole Opry counts heavily in its favor. We didn’t even eat much ethnic food, although in New Orleans I did eat a Po’ Boy sandwich filled with fried oysters, shrimp, and catfish.
With that negative-seeming introduction, one would think we did not have a good time, but such was not the case; we did have a worthwhile trip and a good time. I’ve discovered, after several bus tours, that people who spend the money to join the tour put contentious issues aside and find common ground to enjoy each other’s humor and fellowship. Whenever I step off the bus for the last time, I always feel a bit of emptiness since I have to return to my everyday life and will not see some of my fellow passengers again for awhile, or maybe not ever.
I don’t think any of us came away from our drive through the Ninth Ward of New Orleans without feeling some sadness for what we saw there. The place, for the most part, is still a shambles. The Mississippi Gulf Coast, with its once beautiful mansions, needs much work yet to restore it, although one can’t help but admire the initiative some re-builders are showing as they build their houses on the tall stilts holding them high in the air.
The Vicksburg Civil War Battlefield illustrated the impossibility of some conflicts, this one with its high ground and deep ravines which Northern forces never did take by assault, but instead forced Southern surrender after a siege that starved them out.
We visited Hannibal, MO and the Mark Twain Museum and Home where I bought Twain’s Autobiography. I mention that here because I’m not done with the Civil War impressions. I’d known for some time that General, later President, U. S. Grant did not have any money towards the end of his life. He proceeded to write his autobiography and was ready to sell the rights for about $25,000 to an unscrupulous publisher. He asked Mark Twain to look at the contract before signing it and Twain promptly told him in no uncertain terms it was rubbish. Twain had by now experienced the ins and outs of the publishing industry and found him a new publisher, and the proceeds of his book came to about one-half million dollars, the sum of which Grant would not enjoy since he died soon after but which left his widow very financially comfortable. Witty sayings and quotations made by Twain were in abundance in Hannibal, something that many in our group enjoyed.
Little Rock, AR showed us President Clinton’s new library and museum where a special collection of Madeleine Albright’s “pins” caught our attention.
(More to be added to this…)
