Teatime In Tupelo

Honey and Elvis Presley. That is what Tupelo Mississippi is known for, and even then I'm not sure how much one can say this sleepy little town in the northern part of he state can be said to be "known." the honey connection isn't and Elvis is associated with Memphis more than Tupelo. Yet this was a town worth seeing.

I will say the drive from Oxford to Tupelo was divine, on a winding wooded road that had me wondering where I'd left my Bonneville. The road dipped and twisted, a perfectly smooth ribbon of black asphalt through the trees, across fields and farms and of course eventually it dead ended into a bland wide straight four lane highway that led directly to La Quinta on the outskirts of Tupelo.

Tupelo is actually a pepperidge tree (whatever that is) and the town is apparently named for that. 35,000 people live there and the big claim to fame is that Elvis Prelsey was born here and survived a tornado that killed 240 other people.

The architecture is firmly rooted in the past, Palladian public buildings and a nod to the angelic on the front lawn seems to go down a treat in a state where constitutional law is a nuisance imposed by "big government." I also found a monument embossed with a high falutin' sentiment that made no sense to me when put into context.

The sign said Those who die for a right principle do not die in vain. Who can argue with that, no one can until...you remember the "right principle" was the right to enslave people. I wonder what Missisisppi would be like if their leaders could get with the program and join the 21st century.

There is great physical beauty in these old towns, some of it grandiose and rather poorly proportioned like the justice building shown above which proudly flies the state flag, a flag that includes brilliantly, the Stars and Bars representing the "right principle" mentioned above.

The cupola of the Lee County Courthouse suddenly looked as though I was transplanted to Florence in Italy. Elegance is a lovely thing, and honestly I wouldnt mind seeing a little bit of it on the streets of Key West.

The British and the French fought over this spot in 1763 and Americans killed Americans here in 1864 when it was called Gum Pond supposedly for the gum trees (tupelos) in the area. The civil war battle of Tupelo gave the city it's modern name. Machine Gun Kelly robbed his last bank here in 1932, an even that brings to mind the Bonnie and Clyde myth making of the era. The brick buildings look like they were here when the bank robbers were in town.

You can see Tupelo had money in the early ears of the last century, the signs were everywhere, just like this entrance to a dust catcher shop celebrating earlier glory days:

The whole Johnny Reb thing is a weird holdover that doesn't mix well with the modern preoccupation with nationalism in the face of some supposed need to fight foreign wars. Around the corner we read of the "right principle" of secession to preserve slavery and here we see appeals to patriotism that in 1864 would have won you no Tupelo friends. So why I ask myself do they keep harking back?

It was a hot muggy day when we visited, the La Quinta was new and we were greeted as though old friends, which sounds corny but was delightful. We went into town to walk around and see what was what. It's less than two hours by car meandering from Oxford so we were well in time for lunch.

Wide streets, clean sidewalks and an air of confident prosperity greeted us.

My wife had been consulting the entrails in her iPhone and TripAdvisor and Urban Spoon agreed: Tea For T'Arts. I love tea so a tearoom sounded perfect. I ended up feeling chronically underdressed as we greeted by dresses and doilies and mercifully, ample air conditioning.

Lunch was a series of sandwiches, cream cheese and pineapple, chicken salad, hot ham and Swiss cheese and so forth. It was great fun and I sucked down the China Oolong till I started to begin to feel revived. I captioned this picture in my mind as "a bull in a china shop":

The tearoom is actually a fund raising mission for local arts causes.we were there the day our tip went o the symphony so it was tea for a worthy cause. Our neighbors were two little old ladies who clearly were locals and dithered for a while over whether they wanted their usuals or were they willing to step out for a change? I sympathized with their dilemma and I silently applauded their decision to stick with their usuals. I do the same when I eat out in Key West. I think it's an affectation of age, one dithers and finally one plumps for the safe choice.

Their conversation was a revelation because in their youth they certainly had stepped outside their comfort zones, and we heard it all. The one on the left started out by admiring the jewelry of the one on the right and it turns out it was an Egyptian cartouche which she had picked up on a trip down the Nile. She quite liked Luxor too it turned out.

I asked our 'waitress' a member of the Tupelo Symphony Board in real life what people do for a living in Tupelo and it seems this little town is a hub for manufacturing and industry. People work here which in times like these comes as a bit of a change from the usual unemployment talk. I'd like to think the make a living wage but that may be a lot to ask.

We had the devil's own job finding Tupelo Honey in Tupelo, which it seems is actually a popular product from northwest Florida Tupelo Honey Facts - Tupelo Honey from Wewahitchka Florida - Smiley Apiaries which is what you get when you don't do your research. We found a delicious German bakery run by a German immigrant, and a delicious chocolate factory operated by someone who knows their chocolate and my wife finally found a jar of her honey.

I want to go back to Tupelo.

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Septic BS

My septic woes haven't gone away, something is wrong down the underground. Above ground the problems have been feeling monumental to me as well. I couldn't find a contractor to take this job on, even with my septic backing into my bath tub.

I poked around with my pick axe and found nothing. One contractor said go to the county and find the plans which show where the septic tank is. That sounded odd to me so we struggled through the weekend with a toilet ready not to flush and a shower that we feared to use...I used our outdoor shower and my wife went to the gym...and we had a porta potty at the ready! What a life in Paradise! The county offices were incredibly helpful including one clerk (a government worker no less) got me in touch with a contractor who showed up as promised and stated to work.

They poked through the dirt and rocks and eventually found the downpour buried in 18 inches of dirt. Cheyenne kept an eye on them to make sure nothing went amiss.

They looked at each other and said this missing septic tank needed the big guns to force it to give up its location.

Please come back was all I said as they got in the truck and ...sure enough Howie was back, and armed for bear.

He didn't need county plans, he got dug in and sure enough the dig revealed the missing cement box.

It was like an archaeological search, we knew the septic tank was there, but it was missing and hadn't been seen for years. We never had a septic tank in our house in California and surely not on our boat when we lived on that so we had no idea that this box was supposed to be pumped out every now and again.

So we can say in the eight years we've lived here this thing has never been opened and I doubt the previous owner did anything. No one had bothered to mark its location for sure so I am pretty certain it's worked without help for at least a decade. That's a pretty well built septic system I guess. Tomorrow we remove the lid and see what's what.

My thanks to Howie of Big Pine who leapt to my rescue. He sweated hard too, and reminded me you can get help sometimes even here where sometimes nothing seems to work, far out on the edge of the Gulf Stream.

The irony is the county is getting ready to install a central sewer system soon. That will be good for the nearshore waters and the coral but this septic system has given sterling service while being totally ignored. I've learned a lot this weekend. Tomorrow I expect to learn quite a bit more about where it all goes when I flush. Oh well, knowledge has got to be a good thing even if it stinks.

 

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Rowan Oak

I had long wanted to do a contrast-and-compare visit to the home of that other literary giant who managed to not get along very well with Key West's icon...

Compared to Hemingway's home on Whitehead Street Rowan Oak is statuesque and austere and very restrained. There are no cats, no tour guides, no painters cluttering the entrance with their daubs.

William Faulkner bought the place with 20 acres of woods and he lived a quiet life here with his wife Estelle and their daughter. There are no bars within easy distance of the house and it needs no wall to keep out the crowds.

The street which runs past the entrance is a quiet suburban road lined with expensive homes surrounded by greenery.

We only found the place thanks to the skill of my wife's iPhone navigator.

This home does not announce itself.

We drove cautiously down a woodland trail lined with parked cars, as though a Lovers' Lane until we dead ended into a turn around where we parked alongside a Texas SUV.

Leaving Cheyenne to snooze in the car in the shade of an overcast day we walked through the woods and came onto a lawn area in front of the house. I felt like a trespassing schoolboy lost in the grounds of a mansion. My wife is made of sterner stuff and she found an unmarked door and walked through it. Inside, Faulkner's home was remarkable in its air of normality. A young docent from Ole Miss took our ten dollar entrance fee for the pair of us and I signed the guest book. We were in. The living room with a youthful portrait of the author painted by his mother:

This statue came from Faulkner's visit to Japan in 1955:

This photograph was captioned as the only one taken of the author smiling (more or less) at his nephew's wedding.

There were two young students in the building keeping an eye on it, and us. I enjoyed chatting with him about Hemingway and Faulkner. He told the story where Faulkner was interviewed and the great man from Mississippi made the comment that Hemingway was not very brave in his writing, ie: that he didn't put much of himself into his books and apparently Hemingway took the bravery comment as a personal affront and they were no longer friends.

He also told us Faulkner's daughter had two stipulations when she sold the property, house and twenty acres of Bailey's Woods, to the University of Mississippi. She said no gift shoppe and no signs, hence the secret hidden nature of Oxford's most famous house. There are no tours of the house, you get a handout and you are on your own, free to wander and look, read and think. It's glorious and I had grand time.

The Great Man's writing room as he left it, much like Hemingway's except in this case he wrote sitting down.

In that very Adirondack chair.

It is well known supposedly that Faulkner wrote out his plots on the walls. This was his last effort:

His mother painted his portrait and his wife painted watercolors. She ended up with her own bedroom which finally got air conditioning the story goes, the afternoon of her husband's funeral. Faulkner did not approve of unnatural cool air.

Estelle's room with easel.

It doesn't seem like a bad job being a docent/guardian at the house.

The house has a very sober, unremarkable air. It's a nice house with a fireplace in every room, dark colors, thick carpets and bourgeois comfort at very turn. I think of Hemingway's place in Key West, still littered with all those souvenirs of travels, of life lived large. What a contrast.

Outside the grounds were perfectly kept, trees, shrubs, lawns , paths and ....a fire hydrant? Unlike the stereotype my dog didn't pee on it. Maybe because she's a girl. I really like how Cheyenne feels no compunction to mark her turf.

The docent said she was welcome to hang out outside so I retrieved her from the car and, as placidly as ever she wandered the grounds checking this and that.

Apparently Faulkner was quite the handy man and he had a smokehouse...

...and he also indulged in carpentry...

...and had a nanny who lived in her own home on the grounds.

Faulkner may not have approved of air conditioning but nowadays there is a tank-sized unit on the grounds pumping air. Cheyenne could have used some!

The cow barn was rebuilt using original woods and Faulkner used to get his milk from the animal.

My wife spotted this "Faulkner cat" on the grounds, as she called it.

The horse stable and paddock. Apparently Faulkner loved to ride, too bad it was quadrupeds and not motorcycles, but there we are.

Part of Faulkner's purchase was these woods next to his house. Nowadays they constitute a rather pleasant woodland park for public use.

Cheyenne followed me reluctantly, tired as she was she refused to get in the car and wait with my wife, but her torture was cut off early by the heavy wet sounds of raindrops crashing on the leaves above us.

I recommend a visit of course, as it was great fun to see the papers, articles, photos and movie posters from his Hollywood period, all displayed in a serene and laid back environment. I checked the visitor counter on the desk and saw 59 displayed, possibly the number of visitors. More than I expected less than would be in Hemingway's house. Faulkner was no prize fighter, bull runner or womanizer but he wrote like a man possessed. Too bad his home is hardly sign posted at all.

From Oxford to Tupelo, a name to conjure with, the town where Elvis was born and where they make and sell delicious bread and chocolates, and where we drank tea.

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