The south will rise again. Believe it.

This is the day I know you’ve been waiting for … the first installment of our road trip retrospective! I suppose the best way to get started would be a chronological album of photos, so grab a cup of coffee and get comfortable. If you don’t drink coffee please feel free to select a reasonable alternative.

Our first stop was an authentic Cajun lunch at Marilynn’s Place in Shreveport, Louisiana, about 175 miles from home. Sam and I both had “po-boy” sandwiches. I had shrimp, he had crawfish. My shrimp po-boy is pictured below alongside Bozz Baucum, Marilynn’s owner and chef, a very happy dude with a great accent. After lunch we drove a bunch of back roads across the entire state, which included small towns, real bayous and a stop at the Chennault Aviation and Military Museum in Monroe, located at the base (Selman Field) where my dad had been stationed for flight training during World War II. We crossed the Mississippi River and arrived at our first overnight destination in plenty of time for genuine southern cuisine at the Chinese Buffet of Vicksburg, which was everything we expected (cold egg rolls and too many kids). Afterwards we enjoyed a junket to the Ameristar Casino and I won myself a seriously lovely $120 jackpot on a penny slot machine.

Vicksburg has a lot of very nice riverboat casinos that attract a swinging local crowd of heavy smokers, where the average age is 70 and most are in wheelchairs.

On day two Sam and I visited the Vicksburg National Military Park, a 16-mile driving tour on the site of a 45-day siege during the Civil War that involved 77,000 Union soldiers and 33,000 Confederates. After trying to capture Vicksburg from every conceivable direction General Ulysses S. Grant eventually achieved victory by starving the entire city and forcing a surrender. The battlefield is an amazing experience. You can actually feel the ghosts!

Other activities in Vicksburg included swell food at Rusty’s Riverfront Grill, gigantic murals depicting the city’s history at Catfish Row, beautiful back roads and views of the Mississippi River, and a profitable afternoon (this time for Sam) at the Rainbow Casino, where we enjoyed a surprisingly excellent food at their excellent buffet. Frances the hostess was excellent, too. She brought me sugar-free pie — I love sugar-free pie! — and promised “the south will rise again.” Sam and I believed her.

Please stay tuned for the next installment of our road trip retrospective, probably tomorrow if I set aside enough time to sort through the photos. Sam and I have been busy watching a lot of crappy science fiction movies this week, such as Wild, Wild Planet (1965), a dubbed Italian dreck-fest that included a mad scientist turning people into teeny dolls with teeny diapers and teeny transfusion IVs, miniature sets with Jetson-style cars flying around on strings and idiot astronauts who hurl insults by calling each other “helium head.” Basically, this is a Technicolor version of Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), the worst movie ever made.

I think I’ll rustle up some grub and watch a few Boston Blackie reruns. Thank you for reading this!