Side Trips on the Blues Highway - Beauty & Redemption in the Belly of the Beast

Angola Prison has always fascinated me. Trips to Baton Rouge or New Orleans always took me past the sign on Highway 61 just north of St. Francisville, Louisiana that pointed to the prison with the African-sounding name famous for its violent history. I'd always heard that most of the prisoners at Angola were serving life sentences. This was where they sent people who had committed the ultimate crime, and for many of them, this was where they would live out the rest of their lives. Such people, already violent, had little to lose if they committed further violence, and for years it was known as the most dangerous prison in America.

In the 1970s, I heard about the annual Angola Prison Rodeo, and as a cub reporter for the local newspaper, I planned to attend the rodeo for a story, but mostly because I was curious. I heard stories about prisoners who braved incredible risks for a moment of glory, and I wanted to see it all, myself. But life interfered, and I never made it down there.

Then sometime in the 1990s I saw a story on television about Angola Prison's magazine, The Angolite, and its editor, convicted murderer Wilbert Rideau, who escaped execution when the death penalty was overturned in 1972. With the help of a young editor at a New York publishing house, Rideau learned the art of writing and eventually became the editor of The Angolite, winning numerous awards and international recognition. My curiosity, piqued, I subscribed to The Angolite for about a year, just to see what hardened criminals had to say to the world, their families, and other prisoners.

So when Tommy suggested we go visit the Angola Prison museum on the way back from Hammond, Louisiana last week, I responded with a quick yes.

The road from the turnoff at Highway 61 -- Highway 66 -- meanders 20 miles through some of the most beautiful country in America, rivaling The Natchez Trace for pastoral beauty. The museum sits outside the entrance to the prison, negating the need for a search of your car. Well, okay. I don't even know if they do search cars going into the prison, but it would seem prudent to do so.

Much of what I expected to see was no surprise, although it was, indeed, as interesting as I'd hoped it would be. There were exhibits that depicted everything about prison life, including a case full of homemade shanks and weapons that had been seized from prisoners throughout the years. It was a sobering reminder that Angola's history is filled with misery and bloodlust. In fact, during the 1960s, it was the bloodiest prison in the South, perhaps even the country. The mock-up of a typical prison cell in Angola's museum is stark and depressing.

Since the 1970s, however, prison reform has transformed Angola prison with rehabilitation efforts on behalf of the prisoners as well as adequate medical care. In addition to the annual rodeo, prisoners are encouraged to create artwork and furniture, which can be sold at the rodeo.

One of the first things to see at the museum is a taxidermy collection of fish, animals and reptiles that have been caught at Angola, including the biggest alligator gar fish I've ever seen. There is also a pretty darned big alligator gracing the exhibit.

Museum visitors can see Old Sparky, the electric chair that was used to execute prisoners prior to the advent of lethal injection. There are stories and newspaper clippings of famous escapes and prison uprisings and much to read about life at the prison, both past and present as well as death. One exhibit includes a beautiful funeral carriage, handcrafted by prisoners and carrying coffins also made by prisoners used to usher inmates from this world to the next, pulled by a magestic white Percheron horse, giving an air of dignity to a life lived where few dignities were allowed.

For sale at the museum are tshirts, photos, keychains and other tchkotchkes as well as several music CD albums with Blues, Spirituals, Worksongs, and other music created and played by Angola inmates. Tommy is trying to book the Angola Blues band to come play at Ferriday's next music festival.

The museum is definitely worth the side trip.

Museum hours are Tuesday - Friday from 8 AM - 4:30 PM

Saturday from 9 AM - 5 PM

Sunday CLOSED

Closed Major Holidays

The museum is operated by the Louisiana State Penitentiary Museum Foundation, which is a nonprofit organization. Although no admission is charged to visit the museum, donations are accepted to help defray the cost of operation. For information on scheduling a group tour, contact Marsha Lindsey, museum director at (225) 655-2592 or write to:

LSP Museum
General Delivery
Angola, Louisiana 70702

Found Items

71st Annual Commencement Program
Natchez Institute, 1916


Double click on the photo to view closeup

Matters Familia - Ephemera

As some of you may already know, I have a little online bookstore. I'm forever venturing out to libraries, Goodwill and Salvation Army stores looking for books to sell on my site, Bambooks Booksellers. When I first started doing this, I was stunned at the inscriptions and the objects I would find inside books -- ephemera, as it's called -- and how moving it often was.

One day I came across a book written by a mother about her son's suicide. I opened the book and a piece of folded paper fell out. On the outside, written in a child's scrawled hand, was this: "To all the Momis [sic]..."

I opened it up. Inside, was a picture of a sad face (like a happy face with the smile turned down). Next to it, "To all the momis. I'm sorry."

I feel certain it was a suicide note, and wondered if the family who gave all their loved one's books away knew the note was inside before releasing it to the world.

Another time I picked up a book to list it on the computer when I discovered a piece of notepaper stuck inside. The name of the book was Stone Alone: the Story of a Rock-and-Roll Band by Bill Wyman and Ray Coleman. It is, of course, about the Rolling Stones.

I often get a mental image of the kind of person who reads a certain kind of book. So I'm looking at this book on the Rolling Stones and I'm thinking it's probably someone about my age and into Rock-and-Roll. Someone who sowed their wild oats during the '60's or '70's. Someone who's laid back, relaxed, probably divorced by now, contemplating a hair transplant and a neck lift, and is wondering if that cute chick he laid at Woodstock is an insurance broker now.

Then I pull out a piece of notepaper. In carefully scripted cursive writing is the following:

When one seeks refuge
in a miracle, perhaps
it is that they are not
reminded that God has
so inundated this great
accident of life with
them; that it is perhaps
impossible to fit another
one in. Hence, it is only
a matter of reminding the
seeker of where they
might be found. And, as
common as they seem - they
are not without the
provision of God.

It sounded like the writings of someone with a terminal illness who'd had an epiphany and realized that the miracle they hoped to find is, perhaps, not the miracle they need. That perhaps their small life is not as important to the workings of the world as it is to him or her. I tried Googling the poem, and found nothing, so I assume it's original. That the person who bought the book wrote the poem.

It's really the old books that affect me the most, though. I remember finding a used bookstore one time that was filled to the ceiling with antique books whose owners had died many years before, the inscriptions inside providing clues to their lives, to their hopes, their fears and loves. And I remember becoming overwhelmed with a feeling of loss. I stood there in the stacks and found myself crying. There's just something so sad about lives that are only dust now, remembered by only a few and growing fewer every year.

I was reminded of these discoveries while going through Annet's house yesterday and finding the ephemera, if you will, of my predecessors.

My great, great grandmother, Anna Snyder from Alton, Illinois, was a personal friend of Abraham Lincoln. I've always heard the story that after the Civil War, she was abandoned by her husband. Destitute, she came to Natchez to be near family, clutching little more than her uncle's naval commission, signed by Lincoln, and a personal, handwritten invitation that Lincoln had sent to her for his inauguration. Being one of those rare people who was a celebrity in his own time, she knew that those signatures had more than sentimental value. If need be, she could get money for them.

We still have the naval commission, signed by both Lincoln and the secretary of the navy, Gideon Welles. But the invitation was lost. Annet used to say that Nana was a terrible housekeeper, and throughout all my searches, I had hoped to find it tucked away in a book or trunk tucked into the attic of the house. Alas, I've been through pretty much everything now, and the invitation has not materialized. I climbed into the attic to see what was there, but found that racoons had taken up residence therein and turned everything up there into confetti. If it was there, it's not there now.

But I did find something interesting. During the Civil War, Nana had permission to cross the Union lines. The story goes that she was good at a card game called "Whist," and was allowed to go back and forth to play whist with the officers. So when I came across an envelope on which Annet had written, "Nana's things," my heart skipped a beat.

Rather than the elusive Lincoln invitation, I found the Union pass allowing her passage back and forth. Written on the pass was her hair color (fair), her place of residence (Alton, Illinois), and "peculiarities," on which was written, "Good dance partner." Ha! (photo above) I also found a lock of her hair, the same color as mine. I'm the only one in my family with blonde hair, and had always wondered where it came from.

And yesterday, when I went through the last closet in the house, I found her marriage license, dated 1865, and signed by all who witnessed the ceremony.

Oh! I almost forgot. I think I found the ottoman spoken of in the newspaper article. I'll take some pictures and post them later.

But the most touching thing I found was a tiny little diary that had belonged to my grandfather. Grandaddy was a sweet, gentle, quiet man -- Annet's brother. I knew him as a patient man who seemed to have an aura of quiet sadness about him. For all the years I knew him, he suffered verbal abuse at the hand of Bessie Rose, his wife. She railed at him constantly, berating him for whatever struck her fancy, and he, quiet as always, simply endured it without comment.

Bessie Rose and her sister, Katherine Miller, were well known for meanness. I remember a conversation I had about them with Catherine Meng, who used to receive at Hope Farm for my aunt Katherine. Mrs. Miller had reduced her to tears one day when she upbraided her in front of a group of tourists about how she had delivered her spiel. And on another day, she'd greeted her at the door with, "Why, Catherine, what on earth convinced you to wear that color yellow? It's horrible." Or something to that effect.

Bessie Rose did the same type of thing, not only to me, but to others, as well. She lost several good friends because of it, but never stopped her behavior. Mrs. Meng told me that she thought maybe Bessie Rose was jealous of the attention her sister got for her efforts with the Pilgrimage, and I think she's right.

"The more attention Katherine got," recalled Mrs. Meng, "the meaner Bessie Rose became."

Many of my grandmother's friends lived in antebellum houses passed down through the generations. Grandaddy, however, was an insurance salesman, and although they lived comfortably, never lit the world on fire financially. She would bully their friends to buy insurance from him and berate him for not doing the same. Toward the end of his life, he told my father that she'd told him he was never a good provider.

"That's a tough thing to take at this point in my life," he muttered. "A tough thing."

It would be fair to say that my grandfather lived Thoreau's life of "quiet desperation." So, when I opened the little diary and found that my grandfather had had another love before his marriage to Bessie Rose, I was delighted to see a playful, happy side to him that I had never seen before.

The diary begins on January 1, 1919, when he was 21 years old and working at a bank in town. Every entry in the diary refers to a woman named Kate, who apparently lived in another town and with whom he was completely besotted. Tucked into a pocket in the front of the diary was a little calling card: "Miss Kate Doniphan Prichard"

I sat down and read every entry out loud to Sherry, who was helping me clean the house:

"I took an eight-mile hike in the morning - wrote to Kate in the evening. A full day!"

"2 a.m. up and off for a hunt. Had a three hours' row. Broke the stock of my gun and killed one goose. The day was very cold -- ground frozen. Wrote to Kate."

"Had a busy day. Collections took a lot of time & I only made two. Am gaining speed on the machine. off at 9:10 p.m.. No letter from Kate."

"Got my balance off early today but statements kept me till 6:30. Went down to the river & arranged for a boat for Sunday. Spent remainder of evening at home. No mail."

"Still no mail from Kate. Am getting worried. Finished work and wrote to Kate and went home."

"Got up at 1 a.m. Had a five-hour row. Percy [Benoist] and I hunted all day & never shot at a goose. Came home and wrote to Kate."

"Got a letter from Kate and read it three times, as usual. Wrote to her and now I am going to read hers again. Good night!"

"Just finished a rather interesting serial in Harper's. It furnished much food for thought. I can't decide whether it was disappointing or not. Wrote to the sweetest girl on earth -- alias Kate."


Remembering my sweet, kind granfather, I got a lump in my throat. My eyes welled up and tears started to fall. I had to stop and pause several times before going on. I think I scared Sherry half to death.

"This whole week will be heavy. Today was fairly so but watch tomorrow and Wednesday (underlined) I had another date this evening. Good-night, Kate dear. I am going to write you tomorrow."

"Rode around with Percy a little this morning & we went rowing this afternoon. Got a special delivery from Kate (underlined with a little arrow here pointing at Kate) and {red ink}. Wrote to her."

"Another letter from Kate. She is treating me splendidly. Wrote to Kate."

"Wrote to Kate this evening. Kate dear, I have been more lonely for you than ever today. I tried to tell you all about it in my letter. I am more in love than ever, dear."

At one point, he frets because he's done something to upset Kate, and he promises never to put her in a bad humor again. From the looks of things, though, he was more infatuated with Kate than she was with him. The diary stops on January 17 with nothing particularly notable. I guess he just petered out, as I did with my own diary attempts when I was young.

When I got home, I called my father.

"Who's Kate?"

"That was Kate Don Brandon," he replied, "Mary Ann Jones's mother. Her maiden name was Prichard, like ours but spelled differently. We'd always heard they had a thing for each other."

I called Mrs. Jones.

"Yes," she recalled. "We'd always heard there was a thing with them, and now we've got proof!"

Mrs. Jones mused that her mother was probably away at school at Newcomb at the time. Grandaddy was 21 years old. He married Bessie Rose in 1924, five years after the last entry in the diary.

Kate Don and he had both spent their lives in Natchez, married to other people. I wonder now if the flame he carried for her was ever truly extinquished. Did he love her from afar? Was she a reminder that life could hold better possibilities? If so, he never said anything to anyone, and never showed an inappropriate emotion.

A wonderful but bittersweet discovery in the leavings of the house on the bluff.

Matters Familia - Photos of Annet Munger Pritchartt

Click on photos to enlarge.

Matters Familia - The Fabric of Time

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been going through the house my great grandfather built in 1900 on the bluff overlooking the Mississippi River.

He was a purser on the Anchor Steamship Line. When he settled in Natchez, he wanted a house from which he could watch the river he loved so dearly. His great niece and my cousin, Annabelle Rupert, found the following items about him: 

Name: William Howard Pritchartt. Newspaper article from St. Louis Newspaper about 1885 "SURPRISE - Among the many gallant and courteous gentlemen who do service in the offices of the various steamboats coming to this city, and particularly those of the Anchor Line, there are none perhaps more courteous, polite and efficient than Mr. W.H. Pritchartt, of the steamer Arkansas City. 

As a proof of his popularity, and the esteem in which he is held, especially by the ladies who are fortunate enough to secure passage on this boat, Mr. Pritchartt was presented, on the last trip to Natchez, with a beautiful stool or ottoman cover, exquisitely finished, and wrought in various colors. To say that the fortunate gentleman was surprised would be putting it mildly. 

The fair donors of the handsome present were Mr. Capt. C.B. Ziegler, Mrs. Oscar Moore, and Miss Anne Mounger, all of St. Louis. These ladies are making the round trip on the elegant steamer. Mr. Pritchartt is proud of his treasure, but cannot realize how the ladies managed to resurrect Joseph's many colored coat of ancient fame, with which the dainty piece of work is finished." 

 Excerpt from his obit in 1934 - Natchez Democrat: 

". . . For a time he was connected with the Anchor Line steamboats on the Mississippi river. When he came to Natchez in Sept, 1889, he went into business with the late Captain S.E. Rundle. In 1905, with W.R. Wade, he organized the firm of W.H. Pritchartt & Company and was connected with it until 1916. ............" William Howard Pritchartt was born in St. Louis in 1856 and died in Natchez MS 1934. He married the lady Annie Munger that made him the stool. 

His daughter, my great aunt, Annet, lived there her whole life. She was a spinster lady who died when she was about 97 years old, way back around 1992. Our family is cursed with sentimentality, sometimes to the point of -- well, let's just say -- eccentricity? 

 Even though my brother has lived there for the past ten years or so, none of Annet's things had been touched. "Oh, I hate to get rid of them," he'd say. "They remind me of coming over here when I was little." The clothes were still in the closet in her bedroom; her shoes tucked neatly away beneath a table by the door; her hairbrushes, jewelry, medications, powders and creams still sitting on the dressing table. And over all was a thick coating of dust and spider webs. It reminded me of Miss Haversham's house in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. 

So I finally decided to take matters into my own hands, and I've been cleaning out her things. It has been a journey both of adventure and discovery, but one that leaves me sad at going through the things that tell of the life of one I loved so dearly, disposing of what no one would want, and saving all the flotsam that would tell stories of our family's past. 

Annet was a woman before her time -- keenly intelligent and independent in an age where neither was particularly encouraged. She went to Stanton College for Ladies here in Natchez, and then on to Barnard and Columbia University in New York where she majored in history. After school, she took a trip to Europe, alone, sending home postcards and letters that had all been lovingly saved and preserved. 

Although history was her major, she had a knack for mathematics, which she taught at Braden School in Natchez for 40 years. I've been told that through her tutoring efforts many a boy was able to enter West Point with grades so high, they weren't required to take math. I remember she once told me that the lowest grade she'd ever made was in calculus, and that was an A-minus.  Alas, I didn't share her talent with numbers. I still count on my fingers, can't do simple subtraction and division is a soul-sucking impossibility. 

But I loved her dearly. I remember many a time going over to her house and entering to the smell of homemade applesauce on homemade melba toast. I found the grinder she used to grind the apples with, scraping it off the sides into a big pot she'd set on the stove with spices. She made pull taffy and fudge and always came for Thanksgiving with a batch of uncooked cranberry relish with orange rind. 

Animals seemed to sense that her house would be a refuge, and even two of my own pets moved to her house, just because. One day she went out onto the back porch to find a fully grown rooster crowing on the top step. As it turns out, the neighbor behind her, Mr. Logan, had owned that chicken and planned to make dinner of him. He escaped with his head intact, however, and went straight to Annet's house. 

 We brought him to our house and he lived the happy life as head of his own little harem for many years to come. We named him Mr. Logan. 

Yesterday, I went into a trunk in the hallway and found scores of little Victorian dresses -- dresses that Annet had worn as a child, a Mardi Gras outfit dating back probably to about 1904, and even the dress she wore at graduation. That's Annet in the dress on the front porch of the house. 

 I'm terrified to disturb the items, and am trying to determine what should be done with them. I suspect one of the small girl's dresses is the one she's seen wearing in a book of photographs that was published by Dr. Thomas Gandy called "Norman's Natchez." She's about two years old in the photograph and is a beautiful, angelic-looking child in a white dress. 

 As soon as I have access to a scanner, I'll scan it for you, Readers, to see. A woman in Natchez whose name I can't recall made a doll that looked just like the photo. It's nearly life-sized, and I'm thinking it would be really nice to dress the doll in the original dress and donate it to the Natchez Historic Foundation or the Mississippi Historic Archives. In the meantime, I'll dig further and let you know what treasures I find. *Thanks to Annabelle Rupert for sending the photos of Annet.

So Rose the Dead

I'm cleaning out things that should've been cleaned years ago at my great aunt's house on the bluff. In my cleaning adventures yesterday, I ran across a typewritten copy of the following article, whose date I could not ascertain. It is so delicious, I don't think it needs further introduction. Enjoy:


Chicago Herald Examiner
A Sunday Edition

Culture of Natchez
Old Mansions Invaded by Tourists
By Thomas Craven

The spirit of the old South, the languorous, magnetic South, lingers on in the little city of Natchez. Situated on the Mississippi, with wooded hills and a magnificent view of the river and the low green fields of Louisiana, Natchez is waging its last fight against the irresistible forces of the changing world. As a commercial center, the town is a tomb, a plaintive echo of past opulence, as the sacred citadel of culture with its aristocratic embellishments. It is a landmark in the history of American manners. Here uncontaminated by the encroachments of modern life, you will find mansions, gardens and great estates and the ancestral pride which is the outstanding glory of the ancient regime.

Natchez is famous for its gardens, and that fame is abundantly justified on every hand, but the old houses, with two or three exceptions, are architectural messes. The houses erected from the fruits of slave labor and in the old days staffed with a retinue of black servants are enormous structures with endless balconies or galleries ornamented profusely with grilled ironwork.

You will see in these time-eaten mansions, some of the finest extant specimens of English silver, old chairs and tables of excellent design and incomparable craftsmanship, and occasionally, family portraits painted by real artists such as Audubon and Gilbert Stuart.

The peculiar appeal of Natchez is not based on the intrinsic excellence of its showplaces, nor can it be attributed to any superiority in matters of taste and artistic discrimination. It arises from the legendary appeal of the Old South; and that lure, critically examined, is rooted in snobbery and fantastic notions of superior breeding. Snobbery, of course, is not the exclusive possession of the South. We find it permeating the cultural aspirations of Americans of every locality driving our heightened artists into complete subservience to European standards. But as concerns the actual traditions and deposits of slave-holding lords, the South is still esteemed as the cream of American culture.

For this reason, Natchez attracts to its hallowed atmosphere an annual pilgrimage of culture seekers. Conscious of its superiority and literally bankrupt, the town, in plain language, has been forced to sell its most cherished possession, its culture, to outsiders with money to spend. Every spring a week is set aside for the exploitation of inherited treasures and family pride. The far-famed old mansions are thrown open to the public – admission twenty-five cents: visitors are fed and quartered at reasonable rates in houses which, some years ago, could not be penetrated for love or money: the skeleton in every is exhibited for a small consideration; and there are other sources of revenue – costume balls, parades, festivals, and garden parties.

Last spring the PILGRIMAGE netted the town about $40,000 and enabled the mortified aristocrats to carry on another twelve months.

After the curiosity seekers have departed, laden with cultural baggage and sometimes with antique chairs and soup tureens, the aristocrats close the doors of their august abodes and meditate on the glories of a vanished society -- the life described by Stark Young in his fable. SO ROSE THE DEAD.

I couldn't ascertain the date of the publication, which I estimate at sometime in the 1930s.  "So Red the Rose" was published in 1935, so it had to be after that.

The author, Thomas Craven was an art critic with a decidedly jaundiced eye.  You can read about him here.

Enjoy!  It's kind of mean, which is probably why I find it so delicious.

*Photo "Saragossa" by Lee England, Echoes Photographic Gallery

Green Sky at Morning

I love Sunday mornings. There's no place I have to be, nothing pressing that has to be accomplished. So this past Sunday morning, I was all piled up on the sofa playing on the computer. It was supposed to rain that day. I knew about it because I've got this application on the computer called Weather Bug that alerts me whenever there's something going on.

If there's a weather alert, Weather Bug lets me know by chirping like a cricket. I love the music of crickets. It's peaceful and pretty and reminds me of summer evenings sleeping on the screen porch at Annet's house. My little Weather Bug cricket had been chirping away all morning, and I was thinking how it would be doubly nice, not only having a Sunday morning, but having a nice, rainy Sunday to stay inside and be a bum and listen to the rain on the tin roof at Shantybellum. I'd spent the previous 27 years living in Los Angeles, and the thing I missed more than anything about living in the South was rain and thunder and the smell of ozone in the air after a cloudburst.

It was about 9:45 a.m., and I was thinking maybe I should get up and see about starting the day when I heard Tommy in the next room.

"Uh, oh."

I peeked around the corner to see what was wrong. He was staring out the window towards the bluff. I looked to see what he was looking at and had a very distinct this-does-not-compute moment. I couldn't see anything outside. Nothing. It was as dark as I've ever seen it, even in the middle of the night. Suddenly, we were enveloped in a deafening roar. Rain was blowing down in sheets. Thunder was intense and constant. Then the hail arrived, ranging in size from marbles to ping pong balls. And the air turned a strange shade of green.

I've heard about green skies. They usually signal a tornado and/or hail. I dashed into the bathroom, the only room in the house without a window, and jumped into the tub.

"Wow," said Tommy. "I can't believe this wind. You should see the front-porch swing. It's sticking straight out...."

"Get away from the window," I shouted, "and get in here!"

Men. Here we are, about to die and all he wants to do is stand and look at how cool the storm is.

Finally the spell was broken and he came back into the bathroom with me and we waited. The noise was incredible. In a couple of seconds, the lights went out. We sat in the dark and listened to the roar of hail on tin and thunder and wind. After only a few minutes, though, it quieted down. Gingerly, we emerged from our shelter to look outside. Green had given way to a strange sort of amber. Water seeped in under the front door. I opened it to look outside and a pile of hail collapsed inward. Leaves were plastered against the house. The streets were completely covered in tattered leaves and hail.

After awhile the phone rang. It was a friend of Tommy's up in Indianola who had heard about the storm. Trees were down all over town. I grabbed my keys to check Annet's house on the bluff. Everything seemed okay from the front, so I decided to drive down the alley in back to see what was what in the backyard.

That's when I noticed the Foley's house, directly behind Annet's. We had been neighbors of the Foleys when I was growing up on Linton Avenue. We played with their children, and Glen, who spent many weekends with us at our cabin in the woods, still comes to see my dad when he's in town. Like my own parents, Glen's parents are growing old. My father's muscled frame and the strength that had awed Glen as a child has given way to the atrophy of aging, and the parents who were our heroes are now fragile and fallible.

A huge tree had blown down, taking out the back of their kitchen and crushing the carport with the two cars in it.

I went to the door and rang the bell. Mrs. Foley's shellshocked visage peered out. She looked very small.

"Hi, Mrs. Foley. I'm Elodie Pritchartt. Are y'all okay?"

"We're all right," she said. "But come see my kitchen."

The tree had come through the back of the kitchen, which was where she and Mr. Foley had been standing.

"I saw it coming through the window and I dove underneath the table," she said, "and yelled for Bob to run. I was under the table and could feel hail hitting my back."

I can't imagine how frightened she must have been. Fortunately neither of them was hurt. It will be quite a job removing the fallen tree.

I'd heard of straight-line winds, and that's what this storm seemed to indicate, at least to me. The trees down all over town seemed to have been shoved, not twisted, and all in the same direction. On Monday, I saw the following item in the paper:

INTENSE DOWNBURST IN ADAMS COUNTY MS...

TIME OF EVENT: 945 AM 5/3/09
LOCATION: NATCHEZ
RATING: WINDS 80-90 MPH
FATALITIES: 0
INJURIES: 0

SUMMARY OF DAMAGES:
INTENSE DOWNBURST WINDS ASSOCIATED WITH A LARGE BOWING LINE OF
SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS IMPACTED MUCH OF THE CITY OF NATCHEZ. HUNDREDS
OF TREES, BOTH HARDWOOD AND SOFTWOODS, WERE SNAPPED AND UPROOTED
ALONG WITH HUNDREDS OF LIMBS. TREES FELL ON AT LEAST 41 STRUCTURES
INCLUDING HOMES AND OUTBUILDINGS, CAUSING MAJOR OR MINOR DAMAGE.
MANY POWERLINES WERE SNAPPED BY THE WINDS OR TREES/LIMBS FALLING ON
THEM. THE DAMAGE WAS SCATTERED OVER A LARGE AREA AND MORE INDICATIVE
OF STRAIGHT LINE WINDS.

http://www.weather.gov/view/prodsByState...

And today, I learned a new term -- derecho. A derecho is defined by Wikipedia here. And ABC news reported on our Sunday morning derecho here.

It's now Wednesday, and although we got our electricity back by about 7:30 that evening, my father still has none. Several main thoroughfares through town remained closed yesterday while crews continue to removed debris and repair electric lines.

My friend Courtney Taylor called yesterday to say that our friend Sessions Hootsell had a funny story about the storm. His housekeeper had been at church when the storm hit, and was outside cooking chicken on several small, portable Coleman barbeque grills. When the wind came through, the grills lifted up and levitated in the air. Then the chicken levitated, too. Then, whoosh!

"Chickens flying! Chickens flying!" she was reported to have screamed. Well, I'd have screamed, too. I wasn't even outside, but I was ascared aplenty, and if a plucked chicken had come sailing through the house, crying, "The sky is falling," I'd have taken its word for it.

*photos and post by Elodie Pritchartt

A Shanty. And a Delta Blues Epiphany

As promised, Tommy, Courtney and I returned from our road trip through the Delta and now we're ready to share what we did and saw. We had a blast. I took pictures, and Courtney wrote about it. In addition to being drop-dead gorgeous, Courtney Taylor is a talented gourmet, writer, actress and all-around smart Southern girl. I've known her since she was a kid, but this was the first time I'd gotten together with her in a professional capacity. Okay, well, I have a hard time thinking of it as professional since we had so much fun. Is that allowed?

And Tommy? Well, I'll let Courtney tell you about Tommy, our hometown boy who found beauty in the music of grief at the end of a man's life on a Lousiana levee, how it led him to Nashville and back again, where he works to make it mark new beginnings for the people and the place he calls home.

Read the article here in this month's Country Roads Magazine.

*photo and post by Elodie Pritchartt

Cherry Grove

All around the old place,
the dead visit. 

The day he opened up the trunk
of that sweetgum tree,
and before we saw the
horseshoe hanging inside,
something brushed against
my face. 

 I heard a nickering
far away, and the smell of oiled
leather and candlewax.

A few days later Lloyd
found an anvil half
inside an oak tree, back
by the old barn. It was ten
feet up that tree, and
the color of storm clouds
when the air smells like metal
and electricity breaks
it right in two. 

They say
a shipwright lived
there once. I know.
I've heard him hammering.

That was before the rumor
of the slave revolt across
the road. Nineteen men killed,
tortured, all for the sake
of a child's tale. A child
named Obey. 

 No excuses.

The crape myrtle we cleared from
the back forty bled claret-
colored sap, and stuck inside
one old, stubborn knot
was a skeleton key.

The silver lying all around,
tarnished forks and bone-
china plates. Daddy said
she burnt that house a’purpose,
took the tram to the train
and left town. 

Nobody ever saw her again.
But to be frank, I don't
believe it.

I saw her walking in the fog
one morning, early. Picking bones,
rearranging bricks,
breaking twigs over and over.

She saw me too.
We've been talking
back and forth, she and I,
between the branches.

*photo and post by Elodie Pritchartt

mmmhellooo?

Lots of strange goings on in our little corner of the universe lately. Friday morning I was leaving my dad's house around 10:30 a.m. Daddy was doing his usual thing -- pushing stuff around on the tractor and playing the part of Eddie Albert in Green Acres. When I pulled out of the driveway there was a little silver convertible mustang idling across from our driveway. The person driving the car was obviously a man, white, and fat with a large, blonde wig and sunglasses. For a moment, I could've sworn it was Betty Butterfield.

When I drove past, I looked in the rearview mirror to see what he was going to do. He very slowly eased forward and stopped again. Hmm. This was just too strange. We live in the country and with no one else around, I wasn't leaving my 83-year-old father at home by himself, even if he can still chop down 200-year-old trees without help from anyone, so I turned around. When he saw me turn around, he drove off down the road. I followed him until I could get close enough to get a plate number. After about a half a mile, he turned back around and went back towards our house. By the time I turned around again, he'd gone.

I called a friend in the sheriff's office and asked him to make a report and gave him the plate number. So far, the mystery transvestite hasn't reappeared, at least that I know of. A famous author lives across the street, so maybe it was just some weird fan trying to get a gander at him.

So that was bizarrity number one. Now for number two:

Tommy and I have been attending tourism conferences lately to learn about social networking on the web, and making it work for Shantybellum. Everyone's told us we need a Facebook group, a blog (what you're reading right now), a Twitter account and a Digg account. There are others, too, but I can only spread myself so far.

So I set up a Twitter account to let people know when things are going on, when I've made a blog post, etc. For those of you who've been living on Mars and don't know what Twitter is, it's kind of like a mini-blogging site where you post short status updates, and people who are interested in hearing from you sign on as followers of your Twitter blog.

Whenever someone decides to follow me, Twitter sends me an email to let me know about it. So far I know most of the people who follow me. But yesterday I got an email from Twitter telling me some guy named Roberto was following me on Twitter. Since I didn't know him, I looked at his profile. I figured if he was following other Natchez people, it's probably someone I've met and don't remember. So I check to see who he's following, and he's following a whole bunch of women named Elodie. Sheesh! Creeped me out. Needless to say I blocked him. But that coupled with the fat cross dresser just...I dunno. Weirded me out.

Well, that's about it, all I wanted to say. Another day in paradise. And for those of you who've never seen Betty Butterfield? Be sure to look her up. She's a Southern, drinkin', prayin', substance abusing middle-aged woman who's searching for a church to fit her pocketbook and a doctor who'll dispense the pills she wants (somethin' with a vee in it) without asking too many questions.

She's played by Chuck Knipp, a Southerner who went to Ole Miss and has done real-life stints as a nurse on a mental ward and a unitarian minister. The first time I discovered him, I played Betty Butterfield videos all day and got the best dose of endorphins I've had in a looong, looong time.

If you need a laugh, check out the mad, maudlin world of Betty Butterfield.

Picture This

In addition to being all-around brilliant and humble, Elodie works at Echoes Gallery in downtown Natchez. Echoes offers a variety of beautiful black-and-white archival photographic prints, many of Natchez and the surrounding area as well as Europe and Morocco, by photographer Lee England.

Lee sells his prints direct from the gallery as well as online at www.englandphotographic.com and at www.bambooks.biz.

A Surry with the Fringe on Top

What's cuter than a group of drunk, middle-aged women in obnoxious Easter Bonnets? Nothing!


The day before Easter found some of the most fun wimmens in Natchez at their annual Easter Bonnet Parade, organized by the ever indefagitable Kathy Sizemore, partier extraordinnaire. It was a whirlwind trip around town in two buggies with two tired, irritated horses that wanted nothing more than to go back to the barn.

But there were songs to be sung, milk punches to be drunk, and merriment to be had!

This was Elodie's first year in the parade, and she did not understand the importance of sporting a decadently flambouyant bonnet. Nevertheless, she showed up with a rather plain-Jane bonnet, and took photos of the others.

The parade started out at City Park on Main Street when all 18 wimmins, primed with milk punch, started singing the Easter Bonnet Song, albeit to a rather low key begun by Anna Watts, who might want to think about giving up the late nights and bourbon. Ahem.

Even though they each had a copy of the lyrics, they all forgot the tune in the final refrain, but were happy to fill in their own, which made for a pretty awful rendition.

Everyone came out on the street to see the group of middle-aged, middle-spread women who thought they looked, um, hot, and who were trying to convince themselves that black is a good color for Easter. The mustaches and sweat beads battled for the strategic positions of their upper lips.

At Andrew's Bar and at Biscuits and Blues, people swarmed out onto the sidewalk to see the colorful caravan. When they arrived at The Corner Bar, however, all the doors were closed.

"They're closed!" someone said.

"No, they're not," replied another. "I see people at the bar."

Soon the door was opened and someone who shall remain nameless, (cough! Meredith) yelled, "Let your people go!" before realizing that the man standing in the doorway was African-American.

The parade ended at Bowie's Tavern where the bartender awaited behind a line of milk punches, shaking her head and mumbling, "I shoulda made milquetoast for this bunch of elderly idiots."

The Kiss-lookalike band waiting to play music that evening kindly posed with the ladies, who still thought they looked hot.

At any rate, a grand time was had by all (except the horses). No matter. What happens behind the horse's ass stays behind the horse's ass. Right, girls?

Happy Easter, everyone!

*photos by Elodie Pritchartt

Happy Easter, Everyone

photo by Elodie Pritchartt

What a cold front looks like

One morning a couple of weeks ago, I was sitting on the porch at Shantybellum, enjoying the warm, balmy weather, when I looked across the river and noticed the air looked...well, strange. It was very dark on the Louisiana side. I couldn't even see Lousisiana, come to think of it. It just didn't seem normal.

So I grabbed my camera and headed over to the bluff. As I was walking toward the bluff near Learned's Mill Road, I looked down at the river and noticed a diagonal line that seemed to divide the river. I'd only been there a second or two when suddenly the air on the northernmost side of me turned cold. That's when I realized it was a cold front.

I'd never seen one. The temperature dropped in half a second from what was probably 75 degrees to maybe 50 degrees. For just a second there, I could still feel the warm air on one side of my body and the cold on the other.

I started running down the bluff toward Silver Street but soon realized the front was moving much faster than I could ever possibly hope to move. So I snapped a couple of shots. Just in the nick of time, too, I might add. Anyway, this is a photo of what a cold front looks like.

*photo by Elodie Pritchartt

Matters Familia - Dying People Don't Eat Duck

J. Balfour Miller

What is it with my family? From as early as I can remember, my grandmother was a dying woman. I’d call her on the phone or go see her and she’d scowl:

“Why haven’t you called me lately? I’m a dying woman, you know. I might not be around much longer.”

“Um, I just called you.”

“Well, you should do it more often. I might die.”

Sigh.

Way back in the early 80’s my (then) husband and I were running a restaurant. (We lost our behinds with that, btw. Never, ever again.) But I digress. Anyway, the phone rang and it was my grandmother calling to see what we were having for the daily special.

Ring, ring!

“Broadway Station,” said spouse.

A pitiful groan, followed by, ‘Hellooo?” Who is this?” Cough, cough! Sob.

“Oh, hi, Bessie Rose,” said spouse. “It’s Jeff.

“What do you have today, dear?”

After awhile she’d forget she was dying and start talking in a normal tone of voice.

“Oh, we’re having duck à l’orange. Would you like me to send you a plate?

A gasp followed by retching and coughing.

“God, child! Don’t you know dying people don’t eat duck?? Sob!”

My great uncle Balfour was a hypochondriac, too. No matter what time of day or night it was, he could always be found in his bathrobe and slippers in the TV room with a twinkle in his eye, a drink in his hand and spittle in the corners of his mouth, insisting on a kiss from the ladies. Out of deference for his age, most of them would comply. Well, okay. Maybe he was kinda cute.

When he was in his twenties, he predicted he’d be dead by thirty. When thirty passed him by, he decreed he’d be gone by forty. But somehow, he made it into his fifties, certain that someone that ill would never make it to his sixties, which is when I came along.

He spent his sixties with the Grim Reaper knocking at his door, and his seventies with one foot in the grave. It was about then that he started showing up at the hospital ICU, suitcase in hand. He’d pick a bed and climb in, and when the nurse asked him what he was doing there, he’d reply, “Well, I’m waiting for the doctor, of course.”

“But, sir. You’re not a registered patient here. We don’t have a doctor for you.”

“Well, then get me one,” he’d reply.

In the meantime, he’d call his favorite saleslady at Godchaux’s and ask her to bring a case of her best jewelry. There she’d sit on the side of the bed showing him brooches, rings and other assorted baubles, which he’d buy and give to his wife and her friends. It wouldn’t do to die without leaving something to remember him by.

By the time he reached his eighties, he and the Angel of Death were on a first-name basis. Rather than show up at the hospital, he had a hospital bed brought into his bedroom.

I remember a conversation I had with him when he was about 90. He said, “You know, when I turned seventy, I figured I’d better write my will. I knew I was going to die within a year or so. You know what I just realized? That was over twenty years ago.”

He was baffled.

But you know what? He was right. Hypochondria finally did kill him when he was ninety-three. He died in 1985 saying, “I told you I didn’t feel good.”

He’d even purchased a tombstone and had it engraved, “One of Natchez’s prominent philanthropists,” which now that I think about it, was awfully similar to the monument that had been erected for J.N. Carpenter, who did so much for the city of Natchez. Talk about keeping up with the Joneses.

One day, my great aunt Annet and her friend Lillie Vidal Boatner were driving through the cemetery. They passed Balfour’s stone.

“Oh, look, Annet,” exclaimed Lillie Vidal. “They’ve misspelled philanderer.”

Come to think of it, I think maybe Uncle Balfour was a bit of a narcissist...and a philanderer.

But enough about him. Let’s talk about me.

A few weeks ago, I suddenly started aching. It started with a sharp pain in my right knee. Then it migrated to the left knee. Then it went to my hip. And then sometimes I noticed when I woke up in the morning the joints in my fingers hurt.

So I’ve given it a lot of thought and have narrowed it down to two possibilities:

a. Lupus

or

b. Lyme Disease


Oh, gosh! I think I might DIE! Of course, it could just be that I’m just getting old and fat.....nah.

On the Road

Tommy and Elodie will be taking a road trip with Courtney Stacy-Taylor on Thursday to do a story about touring the Blues Highway 61. Y'all stay tuned.









*photo by Elodie Pritchartt

Cool Cats at the Shanty Shack

Shantybellum has been adopted by two feral kitties, who aren't so feral since Elodie, the cat whisperer, worked her magic on them. We saw them last summer when they were just a few weeks old, but couldn't get to them on the other side of the fence before Mama kitty stole them away to unknown places. Three little kitties - a calico, a long-haired gray, and a solid black.

About six months later, Elodie saw Bella, the calico, in the backyard and set a trap.

"Elodie, don't you be catching any cats," Tommy said, "We don't need any cats hanging around here. Besides, I'm a dog person," he added. He was promptly ignored.

She caught the gray first and took it to the vet, Dr. Gregg in Vidalia, to have her spayed. She was such a gorgeous cat, Dr. Gregg found her a home right away.

So then we caught Shanty, the black magic cat, and took him to Dr. Gregg's to be neutered. Next day we got Mama kitty. Off to the vet. No more babies for this tired mama, who had been seen bringing mice to her kittens when they were living in their secret place. Finally, we caught Bella, the calico.

No one wanted the three remaining kitties, so we brought them back, realizing they'd never be tamed, but willing to offer food nonetheless. Elodie started staying outside while they ate from the other side of the yard. Before long, they knew when she called, "Here, kitty, kity!" that meant dinner, and before long they were running at the sound of her voice. She moved the food a little closer. Finally, they agreed to eat right next to her as long as she wouldn't try to touch them.

Then one day, Elodie managed to stroke Bella's back.

"Ooh! That's feels, good," she said. "Could you scratch a little more to the right?"

Before long, Bella was letting Elodie pick her up and snuggle, although Shanty still had his doubts. Finally one day, she caught Shanty off guard and he realized that he might like to spend the rest of his days being fed and massaged. Those two cats can purr louder than the Evinrude we used to use out on the river.

Okay, well, Shanty doesn't like to be held, but he's affectionate to a fault as long as you leave him on the ground. The mama cat has completely disappeared, although Elodie saw her once last week for the first time in several months. She seemed well fed, so we're hoping she's partaking of our thrice and four-times daily feedings.

Oh, and Tommy? He's fallen in love. I think it's safe to say he's a cat person now. A cool cat person.

As much as we'd like to bring them both inside, we know all about the whole cat-allergy problem, so there's no need to get your dander up about cat dander. They're outside cats.

Y'all meet Shanty and Bella.

200 Years of Liberty

His small face illumined by the flames, four-year-old Robert Stratton watched, awestruck, as fire consumed the family home dark night in 1948. The house his ancestors had built in 1850 was a conflagration that filled the night sky. You can read about it here.

Stormy Weather

Way back in 1840 Natchez experienced some of the scariest weather possible -- an F5 tornado that stretched all the way across the river and still some, and was so powerful, it killed more people than it injured. If you've never read his columns on Natchez history and the surrounding area, Stanley Nelson provides some of the most well-researched, most fascinating accounts about this country's beginnings in The Concordia Sentinel.

The tornado story gives first-hand accounts in two parts, which you can read here and here.

Image ID: wea00218, Historic NWS Collection
Location: Near Jasper, Minnesota
Photo Date: 1927 July 8

http://www.tornadochaser.net/histphoto.html

The Garter, the Sword and the Veil

The Garter

“Guard this with your life,” said Stella Jenkins Carby as she handed over a scrapbook made for The Garter Girls, a group of women in Natchez, Mississippi, who began a wedding tradition around a bridal garter in 1946 that still continues. 

Stella’s daughter, Bettye Jane Carby, was the thirty-fifth girl to wear the coveted garter when she said, “I do,” to husband Charlie Roberts on December 13, 2008, at the Carby’s home in Natchez.

The garter was made by the late Mrs. Howard Pritchartt, Sr. for Buzzy Parker, when she married Bobby Crook in 1946. Buzzy and her friends, decided to share the garter, which would see them through marriages and births, war and peace, riches and despair, and beyond.

Rather than having the groom toss the garter, the girls decided it should be passed down to their children. 

They made some rules:

1. Can only be worn by a daughter or a son’s bride

2. Can be worn by Mabel (Raworth’s) children (an honorary member who was not part of the original group)

3. Can be worn once by any person to get married

4. Can be worn on 25th anniversaries (and now on 50th)

The first photo of the garter girls was taken by Mrs. Helen Jenkins, whose son, Sonny, was Bettye McGehee’s beau. He would later become her husband.

“She took the photo to send to Sonny in World War II,” remembered Sallie Ballard, one of the original Garter Girls. “He was flying the Hump in Burma. We were at the Beltzhoover’s pool at Green Leaves, and we were all sophomores, maybe juniors,” she added.

“The bigger girls at the pool all had cigarettes, so we all got cigarettes from them and posed. It was the first year two-piece bathing suits were available to the public, so it was kind of shocking.”

It’s too fragile now to actually wear, but is still reverently passed from one girl to the next, all descendants of the original seven girls, whose friendship lasted throughout the years — Mary Ann Brandon Jones, Bettye McGhee Jenkins, Virginia Beltzhoover Morrison, Sallie Junkin Ballard, the late Dunbar Merrill Flinn, the late Buzzy Parker, the late Mabel Conger Raworth and the late Alma Cassell Kellogg Carpenter.

“Once somebody had worn it, you kept it until somebody else needed it,” recalled Mrs. Ballard. “After [my daughter] Dix got married and the garter was hers, I remember telling [my late husband] Basil, ‘If by hook or crook our house catches fire, grab up all the family pictures and — whatever you do — get the garter.’”

Mrs. Ballard continued: “Basil looked at me and said, ‘I’ll go back into a burning house for family pictures, but not that garter. If it’s that important, you need to take it and put it in a lock box at the bank.’”

And that’s exactly what she did, as have many others burdened with the onus of such responsibility.

The Sword

“Be very, very careful with these,” said Joie Morrison as she handed over family photos. “Please don’t let anything happen to them.”

Standing in the hallway of a house that has been owned and lovingly cared for by her family since 1849, and surrounded by heirlooms such as bone china attributed to John James Audubon, a family Bible dating back to 1670, and old Natchez silver made by Natchez silversmith George MacPherson, it is clear that care should, indeed, be taken. The members of this family are keepers of the flame, stewards of history and tradition.

The story of the sword begins at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

“Unfortunately, this is all oral history, as the best stories always are,” said Ruthie Coy, Joie’s cousin and the niece of Joie’s mother, Virginia Lee Beltzhoover Morrison.

According to family lore, the sword was picked up after the battle of Waterloo by a French soldier whose grandson joined the Confederate army and was in Colonel Daniel Beltzhoover’s unit — Watson’s Louisiana Artillery. It was in Vicksburg where the grandson was mortally wounded, and as he lay dying gave it to “Colonel Dan.”

Can’t you just imagine the young soldier, mortally wounded, his lifeblood leaking out onto the Vicksburg soil, gasping, “Colonel Dan, suh…cough!”

“What is it, son?”

“Mah sword, suh. Please, take it. It belonged to mah grandfathuh at Waterloo. Cough! Suh, guard it with your life!”

Later, when Colonel Dan’s horse was shot out from under him, the bullet struck the scabbard of the sword and cracked the sword, itself.

“See, here’s the bullet hole,” said Joie, pointing to the scabbard. She pulled out the sword. “We still have the whole sword, but it broke it right in two.”

Still, the story has a happy ending: the family uses it to cut the family wedding cakes at Green Leaves.

“The first wedding that we know for sure it was used in was my mother and father’s [Ruth Audley Beltzhoover and Richard Conner] wedding in 1945,” said Ruthie Coy, “when he was on leave from the Army Air Corps during World War II. We have an account…of my grandparents’ wedding there in 1891, but no mention of the sword. The latest was my niece, Denise Conner Hiller in 2007.”

But if you want to use the sword to cut your cake, the keepers of the sword agree: get married at Green Leaves. The sword stays put.

The Veil

It was in 1848 when Fanny Turner married Lemuel P. Conner, wearing the beautiful lace veil that would also become a tradition at Green Leaves weddings.

“The weddings have been held at the church, in the parlors, and in the back garden,” said Coy. It was actually a Britton family [of Melrose Plantation] tradition, but then included us again when my mother and father married.”

Denise Conner Hiller, who was also the last to use the sword, was the last to use the veil, as well.

“Denise was the fifth generation to wear it,” said Coy, who included a list of all the family members who have worn the veil.

“My favorite part of the story is how jealous all her girlfriends were because she had all this fabulous ‘old stuff’ for her wedding.”

Ruthie recalled that when Denise wore the veil in 2007, the keepers kept careful watch.

“Oh, she didn’t wear it to the reception,” she said. “As soon as she walked back down that aisle, we snatched it off. Well, not really,” she laughed. She had wedding photos taken in it, but we weren’t going to chance it getting danced on.”

With their careful care the keepers ensured the veil will be here for future generations.

How does a tradition become a tangible link to the past and a generous gift to the future? 

You guard it with your life.