My First Road Trip

We never traveled when I was young. I never quite understood why, but we never went anywhere. Friends traveled with their parents to places like Florida, California, Michigan and the Rocky Mountains, but we never went anywhere. In fact, until I was 15, the only times I had ever been out of St. Louis were on occasional (I remember two) daytrips to see my aunt and uncle in Centralia, Illinois (75 miles of flat cornfields to the east), an overnight with my father to Jefferson City, Missouri, to see him argue before the Missouri Supreme Court (I thought the justices were very impolite to him, asking all those probing questions), and during the summers when I attened Wiggins Ozark Camp (you're kidding, you did, too?) in Lesterville, Missouri (Lesterville being about half way between Ironton and the Johnson Shut-Ins State Park).

But sometime during the winter of 1957-8, my parents told me that we were going to take a road trip during my spring vacation. That we were going to spend five nights, or so, at the Edgewater Gulf Hotel, in Edgewater Gulf, Mississippi!!

Where????

So, it wasn't the Rockies, and it wasn't California, and it wasn't even Florida, but at least it was a trip.

Here is how it went.

My mother, my father, my sister (she was 10 when I was 15) and my maternal grandmother piled in the 1957 Ford station wagon, and headed off. I was unbelievingly excited. I was actually going somewhere. Something I had never done before, and something that I wanted to do more than anything else.

We drove south on US Highway 61. Now Highway 61 is part of the Great River Road, and his broad and fast. Then, it was two lanes, and simply a quiet country road, through flat, non-descript country, geographically (but not visably) near the Mississippi River.

We left the road in St. Genevieve to see the oldest buildings in the state of Missouri in this former French colonial outpost. I was excited when we entered Ste. Genevieve (knowing me, I was the reason we made the stop), but I was very disappointed at the unattractive town that is was. (Since then, I believe that a number of the buildings have been restored, and maybe it is something of a tourist site. More important than that, it is home town of Rush Limbaugh. Or is Limbaugh from Cape Girardeau, a little further down the road? Or does anyone care? Does even Limbaugh care? I don't care, I know that.)

Eventually (boy it took a long time), we entered Arkansas. Since I had only been in Missouri and on one road in Illinois, entering Arkansas was like penetrating Bhutan. I don't remember anything very noteworthy in the northeast corner of that state (in fact, the lack of anything noteworthy was itself somewhat noteworthy, so does that mean that there was something noteworthy, or not?), except that immediately upon crossing the state line, the surface of the road was a reddish brown, rather than a light concrete color. I think there were also "colored people" (that's what they were called then, in polite society) selling peaches by the side of the road, and that we bought some. That could, however, been on later trips, because eventually, I did go to a lot of places, and a lot of the same places a lot. There were also a lot of unapinted wooden shacks. I was told that they belonged to "sharecroppers". Not wanting to appear stupid, I didn't ask what that meant. Not wanting to appear stupid, I bet the others in the car were just as happy that I didn't ask.

Our first night goal was Memphis, where we had relatives. This, I was really looking forward to, because, as you now can see, I had never, ever been in another city before.

I remember crossing the Mississippi from West Memphis, Arkansas, into Memphis. West Memphis was less than a spot on the map then, but Memphis was a real city. It looked like St. Louis, but didn't look at all like St. Louis, if you know what I mean.

Memphis was not as big as St. Louis, and had few tall downtown buildings (remember, this was 1958), but had a real downtown. I remember that on the main shopping street downtown (I want to call it Main Street, but this may be wrong), all the stores had Jewish names. I don't mean some of the store, or a few of the stores, or even most of the stores. It seemed to me, it was all of the stores.

Then I remember we found Poplar Street, and headed east to my mother's cousins house, a very nice, ranch-style house in a subdivision called something like Hedgemoor, or Heathrow, or something like that. It was clearly a very nice part of town. And my cousins' house (which I was in a number of times in succeeding years), although relatively new (I think) was already the stuff of legend in my family because it had a wall in the master bedroom, from which you could turn on any light anywhere in the house, and maybe open the garage door, and maybe do other things as well. At least, this was the legend. Facts, I do not remember.

My sister and I and my grandmother were going to spend the night at our cousins' house, while my parents were going to spend the night with my mother's aunt (grandmother's sister) and uncle.

The evening was very eventful, although I can only speak for my parents and myself, not my sister or grandmother.

I went with my cousin and her date (boyfriend?) and a friend of my cousin who became my date to a party at a "roadhouse" out in the country. I remember we picked up my date (someone in the crowd was 16, although my cousin is two years younger than me, and must have been just 13 or 14!) on Walnut Grove Avenue, or something like that, and drove out of town to this road house where there were all these kids talking, dancing and drinking!! I never went to parties like this in St. Louis. I couldn't believe it. How could all of their parents let their kids do this? Did it happen all the time? Did they know what went on in road houses? Was this the difference between the south and the midwest? This was really something.

(On a sad note, I remember one young boy, maybe my age, sort of short and outspoken, who I thought was more out of control than even the others. I learned a year or so later, that he was killed in an automobile accident. It didn't surprise me, but I thought that maybe I should have said something and it could have been prevented.)

(On a less sad but equally interesting note, my cousin tells me that she does not even remember this party, or maybe only slightly, and that she had a vague memory that there were roadhouses around, but if the party is as I described, it was clearly a one of a kind event. For me, it was astounding.) [Hopefully, she will read this article and add her recollections]

My parents' night was eventful in a different way. My father apparently did not like to stay with relatives. I did not know that, of course, because he didn't go anywhere, but it was true, so staying with my mother's aunt and uncle was a real concession on his part. My great aunt and uncle had a one bedroom apartment. They also had a sleep sofa in the living room. Their plan was to give my parents their bedroom, and they would sleep in the living room. My father would agree to know such thing (of course, had it been the other way around, my father would have been the first to give up his room for them), and said that he refused to sleep in their bedroom.

Apparently, they almost came to blows and argued until 3:00 a.m. I think my aunt and uncle gave up, and my parents took the couch. I was mortified the next morning when I was told of this. (I do not think there was any lasting bad feeling between them.)

So, the next morning, we headed south into Mississippi. I remember my mother being very careful where we ate, and where we went to the bathroom. She was convinced that most places were beneath her sanitary standards. She would only eat at restaurants connected to motels with swimming pools.

Mississippi was clearly very poor. (It was also very segregated, but then again so was St. Louis, so I didn't really notice a difference there. This is just the way it was. It never occurred to me that this made no sense.) I remember driving through Granada (and being surprised it was pronounced Granayda) and thinking that it looked like a very nice place with a lot of white buildings. I remember Canton, Mississippi (it was the hometown of my father's brother-in-law, who lived in Dallas, but I am not sure we knew that as we went through it) with its collonaded and arcaded town square surrounding its courthouse. And then, I remember, the road, for the first time the entire trip, about 20 miles north of Jackson becoming a divided four lane highway (reminded me of Highway 40 in St. Louis, the only road like that I knew), and how the highway actually traversed ground that wasn't totally flat, and that it had some new large buildings along the way (I don't remember any new, large buildings in Memphis). I decided I liked Jackson.

(Interesting, I still like Jackson, and Canton is still largely like it was around the town square, as my wife and I visited there a few years ago. Granada I have not seen since 1958.)

The Edgewater Gulf Hotel was a sister hotel of the Edgewater Beach in Chicago (where of course I had never been). It was a large old-fashioned resort that even then had seen better days (it has now been torn down). It was situated across U.S. 2 from the beach about halfway between Biloxi and Gulfport. They had tennis courts, swimming pools, badminton, shuffleboard, children's activities, teenage activities, etc. Except for the pool and beach, I ignored them all.

I am not sure how we spent our time down there, except I remember going to Gulfport and seeing more modern hotels/motels than I had ever seen anywhere, and Biloxi, which did not have the same resort appeal. I was very jealous of the people staying in the modern Gulfport hotels and thought we were really stuck out in the boonies, which we were.

It turned out that there were two girls in my class who were also on the Mississippi Gulf Coast for spring break. Who would have guessed. We ran into one in Gulfport. The other, actually a good friend, was also at the Edgewater Gulf. I forget if we knew they were going to be there; we probably did.

We took my friend out to dinner one night to a seafood restaurant on a cove somewhere away from the beach. I had never been to a restaurant like that before, so that was exotic. The food was good, but the highlight was when the lobster fell off the waiters tray and landed on my classmate's lap.

We also (maybe with my friend's family) took a boat to Ship Island, where we spent the day on the beach collecting very interesting shells. We went and saw something called Bellingrath Gardens (if I remember that right, I deserve a prize). And we saw Jefferson Davis' retirement home, and the creek and bench where he would spend his time thinking about the country that no longer was.

Another highlight was driving to New Orleans for dinner. (I think it was about a 2 and one half hour drive, so it was late when we got back.) We spent a lot of time in the French Quarter. I think it was a Sunday. We were in Pirate's Alley looking at the artists' display (another first for Arthur), when we ran into the mother of a third high school friend. She told us that she had driven down to New Orleans for a few days from St. Louis by herself. My parents thought this odd. I thought it neat. They were probably more right than I was. Shortly after her trip, she shot and killed herself at home. Her daughter (who disappeared eventually from school) was never the same (again, that is my memory).

We ate at Antoine's. My father hated it. "If there was a restautrant this old and moldy in St. Louis, the health department would shut it down." Right.

While on the Gulf Coast, we also saw the brother of my uncle from Canton, who owned a drug store in Biloxi, and the divorced wife of my grandmother's brother. She lived in Ocean Springs (is that the name of one of those towns?).

On the way back north, we stopped for lunch in Meridian, because there was some very famous restaurant there. I thought a diversion for a restaurant was crazy, but remember that I thought the food very good.

I was looking forward to going back to Memphis and seeing family again, but my father announced that, instead, he had always wanted to see Jackson, Tennessee, which is about 50 (100?) miles east of Memphis. No one had ever wanted to see Jackson, Tennessee (and we saw why) and it was clearly out of the way, but my father did not want to get into another couch-bed dispute. That much was clear. My mother and grandmother were very disappointed.

We drove back up on the Illinois side of the river, going through Metropolis (no superman there) and Chester, and crossed somewhere south of St. Louis where we could hook up back to Highway 61.

That was our trip, as I recall. Thanks for reading.