Adventures in Mississippi

I went to Mississippi a few weeks ago and I just remembered that I have not written about it. So, after work I drove five hours to my mothers house in Mosspoint Mississippi on the coast. Upon arriving I crashed out until morning. Upon waking up I had to make my way out to the largest store (Walmart) in that tiny ass town to purchase jeans because all of my cloths were dirty before I left and Ashley had kindly taken all of our dirty clothes to her parents house. It was like walking in to the Twilight zone. All of the men and some of the women seemed to look like Limmy from the band Motorhead.

So I start looking for paints in my size and I start to notice another trend. All of the pants sizes seem bigger around than they are long. I wear a 33X34 pants size and all the pants were marked things like 38X28. After looking for about 15 minutes I find a pair that will work and start up to the counter. On my way I see some neat fedoras and decide that I didn't know which I wanted so I bought them both.

The last time I was in Mississippi I went to this great PoBoy restaurant that use to be a Chinese restaurant, that was run by Koreans. At this restaurant you can order PoBoys of various sizes from 6" - 36" and they have all the good Asian condiments such as my favorite, Saracha sauce. I tell my mother and step father that I would really like to go find that place again and my mother declines going but my step father says that he would go with me. It took about an hour but we eventually found it again (it had been about 2 years since I had been there last). I walk in and start talking to the lady at the counter, who seems to have some difficulty understanding my questions, when a man walks out at starts(in broken English) impatiently asking what I want. I tell him that I want a 12" shrimp PoBoy only lettuce at which point the lady starts to write down my order and the man turns to her and screams what I said into her ear. "12 INCH SHRIMP POBOY! ONLY LETTUCE!!! she finishes writing it down, ignoring the man and takes it to the back. I get my sandwich a few minutes later, put some saracha sauce on it and head out.

Unfortunately, I only was able to stay for 2 days, but on the second day fulfilled the last objective that I had come to do, other than seeing my mother, walking on the beach, and shrimp PoBoys. I went out to find an alligator. Mississippi has 3 major natural resources: Mosquito's, Spanish moss, and alligators. None of these things are very hard to find but I had forgotten that I was still technicaly winter time and Alligators were fairly dormant at that time. The first place we went to find them was a place called Sou Bayu. We went here for several reasons: It is the home of one of my step fathers best friends, it has a bar on the property (so we can drink while looking for the alligators), and this is the last place that I saw alligators in the wild... about 10 of them last time. oh and did i mention that this place is a mobile home park too? oh yah classy! So we get there and grab some beer (bud or miller are the only choices... sigh) and walk out of the bar to talk to the locals and find some gators! to no avail unfortunately, all of them were sleeping where ever alligators sleep in the winter. So we left. On the way home my stepfather had the idea to go to an alligator ranch to at least get some pictures so we did. Not quite as much fun as finding wild ones but at least I was able to get my pictures.


After that I headed back to Birmingham so I could get back to the grind of studying and working. It is always lots of fun to go to odd little towns and see the local color, take in the local cuisine, and find the local wild life. I hope to be able to do it again soon.