Biloxi Blues

Fort Walton might be one of the gorgeous sugar sand beach resorts but it is not called Fort for nothing. No sooner are we on our way, sad to leave, than we pass a big Airforce Airport, a huge complex with Special Ops Command. Navy seals etcetera train here, says Bruce. The property goes on and on behind a high cylcone fence, veritable suburbs of residences rather like the ones Bruce lived in as a “Marine brat” boy. There on a sports field are the forces families picnicking and playing sport.

Well, this place explains the exotic aircraft flying over the Nautilus.

This area seems to be called Florarosa.

We’re on a busy highway heading west along the Gulf coast. There are cheap fibro homes, humble homes, some with faux brick facades. There’s a trailer park.

And here come the lawyers beaming down from the giant hoardings.

Hang on. This one is rather stern-looking. Zarsaur legal firm.

Simpson is smiling, however.

We’re still in the watery coastal country. I can see sand dunes in the distance and new developments upon them And lots of hoardings - hair salon, accountant, restaurant.

Oh, and Ron the Sign Man with a very big Ron the Sign Man sign.

The roadsides out the window alternate with stunted pine scrub and commerce. A lot of cars and pawn, which seem to go together here in the Deep South. And churches.

For the road trip passenger, all these things are the flavour of the culture. Literally, a window on America. The country puts it all out there for the traveller - and this is a country of people on the move. Hence the busy roads. Hence the emphatic marketing.

Wow, but here comes the tiniest airstrip I ever saw - just a field with a short runway out over water. And tiny, tiny planes. Well, I never. I wonder who uses them and why.

I’ll never know because they are past us now and I’m looking at a beaming financial advisor up there on a huge hoarding.

This is hoarding territory. They grow them big, too. Lucrative cash crop, I bet.

Bart Pullum the Realtor is giving me a conspiratorial look from one of them.

Good heavens, There’s a Seashells Supermarket. There’s something sad about the idea of buying one’s shells in a huge retail environment rather than finding them on a beach. We don’t stop.

There are more high rise hotels ahead. Navarre Beach. Fabulous sand dunes around them and lots of fancy houses. I bet they’re all decorated in marine theme with shells from the Seashells Supermarket.

More retail. Publix supermarket and vape shops, nail parlour, mattress warehouse. Oh, and here is Weaver the lawyer on his hoarding. What a cheerful fellow. Commerce is broken up by a length of scrub, then more business. Hotels, car yards, petrol stations.

Sign: No perfect people allowed. Hm. That’s for the Monumentum Church, whatever that is. We will fix you. The landscape’s getting swampy now. Perfect for lawyers. And there’s Jennifer Byron with an extremely come-hither look on her face. And joy of joys,

our old friend smiling Alexander Shunnarah, Attorney. Haven’t seem him since Alabama and don’t we need him now. A new housing development comes with a hoarding showing a plump and contented family and recommending one votes for Sam Parker as Commissioner. That must be the dad up there.

A couple of churches further on,

there’s Alexander Shunnarah again.

Then, just a gun range, pawn shop, and a couple of mini storages later, there he is again, still smiling. This man is a serious hoardings star and isn’t he trying hard?

A water tower, a phone tower, a thrift store and a bit of scrub later - guess who? Yes, our Shunnarah.

Past the Natahala Beach road and a Spanish-style church, there he is again. Not once but twice. Bruce is making cracks about Better Call Saul.

With that,

we hum over an absolutely fabulous and huge new bridge with signs pointing to Alabama. And we have to pay a toll. It has been a while since we paid a toll. I scramble for change. It’s $3.75, accepted by a lovely old toll booth lady in a very vibrant Miami shirt.

It’s pine scrub country, straight road. There’s water in the distance.

And then we hook onto the big Interstate Highway 10 West. And then 59, the road to Mobile. Trucks, roadworks, scrub and another bridge undulating elegantly over Escambia Bay and into Pensacola. Ugh. This is an ugly, rough road cursed by roadworks. Eternal road works beset this country. Bollards and barriers. Bruce mutters as we bump along, passing lumbering trucks and exit signs announcing lodgings and food. When the road improves, guess who is there to share the joy?

Yep. Alexander Shunnarah. It’s a last ditch hoarding for the next one thanks us for visiting Florida.

And now a sign says Alabama - Sweet Home.

Our first Alabama road since Montgomery before Florida is pinkish, winding and lined with pine scrub and a soft long grass verge. At first it seems as if it has no lawyer advertising, just food outlets and a big fireworks store. It is very big fireworks store. But I have seen bigger on these roads. It is a bit of a let down.

Then Maloney Frost appears. I will personally return your call, he promises. He is holding a phone.

Here comes Mobile Bay with another bridge over swamps and a skyline. The road is heavy with massive trucks and those huge five-star RV home travellers with their motorcars on trailers behind.

I’ve always heard of Mobile, Alabama but never in a good way. Bruce says it was a strategic Civil War site. There was a big naval battle here to enforce the strangling Union blockade of the Confederacy. As in the many strategic engagements of the Civil War, the South lost the battle and the port of Mobile.

Modern Mobile seems to have just one skyscraper and lots of cranes. The road in is quite pretty with marshy lakes and complex waterways. I see herons nesting out there. The waters are dead calm.

It is a beautiful day.

We weave our way into town with Google’s advice on where to eat.

Red Hat ladies brighten one street as we zig zag through one-way back streets, some of them, so many of them, unnervingly down at heel. And then, suddenly, we are in a pocket of arty chic. There’s a sound stage being set up for a festival. People are dining at sidewalk tables. There’s an interesting art shop with some rustic repurposing artwork on the pavement.

Our restaurant, Wintzel’s Oyster Houe, takes up a lot of verandah real estate. Fried, Stewed, Nude, its sign brags. Inside it is a zany wonderland of posters,photographs and signs. Very colourful. Years of work. They all seem to be aphorisms of one sort of another: You can’t climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pockets; Ice is one of the few things which is really what its cracked up to be; The best way to

get a wart off your hands is to marry him.

There is years of reading here.

There’s an oyster bar along one wall with a bent and elderly African American man grumpily opening oysters. I go for a closer look and ask about the oysters. He is not forthcoming. Hmm. So I read the poster behind him. "Be Kind to Oysters Week", it says. There’s

another cook behind a glass wall throwing things into a deep fryer.

The waitress is perky, however. I order iced tea and fried oyster salad, which seems to be one of the myriad specials. The oysters are warm moist centres in a fairly heavy blob of batter. More batter than oyster. They looked so fat when raw on the bar. Are these the same oysters?

It is a fairly unremarkable meal.

Google can’t help us out of Mobile. There are road blocks manned by police everywhere.

Something to do with that sound stage and an impending festival.

Finally, we make it back to the busy open road, turn on some music, and hurtle down the big Interstate. It is pretty intense driving. The traffic is hard, fast and aggressive. I distract myself by looking out for Shunnarah signs, pondering just how much it must cost Shunnanah to advertise his services.

Luckily, it is not a long way to Biloxi, our destination for the night and with much relief and slightly dyspeptic tummies, we unload the car at our Country Inn and Suites by Carlson which turns out to be nearer to Ocean Springs than to Biloxi.

We are liking the Country Inn and Suites hotels and are now card-carrying members of their club. The beds are fantastic, the rooms are airy and well-equipped and the pools good.

We check the place out and then go to check out Biloxi.

Biloxi is important to me because of the Neil Simon play, Biloxi Blues.

A couple of decades ago, my son Ryder was cast as Eugene, the lead in this play when Peter Goers, under his banner of Jimmy Zoole Presents theatre, produced it in The Arts Theatre, Adelaide. Peter had talent-scouted Ryder at a La Mama production and saw his potential. Ryder was only 16. I was a nervous mother at this huge responsibility for one so young but Peter’s confidence was well placed. The show was a triumph and so was Ryder. And what was to be a very close and precious

lifelong friendship was to be established with Peter who remains as close and beloved to me as the soulmate brother I never had.

Well, there are absolutely no signs of anything Neil Simon in this tough little coastal town.

It once had a lovely old historic district, I read. But what we see is all casinos. Massive casinos. A great towering glut of casinos. The Hard Rock stars with a high-rise sized guitar glinting out the front. This could be Las Vegas or Atlantic City. I had no idea.

We explore up and down the beachside drag. There is a fabulous structure which says it is an art museum. Oh, yes. Something of interest. We park and go in. It is casino-sponsored African American art. It is shut.

Oh well, the live oak trees outside are glorious and the I see my first drapes of Spanish moss on this trip. We drive the rest of the main drag and find the Biloxi Tourism Centre in a handsome old ante bellum style building, set high up a stately staircase with a broad porch and rocking chairs.

It is cool inside and interesting. There’s a museum and a terrific little shop. I buy postcards and trinkets and have a wonderful chat with a very personable gay young shop assistant who

has visited Australia and dreams to live there. We sit outside on the rockers in the limp-making heat and look at the lighthouse and the beach-goers across the road. There is a pole showing the depth of the floods here when hurricane Katrina came through. Wow. We stand under it and quake.

One last drive the length of Biloxi. It just seems to have been eaten alive by ritzy casinos. It struggles to find character.

Ah, Biloxi Blues indeed.

Ocean Springs, on the other hand, turns on the charm.

It is just gorgeous, its narrow main streets lined by quaint and interesting little clothing and art stores and shaded from side to side by a great arc of ancient live oak trees.

We park the car and stroll, admiring handsome old houses and the gnarled beauty of the trees.

The main street is a charming walk beside sweet old homes and idiosyncratic small businesses.

A couple canoodling on a bench beneath the moss-draped live oaks. Those marvellous gnarled old trees embracing the street. Live oaks are a joy and so is the Spanish moss they accommodate. I am just loving being here beneath them, very conscious of how old is the settlement of this country.

Ocean Springs is not on the tourist map. It is one of those glorious secrets... Just saying.

Walking and revelling in the character of this place, the bookshop with its witty invitation, the fellows passing the time on the streetside bench, fanning themselves with old-fashioned southern belle hand fans, one of them so obese his loose layers hang from the seat...

With help from dear old Google, we scope out places to eat and decide that the Pho House is us. But it is too early. We stroll some more and

then find a breezy table at a rustic-style and very busy bar. I order a margarita which comes in a big plastic glass with a salt rim and a straw. Not exactly elegant but who cares. We enjoy watching the locals, lots of whom seem to be army lads, black and white, drinking shots and getting rowdy. There’s a pretty girl using her dog to attract a a pickup - and failing. Only an old drunk at the bar seems to want to talk to her.

The Pho House turns out to be decidedly idiosyncratic. A very grouchy Asian woman tells us what we may and may not have. There is nothing off menu here. She is very strict. OK, she will ask for some extra beansprouts.There is only one other table of diners here. Bruce orders a pho and I order a catfish hotpot which is salty and intense but the catfish is delicate and lovely. Bruce enjoys his pho. The beansprouts come raw on a saucer.

It seems to have been a massive day.

Sometimes, there are so many experiences and impressions on this adventure that one feels one’s head will burst trying to tuck them all into memory. One fails, of course. We struggle to remember which hotel we were in three weeks ago - and bless the effort of this blog to have it on the record.

Okaloosa, here we come

Destination Montgomery, Alabama.

Bruce has given up on memorising our routes. He’s a bit in love with Siri Google now. So she calls the shots, even stopping Bach mid-note to give the latest instruction. To be sure, to be sure, I add my Siri Google to the mix and we have Siris in duet, dear little Aussie accents on the great big American roads.

And we’re now on the big road watching a car weaving dangerously ahead of us. When cautiously we manage to pass it, we see a driver texting on his phone. We’ve seen a lot of phone use on the highways through this trip. It is very worrying.

Out the window is a KIA assembly plant. We’re now on KIA Boulevard and there’s the huge KIA watertower. The factory is shining silver, massive, huge, huge, huge and windowless. And, oh my, it is right on the state border - because suddenly we’ve crossed into Alabama. And there’s the world biggest fireworks store. So it says. I’m not arguing. It consists of towering bright yellow boxes and I swear the world’s biggest fireworks store also has the world’s biggest No Smoking sign emblazoned on the front.

Passing places with wonderful names - Opelika, Phenix City, Hurtsboro, Tuskegee forest, Notasulga. We now seem to be on the Tuskegee Airmen Memorial Highway. They were a famous unit of black pilots in WWII, says Bruce. Oh, there’s an interesting phone tower. It’s become the roost for vultures. Lots of them. Strange birds, they are. Big and cumbersome, high flying, patient; not the prettiest of birds. Oh, there goes Talahassee. That’s another lovely name. Oh, and what bad drivers inhabit this part of the world. More phone-using, weaving, speeding idiots.

A lot of dead racoons and poor little armadillos line the roads. I guess that explains the vultures. We listen to the radio and are gob-smacked to hear there is a prisoner strike. Who knew there was a 24,000-strong workforce of prisoners out there mowing the verges, making roadsigns and license plates. Working call centres?

Passing more mini storage again. And the tiniest, cramped, humble cemetery so close to the road it is almost on it. And now a huge, stately roadside cemetery.

And here comes the Montgomery burbs along with huge hoardings showing a beaming fellow called Alexander Shunnarah, lawyer. Oh, and another one. And another one. What is it costing this lawyer to promote himself as a roadside star?

Here’s Montgomery. We pull off the road to do the old quickie lunch refresher stop.

A clean loo in McDonalds and a Santa Fe salad. Not such a good McDonalds, this one. Not many customers but a lot of staff, few of them working. They seem to be eating McDonalds. I guess they need lunch breaks, too. Some of them are a bit slobby. Oh, very slobby. I am taking my meal to the car, Bruce. I can’t eat with the sound of that woman sniffing constantly while chomping her way through a huge bag of Doritos. I could be in a pig pen.

I eat as we drive onwards, entertained by the endless Shunnarah hoardings.

Look, he has a double one here.

We’re on the wide open road now. Past turnoffs to Selma, passing Greenville and exits to the town of Pine Apple.

Shunnarah, Shunnarah, Shunnarah - ever beaming at the traffic. I wonder how many stop and seek his services. Siri Google’s little Aussie voice pipes up. Exit left, Alabama highway. Passing scruffy pine forests and fields of weeds which, we presume, once were cotton.

Oh, maybe not. Here are the cotton crops - fields and fields of them with little white cottony blooms. The land opens out into broad agriculture, long-armed irrigation sprinklers, fields of cows.

More cotton.

A mysterious sign recommends Twinkle For President - Fighting for You. None the wiser, we swoosh on by.

Big strip mall. The usual chain retail suspects with added mini storage, medical centre and a Mexican motel. Then back to agriculture and big, big cotton fields separated by the odd humble little settlements. Fallow fields are beaming with yellow wild flowers.

It is surprising some of the odd things one finds out on the open road. Here is a fantastic rusty, dusty car yard. A field of abandoned cars in the middle of somewhere nowhere. We’re in Alabama South driving through Conecuh Forest - an undulating landscape of splaying oak trees and the prettiness of slim, tall pines.

And suddenly, Florida welcomes us. The Sunshine State. Okaloosa County. The surroundings are cotton fields and more humble little homes and caravans. We pass a flyspeck town called Blackman. The Gun Show sign is bigger than the town. Blackwater State Forest surrounds us with more of these very pretty pines.

I am loving this landscape. Abruptly there is a huge mown clearing featuring a massive, fanciful Greco-Roman structure. What on earth. Who on earth? Accountants? Are you kidding. Way out here?

The cotton crops resume on both sides of the road, occasionally interrupted by alfalfa. A farmstand offers watermelon, boiled peanuts and tomatoes. A town called Baker is all churches and Trump signs. We try to look straight ahead.

Palmettos are starting to appear in the landscape. Now we know we’re in Florida. Milligan. Another church and another and another. They’ve built a huge, hideous apartment building here and now, as the land opens out, a vast development of exceptionally ugly new houses. Lots of flags, though.

Another church. And another. A biggie. We’re passing Crestview. Posters advertise local playtime of a Mullet Pageant and a Hobo Festival.

Clouds are massing on the horizon. It’s 91deg F outside, heavy humid Florida heat. The landscape is flat, with low pine scrub. Gator country, says Bruce. A lumbering big-bellied 4-engine cargo plane looms in the sky. The US Special Operations Command headquarters is somewhere near here, says Bruce. Oh, there’s another one. A fat 4-engine prop jet.

We scoot through a big newly-constructed fancy road loop and over a spanking new bridge watching clouds ahead of us casting down arms of rain. And suddenly we are underneath them. Pancake splats of rain hit the windscreen, hard and loud. Spray jets out from the wheels of the cars. Through the deluge we see a sign pointing towards Niceville. We scoff. It’s pretty nasty right now.

And then it’s not. We drive out of the rain as abruptly as we drove in. We’re under a blue sky. A few spiteful drops land on the car just to remind us. Swinging on to Route 8 to Fort Walton Beach, we realise that we just drove into the Central Time Zone. The iPhones are right up with it. The car clock is not.

Here’s big Gulf Coast water - palmettos, rich homes along the waterside and then the inevitable strip mall. Publix supermarket, Denny’s, boat centre, Goofy Golf, Korean restaurant, pizza, nail parlor, Arby’s, Dollar Tree, What-a-burger, liquor store, Thai restaurant, more boats, Ross Dress for Less, tattoo parlor, Mexican food, indoor flea market, gym. We stop at a traffic light. A sign beside us orders No Hand Out Here to Corner. Another says Unlawful To Obstruct Traffic.

Aaah. It is for those pitiful beggars who hold up placards at traffic lights. There are a lot of homeless beggars in this country. We turn into an area of seriously cute gift shops and over a bridge and we are on the Emerald Coast.

This is where we want to be.

We drive down a broad road along a line of towering condos, one after another until one of them is ours. Nautilus Court. On the sugar sand of the Emerald Coast.

Welcoming women in Nautilus reception apologise that they have had to move us from 606 to 604 because 606 had a catastrophic leak from the condo above. But they know we will love 604. Oh, we do. We do. This is what life is all about.