Day 4: Ole Yeller Weed
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Copyright(c) 2014, Jim Beachy
Once again we make a very lazy start and it’s 10:50 AM when we pull out of the gas station next to our night’s motel. It’s a brilliantly beautiful, sun-drenched morning, but chilly, 64 F. Kitty is wearing one of my sweatshirts under the mesh jacket with the liner; I’ve opted to ride without the sweatshirt, but keeping the liner and mesh jacket. Of course I’m a little chilly right away, but not enough to stop and put on the sweatshirt. Sometimes you just live with your decsions. “Silly boy!” Kitty says encouragingly.
I have routed random two-lane roads to Vicksburg. These seem to take the form of Hwy 19 to Philadelphia (the Mississippi one, not the Pennsylvania one), then Hwy 16 through Carthage and Canton, and Hwy 22 to near Vicksburg, finishing out the last 16 miles on I-20.
These routes are sometimes scenic and always pleasant, occasionally surprising us with four-lane stretches. Philadelphia is a quaint old southern town with a long main street and lots of small businesses, but as we pass we don’t get a vibe of a bustling, thriving town.
In Carthage we see giant casinos with beautifully manicured landscapes and artfully designed buildings.
In Canton (the Mississippi one, not the Ohio one), we stop for a break and I find some locals to ask about the yellow flowers in the fields. They say it’s a weed of no earthly known good that moved in some years ago and they can’t get rid of it. “Poison it one year, and it’s back the next.”“Do you know what it’s called?” I ask.
“I don’t rightly know that it has a name. It’s just Ole Yeller Weed here”
Just as we’re ready to pull out, a guy walks up to us, admiring the bike and trailer, and spontaneously starts a conversation. Retired from the US Army, he says “You better be really grounded when you come back home, because there’s nothing here for you.” He goes on to say how economically depressed he has found the area since his return home. A chicken plant and two Mississippi State prisons, he says, offer the major source of employment.
“What about the casinos?” I ask.
He almost snorts in derision. “The casinos suck a lot more life out of the community than they put back!” he says. “Lots of people here will get paid today, tomorrow, and by the weekend they’ll be up there spending two-thirds of their paycheck in the casino. The house always wins in the end.”
Thus armed with this encouraging and uplifting commentary on life in Canton, we continue solemnly on our trek. Having talked for a while now about having some lunch, we are hoping to find a roadside barbecue stand, but the chances of that, outside the little towns, appear to be slim. As we round the a curve in the road and cross the railroad tracks into the village of Flora, I spy a building on the corner and catch a delicious whiff of cooking food on the breeze. “I think that’s a restaurant, and there are two bikes already there!” I say, and wheel around in a small parking lot to return to the restaurant. It’s the Blue Rooster, in a tiny building probably 30 feet by 50 feet in area.
There are maybe a dozen tables and booths in the place, and it is clearly not just a normal everyday restaurant. Displayed on the wall is a large sign “Home of the #1 burger in Mississippi, 2012,” along with numerous other similar awards. C.J. is our waitress today, a perky blond with a disarming southern accent, and she seems to take great delight in explaining the menu, offering suggestions, and answering questions. She entertains us with a brief history of the building: It’s over 100 years old, was built as a little general store with a gas pump out front, and was at various times a laundry, a dry cleaning shop, and since 2008, the Blue Rooster. Every night, she says, the trains thunder along the track barely 100 feet from the restaurant; in the old building, mortar and brick dust are shaken off the interior bricks that form the walls. Staff must come in every morning and sweep up the white perimeter of brick dust that has accumulated overnight.
That #1 award-winning burger is an 8-oz hamburger called the “Flamethrower,” which is my kind of hamburger, but over the top for my lunch today. I settle for the “Rooster Chicken Club” sandwich (a clever play on words, I think), and the instant it arrives, I know this is not a cook-by-the-book kind of restaurant. This sandwich exudes passion, artistry, attention to every detail. It is a labor of love, a masterpiece! Served on a jalapeno bun toasted to perfection, it features a honey mustard dressing not too sweet and with just the right amount of mustard that allows the perfectly seasoned grilled chicken to speak for itself, a few slices of tomato, and topped with bacon and a cheese that I don’t recognize. I will say unequivocally this is the absolutely the most tender, most exorbitantly decadent chicken sandwich I have ever eaten!
Another waypoint to be stored in my GPS for some future ride! The website can be found at http://thebluerooster.info.
We arrive in Vicksburg at about 3:30 PM to find some old friends and warm hugs waiting for us, and Gold Wings steadily trickle in for the rest of the afternoon. Gordo, Gibbie, Skippy, Shaggy, Digger, Jacko and Tezz, and the list continues. We learn that sadly, Roger, the host of the event, is in the hospital and unable to attend. Some folks have ridden much farther than our 1200-plus miles. From the West Coast, Canada, north, south, east and west, the areas of our North American continent are well represented. There’s an informal short ride to a barbecue place for dinner, then back to the hotel parking lot for more stories and reminiscing.
Tomorrow seems to be a make-your-own-schedule kind of day until the actual crawfish dinner in the evening.
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