Blues, Beignets and Bayous: A Southern Odyssey

Yelp has whetted our appetites with a promise of down-home Southern cooking. Google obligingly directs us to Bellue’s Fine Cajun Cuisine, which, when we see it, resembles a slightly oversized trailer. A roadside joint that appears barely three times the size of our van, Bellue’s looks so improbably small and manifests so suddenly that I overshoot it and have to make a U-turn to park in front of the unlikely structure. But then again, we are seeking out local flavor. 

Piling out of our vehicle, we find ourselves inside of a small wood-paneled dive. The walls in the main room are festooned with wrought iron hand tools. Directly in front of us is a freezer stocked with local delicacies, including vacuum-packed rabbit. 

We retreat to a back room where, under the gaze of a poster extolling law enforcement, we crowd around a table and run our menu options past senior Walter Hoffman. In addition to other vital trip functions like Google navigator and in-van DJ, Walter shines as our little group’s recognized gourmet. That, plus his legacy of bona fide Southern family credentials, impels us to defer to him on all cuisine-related matters, particularly if the dishes in question originate below the Mason-Dixon line.

Walter attempts to enlighten our motley crew about the distinctions between the menu’s Crawfish Etouffe (which comes with two side orders, and, for only one additional dollar, can be served with cornbread dressing) and the Crawfish Etouffe Supreme, which presumably comes loaded with an even heftier dose of cholesterol.

The owner, a middle-aged woman with a pronounced sing-song voice, walks over to answer questions. After taking our orders, she quickly returns and floods our table with a tidal wave of Southern hospitality in the form of appetizer samples.

Our group briefly ponders the exact nature and identity of the ingredients, which consist of small solid chunks suspended in sauces ranging from the gooey to the translucent. But any lingering doubts about the food in front of us are quickly subordinated to teenage hunger pangs. By the time the main dishes arrive a few minutes later, a lively discussion is underway regarding the difference between red beans and tasso versus white beans and tasso, or whether you can actually taste the venison in the deer and chicken sauce picante.

Walter utters the final verdict: “Bellue’s is an excellent restaurant with homey vibes and great Creole food.”

Two hours later, and dozens of miles across the state line, we make a spontaneous decision to walk off our lunch-induced stupor with an afternoon hike. At least one-third of the students doze off in the back seats. Rolling along the verdant, occasionally hilly terrain of backwoods Mississippi, we navigate our way toward the entrance to Homochitto National Forest. We hope to get there before the waning signal from Google Maps also decides to take a nap.

Homochitto offers everything that spring-starved New Yorkers might want: ample foliage adorning the oak and hickory, bird calls accompanying our walk along a ravine, a muddy streambed for the boys to get their sneakers wet. The footpath reaches an overlook above a waterfall, behind which lurks a shallow cave. Sarah Coble and the girls take some photos. The boys head straight down to the waterfall to test out the cave’s sheltering qualities. The girls mostly prefer to stay on the high ground. I give the lads a few minutes of Tom Sawyering before summoning them back. The lazy afternoon sun, after all, is preparing for bedtime.

Throughout our drive to Vicksburg, Mississippi, we see farms, small towns, and the white plumes from refineries, fertilizer plants, or chemical producers. The ubiquity of various forms of fuel and chemical processing derives from more than regional geography. It also reflects a low-regulation political culture conducive to industries whose environmental footprint might earn them greater scrutiny in the Northeast or Pacific Northwest.

As a New Yorker having a first encounter with the Deep South, Aiden initially feels perplexed by what he sees as a paradoxical juxtaposition of people in poor living conditions having conservative political preferences. At first glance, Aiden thinks that the rural South is extremely poor and extremely conservative. Yet more travel time gives rise to more reflection. Driving, biking, and walking past people’s homes, Aiden begins to notice additional details that temper his initial impressions. These, in turn, help him imagine why some people might oppose the kind of active government role that others might welcome. “I neglected the fact that Southerners are proud and seem happy in their situation. They have flower pots and signs of love visible all around their houses.”

As the sky turns to night, Walter shifts the playlist from Outlaw Country to Delta Blues. A voice from a back seat recalls Aiden’s presentation on Mississippi blues legend Robert Johnson. As the students snooze or retreat into their own thoughts, the haunting tunes from Walter’s phone remind us of stories, tall tales, nostalgia, and broken dreams traversing the nighttime space around us.

In planning the trip, I operated according to several principles. One of these: teenagers need to stay active. Every day, we build in something: walks, bike rides, time on the water. The days and hours begin to fly. 

We rent bikes and pedal uphill on a self-guided tour of the Vicksburg battlefield. In 1863, General Ulysses S. Grant’s strategy had been to seize the fortress overlooking the Mississippi in order to solidify the Union’s control over the continent’s most important river artery. We reach a high point on the ridge line and dismount. The blue and red markers that delineate each side’s positions converge at a perilously close distance. 

Arjan decides to scout around on foot. He half-jogs his way up and down a short segment of hillside. He returns with more labored breath.

“Charging uphill must have been hard work,” he says. “Now imagine doing that in July,” I say, “while wearing a wool uniform and carrying a rucksack.”

We get back on the bikes and glide past dozens of statues and marble pedestals, many paid for by states, South and North, whose units had fought at Vicksburg. Other memorials, at times more imposing, were put up by the Daughters of the Confederacy, hagiographers of the so-called “Lost Cause.” This is a major Civil War battlefield park in Mississippi, yet I can’t help but notice the conspicuous absence of the Stars and Bars. I wonder when Confederate battle flags began to disappear from the park. What comes to mind is Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

The battle over past memory comes vividly alive for us later that afternoon in Jackson as we visit the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. Located in the heart of the city, the museum is jam-packed with displays, photographs, and mini-theaters screening mini-docs. We hear recorded train whistles and blues songs, watch clips of famous speeches and infamous police brutality, peer at an enormous panel of blown-up mugshots of arrested civil rights activists from the early sixties, a time when the civil rights struggle, much of it in Mississippi, topped the news cycle. 

The living legacy of those issues becomes apparent after we return to our van. We take a spin around the neighborhood to glance at the state house. As we drive a few blocks further, we see another reality: one after another, every retail shop appears to be a local, more downscale version of the Dollar Store. It’s only 5:20 p.m. or so, but every shop appears to be closed. 

Another day, another breakfast. By sheer luck, our New Orleans hotel happens to adjoin The Ruby Slipper, a delightfully decadent breakfast joint whose menu celebrates the idea that you can’t possibly overdo the amount of eggs, avocado, cream, chicken, bacon, or beignets at 7:30 a.m. when doors open. (In true New Orleans fashion, the same principle evidently holds true for morning spirits, which occupy the entire reverse side of the menu.)

“The restaurant employees treat us like guests in their home,” says Arjan, marveling at the service. He’s right, of course, and he is describing several eateries, not simply The Ruby Slipper. But here, in particular, there is scarcely a table hostess or waitress who doesn’t greet us with a warm smile and a disarming, “How ya doin’ today, baby?” 

Walter and Aiden have publicly made a bet to see who can gain the most weight during this trip. Neither one is willing to forfeit. Aiden condenses his philosophy into fewer words than a haiku: “Vegetables are just wasted calories.” 

At some point, Sarah Coble and I make an executive decision to take a short break from feasting. Things are escalating to a danger point; it’s only a matter of time before someone nods off and plants their face into a bowl of leftover cream and berries on the table. Besides, I don’t know if our travel insurance covers these types of contingencies.

A motorized swamp boat beckons us from the bayou country south of the city. Everyone faces forward as the vessel slowly grinds its way forward underneath a leafy canopy. The waterway looks unusually straight. Our skipper/tour guide, who has made it clear that he revels in cheesy humor, interrupts his own banter with a public service announcement of sorts by informing us that the channel is, in fact, artificial, having initially been dredged by oil and gas drillers. This, like most things pertaining to water safety and petrochemicals in Louisiana, is not a joke.

We observe long strands of Spanish moss, majestic cyprus trees, thick patches of swamp grass, and the occasional turtle or egret, but the star attraction is undeniably the alligator. Quite a few, in fact. Senior Gabriella Parasnis is particularly quick on the trigger with her camera. It is awe-inspiring to realize that there are bigger, wilder, and more dangerous things to see than some out-of-towner stumbling down Bourbon Street.

As for the city itself, we postpone any serious post-bayou exploration until nightfall. My reasoning is that it would be more culturally and environmentally appropriate to go on a “Ghosts, Voodoo, and Vampires” walking tour of the French Quarter after sunset. At the very least, we might get more of our money’s worth. 

The tour turns out to be more factually grounded than supernatural, albeit in a grisly manner—the way history tends to spin when it wants to grab some headlines for itself. 

This tour stokes Arri’s visual curiosity. Sure, she is fascinated by the eccentric and the gothic, but she is also struck by the more ordinary details of the city’s facades. “The history behind New Orleans architecture and some of the buildings themselves is fascinating,” she notes. “The differences between galleries and balconies, the ornate designs of each of those, as well as the beauty and intention behind each of the building design features is beautiful.”