…How about a day of rest? Our first complete day off – and where better to spend it than beautiful Oxford, MS, jewel of the south? Its gorgeous colonaded square, filigree ironwork balconies, and the sheer peace and quiet of it! More than that, of course, to anyone familiar with the ‘Jefferson’ of Faulkner’s novels, modeled on Oxford, every vista and every building seems about to pour his characters onto the sidewalk.

I had to take this up with Bill, and we passed a happy hour beneath a perfume-laden magnolia, on the Square, reviewing some of his more remarkable Jeffersonians.

Sacrilege. It takes an Aussie to plant his hand on Bill’s hat.

Attempting to leave Alabama for Mississippi we had a taste of Southern politics: in a bid to convince voters of the need to finance the new interstate I-22, the signs for the old westward route 78 had been removed, leaving people who live along it surprised that they were no longer living along 78, but Route 5, and leaving out-of-staters like us driving up and down & back and forth until we found ourselves marooned alongside a group of tearful seniors who’d had the same experience, at a gas station off an as yet unbuilt section of the future I-22. Y’all are a political football! declared one sympathetic Mississipian.

The detours we had to take made a short day into a long, 250-mile one and we were very happy to reach Connie and Kevin in Oxford, Mississippi – a bubble of culture inside a sea of rednecks, as Kevin describes Oxford, home of Ole Miss university, and former home of Wm. Faulkner, Oxford’s favorite son. They welcomed us with plenty of beer and glorious food. It had been our warmest day on the road, and we feel gratefully into their welcome, with a separate room each & huge comfy bed.

This is turning into the Waffle House tour of America. Everywhere else is a burger joint, and my feelings are best expressed in poetry:
My heart has been won by The Waffle House
For reasons I don’t understand
But the sight of their sign
Brings peace to my mind
And their eggs are the best in the land
Here is Anna, newly arrived from Jersey and working in what is so far the cleanest and most smartly turned out Waffle House we’ve sampled. (Is there a reward in this? Shall we start grading Waffle Houses?)

Our very nice couchsurfing hosts! We’re in Birmmingham, Alabama, after a good day’s biking under pleasant skies, from Tennessee through Georgia (I’m mumbling, ‘Don’t let the sun go down on you in Macon County, boy’) and into Alabama, including a coffee at The Spot in Fort Payne, a very nice spot indeed, formerly a hardware store, huge, with 100-year-old floors and tin-plate ceiling. We avoided I-59 with its nightmare interstate traffic, and took Route 11, the ‘Old Birmingham Highway,’ which is to I-59 as route 66 is to I-40: running alongside the interstate but ignored, delapidated, quiet, and perfect for biking. Horses watched us go by; time seemed to stop; stores full of rusted junk, and yard sales, drifted past.

Had to ask 8 local employees before a customer in a Starbucks could direct us to the neighborhood where Teresa lives. It was the neighborhood that all the people I asked were actually in. As one friendly Southern girl – very Southern, very friendly – put it succinctly, as amazed as I was that no one knew the neighborhood where they themselves worked: ‘You don’t shit where you eat.” All people know of where they work is where to park; they know literally nothing of what was once meant by the word ‘whereabouts’. Circumambulating America you’re struck, just as you feared, by the endless loop of identical franchises that passes for local shopping outlets. Hard to tell where you are. Are you anywhere? Tonight we have a novelty: a tent on Teresa’s balcony, high in the trees overlooking the highway.

The successful fire (even though it’s morning): Joe requires it, He is sitting in the Ulster Savings Bank memorial fold-up chair, given to me as a free gift by the bank when I opened an account there. I thought it was crazy to bring it along, but it has proved to be one of the best pieces of equipment we have. Joe is reading a long crime detection novel he may never finish on this journey – we’re knackered by day’s end, and Joe is always asleep within 5 minutes of turning in. No matter – the fire is a triumph.

Another dumb thing I brought was my heavy ancient rusty trusty mole wrench – which now proves much superior to the miniature key-ring wrenches I also brought, when it comes to tightening the bolt on my loose left-hand rear view mirror (don’t call it a wing mirror here, they don’t get it, and this makes me feel as if I’m referencing World War Two aircraft).

Today would have been my mother’s 100th birthday. (The Germans are celebrating dutifully, with articles in all the newspapers, and a new book, to which I’ve contributed.) Not a famous night: ground too pebbly and hard for even my worthy sleeping pad; night arias by Joe reached a pitch at 3:40 am; our whole pitch is on an antheap (thanks, Raccoon guys) – nice big glossy friendly black ants, nothing against ’em but they’re everywhere in our baggage, and some will now visit many states of the union. Off via Georgia to Birmingham, AL, by US 11, which thankfully runs all the way next to the crowded Interstate. Drivers are even more reckless here, it seems, than in the north. We’re taking it slow, on little roads. Determined to get the fire going that kept fading last night despite the repeated doses of methylated spirits he poured on it, Joe – who requires a fire – has succeeded in getting it going nicely this morning.