Vicksburg, MS- Thursday, July 7, 2011

Even after having breakfast, we still arrived at the Vicksburg National Battlefield before the Visitor’s Center was open. We were trying to get as early of a start as possible in order to beat the heat. It was 77 degrees when we started. By the afternoon it would be 97. When they opened, the girls got their Junior Ranger books to complete, we watched the movie (a much more up-to-date production then the one at Shiloh), watched the electric map program, got our CD tour from the gift shop, and headed out to explore the park.

The movie claimed that the Vicksburg Campaign was the largest and most complex campaign of the Civil War. Lincoln called Vicksburg, “the key to the Confederacy,” because the city was the last stronghold of the Confederates on the Mississippi River. If Vicksburg could be taken, then the North would control all of the Mississippi River, and would effectively cut the Confederacy in two. Vicksburg was as much of a turning point for the Civil War as Gettysburg was.

The battlefield tour road is 16 miles long, and the CD runs for about an hour if you play it straight through. It took us more than three hours to complete because we stopped and got out a lot, and backtracked once or twice for some things that we missed. There are a large number of monuments on this battlefield, both state monuments and regimental monuments. We got pictures of many of the state monuments. The monuments ran the gamut, from the huge and epically impressive like the Pantheon-styled temple for Illinois, to the quirky and small like the odd metal sculpture for Kansas which we initially didn’t even recognize as a monument. There is a relatively new monument to African Americans from Mississippi who fought against slavery in the Union Army. Scott got his picture taken by the New York State monument as well as the equestrian statue of Grant, among others. Julie felt sorry for General Pemberton, who commanded the Confederate Army, so we got her picture by his monument.

Many of the earth works that the soldiers dug and threw up are still quite visible in the park. At one point, we were able to go through a tunnel that had initially been dug by the Union troops. Emma spotted a frog in the tunnel and Anna picked it up like she had picked up the skink at Shiloh.

One of the highlights of the tour for all of us was the remnants of the ironclad Union gunboat, U.S.S. Cairo (pronounced Kay-row). It had been sunk during the war by a primitive version of what we would later call a torpedo. The Cairo rested at the bottom of the Yazoo River until it was raised in the 1960s. The remnants of much of the iron plating, the boilers, the wheel, and the guns, are on display along the park tour route. It was quite an experience to be able to walk through the remnants of the boat itself. The girls and Dad listed it as one of the highs for the day. An adjacent museum shows a surprising number of artifacts that were recovered from the wreck.

Throughout the tour, Anna and Emma were looking for answers to the questions in their Junior Ranger books. They turned them in at the end of the tour and were sworn in as Junior Rangers for the Vicksburg National Battlefield Park, even though the rangers were out of badges and will have to mail them.

One of the last monuments we saw was an upturned cannon marking where Grant and Pemberton met to discuss surrender terms. That meeting took place at 3:00, July 3, 1863. It was hard to believe the inscription as we read it. That’s roughly the time that Pickett’s Charge was happening at Gettysburg (if you excuse a little leeway for differences in local times). Gettysburg and Vicksburg ended at nearly the same time, and it was a true turning point in the Civil War. Nearly two years of hard fighting remained, but the twin victories set the Union on the path to ultimately defeat the rebels.

We finished the battlefield tour in time for a late lunch. We had Southern cooking at Cracker Barrel. Emma liked playing the IQ game, but couldn’t get past “just plain dumb” with three pegs left. We went into downtown Vicksburg to see the Old Court House which is seen so prominently in wartime photographs. We drove down to the river and saw where the Mississippi had flooded this spring. We saw the building that they kept showing on the national news and saw the high water lines on it.

After a few more views of the Mississippi River, we continued south. We crossed into Louisiana, which is a first time for all four of us. We saw the landscape flatten right out and the swamps on both sides of the road, which was really an enormously long bridge. Little houses had boat docks and fishing piers off their front doors. We drove by/over Lake Pontchartrain while listening to the song about it and drove on to our hotel near the Louis Armstrong International Airport, just outside of New Orleans. We’ll be here for three nights so we can settle in for a while. It’s been a week since we left home, and we’ll have to do laundry tonight. Julie says she’d rather do it tonight then have to do it on her birthday tomorrow. The girls went swimming again. The pools have been getting progressively warmer and today’s is like bathwater.

Graceland and Memphis- Wednesday, July 6, 2011

We saw monuments to two of the Twentieth Century’s most influential figures today, and they were certainly a study in contrasts.

First, we went to Graceland. When you arrive there, you start in an enormous plaza which looks like it could be the entrance to Disneyland’s monorails. There’s a wide variety of passes to choose from. Even taking the cheapest choice, it cost over $80 for our family of four. You get shuffled to the lines for a shuttle bus. They take your photo to try to sell it to you later. Then you ride the shuttle through the famous gates and up the hill to the mansion.

The mansion itself is rather interesting, but we were all a little frustrated by the audio tour guide that you had to use for the tour. In the end, it wasn’t really hard, but there wasn’t a good orientation on using them, and we spent the first part of the tour figuring them out. Emma in particular didn’t like the “thing-a-ma-jigs” and said they gave her issues.

Video was strictly prohibited, but still photography without flash was allowed. We’ll piece together the photos we took for our family videos. As you enter, you see the living room with its white sofa and stained glass peacocks. You see the dining room and the kitchen, where some staff member was always ready to make food at Elvis’s whim. Downstairs in the basement was Elvis’s TV room, with three TVs in the wall so that he could watch all three networks at once. The room with the pool table seemed like one of the places where you could picture him actually hanging out and being a real person. The “Jungle Room” was a favorite of ours, with its shag carpet covered walls and faux fur furniture. The whole house never seemed completely tacky nor completely elegant, but struck an odd balance of those two extremes. Oddly, the upstairs was off-limits. Like the White House, the first floor is open to the public. They said the second floor was Elvis’s personal space and guests were never allowed there. They don’t let people up there now, “out of respect.” It’s hard to see how much dignity is left after the extravagance of the rest of the place.

In the outside buildings, Elvis’s gold and platinum records were on display along with many of his movie costumes, the clothes that he and Priscilla wore at their wedding, many of his famous stage jumpsuits, and so on. Anna was impressed by seeing the piano that he played on the last morning of his life. (She was disappointed that we didn’t get to see the bathroom where he died, but that was in the “off-limits” second floor.) We eventually saw the graves of Elvis, his parents, and his grandmother, who are all buried in the Meditation Garden. The girls listed that as one of their highlights of the day. When we asked them why, Anna said she’d “never get closer to him.”

Anna had been anxious to get to the gift shop in the hotel this morning. Dad told her that there were LOTS of gift shops that we’d see, and they all have everything Elvis. True. Like the Mojo Nixon song- Elvis is Everywhere! Julie bought a cute Blue Hawaii t-shirt.

It’s a little unsettling when one looks at how godlike Elvis’s appearance is here. Just when you start to worry about what your little girls are getting from this experience, they reveal their true thoughts. In one of the many gift shops, there was a delicate Graceland ornament, in gold-colored metal. Emma said, “We can get this and hang it on the Christmas tree and remember Elvis…” Before Scott had a chance to respond she continued, “… a person who died on a toilet.”
We had a brief interlude for lunch at the Rockabilly diner, and then managed to find Sun Records Studio where Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins recorded their first records. Dad bought a CD there, but we opted not to take the tour.

Instead we went on to the National Civil Rights Museum. This amazing museum is located at the place made infamous as the place where Dr. Marin Luther King was assassinated. As we approached it, Emma said that she thought he was shot at his hotel. The museum is in the building that was originally the Lorraine Motel. One side of the building looks exactly like it did that day in 1968. A wreath of white flowers hangs on the balcony in front of room 306 to mark the location where he was slain.

Inside the museum, we saw an amazing movie titled, “The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306.” It was based around the recollections of Rev. Samuel “Billy” Kyles, who had spent the last hour of King’s life with him. We learned how King was in town to add his support to the striking sanitation workers. Rev. Kyle told of the famous last speech that King made when he said, “I've been to the mountaintop. And… I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land.” King seemed to know that his death was imminent and he was at peace with it. We were all engrossed in the story.

The rest of the museum had a fascinating look at the Civil Rights story, and examined parts of the story that we, as teachers, knew well, and parts of the story we had never heard of. We entered a bus to hear the driver yell at Rosa Parks, we saw a lunch counter at Greensboro, NC, we saw the jail from Birmingham and the burned out bus of the Freedom Riders. The tour ended by the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. You could look into room 306, and out the windows of what used to be 307 to see the spot where he was slain from the vantage point of many of the photographs we had seen. We noted that throughout the entire museum, the name of the gunman who fired the shot was never used. Let’s keep it that way.

We drove on. Welcome to Mississippi, and YAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Some idiot in a blue Dodge 4x4 had trash piled high in the back. A big blue trash can blew off the truck into the lane in front of us. As usual, Julie was driving. With only moments to react, and in danger of causing a bigger accident if she hit someone else, she swerved the best she could. The trash can itself hit the front of the truck. Scott took video of the blue truck, which had initially started to pull over, but took off at more than 80 miles an hour. We stopped at the Mississippi welcome center to inspect the damage. We then stopped in Batesville, MS, to have it looked at by a Ford dealer before continuing on. The damage was extremely minor, so we got dinner and continued on to Vicksburg.

We got to Vicksburg in time to see the sun setting over the river. Since the temperature has been in the mid-90s, the girls were happy to get into the pool, which has a nice view of the bridge and river behind the hotel.