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Pascagoula: Soap, propane and s’mores.




January 9, 2021

In Gautier, Mississippi there’s a car repair place called Advanced Collision. What happened this past week at the nation’s capital, I would call advanced collision. We’d already been through advanced collusion and you can see where that got us. My friend in Ocean Springs told me that she took their car there once because of a fender bender, and the man said to her, “Lady, this ain’t advanced collision, this don’t qualify; what you have here, honey, is stupidity.”


“Good thing,” she said, “Because it’s not really my car, I was just trying to help.”

“Well,” she said the man told her, “A person should be responsible for his own actions. You be safe, you hear?”


She told me about a place in Pascagoula where we could get our Covid-19 vaccinations and signed us both up for January 13. When she called to tell me about the appointment she was already on her way to my camp and let me know that we could go there and check it out and on the way, go to the Toyota place for another car problem. When we got there, the service bay was open and she drove right in and rolled down her window.


“How can I help you, Missy?” the man said to my eighty-year old friend.

“My front end is falling off,” she blurted out.

“Well, I’ll be darned,” said the man pulling up his Gatorade face mask, his eyes bugged out. “You got a problem with yer body?”

“No, not my body, the car body.”

“Then you you be needing the body shop, have you tried Advanced Collision?”


“I’m not stupid enough to go there,” she muttered looking at me.

“Well, what about right across the street, there’s Swampland Automotive, they ought to be able to fix yer body.”

“I’ll give a try,” she said, and we roared right out of the service bay. When we got to the Escalawpa River we saw three sand hill cranes in the tall grass as we came around the bend. I like to see those tall sandy colored birds, a touch of wilderness on the edge of town.

My friend said, “We should go on over to that Burger King and get a whooper.”

“Wait a minute, I think they’re called whoppers,” I said.

“I’ve got those sand hill cranes in my mind mixed up with whooping cranes. I know those burgers are whoppers.”


“Anyway,” she said, “Let’s get a couple of Dr. Peppers, too. I need to be refreshed, it’s been a tough week.”


“I’ll say,” I said, “Too much news, and evidently the cell tower by my camp went down last fall in the hurricane, that’s why the reception has been so spotty. The man at T-Mobile said, ‘It’s been a big week, you’re going to have to spend some time now catching up, it’s been tough to follow the news.’”


I went to Pascagoula the other day. it’s the birthplace of Jimmy Buffet but how would you know, not a bit like what I imagine Margarita-ville looks like, it’s overcast here with dusty old strip malls, but I get ahead of myself. I woke early in Snowball, my little RV, and realized the propane tank for the stove was empty. A couple of matches didn’t do the trick. So I microwaved some water and had a cup of coffee, why I don’t do that every day is anyone’s guess, but I like the blue spurt of a lighted match, the puff of gas. It’s little game: will the smoke detector go off again this morning?


Then thought I’d wash my hair in the sink and got a good sudsy start when I realized the water wasn’t draining out and suds were spilling on the floor and getting my wool socks all wet; I’d forgotten to empty the tanks. Now what? I scooped off the suds, wrapped a dish towel around my head and took bowlfuls of water outside to some dry palmettos. Got things cleaned up and put away, but there wasn’t much I could do about my hair so I put on my black polyester hat and hoped for the best. Got dressed, unplugged the water and electricity, chained up my salmon pink bike and drove lumbering to the dump station to drain the tanks. Job done and I was off to get propane.


I remembered when I was here in 2016 that there was a place east on 90 where you could get gas, across the highway from where you could feed the alligators as long as it was at least 80 degrees, otherwise they’d be sleeping. Last time I was there, at the propane place, they had to call in an expert, Papa Oaks, I think his name was, he came with a different nozzle. I waited for him in the little corner store that sold the world’s best chili dogs; you wouldn’t have believed the lineup of people in there. Same thing this time, and there was simply no way to be six feet apart, there was hardly six feet of room in the whole place, they’re popular those chili dawgs.


“Thatta be me,” said a tiny, Tinkerbell-like woman, when I asked about propane. She hopped over the counter, flipped her white hair behind her sparkly earrings, four on each ear, and sort of flew out the door and over the greasy puddles to a big steel tank underneath the most gigantic live oak trees you ever did see. I followed her directions as she waved at me with the gas nozzle as if were a wand, and backed up Snowball. “Don’t hit the yeller pipe,” she said. Bent over like a question mark it clearly had been smacked already, and more than once. “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint yew, but this here nozzle inn goin’ work. Now yew take this here frontage road and go down to Franklin Creek and at the caution laight turn raight and at the next caution laight turn laift go under the innerstate and go laift on Presley Point and jess keep goin’ you’ll git there ventually and they’ll have gas. Good luck now.”


Off I went under the giant oaks, past cows and more cows and a handsome big red bull straining to push down the fence that separated them, past rows of small bungalows with deflated Santas and reindeer still on the grass, to a wide field, and in the distance I could see a line of RVs and small signs, like Burma Shave ones, along the sides of the road. No Alcohol. Absolutely NO ALCOHOL. IF YOU HAVE ALCOHOL IN YOUR VEHICLE TURN AROUND AND GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM. I pulled over next to a ditch and took my almost empty Famous Grouse Scotch bottle and stuffed it inside a down parka and into the tiny closet. I’m gonna risk it for the propane.


Eventually I came to the Boathouse at the RV camp and on the wide wooden porch was a white-haired man wearing a surgical mask. He was on the phone and talking to a couple with three kids, all of whom had camouflage neck gators up to their eyeballs. “Hello,” he said loudly.


“Are you talking to me?” I asked walking up the steps.

“Yes,” he said ignoring the gator family and his phone, “What kinda accent is that? Yours.”

“Boston, once,” I said, thinking he clearly was a multi-tasker or at the least a multi-talker.

“Than how come you have Washington plates? You want propane? Go wait in your rig.”


Eventually, he came and waved for me to follow and he jogged down to the propane tank in his green rubber boots and we hooked up. I sat around, hearing all sorts clicks and puffs as various gaseous smells wafted about until he finally yelled, “Got ‘er.”


Then, hanging on to my review mirror, he told me about gopher turtles, bass fishing here in Goode’s Mill Lake which had a lumber mill until, during the Civil War, it was burned up, and drunk campers who boat in from Alabama, Alabama! who leave their blue beer cans all over. “I held my rifle,” he demonstrated, “And click click,” he demonstrated again, and said, “You pick up those cans, I’m not going to repeat myself, and they didn’t want to, but they did, ventually.”


I got out of there eventually, my Famous Grouse safe in its down jacket, no click click with the rifle for me, and found my way back to Pascagoula where there was a Walmart. I went in and found, stacked by the front door, Double Decker Moon Pies. I bought a big box, there were no small ones. My friend in Ocean Springs said that her aunt Lillian told her that you need a RC Cola to drink with a Moon Pie, but I couldn’t find any of that.


Then it was back through Pascagoula towards Gautier, Mississippi and my camp. By the time I got there I was so hungry I could have eaten a couple of those red cows. Instead, scrambled eggs and toast.


In the late afternoon I made a campfire, watched the pale sun go down pink across the bayou and telephoned a friend to wish her Happy New Year as I waited for the couple from Ocean Springs to arrive with chili for our cookout under the stars.


“Where are you now?” my friend in Boston asked. I told her, and about the campfire, too. “Gee, I wish I could be there with you,” she said.


I asked if she’d had a good holiday and she said it had been OK and that she was still enjoying the 39 teddy bears that decorated a Christmas tree that she’d won at a fundraiser. “39! Can you believe it?” she said, “They are valuable, they still have their tags, from all over the world. My son went to Maine, he said there’s nowhere in the house to sit now, so he’s gone, which isn’t a bad thing.”


“Did you do anything else fun?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, I saw a movie, it was so good, you should see it.”

“What was the name of it?”

“I can’t remember,” she said, “But it was so good.”

“What was it about?”

“I don’t remember, but it was so good, you should definitely see it.”


“Sounds wonderful,” I said. The other day I saw a sign by the side of the road that read: “Mama, I’ve been meaning to ask you, is that offer to slap me into next year still on the table?”


In the meantime, I’m ready for a Moon Pie and maybe, to top it off before the chili gets here, the last of the Famous Grouse. I might even take off my hat and rinse out my hair, how would you like that? I’d be the fuzziest teddy bear you ever saw.


If you want to come to Pascagoula, Gautier or Moss Point, Mississippi, just let me know; if its 80 degrees we can feed the alligators, and look around for Jimmy Buffet, he might be here somewhere, wearing a gopher turtle shirt and maybe drinking an RC Cola. If you can’t

remember what movie he’s in, I think it’s called Famous Grouse-ville, I should tell my friend in Boston, maybe that’s what she saw. Eventually, my friends arrive wearing their headlamps, we eat chili for supper, and for dessert, a couple of Moon Pies and a bunch of S’mores, with flaming marshmallows and dark chocolate. Two desserts, always best when you’ve gone to Pascagoula. If the news gets too much for you, just think of it as a bad case of Advanced Collision which is right next door to Swampland Automotive. They can fix anything and if they can’t, they’ll drain it.



With thanks to chili cooks John and Ginny Dugaw, and childhood friend, Nan Fleming; who cares if we can’t remember the facts?


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