Movin' On to Florence, MS

Sunday, April 25, I'm up at 6:30 to see the sun out after all of that rain. We're done with breakfast and halfway packed by 9:30. At 10:30 we call a halt to our packing as it is too early to leave. We need to let the people at the next place check out so there's a free site. There are only 23 sites at the next place and we have no reservation. We'll just take our chances as it is only 67 miles to Florence, MS, just south of Jackson. We finally leave at 11:30. The rest of our nearby neighbors all pulled out between 9:30 and 10:00 a.m.

We take 49 north to Wendy Oaks RV Resort, 4160 Hwy 49 S., Florence, MS 39073, (601) 845-2267, Rankin County. There is a 7-acre lake here. We are set up by 1:00 and drop $64.00 for two nights in the slot by the office door for site #13. Then we continue north in the truck towards Florence and hang a bat turn to eat at Jerry's Catfish Igloo. The waitstaff is great. I get a kick out of their t-shirts that say "Peace, Love and Catfish!"

There is a crowd lined up out of the door, mostly Sunday-go-to-church folks dressed to the nines. A framed newspaper article on the wall says "There's a tasty reason people line up at Jerry's Igloo." The check out gal says a table for two should only be 15 minutes but it turns out not to even be that long. They jam us in by one of the igloo's windows.

We both get the small catfish plate consisting of cornmeal pan-fried fillets that taste just like Gram Rood's! The sides are great; french fries, turnip greens, Cole slaw that tastes just like my Mom's, and sweet potatoes that taste like Poppalua-an old black farmer gent who sold veges out of a wheelbarrow on Perry Street in my hometown. What a nostalgic lunch! I guess it is a good time to eat sweet potatoes here because on the way up we kept seeing produce stands or farmers selling sweet potatoes out of their pickups. They were heavenly. You could make sweet potato pie out of them without adding sugar.

Jerry's Catfish Igloo

After lunch we head south and find 49 South Antiques and Flea Market that we saw on the way here. As we get out of the truck some local guy stopped us to ask Bob about our Fold-a-Cover. He wants to buy one off the Internet but never saw one in person. We close the place down browsing until 5:30. Along the way we find six decks of matched playing cards so we can play Ponytail Canasta, two postcards, a 1000-piece puzzle for $1.00, and a plastic tablecloth.

We're home by 5:30 but never found a paper. We have text messages back and forth with my brother Mike. He's having a Jimmy LaFave day and comments on "Brand New Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat." I text back that it's a Dylan song and he says he doesn't have the Dylan version. Alas, I had it on vinyl.

Bob walks around the fishing lake here and a guy tells him one half is private property. I clean the mud and bugs off the lower front of the RV and then walk around the campground once. I stop in the laundry room and read the local menus. I inadvertently lock the door on the way out. Oops, someone has clothes in the dryer and had the door slightly propped open.



We have Four-bean Turkey soup and crash in front of the TV. We have all the major channels here! Civilization at last. We watch Boston Legal "Que Saran Saran." I love that show. I call Glenda. That rascal fell in her converted garage over a trash back. She's okay and may only have a bruise as a souvenir. We see on the news tonight that on Saturday a tornado traveled 97 miles from I-20 northeast to Yazoo City, MS, with 170 mph winds. It was a Category 4 tornado! Ten people have been killed so far as they know. That is way too close, especially if we had moved up here on Friday as originally planned. No wonder that tornado watch lasted for 12 hours yesterday! It's 7:20 p.m. and 75 degrees with 30% humidity. The high was 88 and the low was 62.