Faith, Folklore, and Friends

I have been to numerous restaurants who claim to have the South's best catfish.   This place nailed it. The restaurant's parking lot is bigger than the rest of the town. They don't do reservations.  No matter who you are, you have to wait on the porch until there is room for you. We were there on Thursday when the doors opened at five, and didn't have to wait but a few minutes.

Yesterday, Hub and I went for a ride to see wildflowers.  We went south on the Natchez Trace Parkway, then to Booneville, Mississippi, then home on Highway 72. The wildflowers were not hard to find; in fact, they were everywhere we looked.  I blogged about mayapple  here. Purple trillium and purple grape hyacinths. They are small, but smell so good! This butterfly found the wild phlox before I did. When I was a child, we called these wild Sweet Williams.  We always picked them and carried them home for bouquets.  Maybe that is why I am not bothered with allergies as much as some people are. We saw much more than wildflowers. . .

The Natchez Trace Parkway is our favorite place to drive.  It is always beautiful, but especially in the fall. Hub and I traveled the Trace to Summertown, Tennessee, late yesterday afternoon,  If you look hard, you can see a hint of the riot of color that will be there in two weeks or so. Happy Fall, Y'all.

A different kind of beauty. . . . Cypress Swamp is at milepost 122, between Jackson and Tupelo, Mississippi.

The Methodists were the first organized religion here. As early as 1808, when white men first came to settle Lauderdale County, Methodist preachers Tobias Gibson and Lorenzo Dow traveled the Natchez Trace and stopped here. They preached in log cabins, forest clearings, and fields that had a stump to stand on.  Waterloo United Methodist Church was established in 1853, making it one of the oldest congregations in the state.   Major James H. Witherspoon served as the preacher in its early days. It is a beautiful place, both inside and out.  I didn't go inside the day these photos were made, but I have been inside it many times.  Some people that I know and love were married from its pulpit.  I have friends that are members of the current congregation.  I'm thankful for the strong, determined people who raised a place of worship that lasted.

Stop a minute, right where you are.  Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water.  Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still. ~Barbara Kingsolver

Gravelly Springs is a quiet community now.  They say that during that cold winter of 1865, all the trees were cut and buildings, tents, and stables went on as far as the eye could see.  Here, young U.S. Army Major General Wilson trained 22,000 cavalrymen for the planned spring invasion of Alabama and Georgia.  You can find additional information about this camp in Civil War Tales of the Tennessee Valley by William Lindsey McDonald, in addition to other Civil War history books. I wonder if the troops had time or inclination to see the beauty of these limestone cliffs and water flowing in natural springs, or if they were concentrating on staying warm and finding enough to eat. One hundred and fifty years later, the land has recovered, and there are no visible scars of that terrible time. Gravelly Springs is located on Highway 14 (Waterloo Road) about 16 miles Northwest of Florence, just past the Natchez Trace Parkway intersection.