| BY
MARK COATNEY
And came
down at last to New Orleans. Where there's Jazz Fest, and
too much drinking and delicious fatty foods. And as I took
in the city, dreaming on the lower Mississippi in the early-summer
heat, I get to thinking of where we had been.
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| DIANA WALKER FOR TIME |
| On the grounds of the Tezcuco Plantation. |
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The most recent memory was of the night before,
spent at Tezcuco Plantation, a beautiful big house with slave
cottages in the back. I stayed in one of the cottages, the
very definition of charming, with air conditioning, fine wood
floors and a bookshelf containing the complete Balzac. A black
woman dressed in a period hoop skirt gives some of us a tour,
and it's all very wonderful, except of course when you realize
that this beauty was all built on the backs of slaves, and
not everybody at this plantation was enjoying the gracious
living the brochures talk about.
Such
reflections lead to another of the few negative thoughts
engendered by our trip. Upriver, in the delta, just about
every white person I came in contact with felt they had
to point out very early on in the conversation that they
were in fact not racists, that Mississippi was nothing like
its national image of the bad old days. And I'd like to
take them at their word; but it's just that, well, I didn't
ask. They protest too early, and too often. Downstream,
here, the oddities are larger (a black woman giving tours
of former slave plantations?) but apologies aren't made.
There's clearly segregation (nearly everyone at Jazz Fest
who wasn't working there was white), but the dynamic seems
more complex.
But that's
about it for the sour stuff. After all, thanks are in order
— so many thanks.
To everyone
who did the work of putting this site together while I had
fun on the river, of course. To the fine captain and crew
of the Grampa Woo III, surely the finest, tightest vessel
from here to Minnesota.
To the
people of Baton Rouge, an apology for missing the 7:30 coffee
Thursday morning. I had a story to file, and that was the
only time I could get it done.
To everyone
who wrote in with advice, tips, stories, or just encouragement,
thank you. Thank you. I haven't been able to get any e-mail
for the past few days — is this the virus everyone's
talking about? — so forgive me for not writing back.
I will, and soon. I promise.
To everyone
we met, in all the towns along the way. More than I can
even begin to say, I was touched, really touched, at the
reception we were given in every single place we stopped.
I was never not amazed that people would be so kind, so
open to a pack of strange journalists descending on their
towns. You were all far nicer to us than we deserve.
There's
many a river that waters this land, but none like this one.
We know that now.
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