Shinin' like a National guitar

In 1986 Paul Simon released an album called 'Graceland'.  The title track has a phrase, "The Mississippi Delta was shining like a National Guitar".  

In the 80's when I discovered the album and was enjoying it, marvelling that Simon could be so strong musically without Artie, I didn't know much about guitars.  So I always wondered what that phrase meant.  Some great American thing, like our 'World's largest ball of twine" perhaps?

Years later as my guitar knowledge (if not ability) grew I came to realize that Simon was painting a picture of the waters of the delta of the Mississippi river being as bright and lustrous as the shiny metal of a guitar made by the National Guitar company, a steel 'Reso-Phonic' guitar.  And people say my knowledge of guitars is wasted.

A Classic National Guitar

When Lynn said she was going to a conference in New Orleans and asked if I wanted to come, I answered 'sure!' (forgetting how much I HATE the inconvenience and dehumanization of flying into America).  Through the travel ordeal I kept thinking about the bright light shining on the delta.  A thought comforting enough to endure the passage.

On the first day I found a Harley-Davidson motorcycle rental place within walking distance of the hotel (another of my many dubious skills acquired in my youth).  In my mind I saw myself travelling down highway 23 to the end of the road and the end of the mighty Mississippi on my Harley.  Who wouldn't?  The National guitar-like environment that Paul Simon captured for me would be before my very eyes.

After planning my trip on the first evening in town, I collected the bike the following morning and set out on a beautiful sunny day, no more that 70 degrees (room temperature for my one younger reader) with a light wind.

The destination is about two hours according to my iPhone.

After about 45 minutes I pass the first mammoth oil storage facility.  You know, the huge round containers.  A Zillion huge, round containers.

It finally ends and I get to a part of the road where I can see the 'levy' on either side of the narrow strip of land the highway is built on.

A levy is a sand and stone hill with water on one side and dry land on the other.  I know you knew that.  So did I but that has not stopped the various tour guides and tour books from tell me this dozens of times in my brief stay in the Big Easy.

So I ride.  On and on.  I'm looking for the 'delta'.  I 'see' a road and two levies.

Reaching the half way point I start to think, there are new houses here.  Some are up on stilts perhaps 10' tall, others are like they came out of the subdivision I grew up in, bricks and vinyl siding.  Half are trailer-like things that are 'single wide'.  But must buildings are pretty new.  The big Katrina hurricane of 2005 must have wiped this area out and of course people rebuilt, 'knowing' that it wouldn't happen again.  Of course it will, but how come they don't know it?

So people live there in new places.

I'm getting hungry...supermarkets?  Nope.  Restaurants...nope.  I'm not saying they didn't have perhaps 5 convenience stores on the two hour trip, they did.  But I try to avoid them as a source of meals.

By and large the strip was 'retail-less'.  Refreshing in the now over-malled America, but pretty inconvenient if you are hungry.  Perhaps the retail giants know something about this area that the residents refuse to acknowledge?

So I stay hungry, but fortunately I can live on my 'reserves' for several days.

Next comes helicopters, lots of them, dozens of them.  And what I believe are storage parking lots of GM pickup trucks.  But not even GM would be crazy enough to risk their vast unsold inventories out here in hurricane / flood land.

After a while I realize that these are parking lots for commuters - not like people on the 401, but oil rig workers who work for a long stretch then are helicoptered back and forth to civilization.  They make good money and in their culture that income must demand a serious shiny new pickup truck.

Granted I started carefully looking at these lots and I did see one Camaro muscle car and a light green VW Bug.  But everything else was pickups.

Finally I got to, what the map said, was nearing the end of the road, the delta at last.

I can hear Mississippi John Hurt playing Avalon on his old guitar, I'm thinking Robert Johnson was a boy here.  I am growing to learn I'm a fool. 

Over the rise and I enter a boat yard, massive serious fishing boats/ships are berthed row upon row.  Huge, rusting workhorses.  Rich fishing grounds bring fishing boats.  No surprise there. I suppose what seemed discordant to me was how 'industrial' they were, not quaint Peggy's Cove fishing operations but massive 'Port of Miami' industrial shipping operations.  No wonder I can get shrimp and crab with every entrée here (and everywhere).

Just past them, more oil refineries, unloading facilities for oil tankers, processing plants.  I begin to feel I am in an 18th century english coal mining town.

Coming up next, and with it the nail in the coffin of my Paul Simon provoked journey, a 60' pile of garbage.  A dump.  Heavy industrial machinery scurrying over the surface of the mountain doing whatever they do up there.  A dump, at the end of the mighty Mississippi.  Nothing is shining at all.

The levies are long past and the water is exactly as high as the road. The wind blows the wavelettes across the road. Low land indeed.

The whole place is dirty, industrial and reminds me of the surface of the moon.  

To see how the needs of our society have ruined this area break my heart, especially as my hands are as unclean as anyones, roaring around on a Harley.

As I reached the end of the road and was turning my motorcycle around I decided to forgive Mr. Simon.  The oily water did actually catch the light.  It did 'shine'.  Simon never said the shine was of nature's beauty.  It was his poetry that gave me a beautiful image to imagine all these years.  That it was my interpretation that made it a pleasing image I suppose was better for me than one that would have made me sad to think of it all these years.

We get the perceptions we imagine, but we get the world we deserve.

I rode back to New Orleans, well below the speed limit, conserving fuel and trying to make as little noise as possible. 

Comments

[rd]

An environmentalist is born. How Woody Guthrie.

[Treat Hull]

We arrived at the same place by means of a different highway. See http://www.juniperrock.ca/wp/?page_id=59

I also share your interest in guitar but have even less talent. If you're ever in Picton, the Acoustic Grill has some great actual, including dobro and slide players.