Day 23 - Rusk, Texas to Cypress Bend, Louisiana

Well, last night we made it to Louisiana, or at least the place on the map purported to be Louisiana. So far all we’ve seen is water. Water on the roads. Water in the air. Water dripping off trees. Water dripping off our noses. Water on both sides of the highway in endless swampy pools. In fact, as the rain pounded down upon our little tin-covered home in Cypress Bend RV park beside Lake Toledo, we’re beginning to think that sooner or later we would be needing a submarine to rescue us from all the wet. Yesterday evening as we listened to the final disk of our most recent murder mystery, it was raining so hard outside that it sounded like someone was blasting us with a fire hose. It was, in fact, so loud that we had the disk player turned up all the way and the novel could barely be heard above the din.

Speaking of our latest novel on disk, we’ve been listening to “Bones to Ashes” by Kathy Reichs. It’s one Concetta picked out for us. Though I only rarely read mystery novels by female writers, I just loved this one. First of all, it was written in the first person, something that I almost always prefer in a mystery. Second, the story was so complex and multi-threaded that it had me hyperventilating as I waited for Concetta to put in a new disk each time one ended. All the parts were performed by Linda Emond who does such a variety of tonal voice variations and accents that you might be fooled into thinking more than one person was speaking. She’s simply outstanding.

I should probably explain about first person vs. over ways of telling a story. I like it when the main character is telling the tale and the reader learns about what he/she discovers as he or she is discovering it. Nowadays, writers tend to sort of cheat and have the tale told by an omniscient, God-like presence who is capable of getting inside everyone’s head, be they villain or hero, minor or major character. The omniscient narrator jumps from head to head, usually devoting a chapter to each, so that the reader knows everyone’s motivation, even if it’s not said out loud. Like I said, I consider this technique cheating. In real life we seldom know the motivation of the bad guys until the end. However, most readers have been spoiled by writers, like James Patterson, who use this technique exclusively because it sells well.

I should also probably explain my reticence about female mystery writers. It’s simple. Female mystery writers, let’s take Sue Grafton for example, spend way too much time involving themselves in the emotional lives of all the various characters. I simply don’t want my detective to do that. I want the detective to catch the bad guy by thinking like the bad guy, not like Dear Abbie. Yes, I know there are probably female writers who don’t do that. Kathy Reichs seems to be a terrific example, and I intend to seek out more of her books. I’m also open to suggestion, so send your favorite author suggestions to me and I’ll give them a try.

There was no internet at Cypress Bend, not even for my mobile device. We were so far back in the piney woods that I suspect if we didn’t dutifully add enough y’alls to the end of our sentences, they’d probably think we were spies and call Sheriff Buford to come haul us downtown for a bit of interrogation.

Today we spent most of our daylight hours in the town of Nocogdoches, the oldest settlement in the great state of Texas. Once again the taking of photographs was almost a waste of time since the only sunlight we saw was in the smile of the volunteer at the visitor center. Thank goodness for him, he made our morning and bestowed upon us reams of information about local places to visit that we ultimately never got to see because of the rain. Then, to add insult to injury, the battery in the camera went toes up on me, which made taking photos inside museums and so forth impossible as well.

By the time we left the visitor center it was time for lunch, so we hoofed it back to the coach where I ran the generator for a half an hour so I could charge the camera battery. We got lucky in Nacogdoches in that we stumbled over a HUGE parking area behind city offices that was provided for the public. We parked a good hundred feet from the nearest building and I don’t think anyone heard our generator at all.

Before leaving town we did a bit of shopping at our favorite emporium, Wally World, where I got to pick out a new sewer hose since ours is starting to develop cracks. I had to stretch it to its maximum allowable length the previous night in Rusk and I ended up having to seal up a two-inch tear with electrical tape. Not a good long term solution.

While at Wally World I finally got a “compass” so I can estimate distances better on our maps and campground guides. Because of the rain we didn't get much in the way of photos, but here's a couple I took the next morning when the rain had cleared up some.