Gulf Shores travelblog: Old friends on the way home
After driving Interstate 10 from Lafayette, Louisiana, to Mobile, Alabama last weekend, I vowed to find a different way home. Danged if I didn’t do something else. I found a better way home.
Cody Aull is a kid who was about 12 or 13 when the Dish and I started teaching the junior high Sunday School class at Lakeside Church of God in 1994. He was a total delight, even at that age. Funny and unassuming and sweet and smart, all the while driven and goal-oriented. There are lots of young teenagers like that. Some of them change. Cody never did.
Cody and our daughter, Haley, were great friends. He hung out at our house often, even went to the OU-Arkansas Cotton Bowl 17 years ago with us and became one of our all-time favorites. Cody always said he wanted to be a doctor. He wasn’t kidding. Cody went to OU, then joined the Navy, which paid for his medical school in Missouri. He became a Navy flight surgeon, then three years ago was free of his military obligations and joined Anderson Regional Medical Center in Meridian, Mississippi, as an ear-nose-throat specialist.
Along the way, he married Lindsey, a Kansas City girl, and they now have four kids, about the same ages as our granddaughters.
On Thursday, I sprung an idea on our Gulf Shores crew. I haven’t looked at the geography, but I was pretty sure Meridian is on Interstate 20. We could go home through Meridian and see if the Aulls were up for a mid-day meal. My suggestion was royally received, and Trish the Dish immediately called Cody. He was with a patient, but no problem. He took the call. Told his patient this was important. You have to know Cody. He’s so charming, the patient was no doubt enthralled with the one-sided conversation. He was all fired up for us to swing by.
So Saturday morning, we headed out of Gulf Shores. Check-out time is 10 a.m., and it’s a hard deadline. The keypad entry code into the condo expires at 10 a.m. No more getting in. I was worried about the elevator situation, considering the chaos when we checked in, but I guess people left out early in the morning, because there was no mad rush at 10. We got things loaded up and were on the road at 10:12 a.m.
There are two main highways that go from I-10 to the gulf; 59 and the Beach Express. Both figured to be packed with cars, and I assume they were, because after just a couple of miles on 59, GPS encouraged us to take a county road west a few miles to Highway 98, the Magnolia Springs Highway. Magnolia Springs is a quaint town near the eastern edge of Mobile Bay. It’s full of magnificent trees and vintage homes. Really a cool place. Highway 98 eventually takes you north through the Mobile suburbs of Fairhope, Daphne and Spanish Fort, where you catch I-10.
I don’t know if we saved any time, but it certainly was less stressful.
On I-10, the traffic often backs up at the tunnel that goes under Mobile Bay near downtown Mobile. So we re-routed and eventually got onto I-165, which took us to U.S. 45. That highway goes through the sticks of southern Alabama; it’s a two-lane road without many stops but with quite a bit of traffic. We rarely were able to go over 60 mph, which can be frustrating.
The only real town we went through was Citronelle. But then we passed a sign that made my heart soar.
Vinegar Bend.
Vinegar Bend, Alabama, is an unincorporated place that had a population of 192 in the 2010 census. When the bridge to the main road into town was closed for repairs in 2010, the post office closed, too.
Wikipedia says that one of the stories for how the town got its name is that a container of vinegar burst at the freight station near the river’s bend. Only trouble with that is, I didn’t see a river, and the maps I’ve looked at show no river or even a big creek.
Seventy years ago, old-timers said that Vinegar Bend once had been a bustling place, with a big mill, several stores, a 42-room hotel and lots of railroad activity. But that was 120 years ago.
But I know of Vinegar Bend for a different reason. In the good old days of baseball, the 1970s, NBC’s Game of the Week was must-see TV, and Joe Garagiola would reminisce about his good-old days of baseball, and I loved it when Garagiola would talk about old-time players who weren’t stars. Guys like Smoky Burgess and Dutch Leonard and Schoolboy Rowe.
And Vinegar Bend Mizell. Wilmer Mizell was a National League pitcher from 1952-62. He made 230 major-league starts and had a record of 90-88. Mizell had one of the all-time great nicknames. He had been born across the state line in Mississippi, but his parents’ home was on the Vinegar Bend mail route, so that’s what went on his birth certificate. I don’t know when he got the nickname, but he had it in the big leagues, and it was a magical when Garagiola talked about it on summer Saturdays.
Vinegar Bend Mizell went on to become a three-term congressman for North Carolina in the House of Representatives. He later was appointed to a variety of federal positions by presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush I. Mizell died in 1999 at the age of 68.
Seven years ago, we hired a new OSU writer. Gina Mizell, a super person and a tremendous reporter. She became a great friend and now covers the Denver Nuggets for the Denver Post. She had lunch with the Dish and I in April, when we were in Colorado.
But as soon as Gina arrived, I had her a nickname.
Vinegar Bend.
She embraced the lunacy of the nickname, and we laughed about it for years. And Saturday, when I zipped past the Vinegar Bend sign, I knew what I had to do. I circled back, parked on the road to Vinegar Bend and posed in front of the sign while the Dish snapped a photo.
I texted the photo to the new Vinegar Bend Mizell, with the caption, “Driving thru Alabama. I don’t make this stuff up.”
She wrote back, “This just made my day.”
My day was made an hour or so later. Just past Vinegar Bend, we hit the Mississippi line, and U.S. 45 opened into a four-lane, divided highway. Score one for Mississippi. We made much better time as zipped up to Meridian.
I had been to Meridian once. In 1999, the Oklahoman crew flew into Jackson, Mississippi, and drove over to Meridian to spend the night, with OSU playing at Mississippi State the next day. It’s about a 90-minute drive from Meridian to Starkville, but we had other motives. Marcus Dupree’s son, Marquez, was playing for Philadelphia High School. Philadelphia, Mississippi, is about 40 miles northwest of Meridian. John Rohde was working on a story on the Duprees, and we went to a high school game that night.
Meridian has a population of about 41,000, with a metro population of about 107,000. It’s the regional commercial headquarters for eastern Mississippi.
Meridian is not an old town by Deep South standards. It was established in 1860 as a railroad center, and a big railyard remains today. General William Tecumseh Sherman burned much of Meridian during his march to the sea during the Civil War, but it rebuilt and from 1890 to 1930, Meridian was Mississippi’s largest city.
The Aulls like it. It’s a regional health hub, it has a Naval air station. The Mississippi Arts and Entertainment Center is located in downtown Meridian; Jimmie Rodgers, dubbed the father of country music, was born in Meridian. Peavey Electronics is headquartered in Meridian. The downtown has some character, and there’s plenty of commerce out on I-20.
And the Meridian federal courthouse was the site of the 1966-67 trial in which 18 men were charged with the 1964 murders of civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. Seven were convicted, though they received relatively minor sentences. It is believed to be the first time an all-white jury convicted a white official of a civil rights killing.
I’m no big fan of the American South, but there are worse places than Meridian. And it’s an even better place because of Cody Aull.
He had us meet his family at the historic Weidmann's restaurant downtown, which has been in business since 1870 and touts itself as the oldest eatery in Mississippi.
We parked down and across the street from the restaurant, and here came Cody to greet us. He raced across 22nd Avenue and grabbed me with a bear hug. I wish everyone on Earth could get that kind of reception every once in awhile.
We had a great late lunch – I had shrimp salad with remoulade sauce, and we had some scrumptious fried green tomatoes – and then Cody took us to his land outside town, where he’s building a beautiful home.
Soon enough, we had to head out, but it was great seeing the Aulls. We hadn’t seen them since they drove down to New Orleans for the OU-Auburn Sugar Bowl. It had been too long.
We then took out on I-20, through the rest of Mississippi and all of Louisiana. I much prefer I-20 to I-10. I might not go back to Gulf Shores via I-10. Too much construction, too much traffic, too many delays. I-20 was much smoother. We got a late dinner at a Popeye’s in Shreveport – J.J. loves Popeye’s – and then motered into Longview, Texas, just off I-20 about 40 miles inside the state line.
Longview is a relatively big place: estimated population in 2017 was 81,000, with a metro population of 217,000. I had never spent any time in Longview, but I liked what I saw as we drove out of town Sunday.
The rest of our trip was uneventful other than a stop at Buc-ees. Buc-ees is best described as a travel stop on steroids. We went into the store at the intersection of I-20 and U.S. 80, in Terrell.
They say that the Buc-ee’s in New Braunfels is bigger – at 68,000 square feet, it’s touted as the biggest convenience store in the world. But the Buc-ee’s in Terrell looks just as big.
It’s got exactly what you’d see in a convenience store, only way more of everything. Huge souvenir section. Huge outdoor-supplies section. Huge snack section. Huge hot food section, complete with tons of barbeque options. The dang place has shopping carts.
Buc-ee’s also has the nicest bathrooms I’ve seen this side of exclusive country clubs. I’m not kidding.
And everything is more-than-reasonably priced. Extra-large drinks at 79 cents.
I can’t adequately describe the enormity of it all. I’d guess there were 1,000 customers in the store when we were there. The parking lot was the size of Home Depot’s.
Buc-ee’s is building a mega-store in Denton and in Loxley, Alabama, from where we just came. You will be stopping at a Buc-ee’s soon, I promise.
We grabbed a quick lunch near Buc-ee’s – Sadie wanted Panda Express, so I took her and Tinley there. Next door was a Taco Bueno, so Haley and Riley went there. And the Dish and J.J. wanted Freddy’s Steakburgers. So we split up, then hit the road again.
Rolled into Norman around 5 p.m. A fun trip home from a fun week at the beach. And while we were gone, August arrived. Football season is here.