The Natchez Trace

In order to get our inverter working again, we drove to Inverter Service Center in White House, Tennessee, over two hundred miles to the west, but sort of along the path we wanted to take.

A technician named Bobby met us when we pulled into their parking lot.  A serious young man, he was friendly but unsmiling.  We showed him where the inverter had been installed by the dealership after we bought the motorhome.  It's under our bed, which is hinged to allow access for storage.  He removed the inverter, took it to his workbench, and later called us over and said, "See those little blue dots?  That means that some moisture got into the unit, and Magnum will not warranty any inverter that shows evidence of moisture.  I have no idea how that could happen, where it's installed."  I thought about telling him that I sometimes wet the bed, but decided that he might not know I was joking. 
 
After sleeping on it, I suggested to Bobby that he re-install the inverter but disconnect the external A/C power supply, and we would replace the unit when we get back to California.  The logic is boring, so I won't go into it, except to say that the inverter was still functional on battery power but blew up whenever alternating current hit it.  Bobby thought that would work, and reinstalled the unit.  When I asked what we owed them, Bobby said, "Nothing.  We didn't fix it."  That was a new one on me.  I guess they do things a little differently in Tennessee.

White House, it turned out, is a suburb of Nashville.  The Natchez Trace, a 440 mile long highway that parallels the ancient trail between Nashville and Natchez, is part of the National Park system, and I'd always wanted to drive it.  It's two lanes all the way, with no shoulders and a 50 mph limit.  There are tall trees on both sides for almost the entire length, and the grass bordering the road looks manicured.  It's beautiful and restful and there was almost no traffic.

We had gone about a hundred miles on the trace and were rounding a left hand curve when something caught my eye in our left hand mirror - the side of the pickup truck we were towing.  When the road straightened out, the tow seemed to track okay, but aside from slow speed sharp turning maneuvers in parking lots, the pickup had never been visible in the rear view mirrors before.  I wanted to pull off and make sure everything was okay, but I had to wait for the next turnout, which was about five miles away.

The tow mechanism consists of two swivel arms that attach to a tow plate on the pickup.  One of those arms had come loose and was in two disconnected pieces.  Luckily the one remaining arm had kept the pickup from flying into the woods.

So the steady stream of motorhome glitches continued.  I called the nearest RV repair facility, which by coincidence carried the same brand of tow bars.  It turned out that the screw that holds the metal rod in place had either unscrewed or stripped, and the manufacturer honored the warranty in this case.  After a couple of hours we were on our way, with a brand new tow bar in place.

We continued our drive on the Natchez Trace and after entering Mississippi pulled in to a rest stop and took our dogs for a walk.  There was a man sitting in a car, a good old boy minding his own business, and Nancy, as is her habit, walked over and said hello.  In a strong country Mississippi accent he said that he was waiting to meet a man from Alabama who was bringing a coon hound that he might buy.  There was, in fact, going to be a coon dog competition in a couple of days which he wanted to participate in.  Each hound was expected to locate a raccoon, tree it, and bay in a proper manner, and it would be scored according to rules which he didn't enumerate.  I asked if it was too late to enter Tammy Faye and Sophia, and he said, no, the deadline wasn't until the following day, they would be welcome.

I told him that I had grown up in Tallulah, Louisiana but had never tasted raccoon and asked him if they did actually eat coons.  He said yes, indeed, you skin it and cut off the head and paws and then add spices and boil it for several hours with a couple of water changes.  It's important to remove four glands in the armpits and groin before cooking, or it'll smell too bad to eat.  If prepared properly, it's just like squirrel or chicken.  I told him I planned to shoot a raccoon when we got back to California and prepare it according to his recipe.

After almost 400 miles on the Natchez Trace, we cut across to Vicksburg, which is about twenty miles from my ancestral home, and we made camp at the Walmart there.