Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles

Greetings from just off the courthouse sqare, Oxford, Mississippi.  We had a good five hour trip up here yesterday.  The weather is perfect and we enjoyed each other’s company along the way.

We didn’t get away from Picayune until about 1:45 p.m., so it was 6:45 p.m. when we arrived.  We unpacked, freshened up and walked up to the corner to the square and walked around the square checking out interesting places to eat.  There were several to choose from and all had menus in the window so we could see what looked good.  They all did, but we finally sestted on a really quirky looking place called Ajex Diner.  It proved to be a good choice.  I mean, the others looked really nice with candle light and one with a piano bar, but we were more in the mood for something really different.

We got it.

The decor was typical diner with low key and very southern looking furnishings.  The service was excellent and the menu was just as quirky as the look of the place.  It looked like a college hangout and there were several tables full of students there, but there were people of all kinds there, too.

We had been looking at the choices of steaks on all of the menus we had perused and Ajex Diner had ribeyes on the menu, but as we looked at all of the other choices we both changed our minds and ordered things entirely different.

I ordered fried catfish filets smothered with crawfish etoufee.  I gave Tom my side of rice, but I scarfed down the grill corn on the cob that had been grilled on a hickory smoked grill.  Talk about delicious!  It was fantastic with a perfect blend of seasoning on it.  It was sweet and smokey and didn’t need butter at all.  The catfish was plump and crispy and the etoufee was made very differently than any I’ve ever had.  Wonderful.

Tom ordered hot tamale pie, but it was wrapped in a couple of grit cakes and was stuffed with pulled pork, shoepeg corn, hot peppers, red peppers and tamale sauce.  Talk about good.

He had a side salad and blackeyed peas along with the rice I gave him.  We tasted each other’s food, of course, and both entrees were excellent, if quirky indeed.

They had homemade pies and cobblers for dessert, but we were full.  After we ate we walked back around the square and back down the hill to our inn.

This morning we got out and drove around town a bit looking for William Faulkner’s home and the University’s Museum so I could get out to see them on my own after lunch when Tom went to his Mississippi Press Association Board of Directors’ meeting on the campus of Ole Miss.  We found them both and enjoyed seeing some of the absolutely lovely towon.  The terrain is very hilly and there are many, many antebellum and Victorian era homes, as well as many other beautiful older homes with large expanses of lawns around them.

For lunch we met up with some other board members and the MPA’s Executive Director who is a good friend of ours and formal newspaper publisher, Layne Bruce, and ate at a nearby sandwich place with really good food.  I had a really good "cool summer salad" and some of their signature huge glass of iced tea.  They advertise sweet tea, but Tom and I both get it unsweet with lots of lemon and put sweetner in it.  Good stuff, southern iced tea.  They had sweet tea by the gallons there.

Tom went off to his meeting and I drove back down a few blocks to where William Faulkner’s home, Rowan Oak, is.  It was built in 1848 and is surrounded by lawns and woods for many acres.  It is all open to the public to wander during the day every day and the house, which is now a museum, is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day. 

I happened in during a lull in the traffic and had the house to wander on my own, although the young man who is the curator said that over 100 people had already been through the house this morning.  Faulkner won a Nobel prize for his work and his acceptance speecch is magnificent, being only two minutes long and recorded by Faulkner himself about 10 years later.  They had it written out in a display in the back hall and I was very familiar with part of it because I have it on a mounted poster I’ve had in my home for years and years.  In fact, it is so good that I want to leave it with you here today as the closing to my post.

Here is some of what Faulkner had to say as he received his Nobel prize for literature in 1950.  Remember it and live it well:

  I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.