To Galveston and Beyond
- By Karen Wright
Crawdad welcomes guests to the Bayou Cabins in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana.
By Karen Wright
Our latest trip to the southern regions of the U.S. was prompted by an urge to eat boudin and hear some Cajun music. We had some tickets on Southwest that we had to use as well, so we hopped on the plane and flew to Houston, Texas, where we rented a funny little Kia Soul (a red fire hydrant on wheels) and drove down to Galveston for a few days. We have history with Galveston as we worked there on a tall ship restoration for nearly three years.
Galveston is still recovering from Hurricane Ike, but they are doing it well. The historic district is coming back to life and in spite of itself, the yuppies are movin' in with new shops, new restaurants, and new attractions. The old bookstore that was there in the 1980s when we were there is no more and our favorite old Mexican restaurant is no longer very good, but we had some great shrimp po' boys on the waterfront and then walked over to The Galveston Bookshop, owned by Sharun. He has a very nice little store with two levels. The selection is limited but most are quite good. Galveston Bookshop was established in 1991. They are located on 23rd Street, not too far from The Strand, which is the main tourist drag. They carry used books which are well organized and include Sci-Fi, mysteries, non-fiction, fiction, the history of Galveston and the storms that rack the Gulf Coast, a large selection of Texana and Southwest, cookbooks, and a good crop of postcards, CDs and DVDs. They also have a very nice gold and white tabby cat who greets you at the door. It was a very nice store. I found several good Western Americana books at a good price. As far as I could find out, he is the only bookstore in Galveston now.
Hurricane Ike created havoc in his store, coating the floor with mud and scattering books everywhere; the pictures are enough to make a book person cry! You can see it on their website, www.galvestonbookshop.com. But as with the proverbial Phoenix, they have come back from the mud and water, remodeled and renewed. Sharun said they were insured, but still - what a tragedy.
It was too chilly to go to the beach so after several days of visiting with our Texas sailing pals and eating too much, we headed for Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, the Crawfish Capitol of the World. It is a quaint little Cajun town a couple of miles off the main highway. This is where the boudin came in. We stayed at Bayou Cabins Bed & Breakfast where they also make some of the best boudin we've ever tasted. The owner had, over the years accumulated a wild assortment of old cabins, slave quarters, and outbuildings, and moved them in, cabin by cabin, to create his own motel. The huge metal crawfish in front of the cabins was an attraction in itself. They have a website, www.bayoucabins.com, if you want to see them. We did a cursory look in thrift and antique stores for books, but found none worth buying. However, the food was terrific at Café des Amis and they have a nice little coffee shop with great spice cake. We spent two evenings listening to Cajun music at a local dance hall. We love to watch their graceful high stepping!
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To Galveston and Beyond
- By Karen Wright
Main Street Books in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
We visited parts of Cajun country for three years when we lived in Galveston, but we never did a swamp tour, so this time we remedied that. We took a two and one-half hour swamp tour in a nice quiet boat with our guide, Butch, who is a biologist and botanist and works as a forester as well as a swamp guide to Martin Lake and Swamp area. He is also a good old Cajun boy 'who know de swamp real good.' He was terrific and very knowledgeable. We had one loud mouth woman who I wanted to feed to the alligators, but my husband discouraged me. We saw lots of lovely birds - osprey, ibis, and egrets (among others), also lots of alligators and turtles, and the beautiful, if a bit spooky, flora of the swamp.
We left there and drove to Biloxi, Mississippi, pausing in New Orleans on the way to find a snack. Three years ago we had gone to Biloxi and found Spanish Trail Books, owned by Mike and Pat Hutter. It was very lucky and escaped hurricane Katrina. It is a wonderful bookstore in a very bad location, and actually the only good bookstore for many, many miles around Biloxi. It is in a dead, deserted downtown area which has not come back from Katrina. In fact, casinos are about the only life left in that area. Unfortunately, their prices are quite high and they are disinclined to offer much of a discount but we did pick up a couple of books - one for my husband's maritime collection and a couple of Western Americana for our store. I was surprised to find Mike quite uncongenial. I wondered if there was something in the water, or my approach, or what. I reminded him that I did a very complimentary article about their store in a previous issue of AEM, and even that didn't perk him up. Perhaps he was just having a bad day.
We stayed in Biloxi for several days, visiting with an old friend who is a terrific cook and a wine connoisseur. As you may imagine, that was great fun. We hit just about every thrift and book store for forty miles in every direction (not many at that) and found almost nothing but grouchy booksellers, paperback romance, and Christian books, most of which were way overpriced.
We headed up the map to the town of Jackson, Mississippi, stopping in Hattiesburg for lunch. We found a nifty little bookstore in Hattiesburg; Main Street Books, owned by Diane Shepherd. She has been in business since 2002. I told her I thought she was quite brave to tackle opening a store in an obviously poverty stricken, but historically interesting town, in this economic climate. But, she said, she's really the only place around and is doing okay. She had a lot of southern writers, lots of cookbooks, quite a number of sale tables with good, hardback and paperback novels. She also carried other knick knacks, some clothing items - T-shirts, scarves, and the like. I found three really neat Australian fiction books with colorful 1950s-style book jackets and a sailing ship book for my grandson. If you are cruising through the area, stop at 210 Main Street and say hello to Diane.
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To Galveston and Beyond
- By Karen Wright
Owner Fred Smith is surrounded at Choctaw Books.
We zipped on up to Jackson and were rather dismayed at how empty it was. There were no cars parked on the street or in any parking lots after 5 p.m., the crime rate is too high. The downtown has been severely "malled", but we went into a bar in a 1920s hotel and the bartender, a young man from a nearby college, told us they are trying to bring it back. The town was pretty grim, but had some fantastic historic architecture. We did find Eudora Welty's house, surrounded by lovely camellia bushes. We also found Choctaw Books. Unfortunately we arrived Saturday evening late and he was just closing. We were going to go on to New Orleans Sunday, but decided to stay over and go to his store Monday morning. And we were glad we did!
First and foremost, Fred Smith, the owner of the store was cheerful, helpful, knowledgeable, and seemed to actually like us and want to help us find things. No mean feat in this store which is packed, crammed, jammed, and stuffed with books on almost any subject you can name. It is floor to ceiling cases, with aisle piles and boxes and overflowing nooks and crannies. Fred told us that one lady had lost a $600 pair of glasses in the store but they had never been found.
He has rare and used books and a fine selection of firsts, signed books by southern authors, Civil War books, southern history, and regional stuff. There is quite a collection of Eudora Welty and scads of ephemera poked into shelves here and there. If you are looking for something specific in the southern genre, give him a call at 601-352-2614. It would take two weeks to actually dig around and find all the terrific things he has stashed away, but he knows pretty much where everything is. It is loosely arranged by subject, but you might want to quickly scan all subjects anyway, since I found a couple of fabulous books hiding in the wrong place. I ended up with a whole box of books with a nice discount, and, bless his heart, Fred offered not only to mail the books I bought from him, but all the books we had accumulated over the past week. That's a huge help when you are on the road and can't carry packing materials.
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To Galveston and Beyond
- By Karen Wright
Seemingly anything can be found at Choctaw Books.
We did find a lovely botanical garden in Jackson. It was called Mynelle Gardens and is a former private home purchased by William H. Allen, a lumber company owner in 1895. Allen was the great grandson of Revolutionary War hero, Ethan Allen, and a soldier in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. The place stayed in the family and opened to the public in 1953. In 1973, Mynelle Westbrook Hayward, the last of the family, sold the garden to the City of Jackson. The area was beautifully tended and had lots of ponds and little fountains with statuary of everyone from Quan Yin to Buddha to several very nicely cast angels and little children. The ponds were full of turtles and surrounded by flora including lots of gorgeous, multi-colored camellias. It was a great place to sit quietly away from the very noisy city streets.
Our next stop was New Orleans for several days and I'll tell you all about it next month. Bon ton roulet! (Let the good times roll.)
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