Our next stop was Vicksburg. We didn’t even go downtown; they took us directly to the National Cemetery where only Union soldiers are buried. Well, that’s not entirely true; one Confederate got into the mix somehow and got planted in the wrong cemetery. There was a Confederate flag on his grave to show the difference. I don’t know why they don’t dig him up and put him in the Confederate cemetery. He’d probably be happier. And showing a Confederate flag anywhere will get you in trouble these days. But there he lies with his lonely little flag. We never got to see where the Confederate soldiers were buried. That’s not a national park. Anyway, the tour was quite educational. There were markers where the two sides had cannons pointing at each other–sometimes only 50 feet apart. Each Northern state who lost personnel in the battle has a large memorial. And they lost a lot of lives. The guide says they still dig up mini balls in the fields. But Vicksburg was important because it was the turning point of the Civil War. When Grant took Vicksburg the South was blocked from getting supplies and munitions. They were cut off from the world. But it was horrible for the town; people starved to death in the siege. One interesting note; Grant came up from the south on the Mississippi. He had to get supplies and soldiers to the north of town to surround the Confederates. The captains of the ironclads hugged the shore closest to the Confederates. The Confederates were on high ground and when they pointed their cannon down at the ironclads the cannonballs just dropped out. So the boats passed largely unscathed. It’s funny when you think of those cannons pointing down and the balls dribbling out. But it worked. And Grant became a hero. What a time this country has had.
We stopped at the closed Visitor’s Center to pee. Always have to keep the bathrooms open for the tourists. A resurrected ironclad was on display. They think the boiler blew and that’s what sank it. What I found interesting were the rails welded onto the front of the boat. The original iron slabs only protected the center of the boat where the boiler and paddlewheel had been placed (not the back, like our boat). Sherman was tearing up the railways so the soldiers took the iron rails and patched them on the front for more protection. Ya gotta love Yankee ingenuity. But it looked a little odd.
We toured a train museum and an Army Corps of Engineers exhibit about the methods used to corral the worst excesses of the Mississippi. Then we went back to the boat. It was the usual dinner and a show but I didn’t get into any trouble and I got my bun and butter.
The boat didn’t stop the next day because they had to make up the time they lost fixing the gangplank. So a series of lectures were presented to keep us out of the bar. The popular girl singer from our nightly entertainment had a Q & A. She was asked where she got her training and she mentioned where she’d gone to college and that she’d done a season of summer stock in South Dakota. Well, my ears pricked up at that. There are only two summer stock programs that I know about so I raised my hand and asked which company she’d worked with. She said, “Prairie Repertory”. And I said, “So did I!” Well, it was old home week. She did Rep in the 2014 season when the kids had air conditioning and showers and I told her I was in the third season “when we were putting on shows in a barn”. Some of the other audience members had done theatrical summers and we giggled about Boone’s Farm and Ripple, the only booze we could afford. The girl said, “Oh, I didn’t do that. I wasn’t 21.” And I said, “Neither was I.” And us duffers snickered together. I think people my age were more adventurous in our youth. Or dumber. Whatever. Anyway, she said she didn’t pursue any union affiliations because she wouldn’t get any work. True. All equity touring companies are shut down and the actors are starving to death. She made a good choice. And it seems like a nice job. She doesn’t have men pawing her. And that’s worth a lot.
The boat skipped our scheduled stop of Greenville where we would have seen the B.B. King museum but they’d made up enough time to stop at Helena, an old town that’s home to a blues festival. The town is almost dead. They’d had a tornado the year before and were trying to recover from that. And then the pandemic hit…It’s hard times in Helena. And that’s too bad; there’re a lot of lovely old buildings waiting to be repurposed if they could get some industry there and get some population back. We toured the train museum and the town’s history museum. There was a copy of a Mark Twain novel, signed by Twain himself. There were lots of interesting things to look at but the best part was the large tabletop representation of the town and the battle positions of the soldiers during the Civil War. The docent gave a great lecture about how many towns voted to stay in the Union but were dragged along into the Confederacy against their will. Apparently, Helena didn’t put up much of a fight when the Union came through. But they suffered when they had to shelter Union soldiers in their homes. At the end of the lecture I was surprised when the docent claimed, “The one person who single-handedly did more damage to the South than anyone was John Wilkes Boothe.” And this from a Southerner! He said that Lincoln and Grant were trying to re-unite the country and help the South recover when Boothe put Johnson in office. And then all hell broke lose. He said the South didn’t begin to recover from the Johnson years until after the turn of the century. From what I’ve read I have to agree.
We had a mint julep at the bar and one final dinner and show. We had to pack and have our luggage outside our cabin door so we could catch our bus by 7 the next morning. They wanted us off so they could clean up the place and set sail by 3 with another boatload of passengers. We said goodbye to the people we liked and went to bed early.
