This is the latest post in a series about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

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Our last day, and it would be a long one.  Eight and a half hours of driving, not counting stops.  Lynn’s flight left at 9pm, and we had been hearing how long the lines at the airports were. It seemed like a good idea to not push our luck by dawdling along the way.

I did want to stop in Hannibal, Missouri, which my mom and her husband had described as quaint and which was the boyhood home of Mark Twain.  But that was at least two hours out of St. Louis and we hadn’t eaten breakfast.  I stopped at a wayside rest to get some advice on where to eat.

If you’ve never done a road trip in the U.S., wayside rests are located about every 100 miles and have their own freeway exits.  They vary from just a gravel parking lot with a pit latrine to a gleaming air conditioned building with vending machines.  But there are no museums or gift shops or restaurants.  I like them because you can get in and out in five minutes without getting distracted. Usually.

This one in Missouri was the rare wayside rest with an information desk.  The woman was very friendly and a font of information.  Well, more like a slow-motion geyser.  She spoke with a slow southern drawl.  “Ya’ll could drive along the river, it’s very picturesque.”  She handed me a map of the Scenic River Road.  We didn’t have time, sadly, for the scenic route.  She highly recommended we take some extra time and go to a small town whose name I can’t remember.  She handed me five maps and brochures.  Looking at the map now, which town was it?  It couldn’t have been Mexico, Paris, or Florida—I would have remembered those.

“It’s a historic town with an absolutely darling downtown and a famous restaurant that serves throwed rolls.”  She handed me another brochure and tried to explain what throwed rolls were but I couldn’t get the concept.  “It’s only 20 minutes off the interstate.  Ya’ll can get cheese grits, and buttered corn bread, and….”  Mmmmmm.

People think that providing lots of choices is a good thing, but after 11 days on the road I was done making decisions, even about where to eat.

“We’re kind of in a hurry, I’m afraid, so it’ll have to be somewhere right off the highway.”

She handed me more maps and brochures for restaurants and scenic attractions. She must get mostly retired people who had all the time in the world.  Lynn had abandoned me.  “I’d better check on my friend,” I lied.  “She gets upset if I keep her waiting.”

The info lady looked disappointed.  “Just a few more suggestions,” she pleaded.  More brochures, more maps.  It must get lonely working in a highway wayside rest.

“My friend has to catch a flight to London,” I said, backing away as if the flight was imminent.

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Meanwhile, I kept getting texts from Air B&B and the Quality Inn urging me to “Write a review of your stay!”

“Do your own marketing,” I muttered.  I am definitely happier when I get breakfast.

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Lynn insisted she wasn’t hungry, so rather than look like a whining hungry weakling, I drove straight through to Hannibal.

This is a postcard depicting Hannibal:

This is what Hannibal really looked like:

Dilapidated houses, block after block after block.  Was this a result of the Great Recession, or a longer term decline?  There was no signage directing visitors to a historic district, but by just following the streets downhill, I eventually hit the river front, where a couple natives out for a walk pointed the way.

The downtown was quaint.  It consisted of about four blocks of antique stores, a boarded up theater, a couple restaurants, and half a dozen Mark Twain historic sites.

We settled in at Becky Thatcher’s Diner, and the food was fantastic.  Really fantastic, not just because I was starving.  Lynn had corned beef hash for the first time and I had a huge omelet with potatoes.  Neither of us talked much, unless you count “Mmmm” as a word.

This is the latest post in a series about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

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When I was planning the trip, I intentionally chose a stop in Oxford, Mississippi as an ironic nod to that other Oxford where Lynn and I had met.  But mostly, I wanted to stop in one smallish town, after Chicago, Memphis, and New Orleans.  Oxford’s population is around 20,000, so it’s not that small, but it is in comparison to the others.

And yet it turned out to be the type of place I had dreaded.

In his 1989 book The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America, Bill Bryson writes about how every town has the same chain stores and restaurants. 1989!  How much worse would it be now, I feared?  Was I going to drive 2,660 miles just to see the same stores I could see in my own town?

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When I was a kid, there was a tiny store at the end of our block called Goldenbergs. I don’t know what these little stores are called elsewhere but in the US we called them “Mom and Pop” or “Dime Stores.”  (A dime is 10 cents, for you readers outside the US.)

They were called Mom and Pop because they were usually run by a married couple and the family lived above the store.

I remember standing inside on the creaky wood floors gazing up at the jars of candy on the countertop.  This was where the dime came in—you could buy a single piece of Laffy Taffy, a small pack of Necco Wafers, or a roll of Smarties for a dime.  These were called penny candy, but by the time I was spending my newspaper delivery money I guess inflation had nudged them up to a dime.

Mr. and Mrs. Goldenberg had been on there for decades.  When my mother was five, two of her cousins died of meningitis and their house had to be quarantined.  There was a yellow tape circling the property.  I suppose it said something like: Do Not Cross by Order of the Department of Public Health.  Every day Mr. Goldenberg would dip under the tape to deposit a box of food on the back step—then run like hell.

I only have a fuzzy memory of Goldnbergs because it was torn down when I was 10 and replaced with an automatic car wash.

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Entering Oxford required driving a five-mile gauntlet of Costcos, Walmarts, Home Depots, and other “Big Box” stores.  We’ve gone from the dime store to the warehouse store, and mom and pop are probably working at the register making minimum wage with no benefits.  Who buys only one piece of candy?  That’s for suckers!  Now you can spend your weekends in a windowless warehouse and get a case of candy.  It’ll be so cheap—you have to buy it!

On Monday you can brag about how you got a case of 500 Mars Bars for only $50.  Who cares if they’ll be stale by the time you can eat them all, or if you really shouldn’t be eating them at all?  They’re so cheap!  Watch out for that one coworker, the one who will try to one-up you with his story about the 100 rolls of paper towels he got for $129.

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The main drag into Oxford also featured the predictable chains: Olive Garden, Batteries Plus, Panera, Tires Plus, Walgreens, and Starbucks.

And I had booked us into a Quality Inn—a chain!  It was across from Express Lube and flanked by Starbucks and Verizon.

Lynn checked us in and as soon as she opened her mouth, the manager, who was Indian, asked, “Where are you from?”

“North London,” she replied.

“I’m from north London too!” he exclaimed.  It may seem strange that an Indian guy from London would be running a Quality Inn in Mississippi, but Indians actually own half the hotels and motels in America.  I’m not making that up:

There were little Indian-influenced flourishes, like a glittery, purple-topped table in our room, that gave a bit of relief from the bland, tan town of Oxford.  At least what we’d seen of it so far.