Taking A Walk

be Dwayne Phillips

Fall weather remained with us today. Ahh, I have been waiting four weeks for this weather. Sunny all day, 48 to 63 degrees, and cool north wind. Wonderful.

I walked 20 miles today. That is a little farther than needed, but tomorrow is a day of rest, so I pushed it. I walked through the big towns of Purvis and Lumberton, Mississippi. Really, these two are big towns.

The Movie Star Restaurant

Purvis has shopping centers, banks, restaurants, and all. I couldn’t see downtown from Route 11. I could see this restaurant. Someone told me that “Movie Star” was a bottling company or something. Someone turned the old factory building in to a restaurant. The sign on the other side of the building said something like, “still ugly on the outside, tastes good on the inside.” The building really is ugly on the outside.

I didn’t post any photos of Purvis. The Wikipedia page for Purvis is excellent. Someone has done a lot of work on it. See it, there are half a dozen good photographs.

The Lumberton Post Office

Lumberton is another pretty big town. It spreads east to west, so a north to south walk is quick. Its main street branches off Route 11. It doesn’t look good. Most of the store fronts are vacant. Here is a photo of the Lumberton Post Office.

If anyone out there works for the postal service, take a good look. This is what a small town post office should look like. Not like all the others.

Now for the name of the town – Lumberton. No doubt this was once called Lumber Town. That summarizes most of the economy between Tuscaloosa, Alabama and the Gulf Coast. This area is solid with pine trees and logging trucks. The trees become lumber and paper. They are called tree farms; they seem to work, but I’m an engineer not a biologists or any of those other sciences that debate about managed forestry.

Today, oil and natural gas have augmented the economy of the area. The work is hard and dirty, but it is work and these are jobs.

Several things about the walk today.

The Wooded Corridor

(1) It seemed boring. I call this the “wooded corridor.” See this photo. The road is lined thick with trees making a corridor of woods. There isn’t much to see. Openings in the woods are for a few side roads and houses.

(2) The houses were widely separated, but high quality. It seemed strange, but the vast majority of the homes on the side of the road looked good. Most were brick homes that were well maintained. There was little trash and clutter. It all seemed out of place for some reason. It was a good surprise.

(3) I lost my little golf pencil – the one that I write in my pocket notebook. I was pretty sure where I dropped it, so I retraced my steps for about 50 yards. The pencil is small and white. I didn’t find the pencil, but while looking for short, white, cylindrical objects, I saw about a thousand cigarette butts. I don’t think that I have notice a dozen such butts in the past 800 or so miles, but there they were, butts all over the place. Strange how you don’t notice such until you look for them.

(4) The woods hold hunting clubs. I recall while in grad school in Baton Rouge reading the sportsmen ads for hunting leases in Mississippi. Well, here they are. This photo is the entrance to one. I saw entrances like this to a dozen “clubs.” I am guessing that there is an old trailer back in the woods that serves as the hunting cabin – just like in Field and Stream.

(5) Two people stopped their cars to talk to me about the article they say in today’s Hattiesburg American. One person gave me the newspaper clipping. Here is a link to the article.

Now go back to # (1) – the day seemed boring. I guess it wasn’t. This is a lot of fun.