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Philip Spiess
Dave: When in Natchez, did you see the country's greatest octagon house, unfinished since the Civil War? I visited Natchez, Mississippi, in 1977, as part of my historic preservation work; I was visiting museum friends from Cooperstown, New York, who were working there. I took the Natchez Trace down from Jackson, Mississippi, where I drank, danced, and dined with Eudora Welty's good friend Charlotte Capers, and was astounded to see numerous armadillos (dead and alive) along the Trace (apparently they'd been migrating eastward across the Mississippi River bridges from Texas). I was reminded that Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis & Clark fame) had been murdered on the Natchez Trace on his way (reportedly) to make a secret report to President Thomas Jefferson, whose secretary he had been. It has long been my contention that Lewis was murdered because he was going to report to Jefferson that General Wilkinson, then governor of the Louisiana Territory out of New Orleans, and former commanding General of the U. S. Army, was complicit in the Aaron Burr-Blennerhassett treason conspiracy to create a new country, independent of the United States, out of the Louisiana territories (we learned about the Blennerhassetts, their conspiracy, and their island mansion in the Ohio River near Parkersburg -- now recreated -- in 8th Grade at WHHS in Mr. Meredith's Social Studies class). I have some documentary proof of this, including General Wilkinson's published diaries, but, unfortunately, not enough to prove anything conclusively. However, in Natchez, I was guest in the Presbyterian manse, and at night I visited "Natchez-under-the-Hill," the former red-light district which was (is) the path down the hill to the Mississippi River docks. Dining on Mississippi cornmeal-fried catfish, boiled greens, and French-fried pickles, along with copious beer, served on and in tin plates and cups, we were regaled with ragtime tunes by a honky-tonk piano player -- who left at 9:00 o'clock. Seeing nobody else coming forward, I took over the piano until about 11:00, a task for which I was rewarded with numerous free beers (I staggered home, uphill, to the Presbyterian manse in a somewhat inebriated state, which disconcerted the Presbyterian minister and his wife).
And then there was New Orleans. When I headed up a national museum program at the Smithsonian Institution in the 1980s, the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans was one of our designated projects. I visited there a number of times (once during an expected hurricane, when the whole city shut down -- an interesting experience for me -- during which we hung out in the bars of the French Quarter, including Jean Lafitte's blacksmith shop -- the buildings had been there since the early 1800s, so we felt safe -- and drank ourselves into oblivion); we were funding, among other things, a project documenting the history of New Orleans jazz. So I found myself, on occasion, at 3:00 a.m. in the morning, with museum staff and aged black jazz musicians (whom they knew), who had just come off performing at the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, sitting in the French Market drinking Louisiana coffee laced with brandy, and listening to them reminiscing about their lives and their music, and hearing them occasionally play (they couldn't stop playing, even at that hour). Great stuff! (Great -- urp! -- hangovers!)
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Photo of the Junior High Mixed Chorus was taken on October 12th when Sally Fox Korkin and I visited WHHS. The refurbished piano is a gift from our Class of 1964 Performing Arts Fund and is used during each period of the day. When the teacher introduced us, the entire chorus (only partially shown here) cheered, clapped and thanked us. Felt good.
