No sign of W. C. Fields anywhere

Philadelphia, Mississippi — 727.8 miles

Two anomalies this morning before I ever got underway. First, the father of the two kids in the Infamous Spinning Top Incident caught me at the door and offered profuse apologies, and said "I know you said it was no big deal, but they have to learn not to do stuff like that." With this sort of thinking around the house, I think they'll learn just fine. Besides, what is life without the occasional risk?

About twenty-five feet later, I looked over at Gwendolyn's flank, and the left rear tire seemed flatter than usual. (I've had radials long enough to know that appearances can be deceptive, but work with me here.) I muttered something under my breath, popped open the console, and withdrew my pencil gauge. The results were discouraging. And if you were thinking "Yeah, but this is the kind of person who brings a freaking air pump with him," you get the gold star. (It hadn't lost any more air by the time I gassed up, so I assume that this was just a failure of my pre-launch countdown procedure.)

Two universities live, cheek by jowl, in the middle of northern Louisiana, and I saw them both: Grambling, an historic black college, is only a few miles from Louisiana Tech. Tech is neat, almost antiseptic; Grambling is rambling, and the legendary old football stadium has seen better days. (On the other hand, the new Assembly Center is pretty spiffy.) I saw lots of Tech students, not so many at Grambling, but everyone seemed bright and neatly-pressed, probably because it was still pretty early in the morning and the humidity hadn't kicked in yet. Were I the cheapskate I profess to be, I'd probably wonder why these schools, five miles apart, weren't merged. But their missions are altogether different, and I certainly wouldn't want either of them to go away.

Canton, Mississippi is the home of Nissan's US truck plant, which you'll find out quickly enough if you come up 55 from Jackson: the exit right before Canton proper is marked "Nissan Dr." The plant itself is huge, and has the capacity to produce 400,000 vehicles a year. (And if you want the tour, you need to request it a lot earlier than five minutes after you arrive.) Canton itself is full of "Home of Nissan" banners, but there were a lot of other manufacturers' trucks downtown, although I did spot two Infinitis in one block, one of which was a loaner from the Jackson dealership.

Mississippi 16 is a lovely, if unchallenging, two-laner that starts in Canton and took me to Philadelphia, a town of about 8000 that probably wouldn't have so many hotels were it not for the Choctaw Nation reservation just to the west, a veritable Casino Heaven if you like that sort of thing. Me, I shrug.

Posted at 4:26 PM to World Tour '07