Part 2- The Natchez Trace

The northern terminus of the Natchez Trace Parkway is just to the west of the Loveless's parking lot on Highway 100. Most people who start in Nashville get on the Trace there, though I never do. I drive out a few miles to Highway 96, go east until I go under The Big White Bridge, and enter the parkway there. There is not enough money to pay me, nor are there enough drugs to calm me ,to make me go on that bridge as either passenger or driver-

Whenever I start to think that all governments are useless, I remember the Natchez Trace Parkway. The government built it, the National Park Service oversees it, and it is a wonder of the world. It wends southwest for 444 miles through Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi, and it ends in the city of Natchez. The house where explorer Merriwhether Lewis died, the Pharr Mounds Indian burial grounds, the town where Elvis Presley was born, the Ross Barnett Lake, historic French Camp- all along the Trace. This parkway follows the old path from the plantations of Tennessee to the ports of the Mississippi where planters sold their goods. It passes through forests, and the Black Bottom Prairie, and cypress swamps. I have travelled its full length twice, and parts of it many times. If I had the money or time and someone to water my foyer garden ,the dogs and I would get in the car and drive down it now, and you would not hear from us for weeks-

I drove only a short distance down the Trace Sunday, for the town of Leiper's Fork is not that far, and I was in search of old-timey small town gardens. And breakfast. I will take you farther down the Trace another day. I promise.

And one final thought- The National Park Service and our government built both the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Natchez Trace Parkway. Why not make it a trifecta? I propose The Route 66 National Parkway through Texas and the Southwest to California. People from across the world would come to drive it. Instead of another pointless war, let us build a Nostalgia Highway!