Natchez

"Welcome to Natchez, Mississippi - the oldest civilized settlement on the
Mississippi River!" -- Official Natchez Webpage

I spent Friday in Natchez. Natchez is amazing. I hadn't been there since our 5th grade Mississippi Trip, and all I remembered about it was Longwood.

This time, I got to walk around and appreciate the beauty of the town. I love river towns anyway. They all seem so calmly saturated with history. The downtown was sort of genteelly shabby. It seemed that it was impossible to turn without finding an interesting shop or a wonderful old house.

I also went back to Longwood. It's amazing. I kept thinking, "What would it have been had it been finished?" I could almost picture it in my mind as the docent described the marble that was to go on the floors. Looking up into that unfinished expanse stretching five floors above me, I was in awe of Haller Nutt's dream. He included so many revolutionary design elements. He must have been an amazingly smart man.

I had sort of a weird thing happen there, too. The house is one of those places that feels...I don't know...watchful. It, in the tradition of all old houses in the South, is supposed to be haunted. Supposedly, when the haunting is active, the lights flicker, the chandelier moves, and things move by themselves.

The whole time I was in the first room of the tour, the lights flickered, and the chandelier started to shimmy. Not like a puppet on a string, but enough to notice. The tour guide kept looking at it with a puzzled expression on her face, but she didn't say anything about it until we got into the next room. A candle had fallen from a three candle candelabra, and she laughingly said, "Oh, Dr. Nutt and Julia are playing with things again." She picked it up and shoved it, and I mean twisted it with FORCE, into the holder. She wiggled it with her fingers. It wasn't going anywhere.

It stayed in the holder until we moved into the next room. Then, suddenly, it leapt out of the holder, off the table, and into the middle of the floor. I don't see how it could have gotten off the table by itself. It was strange. Nothing that could be proven, but I don't think I'd want to be there after dark. None of us commented on it, and we moved on to the upstairs part of the tour soon thereafter. I don't know whether I had a brush with Dr. Haller Nutt, but I really enjoyed his house.

I loved Natchez, odd stuff and all. I found a really amazing potter, Connor Burns, whose stuff I will have to have more of. I am just learning about U.S. pottery and I have so much to find out. I also found a potter who works in the Native American style and bought a very nice cat shaped rattle head figure.

In the confines of that one small city, there was pottery, Thai food (thank GOD), good BBQ, shopping, a blues festival, old houses, and everything I love to be around. I think I want to move to Natchez. Maybe then Haller Nutt could throw things at me on a regular basis. :)