Jackson, MS: Day Two

Up again at 8am, I showered and packed my bags as did the other two. Our train was at 11:20am, but in our usual careful manner we had arranged for Nigerian Joe to come and pick us up at 9am to take us back to town. Once back in the city and having finally extracted money from an ATM to pay Nigerian Joe, we walked back to the Amtrak station from the bank where we’d had the cab leave us.
While Déborah and I were travelling with a small rucksack on our fronts and a large backpack on our backs, Sam was lugging a 50lbs suitcase around with him, so when I said that in the 75 minutes before the train station even opened (we had definitely given ourselves far too much time) I was going to go for a walk and take pictures, Sam elected to stay at the station and Déborah did the same. Not particularly wanting to sit on a bench on a concrete taxi-rank for over an hour (bear in mind that even at 9am it was already 80F (27C), I left my bags with the other two and set off, camera in-hand. It was then that I realised the stupidity of staying in that motel room on the edge of town all afternoon the day before.
Jackson is a staggeringly pretty city. A prosperous business district quickly gives way to streets filled with undeveloped lots but unlike Memphis and Nashville, Jackson has no litter and the constant shade of large trees that line the sidewalks. The downtown area is very small in comparison to the other cities we had visited, but still large enough to feel like a real city. Unlike other places, there is no sense of homelessness on the main streets (even Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC suffers from that shameful consequence of the lack of a welfare state), and the only word I can summon to describe the atmosphere and setting of Jackson is ‘cosy.’

I headed for the Old Capitol Building and was greeted by a kind and informative woman in the lobby. At 9:10am I was the only visitor, and she told me the architectural history of the beautiful building. As the house of the Mississippi legislature until 1903, the building and its grounds had weathered the Civil War but had fallen into disrepair during Reconstruction. Its architect was the same gentleman that had built the North Carolina Capitol in Raleigh, much of the quad at UNC in Chapel Hill, much of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, the Alabama State Capitol and the administrative buildings in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and New Orleans. The woman proudly told me as she led me through the House and Senate chambers that this was his true masterpiece, and it truly was. The only unfortunate part of this brief tour was the prohibition of photography.
My eye was on the time so I began to explain my need to leave to the woman in order to see more in the hour I had remaining and take pictures, and she asked me if I had seen the Governor’s Mansion. The Executive Mansion was down the street towards the Amtrak station and I had taken a picture of it on my way over. Having told the woman this she said, “I don’t suppose you’d like a tour then.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I’ve just not got time.”
“How long have you got?” she asked.
“About an hour, but I need to see the new Capitol Building, too.”
“Well, let’s go then! I can get you on a quick tour. Barbara’s on the front desk and you’re the only visitor in the building at the moment.”

She led me out of the building and down the street, opening the gates and ushering me inside the residence of the Governor of Mississippi. The building resembled a mini-replica of the main mansion of the White House, though it was nestled in among drooping trees and pristine lawns of grass the kind of green only a humid climate produces. I joined a small group about to start their tour. The tour took 20 minutes, and with the absence of both photographs and an adequate descriptive vocabulary I can’t describe how plush, regal and ‘Southern’ it was, but it was absolutely fantastic to have witnessed this just an hour before I was on the train bound for New Orleans. I cursed myself again for lying on the bed in the motel room watching Blackadder and not just coughing up the money for a cab into the city. I knew, however, that all of the accommodation we were in for the next 26 days was extremely central.
The final treat, however, was found on the walk back to the train station. The cool marble walls of the Governor’s Mansion gave way to the dog’s breath of the outside air, but I walked down President’s Avenue, dodging the rehearsal for the Jackson State University graduation ceremony taking place at the Cathedral, and rounded the corner of Mississippi Avenue to see the present State Capitol.
I’d been to the capitol buildings in Oregon, Washington, North Carolina and Maryland before the start of this trip, and I’d found the capitol in Nashville to be the best one I’d seen. Many are if not ugly, unimpressive (North Carolina, Oregon), while others are simply small (Maryland). Tennessee had been a happy medium, but the building in Mississippi was just breathtakingly beautiful.







Well, its 2:29pm and we’ve just crossed the Louisiana State Line, so from a seat the size of which a British train-traveller could only dream of, good night and good luck.