A birthday trip to a ghost town on very little gas

The ghost town of Rodney is absolutely magical.

I like to get off the beaten path. Mr. G. likes to stay on the beaten path. But he's gotten braver since discovering Google Maps (although he insists that the Google Maps on his phone is soooo much better than the Google Maps on my phone). Plus, it was my birthday weekend (and Bailey was with us) so I won the vote to get off the beaten path.

If this house wasn't choked by weeds, it almost looks like someone could live here.

I don't know when I stumbled across Rodney, Miss. It's a ghost town not far from Natchez. Ghost town probably isn't even the right phrase for it. There are somewhere between three and 13 people who live there (depends on who you ask). If I had to guess, the population swells and dwindles depending on deer season.

I love this picture of two women posing so elegantly together. It was taken in the town of Rodney in 1940. The Library of Congress has a number of historic photos of Rodney.

Rodney almost became the capitol of Mississippi. It lost by three votes. Rodney also used to be on the banks of the Mississippi River. Old Man River is fickle, though, and shifted two miles away from Rodney. Toss in a few yellow fever outbreaks, and Rodney just dwindled away.

As kids, we thought this church tower in Taylortown was haunted by a suicidal bride.  As you can see, it's not very tall so I don't know why we thought anyone could jump to their death from here.

Lots of small towns die. It seems to be the way of the world. I grew up not far from a town called Taylortown. There's not much to Taylortown these days except for a church tower that we were always told was haunted by the ghost of a bride who jumped to her death from that very tower after her bridegroom jilted her on their wedding day (or something like that). Turns out that whole story is hogwash. Who's surprised?

It's hard to believe that Rodney once had several newspapers.

Rodney, though, once was home to 4,000 people. It had newspapers, a jail, several churches, a park for band concerts, a drugstore and perhaps even an opera house.

Zachary Taylor loved the Rodney area. One of his daughters married Jefferson Davis only to die three months later outside St. Francisville, not far from Rodney.

Zachary Taylor's home was near Rodney until it tumbled into the river. Supposedly, Taylor was whiling away the evening in a Rodney home when he got the news that he had been elected president of the United States.

This map is based on a number of sources. It's an imagining of what Rodney looked like over the years and is not historically accurate. 

A map found on the town's Facebook remembrance page shows Rodney was a town of riverboat landings and people who could walk to work. The Alstons had a store in front of their home. Further down the road was the Old Alston House. The Shobers' bakery stood in front of their home. There was a drugstore and a saloon, warehouses, a bank and a school.

We saw no evidence of the "Church Street" that once existed alongside the Presbyterian church, but we did see the famous cannonball. During the Civil War, the church's minister was a Union sympathizer. He invited Union officers assigned to the USS Rattler steamship to Sunday services. The officers accepted the invitation and were sitting with the congregation listening to the sermon when Confederate soldiers stormed the church and started arresting them. Those left behind on the USS Rattler soon noticed the hubbub and fired a cannon at the church. A replica of the cannonball is there, in the church's masonwork, to this day.

Eudora Welty had a fascination with rural Mississippi. Here she is in front of Windsor Ruins. 

Eudora Welty wrote about Rodney. It pops up again and again in her writings.

So I was determined to find Rodney during a recent trip to Natchez. I was determined to find it even though I'm scared of rattlesnakes and the woods around Rodney supposedly are thick with them (and alligators when it floods). I also brought my dog with me, figuring I'd leave her in the safety of the car (because God knows where the nearest vet would be if she got bitten by a snake). Naturally, Mr. G. kept taking her out of the car far too close to the high grass until I insisted that he pick her up. It was my birthday after all!

Astonishing Windsor Ruins.

On the way to Rodney, we stopped at Windsor Ruins, where a houseguest flicked cigar ashes into a pile of debris in 1890 and burned the entire house down. And what a house it was! Today only the columns remain.

You can take Rodney Road or the other Rodney Road to get to Rodney. What's the confusion? Actually, I believe Rodney Road takes a very sharp turn and continues on as Rodney Road. 

I had printed out the scant Internet directions to Rodney before leaving Baton Rouge. I also plugged it into the Google Maps. Surprisingly, Google Maps seemed to know where Rodney is.

Here's the thing about driving with Mr. G. He never slows down. So the entrances to interstates, restaurants, hotels, shops, etc. whiz on past. Even screaming "There, there, turn there" before he whizzes past the second entrance doesn't help.

We were supposed to get onto the Natchez Trace from the Windsor Ruins and kiss our last bit of civilization fondly before making the turn onto the back roads. Mr. G. whizzed right past the Natchez Trace and blamed my phone for not telling him soon enough that he needed to turn. Like he would've been listening or going slow enough for that to matter. But I digress.

Next time, country store!

Finally, we got turned around and onto the Natchez Trace in the correct direction and then into Lorman, where apparently there is a famous country store that anyone who is anyone eats at. I didn't know what it was, but I suggested stopping there and making sure we had the correct directions before heading into the woods. Mr. G. was having none of it.

"I thought you printed out directions," he said, whizzing past the country store at a clip.

Even when you're lost, nothing beats a dirt, country road. 

Then we promptly got lost. I don't know if Google Maps was having a disagreement with itself or what. The program seemed to change its mind about how to get to Rodney, leading us on a wild goose chase before setting us in the right direction.

Finally, somehow, we were whizzing down the right road when Mr. G. made an announcement.

Mr. G.: We're running low on gas.

Me: How low?

Mr. G.: We can go about 20 miles.

Me: TWENTY MILES?

Mr. G.: Yeah, but I'm sure there's a gas station around here somewhere.

Me: Freaking city boys.

OK, I didn't say that. I just thought it. Sure, there's a gas station out in the middle of nowhere. It's rush hour in the woods. Who wouldn't put a gas station out there for the 2 or 3 cars that pass once a month?

The old Presbyterian church. Once I saw it, I knew we were in Rodney. Above the middle window on the second floor is the replica of a Civil War-era cannonball that once was lodged there until it mysteriously disappeared. 

When we pulled into Rodney, both of us were a little cranky. Bailey was bouncy, eager to jump out of the car and frolic in the tall grass that was no doubt full of snakes and ticks.

And we'll have fun, fun, fun until Mom sees Bailey's in the tall grass. 

There is not much to Rodney these days. The first semi-presentable building we saw was the old brick church. Behind it, up a hill, apparently is the cemetery. There was no way that I was venturing up that hill in tall grass. I wanted to try to get into the church itself, but it was roped off. So I admired it from afar, looking at the cannonball embedded in the brickwork.

The old Masonic Hall. It's seen better days.

Across from the church is the old Masonic Hall. The door was wide open. Knowing it had flooded recently, I didn't go inside. Then we wandered down the road a bit and discovered newish looking trailers on very tall pilings. Apparently Rodney isn't a ghost town.

This house looks like the front of it was shaved off. A collection of old glassware remains. 

In the opposite direction is an old store that still has a gas pump. Turning around, I saw a wooden church down a dusty lane. In that moment, the grid of the old town came into focus for me. A road still runs in front of the wooden church. Next to the church is a house that looks like it almost could be habitable if you could hack through the weeds. It's all very "Fried Green Tomatoes" (and I mean that with no disrespect; it's so sad to me that towns shrivel up. The Gibson, Louisiana, I knew as a child is gone - post office, country store, church. One day soon, no one will remember that my Granny and Miss Teen liked to take evening walks and talk in Cajun French or that Midnight Mass used to be held on Christmas Eve in the little white church with the priest receiving a gift-wrapped microwave from the congregation one year).

Only later did I read that this church is infested with rats. Still, someone needs to save this building! It can't hold on for much longer. 

I did walk inside the wooden church (apparently the old Baptist church). I knew it had flooded badly earlier this year so I didn't venture far in. I didn't want to fall through rotten floorboards. Later I read that the wooden church is infested with rats. I like rats about as much as I like poisonous snakes so I'm glad that I just peeked into the sanctuary from the hallway.

This was a pretty screened-in porch at one time. 

Despite the few residents still holding on, Rodney is a town that is slowly crumbling in the wilds of the Mississippi woods. It can't last much longer. Time and the floods have made the old buildings unstable. One building looked like the front had been sheared off, leaving it much like a dilapidated dollhouse. Other buildings were tucked too far off the road for us to get a good look, but given that they were heavily obscured by tall grass, their condition probably isn't good.

If the buildings could be moved, they would make a heck of an attraction much like LSU's Rural Life Museum. Keep in mind that the Baptist church dates to 1850. The Presbyterian church is even older. I'm not sure how old the store is, but it's not falling down. Yet.

This was the way of life for so many in the rural south. There were no Wal-Marts or fast food restaurants. My grandmother didn't drive a car. She walked to the store, the post office and church. Everything was within walking distance because it needed to be. When you could catch a ride, you'd go into the city and buy your groceries more cheaply, but for the most part you didn't venture far from home.

Bye, Rodney!

Mr. G. was getting restless - and tired of holding Bailey - so we moved along. We weren't going back to Windsor Ruins. We were going to Natchez. We plugged the hotel into the GPS and - surprise, surprise - it took us a very different way than the way we came.

Now the sane way to get from Rodney to Natchez would have been to just backtrack. We'd have gone down the Rodney Road that turns into Firetower Road. But Google Maps was feeling like Gertrude and wanted the scenic route.

The scenic route did include this interesting building! It kind of looks like an old jail.

So off we went down a different Rodney Road toward Noble Swamp Road. We passed more abandoned buildings, a nice farmhouse and a community of mobile homes that looked suspiciously like a deer camp. We were deep in the country, whizzing past fields of crops. It was spectacularly beautiful except it felt like we were actually in the fields.

Absolute beauty!

We continued on until we could no longer recognize a road. We came to a fork. In one direction was a muddy dip that we couldn't possibly cross. In the other direction were fields. We really didn't have enough gas to backtrack, but we decided that we were backtracking. If worse came to worse, we'd let Triple A - or law enforcement - figure out how to find us.

Then Glenn decided to drive into the deer camp and beg for help. Softly, in the background, came the sound of banjos playing.

Just kidding! Mr. G. drove into the camp and came across two men backing a four wheeler off a truck. He threw himself on their mercy while I clutched my dog to me like she was a string of pearls.

It turns out that they were the nicest people ever. One of the guys came over and looked at the gas gauge. He assured us that we had enough to make it into "town." Hoisting a shovel onto his shoulder, he said he had to go dig a hole but would let us follow him into town in 10 minutes.

He dug the hole (I have no idea why he needed a hole), climbed into his truck and led us out of the camp and - thankfully - back toward Rodney Road. We were following strangers on the back roads of Mississippi. I didn't say a word to them, and I feel bad about that now. I was nervous about being lost and running out of gas.

All turned out well. They dropped us in Fayette, where we coasted on fumes into a gas station. Jesse James, by the way, once robbed Fayette. Maybe next year we'll visit Fayette. There's so much to discover when you get off the beaten path!