It’s All So Exciting – ‘Til It Isn’t

As a lot of you know, I live just a hair’s breadth away from the mighty Mississippi River. Well, actually not the REAL Mississippi River, but a smaller river, a canal really, what used to be the Mississippi River a little more than a hundred years ago. The Mississippi River is constantly moving and with that movement often comes course changes. That’s right, the river actually changes course. That’s what happened here in Vicksburg in 1876. The river changed course and left Vicksburg and its very active port, high and dry.

Long story short, the Army Corps of Engineers, dredged out the old original riverbed and cut a path through some land north of here to connect with the Yazoo River so that Vicksburg could once again be a river town. So, what actually is just a stone’s throw away from my house, is what’s today called the Yazoo Diversion Canal. Once again, floating vessels can meander past our downtown on their way up to the Yazoo River, or down to the Mississippi River via the canal.

That means, riverboat cruises are able to drift right on up to the shore and dock downtown. Lots of people visit Vicksburg via river cruise. The original boats were the old steam powered paddle-wheelers.

Today the American Queen Steamboat Company frequents our quaint little town several days a week. And yes, they are paddle-wheelers. American Cruise Lines also makes stops here, although their boats are a bit more modern. And most recently, Viking River Cruises added some ships. On any given day, there could be as many as 3 boats in town at once!! It gets a little crazy.

Now, normally, this wouldn’t affect me at all. However, with the addition of Viking River Cruises coming to town, they have requested some different shore excursion options from the other cruise boat lines. That’s extremely good news for me, because my lovely historic home is often overlooked when big companies are working with city leaders on planning shore excursions. The Queen and American lines offer other area homes on their tours, but never mine.

Well, not this time!! Finally, I am being recognized. My home is now part of one of the shore excursion options for folks traveling on Viking Cruise Lines. Two days a week I make my home available for 20 or more folks for about half an hour. I regale guests with fun and factual stories about the history of the house and I offer refreshments. I try to provide a snack that somewhat reflects our region.

I enjoy giving these tours. People love hearing about the history of the house, the Jewish community that lived here, the ghost stories, and the Reconstruction era here in Vicksburg. I get asked some interesting and odd questions. I look forward to the tours even though they are a lot of extra work. I do get paid for my efforts, so that’s something too.

This past week, for my expected tour of 28 guests, I tried a new snack recipe – rum pecan shortbread cookies. They sounded delicious. I gathered up the ingredients and went to work. I had no idea this was going to be such a time-consuming process. First, I had to make the candied pecans and let them cool. Then I had to assemble the actual shortbread dough and let that chill. For four hours!!! Then I had to roll it all out and cut it into pieces, then bake it, then let it cool again. It took all day. But they were tasty and all cute in their tiny squares with fancy sugar on top.

I scrubbed the house all spic and span. I rearranged the chairs for optimal seating options. I brewed a big gallon of tea and stuck it in the fridge to chill. I set up all the fancy cups, napkins, tea sweeteners, spoons, and what-have-yous and waited for the guests to arrive.

The guests never arrived. I was so deflated. I wandered around my house moping like a little kid who’d lost their favorite toy. “I spent all day making cute little yummy shortbread cookies.” I pouted some more. I ate some cute little yummy shortbread cookies. I wandered around some more. I ate some more cookies.

I don’t really know what happened, but I’m assuming since the river is sooooo incredibly low right now and big cruise boats cannot make it into the Yazoo Diversion Canal because there’s not enough water, that the captain’s decision to dock about half an hour away and bus people into town is why they canceled my tour. Maybe not enough busses. Or too many other boats trying to dock at the same time and place created too much confusion. I can only make assumptions, but whatever happened, I was cheated out of my tour. (And my money.)

Needless to say, the next regularly scheduled tour is NOT going to get the rum pecan shortbread cookies. Just saying. Even if they don’t cancel the tour, which they might because we’re gonna need a whole lotta rain to bring the water level back up to where it needs to be, those folks won’t get the good cookies.

Fingers crossed that my next day of tour excitement is met with actual excitement and energy and that I am not deflated yet again. At least I won’t have spent an entire day making cute little cookies. So, there’s that.

Have you guys ever taken a river boat cruise? Have you ever floated down the Mississippi River? Have you ever made shortbread cookies?

I’ve got more exciting things planned for the rest of year that only my newsletter followers will know about. I promise you’ll only get 6 newsletters for the entire year, so I won’t clutter up your inbox. Here’s the link if you want to sign up and be the first to know things: http://bit.ly/JansenSchmidtNewsletter

Word of the Day: Latitudinarian

Fun fact about me: I’ve never made shortbread cookies before this experiment.

Original post by Jansen Schmidt, November 2022. Images by Google and giphy.com