We drove into Biloxi to the VIC which is a beautiful building with Old South architecture directly across Hwy 90 from the Gulf. It may look old but actually it is brand new because Katrina smoked the former VIC. Out on a divider in Hwy 90 is the Biloxi Lighthouse which is made from cast iron, of all things. The cast iron shell is lined on the inside with brick. This lighthouse survived Camille and only got knocked out-of-plumb by Katrina. It is fixed now.
From the VIC we went to Jefferson Davis’s Beauvoir estate which is about 2 or 3 miles towards Gulfport. This structure has been extensively renovated because it also got damaged by Katrina. The furniture inside is original but they ain’t too skookum on restrooms because there weren’t any in the house. The main house is five big rooms – an enormous entry foyer, a parlor, another room which seems remarkably like a parlor, a bedroom and a parlor. The guide alleged one of the parlors was actually a “liberry” which in the old days was a place where they kept books. In one wing outside were Mr. & Mrs. Jeff’s adjoining bedrooms and in the other wing was a dining room and a small butler’s pantry. The kitchen was installed in a completely separate building outside. A true Jewish princess’s dream house.
The claim that this was Jefferson Davis’s house might be a bit specious because he only owned the place for a short while, was not the builder and only stayed here once in a while. It should probably be called Jeff Davis’s beach house. He had a plantation somewhere near Vicksburg, died in New Orleans and is buried in Richmond, Virginia.
They also have a Texas-style Jefferson Davis Library facility near the house. Like Texas, they have built a large, elegant structure which consists of mostly empty space because they have very few exhibits and most of those are guns. There is a room where they have a computer where one can look up their relatives who served in the Civil War on either side but you must have their full name and their state of which we had neither. Peg met a woman here who explained that her basement did not flood during Katrina because she had installed what she referred to as “hubber” fans. This type of mechanical equipment is a rotary fan that “hubbers” just below the basement ceiling. In California, we refer to these items as paddle or ceiling fans. We do not actually know what “hubber” means.
We then headed to see the Seabee Museum at NCBC Gulfport. The museum is on a working Seabee base so we had to go through the usual pass and decal shit to get on base; fill out forms, submit to a security check, wait. Once done with that we headed in through the main gate where the contract security person did not bother to scan our ID documents and waved us through. The folks at Homeland Security would shit.
Once we found the facility, we popped in to have the lady inside tell us they had a really nice museum prior to Katrina but now they only have a very few items because the others blew away. It would have been nice if they told us the museum was toast when we were at the main gate pass and decal facility. Well, at least the fed knows we were in Gulfport today.