Biloxi Breakdown

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Halfway between Montgomery and Mobile it started to look as though Jacquie’s opinion of the bluebird was right. Steam started coming out from under the hood. We limped to Biloxi, Mississippi, and stopped at a garage. The water pump had gone, and there wasn’t a replacement available locally. We relaxed on the Gulf shore beach, directly across the highway from the garage, for a couple of hours while we waited for the part to show up and the car to be fixed. It was erev Tisha B’Av, the day before the day of mourning for the destruction of Solomon’s temple and the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians as told in the biblical book of Lamentations. Buzzy had been hoping we would be in New Orleans in time to find a synagogue and hear Lamentations chanted in its unique tune, but the breakdown ruled that out.

When we saw New Orleans in daylight the next day, the French Quarter looked the same as it does now in that Volkswagen commercial --