Mobile is looking considerably more interesting after a walk downtown this morning past Bienville Square, to a little coffee shop called Sera (or something like that). Nice to see those beautiful old ironwork balconies, and to hear music flowing from two public squares. Stopped at The Peanut Shop for a half-pound of boiled peanuts, then sat down beside a patch of marigolds in Cathedral Square to eat them.

I’d been there no more than a minute or two when an elderly gentleman in a hand-operated chair wheeled up to me and said, “How you doin’ over here? You lookin’ so lonley just sittin’ here starin’ up at the sky.” Thus commenced a pretty fine conversation, ranging from astrology (he’s a Leo, born August 1) to women (he’s been married twice, both times for three years, and the last one didn’t work out because his wife wanted him to marry her sisters too and, as Leo said, “I’m not like that) to crime. “They have killin’ up there in San Francisco?” he asked. I said that yes, sadly, they do. “They sure do have it here,” he said. “There’s no more love. When I came here in 59, there was so much love. Now everybody’s just hatin’. They’d as soon kill you as look at you.”

Leo also gave me his recipe for collard greens, which involves cutting them “real thin, like shoestrings,” and cooking them “round about four or five hours, or six or seven hours.” But first you have to put them in water flavored with salted meat. I made a video of it, which I’ll try to post–it was on my blackberry, which I haven’t really figured out how to use yet, so hopefully I can find it.

Also in Cathedral ParK: a bunch of tween girls in long pastel dresses, who call themselves the Oakley Belles and who were quite sweet and charming, and a bunch of older girls in what appeared to be Quaker-style clothing, albeit pastel, although I’m sure I’m missing something here, because as far as I know, Mobile was never a hotbed of Quakerism.

Now for a shower. I didn’t sleep all night, and am feeling a bit fuzzy. I’ve never been good at sleeping in hotel beds. I miss my boys.