Although the trip takes nearly eight hours and covers more than 500 miles, Alton Smith makes the trip from Nashville, Tenn., to Natchez at least once a month.

The Dart landed on Kenwood Lane in Natchez, where Smith was maintaining the windows on his Natchez house on Saturday.

&uot;I’m reglazing my windows,&uot; Smith said. &uot;The panes are in good shape, but I broke one.&uot;

He said the cypress windowframes are in good shape. &uot;I’ll have to fix the one I broke.&uot;

Smith, who has lived in Nashville since 1976, bought the house about three years ago and uses it &uot;as a summer home,&uot; he said.

&uot;I grew up in Harmony Ridge, and we just wanted to come back home,&uot; he said.

He and his wife, Babbie, used to make the Nashville to Natchez trip once every three weeks.

Four months after the couple bought the home, Babbie’s sister, Neely, whom the couple visited often, died and the Smith’s didn’t frequent Natchez quite so often.

&uot;She was real close to her sister,&uot; he said. &uot;We would come to Natchez every three weeks and visit her sister.&uot;

Smith – a retired truck driver who drove for C. B. Ragland Grocery Wholesale – said his vacation home was built shortly after World War II on a G.I. Loan, a government program designed to benefit soldiers returning from Europe and Africa after the war in the late 1940s.

Smith said he wasn’t &uot;fortunate enough&uot; to take part in that program and worked on off-shore oil rigg as a relief driller and a mortarman before moving to Nashville. &uot;I was a roughneck,&uot; he said. &uot;That’s what they called us.&uot;