Palmetto Trees Saved Charleston - Who Knew?

The great thing about going on a side trip is that you tend to discover other side trips along the way.

There's been a lot of rain in the southeast - I know, it's not snow, I'm not complaining, just describing - so I didn't leave Savannah first thing Tuesday morning.  Once the rain let up I consulted the Roadfood book that Uncle Bill and Aunt Connie gave me, to see what was on the map for the South Carolina coast.  Sgt. White's Diner in Beaufort (pronounced Bew-fert) looked promising, so I took the way-scenic route, getting off the interstate just a few miles north of Savannah.  Then I realized I'd still be getting to Beaufort quite early for lunch - even by my standards - so I started looking for wrong turns, and found a couple. 

But as the song goes, if driving this way is wrong, I don't want to be right.  Or something like that.  Generally speaking, if I have the option to go toward anything labelled "island," I will do so.  And along the way I saw a sign for "Penn Center Historic District" which at first I paid no attention to.  A few miles - and random turns - later the sign popped up again and this time it was directing me off the main road so I followed it.

It was very, very interesting.

Penn Center is hard to categorize with a word more specific than "community."  It's a school (now a museum) and community center and some other buildings, and is located on St. Helena Island, one of the South Carolina Sea Islands.  It was designated a historic landmark in 1974 and celebrated its 150th anniversary last year.

The Sea Islands were captured (from the Confederacy) by Union troops in 1861.  The U.S. government urged the former slaves to support the government (not the least of which was for men to enlist in the Army, which many did).  While the government encouraged the former slaves to learn how to read and write, they had no resources to offer toward that end.  Some Quakers in Philadelphia learned of this and received government permission to set up the Port Royal Experiment.  They created a relief society to help the 10,000 former slaves in the Sea Islands.  Two women, a Unitarian abolitionist named Laura Towne, and a Canadian named Ellen Murray came to the islands to set up a school which initially was focused just on literacy but then became a vocational school as well.  It was the first such school for freed slaves.  A Massachussetts woman named Charlotte Forten sailed down to be a teacher.  Remember, the Civil War was still going at this point and although this area was controlled by Union troops, getting there was no small task.  Forten took the most risks - an African-American woman, she would have surely been sold into slavery had she been captured by the Confederates.

Their museum introduced me to the Gullah Geechee culture.  Even prior to their liberation, African slaves and their descendents far outnumbered the white population (ten to one, according to the Charleston Museum, although I don't want to get ahead of myself).  The slaves worked rice plantations and were pretty isolated.  (Even today with a car and a few decent highways, you really have to want to go to the Sea Islands to get there.  It's not exactly on the way anywhere, unless you're the liberating/invading force [depends on your viewpoint] coming in from the sea.)

Anyway, the language and culture of the people of the Sea Islands reflected that isolation.  Their language is a combination of English and various African languages.  Their literature, music, folk customs and art are strongly tied to African traditions.

The archetypal product made by Gullah artisans is the sweetgrass basket.  You've seen these before, but if you're like me you didn't know where they originated.  Here's a picture that I didn't take - it's from a Department of State website.

These baskets are really, really expensive.  A basket the size you see in this picture can easily be $150 to $200.  Apparently they will last hundreds of years.

At the Penn Center museum, I met Robert Middleton, who wrote a short book which I bought.  He's in his 80's (looks 15 years younger) and volunteers at the museum six days a week.  He grew up on a farm on St. Helena Island and was a student at the Penn Center school.  (His book is about his ultimately successful effort to locate his birth parents in, of all places, Philadelphia.)

There's a display about another Robert:  Robert Smalls, of Beaufort.  A slave, on May 14, 1862, he commandeered a Confederate ship (its three white officers were spending the night on shore) and piloted it and the 45 other slaves on board to the Union blockade outside of Charleston.  He served as a pilot for the Union through the rest of the war and eventually became a politician.  (This was during Reconstruction, when blacks were still able to vote in the South - a fact which several current U.S. Supreme Court Justices might want to keep in mind but that's just my opinion.)  He served on the 1868 South Carolina Constitutional Convention which introduced the first public education system in the south.  He was known as the "King of Beaufort County."  Interestingly, after post-Reconstruction laws had effectively ousted all of the black elected officials in the South (by the 1870's), Beaufort County retained a number of black officials in key offices until Smalls' death in 1915.

(Another notable Beaufortonian is author Pat Conroy, whose book The Water is Wide was turned into the John Voight movie about the area called  Conrack.)

All this, and I hadn't even gotten to Sgt. White's Diner yet!  If by any chance you ever find yourself in the Sea Islands, by all means run do not walk there!  (You won't be able to do either after you've eaten.)  The pulled pork, cornbread and southern vegetables were to die for (perhaps literally; I could feel my arteries clogging as I chowed down).  If I don't get out of the South soon, I will need to outfit the Vue with heavy-duty struts.

The other good thing about Sgt. White's is that it's right next to a bail bondsman, and you just never know when that will come in handy.

Sgt. White's Diner, on the left

Then I arrived in Charleston.  I love New Orleans, and was impressed with Savannah, but Charleston is one beautiful city.  And friendly.  And remarkably well preserved.  (Sounds like I'm talking about an old lady - sorry about that.)  The guy at the visitor center on the way into town, who happened to be selling carriage rides, told me that the one thing you had to do was take a carriage ride.  So I bought one, being in a highly suggestible mood after such a delicious lunch.

Tom, our licensed tour guide, introduced himself as "Tom, your licensed tour guide" and also introduced us to Edisto, his horse.  Tom (and Edisto) showed us around the oldest neighborhoods and the market area.  We saw homes that are valued at roughly $1.2 million per floor.  There is a lot of money in Charleston.  More on that in a minute.  Tom showed us a lot of Charleston Single houses.  These houses are one room wide, three back, with a porch across the whole house.  The front door is into the middle room.  The trick is that the narrow end is what faces the street so they have what are called "privacy doors" (pronounced like the British say, with a short i). 

Charleston Single House - the street is on the left, by the tree

Charleston was actually not a colony, at least not originally.  You may recall from your English history that in 1660 Charles II took back the government from Cromwell with the help of a bunch of noblemen.  In gratitude for their help, Charles II gave eight of them "Carolina" which was a very large segment of North America.  These eight are the Lords Proprietors (yes, the plural on both words is correct).  They originally (1670) settled a few miles up the road but couldn't defend themselves so moved to a more strategic position on the peninsula in 1680 which is where Charleston (Charles Town - get it?) is located today.

The history of Charleston is long and fascinating (for instance, it's one of only three walled cities in what is now the U.S. - read to the end to see if you can guess the other two), and I will only dwell on a couple of points.

The first is where the city's obvious wealth came from.  When I asked Tom about it, he said that people got it the old fashioned way, they inherited it.  That begged the question "where did their ancestors get it," of course, but at that point the tour was over and everyone was getting out of the carriage.  However, I spent some time at the Charleston Museum today investigating said question, and it turns out that a lot of the money came from rice.  The Lowcountry (all run together), is the name for coastal South Carolina, and Charleston is in all respects its capital.  Until the mid-19th century, the Lowcountry was a great place to grow rice.  The climate was good and the labor costs were, let's just say, controlled.  A number of white plantation owners made pretty good-sized fortunes up until the late 19th century when the Civil War, Emancipation, competition from mechanized production elsewhere in the South, and a couple of hurricanes effectively ended rice production in the region.  (South Carolina arguably had the economy most dependent upon slavery in the 1850's and it seems no coincidence that they were the first to secede from the Union.)  In addition, Charleston was one of the most important ports in the United States (and the Confederacy), and fortunes were made from the trade that happens in such a major port.  Including, I feel compelled to add, buying and selling people.

The second point is the Civil War.  As everyone who's been through elementary school knows, the first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. I'm not going to rehash the history here, but I've got a couple of pictures and this is the part of the blog where I'm putting them.

Approaching Fort Sumter

A cannon's-eye view of Charleston (the dark line at the horizon) from Fort Sumter

Oh, there's a third piece of history I wanted to tell you which is why I titled the blog post the way I did.  Here's the South Carolina flag:

South Carolina Flag

Tom, our licensed tour guide, explained that it is blue because of the importance of indigo to the region's economy (I oversimplified when I talked about rice).  The crescent moon isn't really a moon, according to Tom.  It's a neckpiece worn by early American military officers.  And the palmetto tree isn't just there because it's pretty (although it is).  At the beginning of the Revolutionary War, they used palmetto logs, stacked like cordwood, to stave off the British and protect Charleston.

So next time you see something that looks like a somewhat romantic moonlit night, think twice.  It could be a revolutionary statement.

And the answer to the question about walled cities?  New Orleans and St. Augustine.  Now you know.

Wherein I Begin to Wonder about My Seeming Obsession with Military Aircraft

A person simply can't get to every museum.  She can't go on every ghost tour.  Some days she just has to do normal things like working out and doing laundry and finishing a great mystery novel.  And, apparently, seeing yet another museum about military aviation.

Savannah is a beautiful city.  It is quite old by U.S. standards, and looks a little like New Orleans, although with less obvious sin.  Sunday afternoon I engaged in the sin of gluttony at Paula Deen's restaurant, The Lady and Sons.  Actually, I thought I did pretty well given it was a buffet and all.  See all the veggies?

Of course, this picture doesn't include the two different rolls I had along with a remarkable dessert called Gooey Butter Cake which by itself could give you diabetes.  And there was probably more butter in the greens than I'd normally put in cookies.  But still - did you see all the veggies?

I was surprised that I could be seated right away on a Sunday at noon but I don't mind eating at the bar.  It actually is more fun than a table when you're by yourself because you can meet people.  I started talking to a guy from West Palm Beach who had planned to drive to northern Wisconsin for a friend's wedding but was deterred by weather and since he'd planned to be gone for the weekend he came up to Savannah instead.  Let me give you all a minute, as I needed, to roll around in your head the idea of driving from Palm Beach to northern Wisconsin for the weekend.  I guess I've found my new Driveabout role model.  I feel like such a slacker.

Many of you have been generous with your suggestions about places to see, and I thank you.  A special shout out is due, however, to Susan who has come up with two ideas (one in Austin, one in Savannah), which I wouldn't have known about otherwise.  Her Savannah suggestion was to make sure to see Fort Wayne.  Fort Wayne!  The bartender had sort of heard of it, when I described to him what I'd been able to find on my phone.  I went to where he and the Waymarking website describe, but I couldn't find anything that looks like the picture they have.  The bartender said there's just a wall.  Here's what I saw:

I don't know whether this is actually the Fort's wall.  It may just be a retaining wall for the ramp down to River Street.  The Fort was built in the 1760's and its importance is not something that I've been able to determine.  If anyone knows, please post a comment.

Anyway, on the way to Fort Wayne, or the retaining wall, I followed my ears and ended up seeing a church group in one of the many squares Savannah features.

They were playing Dixieland Jazz Gospel.  See - Savannah is sort of like New Orleans, but more Protestant.

After walking about forty-five minutes around downtown, I started to get a little warm and realized that I'd still time to hit the beach at Tybee Island if I high-tailed it, so I did.  It's a nice beach - not as nice as St. Augustine and of course it was only in the 60's (it is February after all, and this is Georgia, not Florida) but the sun was warm and I caught some rays before I had to bundle up.

On the way back from Tybee Island, I drove by the birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts.  It is completely surrounded with scaffolding, apparently being renovated.  The Federal Building, which is just in the next block, is called the Juliette Gordon Low Federal Building which I thought was pretty cool.

Last night I was planning to go on a ghost tour but after I got cleaned up from the beach I didn't feel like going back out.  I blogged a little and just kicked back.  Sometimes you need a break, even from vacationing.

As had been predicted, it rained all day today.  I decided to take advantage of the rather miserable conditions and take the day off.  Even vacation can get tiring after a while.  So I finished up a fun mystery I'd picked up in New Orleans, rode the exercise bike for over an hour and a half, and did laundry.  But I couldn't get through a full day without at least some tourist-y activity, and since my suburban motel is about a half mile from the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum - and since aerospace museums have apparently become a hobby of mine - I went to check it out.

Until this afternoon I had no idea what the Mighty Eighth was. It is the Eighth Air Force, which began in January, 1942, in Savannah (although it is now apparently based in Louisiana).  Its original mission was supposed to be North Africa but plans changed and on April 8, 1942, it was ordered to England to fight the Germans. The airmen were poorly trained and initially resented by the Royal Air Force since the Americans were paid more than the British troops.  (This is the origin of the phrase "Overpaid, oversexed and over here.")  However, they learned quickly and by 1944 were able to control the airspace over northern France to support D-Day.  You may have heard of Lt. General Jimmy Doolittle who was one of their commanders late in the war.

The museum is wonderful.  It has so much information, presented in such interesting ways.  For instance, you go into a briefing room - it looks just like the kind they used in England - to watch a short movie about their pre-sortie briefings.  Of course they have aircraft, including a B-17 called the City of Savannah.

They have the wing of another B-17 from the Lindy Lou which went down over Belgium.  The pilot died but several members of the crew survived.  In 2001, one of the crewmembers tracked down the wing and brought it from Belgium to the museum.

Wing from the B-17 Lindy Lou

There's a display about being a POW in Germany, and a large display about the "helpers" (as the museum calls them) throughout Nazi-occupied Europe who helped American and British airmen evade capture by the Germans.  Nearly 3,000 Americans and 2,000 U.K. airmen were assisted by these people, who obviously risked all sorts of terrible things had they been discovered.

The museum is very focused on the air war in Europe in World War II.  They do a good job of leading up to the war and of describing the Battle of Britain.  They have an exhibit on the Tuskogee Airmen and the Women Airforce Service Pilots, also called WASP's.  These women (who were all white - the WASP's excluded black women who tried to enlist) were over 1,000 pilots who flew a variety of missions and although they were officially classified as civilian, often flew in roles that were very dangerous.  Thirty-eight WASP's died in the line of duty but the military made their families pay to ship their coffins home.  It wasn't until the 1970's that these women were given any veterans benefits.

If you are ever in the Savannah or Hilton Head area, the museum is simple to get to off of I-95 and you should definitely go.  It's easy to spend several hours there, and there is a little cafeteria with pretty good food if you get hungry.

I wonder whether there's an aviation museum in Charleston?  If not, maybe I'll just have to check out Kitty Hawk.

Go to Church and Learn Some History

Whenever I've been somewhere on a Sunday, I've gone to the local Unitarian Universalist church.*  Partly this is because I generally like going to church and a little organized spiritual reflection is almost always a good thing.  Partly I go out of curiosity, to see how other Unitarian Universalist churches operate.

(Note:  I'm not going to go into a lot - or any - discussion of UU theology or philosophy.  If you're interested in that, go here.)

I'm a member of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Fort Wayne, and when I was a teenager I was a member of First Unitarian Church in Omaha.  Up until November, those were pretty much the only two UU churches I'd ever attended services in, along with the Arlington Street Church in Boston, which is the Rome of Unitarian Universalism, if one can say such a thing.

But since November I've attended services at UU congregations in (in chronological order) Omaha (First Church), Seattle (University Unitarian), Austin (First Church), Las Cruces, Silver City, Fort Wayne, Chattanooga, and Savannah.

As one might expect, there's quite a bit of variety.  Some of these churches are giant (Seattle had about 200 people at its first service) and some are tiny (Silver City meets in a building the size of a large body shop).  Some meet in historic old buildings (Omaha, Savannah) and some meet in very cool 1950/1960-era buildings (Seattle, Fort Wayne, Chattanooga).  A number of the churches have new ministers, some have long-time ministers, and one is a lay-led fellowship.  At some of the congregations I was very, very warmly greeted and at others I was barely noticed.  [Aunt Susie, a Methodist minister's wife, points out that there's an inverse relationship between size of the congregation and the attention paid to visitors.  This is not a denominational - or even a religious - phenomenon.]  Some services have liturgy very similar to what I am used to in Fort Wayne, and some are quite different.  One thing they all have in common is coffee hour, coffee and conversation serving roughly the same function for UU's as wine does in some other religions.

But so far I've never found a congregation with as interesting a history as the Unitarian Universalist Church of Savannah.  Part of my fascination is my continued naivete about the South, so go ahead and roll your eyes now.  Yes, it's finally starting to sink in that the South has experienced American history differently than the Midwest.  I've got it.

To begin.  The Unitarian congregation in Savannah traces its roots to the 1820's, when east coast cotton merchants moved to Savannah (which eventually became the largest cotton exchange in North America).  The theological liberals among them brought Unitarianism, and a society was established.  The church fell into troubles and sold its building to the Baptists in the late 1840's.  A few years later a benefactor gave them enough money to build another church in Oglethorpe Square.  The minister at this time was John Pierpont, Jr., from Massachusetts, son of another Unitarian minister and prominent abolitionist.  John Junior's brother, James, served as music director and wrote Jingle Bells.  The next generation of Pierponts included John Pierpont Morgan, the financier.

So far that's all sort of interesting, but not too much - although admit it, the Jingle Bells thing is especially cute having been written in coastal Georgia.  Childhood memories endure.

But in the late 1850's it gets intriguing.  Remember how I said that the Pierpont brothers' father was a prominent abolitionist?  Well, the brothers were split on the issue.  That whole "brother against brother" thing is not a throwaway line.  And the brothers' split apparently reflected a split within the congregation.  So in 1859 the congregation disbanded.  The building was sold to the Episcopal church, who sold it to a black congregation.  That congregation wasn't allowed to be in Savannah proper, so the stone building was disassembled and moved, block by block, to its current location in Troup Square which at the time was apparently not inside Savannah.

A Unitarian presence didn't reemerge in Savannah until the late 1950's - a century later.  It was very small at first, and rented space in the YWCA until the congregation's active support for civil rights caused the Y to ask them to leave.  They called a minister in 1990 (whom I believe is a colleague of the Minister Emerita of the Fort Wayne UU Congregation) and in the mid-1990's raised the money to buy the Troup Square church back.  Considerable renovation ensued, and it's a really lovely church.  They just called a new minister this year and his installation was apparently yesterday, while I was getting new tires in Jacksonville.

Here's a picture from their website.  I didn't take any inside shots out of respect and because I assumed there'd be some online.  I couldn't find any but let's just say that the inside of the building looks the way you'd think it would after seeing the outside.  It's beautiful.

This post may be of limited interest to people other than Unitarian Universalists, and perhaps not even to many of them, but I found the story remarkable.  We live in a big country, and even though I like to think I've paid attention for forty-uh-hum-some years, travelling has been an eye-opening experience.

More on Savannah later.  One thing all Americans have in common, north, south, east and west:  we sure do like butter.


*Okay, not every Sunday I was in Omaha.

Water, Water Everywhere

When last we spoke I was grooving on the Gulf Coast.

If there's anything that's a buzz kill for beach-induced bliss it's twelve hours of rain during which you're trying to drive four hundred miles.

At first the rain was pretty.  After all, the ocean is still the ocean and I started the day with this view from my motel window.

Highway 292, the scenic route out of Alabama takes you through Pensacola and I saw a sign for the National Naval Aviation Museum, which is located within Naval Air Station Pensacola.  Since touring aerospace museums seems to have become a theme for the Driveabout (see Alamogordo and Dayton), it seemed too good to pass up.

I arrived about 8:30 a.m., having left Orange Beach early (for me, lately) and the museum hadn't officially opened yet.  But they don't lock the doors and Pancho, a retired airman/docent, was very friendly and told me to feel free to look around.  It's quite a collection of aircraft and even spacecraft.

They have a propeller from the aircraft carrier Intrepid which is 15 feet tall and weighs 27,000 pounds.  That means that it is almost three times as tall as I am.  As a matter of pride, I will not compute the weight ratio.

Not all the planes are American.  The museum has the world's first operational jetfighter on display.  The German Me-262 (called the Schwalbe or Sparrow) first flew for the Luftwaffe in 1942 during WWII with a top speed of 540 mph, more than 100 mph faster than the P-51 Mustang which was the top U.S. fighter at the time.  The Me-262 first saw combat in 1944.  Here it is.

There's a Sopwith Camel, complete with a stuffed Snoopy pilot.

And here's an interesting fun fact:  the first Transatlantic flight occurred in 1919 and was a Naval aviator piloting an NC-4 Flying Boat.  While not nonstop, it travelled over 800 miles and arrived in Portugal on May 27.  Can you imagine living in Portugal then, looking up over the water one day, and seeing a plane coming toward you?  It must have been amazing.

They have a lot of space exhibits, including the command module for Skylab II.

I met a docent named Jim, a retired naval aviator who flew during the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis.  And while Pancho maintained that his museum was larger than the Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, I couldn't tell.  The museum itself, although quite large, seems smaller than the Air Force museum, but I didn't go on the flight line tour.  The two museums are pretty complimentary in the sense that their emphases are different.  The Naval Aviation Museum includes some interesting WWII period exhibits as well as exhibits about aircraft carriers and radio intelligence.  And while the Air Force museum is trying to raise money to build a new wing for Presidential aircraft, the Naval Aviation Museum has a couple on display.  The first, Marine One, is the most photographed aircraft on earth.  So I took a picture, too.

The VH-3A Sea King helicopter above was Marine One for Presidents Nixon and Ford.

And speaking of Presidential aircraft, they have the S-3 Viking, used on May 1, 2003, by George W. Bush who became the first sitting President to participate in a carrier arrested landing.  You may recall this occurred on board the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, and you'd probably recognize the aircraft if you noticed the "Mission Accomplished" banner behind it.  During this event, the Viking was called Navy One due to the President being a passenger.

When I left the museum the parking lot was nearly full.  It was a good day to hit a museum.  If you're ever in the area, you really should go - even if it's not raining.

Heavy drizzle continued to soften the seascape and as I drove through Gulf Islands National Seashore the drive was enjoyable.  The sand dunes are lovely and I eventually arrived in Destin, the Luckiest Fishing Village on the Coast - or at least, so says the sign.  They also have the best sand beaches around, according to all accounts and confirmed by their Visitors Bureau, but the rain prevented me from enjoying them.

You all know me well enough to know that I'm not going to pass up something called the Fishing Museum - particularly when I can't get to a beach.  Given the weather, I wasn't alone.  Jean and Kathy explained that Destin is the closest port to the 100 Fathom Curve, where the water is 600 feet deep.  This means that you can get to better fishing faster.

The museum has a lot of fish tales.  Seriously, it has a molded models of a large number of fish caught in the waters around Destin.  Included among these are the world record smooth hound shark and red snapper.  There are exhibits of old fishing equipment and information about the history of fishing in the area.  The museum also serves as a local history museum for Destin, which was founded in 1835 by Captain Leonard Destin who moved there to develop a fishing industry.  There were no roads or bridges for 100 years, and no electricity until a couple of years after the bridge was built.  They didn't have telephones until 1952. 

After a delicious lunch of grilled scallops on a salad and a cup of gumbo, I was ready to take on the main part of the trip - still more than three hundred miles to go.  Unfortunately, the rain was just getting its second wind, so to speak, and it dogged me all the way to Jacksonville.  Or I should say "dogged and catted" me.  I don't like driving at high speeds in heavy rain, particularly on roads with lots of semi trucks, so I took Highway 90, which has as its only advantage a lack of heavy traffic.  The drive should have taken four hours, more or less, and it took six and a half.  But I made it to Jacksonville without incident, although too tired to read the Bhagavad Gita placed in my room by the Hindu branch of the Gideon Society.

This morning I awoke bright and early and glad to see the rain had left.  In its place were some clouds but also temperatures in the high 70's!  So I headed to St. Augustine, America's Oldest City, to see what I could see and to find the beach.

The first historic site I came across was fascinating:  Fort Mose (pronounced Mozay), a couple of miles north of St. Augustine.  This was the first legally sanctioned community of free blacks in what is now the United States.  You really should read this short history.  The basic story is that the Spanish, who owned Florida in the 17th Century, decided that having more residents would be great for a couple of reasons.  First, they'd be able to convert more souls to Catholicism.  Second, they'd have more soldiers to defend the area from the English who had settled Georgia, the Carolinas, and points north.  So in 1693 the Spanish announced that any escaped slave would be welcomed in Florida.  They would be given, in 21st Century terminology, "a path to citizenship."  It was no small feat to escape from a plantation and find Florida (usually this was done by boat), but a number of slaves did so.  So many, in fact, that the Spanish governor of St. Augustine decided he needed to, in 20th Century terminology, "red line" and move the escaped slaves into a new community.  Fort Mose was born and was home to around seventy to ninety people.  There were battles with the English and the fort was rebuilt once.  In 1763, when the Treaty of Paris gave Florida to the British, it seemed prudent for the black residents (along with most of the other Spanish residents of Florida) to decamp to Cuba, and so they did.  It is still an open question whether any of these folks ever returned to the United States.

That was really interesting.  Their Visitor Center is extremely well done and educational for both children and adults.  If you're in the area, it will be the best two dollars you spend. 

After I left Fort Mose the sun was winning its battle with the clouds, and I decided that I wanted the beach more than I wanted more history.

The St. Augustine beach is very nice, and it's free.  It was fun to see surfers, and most luxurious to lay out in the sun.  A much better way to experience water than I had last night.

Now I'm sitting at the Goodyear Tire Store because it occurred to me last night that new tires would probably be a good idea.  Then I'm heading to Savannah, hoping to take a scenic route or two along the way.

Riding on the City of New Orleans

Yeah, I know, the City of New Orleans referenced by Arlo Guthrie is a train, not the town, but don't go all technical on me.  I've been in New Orleans, after all, and it's not called the Big Easy because people sweat details.  (They do sweat quite a bit, of course, although not this week as it's a little chilly - by New Orleans standards, not by mine.)

As you are aware, my plan twelve hours before I left Montgomery was to head straight south to the coast for some sun.  But I couldn't sleep well, and one of the things I thought about while not sleeping was that it was silly not to drive another hour or two, albeit it out of the way (since my next plan is the east coast), to spend a couple of days in the Crescent City.

And like every single detour or stop I've made since beginning the Driveabout, I'm glad I made it.

On the way, I enjoyed the last of Diane's provisions at the Davis Bayou in Gulf Islands National Seashore, which is in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.  It's beyond beautiful.

 

Although I managed to arrive in New Orleans at rush hour (turns out I have quite a knack for hitting urban areas at rush hour) I was able to find an adorable little guesthouse in the French Quarter that didn't cost an arm and a leg and parked in the garage six blocks away.  Parking was actually the hardest thing I've done in a while - it's one of those old garages with tight spaces and while the Vue isn't exactly a semi, it's not exactly skinny either.  It took me a couple of tries but I am proud to report that I made it both in and out of the space with no damage to car, garage, or pride.

 

Here's the guesthouse.  You'll have to use your imagination on the garage.

 

 

Tuesday night I went on a ghost tour of the Quarter, which turned into a minor pub crawl, and it was great fun.  Wednesday afternoon (yeah, you're following) I went to Cafe du Monde for breakfast.  They only have one food selection at Cafe du Monde.

 

 

Of course, if your only food item is a beignet - little square donuts topped with more powdered sugar than you think is possible - you can get away with this for 150 years, which is how long they've been open.

 

There are a lot of street musicians in New Orleans, like these guys:

 

 

And it seemed like I should have my fortune told, so I sat down at a table on Jackson Square operated by none other than Fatima, a.k.a. The Voodoo Bone Lady.  She has her own website.  (Generally my prognosis is good, although a troubling person from my past is supposed to reappear in the coming year and I'm not supposed to engage with them.  So if that's you, be forewarned.)

 

I've only been in New Orleans once before, about 25 years ago.  And although the St. Charles Streetcar is the oldest continuously operating streetcar line on earth, it was broken during that trip so I didn't get to ride.  On this visit I rectified that situation.  The streetcar goes near the Garden District which has beautiful homes that were apparently built by Yankees who moved to town pre-Civil War.  The Creoles who ran things wouldn't let them live in the nice neighborhoods in New Orleans so they built their own.

 

When I'd posted on Facebook that I was headed to New Orleans I got an e-mail from a friend who was there for a convention, and we had dinner Wednesday night.  Then we decamped to Cafe Lafitte in Exile for great fun at karaoke.  We killed doing the B-52's Love Shack.

 

As you might guess, breakfast is not the most eaten meal in New Orleans, which accounts for the trouble I had finding someplace to grab a quick bite on Thursday morning when I was getting ready to go.  (I wanted to find a place that was between my guesthouse and the parking garage and was unsuccessful in finding anywhere open.)  Luckily, someone had told me about Elizabeth's, which is a short drive from the French Quarter but since they serve praline bacon it would be worth walking over rocks to get there.  Plus they serve fried green tomatoes.  I heart Elizabeth's.

 

Conveniently, Elizabeth's is on the way to the Lower Ninth Ward, which I wanted to drive through before leaving New Orleans.  This is the area that was devastated by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  It is a very low-income neighborhood and many people didn't have insurance, so the rebuilding has been very, very slow.  There are still a lot of vacant lots and boarded up homes.  There's a new school with a library, but that's about it.

 

After that depressing side trip, I was off to Marksville.  This is a small (population 5,702) town in central Louisiana, about three hours northwest of New Orleans, and is notable because my father lived there until he was eight years old.  My goal was to find his old house, same as I had tried to find my mom's in Junction City, Kansas.

 

Compared to my father's directions, my mom's had been GPS coordinates.  Here's exactly what my father said:  "Find the old part of town.  Then find the old bank building, which was gray or brick.  Then go left, and then go right.  If you reach the school, you've gone too far."  These are not the kind of directions that inspire confidence, but I was determined at least to try.

 

Turns out there is another historic aspect to Marksville:  it's home to a prehistoric ceremonial center, built by the Hopewell people over two thousand years ago.  They have a museum which I stopped at hoping (no pun intended) that it might be staffed by old people (often these places are) who would remember my dad's family.  Since the Goldners left Marksville in 1947, these would have to be folks in their seventies or eighties, at least.  Earl, the very nice man running the museum in the absence of someone else who had gone to a meeting, was in his sixties so he didn't recognize the name, but he was able to figure out the first part of my father's cryptic instructions and directed me to the Union Bank building, conveniently located across from the courthouse.

 

Once I found the bank building (and it's still gray) I called my dad.  Of course, he didn't know exactly where I was relative to his memory of the place, so it took a while for me to figure out that I was probably in the right block.  There's only one house standing (the rest has become commercial buildings).  Dad said that people named Bordelon lived a couple of doors down.  That seemed an irrelevent detail to my search until I noticed, as luck would have it, a historic marker in front of the remaining house that marks this as the Bordelon house.

 

 

I guess my grandfather didn't think about putting a historic marker in front of their home, so it's now a parking lot.  Live and learn.

 

During the past few days I've driven over some fabulous bridges.  I love driving over water, and you do a lot of that along the Gulf Coast.  The soaring feeling is exhilarating.  Of course, if you're surrounded by semi's at the time, it's more than a little frightening but still a rush.

 

On the way to Marksville I unexpectedly encountered an amazing bridge called the Audobon Bridge, which crosses the Mississippi River.  It has the second longest cable-stayed span (whatever that means) in the Western Hemisphere, but what I liked about it was how unusual it looks.  Here's a picture, which doesn't really show you why I thought it was cool.

 

The orange-ish things you see are giant guy-wires, or at least that's what they look like to me.  They're the same color as the yellow paint they use for striping roads, which sounds goofy but looks incredible when you drive under them.  On a cloudy day, as Thursday was, it seems that they are rays of sun.

 

It used to be that Marksville had really nice infrastructure because it is the home of Edwin Edwards, former Congressman, long-time Governor, and Federal inmate.  But since he was still serving time when this bridge was built, I don't know that you could credit his involvement in its construction.  (Interesting aside:  Edwards' mom was a midwife who worked for my grandfather, the town doctor, in Marksville.)

 

And then, on to Orange Beach, Alabama, where I am staying in a beachfront motel.  After checking in about 8:30 I ran barefoot onto the dark, empty beach and let waves from the Gulf of Mexico hit me ankle deep.  I nearly exploded from joy.

 

Tonight I am feeling very, very lucky, and I appreciate your joining me on this journey.



Driving Miss Daisy

Remember my somewhat mixed feelings about the Confederate Cemetery in Chattanooga?  After spending a little time in Birmingham, Selma and Montgomery on my own self-guided civil rights tour, any sympathy I might have had, any effort to understand the other guy's point of view, has gone away.

Fortunately I was just leaving church Sunday morning in Chattanooga when an e-mail popped up from my friend Ken.  He told me I couldn't leave Chattanooga without going to the Chickamauga Civil War battlefield.  Then I saw a sign for it on the interstate and decided I couldn't fight fate any longer.  I swung through southern Chattanooga, which is technically northern Georgia, and found it.

The Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park was established by Congress in 1890 for the purpose of "preserving and suitably marking, for historical and professional military study, the fields of some of the most remarkable maneuvers and most brilliant fighting in the War of Rebellion."  This was the first such Military Park, predating Gettysburg by some five years.

The Battle of Chickamauga was hugely important in the Civil War, and may be a classic example of "win the battle and lose the war."  After some of the bloodiest fighting of that terribly bloody war, the South won, but failed to capitalize on its victory and allowed the North to retain control of Chattanooga - which Sherman later used as a supply base for his March to the Sea.  I'm not a military history buff, but the interpretive center does a great job of helping you understand the strategies that were used and the importance of the battle.  The park itself is immense, with many markers commemorating both Union and Confederate companies.  A number of them, of course, were from Indiana.

You could easily spend most of a day here, but I didn't since I wanted to get to Birmingham in time to see a couple of museums.

Before I get into what I saw in Birmingham, one thing I neglected to mention in my fawning review of the National Museum of the USAF, is that a part of their Holocaust exhibit includes a timeline of human rights in the 20th century.  The curator included a wide range of items, including labor rights and eugenics, and I liked how s/he linked all these together.  In Alabama, "civil rights" is more of a black-and-white term - and you can take that phrase however you want to.

But there is a little Native American history.  For instance, behind the Bi-Lo grocery store in Rossville, Georgia, is the two-story log cabin home of John Ross, Great Chief of the Cherokees (1790-1866). Ross was only one-eighth Cherokee but was elected Principal Chief and served the Cherokee Nation for forty years in that capacity. Ross was on the forced relocation march known as the Trail of Tears, during which he lost his wife.

I arrived in Birmingham mid-afternoon and went straight to the 16th Street Baptist Church.  On September 15, 1963, about three weeks before I was born, three Ku Klux Klansmen set off dynamite, killing four little girls and injuring 22 others.  Bombings were not a new way of terrorizing the black community - they were so common in the city that it was sometimes called "Bombingham" - but this event was so outrageous that the world took notice.  (The world took notice, but not so much local leaders - although 8,000 people attended their funerals, there were no city officials among the mourners.)

The monument in their honor is very understated and takes a minute to find.  On one side is a scriptural verse to the effect that retribution is not the appropriate response.  The other side is simple:

The church is right across the street from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (you can see it on the right in the background behind the picture of the monument).

The tour starts with a movie about Birmingham from 1871 to 1921.  Interesting thing about Birmingham - it was created, more or less, out of whole cloth.  The railroads crossed there and some people said, "Hey, let's build us a town."  Birmingham is known as the Magic City, which I guess is a way of describing how this community (it's the 50th largest metro area in the U.S.) developed pretty quickly.  Of course, given the willingness of the city fathers to use a wide variety of creative, brutal and effective segregationist and union-busting tactics which resulted in Birmingham having the lowest labor costs in the nation during this period, it doesn't seem so magical at all.

On the 50th anniversary of the city's founding, President Warren G. Harding arrived to congratulate the good people of Birmingham.  He also called for racial equality - the first American President to do so in a speech in the south. Only part of the crowd applauded.

It's hard to completely fathom all of this.  For instance, in 1963 Birmingham changed its form of government from a commission to a mayor/council.  This had been studied and planned since the mid-1950's, but Bull Connor (you've heard of Bull Connor - he's the guy with the firehoses) viewed it as a threat to his power.  On April 2, 1963, Albert Boutwell was elected Mayor along with a new City Council.  Connor refused to leave office (he was a Commissioner) and until May 23 there were two operating city governments.  It was like a coup in reverse.

Or in Selma, in 1964 a state judge issued a court order prohibiting more than three people from congregating in Dallas County.  True dat.  Check out the First Amendment if you've got a minute, and get back to me.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (and, I would say cynically but confidently, white flight from a landlocked Birmingham) has had some impact.  In 1979 Richard Arrington, Jr., was elected Mayor of the city, the first African-American to hold the office.  He served five terms, until 1999.  There is a boulevard by Vulcan Park named for him.

Side trip to Vulcan Park:

Set on a big hill, this is a combination city park, local museum, observation tower (see the deck in the picture above) and gigantic monument to the industrial age.  You get a great view of the city, but the height is a bit much for me so I didn't stay long up there.

Operated as it is by city government, the Vulcan Museum is a little less, um, stinging in its description of the city's history than the Civil Rights Institute.  They do mention that the city was very, very badly hit during the Depression since it was so dependent upon relatively new industry, with something like 90% unemployment among industrial workers.  Yes, you read that correctly.  That still wasn't enough to make local business leaders support the New Deal:  their anti-unionism was stronger than their recognition that workers with incomes will buy more than those out of work.  Still, most of Vulcan Park was built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) so I guess someone got over it, at least a little.

I took a break from history and had dinner with my friend Diane who has lived in Birmingham about five years.  She likes it - good weather, and it's a really pretty city.  My other friend, Leslie, was in New York visiting relatives and craving winter.  Yeah, I worry a little about Leslie, but everyone has their own minor craziness.  Diane sent me on my way Monday morning with apples, berries, cheese, granola bars....more food than I typically had in my entire frig this summer.

And so, well-stocked, I headed south from Birmingham to Selma.  During this leg of the trip, I hit 10,000 miles which is obviously something of a milestone so I celebrated with a few minutes of Facebooking in the parking lot of the Valley Grande, Alabama, City Hall and Public Safety Building.

Downtown Selma is interesting.  The streets are very, very wide, and some of the old buildings are renovated.  I parked by the PNC Bank which somehow made me feel like home.  (My definition of "home" lately is really weird, but that is a topic for another time - if at all.)  I walked across the Edmund Pettus bridge, which crosses the Alabama River, and went to the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute.

In case you were wondering, as I was:  Edmund Pettus was a Civil War general and a Senator from Alabama (1897-1907).  He practiced law in Selma before being elected to the Senate.  The bridge was built in 1940 and is 250 feet long.

Of course, the real historical significance of the Edmund Pettus Bridge is that it is where Sheriff Jim Clark and a bunch of Alabama state troopers engaged in what might politely be described as a police riot when a bunch of black people wanted to march the 54 miles from the Brown Chapel church to the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery in order to petition their government for voting rights and make a point that they were tired of being denied said rights, with the proximate cause of the march being the killing of a young black man named Jimmie Lee Jackson by a white policeman during a nonviolent civil rights demonstration. 

The state troopers drove the marchers back across the bridge and all the way back to the church, which is a little over a mile.  March 7, 1965, is known as "Bloody Sunday" because of the beatings and violence that the marchers received at the hands of the police.  A second unsuccessful attempt at crossing the bridge came on Tuesday, March 9 and included a large number of clergy, many of whom travelled from across the country to participate.  It was on this day that a Unitarian Universalist minister from Massachussetts, James Reeb, was beaten to death by white supremacists. He was survived by his wife and four children.  Later, on March 21, under the sullen protection of Alabama National Guardsmen federalized for this purpose by President Johnson, several hundred people followed Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and began the march to Montgomery.  By the time they arrived at the State Capitol, the group had grown to 25,000.  Governor Wallace stayed in his office and refused to meet with them.

These events are widely credited as giving President Johnson and the non-racists in Congress the political leverage to pass the Voting Rights Act despite the continued opposition of powerful southern Senators and Congressmen.

On Highway 80, along the path of the march, there is a very good interpretive center operated by the National Parks Service.  (As an aside, I am really impressed with the many NPS centers I've encountered during the Driveabout.)  The Lowndes County Interpretive Center describes a lot of the history that I'd seen elsewhere, but goes into more detail about the conditions in this very rural county halfway between Selma and Montgomery.  Rural and, it seems, feudal.  The industrialists in Birmingham used a combination of racial prejudice and state-sanctioned violence as a way of achieving their economic power.  The 86 white families that owned 90% of the land in Lowndes County added control of property to the mix, with the result being that at the beginning of 1965, there were no black residents of the county registered to vote.  Black tenant farmers and sharecroppers were entirely dependent upon the goodwill, if that word may be properly used here, of the white landowners who would evict you from your home if you registered to vote or took any other such radical step.  Since your home comprised your livelihood, even if it didn't have running water or heat, that was quite a risk.  And if that threat was too subtle, there was the knowledge that white people had carte blanche (no pun intended) to injure or kill a black person with no threat of punishment.

When the civil rights marchers came through Lowndes County, many of the county's black residents were afraid even to wave at them for fear of retribution.  And that fear was not unfounded.  After passage of the Voting Rights Act in the summer of 1965, a number of families were evicted when they registered to vote.  The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) raised money to purchase six acres for a tent city so that families would have a place to live.  The interpretive center is now on this land.

While in Selma, I walked over to see the Dallas County Courthouse which had been featured in several pictures at the Voting Rights Museum.  Before they marched to Montgomery, black citizens had unsuccessfully tried to register to vote in this building, and often had been arrested by Sheriff Clark.  Just across the street there's a marble monument to the first U.S. Naval officer killed in World War I who was from Selma.  The monument was erected long enough ago that they called it "The War With Germany" rather than "WWI" so I assume it is circa 1920.  Without irony, the monument states "He gave his life that democracy and liberty might live."  Perhaps there wasn't room on the monument for the modifiers that would have made the statement more accurate, or perhaps Sheriff Clark had never read it.

Several places there are references to "foot soldiers," ordinary people who participated in the marches and other civil rights protests.  Most of these foot soldiers were black, but perhaps because she was a Unitarian white woman, I've always been moved by the story of Viola Liuzzo.
Viola was a mother of five who left her home in Detroit to join the marchers.  She was shot and killed by a white man on March 25 while driving with a black man back to Selma. 

All this sacrifice made a difference.  In 1940, less than one-half of one percent of voting age blacks in Alabama and Mississippi were registered to vote.  In 1984 (the latest they had in the Voting Rights Museum exhibit) it was 74% and 77%, respectively.  The greatest increase in registration occurred between the Presidential elections of 1964 (prior to the Act) and 1968 (the first Presidential election after).  Alabama went from 23% to 56.7% and Mississippi went from 6.7% (yes, that is correct - six point seven percent) to 54%.

I was going to pass on the Old Depot Museum, which is the Selma/Dallas County museum, but fortunately decided not to.  As I walked in I met Beth Spivey, their new director of three days - the previous director had a stroke, so Beth has jumped in to get things organized.  There is a lot of material here, both inside and out, so Beth has a big job ahead of her.  Here's an old cotton scale:

They have a small exhibit about women's suffrage with a picture of Harriet Hooker Wilkins of Selma, the first (white) woman in Alabama to be elected to the legislature.

Beth proudly showed me a large collection of photographs of sharecroppers from the late 1800's and early in the twentieth century, taken by Selma native Mary Morgan Keipp.  The pictures provide a window into the past that is very interesting and moving.

By far the coolest thing at the museum is the treatment log from the hospital in Selma on Bloody Sunday.  This is very un-HIPAA, but hey, it's history.

Here is one of the entries enlarged.  Take a minute to read it.

Name: Robert Landford

Complaint: Difficulty breathing

How happened: In March Tear gassed

Seeing that book just made me shiver.  Artifacts can make history come alive in a way that's hard to explain, and that log did it for me.

Beth has big plans for the museum and I wish her the best in making them happen.

When I arrived in Montgomery I drove along what I thought might have been the path of the marchers to the State Capitol.  It's a beautiful and impressive building - set on the top of a hill and it gleams in the sun.  Under the right set of conditions, I can see how it might be intimidating, too.

To be complete, let me give you a picture of the Brown Chapel AME Church, which is where the Selma to Montgomery March began.  That way you'll have both ends of the journey.

In front of both buildings there is a monument about the march.  You can see the one in front of the church in the picture.  The one in front of the State Capitol is more of a historic marker, but it's there.

In Montgomery (Cradle of the Confederacy) I visited the Rosa Parks Museum which is operated by Troy University.  Their focus is very specifically on December 1, 1955 - the night that Mrs. Parks refused to give up her seat - and on the year-long bus boycott, which ended with the Supreme Court ordering the integration of buses.  The original demands of the protestors were ridiculously modest from our perspective in 2013 (or even 1973):  treat passengers with respect, keep blacks and whites separated but let seating be first-come first-served so that already seated black patrons wouldn't be required to give up their seats for whites, and hire some black drivers for the routes in black neighborhoods.  They made a point of saying that they weren't opposing segregation - this was 1955, after all.  But the city and the bus company wouldn't hear of such a thing, and ended up with integrated buses. 

This was the seminal event of the modern civil rights movement, and the museum uses multi-media pretty effectively to give you a sense of what it was like to be there.  I would recommend it both for adults and for children.

After all this powerful history, I had a bite to eat at Chris' Hot Dogs, the oldest restaurant in Montgomery, operating from the same location since 1917.  Their hotdogs are topped with chili, mustard and sauerkraut (I had mine without onions).  They're not Coney Island dogs, but they're still good - I loved the combination of sauerkraut with the chili.  And I felt very virtuous since I had chicken vegetable soup rather than fries or onion rings.

When he was ringing me up, the third generation owner Gus (he looks to be about 30, plus or minus) said that Chris was his grandfather and that President (Franklin) Roosevelt came in once.  After that he'd have hotdogs sent out to the train when he would be on his way through town.  Truman did the same, and Elvis would order a bunch whenever he was in Montgomery.  Hank Williams, a Montgomery native son, ate here a lot.  So did Governor George Wallace and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Everybody likes coney dogs.

It's interesting to hear young white Alabamians talk about segregation.  It is part of the history, and by acknowledging it I don't take it that they agree.  It's just that I'm not used to hearing the topic being discussed as recent history, the way you might say "there was a building over there before they built the new highway."  For instance, in showing me the hospital log Beth said "we have the log from the black hospital."  Of course it was the black hospital - the protesters would have been refused treatment at the white hospital.  And Gus said that when Rev. King and Rosa Parks would come to Chris' to eat, they had to eat at a separate area "because of the segregation law."  There's a long history of racial inequality in the midwest, but most of it wasn't structural and legal.  I guess that's the part that I find the hardest to wrap my arms around.

So that's my Song of the South.  I'm still processing it all, truly.  There are a bunch of things rolling around in my brain:  reconciliation, justice, forgiveness, progress, economics, morality, how a society moves on from such evil...it's going to take a while before anything coherent develops, if it ever does.  In the meantime, tomorrow I'm headed for the Gulf Coast for some sun and fun and thinking about nothing more serious than what's for dinner.

Stuck inside of Chattanooga with the Nashville Blues Again

You know those days where you wish you could have a do-over?

Welcome to Chattanooga.

But let's begin in a happier place:  Nashville.  (I should specify Nashville, Tennessee - years ago I had a great deal of confusion thinking I was going to a concert in Tennessee when in fact the concert was in Nashville, Indiana.  Yeah, that's sort of an important detail.)

My Uncle Bill and Aunt Connie have lived in Nashville for fifteen years or so, and they set out to prove that Aunt Susie isn't the only Natural Born Tour Guide in the family.  I'd visited Nashville (Tennessee) a couple of times before (and Nashville, Indiana, once), and was only going to be in town this time for basically one day, so they gave me the abbreviated version.

Oh - I need to go back in time one more day, to show you a picture of Abraham Lincoln's birthplace in Hodgenville, Kentucky, which I arrived at after it had closed for the night.  But here it is from the driveway:

The two best things about swinging by was that when I got out of my car it was really pleasant - probably 50's at 6 p.m. - and I was off the Interstate for a while, driving through some very curvy and fun back roads.  It was a good addition to my drive from Ohio to Tennessee, even if I was too late for the main event.

Okay, back to Nashville.  We saw Musica, the statue by Alan LeQuire.  (Uncle Bill and Aunt Connie live in the historic Richland neighborhood and their house was on a neighborhood home tour a few years ago - LeQuire exhibited one of his other statues in their house for the tour, but they didn't get to keep it.)

Downtown Nashville has some fun buildings, even beyond the Batman Building.

For instance, there is Nashville's first shopping center, the 1902 Arcade which Aunt Connie and I agreed could use a few of those space heaters but otherwise is pretty fun. Some pictures:

We didn't stop to have either sushi or a fried pie.  Or to go to the Post Office, for that matter, but we could have if we'd wanted to.

And of course there is the famous Printers Alley.  (My friend Rachel may be pleased to see that there is no apostrophe in "printers.")

Nashville has a really nice farmers' market (please note the somewhat random placement of the apostrophe - there are a couple of right answers here).  Obviously in February it's (correct use of apostrophe) not very big, but we picked up some honey and I saw carrots bigger than any I'd ever seen.

Then we drove over to East Nashville and saw Saint Ann's Episcopal Church.  It is a fairly small church, but what's interesting about it is that it was devastated by a tornado in 1998.  They rebuilt inside the original footprint and left some of the old stonework, along with these words which I like:  "God was not in the tornado but in our response."  That's actually a pretty Unitarian-Universalist saying.  Except for the use of the word "God," of course.  <insert smiley emoticom here>

Saturday morning I left Nashville - very well fortified after a big breakfast and with enough provisions that I would have been okay if the Vue had been a horse and buggy - and headed southeast, to see Chattanooga.

Three good things about Chattanooga:  South Pittsburg, Ruby Falls, and a great chocolate martini at Terra Nostra wine bar.  Unfortunately, there's no parking at Terra Nostra, but that comes later.

Since at some point I will stop driving around and have a kitchen where I will actually want to cook something, Aunt Connie and Uncle Bill strongly recommended that I stop at the Lodge Cast Iron Outlet Store in South Pittsburg, just outside of Chattanooga, to pick up some pans.  (Mitch told me to get a griddle because it "takes brunch to a whole new level, and also makes a pretty good boat anchor if you happen to need that."  And since I never know when I'll want brunch or need a boat anchor, I picked one of those up, too.)  They make their pans in the U.S. of A. - actually, just around the corner from the outlet store:

Downtown South Pittsburg features the Most Unique Store in Tennessee.  They have a sign to prove it:

This is Opera House Music which is a record store (with genuine records), musical instruments, and a lot of miscellaneous.  It didn't shock me to hear Charlie Daniels playing "Devil Went Down to Georgia" as I walked in.  If you are looking for cluttered, you've found your place.

And somehow the gorilla in the window seems to fit right in.

South Pittsburg has more than Opera House Music, however.  It is home of the National Cornbread Festival which is coming up in April.

It's a cute little town with a number of shops ranging from Miss Jane's Bridal Shop to Base Camp 2-22, which looks like an army surplus store.  I didn't stop at either.  South Pittsburg is also the birthplace of Jobyna Ralston, a movie actress from the silent era whom I have never heard of but they do have a sign.

Last but not least, I thought that this was a cool building on the road out of town.

On the interstate to Chattanooga you see a bunch of signs for Ruby Falls.  That's all they say:  Ruby Falls.  Having seen these signs before, Aunt Connie had looked it up once and saw that it was a large waterfall which the discoverer had named for his wife, Mrs. Falls.  (Sorry, couldn't resist that.)

I'm a sucker for a good waterfall so I checked it out, and it was worth the $17.95 and two hours that it took.

Turns out that Ruby Falls is inside Lookout Mountain and at 145 feet is America's tallest underground waterfall.  You take an elevator into the mountain (when we got out of the elevator, a little kid said, "hey, we're inside the mountain!"), walk about a half mile through stalagmites and stalactites (and, the tour guide said, "stalaglights" - which are where the lights are - I love tour guide humor).  Many of the formations have funny little names.

"Cactus and Candle"

The North End of a Southbound Donkey

The falls themselves are spectacular, and the cheesy lighting and overly dramatic music actually enhances the experience.  You're a tourist down there, after all.  If you were an adventurer you'd be on your stomach in the dark.  In my mind, tourist is much better.  The red in this picture is just from the lighting.

Then a half-mile walk back through the mountain, a seemingly half-mile walk through the gift shop, and it was onward to Chattanooga. 

On the way into town I drove by the International Towing and Recovery Hall of Fame and Museum and decided to keep driving since I was on my way to the Tennessee Aquarium.  Perhaps the events of that evening were some sort of karmic revenge for my snubbing this attraction.

The Tennessee Aquarium is nice.  Among downtown development people, it is credited with being a significant driver in downtown Chattanooga's renaissance.  There certainly were a gazillion people there on the Saturday afternoon which comprised my poorly timed visit.  (I love kids in small numbers, and I feel the same way about adults - being part of a very slow moving parade through the aquarium just made me grumpy; I do better at these sorts of places during off-hours.)  If you go, their freshwater/river side is where you'll want to spend more time although the seawater side has a very impressive display of penguins.

I consulted Trip Advisor to see what else I should see, and learned that there is a Confederate Cemetery so I stopped by.  It's pretty large and right across the street from the Chattanooga campus of the University of Tennessee.  I felt weird about something with the purpose of "honoring the Confederate dead."  I've got nothing against honoring the dead, of course, but I just have trouble figuring out what to think about people who did what they thought was right and I think was wrong.  It was a rather unpleasant afternoon, weather-wise, so I didn't stay long but I only saw one gravestone with a Civil War era date.  The rest were people who died later, including a woman who died in 1957.  It would be interesting (probably in a depressing way) to learn about the history of the cemetery during the twentieth century.  My guess - and this is unfair because it's an assumption - is that it was where the white people wanted to be buried.  But who knows?

I'm in the South.  Driving by the Robert E. Lee apartment building reinforced that, in case the Confederate Cemetery was too subtle.  And I know the prejudices that many people have about southerners - and will admit that I, too, am not always above such feelings.  But my basic personality is to ignore the bad until it hits me in the face.  That has its advantages, of course, as well as some obvious risks.  I also tend to follow rules and be respectful of other people's property.

Still, when I was in search of a nice glass of wine before heading to my hotel and saw the Terra Nostra wine bar beckoning in the middle of a weird snow flurry, and saw that the only parking for blocks was at the Walgreens store, it didn't occur to me that the "Parking for Customers While Shopping Only - Violators Towed" sign was a serious threat.  The lot wasn't half full and I was gone less than 45 minutes.

You see where this is headed.

The cabbie - and it's not easy to find a cab at 7:30 on a Saturday night in Chattanooga, in case you're ever in a similar circumstance - was a nice guy named James who was very sympathetic and said that this whole thing seemed like a scam to him.  He said this the minute I told him I needed to go to Gant Towing, not needing to wait for any editorial prompting from me.  I was not his first such fare. 

And let's just say my experience at Gant Towing was reminiscent of the Dukes of Hazzard and I'll leave it at that.

Look, I saw the sign.  It's private property, and the good people at Walgreens can do, more or less, whatever they want to with their parking lot.  I'd be annoyed, too, if my customers couldn't find parking because the lot had become overrun by people using other businesses who don't invest in their own parking lots.  I get all that.

But the lot was less than half full and I was gone less than 45 minutes.  Honestly I didn't know you could even get a car towed that quickly.  Apparently they have perfected towing in Chattanooga (which makes sense, since it's the home of towing which I would have known had I visited their museum.)  Paying $200, however, to reclaim my vehicle (which they had stored for about an hour by the time I got a cab), was just too much and made me agree with James.  (James also advised that the neighborhood around the impound lot was a notorious speed trap.)

In an effort to focus on the positives in Chattanooga, and get a little spiritual balance, I am off to church this morning and then on to Birmingham where I will see another church.  This one is where four little girls were killed by violent racists and by the time I get there I plan to have regained a better sense of perspective.