Lyricism and The South

We recently made a trip down south to see my brother-in-law and his family in Florida. The weather was hot and melty. So were the beaches. The waters of the Gulf, however, were perfect. Not too cold, not too hot, at least in the few times I was able to get to the beach.

On the way back, we decided to make a slight detour to visit old St. Augustine on the Atlantic coast, and we were so glad that we did. We took a tour of the Castello di San Marco and were just in time to watch the Cannon Firing Demonstration. We then had lunch at a Mexican restaurant overlooking both the water and the fort. It was a great way to get off of I-95 for a little while on our way to Savannah, Georgia, which was our next stop.

We arrived in Savannah for a two-night stay, checked into our hotel and went downtown to do a bit of the tourist thing. The real touring didn't begin, however, until the next morning. My seventeen-year-old had a tour of the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) planned for the afternoon, so we made sure to get up nice and early to get a few things done beforehand.

The first place a couple of us wanted to go was to the very interesting and, by American standards, ancient cemeteries around Savannah. We made it to two of them, both very interesting in what they revealed about life in the early centuries of life in The South as well as some of the individual characters who played a part in forming its history.

The second we didn't reach until later in the day just before closing time at 5:00 in the afternoon. We only had time to drive through it and see from the inside of the car what mysteries might be revealed in the sometimes plain, sometimes poetic epitaphs on the stones. More than once I wished I had a large sheet of paper and a piece of charcoal so that I could make a rubbing of words that were no longer visible to the naked eye.

I admit to being just a bit disappointed that the now-famous statue of the Bird Girl had been moved to the nearby Telfair Museum of Art where, I imagine, all the mystique has been swept away amidst the rest of the collections the museum holds. (Disclaimer: we didn't actually go to the museum, so I cannot vouch for this assumption at all, and lest I appear to be a troglodyte of the lowest order, I do enjoy museums very much. I simply go by my own experience that objets d'art with a history or backstory seem to lose a smidgeon of their lustre and oomph when placed all alone in a marble edifice behind a velvet cordon and tagged with only their vital statistics. Somehow, though the work itself may be magnificent, the original, and therefore proper, atmosphere is lacking.)

But on with the rest of our day.

After the first cemetary, we visited the Juliet Gordon Lowe birthplace. She was the founder of the Girl Scouts of America, of course, and I, for one, enjoyed the tour of this home. It reminded me of my grandmother's and other relatives' homes from way back when. Hearing stories about other people's lives makes them real, makes them familiar, makes them like family and friends. What a hoot Lowe's mother, Nelly, must have been, sliding down the steep bannisters at the age of 82. We didn't spend a great deal of time in very many gift shops on our travels this time, but we did leave this one with a few keepsakes for the younger girls. My one daughter who is in the Girl Scouts was thrilled to be able to add a patch and a pin to her uniform for this upcoming scouting year.

We were hungry for an early lunch at this point, and my husband had this one covered. We went to the Pirates' House for a southern buffet-style meal. Everything we ate we agreed was delicious, and I kept going back for the vegetables. With our health-conscious diets these days in climes slightly north, we don't get to eat very many vegetables cooked the way we ate them that day. Sigh. It was amusing to interact with the character actors who stroll through the dining rooms, some threatening to abscond with members of the dining party before making them walk the plank. In their defense, they did offer bits of historical facts regarding some of the pirates, so it wasn't complete camp on the set. It was fun.

Next came our tour of the aforementioned SCAD. Delightful. We had a fantastic tour guide for a couple of hours, a junior from Mexico. Though there was one other prospective family on the tour with us, we felt that the tour was basically a private one. As my seventeen-year-old had already toured SCAD with her father earlier in the year at what I can only call the semi-annual, collegiate cattle call, this tour reinforced her desire to apply for admission after her senior year. I could see why. Now we just need to finance it . . . donations gladly and humbly accepted.

To get a feel for the local scene surrounding the college, we hopped over to a local cafe for an afternoon pick-me-up. It was like one giant living room, sofas, armchairs, and coffee tables everywhere, though plenty of drinker-diners were also plugged in and WiFi-ing around the periphery of the large, open room as well.

At this point there was only one place left to see, and you, Dear Reader, have already seen it—the second cemetery—and you've seen almost as much as we did with our ever-so-brief drive-through. So much for Savannah this time around.

Next time I'll have to talk about the rest of The South, or at least those parts of it that can be thought about, observed, experienced, and maybe even purchased around the infamous I-95 corridor.

'Night Ya'll.