Rediscoveries

You would think that with no appointments and no one but me to set my "schedule" I could get my time organized and keep my postings up to date.  When I figure out why that isn't so, I'll let you know.

You would also think that after a month in Savannah I would  have definitely rediscovered the South.  And in fact I did do a bunch of that.  Paula Dean's fried chicken helped a lot.  As did the softer attitude and voices and the patience of drivers and the helpfulness of everyone.   But I've added a few things to my rediscovery.

First there were the Civil War battlefields at Chattanooga and Chickamauga.  I remembered visiting Lookout Mountain but I had forgotten or never known that it too was a battlefield.  I'm not enough of an historian to appreciate the nuances of troop movements and the old firearms.  What got through to me was the waste of life and young life especially.  I don't remember the statistics but the overall feel of the story is so sad.  I wish we could learn that very, very few things are worth dying for.  There are beautiful stories also, of course, of the times when each side showed respect for the gallantry of others but it just does not balance at all.

The next discovery was much more upbeat.  I revisited Memphis, a place where I used to visit family every summer when I was a kid.  Most of the time it was just me and my mom because my dad couldn't leave his business and I remember those long, long Greyhound bus rides.  But then there would be the arrival and hugs, hugs, hugs.  My cousins (the relation is more complicated but we just said cousins because it was easier and after all there are so many kinds of cousins in the South) who were close to me in age and the visits to relatives in Mississippi who lived on farms.  Sleeping on pallets of quilts and talking long, long into the night with all the younger relations or listening to the stories the adults were telling out on the porch.  Well, the family part is no longer around, but Memphis is still here.  Looks like it's struggling with the hard economic times but it is struggling and that's a good sign.  There's still the Peabody, where my oldest sister once worked as a hostess for the dining room, and the ducks are still there coming out of the elevator and hurrying down their red carpet to the fountain.  What a life.  Too bad the dining room was closed but good that Beale Street is right there to provide.  Blues City Cafe.  I took a bite of the ribs and they tasted like home.  Who knew I'd been missing the taste of Memphis all these years.

Next morning I visited the Metals Museum.  Completely forgetting that a combination of daylight savings time and a new time zone had completely thrown off the time on my watch, I arrived before the museum opened.  Still completely unaware of the correct time, I saw the gate opening and thought how well timed my visit was.  Well, the gate closed after me and I realized someone had opened it to get in or out.  A few questions and I realized my goof but the folks were so nice they let me stay anyway.  I wandered through the sculpture garden, took pictures of the fantasy of metal flowers and of the barges on the Mississippi.  Chatted with the guys in the smithy about ironwork (what I call it), which is actually steel and wished I could commission them to do a chandelier or a set of andirons for me.  I wish I could figure out how to upload some of the pictures to the blog, but I'm going to post some on facebook in any event.

I'm now in Mississippi exploring the Natchez Trace.  Did you know that buffalo actually helped form the Trace?  Once upon a time, they did live in this area and were one of the animals who began this trail.  I sure didn't know that before.  National Park Rangers are very informative.