Savannah

I rented this big truck. I picked it out. Sarah, of course, paid for it. I wanted a smaller one. Thank goodness they didn't have one, because we loaded this baby to the gills.The only problem we had was with the toilet paper. I stuffed a four roll package down beside the mattress and boxsprings. It flew out somewhere outside of Oxford.


Sarah was sick all the way to Savannah. I had to listen to her whine for nearly 11 hours straight about her various ailments. The trip was long, but I had the magic weapon. Billy let me take his GPS. WOW!! What an amazing machine! I have a few complaints about it, but I imagine if I knew how to work it better it would help. I just think the lady in the machine waits a little too long to tell me when to turn, especially when I'm on the interstate and I need to change lanes. We stopped in this little town in Mississippi to get Sarah some PeptoBismol.



It was dark when we arrived. Sam called us several times on his cell to see when we were to arrive. He'd cleaned his apartment all day. Sarah and I wandered through the romantic, dimly lit streets of this beautiful old town then eeked and creaked the truck into the little lane behind Sam's apartment house. Sam turned on the light, opened the back door and waved me "C'mon back," to the steps. The dry dirty sand clung to our shoes as we scuttled in the hot humid night. He and Sarah had the truck unloaded in a matter of minutes.

Sam coming down the hall to get more boxes.


When they finished unloading the truck, we all went out to the front porch where Sam has a little garden. He has a sweet potato vine that is not one of these new fangled yellow ones. His is literally a sweet potato growing out of the dirt in one of his pots. I took this picture and was lucky to get this guy walking by. Perfect Savannah pic.


Sam and Sarah are in the kitchen talking. Sam is really happy to have Sarah here. He's done very well, moving to a city and making his own way. Now Sarah will be paying half the rent and they'll be good for each other. Martha will be coming to Savannah next week for the television taping of the Paula Dean show on the food network. She'll be staying with guess who? Sam and Sarah. If you hear an explosion coming from the East Coast you'll know what it is.


Sarah's bed is the bed I slept in as a child. My father bought if for a dollar at an auction. It's the heaviest bed in existence! It was in much better shape when I slept in it a zillion years ago, but now. the brass is no longer shiny and it's come loose on one side. 

As I was getting ready to go to sleep on my mattress on the floor after our long drive, I sensed the presence of an old childhood friend. Maybe it's the spooky Spanish moss hanging from the trees that makes this place eerie, but there always seemed to be a face on the bed. Here's the bed and below is my childhood friend the wrought iron fleur de lis once again smiling at me.





Does this look like a face to you? No wonder I had nightmares as a child.

begonias and dog

begonias

begonias, vines, sweet potato vines and dogs

tiny dog, tiny stressed dog who is mad at Mama for moving her all the way across the country to a sandy, hot city where she has to share her food bowl with Gus and she has to listen to her Uncle Sam make loud unexpected noises.

Curry lives next door to Sam. We had a good time that afternoon sitting outside. She'd been home for the weekend to Swainsboro and found her batons in a closet. I asked her to do just a bit of a routine for me and she did. Amazing. She looked exactly like a majorette; down to the little curl of the fingertips and tap of the toes.

The other pic is Sarah after she went in to Starbucks to talk to them about her schedule for the week. They're excited about having her here.








 Sam sweeping the sidewalk in front of his house, Sarah standing and Curry sitting on the step.

I am leaving in the morning to take the long way home through Georgia.



Look at this beautiful collection of plants!

I was on the highway headed home when I got so sleepy I decided to pull over and take a nap. I shoved over the luggage in the back seat and stretched out for 30 minutes or so. When I awoke I went in search of something, maybe a place to turn around, I pulled into a gas station that happened to have recently gone out of business. Next door to it was Thompson's nursery. 

     Here are the Thompsons. No wonder their plants are so happy. You can tell they love what they do.

 Toomsboro

I had to go to Milledgeville. I've been wanting to go for years ever since I read the works of Flannery O'Connor. She was born in Savannah but moved to Milledgeville when she was a child. She attended college in Georgia, then was accepted to the prestigious creative writing degree program at Iowa State. After she graduated she lived with Robert and Sally Fitzgerald in Connecticut for two years. He was a well-known poet and authority on the Illiad and The Oddessy. In 1951 she was diagnosed with Lupus, a hereditary disease her father had died of in 1937. She returned to Andalusia, her ancestral farm where she raised peacocks and nearly 100 different varieties of birds. 

She was expected to lived 5 more years, but lived 15 more, and left behind an amazing body of work. She was as good as Faulkner, in my humble, feminist opinion, but didn't live long enough to create a body of work that would qualify her for the Nobel Prize for Literature. 

 
I typed Milledgeville into my GPS and found myself on a deserted, two-lane highway for about 45 miles. I eventually came to a small town called Toomsboro. Eerie name don't you think? I passed a little gas station with a couple of pumps and a man was sitting in a chair outside. He waved knowingly to me as I drove by. What did he know? I guess he knew I was heading somewhere else or I was lost.

I came upon a ghost town that was still alive with its ghosts. I'm not easily spooked but I know I have a superstitious side from watching too many "Twilight Zones" with Rod Serling, shows where people drive into small deserted towns and start seeing people from their childhoods; people that they know are dead.
 
That's the way I felt in Toomsboro. Here's a picture of the deserted Depot. 

Across the street was a huge old boarding house where people who were traveling through Georgia could stop, rest, have a hot bath maybe and a good meal. The boarding house had been retored with fresh white paint and clean shining windows, but it was unnaturally empty.

The downtown area of old grocery stores and department stores were boarded up, and two well fed dogs without collars lay in the grass in the median as if the town belonged to them. They're the languid white spots in the grass, their ears twitched from time to time.

The Farmer's Cotton Warehouse above was right on the edge of town beside across the little road from the Depot. It was an unusual trek back in time, and my aloneness in such a strange place made me remember Flannery O'Connor's most well know works, A Good Man is Hard to Find. It made me want to be extra careful NOT to have a flat tire or to slip off the road into a ditch.

As I drove through the rolling hills and countryside toward my destination now and then I'd catch a glimpse of the red clay of Georgia. Most of the redness was covered with leaves and pine needles, but now and then I'd see a big display of it. I passed it and passed it. Frankly, I had the strange sensation that if I stopped something or someone was going to magically appear and hit me in the head with a crow bar. How strange is that? I finally told myself how ridiculously I was behaving and pulled over to take this picture. It the red clay Georgia dirt that Flannery O'Connor so vividly describes in her works.

This is Rob Hattaway who was the only person in Milledgeville that I talked to who knew where Flannery O'Connor's home was. It took me much longer to get there than I thought it would. duh. Really, Melinda?

The town was much bigger than I thought. Much bigger than Covington. There's a state prison there and there must be industry because there are lots of hotels, stores, a Starbucks, huge Walmarts and a 6 lane highway running through it. 

Andalusia was closed. Heart Break!!!!! It's seen by appointment only except on M,Tue. and Sat.

What an idiot I was not to check first! 

I hope someday to get back. I don't know how much longer it will be able to keep progress from bulldozing it. It's right across the street from the Best Western.

Then I was off  to Stone Mountain and then to Chattanooga for the night. It was waaaaaayyyyy tooooo much driving for one day considering the driving I'd done just a couple of days before. 

Stone Mountain
But Stone Mountain was one of the most amazing sights I've ever seen! It was like seeing something out West. It's a granite mountain sticking up out of the ground. The park is beautiful, just beautiful, and there were many people out walking in it by the time I got there. I had lots of driving ahead of me by the time I left there. I should have just stayed at the Inn there at Stone Mountain. 

I finally made it to Chattanooga where I stayed at the Stonefort Inn. It was lovely. And then, I drove home. Whew! I'm still recovering!