EPISODE 11: GULF COAST

There will be fewer pictures in this episode and more words, maybe a little more like an old fashioned CliffNotes. The main reason for fewer pictures is that I decided not to take pictures of the widespread devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Although I took pictures of disaster areas in India, that seemed to be part of my work. On this recreational trip I could not bring myself to take pictures of all this human misery here at home, but I will try to describe it in words a little later.

But before I get to Mississippi and Louisiana I will say a little about Florida and Alabama. I went to Florida to make it my forty-fifth state and to say that I saw the Gulf Stream waters. Although not on this trip, I have been from California to the New York Island, from the Redwood forest but not to the Gulf Stream waters. I have been thinking of and singing that song a lot on this trip because I have seen a lot of God Bless America signs and that song was Woody Guthrie’s antidote to the song God Bless America. Here are a couple of little known versus from Woody’s song:

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

Back to the Gulf Stream waters - here is a picture of those waters and a couple of houses in Florida that show the result of an earlier hurricane (probably Dennis or Ivan last year). You can see how they are constructed on stilts, which is typical here to keep living spaces above flood stage.


Florida Gulf Coast

Around Panama City Beach in Florida I started seeing some very strange high-rise structures that turn their back on the land and face the sea. These are huge modern buildings, over twenty stories high. They have almost no windows on their land-facing side and all their windows face the sea - but the effect is to wall off the shoreline. I thought I was in Las Vegas since they seemed so new and large and expensive. They are all condos and will clearly withstand hurricanes. Some of these new fancy high-rises are right next to typical beach vacation areas with swim suit shops, miniature golf, cotton candy, and other such activities.

I tried to drive into Pensacola along a causeway but Hurricane Ivan had washed it out last year. And there was still a lot of devastation visible, mainly roofs that had been torn off buildings.

One thing I noticed on the Gulf Coast was that there are many new and very large and expensive bridges either leading to islands or along the shore going over waterways. It seems that these are in response to past damage by hurricanes and are designed to withstand future damage, but I don’t know that for sure. And I don’t know who funded their construction. Another thing I noticed along the gulf coast all the way to Louisiana was that there are an incredible number of Hooters here (the restaurants).

I drove along the shoreline into Alabama (state number forty-six) and then into Mobile where I stayed in a little trailer park. I thought about heading north to some Civil
Rights sites, such as Selma and Montgomery where they have just dedicated a new memorial designed my Maya Lin. I also always wanted to see Tuscaloosa, mainly because of the Marx Brothers’ joke that followed the “I shot an elephant in my pajamas” line in Animal Crackers. (Punch lines: what he was doing in my pajamas I’ll never know, and it is easier to remove the ivory from elephants in Alabama because their tusks are looser). But I decided to leave that to another trip.

I did ponder, however, that it seemed that Mobile was not one of the Alabama cities that featured in the Civil Rights movement like Selma, Montgomery, and Birmingham (I will never forget that most famous photo of the sixties in Birmingham where the firemen spraying water on the demonstrators had those big letters BFD on their back). One of the few really integrated restaurants I saw on this trip was a Mobile oyster bar that had both black and white customers and staff.

Hank Aaron was from Mobile and their baseball park is named after him. Another thing about Mobile -- I kept on thinking that they really feature movable items here: mobile furniture, mobile homes, mobile hardware, mobile food – then I figured it out. I also saw the first effects of Katrina here when I tried to find a wireless Internet place at a marina but they were hit by the hurricane and the wireless antennas had not been fixed yet.

I took the interstate into Mississippi (number forty-seven) and thought of the old Phil Ochs song from the civil rights era: “Here's to the land you've torn out the heart of,
Mississippi find yourself another country to be part of!” I started to drive on Highway 90 along the coast and in Pascagoula at the eastern end of the state I began to see the results of Katrina. Big tall signs and billboards had been destroyed. Highway 90 is not drivable yet into Biloxi so I took the branch of the interstate and saw a sign that said “residents and relief workers only.” Well, I was already there so I thought I would check it out and what I saw in Biloxi was truly shocking. Whole neighborhoods were devastated with houses off their foundations and roofs blown off. The trees affected me as much as anything else especially when huge oak trees with massive root balls are just ripped out of the ground and thrown against the houses.

Since Highway 90 along the coast is not passable it takes hours to go along another road further inland so I gave up and headed back to the interstate to go into New Orleans. I found out at the Louisiana welcome center that New Orleans has been reopened and they also told me about a volunteer opportunity in Slidell about twenty-five miles north of New Orleans. A church group has set up operations there with volunteers from all over the country; they have established a compound in a family’s large yard. I stayed two nights in the compound and worked one day cleaning out a woman’s house. The only picture I took was of this woman’s house and the junk we removed. It was really hard emotionally removing her personal possessions. We had to take down a lot of the plaster and paneling that had been damaged and was moldy. It was a real mess and when the fridge opened by mistake as we wheeled it out the door the smell was horrendous. Here is the house:


Ms. Dorris' house in Slidell

In the little town along Lake Pontchartrain north of New Orleans every structure was massively affected. In New Orleans itself there was a lot of damage but most neighborhoods seem to been in pretty good shape. However, some neighborhoods were obviously under water for a long time. In these areas, mostly poorer neighborhoods to begin with, many cars have been abandoned with dirt on them. And whole neighborhoods are empty. Nobody is around. It is like after a nuclear attack - remember that Burgess Meredith Twilight Zone episode? These areas are just abandoned. It is so disorienting with the traffic signals not working and light poles bent over. And all the stores and gas stations are closed. There are huge piles of trash at the curbs and there is a smell of dust and mold. I don’t see how anything can really be done except bulldoze whole neighborhoods.

It is just exceedingly sad. I never saw anything like that in India - possibly because much of the housing in India seems like a disaster area anyway. That is an interesting point - the way we use the term “disaster area”, to describe a teenager's room, for example. I guess this is the first real disaster area in the US I have ever seen. Also, while people seem to be determined to rebuild I think everybody is in a state of shock still.

One more thing about the Church group I worked with. While there was not much overt religion, and they welcomed volunteers no matter what their religion or denomination, they did ask that there be no drinking or profanity at their compound or at a work site. I hope I did not offend anyone but a couple of times I just could not help it. In our van on our way to the work site we passed by a mobile home that was just cut in two by a huge fallen tree. I just could not help myself and said “Jesus”. The other time was when I was wheeling a load of debris down a door that we had placed on the front steps as a ramp for the wheel barrow I let the barrow fall over on the way down and let out a “Damn”.

While there was no drinking at the compound this was not so away from there. About twelve of us went to a Mexican restaurant, mostly young people in their twenties although there were a couple of us older folks. The restaurant had a little routine that I think was more Louisiana than Mexican. One of the waiters takes a customer and bends his head back with a towel wrapped around his neck and pours Tequila into his mouth using the little dripper used for measuring liquor. While he is doing this he blows a whistle. The idea is to see how long the person can keep on drinking. John, one of our young guys who drives a little John Deer fork lift in the tree removal work, did this twice for a long, long time. While his head was bent back and he was guzzling Tequila you could see on his shirt: “Hilltop Rescue - A Church of Christ Ministry”. Then the waiter picked him up on his shoulders, and John is a tall guy, and whirled him around for a couple of minutes. Four guys from another table who also participated in this tequila routine came over and congratulated John; and I told him I would but him in my blog. I don’t know how much tequila he actually imbibed but he seemed OK the next morning.

That was about all the Laissez les bontemps roulez I experienced in New Orleans because I did not feel much like partying there yet. But I did do a little touristy stuff. I walked along the Moon Walk, named after President Carter’s cabinet member Moon Landrieu and took this picture. It is a long way from the source which I spit into up in Minnesota. Do you think it is here yet?


New Orleans Bridge

And here is my obligatory picture of the French quarter where about half of the restaurants and other businesses are not yet reopened.


French One-eigth

One of my objectives, of course, was the D-day Museum but, unfortunately, it is not yet reopened. It is located here in New Orleans because this is where the landing craft were built and Eisenhower credited them for the invasion’s success. And Stephen Ambrose was instrumental in establishing the museum here. (The highway leading into New Orleans from Mississippi is named after him now.) The museum survived Katrina pretty well and all of their artifacts are undamaged, although there was some damage and looting of the gift shop. I walked by the museum’s entrance and a guy who runs the gift shop saw me through the glass door and came out to tell me they were still closed. I told him I was a charter member and why I was involved. He asked me to come in for just a minute and introduced me to a man who was in the 82nd Airborne Division who has been back to Normandy many times and knows some of the French friends I have made there. He said that parts of New Orleans are worse than some of the war zones he was in. In any case, here is a picture of the museum that I did not get to tour.


D-Day Museum

After New Orleans I headed west to Cajun country and I really liked what I saw. As is evident, much of this trip has consisted of types of pilgrimages and my visit to Avery Island was certainly of that nature. That is where they make Tabasco Sauce and this was almost as memorable for me as visiting the Guinness factory in Dublin.


Tobasco factory

I had heard about a big restaurant in Lafayette that serves Cajun food and plays Cajun music so I asked someone at a gas station how to get to Prejean. But I pronounced it Pre (like “before”) Gene. Of course it is pronounced “PrayJhan”. Stupid Yankee again. I guess this should not be a surprise for someone who in High School got a D in French 4, repeated it in Summer School and got another D. Although in another town I was trying to find Bridge Street was able to do so by reading the “Rue Pont” on the street sign.

The next morning I took some back dirt roads along the Atchafalaya River and on the levee itself. I said before that it didn’t get any better than driving over country roads in West Virginia listening to Country Western music. Well, I take that back. It does not get any better than driving on dirt roads and levees in the bayou county listing to Cajun and Zydeco music on the radio. And the dead armadillos on the road add to the ambiance.


Not a Chevy, still dry

One of my main reasons for exploring the Atchafalaya basin is because of the account I read by John McPhee (The Control of Nature) on the Corps of Engineers’ huge effort to keep the Mississippi River from changing course as it has done many times in the past. The river WANTS to go down the Atchafalaya but New Orleans and Baton Rouge would not like that. Here is a picture of the Corps’ locks that connect the Mississippi to the Atchafalaya and it’s control channel up river from the locks where it meters how much water can leave the Mississippi.


Lox


Where Mississippi wants to go


Corps control structure


Control structure 2

Not far up river from here and across the Mississippi is the town of Natchez. I am getting a little touristed-out by now but I wanted to see the town where Maverick hung out (“From Natchez to New Orleans, Living on Jacks and Queens”).


Natchez

I happened to come across a chili cook-off in Natchez and for $5 I ended up sampling 14 entries. I could barely make it back across the Mississippi where I wanted to check out the town of Ferriday, Louisiana where Jerry Lee Lewis comes from. There is a sign to his old house, which is right next to a little one-lane drive-through market that looks like a barn or garage. People just drive their cars into it and ask for groceries. The guy who runs it looks like he could be Jerry Lee’s brother but he told me that one must call ahead so somebody could open up the house. So I was not able to go inside to see the house, or to find out where one finds thirteen year old cousins, but here is a picture of the outside of the house.


Great Balls of Fire

EPISODE 10: SOUTH CAROLINA AND GEORGIA

(Just a note before I go on with this Episode. I ended last episode by saying that the WWII aspects of this trip were over. I forgot about the D-day Museum in New Orleans. I have no idea if it is open again – I think they did not suffer too much damage. But I will just have to see when I get there. Also, there is a woman who is the widow of another Lieutenant who served with my father and who survived the war but died many years ago. She lived in Norman, Oklahoma. She wrote a very nice letter to my mother shortly after my father was killed that I found among my mother’s things. I spoke to her a couple of years ago but now her number is no longer in service. I will try to find out what happened to her in Oklahoma. )

I had the feeling I was in the South mainly because of the accents I had been hearing since West Virginia and the west part of Virginia. But it really hit home after I left Southern Pines and Camp Mackall and headed south to South Carolina. I turned a bend in the road and there was this field of cotton. I am often lost as to which crops is being planted in a field and have often thought that farmers should be required to label their fields. But there was no doubt here.


King Cotton

I headed to the town of Darlington where William Least Heat Moon had gone to a funky diner and I wanted to cross paths at least once with the author of Blue Highways. But the Deluxe Café was closed by the time I got there and it looked like it had been gentrified anyway. So I then headed down the road, past the Darlington Speedway – this is the south remember – to the nearby town of Bishopville. My objective here was the topiary gardens of Mr. Pearl Fryar as featured in the New York Times. Mr. Fryar is a former postal worker and the folks at the Post Office told me how to get to his house. He was not home but I did get to meet Mrs. Fryar. I am sorry about including so many pictures but I really got carried away and I took several that I have not even included. It is a fantastic example of art created by a normal workingman, much like the Watts Towers. And he has only been doing it for about 12 or 13 years. I really loved this place and was just sorry that Mr. Fryar was not home. The neat thing is that his neighbors have taken this up too as can be seen in the last photo (before Mrs. Fryar). (I think I saw a sign in town that said the Doc Blanchard came from here. He was the famous football player from Army, known as Mr. Inside.


Fryar home


Topiary 2


Topiary 3


Topiary 4


Topiary 5


Topiary 6


Topiary 7


Topiary 8


Mrs. Fryar

Then I was off to the old southern cities of Charleston and Savannah. Here are a couple of pictures of Charleston. The white church (St. Michael’s Episcopal) in the first picture was modeled after Wren’s churches in London. Life in Cabbage Row and the surrounding Creole ghetto supposedly was the inspiration for George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess. The famous house is the Edmonston-Altson House.


Charleston by Sea


Street Scene


Cabbage Row


Palladian house on alley


Famous house


From famous house

Here is a new bridge that runs across to Patriot Point where I got a boat to Fort Sumter where the Civil War (Is that the world’s greatest oxymoron or what?) started and where Abner Doubleday from Cooperstown (later to formalize the rules of Baseball, not invent it) fired the first shot on the part of the Union Army.


Bridge 1


Bridge 2


Fort Sumter

In Charleston I had the most amazing dining experience. About ten miles out of town, past some shopping malls, and down a dirt road that runs about a mile into a swamp, there is a restaurant built out of cinder blocks on Bowen Island. The woman who worked at my campground said she was amazed that the health department had not shut it down yet. They encourage you to write graffiti on the walls. Their special is all-you-can-eat oysters for under $20. The steamed oysters are dumped on your table, which is covered with newspaper and has a hole in the center over a trashcan where you throw the oyster shells. They give you a towel, an oyster knife, a bottle of hot sauce, and a package of crackers and let you go to it. I had more than a whole shovel full. I lost count but I must have opened and eaten over 75 or 100 oysters. Now, these are not all the nice pristine ones you get in restaurants – these are usually in clusters of various sizes. My left hand got wrinkled from the moist towel and I actually got more tired doing all the opening than really full. But I certainly had enough oysters to satisfy me. I have never been to a restaurant like this.


Henry at Bowen Island restaurant


Henry dishes it out

Outside of Charleston I visited the former Middleton Plantation. The former house was pretty much destroyed by the Northern soldiers in the Civil War although the gardens are still maintained as well as a small house and outbuildings. I attended an interesting tour focusing on the slaves that made this rice plantation possible. Here are some pictures. First the butterfly lakes framing the grand entrance to the plantation from the river and the old rice mill. Then a water feature and an formal aspect of the garden. Then a more romantic informal landscaped area.


Middleton Plantation entrance


Formal garden


Water feature with swans


Informal woods and lake

After I left Charleston I decided to spend the night in Hilton Head because they had a Motel 6 there. I am really glad I went because, from a planning perspective, it is an amazing place. It is a result of sign, landscaping, and setback regulations gone wild. I got lost at night trying to find a restaurant because you can’t see the signs or the commercial development at night. Where are neon lights when you need them? Here is how the regulations dealt with my hotel.


Hilton Head


Motel 6 at Hilton Head

Just over the Georgia border is the beautiful town of Savannah. Pictures of individual buildings and squares don’t do it justice. It is the whole urban fabric (sorry) that is so wonderful with beautiful squares every few blocks. Temple Mikve Israel is the oldest congregation in the country that currently practices Reform Judaism. It was founded mainly by Spanish and Portuguese Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity by the Inquisition and ended up in England. The Jews in London that were part of the Bevis Marks synagogue (no relation although I have been there) were glad to get these folks out of their hair and on the boat to Oglethorpe’s adventure in Gerogia. This was in the 1730s.


Savannah street scene


Savannah square


Temple Mikve Israel

Please note that I did NOT take a picture of Forest Gump’s bench nor of the stature that is on the cover of In the Garden of Good and Evil. (Actually both those items have been moved inside to museums.)

It has been a while since I have come across the world’s biggest anything and I am not really sure if this is the world’s biggest world. But maybe it is. In any case it was once a natural gas container but has not been used as such since the 1960s and the City of Savannah had it painted to attract tourists like me.


World's biggest world

I want to say a little something negative about Charleston and Savannah. Sacrilege, I know. Not really negative because I think the hearts of these old cities are as great as people say. I especially liked the layout of Savannah. But these old, historic, and preserved areas are just a small part of the overall urban environment. Outside these preserved areas (and I am glad they are preserved) one finds development that is typical of the modern landscape in the rest of the country -- that is to say, pretty ugly. Charleston outside of downtown is not terrible but is no different that other places. But one part of outer Savannah had every franchise know to humankind in an ugly urban sprawl. So I felt that these places kind of “cheat” – they are very proud of their historic areas but the areas outside of these “museums” are just like anywhere else. One could be in Bellevue.

OK, back to the road. South of Savannah I ran across what is billed as the country’s smallest church, as seen here.


America's smallest church

A short while after I visited this church I had some Bar BQ at a place called the “GA Pig” in Brunswick. It is famous but is hidden away and I had a hard time finding it. This moment wins the prize for Most Stupid Action of the trip. I asked a couple of people where the “GAH Pig” was. And they never heard of it. It never occurred to me that the GA stood for Georgia and that is how one would call the restaurant. Finally one guy said, you mean the Georgia Pig. I felt like a really stupid Yankee. Anyway, this point was a turning point of the trip since I was now turned toward the west and even though I still have a long way home I am headed in that direction.

The last Georgia (or GA) site that I visited was the Okefenokee Swamp. It was not on my original list of things to see because I guess I did not really know where it was – I probably thought it was in Florida. But it is on the way to the Gulf Coast so I drove into Stephen Foster State Park and took a little boat ride. On the ride were two retired women who used to teach at San Francisco State – one woman started teaching there the first year that I went there and we had some mutual acquaintances on the faculty. Our guide/driver was very knowledgeable about his swamp; he asked me about something he read in the paper – that in Washington state people are only allowed to develop 30 percent of their property. This go us started on a discussion of critical area regulations.

The Okefenokee is the headwaters of the Swannee (or Suwannee as it is spelled here) River. They are big on Stephen Foster down here even though he was from Pittsburgh. They are lucky that he changed the song from the original lyrics. It first was Way Down Upon the Peedee River – a river up in South Carolina that I crossed a couple of times, singing the song with the original lyrics.

In any case, I really loved the Okefenokee even though I did not see Pogo.


Okefenokee Swamp


Egret


Mr. Ali