Ribbon of Highway - Route 1 - Leg Two - October 2011

Leg Two

Tennessee-Alabama-Georgia-Florida

October 29, 2011

The second leg has come up sooner than I had originally planned the spacing between the legs (that sounds vaguely erotic…). Partly this is because I launched the first leg later in the year than planned, and the coming chill of winter follows the calendar regardless of my plans, so I have to get he bike further South before it becomes miserable or even impossible to do it. But the other major part is because life changes, and so much has changed in the few weeks since I completed the first leg.

My best friend died last week. This has nothing to do with the ride other than my urgency to do it. Jim Robinson, “Robbie” who was closer to me than my brothers during the 70’s, when so much around me and with me was changing. He was the best man at my wedding, sang our music and played his guitar for te processional and the recessional (Who cares if we ain’t got money, I’m so in love with you honey!). He played base guitar for Bob Seeger and The Silver Bullet Band before they made it big. He was my compadre on my first big ride, in the summer of 1971 we drove from Ann Arbor to St. Louis to Denver to Salt Lake to Reno to San Francisco to Los Angeles to the Grand Canyon and back through Denver to Ann Arbor. Death is final. We will never ride together again, never, ever.

 Robbie was such a large, physically imposing man, self-confident, handsome and funny, very funny. I played the straight man for him, he was always the center of fun at every gathering. He was drafted by the Chicago White Sox to pay professional baseball out of high school, where he was All–State in three sports. Instead he went to Michigan to get his education, and ended up dropping off of the football and baseball teams, and after he graduated, joined the Ann Arbor police force to avoid being drafted and sent to Vietnam. “Stupidest decision I ever made,” he used to say. “Statistically I’m much more likely to get killed as a cop on the beat than as a soldier in Vietnam.” I was known to the Ann Arbor constabulary as “the hippie that Robinson lives with.” He never let himself get out of shape and always lifted weights. His experiences as an athlete and a cop made him almost as intimidating as he thought he was. I’ll never forget going into a pizza parlor with him late one night in a shady area of Ann Arbor to pick up our order. We were both stoned and wearing some of those strange costumes that passed for clothes in hippie days. Four or five black teenage toughs came in, wearing their gangbanger uniforms. They started sniggering at the two stoned hippies, and making comments and motions that weren’t flattering and were supposed to intimidate us. This was a recipe for big time trouble as Robbie wasn’t one to let this go unchallenged. He glared at their leader and growled, “What do you black-ass niggers find so fucking amusing?” It got very, very quiet in the pizzeria. I thought “Oh shit, come on Robinson, now you’ve really done it. Why couldn’t we just get our pizza and get out of here?”  But he’d made our play, and so I had to have his back – he knew it, and I braced up next to him and stared at the black kids, too. A few glances flickered among them and I knew they had blinked.  They sensed a menace in Robbie that told them he wasn’t somebody they wanted to mess around with. After a few moments of bowel churning silence, they packed up their kit and slunk out with that phony do-wa-diddy bravado. We paid for our pizza and went about our business.

And now he is dead. He always a smoked, and started a battle 18 months ago with lung cancer that metastasized into brain cancer. After I don’t know how many radiation treatments that supposedly “got” the lesions on his brain, and chemo weakened him but supposedly also arrested his lung cancer. Last Wednesday they told him the lesions had come back and they could do nothing further for (to?) him. He had about two weeks to live. I called last Friday morning to talk with him, and tell him I was coming out to Palm Springs to visit him this week. That’s when Mia, his wife, told me he had passed away the night before. He didn’t last 48 hours.

My brother was a smoker, too, and he died of renal cancer when he was 58. My mother and my father have passed. Now my best man and best friend from college has gone. Life is beginning to feel lonely. And shorter.  If I am going to do this motorcycle odyssey thing around the country, I’d better just do it. If not now, when?

So what ridiculous things have happened since the last leg? Well, the Occupy Wall Streeters are still at it, but the media has gotten tired of covering them so you don’t hear as much about them any more. There is great speculation whether the coming winter will drive them off the streets, and of course they vow not. My bet is on December. And meanwhile some constipated pc school board has banned Halloween costumes at their elementary school party because some students might feel bad that they don’t have costumes. What kind of idiot throws a Halloween party without costumes? Let’s ban beautiful people because ugly people feel bad. And in Colorado some a-hole parent is demanding that her son be allowed to join the Girl Scouts because he likes to play with dolls. If this isn’t a passing phase for this kid, it won’t be after he is branded as a future transvestite of America. What doesn’t she get hat every five year old gets? Boys have ding dongs and girls don’t. And then there are the Muslim students at Catholic University in D.C. that are demanding a place to pray to Allah that does not display Christian symbolism, i.e., crosses. What is it about “Catholic” they don’t get, dimwad? What’s worse, I’ll bet some gutless pc administrator will give it to them!

And the new owners of my company are shredding everything that I have worked to build for the past four years. It looks like I will lose my job and may be put out to pasture.

So, time to mount up and ride.

As my plane banks to land in Nashville, the light shimmers off the surface of one of the many lakes that surround the town. The angle is just right so that you can see every wave, every patterns of every current on the surface, even the streak that has been left by a no longer visible boat cutting across the surface. Tom Meeks is gracious enough to pick me up at the airport. We stop for lunch at Shoney’s, a Southern institution (catfish with Louisiana hot sauce, of course!) before we go to his office to discuss whether we can find a way to do business together in the future making a new line of small delivery vans for Federal Express contract drivers. The market potential for these little vans is huge, especially when you add in heating and air conditioning contractors, funeral parlor operators, and a number of other delivery and service operations. There is nothing on the market now that really competes with the van we have in mind in terms of cost or convenience. Plus he can finance them for 84 months at zero down and no payments for 60 days, and I can make 20-25% margins on the body up-fit. All I need is working capital - which, of course, I don’t have.

Wile we are at his office, his daughter and granddaughter stop by. He refers to his granddaughter as his Miracle Baby. His daughter had a very tough pregnancy. There was no enough amniotic fluid in the placenta (do I have that correct medically?), and the baby could not develop normally.  The baby eventually stopped moving in her mother’s womb. She didn’t move for over a month. The doctors took ultra-sounds and advised that the child had a deformed face and only three fingers on her hand. They counseled his daughter to abort the child. Tom and his family are devout Christians. She refused to abort, and instead prayed everyday. For weeks the doctors kept pressuring her, she kept refusing. Finally, they told her they could no longer detect a heart beat, believed the baby had died, and for her own safety, she needed to have the abortion. She consented to the “procedure” but asked that they run one last series of tests to make sure the baby was really dead. While waiting for the results, doctors and nurses she had never seen before began running frantically in and out of her room.  Scared, she asked them what was happening, was she going to die, too? They told her that not only had the test confirmed that the child was alive, but that there was now an abundance of fluid in the sac, and the baby appeared normal. Shortly thereafter, she was born prematurely, but perfectly normal, 10 fingers and ten toes, no deformities. I saw her that day coming to see her “Grandpa” from dance lessons, and asking to go to Golden Corral for dinner because they had some kind of ice cream dessert that was her favorite. He face is radiant. She is a perfectly normal, healthy little girl.

Mia’s faith is equally as strong as Tom’s. Her prayers for him went unanswered. The Miracle Baby comes, Robbie goes, and the mystery of life goes on.

Tom and I finish the day shooting pool and watching Michigan beat Purdue in football. He cleans my clock at 8 ball while we learn Obama is pulling our soldiers out of Iraq by the end of the year, and 13 soldiers have been killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan. There are 3 inches of snow in New England and record floods in Bangkok, Thailand, and 20% unemployment in Spain and riots in Greece. The Euro is faltering so badly that Lloyd’s of London has withdrawn all of its money out of European banks - startling news, but they don’t tell us where Lloyd’s put its money. Tom was a smoker, and he has had cancer, too, he has had part of one lung removed. He’s going with his brother to visit a mutual friend at his cabin in the mountains. The friend has terminal cancer. There is only one thing certain: none of us get out of this life alive.

The Beemer has been kept safe in his garage. Around 4ish, I pack it up, shake hands and pull out. I head to downtown Nashville to see what it will be like on the Saturday night of Halloween weekend. It doesn’t disappoint!

I don’t stay any place particularly interesting, just the Hampton Inn downtown. It’s reasonable, has free breakfast and underground parking for my bike, I can drink as much as I want and walk to and from the music scene, and its comfortable, what you expect for the Hampton Inn. Dinner is at a Nashville institution, Jack’s BBQ. Stand in line cafeteria style and then find yourself a seat. I drench my brisket and ribs in Tennessee Vinegar style sauce. Wonderful! Then out on the streets as the sun starts to go down. Stick my head in the venerable Tootsie’s but settle in at 2nd Fiddle for country music, ogling an astounding percentage of really gorgeous women while downing several rounds of Jack/rocks – not Jack’s, Jack, Old Number 7. This is crazy, the bar is packed with Colts fans from Indianapolis, they must be playing the Titans tomorrow. Surrounded on the street by Ninjas, people in 19^th nobility in gowns and top hats, several Little Bo Peeps, a Little Red Riding Hood followed by a wolf, a cartoon character 50’s woman sporting a big bouffant hairdo, horned rim glasses and humongous chest, sundry pirates, several zombies, one particularly remarkable young woman in a red, white and blue bikini in 40 degree weather, and some loud Alabama football fans.

The music is fantastic. It’s like a cleaned up

Bourbon Street

, only with country music. No cover charges here, they pass the hat for tips, so I give generously. At Bootlegger’s Inn, two mummies keep coming in, going from the front door through he bar toward the back – but I never see them leave! They just come in again, and again, and again.  Too much Jack?

Sign of the day: a guy in green tights with a sign on his chest “Occupy This” with a big arrow pointing to his penis. On his back, “I’m the 99%.” What does that mean?

Back on the street, I head over to the Crazy Horse Saloon where some girl is doing erotic aerobics in front of the bar. Across

2^nd Avenue

, I see Elaina’s Psychic Readings, a palm reader and fortune teller, what the heck. For $25, Jennifer deals out my Tarot cards. She says she is of Romanian heritage, and psychics run in her family. I try not to give her too much information, to see what she comes up with. She says I have a very, very strong reading. In my personal life, two people close to me need my help and attention very much right now. Who are they? I can think of two right away! In my business life, I have made a lot of money, but I have spent a lot of money – duh! My cards reflect great chaos and extraordinary stress over the past 18 months. Remarkably accurate. I am very tired, but I must remain strong. The cards are very clear that I will be successful within the next three months, and will have a very big financial game in the next 6-8 months. This is what I want to hear! There is somebody out to do me harm - is he German? – so I must be  very carful to keep my plans quiet. That’s it. For $40, I can have my palm read. No, thank you. She offers me some power candles, which I decline, and gives me her card so that I can telephone her for a follow-up reading.

October 30, 2011

I have to get t Jacksonville, Florida by midday on Thursday, so I’m up early Sunday morning, eager to hit the road. After my free breakfast, I head down Route 41A, aiming for the Jack Daniels distillery in Lynchburg. I ride past Trevecca Nazarene University (never heard of it), and Drakes Motel, “Where the Stars Stay” (or maybe used to stay before they were stars? It’s pretty run down!). Its only 45 degrees, so I pull into a McDonalds to add a sweatshirt under my jacket. Miles of miles of run down state highway, hitting every damn stoplight, making very poor time. The route is littered with carnicerias and panaderias, and of course the ubiquitous Chinese King Buffet. Popeye’s chicken has gone from rare to common, and I begin seeing Krystal hamburger stands. They are almost as numerous as the CPA and tax services offices. Why do we have a tax system that is so complicated that they average person has to hire CPA to figure out his returns? One of the biggest obstacles to tax reform has to the accounting industry lobbyists, trying to fend off unemployment for their members.

Pawn shops. More and more pawn shops. Why do pawn shops and gun shops always go together? Something to ponder.

Past Stone’s River where the Army of the Cumberland met the Army of the Tennessee in one of the largest, bloodiest battles of the Civil War, now almost forgotten and overshadowed by Antietam, Vicksburg and Gettysburg.

All the damn traffic lights continue all the way to Murphreesboro. After that, the road finally opens up. Cotton fields, brown plants with a frosting of white.  Big red brick houses with white trim behind sprawling white fences. Curves as I get into the hills, get back into horse country and fall colors at Hoover Gap.

But this route is taking much longer than I had expected. I pull over and check the map. Oops! I’m on the wrong road. I’m not on 41A, I’m on 41, gone way further East than I intended. Good thing I checked, I can cut over at Manchester on Route 55 through Tullahoma before any real damage is done.

Back on track on country roads headed to Lynchburg, past Davy Crockett’s homestead. “Greenest state in the land of the free, shot him a b’ar behind every tree.” Fess Parker, boyhood hero.

I can smell the Jack Daniel’s distillery miles before I get to it. Its distillery is worth visiting. Picturesque town and great tour. Learned the difference between Gentlemen Jack and Old No. 7. Old Jack died a bachelor, but a well-known ladies man. The distillery was shut down by prohibition, then re-opened after something like 30 years. The fumes from the mash colors the surrounding tree trunks black, which meant the moonshiners had to continually move their stills because the revenuers just looked for stands of black timber to find the illegal stills! Very useful information if prohibition ever comes back, but the Jack Daniels folks are pretty confident that they won’t happen because 65% of the retail price of whiskey is tax – too much money in it now for government to shut them down again! But, even today Jack Daniels can’t sell you whiskey or even let you taste it at the distillery, because its located in a dry county! So far they tried to change that about 5 times, the last time still losing by 7 votes!

Sign of the day, at the distillery: “Paris got fashion. We got whiskey. Sorry, Paris.”

{Just about when I was in Lynchburg, the Moore County commissioners voted to have a referendum to tax the distillery $5 million/year, on top of $1.5 million that the distillery already pays in property taxes. Moore County has a population according to the 2008 census of 5,740. Increase that by 12% to 6,500 for 3 years of generous population growth (not much else to do on Saturday night in dry county except make babies) and that would be a tax burden of $1,000/year for every man woman and child resident in the county. Looking at it another way, at a $5/bottle net profit which I am sure is grossly over the actual margin, the distillery would have to sell one million three hundred thousand (1,300,000) bottle of Old Number 7 just to pay its local taxes. This doesn’t take into account federal or state taxes or even consider the contribution to the local economy that the distillery makes in payroll and the staggering tourism revenues the distillery attracts to the county. This is a microcosm of what is wrong with government today in the United States. Even in a small county of less than 10,000 people, where politics is truly local, the politicians regard successful business as a bottomless source of tax revenues to fund all of their promises and dreams. Politicians who have never run a business or met a budget all across our country are slowly strangling the geese that lay the golden eggs. This week, I heard that the commissioners rescinded their vote – until the next time. These things never seem to go away.}

I take State Road 50 out of Lynchburg, through some pretty hills and take the wrong cutoff on SR 121, which causes me to backtrack some before I hit US 64 – but I don’t mind because its so gosh darn pretty. Cut back East on US64 and almost miss the cutoff on SR 97. Do you get the idea some of the back roads are not really well marked? Actually, I went by SR 97, and instinct told me I had blown it again, pulled a u-y and headed back to it.

Tennessee 97 turns into Alabama 65, and then I took 146 over to 79 and South to Skyline. This is simply a spectacular ridding road. I didn’t see any services – gas station, restaurant, pee stop, nuttin’ for 50 miles except beautiful mountain country in fall colors. I don’t know what I expected in Northern Alabama, but it wasn’t quite this. It is some of the prettiest empty mountain country I have ever seen. Stopped in Skyline for lunch at Mason’s Café. Really friendly people and great country cooking. Apparently just north is a great place for hiking, steep cliffs and rock, Jericho Heights or something like that – I know I don’t have it right, but stop at Mason’s and somebody will surely direct you to it! They made it sound so nice that I wish I had time to hike it. But I don’t – that’s the trouble with having a set destination at the end of the day.  Not what this ride is supposed to be all about, but there are still some limitations. I have to get to Jacksonville by Thursday.

My neck is hurting from the road wind, and my right elbow is very sore from holding the throttle, so I take  Vicodin to ease the pain it works! I ride South on 79 all the way along Guntersville Lake and the Tennessee River. Another place I did not know existed, lined with cottages, a great recreation area. In Guntersville I see my first taqueria since entering Alabama – I don’t stop – head down US 431 to SR 68, then North and follow it all the way to Leesburg where I find the Secret B&B overlooking the Coosa River and lake. The Secret was originally a private home, built in the Prairie style with great beams, sandstone and lots and lots of glass. It sits right on a rocky promontory at the end of Lookout Mountain – the same Lookout Mountain that extends al the way to Chattanooga - with spectacular views and even a roof top pool – although now it too cold to enjoy that little item. New innkeepers have just taken it over, very nice, Charlie and Chris Thomas (and she cooks a terrific crème brulee French toast for breakfast!). I finish the day sipping bourbon and admiring the view.

October 31, 2011

Dressed warmly against the 40 degree early morning air, I leave right after that French toast to see Noccalula Falls in Gadsen. Princess Noccalula jumped to her death at the falls because her father the Chief was going to trade her in marriage to another tribe rather than permit her to marry her poor sweetheart. No taquerias on the way! 5 mile detour to get to the park. The falls look beautiful from the pictures on the website, but unfortunately that is all I get to see, the website  – because the falls closed on Sunday the 30^th for the season – the day before I arrived! How do you close a waterfall? Simple – its privately owned, and when the gate doesn’t justify the staffing, you shut it down to save costs and prevent vandalism. Oh, well!

Heading down US 431 in Anniston I am almost run off the road by a red neck trucker changing lanes in his J B Hunt semi, but I manage to avoid disaster. I see signs I am entering the Deep South – my first Winn  Dixie grocery store,  Captain D’s instead of Long John Silver’s, Krystal hamburgers, Church’s Fried Chicken and Popeye’s become commonplace, along with humongous Baptist churches, and more billboards for churches than for lawyers! The temperature starts to rise into the 60’s as I pass through Anniston, a lovely town of tree lined avenues nestled in the Alabama hills, cut east on 78 and South on 49 – where I see my first Kudzu vine swallowing up the foliage on the side of the road. Some brilliant highway engineer imported this stuff from Africa to prevent erosion along highways, and boy, does it do that. It is the archetypal invasive species, growing uncontrollably everywhere and covering up everything. One of these days there will be nothing but Kudzu vine and fire ants hills all across Dixie!

Then I ride on SR 281 to the highest point in Alabama, the 2,407 foot crest of Cheaha Mountain. Riding doesn’t get any better than this!

Heading back to 49 on a back road, I pass a lone Stars and Bars flapping defiantly in front of a remote cabin – the first one I have seen in Alabama and only the second one I have seen on the entire ride. The climate on this side of the mountain is clearly drier. There seem to be even more pine trees, and there are some subtle differences in the houses that I can’t quite put my finger on. I see my first magnolia tree by the road in Lineville. I stop at the Horseshoe Bend National Military Park to see where Andrew Jackson vanquished the Creek Indians. There is some really interesting history here. The more southerly Lower Creeks, known as the White Sticks, were living peaceably alongside white settlers, even adopting white customs and intermarrying with the whites, some owned slaves. The Lower Creeks and the Cherokees were both terrified that the. The highland Northern Creeks, known as the Red Sticks, would start a war with the Americans. The Red Sticks were influenced by Chief Tecumseh of the Shawnees to the North and hostile to whites. The Red Sticks wanted to kill all the whites and take back their tribal lands, and favored the Spanish and the English in the War of 1812. The English were trying to set up an Indian country as a buffer zone to the West of the United States, to prevent further American expansion. The Red Sticks began raiding American settlements with the encouragement of the British. In 1813, the Red Sticks defeated an American military unit in the Battle of Burnt Corn. On the way back from a hunting party, some Red Sticks came upon some white settlers and slaughtered them.  To try to prevent an all out war, and to prove to the whites that they really were on their side, the White Sticks arrested those responsible among the Red Sticks and put them to death. In retaliation, the Red Sticks launched a raid on Fort Mims, a major White Stick settlement where many half-breeds and some whites also lived, and massacred the residents. With this, the whites had had enough, and called out the militia, led by Andrew Jackson, to put an end to what was essentially a civil war among the Creeks that was spilling over into the white community. In 1814, as the British were preparing to invade New Orleans, the Americans and Creeks met at Horseshoe Bend, White Stick Creeks and Cherokees fighting along side the white militia as allies against the Red Stick Creeks. The allies wiped out the Red Stick Creeks, but when it was all over, almost all the Indians, regardless of which side they fought on, were deported in the great Trail of Tears. Fearing the British would continue to try to use the Indians as their allies against the Americans, as both the British and the French had done in earlier wars, the Americans made no distinction between the White Sticks and the Red Sticks, and forcibly deported virtually all the Indians to Oklahoma Territory.

But let me warn you – there are no services between Anniston and Dadeville on Route 49. And no place to get a bite to eat at the military park. Buy the time I rolled into Dadeville, it was after 2 pm and I was starving. I pulled up in front of Ben’s Fine Foods, but the proprietress came out to tell me they had just closed, but maybe the BBQ joint down the street was still open. It wasn’t. That left a McDonald’s, a Subway and Golden Buffet. Yup, a Chinese buffet in beautiful downtown Dadeville, population 3,212. I chose Chinese. You know what? There was plenty of it and it wasn’t bad!

By midday, my neck and elbow are really hurting again. Dr.Vicodin to the rescue. I book it the rest of the way to Eufala, Alabama. Once I hit US 431 again, it was like an Interstate only without the limited access, and no traffic. 4 lanes of carefree good time. The landscape starts to flatten the closer you get to Eufala. Pecan groves start to show up, and peanut fields and roasted peanut stands start to make their appearance. Stayed the night at the Lakepoint Resort State Park, right in the Eufala National Wildlife Refuge and Flyway. This is what state parks should be: clean, friendly, well managed, beautiful with very satisfactory rooms and a pretty good restaurant, all at a very reasonable rate. Ended the day on the docks, drinking whiskey and watching waves of geese fly over while large fish flopped in the water. The fellow fishing from the dock didn’t have any luck while I was there, but he didn’t seem to mind, either…

Sign of the Day, pulling into Eufala: “Bob’s BBQ – the best butts in Alaabama!”

Runner up, in front of a Baptist church; “If you died yesterday, where would you be today?”

Heck, I don’t know, but it wouldn’t be Eufala, Alabama!

November 1, 2011

The town of Eufala is a gem. It escaped the ravages of the Civil war. Antebellum homes that would make New Orleans proud line a boulevard shaded in live oaks and Spanish moss. Surrounded by cotton fields, and a monument to the Confederate War Dead at the central intersection. Had breakfast, grits and red eye gravy and biscuits at Barb’s, where “Country cookin’ makes ya’ good lookin” and the sign on the wall asserts Barb can kiss better’n she can cook!

I take

Martin Luther King Memorial Highway East

out of Eufala, down off the bluffs and over the Chattahoochee River causeway across the wide and sparkling Walter F. George Reservoir into Georgia on the other side, where the road becomes Jefferson Davis Memorial highway. Interesting juxtaposition of Southern heroes. Either way, it’s all US 82 to me.

The flat cotton fields, antebellum mansions and river bluffs of the Alabama side immediately changes to gently rolling hills criss-crossed by slow moving streams choked  with fallen timber. The land is covered in pine trees, carpeted with pine needles, over a thin white sand and then the characteristic Georgia red dirt. On the Georgia side, its not cotton and peanut country, its lumber and livestock country, the woods broken by clear cut areas and rough pasture. The landscape is like this all the 27 miles to Cuthbert, where I ride by the Andrew Female College (they have now dropped the “female” part of their name, I wonder why?), my third Stars and Bars of the trip, and through the traditional town square. The town is interspersed with some prosperous looking homes and several abandoned mansions, but it is clearly a poor sister to Eufala. Just past Cuthbert, the and starts to change again, with many more deciduous trees as the ground starts to flatten again. Big farm fields begin to take the place of pine timber, and then feed mills and more and more snow white cotton fields floating on dirt brown bushes take over. Cotton puffs sprinkle the sides of the road. Corn fields appear, and then large pecan groves and cultivated fields, red dirt everywhere. By the time I get to Dawson, it is definitely greener and more fertile. I cross old country roads that tell you w ere they go, like Union Church, Old Trinity Church, Melton Mill.

I stop for a break at the McDonald’s in Dawson. It’s crowded with old black men, sitting in the corner and talking, clearly they are there pretty much every day. The local McDonalds has become the new country store where locals used to gather around the wood stove. There are a couple of Harley riders there, staring at my bike trying to figure out what it is, and the license plate to see where its from. We get to talking over coffee, friendly biker talk. One of them admits heresy, that he wanted to buy a BMW but couldn’t quite afford it. He comments that he didn’t even hear me pull in, he just looked around and there I was. Both of them are jealous of my ride, they want to be on the road. Who has a bike that doesn’t? But they have to work. Don’t we all.

Next stop is the Chehaw Wild Animal Park on the north side of Albany. This place is worth stopping at. It’s filled with rare and endangered species, and the walkways are arranged so that you can almost always see the animals. The habitat is natural, but in so many zoos the animas hide so you can’t really see them. The park itself has camping places and RV facilities as well as places for children to play.

This morning when I started out it was 43. Now its 72. I’m in the land of Spanish moss, cane syrup, Vidalia onions, and cotton, cotton, cotton. Cotton fields as far as the eye can see on the North side of the highway, and pecan groves that go on for mile son the south side. I pass by the Doerun cotton gin, with huge bales of cotton scattered about the yard, maybe 10 x 8 x 40 feet wrapped  in white and big round ones wrapped in green plastic, big truck rolling in with more and out empty to retrieve more form the fields. Then by the DeMott Peanut Company, big red field trailer filled with peanuts waiting for their time. Framers are pretty much the same everywhere. Georgia peanut farmers probably have more in common with Indiana corn farmers than they do with the local bankers. Giant hay bales up north instead of giant cotton bales down south. The crops differ, but the equipment and routines are similar, and the worries about the weather and prices are identical.

I pass by more roads with names like Gravel hill, Spring Flats,

Sweetgum Lane

and Donna Turner, Hmmm. I wonder where that road leads and who she was? Not a cloud in the sky, pine trees everywhere again, little traffic, a marvelous, glorious ride on the open road. I swerve back and forth leaning in my lane just for the fun of it. I think about stopping for the night in Homerville, but trust me, there is nothing there. I pull over and checked on the internet - the traveler reviews of the local establishments range from bad to awful except for one small B&B. I’d lie to stay at Stephen C. Foster State Park, on the Suwanee River, but there is a two night minimum. Screw it. I cut across the Okefenokee Swamp on SR 94as the sun is going down, closely following local pick up trucks at over 80 mph, really making time to Macclenny, Florida. There must be something decent at the I10 interchange, right?

Wrong. Macclenny is a hole. The best place in town is a 4 star EconoLodge. What? A 4 star Econolodge? Well, if you’re being compared to Homerville, maybe, I guess. I stay at the 3.5 star Travelodge and Suites, pretty much a dump but clean and basic. Fine dining? Not. But I’m tired and not going any further today.

Sign of the day: Antioch church; “Run form the devil, Walk with god, Exercise daily.”

Runner-up: Hand painted sign by a big muddy pond. “NO fishing. Don’t Ask.” Now, that’s straight and to the point. Wonder if the owner is related to anybody in Bristow, Indiana?

Second runner-up (it was a good day for signs): in Barb’s, in Eufala, printed and taped to the buffet line: “You will be charged extra for wasting food.” Barb the kisser believes in the clean plate club – take what you want but eat what you take! J

November 2, 2011

It’s a very short ride to Jacksonville. I’m in early, so I go right past to the Timucuan Ecological and Historical Preserve and Kingsley Plantation on Ft. George Island. Kingsley is really cool an old sea island cotton plantation that dates back to the 1700’s. Zephaniah Kingsley was born in Bristol, England, became a slave trader and shipping magnate, and emigrated to Florida in 1814. It took me a while to figure it out, because the informational signs didn’t ballyhoo it, but his wife was a former slave whom he purchased when she was 12. She was a Wolof from Senegal, the very tribe with whom my daughter, Kinsey, spent over 2 years in Peace Corps. She was born Anna Madgigine Jai. Zephaniah married Anna when she was 13, and freed her when she was 18 while Florida was still a Spanish colony. Spanish law provided for a separate class of a free people of color. Anna held her own property (32,000 acres), including slaves of her own, and managed the plantation for her husband. Two of his daughters married other white planters. Kingsley also maintained three other African co-wives. However, when Florida became part of the United States, the laws changed, including new laws forbidding inter-racial marriage, and it became more and more difficult for Anna and other free blacks. Finally, Kingsley moved his entire polygamous biracial family to the only free black republic in the western hemisphere, Haiti, and sold the plantation in 1839. Anna Jai moved back in 1852, and ultimately moved to Jacksonville with about 70 of their former slaves. The house eventually became a private club for US naval officers, before it ultimately became part of the reserve. The plantation site is stunningly beautiful, right on the water at the end of a heavily forested 1.5 mile winding dirt road that iscompletely shaded by live oaks and fan palms, the sunlight dappled on the road surface.

I ultimately arrive in Ponte Vedra Beach, my destination, after lunch, where I have an appointment with a friend and terrific trial lawyer, to prepare for some meetings on a big case the next day.

I passed only  3 Confederate battle flags in over 3 days of riding through the Deep South. Surprisingly few. I could probably find more in Osceola, Indiana. When I lived in Baton Rouge in the 1980’s, the Grand Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan lived in neighboring Denham Springs, and traffic was blocked by KKK demonstrations in Biloxi one summer while we vacationed there. There were no parades on Memorial Day, but schools were closed and there was a big parade on Confederate Memorial Day. I did not comment on all the American Stars and Stripes I passed on this ride. The ratio had to be 10 to 1, maybe even 20 to 1.  I’m proud of my Southern heritage, and I had ancestors who fought on both sides during the War of Northern Aggression, but I find this ratio to be a very good thing. Even though I can’t stand him, we have a Black President. Not to mention Black Secretaries of State, Congressmen, Senators, Supreme Court Justices, Governors, mayors, and in all walks of life. This country has turned a huge corner since the days of the civil rights demonstrations in the 1960’s. It’s time we recognize it, and stop flagellating ourselves with our history.

By a more traditional measure, I covered 931 miles in less than 3.5 days, roughly 300 miles per day. A little more than I would prefer to average per day, maybe a few less might ease up on the neck and elbow. That elbow is pretty much sore the whole rest of the day. Regardless, a great leg!