Ribbon of Highway
Leg 5
Florida to Georgia
(via Long Detour through China and Louisiana)
March 31-May 3, 2012
The leg from Jacksonville to New Orleans (hereafter NOLA)
was planned to take place in March, and then April, but I was waylaid by a trip
to Portland, Oregon to testify as an expert witness in a helicopter death case
against GE, and then by a trip to China to take care of business with a
start-up RV manufacturing company, both of which took precedence because they
involved significant bucks now and for the future. Which means that when I
arrived in Louisiana on April 25 to meet some friends at the New Orleans
Jazzfest, my trusty steed was still rotting in a garage in Jacksonville, so
technically my adventures in Shandong and NOLA are not part of the road trip. However,
they w ere great adventures and were sort of proxy to the road trip, so with
that confession I’m going to tell you about them anyway. If you are offended by
this unorthodoxy, just skip over the China and NOLA parts! J
CHINA
Saturday March 31
through Saturday April 7
Actually, in a perverse sort of way, I am quite proud that I was out of the office – out of the country – for an entire work week yet managed to perform my work duties in such a way that my clueless employer never realized I had left Elkhart. Only with modern communications technology! I flew from Chicago to Beijing on March 31. The trans-Pacific trip is grueling even in business class on a modern jet. No matter how you cut it, it takes about 24 hours door to door. Along the way, I switched planes to Hainan Airlines in Seattle because Hainan was several thousand dollars cheaper than business class on any US flag carrier. Hainan was fine, but the food was definitely not up to US standards, but for several thousand dollars who cares?! I arrived at 4pm the next day in Beijing, which was 4 am that day by my body clock. I was met by my host, a translator and a driver, and we immediately started across Beijing to the train station. Even on a Sunday afternoon with minimal traffic, it took us over an hour to get across town. Anybody who thinks the inscrutable Chinese are smarter than we are – not. They apparently didn’t learn much from observation of our transportation system from a 100 year advantage point: just like us, they built their airport across town from their train station, but they did that only in the last few decades. In all the world so far as I am aware, only the Dutch have got it right. Schipol in Amsterdam should be a wonder of the world, because no other civilization seems to grasp the concept that the airport and the train station and bus station should all be in the same location.
My hosts had also not bought tickets in advance even though it
was a big family holiday weekend in China. When we arrived at the station, the
cupboard was bare because, so we had to find a hotel for the night. Eat and
crash.
Next morning, we go to the train station early to get
tickets (after going through security similar to an airport) and sit around for
several hours waiting for the train to leave.The station is brand new, all
white tile and soaring stainless steel beams. Everybody begins to queue up a
few minutes before the train arrives, and at a bell surge pushes forward
through the turntables. Why? All seats are assigned! A big rush to get on the
train platform to wait for the train to arrive? Human nature, everywhere. The
train itself is a wonder! European technology high speed rail. Not at all like
Amtrak. Whizzing along at over 300 mph, there is no noise, no shake and no
rattle. You can safely set your drink on a table without concern that it will
spill, or walk the aisle without having to grab the seats as you are thrown
back and forth by the train. It is completely full. We need one of these
between Minneapolis and Chicago and Cleveland (who cares about Detroit
anymore?), and probably several other major interurban corridors.
Many people are waiting to welcome me back to Shandong. When
you are the honored guest, a Chinese banquet is a trial by fire. Everybody sits
around a large round table, with the host sitting facing the door. Everybody
else sits according to status around the host. The most honored (highest
ranking) guest sits immediately to the right of the host, the second to his
left. The second ranking host (who also picks up the tab) sits directly across
from number one, with his back to the door. Everybody else fills in between in
a ritualistic protocol order that is still beyond my complete comprehension.
Everybody’s glass is filled with alcohol, the weaker drinkers sometimes with
beer, the rest with “wine.” Chinese wine is not Western wine. It is closer to
grain alcohol only with a vile taste. Every region vies to claim the title of
having the best wine, which is touted in terms of proof, starting at 160 and
going up from there. In the US, we would
each order our drink of choice, and when
it comes, we would each drink it at our own pace, occasionally joining
in a group toast. Not in China. No mixes, no frou-frou drinks, everybody the
same, the only difference is beer or straight grain. NOBODY drinks alone. Bad
form. And NOBODY drinks until the number one host makes the first toast.
Actually, it may be two or three toasts. In Shandong, the person giving the
toast may specify how many toasts to finish the glass, one, two or three – only
more likely than not, somebody will likely say “Gambei!” which is a
semi-mandatory friendly challenge to “Bottoms up!” or as we might say “Chug!”
Bad form to refuse, because it shows (a) maybe you can’t hold your liquor
and/or (b) maybe you are not really friendly, because in China it is a great
show of friendship, honor and inclusion to get roaring, stinking drunk
together. In vino veritas. So you have maybe 24 people sitting around the
table, all anxious to start drinking in earnest. The host’s toast is quickly
followed by others’ toasts with the whole table drinking. Ahh, but that is not
all. Each attendee wishes to show his respect and friendship to the honored
guest by offering an individual toast, not involving the others. There are also
individual toasts given among the various attendees, some required by protocol
and rank, some because they are friends. But these may be 3 or maybe 4 per
person. Nobody but the honored guest is personally toasted by all other 23
people at the banquet. And the honored guest is also expected to toast his
host, both individually and to the group. And every time you drain your glass,
a cute waitress promptly fills it with more of the vile liquid. All this on
less than 8 hours of sleep in the past 42 while my body clock is still upside
down. Beginning to get the picture?
And in the meantime, various strange and exotic foods appear
one by one on the table. The banquet table always has a large lazy Susan so
that the food offerings are constantly passing in front of you. People are also
constantly placing samples on my plate, saying “Try this.” “What is it?” “I
don’t know what you call it in English.” Or “What kind of fish is it?” “I don’t
know, hmm, river fish.” Comforting. And especially delightful when the give you
the “best part”, the head and the tail of the fish cooked whole, the parts
Westerners generally consider the trash part of the fish. Hmm, hmmm good!
Much of it is truly delicious and the number and variety of
dishes is incredible. (They have a protocol for that too, how many dishes you
must offer based on the number of attendees. I wouldn’t doubt that there is also
a multiplier for status of the guest, too). Plus those cute waitresses keep
putting various cups of soup next to your plate. This is about the time when
somebody scoops the eyeball and eye socket out of the sturgeon and plops it on
your plate. “Best part.” Yechh.
The only night they “got” me at one of these banquets I was
drinking with the Secretary of the Communist Party in Shandong Province, the
highest ranking and most powerful person in the Province (who proudly told me
he had attended the University of Missouri!). I am told I downed 69 Gambeis
that evening. I don’t remember – why would I? I do know I had to go straight to
bed and woke up the next morning feeling like shit. I also know that I took quite
a few of them down with me J and earned an unassailable reputation throughput
Shandong as a “Good drinker.” However, that is something like having a
reputation as a gunslinger, there is always somebody who wants to test their
mettle against you!
After dozens of these banquets, I have learned some
defensive strategies, none of them fool proof. Most common is to claim a medical condition that
prevents your drinking, but the downside is that you cannot effectively engage
in the ritual and have to be the sole sober person, and if you do this from the
beginning, you never pass the initiation. Also good is to explain you have to
limit your intake because you are either ill, or have an important business
engagement that requires your sobriety. That works sometimes. I have been
taught how to hold some in my mouth and drain it off into a face cloth after a
toast, but sharp eyes can catch that and its sort of like being caught cheating
while dealing at the poker table, bad form. What works best for me is to have
an ally tell the girl filling my glass to cut the liquor with water; nobody can
tell. I also have learned never to let somebody who toasts me drink less or
something different than I do – a good offense makes a good defense! There is
also a tradition that when the guest gives his toast near the end of the
evening, he can include some words to the effect that his is the last one.
Unfortunately, I have forgotten the “magic words.” That is not foolproof
either, as the crafty drinkers will find many ways to get around “the last
one,” but the rate usually does abate after that toast. When all else fails,
you can humbly beg mercy and only have your glass filled half way – but only
after you have already drunk an appropriately excessive amount or you are at
risk of being deemed a pussy.
I can’t tell you a lot more about these banquets because
they all kind of run together. I wonder why?
The next few days are filled with meetings at the plant and
negotiations with a US equipment supplier. The main purpose of the trip is to
finalize the purchase of a large piece of capital equipment, a glue spreader
necessary for the Chinese to manufacture 40 foot long laminated sidewalls for
the assembly of RVs. This equipment is only made in Europe and in the US, and
there is only one manufacturer of this type of glue spreader in the US. The negotiations
are protracted and very, very difficult,
partly because of the language barrier complicated by the facts that that the
available translator is not very good with technical language and that the
Chinese are unfamiliar with the process, but even more so because each side is
mistrustful of the other. For their part, the Chinese are very concerned about
being passed off used equipment that is not current state of the art technology
– with good cause based on past history of dealings between Westerners and the
Chinese. For the US supplier’s part, he is a small businessman unfamiliar with
export sales, and deathly afraid of not getting paid by the Chinese - with good
cause based on past history of dealings between Chinese and Westerners. So, for
example, when the Chinese suggest they wish to pay by letter of credit rather
than cash, because it will help with their bank financing, the US supplier’s
knee jerk reaction is “No”, so I have to step in and say “Why not? Letters of
credit have been used for hundreds of years in all kinds of international
transactions, are perfectly safe when prepared properly and are the standard
way of satisfying each party’s concerns, one of paying before the product is
shipped, the other of shipping before they are paid.” Which leads to long
discussions and finally an “I’ll consider it.” And the Chinese want a parts
list with pictures because the English labels mean nothing to them, which of
course the US supplier does not have but says he will create for them. The US
supplier is very concerned about how he will fulfill his warranty obligation at
this distance with these language barriers. Because of issues like these,
although progress is made, the deal is not finalized during this trip.
In between negotiating sessions, I am dragged off to
meetings with various government officials and bankers. I am my partner’s “bonafides,”
an in the flesh token blonde and blue eyed genuine American businessman who
gives their project credibility. At each meeting I parrot how terrific the RV
opportunity is in China and what a good partner my Chinese hosts have been,
telling them exactly what they want to hear. At each meeting, I get tossed
serious questions that I have no qualifications to answer but in response to
which I am expected to make some kind of impromptu speech, like “What do you
think we should do to improve our traffic congestion?” - or of the wall questions that seem entirely
inappropriate, such has “How many lovers do you have?”
One day we travel several hours to another area of Shandong
Province where they are intending to build an RV park When they say RV park in
China, they are not referring to a farm field transformed into a KOA campground
for 20 RVs. Some of these parks are 100 square miles or more, on the order of a
state park in the US. This particular site is on a river where a dam was built
in 1300 AD, taking about a decade and several tens of thousands of people. The
dam created a huge lake for irrigation still used for irrigation and
recreation, and divided the river into three channels, one of which created an
entirely new river between two cities that is still used, and one of which only
fills during high water in the rainy season to irrigate a dry region, and one
of which is the original river channel. All done some 700 years ago! This is
especially interesting to me because my father spent much of his life building
dams for TVA, and then building huge concrete dams for hydro-electric power
plants all the world, including Brazil, Turkey, Spain, Japan, Greece, and
India, among other places. There is a big visitors’ center that explains the
history of the dam and has samples of the original stone work to show how it
was cut and fitted together, as well as dioramas of workers building the dam.
At the entry, there is a statue of the engineer who designed and oversaw the
project. Imagine that, a statute in tribute to the engineer, not the politicians! Of course, inside there is a wall
paying the obligatory homage to
politicians featuring quotes from various persons, including Chairman Mao. That
is pretty weird, a man I was raised to revile, who slaughtered millions of
people and inflicted the Cultural Revolution on his country, whose
anti-capitalist views have been pretty much repudiated but who is still very
much a hero to the Chinese.
Make no mistake about it, for all of its recent economic
changes, China is still much a communist country. The communist party is very
much evident and in charge. Every large organization has its business leader
and its party leader, and the party leader is the more powerful. It is not much
of an exaggeration to say if the party approves it, anything is ok, but if the
party disapproves it, nothing is ok.
It was a huge compliment that the Secretary of the local
party himself rowed us across to the proposed RV campsite in an ancient style
fishing boat, gave us the tour of the dam, and then joined us for lunch.
Nonetheless, it is still disconcerting to share the company of people who could in all probability make me
disappear with no recourse…
Although they no longer confiscate foreign newspapers and
magazines at the entry points, the press and the news in China is also tightly
controlled, although it is increasingly more difficult to do with international
visitors coming and going and especially with the Internet. While I was there, Bo
Xilai, a very powerful party leader in the South, a member of the Politburo and
a strong contender to be the next Chairman, was arrested and removed from
office. His wife, Gu Kailai, the daughter of a People’s Liberation Army general,
arranged the murder of Neil Heywood, Bo’s English financial advisor, because
she thought he was complicit in Bo Xilai’s arrest. Bo Xilai has since been
dismissed from the Politburo. This is a huge scandal with enormous implications
for the future of China, and was all over the front page of the Wall St.
Journal the day I arrived in Beijing, but my hosts knew nothing about it and
even denied that it could be possible! During the same time and in the very
province I was in, Shandong Province, Chen Guangcheng, a blind Chinese
dissident against forced abortions as part of the Chinese family planning
policy, escaped house arrest and fled to the US Embassy. He has since been
exiled to the United States but his family is still being persecuted, at least
one of them still under arrest in Beijing. Of course, I heard nothing of any of
this until I returned to the US.
Breakfasts. I have concluded that the only places in the
world where you can get a decent breakfast are the UK and North America.
American breakfasts come in number one. A full Scottish breakfast is damn good,
but they lack the variety of US breakfasts. As my daughter once famously said,
“French breakfasts aren’t worth getting up for.” And Chinese breakfasts are
worse than that, even when they try to imitate US breakfasts. Rice, rice
porridge and cold fish. Steamed balls of dough with spinach filling. Yum. The
“Western” offerings are uniformly sub-par even in better hotels. Coffee if they
have it is a packet of Nescafe. Pastries are dry or stale and pretty much
tasteless. Chefs have mastered how to fry an egg, but have you ever tried to
eat an egg fried in olive oil with chop sticks? Getting a knife and fork is a
major production. They do have imitation Rice Krispies, but if they have milk,
and usually it’s by special request, milk is reconstituted, and yogurt is
runny. Orange juice is too sweet orange drink. Third rate fresh fruit. Bacon
is, well, strange. I’m sure the Chinese
say the same things about our ”imitation” Chinese food and the lack of
vegetables in our diet.
Don’t get me wrong. I truly like almost all the Chinese
people I have met. I find them to be extremely hospitable, and in their own
way, very open and outgoing. And it’s refreshing to be with people who by and
large like Americans!
After 5 or 6 days of meetings and banquets, on the last
night in Shandong we go to a locals lamb barbecue restaurant. Some tables are scattered
in the parking lot, but we go inside and upstairs to a private banquet room. On
the way, we pass a toothless man putting small pieces of lamb onto skewers in
the front room. The banquet room is not nearly as large or fancy as the ones we
have frequented with the government officials, but it does have the ubiquitous
round table with the lazy Susan and seating protocol is still roughly followed.
In fact, this bequest room has a dusty tv in one corner, looks to be a
refrigerator in another, and opens up onto a front balcony where the family
laundry is hung to dry. But the lamb shish kebab? Fantastic! And it keeps
coming and coming, washed down by pijiu (sp?), BEER! Many happy toasts among
friends. Very different from the formal affairs. Best meal I had in China.
The next day, I get up early to catch the bullet train back
to Beijing. Several hours later, we motor back across the city to navigate the
organized chaos of a Chinese airport and begin the 24 hour trek back to
Chicago. So now, dear children, you know why the Jacksonville-New Orleans leg
was scrapped, have some idea what a week long business trip to China is like,
and have learned two critical Chinese words: can you say gambei and pijiu? J
NOLA
April 25-Apr 29, 2012
No need to conceal my trip to New Orleans from my erstwhile
employers. We parted company on April 20, just 3 weeks after I predicted they
would let me go last November. Under my employment contract, my severance
benefit was cut in half if they continued to employ me through March 26, 2012.
I drafted a letter of resignation three times between November and January, but
each time after sleeping on it decided it was prudent to continue to pretending
to work while they pretended to give me something significant to do so long as they continued
to pay me. I thought my relationship with the beady eyed reptiles would end
March 27, but it lasted an extra three weeks or so while we put the finishing
touches on the bankruptcy of the old RV companies. So less than one week after
I turn 65, I find myself unemployed for the first time since I turned 16. I
have very mixed emotions about this. I am relieved to finally be rid of the
toxic relationship with the private equity guys who took over Coachmen, whom I
have come to totally distrust and despise. And while my severance is much less
than I expected several years ago, I have been employed for a year and still
have severance package, which gives me income for a while in order to figure
out what the next adventure in my life will be. And I now have time to do other
things, like go to my house in Vieques and on these extended motorcycle rides.
All in all, it’s good thing, but it is still very strange to no longer have the
responsibilities or status of running a large company, have an office and be
eligible for Medicare… The last 12 months have been full of change, much of it bad:
starting with the death of one of my oldest and best friends, the (expected) loss of control of my
company to private equity, the turnover of the housing business to another
HIG-owned company, the totally
unexpected turnover of the bus business by my “allies” to my rivals involving
the betrayal by a smarmy lickspittle son of a bitch whose job I personally had
saved at least three separate times, being evicted from my brand new office
wing that I had designed just as it was finished, the dismantling of the green
furniture business just after we qualified as a supplier to Marriott and
received an award from Architectural Products, the abandonment of the export RV
and delivery van businesses just as we received orders that would have filled
the plant, the descent into Alzheimer’s by a close friend, losing the start-up
capital I invested in a start-up RV company that I helped get started, the
dropping on the eve of trial of a case I have been involved with for over a
decade against a law firm and partner whose malpractice and devotion to lucre
killed some people in a fiery gruesome death, and now being unceremoniously
dumped from the company that I saved from the Great Recession, all while
dealing with personal issues with members of my immediate family who have been
dealing with personal issues of their own – well, altogether it has been just a
little too heavy of a burden to bear graciously. I hereby sincerely apologize
to anybody (and everybody) to whom I have been short and testy the past few
months, but I simply couldn’t help myself.
Do I sound bitter about some of this? If so it’s because I
am, hellish bitter. It certainly hasn’t been all bad news, but at least from my
present perspective, 2012 will not go down as banner year! But bitterness
corrodes. We can do nothing about what is past. Time to push that bitterness
way down deep inside and cocoon it in scar tissue. Time to embrace the future. Time
to put on my big boy pants and move forward.
So now, great god almighty I’m free, free at last, and in
the mood to party!
To minimize airfares to New Orleans on Jazzfest weekend, I
had to buy my tickets well in advance. Of course, I planned to have my bike in
Baton Rouge, so I flew there rather than New Orleans. By the time I realized I
could not get my bike there on time, airline change fees and fare difference
charges made flying to Jacksonville and driving over prohibitive (does anybody
but me remember the good old days when you could just call up and change your
reservation, usually no charge? Deregulation has certainly kept ticket prices
low through competition, but it has degraded the air travel experience in every
respect, to almost a misery). Flying to Baton Rouge now presented several
challenges: 1) how to get from the airport to wherever I am staying? 2) how to
get around Baton Rouge to visit my friends? 3) how to get to New Orleans
without my bike? 4) how to get to Jacksonville to pick up my bike? Nothing that
can’t be solved with money and a little help from my friends…
Getting a little help from old friends is one of the best
things about this odyssey. Friends generally like to help friends, that is part
of what being a friend is all about, and these short layovers give us (me and
them) the opportunity to visit a little without me as the guest becoming a
burden. We catch up on children and things, share some laughs and tears and
generally just renew those old friendships. In Baton Rouge, I was visited with
people I had not seen for decades. After the battering I have taken in the
corporate wars, being with people who like you for who you are, nothing else,
is a real treat. A treasure. But to protect the innocent, these friends shall
remain anonymous…
Friend #1 aka Gunner had offered me his garage to store the
Beemer during the planned layover. Now he insisted that I stay at his house and
equally insisted that he would pick me up at the airport, get me around town,
and find a way to get me to New Orleans Thursday afternoon to meet my other
friends. This guy is a Marine, extremely proud of it, and generous as hell. He
is also an auditor. Somehow auditor and Marine don’t seem to go together with
“The few, the proud, the brave”, but I have known two Marines who are
accountants, and they are both feisty bantams that you wouldn’t want to mess
with. Gunner is married to a crazy Australian lady - crazy because she married
and has stayed married to him despite his obvious devotion to the Corps and
deployments to Desert Storm!
There was one problem. Gunner and his wife were into
ballroom dancing, and had a lesson that evening. So off we went. Turns out a
lady’s partner couldn’t make it that night and they needed another male body,
so I danced, (re)learning the rhumba and the cha-cha with a very nice woman who
was also an accomplished dancer. Then we were off to a Cajun dinner (my treat):
jambalaya, crawfish pie, fried catfish and red beans with rice. Then back to
their house where I crashed and burned. The next morning omelets and strong
coffee, and he took the morning off. We visited his daughter in Spanish Town –
one of those the last-time-I-saw-you-you-were-this-high things – before he
dropped me off at the City Club to have lunch with my high school girl friend,
the girl I took to the senior prom. (The City Club is one of the “high brow”
private clubs in Baton Rouge where the food is superb, at the other end of the
culinary scale from the Cajun dinner of the night before). She made contact
with me a year or so ago after she Googled me. She had become a French
professor at LSU and has been honored by the French government for her
contributions to the French language. She actually worked at LSU when I lived
in Baton Rouge in the 80’s, but I never knew it. She wanted to show me the
Solitude Road in Pointe Coupee Parish, but no bike and no time! Next time! After
a delightful lunch (her treat), Gunner met me on the front steps and drove me
all the way to the New Orleans airport, where he dropped me so I could catch a
cab to downtown and he could book it back to Baton Rouge for a meeting. THAT is
a good friend!
NOLA – love dat town.
My friends were staying at a less expensive chain hotel outside
the Quarter a block off Canal, but if I’m in NOLA I’m staying either in the
Quarter or the Garden District, period. So I took my cab to the quieter East
end of the Quarter to The Hotel Richelieu on Chartres Street. The Richelieu is
a boutique hotel, with a small pool in the center, a small bar, very good and
very reasonably priced breakfasts, and an extremely helpful and friendly staff.
A good place to hang out for a few days, far removed from the rowdiness of
Bourbon Street! It made for some very long walks to link up with my friend Dr.
K, but n’importe! A walk through the Quarter? C’est tout bon!
The restaurant Dr. K wanted to go to for dinner that night was
closed for a private party, so we went to a divey little oyster bar up the
street where I feasted on a delicious dozen on the half shell buried in
horseradish and cocktail sauce washed down by a local brew. Then we grabbed a
cab to the Rock ‘n Bowl. Now I lived in Lousyanna for five years, and I have
been to NOLA dozens of times, but it took Dr. K from Los Angeles to introduce
me to Rock ‘n Bowl, a NOLA institution like no other. It is a must on anybody’s
visit list. Rock ‘n Bowl is out in the burbs in what looks like a strip mall,
but every cab driver knows where it is. There’s a cover and it gets crowded
after the music starts, so get there early if you want a place to sit. Just
like the name suggests, it is an incongruous combination of ten pin bowling and
rock ‘n roll. There is a huge dance floor and bandstand up front where live
bands play rock and roll, blues and Cajun zydeco, while in the back it’s a
bowling alley. There a big oasis bar in between and a walk-up counter in the
corner where they serve up all kinds of Cajun food.
At first it’s just Dr. K and me, sipping bourbon and beer. We meet some new friends and protect
each other’s seats so we can wander around the pace. After two or three Jacks,
Dr. K’s other friends show up, two women our age from Detroit. Introductions all around, we all catch up and
share past adventures with Dr. K. One of the girls is a medical doctor (unlike
Dr. K, who is sort of a doctor of all knowledge, especially pharmacology…) who
rides her BMW motorcycle around the country! Gee, nothing to talk about there!
We plan on making rides together! Eventually, the four of us find our way out
to the dance floor. Thursday night is zydeco night, squeeze boxes, guitars and
howling French lyrics, and the Rock ‘n Bowl is mobbed. Young women in short
shorts, cowboy boots and cowboy hats. Old guys in snakeskin boots twirling
their wives or girlfriends to the two step. A scattering of really good dancers
going through their routines. And us and
others like us. Tourists from California, Indiana, Michigan, from Wisconsin and
all over, in for Jazzfest, faking it and laughing all the while. Everybody
drinking and dancing to great bands, one band following immediately after the
other. Even the bar tenders are dancing to the beat as they get your drinks.
Crazy place. A great time. And when it closes down early in the morning, no problem
getting back to wherever – all the cabs know when Rock ‘n Bowl shuts down and
they are constantly pulling into the parking lot to take tired party-ers home.
Next day, its time for Jazzfest. First, one of my favorite
things to do, bar none: a walk through the Quarter in the quiet of the early morning,
streets clean and wet after being hosed down and the debris from the previous
night’s revelry all cleaned up. I head for my favorite place for beginets and
cafe au lait, but find it’s gone out of business! Quelle bummere! Too much
competition from the Café du Monde across the street? Determined, I go there
and stand in line for a table. After fortification with beignets and deep black
chicory coffee, I continue my wander through Jackson Square and down the
Cabildo. I stop to buy a hat to ward off the sun and to stock up on sunscreen,
make my rendez-vous and we catch the Canal Street trolley out to near the
fairgrounds, and walk the rest of the way. No directions needed - just follow
the crowd. We buy ice cold bottles of water cheap from street vendors on the
outside, hide them in purses and backpacks before we go through the gates, and
then its where do you want to go, who do you want to hear? With something like
a dozen or more stages and sets lasting an hour and a half, the music menu is
endless. You just gotta choose what you like! At the end of two days, I buy
half a dozen CDs from great artists I loved but never heard of before. Myschia
Lake and the Little Big Horns were marvelous, but you had to be there to see
the pair of dancers that they had on stage for every song. Great new tunes like
“I want to burn with you” and “Don’t tell them anything” that haven’t been
released yet. Pure country from Kim Carson and the Enablers, honky tonk from Gal
Holladay. Jazz tents (loved Eric Lindell), a gospel tents where The City of
Love sang fifteen straight minutes with the only lyrics being God’s Got A
Blessing With Your Name On It, everybody standing and clapping, singing along
and dancing in the aisles, fantastic! At the zydeco tent with bands from around
Lafayette, I learn there is a Cajun jam every Saturday morning in Eunice,
Louisiana, near Lafayette, and immediately mark that as a must do destination
on my swing through the Bayou State. In between the music, row after row of
booths selling really good Cajun food. Fried oyster po’boys. Jamabalya. Boiled
crawfish. Cold beer. Berry cobbler. You name it, they have it.
At the end of the day, the headliners like Tom Petty and the
Heartbreakers (Don’t Back Down, Lover’s Touch), and the first reunion of the
Beach Boys, hits too long and too well known to list, they played them all!
Huge screens make sure everybody can see it all and up close. The crowd is a
mix of aging ex-hippies and rockers, barefoot young wanna-bes in peasant dresses and halter tops, goggle-eyed
5 year olds on parents’ shoulders, and lots of tweener fans of classic rock and
roll in their lounge chairs. There is no sitting when the music starts! The unmistakable aroma of weed drifts through
the crowd, but unlike the 60’s and 70’s nobody is freely passing their joints
around to strangers. L
Oh, well!
Wow. Great music,
great food, great music, great weather! Gotta do it again next year – wanna come?
That night, Dr. K introduces me to another NOLA institution,
a local family restaurant called Mandina’s on Canal, been there forever. Simple
Louisiana food, reasonably priced, worth a visit. However, unlike Rock ‘n Bowl,
cabs are infrequent around Mandina’s late at night. Either drive there
yourself, take the trolley (stops in front) or be prepared for a long wait!
Walking back down Bourbon on my way back to the Richelieu, I am treated to see strippers
taking smoke breaks outside the gentlemen’s clubs. Garish neon signs light the
street, bands blare from open air bars every block, drunk college kids click
quarts of Miller Lite, and the street smells of stale beer soaked deep into the
cobbles for decades. Bourbon Street never changes, some nights are just more
crowded and rowdy than others.
After Jazzfest the next day, most restaurants are jammed and
require reservations. Dr. K wants to go to some joint up on Canal, but I am too
tired to hike over there and back, so I insist on a place in the Quarter. The
Royal House Oyster Bar on (what else) Royal Street is recommended by the
Richelieu and doesn’t require reservations. I stroll over there past these
silver or gold painted living statues that gather crowds every other street, and
put my name on the waiting list. I grab a double bourbon from the bar (after a
quick trip to the bathroom to make a change when the bartender is kind enough
to ask me if I know my shirt is inside out, it’s been that kind of day!) and
take it out on the street to listen a quartet that has set up on the corner
under a streetlight. A girl sings sweetly to a small crowd over soft background
music featuring a clarinet, a trombone and some sort of stringed instrument. The
concert is interrupted by a New Orleans wedding celebration parade marching
down the street, led by a loud brass band and the bride in all her wedding
dress finery, followed by the entire wedding party dressed to the nines
clapping and singing, dancing through all the streets of the Quarter. The bride
and the wedding party are Asians, Korean, I think. The quartet resumes, and
pretty soon a guy in a Porsche Carrera with the top down and a luscious blonde
in the passenger seat pulls up and parks in the middle of the street to listen.
Classic NOLA. Finally Dr. K and the girls arrive and shortly after we are called
inside the Oyster Bar and go upstairs to eat. Believe me, the Royal House
serves a lot more than oysters and it’s all delicious and incredibly reasonably
priced. Don’t forget the bread pudding for dessert – save room and share, it’s
humongous. Our meal is interrupted by another wedding march, which I watch from
the balcony.
The next morning, I drag my sorry ass out of bed at the
crack of dawn to catch a flight to Jacksonville, to retrieve the Beemer and
begin the next leg to Atlanta. List of things have to do next time through:
Eunice; Check Point Charlie’s dive bar in NOLA for late night music; Mother’s
on Poydras for breakfast; Stella’s at the Hotel Provincial for dinner; Solitude
Road in Pointe Coupee; more beignets!
Sign of the week: on the back of Gunner’s pickup truck,
“Except for ending slavery, fascism, nazism and communism, war never solved
anything.” Probably wouldn’t go over well in Hollywood. Too many peaceniks and
communists there.
NOTE: I accidentally
deleted all my photographs of New Orleans and Leg 5. L!!
As and if I can recover them, I will add some the blog.
Leg 5
Sunday, April 29 and
Monday, April 30
I arrive in Jacksonville late morning. On the way over, I
have time to catch up on the ways of the world. Contest for the most
exasperating and ridiculous:
·
Government statistics on inflation and
unemployment. I have learned over the years that incentives work much better
than we realize. There is great incentive to incumbents to keep both inflation
and unemployment figures low. Low inflation means smaller increases in Social
Security, less pressure on the budget, and happier voters. Low unemployment
means happier voters. Thus, inflation and unemployment are low. Here’s how.
First, inflation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics uses the principle of
substitutability: if the costs of two types of chicken breast diverge, the BLS
assumes that we all buy the cheaper chicken breast. Next, the principle of
quality adjustment. For example, as ever more powerful computers become
available for the same price, this is treated as deflation, regardless of the
fact that consumers actually tend to buy the more expensive new more powerful
computers because the older models are rendered obsolete. Next, “owner’s
equivalent rent”, whereby the rising costs of owning a home are instead
supplanted by the cost of renting the home. Oh, yes, and they ignore price
fluctuations in gasoline, because that is excluded from the inflation
calculation formula. Little “adjustments” like these reduce the reported level
of inflation by about 7%. That’s why the government can proudly claim inflation
is at record lows while the “real rate” is over 10% as we pay more and more for
groceries, gasoline and home ownership. Second, unemployment. Similarly, the
BLI does not “count” those who have given up and stopped looking for work, or
those who have taken jobs way below their qualifications just in order to have
some job (the “underemployed”), but it does count those who take temporary
summer and holiday jobs. Thus, they can proudly report unemployment at around 8
or 9% when the “real” unemployment rate is over 20%. Who do you believe,
government statisticians or your own observation?
·
The Gulen Movement operates the largest network
of charter schools in the United States. They opened their first charter school
in the US in 1999, and now have 135 schools with over 45,000 students in 26
states, all financed by US taxpayers. So what? The Gulen Movement originates in
Turkey, and the school board members and principals are usually Turkish men,
with many teachers on H1-B visas. During school and after school they study the
Koran. On Fridays, the Muslim holy day, students are taken in small groups to
the bathrooms for ritual washing, and then attend Muslim prayers. The school in
Inver Grove, Minnesota, shares a building with a mosque and the headquarters of
the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, whose stated mission is “establishing
Islam in Minnesota.” Not alarmism, fact. At the same time, media is replete
with stories of schools forbidding Christian prayer before sporting events or
graduation ceremonies, fights against school vouchers being sued at Christian
parochial schools, and removal of the Ten Commandments from public places.
Forget whether you are Christian or atheist. Ask yourself: what’s going on
here?
·
Today, a record 14% of the population receive
food stamps, up from an average of less than 8% from 1970-2000. 4 in 10
children are born to unwed mothers, over 72% of the black babies. The overall
percentage has risen from 10% in 1970 to over 40% today. 49.5% of the US
population paid no federal income taxes in 2009. Today, the country spends more
on welfare than it does on national defense. Where are we headed as a country?
·
US business is steadily becoming criminalized.
Virtually all new federal statutes now provide for criminal sanctions in case
of violation. In February, an independent insurance agent was sentenced to 90
days in jail for selling an annuity to an 89 year old woman whom prosecutors
claims had shown signs of dementia. Hey, selling an annuity top an 89 year old is
suspect on its face, but jail? That used to be for crimes like burglary. You
don’t get 90 days for assault and battery today. Selling annuities to elderly
persons is legitimate estate planning. Are agents now going to have to diagnose
dementia before selling to an older person? Sarbanes-Oxley and the ‘responsible
corporate officer doctrine” makes executives of public companies potentially
criminally liable for actions of employees multiple levels below them whom they
may have never met even if they don’t actually know what they have done. Not to
be outdone, Chevron had a deep water oil spill last year in Brazil, and its
officials are now barred from leaving the country pending criminal prosecution
for “environmental crimes.” Moral: get a job in government. Today the pay is
higher, the benefits are better, and there is far less risk. Is that the kind
of country you want?
What, me worry? It’s no longer my concern. I am out of the
public company hell hole and the corporate rat race. This Sunday, I also get my
first lesson about no longer being a CEO or even a GC controlling a book of company
business: nobody rushes to pick me up at the airport, so I have to catch a cab
out to Ponte Vedra Beach. $100 cab ride. Lesson number 2: no expense account to
charge it off to. L
And when I get there, I find that the battery in my Beemer has gone dead. After
hours of trying to charge it, I give up and go to Plan B: finding a BMW
motorcycle shop to replace it. Found a shop. Next problem: they are not open on
Sundays or Mondays. (As a result of this I have checked with several BMW shops,
and Monday closing is quite common among them. Note to self: don’t break down
on Mondays.) So Monday, I search for another shop that might have a jell
battery that fits. None of your standard auto parts or battery stores have such
a thing. Finally I find an old-style bike shop out by the Mayport Naval Station
that works on metric bikes, and what do you know, they are open on Mondays! And
yes, they have a battery that will work as a replacement. So I impose on my host to drive me out that
way, which happens to be in the same direction as the dive shop where he wants
to get his scuba tanks charged up for a trip they are taking to the Bahamas
later in the week, so not too much of an imposition. The shop really is old
style, where the owner works on the bikes himself and his wife (girlfriend?)
runs the register. No fancy show room. Parts hanging everywhere, and dozens of
bikes are parked out front in the dirt lot. Great people. Owner used to work at
a BMW dealership and is very familiar with the bike. Tells me this battery has
been a piece of shit since day one and he has stopped replacing it with the OEM
version, instead has another which has proved to be much more long lasting and
reliable. Expensive but worth it. Besides, what choice do I have but to sit
around for another day and make another trip to a BMW dealership? And I like
him, and feel good about helping a small independent business guy. Wish he was
closer so that he could service my bikes!
Back to the house where I have to install the battery. Hey,
of all parts on a motorcycle, the battery has to be one of the most often
switched out, especially in colder climates where you often remove it each year
during the winter months. In my Yamaha, the battery is right out there, very
easy to get to, maximum 10 minute job to swap a battery. Not so the German
engineered BMW. The battery is wedged in a tight cavity you can only access
from the top. Part of the motorcycle frame extends above one of the bolts on
the bracket that holds the battery in place, so that you can’t get your screw
driver vertically on top of the bolt, and you can’t get it to bite right and
have to try to screw it at sort of an angle. And the bolts go into holes at the
bottom of the battery platform that you can’t see, so you have to fumble around
trying to get them in the holes. And the bolts are have a sleeve that pads them
from rubbing against the battery. These pads tend to slip down the bolt and
even off as you try to get the bolts in the holes. And of course there is
hardly any room in the battery cavity to hold the nut on the tiny bolt that
goes through the battery pole to connect the wiring while you use your other
hand to hold the wrench, and with both hands and the wrench wedged in the
battery cavity you can’t really see what you are trying to do, complicated by
trying to avoid being the electrical connection between the poles after the
first wire is connected (read, shock!) Herr Schnitzel, I am zupposed to do dis vearing
de rubber gloves? Naturally the nut falls off – and ends trapped
somewhere inside the frame where I can’t find it. Luckily, I saved the nuts
from the old battery and they fit. In the meantime, there is no room for a
man’s fat fingers in there but plenty of sharp metal parts to scrape them on.
Despite all this, I do get the first pole attached, but as I am connecting the
second pole, sparks start flying. What’s going on? I take a closer look, and
the poles on the replacement battery are exactly 180 degrees opposite in
location from the poles on the original. I just placed the new battery with the
poles on the same side as they were on the one I removed, and now the positive
pole is where the negative pole should be and vice versa. Shit, I hope I didn’t
fry the battery or blow a fuse! I have to take out the new battery, turn it
around, and re-install it. But it works! After an hour or more of colorful
language and bloody knuckles, the engine starts right up. But the net result is
that I have lost a day on the road and have to spend another night in a hotel
in Jacksonville (with no expense account
to write it off)!
Hey, get over it, dude! An expensive day of motorcycle
maintenance on the road is better than a good day in the office! J
Tuesday, May 1
May Day! Finally on the road again, because of the lost day
I decide to skip the side trip to Savannah – been there many times already anyway
– and head straight toward Hotlanta. At my friend’s suggestion, I take the A1A
North through Atlantic Beach to the Mayport Naval Station and catch the ferry
across the St. John’s River. Then along the palm tree and live oak shaded
twisty road next to the beaches of Little Talbot Island State Park and the
wetlands of Timucuan Ecological Preserve, across the Nassau bridge to Amelia
Island. Man, this is such a pretty drive and a beautiful area, I really wanted
to kick back and lie on the beach. While I was pulled over on the side of the road looking at the map and
contemplating doing just that, a friendly fellow pulled over in his pickup
truck just to make sure I wasn’t lost or
in trouble. Nice. I continued on up toward Fernandina Beach, where I cut West
to pick up Highway 17 heading into Georgia and points North. Driving across the
flats North of the St Mary’s River is also very pretty, spreading in all
directions and cut by curling channels and edged with pine forest in the far
distance. I turn off at Brunswick to
head over toward Jekyll Island.
Jekyll Island is a very, very cool place. Pre-World War II,
the private hunting lodge and winter vacation club for the ultra-rich
industrialist families that at one time in the aggregate controlled something like
80% of the country’s entire wealth. Their “cottages” are all multi-storied and
some have walled and brick paved courtyards. They would be considered mansions
anywhere but Newport, Rhode Island. Andrew Carnegie applied for membership to
the Jekyll Island Club, but was snubbed, considered too nouveau, so he just bought
another island of his own down the coast. The story goes that early during
World War II there was a plot by the Nazis to land a force of commandos by
U-Boat to capture and kidnap the families on Jekyll Island, and gain control of
our nation’s wealth and foreign policy by holding them hostage. Supposedly FDR
himself called the residents and asked them to abandon the island because he
could not guarantee their safety against this plot. Within 24 hours, the place
emptied out, the families leaving belongings and silver settings behind them in
their haste to evacuate. After the war, it became fashionable for these
families to instead go to Europe, where they could pick up estates and
properties very cheaply, and Jekyll Island fell out of fashion and into
disrepair. Eventually the State of Georgia took over the property, and now you
can play golf, swim or walk and bicycle in protected woodlands, staying in an
elegant hotel that was originally the hunting lodge or in the “cottages” where once only the “quality” like the Astors
and the Vanderbilts were allowed to tread. Very cool place.
And speaking of very cool and stupid and extravagant expense,
there is the marvelous and beautiful suspension bridge to almost nowhere from
almost nowhere rising high above the marshland over the Brunswick River,
between Jekyll Island and the City of Brunswick. My camera could not do it
justice. It is a real work of art and a monument to excessive government
spending. But it’s there, so you may as well enjoy it!
Driving into Brunswick, the “Gateway to the Golden Isles”
you get a real feel of has-been. Old mills and abandoned buildings everywhere.
But I had a wonderful meal with some very friendly people at Salvador’s Deli
before heading out on State Highway 27. Highway 27 proves that Brunswick is
somewhere, after all, because there ain’t nothin’ else for miles up that
highway but piney woods, except for a dusty little manufacturing town of about
10,000 souls named Jesup and even that you would miss in two blinks. Straight
and flat. Through Gardi and Odum and Graham and Hazelhurst, plenty of time for
contemplation. There is no need for any route sign because crossroads are few
and far between and it’s clear none of them are going anywhere near
civilization. As I was coming into one of the bigger towns, I think to was
Hazelhurst, a big otter was trying to cross the road with two kits. She got
about half way across, decided the traffic wasn’t looking so good and nipped
the little ones right back into the brush where they all came from. The mother
otter had to be almost 4 feet long from the tip of her tail to the tip of her
nose. I’ve never seem one that big before. In fact, I was so surprised by seeing it and
its size that I researched the Internet on otters living in Georgia. Sure
enough, the river otter thrives throughout Georgia and can reach up to five feet long. The male can occupy up
to 50 miles of a stream, and is no help in raising the kits, whereas the
female, 25% smaller on average, rarely occupies more than 7 miles of a stream
and does all the work. Clearly, otters and humans share some genes!
Just past that crossing incident were a series of lumber
mills. Trucks loaded with logs coming in. At one end of each complex huge piles
of logs, and at the other end huge stacks of two-bys and plywood. Must be very
satisfying to see that raw material turned into finished product right before
your eyes, and comforting to the community to have the stability of those jobs
growing literally right out of the pine forests that cover the area. I stopped
to take a break from the heat and get a drink under a big live oak by the side
of the road, across from a chicken shack. The smell of that fried chicken wafting
across the road made salivate. I was sitting on my bike studying the map when a
young black kid walking by stopped to start up a conversation. Pretty cool, America, an old white guy and a young black
guy just chatting in the shade about motorcycles. Everywhere, people seem curious to talk to itinerant
bikers, what kind of bike you’re riding, where you come from and where you’re
going.
More and more often I drove through stretches of road
saturated with the smell of honeysuckle. After a while it seemed the whole
state was perfumed with honeysuckle. Delicious. I stayed on US 23 all the way
to Macon, where late on a hot afternoon I stopped at the Ocmulgee National
Monument. Too many people don’t know what this is. It’s the American pyramids,
one of several archaeological sites for an ancient American Indian culture
often referred to as the mound builders. Ancestors of the Creeks, Ocmulgee was
an advanced civilization that thrived for a 1000 years before the English
arrived in North America, but which pretty much died out somewhere around the time
of DeSoto. Ocmulgee was a center of this civilization once populated by
thousands of Indians, and features several of their pyramid-like mounds. You
can walk into one reconstructed meeting room, and see the dais where the throne
sat on a sculpted figure of an eagle. The entrance was placed precisely so that
the sun sends a shaft of light down the entrance corridor to shine on the dais only
twice a year, on the equinox when the sun crosses the equator. The similarities
between the architecture and animal images among the Mayans, Aztecs and
Egyptians is striking, and eerie. You can climb another, larger pyramid, and
see for miles, including the modern-day skyline of Macon just a short distance
to the West. I also learned that this was the place where Confederate armies
defeated Sherman’s army twice in its efforts to capture Macon during his
infamous March to the Sea. Macon remained in Confederate hands throughout the
Civil War.
Too tired to ride further that day, I opted for a Courtyard
by Marriott so I could lounge by the pool and read while imbibing a big glass
of iced peach flavored vodka! Free room on points, comfortable bed, AC and TV
covering the Occupy protests against the international monetary fund summit and
for May Day, May 1st, outside the US the international day for labor
parades. They had pictures of Occupiers carrying signs and chanting “Down with
Capitalism!” and particularly catchy, “Capitalism isn’t in the Constitution.” According
to one demonstrator they interviewed, their strategy was to damage capitalist
system by clogging thoroughfare chokepoints so that employees couldn’t get to
work. I wonder if they asked any of the workers how they felt about a day
without pay? Fox interviewed some professor from Columbia University who
claimed to know many of the New York protestors, and described them as “ just
playful”, not at all dangerous. He also claimed there were more than 10,000 of
them in the streets – although the pictures looked more like 1,000 at most.
This was followed by a report from Cleveland that two Occupiers were arrested
while trying to blow up a bridge across the Cuyahoga River as part of the same
strategy. Playful. Nothing much seemed to have changed in the past few months!
Sign of the day; exiting Ocmulgee, “All things are
connected.”
Amen.
Wednesday, May 2
This day was planned for sightseeing. You know what they say
about God and plans. I think I am going to quit making plans and just see what
happens. Whatever will happen will happen anyway, right?
I got up early and headed
North on US 23, headed for what was marked as a scenic highway to
Jarrell Plantation, imagining Tara sitting on a high hill overlooking pastoral field. I was on the lookout for a
local greasy spoon to grab some coffee, grits and eggs for breakfast. Pretty
soon after I passed up several chain restaurants I figured out that I wasn’t
going to get breakfast any time soon! Ma
and Pa greasy spoons seem to have become an endangered species, likely driven
out of business by “free” breakfast at the likes of the Hampton Inns and by
chains like Bob Evans. Oh well, the highway was very pretty and riding in the
cool of the early morning always seems to be the most fun. The roads North of
Macon are no longer straight and flat, curving and twisting up and down Georgia
hills so you really have to pay attention. I stopped to take a picture of some
mailboxes (!) standing in mute testimony of the need for our Post Office, Rural
Free Delivery. No way that private enterprise would want to service these
remote locations with minimal mail traffic, couldn’t do it efficiently at a
profit. I turned off US 23 on highway 18 into the Piedmont National Forest, and
came to a spectacular river crossing. I stopped for a while to watch a fly
fisherman quietly work his craft in the middle of the stream. There were some
telephone linemen working at one end of the bridge, but even they didn’t know of any place in the area to get
breakfast. So I soldiered on, turning North on an unnumbered forest road toward
Jarrell Plantation. Surely they would have a cafeteria or something for
tourists where at least I could get a cup of coffee.
I arrived at Jarrell about 10 minutes before the gates were
scheduled to open. However, it was not what I expected at all. Tara it was not.
Jarrell was a backwoods timber plantation,
a lumber and logging operation, and from the looks of it, a hardscrabble one at
that. I sat by the gate for a few minutes reading about the history of the
place. The mill started in 1840, only 14 years after the “removal” of the
Creeks. Doesn’t take long for settlers to fill a void! After a while, a car drove
past me into the parking lot. A dumpy old hag in a park ranger uniform got out
of the car and headed toward the log cabin that looked to serve as a welcome reception
area, but she paid me no mind. I called out to her to ask when the plantation
opened. She stopped briefly and looked at me like I was pond scum and said,
“We’re not open today. We’re only open Thursday through Saturday,” and
continued on inside. Hmm, welcome to Georgia State Parks. Well, Ms. Grumpy
State Employee, what do you do in that
log cabin all day on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at a non-operating lumber operation that does not allow
visitors?
There was nothing to do but continue on the great breakfast
quest, so I turned North on the unmarked forest road, figuring it had to lead
somewhere, right? The road stayed very pretty but became increasingly less
maintained and eventually became a washboard from the wear and tear of logging
trucks. I shared it with nothing but a couple of wild turkeys. And a
woodpecker. A big red and white one, maybe a pileated woodpecker like Woody
Woodpecker? I should know because we got up real close and personaI when we
almost collided, but I was too startled. He came flying out of the woods right
toward me at head level, then averted a crash at the last moment with a sharp
right turn, ending up flying right next to me at eye level for a few seconds.
If I had a mind to (and could have let go of the handlebars!) I could have
reached out and touched him. Heck, I saw his eyeballs! I don’t know which of us
was more freaked out, I kept trying to look the curving road and at this bird
flying next to my temple all at the same time. Then suddenly he took another
sharp right and disappeared as quickly as he had appeared. Things like that
just don’t happen to you when you’re in a car!
I decided to turn back West to Highway 87 at the first
intersection. This time re-crossing the same river upstream I came upon a very
pleasant surprise, a little hamlet named Julietta. There was a dam, a railroad
stop and an old restaurant/saloon, and several signs in front of old timey
buildings and shops that proclaimed welcome to bikers. Looked like a really fun
place to spend a Sunday afternoon. Only problem, it was still Wednesday, and nothing
was open! The only sign of life was a fellow riding his tractor down the
street, leading a pair of mules. Incongruous.
So I continued North on US 23 and saw no place to eat
breakfast for another 20 miles, until I got to Jackson. By then I was famished,
craving biscuits and eggs and – God works in mysterious ways, SUCCESS! I pulled
in to Big Jim’s Wing Shack, sort of an all-purpose tavern that served
breakfast, wings, beer, music and dinner. I took one look at the menu and had
to order the Hillbilly Breakfast. This is such a monument to breakfast I took a
picture of it. Eggs, hashbrowns, bacon and sausage, all drowned in white gravy
and cheddar cheese. Incontrovertible proof that only in America do they really
know how to fix breakfast! (No, Mom, I didn’t eat it all…)
So stoked on caffeine, belly happily full, I skirted South
of the City of Atlanta headed for my next tourist stop where I intended to
spend the entire afternoon, the Civil War battlefield of Pickett’s Mill where
my ancestor fighting with the Georgia cavalry was captured by the Yankees and
sent North as a prisoner of war. As I was leaving Jackson on Highway 16 to
Griffin, a very exuberant biker coming the other direction wearing a skull mask
began swerving in his lane, standing on his foot pegs and waving at me just to
say hello! He was having a good day!
It’s the kind of thing you see when you get off the Interstates to where life
is happening.
At Griffin, I turned North on 92 and followed it all the way
to Dallas, listening to Emmy Lou Harris, Brad Paisley and Miranda Lambert on
The Bear 92.5 fm – great station! The roads became more and more curvy, and
every mile closer to Atlanta there seemed to be more people, everything seemed
incrementally more tended, more prosperous, and yet somehow more and more the
same. It struck me when I passed yet another shopping center and big sign
advertising a new, planned, fully zoned and gated housing development –
precisely the attributes that would cause me to live someplace else – that only
in America can you pass the same store 20 times in 20 different locations on
the same day! Very pretty, very ordered and very much the same.
Coming into Fairburn, there is a graded railroad crossing,
nothing unusual in that, and no special warning signs or anything. But it looked
a little more peaked than normal, so I slowed from about 55 to maybe 40 as I
approached it. Holy smokes, you want a thrill? It went up and down at the same grade on both
sides, steep! Try playing Evel Knievel
launched on an 800 pound touring bike at 40 mph. I was completely airborne, landed
square with a big ka-thump, and kept on motoring. What else was there to do? My
heart was beating just a little
faster, though…
I took a short side trip to downtown Dallas, Georgia. This
was the town where my family on my Mother’s side lived when the Civil War
started. They moved West right after the war was lost. I walked up and down the
main street, and around the courthouse square, thinking that 150 years ago my
ancestors most certainly walked these same streets. I stopped at a few roadside
historical markers commemorating where the boys in blue and gray clashed on
ridges surrounding Dallas as Sherman kept flanking Johnston on his inexorable
push to Atlanta. The Union Army outnumbered the Confederates almost 3 to 1, and
Johnston kept taking strong defensive positions in front of the Northerners,
trying to bring them to battle where the hilly terrain would offset his
disadvantage in numbers and munitions. Sherman only tried a few all out assaults,
which were bloodbaths. Instead he kept stretching out Johnston’s lines as he
tried to slip around the Confederate flanks. I set out to find Pickett’s Mill.
Which turned out to be very difficult! I could only locate
it in general terms on the road map, so I stopped at a filling station to ask
how to get there. A woman behind the counter and an old guy who was a customer
got into an argument about where Pickett’s Mill was and how to get there.
Finally they decided that he was trying to send me to the subdivision of that
name while she was sending me to the battlefield, and then they discussed where the main entrance was
because the one up the road was closed a lot for some reason. He relented, and
I followed her direction to go West, turn here and turn there etc., which
didn’t seem right to me, but what did I know, I didn’t live there and I was the
one asking for directions. Pretty soon, I found myself backtracking where I had
come from and heading toward Atlanta. I checked the directions just to make sure
I hadn’t made a mistake, so I decided to check at another convenience store.
They didn’t know either, but a UPS guy happened to stop in and while he wasn’t
sure, there was a subdivision with the same name North of the filling station
where I first stopped (!). So I went past the same filling station heading in exactly
the opposite direction from where I had originally been sent, and sure enough
up the road there was that subdivision, so I turned in. Nope, nothing but
twisty streets and lots of nice houses, actually just what you would expect in
a subdivision. So I turned around and drove back out. Just as I was leaving, I
espied a small brown and white park sign that said Pickett’s Mill! This led me
to a twisty country road that wrapped around the subdivision. The whole area
was a mass of heavily wooded steep ravines. I followed the signs for a few more
miles, and sure enough, right in the middle of several subdivisions was an unobtrusive entrance to the Pickett’s
Mill National Military Park, lined by a split rail fence – leading right up to
a closed gate. You guessed it, the park is only open Thursday through Sunday,
and this was Wednesday! So I sat in the shade of the bulletin board and read a
little bit about the battle. The Yankees became trapped in one of these
dead-end ravines with Confederates lining the top. The fighting only lasted
about 5 hours, but it was so intense that survivors nicknamed it the Hell Hole.
Of the 25,000 men who fought over this gully, almost 10% were casualties, the
highest percentage in Sherman’s Atlanta campaign. More than 3 Union soldiers
fell for every Confederate. Today people who live within 2 or 3 miles can’t
tell you where it is or what happened there. The Battle of Pickett’s Mill was a
resounding victory for the South, but it had no lasting effect. It only delayed
Sherman’s advance on Atlanta by three days. Somehow my ancestor got captured
there, maybe ten miles from his house, to be shipped hundreds of miles North to
a prison camp. Maybe I’ll get to actually see the place another time.
From there it was a short drive in gathering rush hour
traffic to my sister’s house in Marietta. She and her family have moved back to
where our family once fled. Marietta is a beautiful town on the Northwest side
of Atlanta that weaves in and out of several of these battlefields, and her
house was the perfect place to store the bike until the next leg.
Sign of the Day: Open to the Public Only Thursday through
Saturday.
If you would like to read a really good book about a crazy
motorcycle trip, a true story about a trip that even in my wildest imaginings I
wouldn’t dream of attempting, pick up MotoRaid by Keith Thye. It’s out
of print but you can find it if you look. It’s the story of two
twenty-somethings who drive their motorcycles from Portland Oregon to Pucon in
Southern Chile in 1963, spending some time in jail in Peru along the way.
Amazing story.
And while recommending reading for your library, try The
Hiding Place by Corrie TenBoom. If you are not afraid of her religion, it’s
a disturbing (and inspiring) story of living under the Nazi occupation of
Holland, and how she came to be part of the underground helping Jews escape,
found God where she had every right to see only Hell, and survived the death
camps. Recommended to me by a friend in Jacksonville, thank him very much!
