Reflecting on Georgia

My faithful readers (both of you) realize I'm cheating on this one by backdating it. Got pretty busy with school, then forgot my password for Blogger.

I'm really glad I went. I'm actually writing this nearly two months afterward, and I remember several things very vividly:

• I had thought that my visit with Joel and family (both going and return) would be a freeloading quick stop (and I was embarrassed to impose that way). Joel and Heidi did it up right. They took me for fireworks and a minor league baseball game. Fed me great Italian food and even espresso after church on Sunday. It was great.


• In Valdosta, Jon was (of course) quite busy putting the plays on, but we did get to talk really well a couple of times. I still think it's funny that he's pleased with his new police cruiser. As usual, he loves the stagecraft and is delighted to explain it. Some might think that's tedious. I don't. He's a true lover. He loves his craft, and when he talks about it, I fall in love too.


• The plays in Valdosta were A Year With Frog and Toad and Thoroughly Modern Millie. Jon wished I could have stayed for Cabaret, but I don't feel cheated. I loved Frog And Toad. We had the snail that delivers the mail ("I put the go in escargot"). Flowers popped up mysteriously from the stage. Wonderful. And I'm not sure I'll ever really recover from the Chinese guys singing an old Al Jolsen hit, "Mammy," in Chinese, with subtitles (Millie). So much to talk about. So much to remember. Office girls typing and tap dancing while someone pushes them around the stage in wheeled desks. Jon's elaborate art deco lamp. Lots of stuff.


• I sort of fell in love with Valdosta too. Apparently it's the town in Fried Green Tomatoes (which I haven't seen). Columbus may have its Short North, but Valdosta has its Really Short South—about a block long, complete with antique stores, classy restaurants, bars, and a great Episcopalian book store. I'd go back.

Plus ça change

Here I am, about a thousand miles south of home base, just a few feet north of Florida, in Valdosta, Georgia. I'm here to attend a couple of plays my friend Jon is working (He's the Master Electrician). But this morning, I'm sort of on my own for a couple of hours, so I spent the time doing e-mail and eating a hotel breakfast.

Over the last few years, I've done a lot of traveling, but it's always been in the same corridor. I oscillate between my home and my two colleges. Three or four times a year, I drive to my mother's in Washington, DC. Sometimes I go to Columbus. That's about it. Valdosta is definitely outside my loop.

Pax, West Virginia

A couple of hours on the West Virginia Turnpike, and I was beginning to worry about gasoline, so I took the next available possiblity. Pax. The sign at the edge of town proclaimed the town's most recent glory: the Boys' Basketball Division B State Championship. That was in 1954. No glory, apparently, for the last 53 years. The town's few houses are crowded between the state highway and the railroad. The one business, a tacky convenience store, is pretty much the center of things. I had to wait in line behind a group of motorcyclists who were pondering the difference between the energy drink in the red can versus the one in the black can. Harley riders apparently aren't in much of a hurry in West Virginia. I was strongly tempted to buy the local church's fundraiser cookbook. Maybe on the return trip.

South Carolina highways

I'm used to Washington, DC, traffic, but South Carolina beats it. Narrow Interstates, 70 mph speed limits, and semis operated by desperate drivers. I wonder if there's any way to defuse the return trip.

Georgia Route 84

The best way to get here involved about a hundred miles of Route 84. It's sort of a 100-mile-long town. You're never far from a tiny settlement (complete with a little Fundamentalist church). Driving at highway speeds for more than five miles is a real event. At least a third of the houses and businesses appear to be abandoned. You probably remember hearing about the Georgia fire that burned an area the size of Rhode Island (why is everything the size of Rhode Island?). I drove through that area, and it's pretty obvious how the fire caused so much devastation. The soil is almost nothing but sand. The trees are all pines planted by a local paper mill—skinny pines growing a uniform twelve feet apart as far as the eye can see. The paper mill wants poles about 40 feet long and 8 inches thick. That's what these trees become, naked poles with a brush of pine branches at the top. Not exactly Hiawatha's virgin forest.

Waycross, Georgia

This romantically-named town (it's the crossing of two railways) has actually grown to some size, probably because it's the home of the largest cigar factory in the world. It's not a bad town. I spent some time there, because Route 84 vanishes mysteriously in the middle of town. I asked directions from a local gas-station employee—not exactly a success—our versions of the English language didn't match up that well. Nearly wrecked my car when the route sign told me to make a turn into a church parking lot.

Valdosta

So, after all this romantic-sounding voyage, here I am. I'm sitting in an Econo Lodge, typing on my computer as if I were home. Yes, a couple of the people in the dining room look Hispanic, and there was a collection of Good-Ol-Boys a while back, but it's astonishingly like home. Local cuisine? Appleby's. I can stop at Kohl's to buy clothing. I can look for furniture at Pier 1. Local kids look like urban hip-hop, just like Akron, Mansfield, or Washington.

No, I'm not sorry or depressed or anything about the trip. I'm glad I came. But the paradox is this. Apparently, if you want quality in the USA, it's going to be a franchise operation (Outback steaks, Econo Lodge, Barnes & Noble). If you want local color, it's going to be somewhat tacky (Bubba's Bar-B-Cue, El-Cheapo Gas).

One last encouraging note: fifteen hours of driving, and I only saw one Rebel flag (and that was on an old, weathered sign). Nobody flying them from their 4X4's. The Georgia state flag doesn't have it any more. I think I see more Rebel flags in Ohio than in Georgia.