Some Damn Good Life Experience(through the eyes of Stephanie): Georgia Peaches

I didn’t actually eat any peaches. But I reckon I sure saw a lot of them on license plates.

I have wanted to visit Savannah, Georgia since I read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt, a few years ago; the book painted a gorgeous, mysterious, Southern picture of the city and I was delighted to not be disappointed. Savannah was the first city in Georgia, actually founded on the same day Georgia became the thirteenth and final colony, and it was the first planned city, laid out in a grid pattern with 24 town squares - which are to this day beautiful shady parks. (Anyone who’s ever driven a car in Boston, the Master City of One-Way and Confusing Streets, can appreciate the functionality of the grid pattern. And not having to navigate through the Big Dig, cement partitions, and road signs nearly impossible to read fast enough to navigate... But, I digress…). Trolleys and touristy yet regal horse-drawn carriages are common forms of transportation along the streets of the city. Oak trees line the streets, with Spanish moss dripping off of the branches. (Spanish moss is one of the loveliest things I have ever seen. It’s draped on the trees in a romantic way, making the trees look as though they are wearing some of Stevie Nicks’s gypsy outfits from the 70s…If I could add a few elements of plant life to New Hampshire, they would be: Spanish moss, palm trees, and the giant Saguaro cacti from Arizona.)

An early story about Savannah’s beauty takes place toward the end of the Civil War. In 1864, Union general William Sherman was marching toward the Georgia coast, having just burned the city of Atlanta and intending to do the same to Georgia’s original city. However, when Sherman rode into Savannah, he was so taken with its seductive loveliness and Southern charm that he opted not to destroy the city. Instead, the general sent a now-famous telegram to President Lincoln, offering some holiday tidings:

“I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.” (December 22, 1864)

Sounds like what I asked for last Christmas! And did I get any of it? NO!

When we arrived in downtown Savannah, we drove around and around, the Suburban sleekly executing turns like the gray flash it is, but couldn’t really find a place in the city to stay. After some confusion and tension, (including a particularly tedious 100-point turn in the dead-end parking lot of a college dorm that we had mistakenly assumed was a hotel…sometimes we aren’t the brightest three bulbs in the chandelier…) we decided to turn back onto I-16, to the outskirts of Savannah, finding ourselves in a town called Pooler.

There was a McDonald’s in front of our hotel in Pooler, and we were starving, so Sarah and I went there for feeding time. We innocently wandered in, expecting to order off the dollar menu and be on our way. The experience was not going to be as brief as we’d hoped.

It was the most horrible, sketchy, unsatisfactory, demeaning Mickey D’s experience I have ever or ever will have. As soon as we walk into the AC, out of the Georgia heat, we see that the place is abounding with men...(men who say things about women in other languages in front of said women…that is the worst). It was so crowded in the front section of this unhealthy eatery that it was like being packed into a too-small, greasy elevator. It seemed the only patrons were me, Sarah, and what seemed like dozens of Hispanic men with filthy work clothes and some straaaange hairstyles: one had a dyed blond Mohawk that wasn’t spiked up…it was hanging stringily from its black roots like a dead goldfinch; one had a shaved head with extremely long bangs that had been plastered to the side of the guy’s face like the worst imitation glue-on sideburns. They all stared shamelessly at Sarah and I as we walked in. I could feel their eyes burning laser holes into my posterior as I faced the counter and all of the gargantuan, French-fry-frying employees. I ordered two cheeseburgers off the dollar menu, a chocolate milk, and a white milk, trying to speak softly because I didn’t want any of the depraved, non-English-speaking freaks behind me to even hear me talk. I was handed my milks and a receipt with my order number on it, and my traveling companion and I stood off to the side of the counter and quickly plastered our buttocks to the wall to avoid them being seared by the stares of dirty, dirty men. Since they couldn’t speak English, the visored McDonald’s lady who called out order numbers had to look at all of their tickets (I still say receipts) to see who had which number, which slowed our exit process. When we finally got our food (and we can understand numbers when spoken aloud in English, so that helped us) we booked it out of there so fast we probably had smoke coming off of our derrieres. Back in my room, I bit into one cheeseburger, anticipating the familiar McDonald’s taste; instead it tasted like a lukewarm beef sandwich that had been created from a non-English-speaking cow that had foot and mouth disease. I think I am definitely done with McDonald’s, indefinitely.

We also got a car wash in Pooler, which was a small single-bay unattended deal behind a gas station. The Suburban was disgustingly dirty, with splattered bugs of varying sizes and colors stuck to the grill area in various grotesque contortions of death. In the morning, we asked the portly, thickly-accented convenience-store guy if we had to pay for a car wash inside the store. “Yeeahh, but it’s not workin’ today,” he said. Later when we returned to our hotel, we noticed that a car was, in fact, being washed. In the car wash. I returned inside the store. Same guy. “Hey,” I said. “So…looks like the car wash is working again?” He looked up at me with not a flicker of recognition. “’S workin’,” he said. “Okay,” I said, “well I knew it wasn’t working earlier.” Same quizzical look. “Naw, ‘s workin’,” he said. “Okay,” I said again. “Cool. I’ll take the cheap one.” No movement toward the cash register. “OH,” he said, as if he had just discovered the meaning of life. He remembered! “Guy came this afternoon, fixed it.” A line of customers was building up behind me. “Okay,” I said for a third time. “So...can I get a car wash?”

These are the events of rural Americana.

Bill, who has ridden 2809 miles, was recruited by the front-desk lady to kill a rattlesnake outside. I haven’t got all of the details and I don’t really want to know. All I know is that a reptilian murder was committed by my boss, and though he is proud of his rattlesnake wrangling adventure, I am not sorry that I didn’t have a chance to view the carcass. And when Bill went back to check on the corpse…it was gone. Perhaps it slithered down to the underworld to begin its devious plot to seek revenge on Bill’s mortal soul. Some cultures worship snakes, you know, Bill. You’d be put to death if the Aztecs found you.

After walking around downtown Savannah, we walked down steep stairs to River Street, which runs alongside the Savannah River. A row of nineteenth-century cotton warehouses have been renovated into a row of shops, bars and restaurants which line the cobblestone street, and street performers play instruments and perform comedy routines, sometimes atop giant unicycles.

Wet Willies is a bar on River Street, but it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Behind the bar are what appear to be giant silver industrial clothes dryers, but they are filled with brightly colored frozen daiquiris that are being spun around. They had names such as ‘Attitude Adjustment’ and ‘Shock Treatment’. The strongest one was called ‘Call a Cab’, which I didn’t try – almost all the drinks are made with 190-proof grain alcohol. I sampled a few others (you can sample whichever ones you want) and they tasted really strong. (I think the tangerine-flavored one scarred me…bleechhh.) I settled on the margarita-flavored one. I love all margaritas, and a big reason for that is…how many beverages have salt on the rim? I live for salt. My body is probably 75% salt. Oh, the other thing that I thought was great about Wet Willie’s is that they have all the fake IDs that they’ve confiscated framed on the wall. Now, that’s art.

I always love Irish bars. I suppose it’s my New England roots coming out again, but you can’t beat them. So when we saw Irish flags flying over the street and a sign saying Kevin Barry’s, we decided to go eat there. We sat on the second-floor patio area, overlooking the Savannah River, which provides a view of South Carolina on the other side. I ordered the combo meal of Irish beef stew and shepherd’s pie – and it was some of the most succulent cuisine I’ve had on this whole trip. The Georgia Queen riverboat went by, and then I saw the biggest, most teal boat I’ve ever seen. It said MAERSK SEALAND on the side, with a hotel-like structure on the top. This thing was HUGE. It was actually a ‘container ship’, which just means…a big cargo ship. I thought the riverboat was big…and next to the Maersk ship, it looked like a Styrofoam peanut.

And…onward to the next excellent adventure…

-stephanie

Some Damn Good Life Experience(through the eyes of Stephanie)

What will certainly in the future become legend: my attempt to capture true adventure - the drama, pain, and hilarity of our largely unplanned six-month trip across the country. It's like reality TV, except you're going to read it!

About

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Data-Driven Publishing

Georgia Peaches

Comments