Queen of the Road

by Doreen Orion

  “Oh, Tim! Sherpa Tim!” I sang out. He had to laugh. If the hiking boot fits, after all. As he put the shells in his pocket, he gave me a kiss.

  “As long as I’m a Sherpa with benefits,” he said.

  We met another busing couple in the RV park. They were from Virginia and the husband was recently semi-retired from his job as an actual city bus driver. The wife still ran a computer lab in a high school and…was a bus phobic! She swore she had never been in one before, that it all began six weeks ago when they started taking trips. She recited the all-too-familiar litany: Hates sitting up front hearing everything rumble behind her. Hates the overpasses, always asks if they’ll fit. Hates the curve of exit ramps, always announces their speed limit. Her husband just ignored her as Tim did me.

  While the menfolk compared engine sizes, the womenfolk compared coping strategies: They had wooden venetian blinds on their windows and she made sure they were rolled up before they headed out, to reduce the clacking sound. I shared with her my method of putting socks on the martini and wine glasses in the wine rack to reduce the clinking sound. (I left out where the socks came from: i.e., if the driver gave me enough warning of our departure so I could retrieve them from a drawer in the bedroom, or if he didn’t, when I was forced to simply reach across the aisle to the laundry bin perched over HAL, giving new meaning to the phrase “dirty martini.”) We then went on to debate the relative horrors of clacking versus clinking and called it a draw.

  I must admit, I felt quite superior (after all, married to a professional bus driver and still phobic?) until she informed me that like mine, her seat had no armrests. But she got her husband to install an oh-shit handle to clutch. Why didn’t I think of that? I had to concede, even though I was Miss September, I had just been trumped by Bus Phobic of the Year.

  We tore ourselves away from the beach for a few days here and there to take some day trips in the Jeep. We’ve never really been architecture buffs, but we’d never lived in a place known for historic homes, either. Much more than the buildings themselves, however, we found we enjoyed hearing the stories of people who had lived in them so long ago.

  At the Mann-Simons Cottage, we learned that Celia Mann, born into slavery in Charleston in 1799, managed to gain her freedom, then walk all the way to Columbia, where she bought the cottage and supported herself as a midwife. Her descendants continued to live in the home for over a century. Her story of sacrifice and struggle was quite a contrast to the opulence and privilege of the Nathaniel Russell House; while in France, a governor’s wife had a piano crafted for the house, with the explicit instructions that it be missing one octave in order to fit in her stateroom for the shipboard journey back.

  Just before we left Myrtle Beach, we ran into a man at a restaurant who shares a last name with Tim (our reservations either happened to be for the same time, or if you’re a Boulderite, this was meant to be). On his rare visits to his father, Tim was always under the impression that half the state of Arkansas were cousins, but this man (who knows his genealogy), really seemed to be, however distant.

  After dinner, as we sat together over dessert and coffee, Tim learned more about his origins than he had ever known, and realized that like me, he’d been missing out because of assumptions. He never took an interest in the Arkansas side of his family before, largely because as a child, he’d gotten the distinct impression they were something to be embarrassed about. His father didn’t talk about his kin and never took Tim to visit them. Then, as an adult, shortly after our marriage and years after his father moved back there from Reno, Tim went to Arkansas for the first time. On that trip, Bob took him to see an elderly lady. Tim had a vague feeling of familiarity, but couldn’t quite place it. After settin’ a brief spell, they left and Bob informed him, “That was your grandma’s twin.”

  Tim hadn’t known his grandmother had a sister, let alone a twin.

  But now, hearing that his ancestors were spear-carriers for William the Conqueror, how a later relation, a major in the British Army, deserted to support the Revolution, and how several more recent ones intermarried with the Hatfields, Tim realized it wasn’t really important what the history was, just that his family—like every family—has one.

  With apologies to Margaret Mitchell (and my long-suffering husband) I just could not help but constantly cry, “Lordy, Miz Scarlett! I don’t know nothin’ ’bout drivin’ no buses” the entire time we were in Atlanta, Georgia. Maybe I shouldn’t have read Gone with the Wind three times that summer of seventh grade. Tim, of course, had only seen the movie, dragged by a college girlfriend. He recalled that while they were in line, he couldn’t figure out why everyone else brought seat cushions. When the lights went on after two hours of film viewing, he thought, “Well, that’s kind of a weird way to end the movie, but oh well,” and started to leave until his girlfriend set him straight—it was only intermission. No wonder he winced and rubbed his butt every time I did my Prissy imitation.

  As a diehard GWTW fan, I was particularly taken with the Cyclorama and its Rhett Butler surprise. The Atlanta Cyclorama bills itself as the longest-running show in the United States, on display since 1893. At 42 feet high and 358 feet around, it’s basically a huge cylinder of art (the largest oil painting in the world) depicting the Battle of Atlanta, which slowly revolves around its audience for nineteen minutes. (I, of course, ensured seating was involved before going in.) What makes it a “show” is the accompanying music, narration, and foreground figures. The artists who worked on the Cyclorama were all specialists: i.e., one might just do the sky; another, horses; still another, faces, etc. Apparently, cycloramas used to be quite popular, commissioned by the victors of various wars (Civil, Franco-Prussian, and the like) and there are still almost twenty active ones in the world today. Atlanta’s was originally commissioned by Union General John “Blackjack” Logan, then a senator, as a sort of campaign poster for his vice-presidential bid. He never got to use it; he died two days before it was completed.

  The surprise Rhett connection: When Clark Gable came to see Atlanta’s Cyclorama during the GWTW premiere in 1939, he informed the mayor that no painting of the city could possibly be complete without Rhett Butler. The mayor obliged, having him added to the foreground—as a dead Yankee.

  We worked up quite an appetite with all this revolving, so headed for The Varsity. Rather than dine in our car at this, the world’s largest drive-in restaurant, we opted to take our delectable burgers to a table inside for our feast. We’d often found that the hip burger place in most towns is a hole-in-the-wall. Not here. Serving 16,000 people a day (double if there’s a Georgia Tech home game), the historic Varsity (it opened in 1928), with its soaring ceilings and expansive dining areas, is kind of the Versailles of burger joints.

  Of course, the city of Atlanta is forever tied to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But when we visited the Center for Nonviolent Social Change, we wished we hadn’t. Rather than a stirring testament to the man and his life’s work, the buildings and grounds (which, judging by some old pictures, had once possessed a reserved dignity) were run-down and worse, practically empty—except for some Hare Krishnas singing and drumming with a lack of energy that appeared to mirror their surroundings. We found out later that the center was in a bit of limbo, with the King children and his widow (who has since passed) deciding if they should relinquish control and turn it over to the National Park Service, which could then rejuvenate the place, both inside and out.

  On a five-hour round-trip drive in our Jeep to Scottsboro, Alabama, we passed through Chattanooga, Tennessee, and spied a sign for the Chattanooga Choo Choo. We just had to take the exit and see what this was all about. It’s actually a Holiday Inn where, in addition to the regular hotel, guests can stay in train cars out back. Tim cringed once again when I couldn’t resist asking the bellhops, “Pardon me, boys. Is that the Chattanooga Choo Choo?” Their blank looks indicated that either they’d heard it too many times before or never at all. Maybe I should introduce them to the
Romulans in the Finger Lakes.

  Why were we headed for Scottsboro? Fine. I’ll admit it: the famed Unclaimed Baggage Center, where airlines send luggage left unclaimed after ninety days. I do a lot of shopping at used-clothing stores, but even I had to admit it was kind of creepy sorting through all these things that were never voluntarily relinquished. It was easy to see that some of it probably meant a lot to the owners, who might, even now, be wondering what ever happened to their stuff. I felt a little better going through the books and CDs, which seemed less personal, but there wasn’t much there. Of course, back at the clothing racks, I managed to quash my discomfort long enough to find just a couple of items (a Tahari blazer and J. Crew jean jacket, for all fellow Princesses out there who need to know. Although if you’ve been missing either after a flight taken long ago—never mind).

  The people-watching was even better than the actual shopping. Tim, as always, was a good sport, and after quickly realizing he wasn’t going to find anything in the place (apparently men who were 40 Long with a thirty-two-inch waist did not lose their bags), wandered around, then kept me company while I waited in the extremely long line to pay for my purchases. (One might think the Unclaimed Baggage Center’s checkout was going for too much authenticity by attempting to re-create an airport check-in.) Two guys in camouflage garb passed in front of us.

  “They don’t want to be seen in this place,” Tim whispered. Just as I succeeded in stifling my laughter, another man sauntered by holding a couple of hockey sticks. (How in the world do you lose a hockey stick on an airplane?) Tim, feigning enthusiasm, oohed and aahed.

  “Wow! They’ve got hockey sticks!” he exclaimed. It seemed the young couple standing in front of us could also see the absurdity of it all. When the woman showed her husband the dickie she planned to purchase, he screwed up his face and asked, “What is that, a shirt for your boobs?”

  During our time in Atlanta, we stayed at an RV park in nearby Marietta that felt hidden in plain sight; set among tall trees just off a busy highway and behind a strip mall with a car dealership, it was still surprisingly quiet. We could almost fool ourselves into thinking we were out in the countryside. So we decided to really go for it at our next stop, Savannah.

  There we stayed at one of the loveliest campgrounds of the entire year, at a state park on Skidaway Island. Although it was forty minutes from town, the drive was well worth it. Our huge spot overhung with Spanish moss in the sprawling park was a treat. But there was no sense in taking this roughing-it stuff too far and we still managed to maneuver the bus so that both our satellite TV and Internet worked.

  There were days we never left Skidaway, instead exploring the many biking trails through the swamps. For the first time, I could understand the pull of camping, being out in nature without the usual trappings, as there was so much else to do. (OK, so maybe I had my usual trappings like TV, Internet, microwave, queen-size bed, etc., just not in their usual trappings of a house.) This feeling quickly subsided, however, with the arrival of our new neighbor. He came in a beat-up van, pitched a tent, and promptly got drunk by 10 a.m. This was repeated on each subsequent day (without the arriving and the pitching parts). Actually, he could easily have been drunk well before ten, but since that was when I woke up, I had no way of knowing. Every time he saw us, he’d say he wanted a tour of our rig, as he planned to build a bus from scratch someday and knew we had “sompin’ special.” We just smiled and demurred with as vague excuses as we could muster.

  After a few days, some female relative came by. Loud arguing ensued. We imagined she was doing an intervention. The next morning, he was gone. For his sake, I hoped he was on his way to Betty Ford. But I couldn’t help remembering what Dee Brown (Chris of Vanture’s brother and a retired railroad engineer) said to help me feel better about the journey we were about to undertake: Dee much preferred living on the road in a rig versus staying stationary in a house. As he pointed out, in a house, if you don’t like your neighbors, you’re stuck. In a rig, you just move. I could see now he had a point.

  In Savannah itself, we walked. A lot. Architecturally speaking, it’s one of the best-preserved cities in America and walking allowed us the time to take it all in at the pace it was meant to be appreciated. Still, armed with the Visitors Bureau’s map and guide, it was a lot of walking. An awful lot. Walking that was interrupted only by touring a few of the historic mansions, which, in turn, involved interrupted walking. We did so much walking, in fact, that I started sitting on anything handy—a bench, a stoop, a fence rail—every time we paused, however briefly, to admire a house. It wasn’t that I was perpetually tired. Most of the times I sat I wasn’t even tired at all. I did it, as I proclaimed to Tim, to “prophylactically rest.” He rolled his eyes and the next time I sat, said, oh so empathetically, “One of your rubber rests, eh?”

  We walked to the Andrew Low House, considered one of the great Federal-style homes in the country and where Juliette Low founded the Girl Scouts. Not knowing what constitutes Federal style, I couldn’t really judge, other than to say I sure wouldn’t be averse to living there. We then ambled by a century-old Presbyterian church whose bell has three methods of pealing: one arm strikes the hour for the clock, one strikes inside for funerals, and another clapper rings for weddings. Our guide sheet pointed out that Woodrow Wilson was married there, and I couldn’t help thinking that if ole Woody had been a practical joker, he might have slipped the pealer two bits to strike the funeral bell during his wedding ceremony.

  We continued our stroll past where General Sherman stayed during his March to the Sea. The wealthy cotton merchant who put him up hoped the general would in turn not burn Savannah and perhaps also allow him to keep his crop. While Sherman didn’t burn the town (instead offering it to President Lincoln as a Christmas present in a famous telegram), he did take the cotton, prompting the merchant, a Mr. Green, to see red and send the general a rent bill. Sherman paid. The Green-Meldrim House, then, is a fine example not only of Gothic Revival but of genteel chutzpah.

  Off Telfair Square, we saw a fine example of genteel wrath: When Mary Telfair bequeathed her mansion to become the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences, she specified that no liquor of any kind ever be served there. This request was honored for years until champagne hit the menu at an art reception, during which a portion of the ceiling inexplicably hit the floor. Thereafter, spirits have been served (and placated) in a tent in the square.

  We also visited Mickve Israel, the third-oldest synagogue in the U.S. and only one of two in the world built in a Gothic style. Used to more traditional temples, we found it almost disorienting to wander under the pointed arches and flying buttresses, gazing up at the ribbed, vaulted ceilings. Then, our docent, Leo, an incredibly warm, sharper-than-I’ll-ever-be ninety-year-old, wove his own story of sailing from Heidelberg to America as a young man fleeing persecution into those of the earliest congregants. They included Civil War heroes and a widowed tavern owner who gave her proceeds to the Union. Hearing the familiar history (my father’s and his immediate family, as well as my mother’s parents, had also fled persecution from other parts of Europe), I felt more grounded.

  Of course we took Miles with us as we walked. And apparently, we were not the only ones to enjoy hoofing it through the city with our pooch: Troup Square has a Victorian cast-iron drinking fountain—for dogs.

  For me, though, what most epitomized our trip to Savannah, and perhaps the entire genteel South, was my visit to Joseph’s Salon. Look, I can’t help it; I’m shallow that way. (What do you want from me?) Still, bear with me here, for Joseph has coiffed the ladies of Savannah for years in the downstairs of his lovely townhouse and I’ve never had my hair done in such a graceful atmosphere by such a master craftsman. As the scissors flew in his hands, the “darlin”s and “suga”s were flyin’ out of his mouth and back at him again by the waiting female throng.

  Tim was to pick me up and we were going directly to a fancy dinner in this oh-so-foodie town. Ever the Southern Gentleman, Jo
seph offered to let me change upstairs in his bathroom, so that I’d be more comfortable. Sigh. If I were a rich woman, I’d fly to Joseph’s every six weeks to get my hair done. I’d had a cut or two since Nick in New York and was beginning to despair of my hair ever looking that good again. But Joseph somehow managed to transform the helmet head my hair had become into a stylish bob that allowed my natural wave to flourish. (Funny how during my long-haired childhood, I had taken great pains to straighten it with giant curlers, bobby-pin wraps, and other tortures to tresses only adolescents would put themselves through. Why is it that at any age hair seems to be the great equalizer among women? Although almost every one of us wants to be tall and thin, it seems pretty universal that those with straight hair prefer curly and vice versa.) Dinner that night was one of the best we’d ever had, at the chic 45 South. The food was out of this world—as was the bill. We tried not to ruin the evening by realizing it had just cost us a tank of diesel.

  Throughout the South, we stopped at sights rich with the history of the Civil War and the struggle for civil rights. But it was always while poking around old homes and plantations that we got a more personal view of the inhabitants of long ago. Outside Savannah, the meaning of the word “genteel” was further brought home to me not by a person of yore, but by yet another ninety-year-old docent, this one named Dody, who, directing us along the garden path of a mansion, commented with a wave of her hand, “Walk this way. There are herons in those trees with no regard for anyone.” It would have been worth being the object of heron disregard just to hear her say that line. Sadly, I had to admit that if I were the guide, the most genteel word out of my Yankee lips would likely have been “doo-doo.”