Southern States

FLORIDA, UNIQUE AND LENGTHY
I am driving down a thin road in the Florida Panhandle. On the right marches a miles-long row of mighty Slash Pines from which, if one was clever, turpentine might be siphoned. Their trunks are beautfully marked in red-brown checkerboard and at their feet huddle Saw Palmetto, one of the seven different palms living in Florida. On the left is the Emerald Coast, touted now as the "Forgotten Coast" to lure more tourists, I suspect; its Gulf waters flat and gray against the horizon, devoid of the turquoise verve and whipped cream surf of the "Remembered Coast" miles to the east, though their beaches have that same sugary sand. Behind me is Apalachicola, one of the really cute towns along the way. Their main raison d'etre having changed from cotton to oysters, they have nevertheless maintained their Greek Revival mansions and civic pride in a way so gracious that you definitely want to move house and settle in.These towns are rare but every state has them. They all share history, mystery and energy in common, plus a control factor over destructive development. Last year I thought Texas went on forever, but Florida's coastline wins.

NATIVES AND EUROPEANS
I've had a hard time restraining Truman from drinking every drop of salty water he could slurp--with disastrous aftermath--but some ancient bloodline thing impels him. One day in the Everglades, he was spashing away in a mercury-laden pond when his shenanigans attracted a 6-foot alligator. Truman decided to get land-locked in a hurry and from that day to this he barks at all waterlogged rocks and branches.Young German families are everywhere--camping, restauranting, beaching. They rent campers and set off with a pre-arranged itinerary, just as we would be doing over there--smart to come this early in the season.They sit among the sun-toughened folk of mansioned Palm Beach and points south, practicing a little their English. During conversations there are the usual wild-eyed gestures and language book page flipping, which reminded me of me in every foreign country I've ever visited, especially England.

TRAVELING WITH TRUMAN
Exercising with the Trumanmeister on 3x a day hikes takes us on trails that wind through unbelievably diverse terrain and plant life: sandy soils, every kind and sort of pine, oak and palm tree, wild magnolia, azalea, rhody, laurel, holly and berried shrub. Birds of crayola color and vivid description follow us through the woods.My favorite little guy was a Scrub Jay with two teensy horns who insisted on walking every step with us, talking the whole way. I almost had him convinced to come on the trip when his mother came to get him. Truman is now so courteous that he will stop and wait patiently while I photograph. Of course he expects the same courtesy during one of his marathon--every whelk and fern--sniffs and salutes. We manage well together, my friend and I. He sleeps ten hours at night on the sofa, as do I on my little shelf over the cab of which I am very fond. Then he naps another ten during the day so that he will have plenty of pep for all those hikes, while I hunch over the wheel for five or six hours.

THE WATERY EDGE
The shape of Florida is definitely funny...dainty, really, like a lady's foot testing the water, its Keys swinging left with the flow of her movement. Everything in the tip of South Florida is waterlogged and even over in Louisiana poor old New Orleans is sinking. The charming parenthesis of the Outer Banks resembles a piece of lace blown free from its gown, and the 3,000-mile tidal shoreline edge of South Carolina is melted like a cookie dipped in hot chocolate. Our coastlines seem to be a gift that might be taken back with the next hurricane. Ahead of us now is a lengthy stretch of some of the country's most scenic drives: Louisiana's Bayou Byways, Mississippi's Natchez Trace, Alabama's Lookout Mountain Parkway,Georgia's Northern Highlands, the Cherokee Foothills of South Carolina, and North Carolina Countryside. Everything has a bridge leading to it, from it, around it and through it. New bridges, concrete and boring (except for the spectacular divided highway on stilts over Atchaflaya Swamp in Louisiana) but solid and safe; old bridges, soaring, rusted, scary and beautiful, each relating to, for and about the watery edge: tea-colored wetlands--bayous, swamps, marshes, sloughs, estuaries, quagmires, bottoms, fens, bogs, muskegs and cypress knees. The knees look like little fairies and gnomes gathering for a hootenanny instead of the breathing organ for the bald cypress, a cousin to the California redwood and giant sequoia that festoons itself with Spanish Beard, air plants, ghost orchids and bromeliads in lieu of needles during the winter.

TRAIL OF TEARS
Along the infamous Route 72, the east-west leg between Florence and Scottsboro, Alabama, historically known as "The Trail of Tears" I thought of tyranny, heroism and allegiance and wondered if the definitions for these change over the years. This area of the country is part of the "walk of shame" when 17,000 members of the Cherokee Nation were forceably removed from their homelands, rounded up with only the clothes they were wearing to trudge the entire distance to Oklahoma Territory under the command of General Winfield Scott acting under the ultimate orders of Andrew Jackson. Over 4,000 died while some few escaped along the way. Where is the heroism in this action? I meditated on the vagaries of the human heart and oblivion regarding our own cruelty.

PLANTATION HOUSES
Some of the largest antebellum plantations were built by Creoles planting thousands of acres of sugar cane, at first, then, after Eli Whitney, cotton in a big way. In early to mid-19th century, 2/3 of America's millionaires were planters along the Mississippi River between Natchez and New Orleans.Some were Englishmen. I visited so many of their great homes that in the end I was dreaming about delicate little English celery dishes dancing with gilded-edge French compotes under heavy crystal candleabra which they all seemed to sport. Most were Greek Revival in style, thank goodness, lending graciousness under columned porticos, 17-foot ceilings and breeze-full outside stairways. My favorites: Shadows on Teche in New Iberia, called "the most beautiful home he'd ever seen," by Elia Kazan; Oakley, the smartest, where John James Audubon spent four months tutoring spoiled and untalented daughter of the house only to be fired when he mentioned his overdue salary at dinner...wonderfully laid out--kitchen and gardens, porches and outbuildings; Rosedown, the loveliest gardens and interior spaces; Myrtles had the best ghost story: Chloe, a 14-yr-old African girl is co-opted by Creole master as sex slave. He cuts off her ear when she's caught listening in to "gentlemen's conversation." She retaliates by making oleander-juice cake for daughter's birthday, killing mother and both daughters. The plantation slaves capture and hang her as an act of self-protection, and now Chloe's ghost haunts the Myrtles...photographs handed about to prove claim! In Natchez, Stanton Hall, the richest, most splendid and grand; Rosalie, lovely, modest and setting the standard for all; and Longwood, the most bizarre and sad story, too: all workmen left house unfinished when Civil War created supply shortages, so family moved into basement (4,000 sq ft so don't cry). Father soon died of broken dreams but family carried on. It is an octagonal four-story mansion precursor of Gilded Age pretensions. Actually, the fathers all died very soon after the houses were built of one thing or another and Mother married again or pleasured being in control of all. One plantation, the Laura, was run by women for 84 years straight. None survived intact after the war was over; most crumbled or had been burned. These survivors had special contacts and managed to be taken up by caring institutions like NTHP, Natchez Garden Clubs or the State.

CAJUN AND CREOLE
What is the difference between Cajun and Creole, anyway? Both are basically French, but now are blended with other cultures. The original Acadians (slurred to Cajun) were 18th century refugees from Nova Scotia, hounded out by the British, who escaped to Southern Louisiana bayous complete with their music, cuisine, language and religion. They added German accordians, Caribbean rhythms and steel guitars to create Zydeco, a musical form best expressed in a zesty two-step. Cajun Gumbo File, with okra, chicken, shrimp tomatoes and hot pepper sauce is a delicious Cajun meal. The Cajuns married mainland French immigrants and also with Spanish, English, German and Native American cultures. Creole, back in 19th century New Orleans meant "born in the colony" and was a naming way groups separated themselves from the waves of German, Scots, and English settlers pouring into the city after the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. Basically, they were of European descent but in rural southwestern Louisiana, a blending of French, African and Caribbean cultures was considered Creole. Like Cajuns, they too speak a patois of the French language and cook like a dream. Pampano En Papillote with fish fillets wrapped in parchment and baked with a shrimp, crabmeat and mushroom sauce would be an amazing Creole dish.

THE WAR
The Civil War is a constant theme, as you might expect--unrelentingly present-- its physical evidence everywhere and when we reached Vicksburg I could see why. At the Vicksburg National Military Park following the taped tour, I drove through sixteen miles of mounds, humps, hills and valleys created by cannon fire and trenches covered now with thousands of memorials, statues, buildings, sculpture, monuments, plaques, portraits, signage, labels, vistas, and even the Cairo, a resurrected ironclad bristling with heavy artillery. A nearby cemetery held simple tombstones of the Northern dead and I wondered if the National Park Service hadn't gone over the top with this project. All these memorials are dedicated just to Union forces. The 35 thousand Confederate casualties receive almost no mention. When it came time to see the Chickamauga battlefield in Georgia, an 1863 Confederate victory that cost a combination of 34,633 boys lives, I found that I had lost the heart to revisit that terrible place. The gentle land is blanketed by white oaks and black sweet gums, wild spearmint and honeysuckle, magnolia and wild azalea that belie its bloody history. As Byron wrote about war conducted on other land:

THE NATCHEZ TRACE
Truman and I had drifted up the beautiful Natchez Trace, a project that the National Park Service does spendidly. All 442 miles, from Natchez to Nashville, were deeply grooved eons ago by buffalo herds followed by hunters, then by traders, by soldiers, then by settlers, then by tourists like Truman. There are sixty points of interest along the way including gristmills, Indian mounds and village councilhouses. We hopped off at Tupelo to gander at Elvis's birthplace.

ELVIS AND GEORGE VANDERBILT
Later, in Asheville, North Carolina, while visiting Biltmore, the stupendous American chateaux built by George Vanderbilt in 1895, I found that Elvis's nine-foot-wide two room (bedroom/kitchen) birth house would fit nicely into one of Vanderbilt's lesser horse stalls, though the stables would have much the higher ceilings. I confess to a slight irritation when viewing gross material excess whether or not it belongs to the Gilded Age culture, especially when the supporting funds come from the material sacrifice of slaves, miners, Chinese laborers, Native Americans, women or war dead. (Is everything covered here?) But, the annoyance fades fast while walking landscaped grounds designed by the genius plantman, Frederick Law Olmstead. There was a Copper Beech to stop your heart. Planted under his hand over 100 years ago, it stood hugely purple, lush and vast, looked timeless, noble and wise and was the first Copper Beech I've ever laid eyes on. The house is a different matter. Designed by the ubiquitous architect of his time, Richard Morris Hunt (the painter's brother) and based on French design (GW had a Napoleonic fixation and a vivid imagination), it has 250 rooms with 34 bedrooms, 43 baths, 65 fireplaces, 3 kitchens and a huge indoor swimming pool. He lived in it off and on for 19 years before dying of appendicitis, but I think all the fun for him was in the planning and building of it. Except for the wonderful library, loved also by house guest Henry James, though he complained of having to walk a half-mile to get to it from his bedroom, all those perfect rooms are and were barren and stiff without human movement and use. He had a great print collection--lots of Durer--some Barye, too, and other tastes that ran to tapestries, silver, red velvet and weighty baroque. Sargent was a guest who painted both Hunt and Olmstead, plus some Vanderbilt relatives. But only one little girl named Cornelia lived there and she ran away as soon as she could after her mother remarried, leaving her own husband and two children behind. Like the antebellum plantations, it's always a sad story--Elvis, too. But George was the end of an era and Elvis began one.

STATE BOUNDARIES AND A WISH
Now, will you believe me when I tell you what happened when I climbed the rainy gray hills between North Carolina and Virginia? I swear to you it was like driving into Technicolor: Swards of scarlet poppies and butter yellow daisies against satiny black Angus shadows against emerald green hills against French blue mountain ridges against cobalt blue sky filled with fluffy marshmallow clouds. It was beautiful, Fantasia, Virginia and home.