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:
Stop!
Thy tread is on an Empire's dust,
An
earthquake's spoil is sepulchered below.
As
the ground was before, thus let it be;
How
that red rain hath made the harvest grow.
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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.
May
I a small house and a large garden have;
And
a few friends, and many books...
-
Abraham Crowley , "The Wish"
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The South
greatly affected me with its plushness, vegetation, color, the exotic
creatures, salty white beaches, the profoundly moving history, and the
truly courteous people. I didn't experience a single moment of fear.
I'll also miss those endearing roadside signs like
INCOME AX------NEW / USED BABY -----or
my personal fave: WORMS
and COFFEE
!!!
Barbara
and Truman
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