Savannah

Hey, I've posted 1000 posts!! Or so the chart in the back room of the Shoe told me right before I came onstage here.

We're having a great time in Savannah. Paul and I never do this sort of thing, just doing the relaxing tourist thing among busloads of retired folks in pastel capris and polo shirts and sunglasses or umbrellas. Last night we ate at a little sidewalk cafe. This is not something we do. But we did. Ah, the memories.

Today we toured the old Catholic church and the Jewish temple, both built in the same Gothic style. Just a few months after the colony was formed here, a boatload of 42 Jews from Spain and Portugal sailed in, looking for a safe place to settle. The small community here was dying of dysentery and typhoid and other swamp diseases, and the doctor on the ship saved their lives. Some six months later the word came from General Oglethorpe's supervisor that he was not to let Jews settle in Savannah. (Or Catholics or lawyers) He said, Too Bad For You, they're already here.

It's no wonder there were swamp diseases here. The Low Country, they call it. The elevation is about 2 feet, with scummy little canals here and there around town and if you go driving out of town it seems like most of the land beside the road is damp and marshy. And probably alive with alligators and rattlesnakes. "RATTLESNAKE ROUNDUP" advertise a few billboards along the main highway. It's in March. We don't plan to attend.

We spent some time on the riverfront today, where the Savannah River comes in off the ocean and brings monstrosities of ocean vessels with it. It gave me quite a turn when I looked down the street the first day and at the end were these three-story buildings and behind them was another building but it was moving slowly sideways. It was a big merchant ship from afar of course.

Along the riverfront is the old cotton shipping district, where the "factors" or brokers worked in a long row of brick buildings and workers took 400-lb bales of cotton down the cobbled streets to the ships. The streets and walls are made of stone that used to come from England as ballast for the empty ships, which would then unload the stones and reload the ships with cotton and send it back to the mills as per North and South, that Elizabeth Gaskell book I just read. And then the locals would use the stones to pave the roads and stuff.

We haven't heard as much of that deep Southern drawl as I was hoping. Are all the tour guides transplants from elsewhere or what?

But both the host and waitress at the seafood restaurant this evening had teeth missing, which must mean something profound about the culture.

We are staying at the Hilton which is wonderful but has its drawbacks if you are frugal Mennonites from Oregon, but that is a subject for another day.

Quote of the Day:
"Fun Family Festival!!"
--the billboard about the Rattlesnake Roundup