Our US Tour Week 9: TN NC SC GA

2006-11-22

Thursday, November 2/06 Nashville TN:
I heard it! I heard the call of the Tom Peabody bird. I don't even know what it is really called (although Nita from St Bethlehem's UMC who wrote the handbook "Wild Birds of Tennessee" could tell me in a second). My grandmother always sang along with it: "Tom Pea-bdy, Pea-bdy, Peeeee!" I often listen for it on the west coast, to no avail. It is everywhere here.

We awoke on our morning at the Opryland luxury resort and the kids could not understand why we adults were planning to go anywhere. Sorry, kids! The sun was shining brilliantly and the air was cold as we puttered our van down to the next major road where Doug, the VW specialist took it from us - with a promise of fuel pump, tune-up and oil change by day's end.

That left us perilously on our own. But with the blessed Stroller from Beacon, we were in control of the situation and stepped in front of a passing bus to get to the heart of the Nashville downtown. Now, David and I have been to this city before so we know what and where to see and go. Despite Patrick and Nicole's protestations that they had hated every country music song they had ever heard in their lives, we pulled them straight in to the Country Music Hall of Fame. What a wonderful walk through southern history and music's part in it. It's not easy to understand the descriptions of how one style (fx. hillbilly) became fused with another (such as blues) if you don't know what each style is to start with, so the kids and I went slowly through each display case, with its focus on a period in country music's development, listening to the music, seeing the clothing change. We saw when slide guitar entered in (with Bud Isaacs), when those background angel-voices got added and would have sat longer in the Ray Charles special tribute exhibit if Isaac hadn't set off an emergency exit alarm that was completely out of key with the exhibit!

David and I had already seen a video profile of Tim McGraw and Faith Hill and their family experience of being on the road, so we suggested to our kids that they would appreciate seeing how the big stars do what we do. Despite the fact that they travel in sometimes up to 13 buses and trucks on their tour, have their own team chef, play for audiences of thousands, there were many similarities to our lives. However, when I looked at how they had to import a petting zoo to the arena for their little girl's birthday, I thought that perhaps WE had more fun!

While David acted as traffic cop for sandwich-making in a local deli, I called the ticket-master to see about tickets for the production of "The Lion King" that evening. Anne, at St Bethlehem UMC, had effused about the show and its human portrayal of animals, so I was inspired. When I had spent over the cellphone a virtual sum equivalent to TWO nights at a hotel (for Pj, Nj and me only!) both kids told me they didn't want to go! "We want to go back to our hotel tonight..!" they balked. I hadn't banked on that! They were mad. Patrick informed me that he was going to die of torture to have to go out again that night. I said that I guessed they just had to trust me on this one.

It would have made sense, then, for us to go back to the resort, have the afternoon off and prepare for the evening out, but we got a call from the VW place apologizing for not being able to have our van ready for us until the stroke of five. We were somewhat stranded. So, we needed to stay in town and have an important experience, instead. We decided to make that be the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. I directed us up the street to Broadway again, getting us mixed up only once reading the map upside-down and mistaking "First" (Baptist Church) for "Frist". The Frist Center usually has stunning and immense displays, like the one that would be opening up in something like 4 more days, hmph. This day, however, it had an exhibit of jewellery that even I was too tired to consider. With admission that always allows children free, and that today was half-off for adults, the price was right to spend a while in their art-making section. Here the children and we had a chance to try our hand at various ways of creating images, such as watching a few seconds of a dancer's moves on video and recreating the lines that they had drawn, this time in pencil.

Still, we were tired.

By five, we were at the VW place, picking up a van that now purred. We drove quickly in to a favourite southern restaurant that Isaac has taken to calling the "Burger Barrel". It is really called the "Cracker Barrel" and we all appreciate its home-style, southern cooking. Then, the challenge was mine to drive the two older kids and myself without a navigator, in the dark, through on and off-ramps under construction and frightful traffic, to the Tennessee Performing Arts Center (and park!).

We must have been in the third row from heaven, in a row of side seating that, from a distance, remarkably resembled those shots they take of people on the crest of a roller coaster ride. It wasn't close, but at the ceremonious entry of the entire cast of animals, dancers, puppeteers, and with lights and music ablaze, the three of us were transfixed. The scene changes were constant, sometimes as small as diagonal stage curtains falling into light, sometimes a spiral mountain that entered, circled the stage, took its place, left again. A chase scene of two humans dressed elegantly as animals would suddenly become two puppeteers running through the stage with a wooden version of the same. Night would fall and a circle of light would appear like a rear spotlight around a paper silhouette of a mouse hunting a cricket. The music was stunning in strength and fullness - all of an African, sometimes Afro-American feel (how did Elton John do that..?)

Nobody in our family died from going to a broadway musical that night, I can report. Furthermore, I drove us home unscathed. We returned to find Isaac fast asleep at the hotel and David luxuriating with his favourite book (the Michael Caine autobiography). We both felt deeply satisfied as I went to bed, after such a day full of Nashville!

Friday, Nov 3 to Chapel Hill NC:
The day spread out in front of us like one long highway; well, in fact, it WAS one long highway. It was 13 1/2 hours of a long highway from Nashville to Chapel Hill. Though we were retracing our path much of the way back through NC, still the the Smoky Mountains are worth a second look, with their grey smudge of treetops bounded by autumn yellows and dull orange.

David and I have made a mental note that, on any tour of any length whatsoever, a break at half-time is crucial. It is past the halfway mark and we all know it, and we're baked. It was bound to happen. Maybe it even happened because we had a little taste of time off at the hotel in Nashville..! The kids are cranky and spacy and sometimes resentful, and by bedtime are almost hysterical, the olders teaching the younger martial arts skills we didn't know they owned. We grown-ups are calm, reasonable and fair ---- AAAAAKKKKK ---- LiarLiar Alarm!!! We are frayed at the ends and tired out. We'd like a day off parenting. Like completely. And the kids would like us to have that day off, too. If you ask them, they will say that all they want (and is it so much to ask) is to go to McDonalds for breakfast, A&W for lunch (with playplace), a pee-down (playground) for the afternoon, Burger Barrel for dinner and a luxury hotel with wireless, hot tub, pool and room service for the night! I know I'm wrong to repeat myself about the economics of this, or to wind up my tiresome "thinking like a team" voice, so I am trying to adopt my mother's "We'll see..." sigh, which admittedly didn't sway my siblings and me much either back in the old days.

Anyway, with nothing of value to report about the 13 1/2 hours, let me tell you about our team-mates while they're not looking:

Nicole lost her first (and still only) tooth on the first concert day of our tour - just like she promised. She continues to be a miracle of personal shape-shifting, going from the silent and absent reader, curled up in the back seat, absolutely oblivious to all passing shapes and colours, to the vigilant watcher. She is the one who will grill her father on how much gas he has (and is it enough?) in the middle of a long drive. She will complain loudly about having homework to do at all and then hunker down and do the whole thing in one go. And marvelously, she will sit and teach her little brother, on the beginnings of drives (when I am sitting up front to navigate us with maps and internet trajectories and little scraps of paper with directions). I will become aware, through the morning busy-ness, that she is helping Isaac identify states on our official US map placemat, giving him flashcards to answer for his vocabulary work, and leading him in printing letters on his "Preschool Homework". She is a born teacher. She, of course, is the one who is effective with every animal she meets.
In LOVE with every animal he meets is Isaac. This boy, who could not speak a word before March first, is now a virtual motor-mouth. He sings along with Pj and Nicole's CDs (which they can rig up with earphones to work for all 3 at a time), and can quote the songs as if they were the patter from a Gilbert and Sullivan chorus (but not one recognizable word of English). He begins each day pretending to be baby bunny and crawling into bed with the adults, and ends each meal by becoming a kitty. In fact, when we watched "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", at the moment upon which Aslan the Lion emerged from his tent as the noble leader of the just world, the wind blowing his mighty mane about his glorious head, the crowd swelling in a battle cry, Isaac chirped happily, "A fluffy little kitty..!" He is such an even-tempered little team-mate, and I only wish he would keep his shoes on his feet.
Patrick's biggest surprise, perhaps, is that everybody thinks he's a girl! His hair is very long and I guess that's all folks see, along with the fairness. I have taken to covering for folks so that it is not such a relentless experience for him. Tonight, a host remarked: "Patrick is SUCH a neat name for a girl!" It took me a split second to realize what she was saying. Pj is the most connected to the geography of our tour and will say such things as (about his morning pancake) "This one should taste like Delaware." He is our Asker of Most Excellent Questions" - especially at bedtime, to get his mother hooked into talking. He also seems to be dejected some of the time. I guess it makes sense that our child who is the most connected to his friends and activities back home would have a hard time with the "mystery" of each new moment on this tour. He loves luxury, and has never truly bought his parents' conviction that we are incredibly rich - in friends, in experiences, in memories, in hospitality, in yard sale clothes, in dumpster strollers... etc.

Anyway, there are the 3 young Good Company members, and by the time we rolled in to Chapel Hill, to the sound of our host's welcoming voice on the phone, all three were asleep. We carried each to foamies on the front room floor of Kathy Peck's home, grateful for a home to come home to.

Saturday, Nov 4 Chapel HIll NC:
The Church of Reconciliation (Presbyterian) has a statement in its worship bulletin: "Neither race nor gender, neither ethnic origin nor sexual orientation, neither age nor infirmity, neither marital status nor educational background, neither economic condition nor any other aspect of personhood will divide this Christian community, this Household of God. For We Are One in God." Reminiscent of a certain piece of scripture: "Neither height, nor depth... can separate us from the love of God."

It has been Joyce and Bill Peck who have been corresponding with me about a visit to their community and they are people whose lives are based on those very words. Bill grew up in Guatemala until the age of 13 and it put an indelible mark on his character. Much of his and Joyce's lives are taken up with Guatemalan solidarity and support projects. He tells a story of how his father was one of the first Presbyterian missionaries in the country. On a day in which he and some others had ridden up into the hills, to territory never seen by a white, they found themselves surrounded by people who lived on the land and felt threatened by their presence. Surrounding the white guys, the group made their own threat. Says Bill: " They knew that the Presbyterians were completely opposed to drinking liquor and would disgrace themselves if they drank. So the leader pulled out a bottle of whiskey and told him to drink it or die." His father was in trouble - damned if he did and if he didn't. However he was not defeated. He was wearing his college wool sweater with the big W on it. With one arm in the air, he held the bottle in his other hand, and poured the entire draught down his sleeve where it was swallowed up by the knitting. The opposing team broke up in laughter. Bill's Dad had won them over with humour.

A certain amount of internet and e-mail impediments had made Joyce's and my correspondence difficult, so it took a while for the folks at Church of the Rec (as they call themselves) to actually learn that I had nothing to do with "Linnea in Monet's Garden" (a famous children's introduction to Monet's Impressionism)..! However, once we got that straight, we were ready to offer song to a group of folks who had come to the church to share in a Guatemalan weaving sale. As they tucked in to rice and refried beans in the church multi-use sanctuary, we sang a few songs, a couple in Spanish. I had the chance to enjoy the weaving and buying myself. In particular, David and I bought a couple of complementing woven vests. ("Say... nice vest!" "Hey - pretty jacket!" No, not like THAT. Oh, never mind!) Our hosts were excited to show us how the money was going to continue the work in the Guatemalan highlands where access to water was changing the lives of whole communities.

We had a wee afternoon off, in which we decided to go hang out at the local Weaver St Market. (I had had the idea to drive to Raleigh, only miles away, and attend the actual MONET exhibition which - completely coincidentally - was showing there, but with crowds, advance sale tickets in 15 minute installments, it was clearly too much for our crowd). Instead, this organic/natural food store was our kind of place, with a latte and internet for me and then for the kids (the computer, not the coffee). It was enough. Joyce and Bill took us out to a nearby Chinese buffet restaurant for dinner. We shared conversation (and chaos, for our part) with them and Kathy, while perfect Chinese versions of old American hits like Moon River wafted oddly behind us.

We set up the laptop in Kathy's living room, piled big cushions upon foamies and all watched half of the Chronicles of Narnia, giving thanks for relaxed hospitality and miracles like running water.

Sunday, Nov 5 Chapel Hill NC:
The Church of the Reconciliation is found in a nook of forest, like a cottage in the wood, tucked in with a playground and children's house around it. It is wide and open inside, with moveable, comfortable chairs. The clergy, Mark Davidson and the music director Allen Willcox, both agree that the church is a great place to work because there is no particular "way" that things have to be done. People are open to new and surprising things every week. Katie Ricks is the youth director, so adjustment to quick change is her job description.

Worship celebrated All Saints Day, remembering those who were gone from and before us, with an interpretive dance piece about the Rainbow Bridge - the place of passage. David joined Allen at the end of the service for a rousing "In Christ There is No East Nor West", which folks sang in a large circle, by heart and with a great beat. Back at her house, Joyce fed us on Central American foods, and Bill showed us the way out their back door to a forest walk. Nicole and I mostly skipped together along the forever-soft carpet of leaves. When we slowed, we heard owls calling to one another in the late afternoon's fading light.

The church youth group invited us to share in a spaghetti supper and the night began. This concert was taking place because of some coincidences - or co-incidents. Just as David Golden's (Florida) friend Shannon Giles (just moved from Portland) had offered to find us a Chapel Hill venue, our friend Ross Smillie (Alberta) dropped us a line to say we must contact his friends, the Pecks. With energy coming from all those directions, it seemed important to go!

Add to this the e-mail that came to me in virtually the same week: A Rebecca McCulloh wrote enthusiastically to me to ask if she and her group might use my song "How Then Shall I Live" in a Christmas fund-raiser story/song CD. IN CHAPEL HILL, NC. This again was such a surprise that I had to ask them if they could join us in performance (sight unheard)..! And so Edwina the Pig's hilarious monologue was told in a most vivacious and porcine way by Sara Hofer and the large group of singer/instrumentalists surrounded us and sang my song. It was a splendid evening - and a real ecumenical one as the group came from the Church of God, and many of its members were from yet another denomination. If you want to know more about Edwina and the story of her being on the Ark, e-mail Rebecca and Co for a copy; its release is imminent!

Monday, Nov 6 to Myrtle Beach SC:
What did the Ringling Family parents worry about..? Surely not that their kids would climb up high things. People in rest stop welcome centers seem very worried about a little boy wandering between women's and men's bathrooms. I felt I needed to make a show of telling Isaac that we don't leave grown-ups and play on our own, at the stop outside of Durham, but after it has happened the fifty-fifth time, you feel the edge of the words wear down like a knife of wood.

We could feel that the air was warmer than it had been over the past few days as we left our friends in Chapel Hill, so some of us had our photo taken with Bill, in bare feet. It was a brilliant, clear day and we spent most of it just coasting from North to South Carolina, snacking on Halloween treats between meals. At the almost border, a sign indicated that we could go visit the SS North Carolina battleship so, on a whim, we pulled off the highway through a huge gate into the immediate sight of an enormous World War II ship. Artillery shells lined the driveway like pilons and beyond the parking lot, the ship's stacks and radar towers stood massively above it all. It was an arresting sight.

We decided that we could best appreciate the ship without going into it - especially as we were told that it really took almost 2 hours to make a proper tour of it (War Appreciation rate). We read about its WWII history, how it was commissioned in '41, had an illustrious career downing Japanese aircraft, rescuing its own fallen planes and acting in combat, was once torpedoed, and was finally de-commissioned in '47 and soon after claimed by North Carolina as a heritage site. We left a donation in thanks for seeing a part of recent southern history. However, the best part of the tour was the "Don't Feed the Alligator" sign along the tourist railing. I turned to the man having a leisurely cigarette on the bench behind us. "This isn't a joke?" I asked. "There are really alligators here?" Yep, there were 3 or 4. And we weren't even in the deep south yet.

OK, maybe THAT's what Mrs Ringling worried about. The surprise dangers you never even thought of - let alone prepared your children to combat.

David and I both recognized the name "Myrtle Beach" when we looked for a camp-spot in our (gift) Coast to Coast membership book. We drove in along the beach highway at the edge of dusk, just as the floodlights began to hit great, monstrous Amusement Parks with south sea waterfalls rushing semi-magnificently over manufactured mountains, Aztec gods gazing out over the Myrtle Beach Christian Retreat Center (where life is awesome!), just next door to the Discount Beachwear Bazaar. David realized that he probably had recalled the town name from prizes in television gameshows. I'm thinking it might have been the Rocky Horror Picture Show for me.

Omygosh, I don't get it. The neon strip, the gawdy fun-for-money - and then the "resort". Looks like we were the last to make it in because ours was the last small slice of ground available for rent. The place was like a condominium of RVs. Huge rolling palaces all of them - each for 2 people. And packed in absolutely gill to gill. I cannot imagine what the appeal would be during the summer when all you can see is wall after wall of vehicles and people! The young woman at the desk was absolutely clear that there was no regular current electricity for the likes of us - only the 30 and 50 amps that large rigs use.

So, I got an idea. I approached our next door neighbour RV - in the dark - and introduced myself, to ask if we might actually plug in to THEIR vehicle, so we could get AC that night. Turned out they were from Quebec and I had my second opportunity to speak French on our trip to the US. This time I was faster! He assured me that there was indeed our kind of electrical outlet and he was right! We set up the camper for bedtime, and the children and we watched the second half of the Chronicles of Narnia on the grown-ups' fold-down bed. Then, the Ringling brothers and sister climbed to the second tier of this tightrope act and eventually went to sleep.

Tuesday, November 7/06 to Charlston SC:
The rain on the McDonald Playplace was driving so hard at the window and the wind blowing so violently at the palm trees outside it, that the view through the glass was like one of the hurricane videos we have seen on the Weather Channel. As it tapered off, I invited David to take the moment to grab some lunch fixins from the grocery store across the street, now that the other side of the street was actually visible. He told me that any store whose advertisements at the top of each window included "worms, shrimp, crickets and hotdogs" would not be having his business. I think he's picky.

We did pick up sandwich foods and carried on down an intra-coastal highway that is lined on either side with pines, palms and oak tree forests for pretty much the entire length of the state. When a sign invited us to view a plantation historic site, it seemed like it could be a good place to have a meal, too. The Hampton Plantation was un-staffed on this particular day, its earth roads spread with puddles and spongey lawn covered in new lakes from the rainstorm. I convinced David to take the risk and we drove right in through low-hanging forest, to a welcome building and picnic shelter that would keep the mosquitoes out. The air was thick and warm, heavy with the antiphon of tiny frogs. We changed into sandals.

There was a snakeskin lying by the door of the picnic shelter.

After lunch, we followed a gravel path to the genteel remains of a successful southern plantation. Its grand white two-storey mansion was upheld by the thick round columns one expects of a southern estate. In its front yard stood an overwhelmingly large oak tree which should have been cut down a long time ago. Precisely 250 years ago, actually. In that year, Mrs Pinckney, mistress of the house, remarked to a guest that she was planning to have the tree cut to improve the view of the building. Her guest disagreed, saying that no (hu)man could make a tree grow, so they should not presume to end one's life either. Her guest was George Washington and the tree - and it IS an eyesore - stands to this day.

It was late afternoon by the time we reached Charlston. The usual van-wandering into and out of hotel parking lots looking for effective wireless wasted us more time (I'm sure - I dearly hope! - I will look back at these kinds of comments in future and rejoice at how we don't have to do THAT stupid thing any more). In any case, we left our chariot along a park at the waterfront and brought out the Blessed Stroller from Beacon (as it ever more shall be called) and turtled through the streets of the downtown core.

Charlston fired the first shot of the Civil War, they say, and Fort Sumter is still there to prove it, an island out in the harbour standing guard over the jewel of the city. The downtown has history draped around every home and courtyard. Scrolled fences, stone stairways, tall thin buildings of light and pastel colours sit tightly together, with small front yard or back stone patio, vine-covered walls and steps. The dusk often has a moment of inattention in which you can catch a glimpse in living room windows, and there we could see sometimes paintings, ornate wooden furniture, a grand piano.

Isaac missed all of this because he was staging his own revolutionary war. At 4 1/4, he now cares about his own independence with a passion that is all-consuming. And if, as I did, you eventually realise that he is holding the whole family hostage with his demands to wander by foot up house entries and across car traffic, and you resolve, as I did, to put him in the BSB (see above), he will rail and lament repeatedly until all the way to the next meal. So, our mystical tour through the dusky streets of Charlston, South Carolina, lacked the antebellum romance for which we had hoped. We grown-ups, anyway.

As dusk spread in from the water and the gaslights fluttered on in the streets, I spotted something shining on the edge of the street near the curb; two delicate Christmas decorations lay glittering in the lamplight. One, a sequin-beaded silver ball I gave to Nicole. The other was a glass icicle with a thin gold core; that was Patrick's. I told you about me and God's garbage..!

We made it to our campground, and to our surprise, discovered that we were next door to another VW - this one a lifer: Patio lamps strung jauntily all across their front windshield.

Wednesday, November 8/06 to Savannah GA:
OK, so the 'drive until late afternoon and then sightsee' approach had perhaps not been the most effective yesterday so we decided to reverse that order and visit the city of Savannah right away in the day. A long drive around the city's downtown eventually afforded us a double parking spot and we left our van with 3 hours in the meter in front of the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Then began the walking. The trouble with having very little time wherever you go is that you have to march directly to where you want to go, see what you want to see and eat at the very place you want to eat. We couldn't even figure out which way was up! We went on a certain kind of intuition about where a great and authentic restaurant might be (fending off the begging - no, I don't mean poor Georgians; I mean our own kids asking for burgers and fries!) And the thing is - apart from the Sacred Garbage gift and an ability to think up the next song on a stage - I have no such intuition! More tragically, neither does David.

Savannah has ornate and tightly-tucked homes with flowers and bushes blossoming in their front walks. The sidewalks are often made with oyster shells cooked right in them (I had noticed "Oyster Recycling Depots" along the highway...). At regular intervals, the street lines are broken by commemorative squares, remembering the battles fought, the movements founded, the momentous events bridged, the Christmas songs written. Statues, plaques and house signs prevail. This was the city that was spared General Sherman's March to the Sea, in the Civil War, in which he burned everything in his path. Instead of burning, he rested in the beauty of the city.

Everything is from the 1700's - unless it is from the 1800's! The earliest founded African-American church is here, the oldest Reform Jewish temple is too. There is a graveyard for the battle-fallen of the revolutionary war. Not to mention the square (and subsequent churches and sites) which mark the birth of Methodism in North America here in this city! Oh man, I hope that no-one from my theological college is reading this since I left them in Week 409 or I'd be too humiliated to tell you I was completely nonplussed to find John Wesley standing on a city street pedestal with a bible in his hand in Savannah, Georgia.

And so it was that we walked quite a stretch around town, looking for an authentic southern lunch until all of 3pm. It was desperate. So desperate that we were at the point of ordering at a local deli, when I took out the downtown guide and there gleaming on its pages was the ad for "Hannah's Southern Cooking". THAT was what we wanted! Armed with directions from the deli staff and a phone-call to Hannah, we were headed - they assured us - for a few short blocks to lunch... Twelve blocks later!! Still it was worth it: smothered chicken, lima beans, green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, black-eyed peas. If nothing else, we could say we ate right in Georgia.

We followed the map to Fort McAllister State Park for camping that night. Nobody was very hungry for supper, and perhaps we never will be again.

blessings to all,
Linnea

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