Week 10: "The Chronicles of Linnea": GA FL AL LA TX

2006-12-01

"Life is a book and (the one) who stays home reads only one page," said St Augustine. Mind you, he didn't have to experience highway public bathrooms. I keep making the mistake of asking at hotels and rest stops and gas stations if I can use their "bathroom". Blank looks. "I mean washroom! Um, lavatory?" Eventually, with relief, they decipher my meaning: "OH - our RESHROOM!"

Thursday, November 9/06 to Jacksonville FL:
We were at Fort McAllister, just south of Savannah, Georgia - a fact that I usually have to recite to myself first thing on waking. Which state are we in, today? We have been travelling through a state a day. I'm not proud of this; in fact, I feel a hovering sense of frustration that we are skimming the mere froth on the surface of the country. I can only hope that the pages we are reading of our own lives on this trip are giving some framework for more learning, more travel and at least a sense of the spectrum that lives beneath the surface.

Case in point: Fort McAllister has the oldest earthworks of a Civil War fortification in the country. We sailed right past it and its museum on our way out the gates of the state park. The children had begun the morning on the campground playground, beneath the skinny trees that formed a tall dome above our sites. Spanish Moss draped from every branch. It was such a serene morning that I suggested they do some schoolwork on the picnic table. Then, we left.

We were headed for Jacksonville to visit a couple who would put Florida on the map for us. I had met Maynard Cox at the (aforementioned) Soulfeast event last summer - but not by that name. He called himself "Snakeman", and without any smalltalk, I learned that this senior Cherokee/Nez Perce/Irish man was a world specialist in snakes and other hazardous forms of animal life. His cellphone was on call for emergency direction to people all around the world about snakes. Maynard and I had kept up correspondence since that event because he is such a good storyteller and because he kept calling us "the last of the beautiful people".

Maynard was featured in a National Geographic special called "Snake Bite" which showed him on his rescue missions to homes - removing diamond-backs and coral snakes from kitchens, porches and bedrooms. The narrator says: "Maynard has caught upwards of 7500 snakes, by his own count. He's been bitten 139 times, declared dead twice and lost half a finger." He has a rattler and a water moccasin in his freezer.

If you are like David, you feel a kind of blank numbness come over at the very suggestion of snakes, so it was an act of grace on David's part to attend this visit (no matter how great the hosts!), especially as Maynard is a gifted snake raconteur. He's seen what they can do and has for them a kind of respect borne of both love and extreme wariness. Because in over 50% of the cases of snake bites, the bite is on the victim's hand, it seems that at least half of human-snake regrettable interactions are the result of trying to "reach out and touch somebody"! As our host said, with rattlers it's a case of snake serum or "it's all over but the diggin' and the singin'.'"

We stayed up into the evening, all of us trying to get a bit of work done on the computer or (in David's case) on the guitar, but the conversation kept breaking in anyway. We asked him about Steve Irwin, the controversial Australian animal adventurer who had recently lost his life to a stingray. As a former navy seal, Maynard knows what divers are like and he described how it is a diver's trick to come upon stingrays cloaked in the ocean sand and startle them. They glide up in front of them and tap them quickly on the back. The animal responds by thrusting its stinger-loaded tail forward in defense. No danger when you are head-to-head. Our friend's suspicion is that this is what was happening on the day Steve was stung through the heart, and he confirmed it with Steve's dad, who is an old friend. Either Steve made a mistake by coming from behind or perhaps a camera operator triggered the animal into awareness. Both Maynard and Steve's father think this latter is the case.

Some people don't know how to retire - from work or from the day. But nobody but Snakeman's wife wants him to, in either case, so there's the problem. The children's sleeping bags made a sprawling corridor around our bed, covering every inch of floor, their beautiful bodies draped in all directions.

Friday, November 10/06 to Keystone Hts, FL:
The day broke early and it was Kaya's fault. The little dog is the image of my parents' Welsh corgi, except the colour. With a pup resembling beloved Uncle Wellie in the Cox house, Isaac rose as quickly as possible in the morning, to seek and throw ball. We were all up in short order and no matter. We had things to do.

I know I lost any sympathy you had for the hardship of this trip somewhere back near the resort in Tennessee, so it won't do any good to tell you that the pool was cold. It really was quite chilly. Night blooming jasmine and confederate jasmine bordered the pool, their colourful blossoms beaming broadly; even the flowers are southern patriots. Nicole pointed out a lithe little gecko running along the deck, disappearing under the pool furniture.

Although we have had on our list of Florida To-Dos to go to the Kennedy Space Center, we could see by late last week that it was going to mean keeping a pace of intense driving that we have had for all too long. So, we reluctantly chose against it and followed the one-state-a-day driving along the coast to here. Even this morning, we might have decided to go to the Jacksonville Zoo, with its 2 hours' drive and expense, and we just decided that we all would enjoy life better if we went to the playground. We were right; the "playground" was a wooden castle with walls, painted with mediaeval crests and hundreds of children's coloured handprints along every edge calling children to their own kingdom. Its inner court had climbing, swinging, balancing, pretending and stairs to climb to walkways. Kids owned the place.

As we stood surveying the rampant noise and fun around us and soaking in the Florida sun, a little boy approached us: "I haven't seen my mummy in a long time," he said. "Do you know where she is?" I had no real worry that she was close by, but we gazed out with him around the lines of swings, the sandbox where David was stopping Isaac from pushing a boy over, the castle walls where Nicole and Patrick were joining in with children in a game of something like tag and destroy, the hubbub of rushing children. "What does she look like?" asked Gloria kindly. He informed us: "She has long, long hair in a pony tail and her hair smells of lots of beautiful smells. She's tall and she has a big bottom." I make a point NEVER to laugh at children - it's my pledge of respect. But, on this occasion I had to turn away. And hope to goodness I didn't find his Mom.

As Gloria prepared chicken salad sandwiches for us, we got to sit on the bed and watch Maynard's National Geographic DVD. He gave us the book he had written on safety with animals and insects in the area - and an extra copy of both for our next host, David Golden - who was new and not friends with the local animals yet, he figured.

David is the composer of the funniest song I sing in concert: The Three Tenors (about Fred who sings in the choir). We met in Portland, where he was music minister, after I began singing this song off his album "What I Did on my Summer Vacation". Since our meeting, he and his partner, Joyce, and 2-year-old, Matthew, have moved to Keystone Hts, to this new place and position. After a mere couple of months on the job, he thought he could dare bring us in for a concert.

He met us at the church, where we set up for the following day's concert and then drove out of town to our hosts for the weekend: Mary and Walt Snider. At a turning that suddenly took us onto a dark beach-sand road, shaded by palm trees and oaks, a driveway emerged and wound us past a barn and paddock where 3 horses stood attentively watching our arrival. The house was a beautiful, bright, single-storey home, surrounded by flower beds and footpaths. Mary came out in jeans and a baseball cap to warmly greet us and it wasn't long before she had the guys following her to the barn. They returned, following her slow golfcart, holding the back half of a futon. That would become the children's bed.

It was a magic place, set apart in the forest. Walt told us that Mary had designed the home herself, with its cathedral-like ceilings and indoor pool (indoor by Florida standards - the pool was inside a room whose exterior walls were screen-only to the outside world). Chilly - I'm tellin' ya!

Saturday, November 11/06 Keystone Hts, FL:
David Golden had written to me 3 weeks ago and related the local weather report: "Last night on the news the weather man warned us that a cold front is moving in, so today we can only expect a high of around 70, with wind chill in the low 60s. Yes, he really mentioned the wind chill, and I don't think he was joking." This probably tells you more about David than about Florida. Keystone Heights United Methodist Church folk seem to be pleased with their new music minister, speaking warmly of his ability to bring a high level of musicianship to the choir, praise band and congregation and his very low-key non-judgmental way with everybody. David's quirky humour is not obvious when you first meet him. It comes out in off-beat moments and definitely in his songs. I'm sure I remember that he introduced us in Portland as bringing Southern Gospel music to the church - that is, SOUTHERN by the Canadian map..! Anyway, he seems to have won the hearts of the different sides of the congregation, and that is a feat in a church.

Patrick and Nicole awoke early because Mary had promised them they could assist when the horses were to be fed - and watch them fight for each other's breakfast. Mary took them out on the golf cart and let each drive; it will remain a highlight of the tour for Patrick, who treated it like teen driving lessons. Nicole, I understand, just bore down on the go-pedal and took off like a shot. Isaac and I took a slow walk through the bare trunks of the wood, stopping to draw letters and pictures in the path. As we have been encouraged to engage him in imagination play (given some speech and social delays he has), I was happy to see him draw bunnies and kitties in the dust. Later, however, he sat right down on the ground and before I could ask what he was up to, he proclaimed, "Mummy, I'm on da toilet!" And indeed, he had drawn the tank and seat of a toilet and was sitting right on it. Could a mother be more proud..?!

We swam in the pool - well, plunged in a couple of times. The kids asked Mary if she could heat up the pool and she gave them the same answer as Maynard had, back in Jacksonville: "It's Florida." David and Joyce and Matthew joined us for hamburgers on the grill, and it all ended without ceremony when it was time to whip up to the church to sing.

Of course we sang "The Three Tenors" to our Keystone audience that night, with Maynard and Gloria sitting in the front row. Wonderfully, the audience was made up of the pastor, the musicians, choir and praise band as well as enthused others, some of whom remained out in their cars until the last few seconds of the Florida Gators vs. the University of South Carolina football game, which was held only miles away in Gainesville. We were lucky; the Gators came out on top just before the hour. Coulda been a hard concert.

Sunday, November 12/06 Keystone to Alabama
A light overnight rain had left the ground damp and the air fresh when we emerged to pack back up for church and leaving. There, David and I discovered to our surprise that the "apron" for the front of the van had ripped at one seam, leaving the entire piece hanging from its remaining moorings. Irreparable. Goner. We hadn't noticed that before. After we were done considering the usual suspects, we looked at how the van was parked up against the paddock fence. Whenever we had had to get in to the van, we had to make a break for the door because one of the horses was a young nipper! The horse lick on the wing mirror sealed it: this was a horse prank. We unceremoniously removed the former apron and gave it the same funeral as our ex-awning (see Wyoming: Wind: Van is lighter now)

Three worships and each of them different! Pastor Don preached up a storm at the 8am service, telling a story about the day he saw the space shuttle Challenger go up in flames and 3 pieces, while he was on the job with a cable crew - a former lifetime. One of the men who knew him to be a Christian spun him around and asked him: "Where is your God now?!"

I reflected during the middle service and - forced by sheer popular demand - sang The Three Tenors again. I could see people slapping their neighbours during the singing, saying, "THIS is the song I was telling you about!" At the end of the third service (how does anybody keep up this pace?), Don invited David and me forward and, with no warning, asked David Golden to join us. With hands laid on us and with prayers, he anointed David J and me - with oil - to the mission ahead of us. A first for us.

Later around the sales table, people were most warm and appreciative. One woman stayed to ask about how it was faring with introducing my music to new churches. She related the story she had heard from a woman whose work is on the speaking circuit. In the beginning it was hard getting bookings and then, she said, she came across two words that helped change everything. My mind raced after the festival of faith that we had just attended that morning... He lives! .... Jesus saves! .... I believe!

The words, when someone called to ask about her availability?
"Which year..?"
I'm going to try that.

We drove with resolve and speed all afternoon and evening, arriving at an RV resort just across the line into Alabama, which I had actually booked days in advance, knowing that we would need a goal for the day. Armadillos by the side of the road.

Monday Nov 13/06 Alabama to Louisiana:
It's funny - well, maybe a miracle actually that it hasn't happened before now. I had felt really good about making advance reservations for this campground just inside the curb of Alabama, but as I contemplated the trip ahead of us to San Antonio, I was totally baffled: What had I been THINKING to only go about a third of the way of the journey when we only had TWO DAYS to make it there? We rose with muted hustling to get on the road - a trip that looked easily like it could be 15 hours long. Or more.

We were hours into the trip during the morning, the children working away at Road School, when Nicole casually mentioned it was Monday. And suddenly all the little fractured pixels of my mind tumbled back into place for a brief moment of lucidity. It was only MONDAY. We had THREE days to get to our destination. I sat in stupefied silence for a long moment before I called up to David that we had a whole extra day to travel in. We almost didn't know what to do.

It was a while before I simply said, "I guess you could leave the highway here." It was the Atchafalaya Welcome Center. I didn't recognise it - let alone could I pronounce the thing, so I didn't expect much from our quick attempt at re-orienting.

You know, a really good Welcome Center can give you the clear impression that you have been guided by the hand of God to the very place you are about to see. An automated horned tortoise in a wall-sized forest backdrop invited us to hear the story of the Atchafalaya (A chuffa-laya) Basin. His neighbour raccoon hurried us into the room next door to see a short film about the place, before a crocodile could make its pretend way out from behind a large stump toward us. The film conjured up the mysterious and tumultuous bayou wilderness. With the pounding of the thunderclaps still in my head, I walked up to the welcome counter to ask what we should do here. If we were going to be here for a short while, we were going to be focussed about it.

Well, growing up in New Brunswick, I did learn that Louisiana was one of the places that the Acadian people went, in a mass Expulsion that practically cleared Nova Scotia of its francophone population back in 1755. I certainly was aware that we were in Cajun country as soon as we came into the state. However, the Welcome Centre we happened upon at this time was situated at exactly the locale where the Cajuns began to call home; it was the heart of Acadia. The women at the counter spoke with accents gently Maritime and yet with a southern drawl and something else... something that I couldn't put my finger on. As they pointed out the towns of St Martinville and Lafayette, mere miles from us, I suddenly realised I couldn't speak, for wanting to weep. I wanted to say: "You are my relations..! Look - I'm here!"

The story of human suffering is recorded in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "Evangeline". I have seen the statue of Evangeline in Nova Scotia, where she sits still searching for her lover, Gabriel - taken away, only to be found in the south when it is too late. Another such statue sits in a devotional area at the back of the Mother Church of Acadia in St Martinville. The characters are fictional, although there is an oak tree that marks the spot where two lovers, who are said to be the real-life inspiration for his poem, were reunited - in vain. They say it is the most photographed tree in the country.

At Mulate's (pronounced "moo-LAT's") Cajun Restaurant, we arrived to find we could take a couple of tables right along the dance floor before the musicians and other visitors arrived. A simple, flat building with wooden floors and walls, and a glittering array of business cards thumb-tacked to every inch of the ceiling, the restaurant is a famous local venue for Cajun music - every evening of the week. I replayed in my head every Cajun song I had ever known to plan what I would have for dinner, and David and I shared a gumbo - a salty, rich soup of seafood. Patrick won the Food Adventurer award by ordering - and eating - fried ALLIGATOR. Our server had said that it tasted somewhat like chicken and it was true; moist and tasty.

Then, Jay Cormier and his band showed up, set up, sat down and struck up their accordion, bass, fiddle and drums. This is not sittin' music! Suddenly couples were on the floor, doing the two-step. By the time 4 or 5 songs had gone by, a woman in her fifties was showing a group of young adults how to do a simple dance move. I tried joining them all with Isaac, but moving that fast and holding a road-weary four-year-old did not go together. We reluctantly had to leave just when the dancing got good. That's alright; we asked for an evening of Cajun and we got it!

The road to Fausse Pointe state park (which we had to scurry to reach before the 9pm lock-out time) was low and winding, passing through sugar cane fields, small houses on small blocks, ramshackle mobile homes and then new and landscaped homes and gardens. The smell of burning canes greeted us as we passed a field ablaze in low drifts. Fog suddenly emerged on a piece of road further into the wood, surrounding a passing truck and disappearing as quickly, like a haunted vessel. When we found our campground - then campsite - then reshrooms, I made a quick note to not rise in the night to relieve myself there. A far walk from our site they were, and in the dimmed lights of the grounds, with the sounds of hooting owls, plaintive calls from out on the bayou and mosquitoes everywhere, they did not look inviting at all. The wash house was raised high on thick wooden stilts and I knew it was because of the damage that flooding can and does do every year. However, Snakeman had got reptiles on my mind, so I couldn't help worrying what might be in the bathroom stall if I should stumble in there in the night.

As it was, I did rise later that night and simply sat me down on the concrete parking bumper behind our camper to relieve myself of the memory of a beer. David told me later that this is why it is called an abuttment.

Tuesday Nov 14/06 Louisiana to Seguin TX:
The sign above the still-battered highway into Texas from Louisiana announces that it is 896 miles to El Paso - the farthest western point along the Number 10 Highway. That made driving to the outskirts of San Antonio look positively breezy at about 650.

We had spent the morning at Vermilionville, a reconstructed historical village in Lafayette. This was school time for the kids, so we walked through a series of time periods and cultures: a First Nations home made of canes (in which a low fire would have been kept burning to keep away the insanity of mosquitoes around here), an Acadian home, woodworker's house (whose workshop in the front room had, among other things, a coffin in it), the Roman Catholic church, the forge. The kids don't remember, of course, but we have seen spinners and weavers in settlement reconstructions in every land we have visited - sheep fleece spinning in Christchurch ANZ and Kings Landing New Brunswick. The neat thing was to see how the wool and flax spinning skills that the Acadians brought from the north became cotton spinning in the south. I got to speak French with folks, but had to fake understanding the accordion player in the schoolhouse - too local! Rain showers broke out periodically to try and punch a hole in the humidity, to no avail. We ordered jambalaya at La Cuisine de Maman before heading out after the noonhour, on the road again.

We drove from early afternoon well into the evening, in the direction of Seguin, near San Antonio, when we began to look for a restaurant for supper. The miles went on as child after child dropped asleep, and David and I - never really hungry at all in this heavy humidity - finally drew up to the Holiday Inn, where Greg Ronning had booked us a room for 2 nights. Our room sat along the inner courtyard facing the pool and the children rejoiced in their weary night-time stupour. Patrick managed to stay up late enough to share a ham sandwich with us around the hotel telephone table. Very happy.

Wednesday Nov 15/06 Seguin TX:
"Look down the street!" I was trying to get Greg Ronning to tell me which street to drive down, once we went awry of the map he had drawn us. Now, perplexed on the street corner of Texas Lutheran University's campus, we were being told over the phone by our host to simply look down the street. I hadn't even told him where we were. Of course, I'm not really used to the miracle of cellphones, and there he was a full block away, waving to us to come his way. How DID he know that this VW pop-top camper and weeny Little Guy trailer was US..?

The Chapel is a beautiful and towering church with soaring black interior arches, giving it the look of a boat in flight. I got to tell one of my favourite stories/songs these days: "Cast Your Net on the Other Side", and to tell these college students, who are about to head into the dark night of mid-term exams, that these 7 fishers had a night of failure - all the while trying to be the fishers they used to be. But when you've been called, you can't go back; we can only go forward, knowing God has gone before us, and prepared the way.

We asked Greg what his favourite lunch place was in town and so he took us to a Mexican restaurant with square, unfancy tables and a bona fide clientele. "I can't remember its name," he said, when we looked at the sign and couldn't really make out what it was called. "I just call it 'that little Mexican place on Guadalupe St.'" Greg's been pastor at the university ever since he was first settled after seminary, thinking it was temporary. But, he loves his job, and his laid-back manner suggests he might be in the right place. "Here comes the hardest moment of the day," he says, as he changes from shorts into long pants, for the benefit of worship. Coming from California, he doesn't like the climate, and he says his family can't camp until Thanksgiving. But the atmosphere is right and the people are alive. He likes it here.

Needless to say, we had to try out the pool, back at the hotel that afternoon, although the winds were reportedly 45 mph. The sun was brilliant in the perfect blue sky, but the wind tore at the palm trees and it was painfully cold - so cold that Patrick actually RAN back into the room and wasn't seen again for a time. Nicole plunged in, of course, and paddled about until purple. Isaac had, I think, planned to only prance around the perimeter of the pool, but after a most delightful dance resembling a gecko climbing a wall, he missed a footing and fell hilariously into the icy water! That'll teach him.

Not.

The afternoon we spent at Faith Lutheran Church with a group of children, singing and sharing in stories and fun. A group of TLU students and youth leaders had joined us to observe and assist, if necessary, and they and their leader, Kevin, invited us to join them for pizza, after the barking and dancing were over. We had a neat evening of sharing thoughts about seminary, which some of them are headed for (and one rejoices that he is NOT headed for) and pizza of all kinds. Patrick joined us, while Nicole and Isaac stayed back with the children's group and ate ..... pizza! As we drove back to the church after dinner, to collect the children and trade vehicles, one of the students - Amber - turned to me and, with a shy smile, asked me, "Y'all like peh-CAHNs?" Turns out Seguin (pronouned Say-GEEN, by the way) is the country's PECAN capital. Well, it has the largest pecan sculpture perhaps in the world on display in a public square. I'm sorry I missed that.

The children and we grown-ups ended a perfect Seguin day by pulling our LCD projector out of the Little Guy to hook up to my laptop and project a DVD movie onto the hotel wall before bed. We have never done that and boy, did it work. Greg called in later, to say that one of the children at the programme had come down with chickenpox after our time together. Luckily for us, Patrick and Nicole both got that on an ill-fated Alberta tour years ago. This 15-week extravaganza is a walk in the park compared to THAT tour.

Thanks for continuing to join us on our great long walk in the park!
Next installment: We remember the Alamo in San Antonio.

Linnea

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