Savannah, the gem of September 2001

September 9

The sun rises on Tybee Island behind a mess of low clouds and misty remnants of rain. I’m stirred awake by a fierce itch at my ankle. Reaching down for the welt, I find a pair of them, and at the same time become aware of another one at my elbow. My bites are modest, though, compared to Brian’s; he’s sitting up and scratching madly around what looks like measles threatening to overtake his whole calf. The restless night comes back to me, feeling crowded out of my sleep for eight hours. It was his body heat I’d been warding off in the oppressively humid air, but the added intrusion of so much mosquito venom justifies it better.

            I tell him not to scratch, then find the calamine lotion at the bottom of my duffle bag in the front seat. While he applies it, I drag open the side door, exposing the 80° world of mud outside. We sit amidst our wadded sheet staring dumbly down at it. A clammy film covers me.

            Finally I say, “I cannot, cannot wait to see Savannah. But...I need to take a shower.”

            Brian feels the same. But how is it possible? We are supposed to keep this shower-less hovel as our base camp until tomorrow, until we are finished with Georgia.

            “Can we afford to move?” I ask mechanically. He responds with one nod, as if there is no longer any question, and we literally never set foot in “The River’s End” campground again. We pull all the gear over from the front seats and brush our teeth in the back of the van, spitting out the side door into the sludge puddles. We squirm into day-old shorts and t-shirts, climb into the cockpit, and take off. 

We get coffee from a gas station and stop at the Tybee lighthouse. The oldest and tallest in Georgia, stationed at Fort Pulaski, it has its requisite plaque explaining when it got there and what ships it saved. It also has a park and a charming groundkeeper’s house, but I have the sniffles, and the gloomy weather discourages me from getting out of the van just yet. The place is of course deserted this early on Sunday morning. We drive around in a few circles, and then just park, take a picture out the window and sit sipping our coffee, sniffling and scratching, tracking the digital clock toward a reasonable hour for early hotel check in.

Once we’re leave the island, we are officially in downtown Savannah, on River Street, and soon we come upon the Savannah Waving Girl statue, the symbol of southern hospitality. We park again, wander in the mist for a few blocks along the mossy stone wall and flowering trees that lead to Factor’s Walk--a mile of  shops and eateries--then return to the van and sit some more. There’s a full-arc rainbow over the river and a pirate ship parked at its wharf.

“We’re like the army,” Brian announces, “we do more before 9am than most people do all day.”

After casing by van the first six streets off the riverfront, we stop at The Marshall House hotel, because it looks classy from the outside—half the block long with scrolled white columns and green shutters—and because the AAA book confirms that the room prices are mid-range and that it has a delightful atrium courtyard. As usual, I wait at the curb while Brian works something out, dozing until he returns with a card key.

            “We’re psyched,” he says, grabbing all his essentials from the dashboard compartments and then his duffle bag. I throw together my own stuff and scamper after him across the sidewalk, through the heavy door with the brass pineapple handle and into the lobby, trimmed in mahogany and toile. Behind a round oak table with an enormous bouquet of white hydrangeas, is a carpeted staircase that we follow up to our room. It is heavenly, not just because any hotel room will do right now, but because it has blonde wood floors, a high tray ceiling, powder blue wainscoted walls and a patchwork quilt on its tall four-post bed. The boutique bathroom has a pinstripe shower curtain and pedestal sink; the toilet flushes from a pull chain. I immediately turn on the hot water and peel off my clothes. Brian goes back downstairs to move the van into the garage.

            “This is my favorite place in the whole world!” I sing through my second helping of shampoo when he returns.

            “What’s that?” he calls from the other side of the curtain. 

I stick my sudsy head out. “The best place ever. I love Savannah.” 

“Good.” He adds his clothes to my pile on the floor and steps into the shower as I step out. I wrap myself in two plush towels, proceed directly to the feathery bed, and curl up to study the street map he’s brought from the lobby.

“We can walk everywhere,” I tell him while he dries off, “even though it’s humid and maybe raining; we might need layers.”

“Right.” He puts on his cargo shorts and t-shirt, and knots a slicker around his waist. I have to cut off the tag dangling from the sleeve with my key chain Swiss Army knife.

“New raincoats!”

After this morning’s revival it is cause for glee. His is green, mine Paddington Bear yellow. I cut my own tag and tie my slicker over thin khaki pants, and I put sneakers on for the first time all week; today I will sweat rather than be eaten alive. 

Savannah is immediately just what I'd longed for, a wonderland of narrow streets and lovely row houses which stand out even amid the copious drapery of ivy, dogwood, willow, magnolia. The tour map is mostly colored green and calls the 22 squares on its list “the jewels of the city.” At almost every intersection of cobblestone street in this historic district, there’s a lush patch of lawn bordered with hedges, flowerbeds or benches, with a gazebo, statue or water-feature centerpiece.

We come to Oglethorpe Square first, named for the general who founded Georgia’s oldest city. Here we begin a pattern of pauses, sitting next to an impossibly old man in a tweed coat, smoking and staring up into the Spanish Moss that softens and haunts everything. The first plaque I photograph denotes the custom house, where Oglethorpe lived for awhile. The next shows me the Second Baptist Church, at Greene Square, where General Sherman turned to the thousands of former slaves who had followed his fiery march through the confederacy and issued Special Field Order 15, aka Forty Acres and a Mule. Sherman had presented Savannah to President Lincoln as a Christmas gift, but needed a few more weeks to determine what should be done with the vast homeless black population that had become free behind his notorious advance. We can sneak between the lines of our history books and southern family folklore here, just by wandering around—no museum necessary. There is another Americana lesson to read around every corner, another spectral gala to discover on the wrap-around porches and beyond the scrolling gates of private courtyards.

We wander through the Daughters of The American Revolution archway to Colonial Park Cemetery, where mosquitoes congregate in the wildly overgrown grass. Other visitors join us in the silent skirmish against them, slapping at arms and necks, struggling to enjoy the architecture of the ancient crypts and crumbling monuments. Headstones are pressed into a brick retaining wall along the cemetery’s east edge. Prominent men are buried in a line with their three consorts as well as their wife and children. The most Bourgeois of the interred have their own lamp posts and wrought-iron fences around their graves. It’s a community, albeit perhaps a creepy one after dark. Engulfed in the flat quiet that usually comes with snow, except for the buzzing of bugs, I’m taken in by the saga that tumbles through these markers. But I can stand slapping uselessly at my buzzing arms for only so long.

Brian joins me on the sidewalk as the clouds suddenly gush forth three minutes of warm rain; we rush into our slickers and stand still like children, holding hands, until it passes. Murky sky holds down the sense of a clandestine world; the streets shine black and steam rises off the palm fronds. In a few trance-like hours we cover about forty blocks. Chippewa Square, familiar from Forrest Gump, where James Edward Oglethorpe stands immortalized. From his plaque we learn that when he plotted the city in 1733, he included all the squares to serve as military training grounds, preparing the militia in each original district to defend the colony of Georgia. Lafayette Square, flanked by the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist and the Flannery O’Connor House, which I’d love to go inside but it’s closed Sunday and Monday. Instead I scribble down the phone number from a “for rent” sign on the lavender door of an adjoining apartment with matching shutters and crystal beads hanging between porch columns.

Monterey Square, featuring the Mercer House and Bird Girl statue, best known in modern times from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Barrister offices with grumpy gargoyles on their vestibule roofs, gazelle statues flanking the front steps, fern baskets hanging from the railings. Scallop detail threads together the various Victorian, Romanesque and Greek Revival structures. Row after row of uniform windows with delicate panes, and mirrors hung on the porch walls, gates made of iron-carved ivy. Everything requires a closer look into the adornment and flora. Saffron-colored steps lead into shadow; cherub-topped fountains murmur as orange bugs crawl out of their basins. Wisteria trees in the side yard. Ceramic drain spouts sculpted into carp. And flash downpours recharging the scene several times more throughout the afternoon. Trolleys and pedi-cabs cart the tourists past us down Bull Street. I marvel at the 50 foot tall, 270 year old Chandler Oak, just registered with the historical society. The still bigger one in Charleston could not have been more impressive.

In sprawling Forsyth Park—the oldest in the city and the frequent venue of war reenactments—we linger by the Parisian fountain, its swans and Neptunes spitting water into the pink azalea bushes, as streaks of resplendent sunlight sway in and out. Hanging our new raincoats from our heads, where they dry within seconds, we study the battle inscription at the base of the ornate monolith behind busts of Generals Bartow and McLaws. Brian is provoked into a jarring rendition:

War! Huh! Good God! What is it good for, absolutely nothin’! Say it again!

He’s finally responding to my serious inquiries from yesterday, but I cut him off before he becomes a spectacle, and skip toward a health food market I spy across the street. We re-fill our water bottles at their drinking fountain, since we’ve already gulped down four of them in our submission to the still-rising humidity. Brian grabs a stack of fruit bars and I fill a bag with fresh peanut butter cookies. We float past more courtyards and shuttered-up mansions, shooting video of the church spires, accompanied by the peal of Sunday bells.

            More shady squares compel more breaks for zinging feet; more soggy cigarettes shared as the mosquito concerto plays on. We admire Goosefeathers bakery, Leoplod’s ice cream, and The Velvet Elvis lounge. City Hall with gold leaf clock tower and dome; Reynolds Square, with another monument to the founder of the Methodist church. Wright Square, whose memorial is the president of the Central Georgia Railroad and grandfather to the founder of the Girl Guides, which we now call the Girl Scouts. A memorial to the spot where John Wesley knelt down and believed. People live forever here. We are exhausted by the time we have circled back to Bay Street, where we see the Savannah Cotton Exchange, behind whose gryphon fountain the price of antebellum cotton was set for the whole world.

When we return to our rapturously cool room, Brian falls into a nap and I pen a few postcards alerting friends that things are impossibly enchanting in Savannah, and I may not come home. Later it will be pointed out that this is a confusing message paired with a postcard image of a cartoon mosquito captioned “Georgia State Bird.” Indeed, it has been a puzzling journey so far. How have I now dispersed all the anxiety and doubt, the bad donuts, bickering and indecision, traffic jams, missed landmarks and muddy frustration of recent days? A magic trick, achieved with the sleights of pampering and persistent treasure-hunting. The nuisance of mosquitoes consumes me and then is countered by a breath of Atlantic wind or a swath of flowering trees, a rich meal, hot shower, historic revelation, comforting place to lean my head.   

At six o’clock I rouse Brian and wait in the blue striped armchair by the window, gazing down into the serene leafy courtyard, while he changes clothes. If hard reality comes to the door now I can easily ignore it. Savannah has won me because it’s generously self-contained, and rich with hiding places. 

At dusk we return outside, walking in a new direction toward the river. At the bottom of a precarious wooden staircase we are back on Factor’s Walk again, the long wharf where we ended our first stroll early this morning. Now we understand that it may be the tourism heart of the city. In addition to more statues and plaques, it supports vendors and performers with bare feet and cigar boxes full of crumpled bills. Their voices and tambourines ignite the evening. We keep to the east side of the street, where we can almost reach out and touch the Savannah Bridge and the wheels of the riverboats—the Georgia Queens I and II—that glide under it. The tourists keep to the other side, where the haberdasheries, peanut, candy and soap stores are. 

The lamplights, like the stars, reflect in the dark river, and the rain-washed breeze brings the temperature to what might be called mild. We have mojitos on the balcony of a Polynesian bar.

“Is it everything you thought?” Brian asks me.

“It is. For the first time since we got off the plane, it’s what I though times ten.”

“Pigeon Forge was pretty cool,” he winks.

“For sure, and Gatlinburg and Atlantic Beach and all that, but we had no expectations. This place had a lot to live up to, and it totally does. I know I said I could live in those houses on Cape Hatteras, or even Tybee yesterday, but I meant in a fantasy life. This place feels real. I'm sure it's not all like this outside the historic district, but I could seriously check out the rent on one of these little row houses and come live here for awhile. If I could get a job I guess.”

“Yeah, that might be the dicey part. There’s an art school, but I don’t know if they need English teachers.” Would he really even entertain the idea with me, though? I hadn’t pictured him in my images of living here.

“I know. I know I can’t really do it. I’m just beguiled. The trees blow my mind. And I guess I love how it’s all walking, no car necessary. It seems like Europe."

"It is like Europe. You're going to feel this way about New Orleans, too."

"Maybe..." I'm not sure, though. The pleasure in this place is not about the party electricity. Busy as it, it's somehow so beautifully quiet. "This will be hard to top. All the history is just, like, embedded here; you don’t even have to reach for it. It’s the first place that doesn’t seem at all staged, you know.”

“Wow, you’re gushing.” He is pleased. “I’m glad you liked it.”

“Thanks, Babe. I did.”

But I don’t want it to be finished yet, especially not at this touristy Polynesian bar. I get the whole Barabary Coast thing but I want to be with the people who really live here. We request the check without ordering dinner. We take the long way back down the riverfront, past where the stores and street vendors taper off and it’s just us and the ghosts (living and dead) that lean against the rock wall in the damp darkness. The path ends and the road beside it curves up a ramp back to Bay Street, where a park full of oak sentries recedes into the gathering fog. The tendrils of moss are silver and I feel like a Disney damsel in an animated cell. A few blocks further on I am wooed by the locals carousing on the steps outside the Moon River Brewing Company across the street.

“This do it for ya?” Brian steps on his half-smoked cigarette and points at the door.

“I believe so.”

We can't hear each other over the loud classic rock in here, but cheese grits in a soup bowl, soppy pulled pork sandwiches, and one more pint glass to bring home…yes, that’s a strong finale. For the encore, we go to the Marshall House bar, and take our decaffeinated B52s to a game table with leather club chairs reminiscent of the Peabody. We tie in two rounds of ebony/ivory checkers at the inlaid table, drain the fancy coffees, and retire upstairs to bed.

What the hell was I thinking when I planned to camp through a weekend in Savannah? Picture absolutely anything the place conjures; camping can't be in the picture. This hotel room, with its eyelet curtains swishing gently in the blue dark, is too good to close my eyes on. I find the TV remote atop Gideon in the bedside drawer, push the power button and am startled, as it’s the first television I’ve watched in ten days. I had not missed it, but now it serves its purpose. HBO is premiering a World War II mini-series called Band of Brothers tonight. I remember reading some hype about the Spielberg production in my Entertainment magazine, and it seems serendipitous, the way it dovetails with the revelations of warfare I’ve been tromping through. I engage the TV’s sleep timer, and am shortly dreaming, despite the shells exploding in the background.