EAST - The Lost Continent - page 57

I toyed for a moment with the idea of grabbing the woman by both ears and driving her
forehead into my knee, but instead passed into the next room where I found the entrance
to a small cinema in which they showed us a crackling black-and-white film all about
Roosevelt'sstrugglewithpolioandhislongstaysatWarmSpringstryingtorublifeintohis
spindly legs, as if they had merely gone to sleep. It too was excellent. Written and narrated
by a correspondent from UPI, it was moving without being mawkish, and the silent home
movies, with their jerky movements that made all the participants look as if someone just
out of camera range was barking at them to hurry up, exerted the same sort of voyeuristic
fascinationasFDR'slegbraces.AfterwardswewereatlastreleasedtoseetheLittleWhite
House itself. I fairly bounded ahead in order not to have to share the experience with the
old people. It was down another path, through more pine trees and beyond a white sentry
box. I was surprised at how small it was. It was just a little white cottage in the woods, all
ononefloor,withfivesmallrooms,allpaneledindarkwood.Youwouldneverbelievethat
this could be the property of a president, particularly a rich president like Roosevelt. He
did, after all, own most of the surrounding countryside, including the hotel on Main Street,
several cottages and the springs themselves. Yet the very compactness of the cottage made
it all the more snug and appealing. Even now, it looked comfy and lived in. You couldn't
help but want it for yourself, even if it meant coming to Georgia to enjoy it. In every room
there was a short taped commentary, which explained how Roosevelt worked and under-
went therapy at the cottage. What it didn't tell you was that what he really came here for
was a bit of rustic bonking with his secretary, Lucy Mercer. Her bedroom was on one side
ofthelivingroomandhiswasontheother.Thetapedrecordingmadenothingofthis,butit
didpoint outthat Eleanor'sbedroom, tucked away at the back anddecidedly inferior tothe
secretary's, was mostly used as a guest room because Eleanor seldom made the trip south.
From Warm Springs I went some miles out of my way to take the scenic road into Macon,
buttheredidn'tseemtobeawholelotscenicaboutit.Itwasn'tunscenicparticularly,itjust
wasn't scenic. I was beginning to suspect that the scenic route designations on my maps
had been applied somewhat at random. I imagined some guy who had never been south of
Jersey City sitting in an office in New York and saying, “Warm Springs to Macon? Oooh,
thatsoundsnice,”andthencarefullydrawingintheorangedottedlinethatsignifiesascen-
ic route, his tongue sticking ever so slightly out of the corner of his mouth.
Macon was nice-all the towns in the South seemed to be nice. I stopped at a bank for
money and was served by a lady from Great Yarmouth, something that brought a little ex-
citement to both of us, and then continued on my way over the Otis Redding Memorial
Bridge. There is a fashion in many parts of America, particularly the South, to name things
madeoutofconcreteaftersomelocalworthy-theSylvesterC.GrubbMemorialBridge,the
Chester Ovary Levee, that sort of thing. It seems a very odd practice to me. Imagine work-