Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ing all your life, clawing your way to the top, putting in long hours, neglecting-your fam-
ily, stabbing people in the back and generally being thought a shit by everyone you came
in contact with, just to have a highway bridge over the Tallapoosa River named after you.
Doesn't seem right somehow. Still, at least this one was named after someone I had heard
of.
I headed east for Savannah, down Interstate 16. It was a 173-mile drive of unspeakable te-
dium across the red-clay plain of Georgia. It took me five hot and unrewarding hours to
reach Savannah. While you, lucky reader, have only to flit your eyes to the next paragraph.
I stood agog in Lafayette Square in Savannah, amid brick paths, trickling fountains and
dark trees hung with Spanish moss. Before me rose up a cathedral of exquisite linen-fresh
whiteness with twin Gothic spires, and around it stood zoo-year-old houses of weathered
brick, with hurricane shutters that clearly were still used. I did not know that such perfec-
tionexistedinAmerica.TherearetwentysuchsquaresinSavannah,coolandquietbeneath
acanopyoftrees,andlongstraightsidestreetsequallydarkandserene.Itisonlywhenyou
stumble out of this urban rain forest, out into the open streets of the modern city, exposed
to the glare of the boiling sun, that you realize just how sweltering the South can be. This
was October, a time of flannel shirts and hot toddies in Iowa, but here summer was unre-
lenting. Itwasonlyeight inthemorningandalready businessmen were loosening their ties
and mopping their foreheads. What must it be like in August? Every store and restaurant is
air-conditioned. You step inside and the sweat is freeze-dried on your arms. Step back out-
side and the air meets you as something hot and unpleasant, like a dog's breath. It is only
in Savannah's squares that the climate achieves a kind of pleasing equilibrium.
Savannah is a seductive city and I found myself wandering almost involuntarily for hours.
The city has more than 1,000 historic buildings, many of them still lived in as houses. This
was,NewYorkapart,thefirstAmericancityIhadeverbeeninwherepeopleactuallylived
downtown. What a difference it makes, how much more vibrant and alive it all seems, to
seechildrenplayingballinthestreetorskippingropeonthefrontstoops.Iwanderedalong
the cobbled sidewalk of Oglethorpe Avenue to the Colonial Park Cemetery, full of molder-
ing monuments and densely packed with the gravestones of people famous to the state's
history-Archibald Bulloch, the first president of Georgia, James Habersham, “a leading
merchant,” and Button Gwinnett, who is famous in America for being one of the signat-
ories of the Declaration of Independence and for having the silliest first name in Colonial
history.The people ofSavannah, in a careless moment, appear to have lost old Button. The
historical marker said that he might be buried where I was standing now or then again he
might be over in the corner or possibly somewhere else altogether. You could walk around
all day and never know when you were on the Button, so to speak.
