Deep South Tour - Fall 2011 - Day 16

We had the usual buffet breakfast and set off into Savannah, Julia’s internet research had yielded Savannah Dan who did daily walking tours of the city. We found his starting point and waited. Julia had spoken to his wife on our mobile so we knew we were in the right place and several other couples arrived to reinforce our belief. Just after ten Savannah Dan appeared, He was slightly large than life, dressed in a pale cream seersucker suit and matching Panama hat, he introduced himself and saluted another man in our group who had also been in the US Military, when he got no real reaction from the ex-soldier he kept his salute in position and remarked, “I never drop mine until I get one back!” His victim threw him back a salute and the briefing continued, “As we will be on crossings cars should stop for us, but let me get the traffic stopped before you cross. They will yield to seersucker!”
His outline of the development of Savannah was very illuminating, he pointed out that the city was a grid of squares joined by streets; he claimed that at each square two sides were devoted to banking and commerce while the other two were housing. We were starting at Johnson Square, named for Governor Robert Johnson of South Carolina who had supported the colonists in their early stages.
The walk took us to the next square which was where Tomo-Chi-Chi, was buried. He was the great chief of the Yamacraws, the local tribe of native Americans, who had befriended the settlers and on his deathbed he announced that he wanted to be buried with his new friends. Some years later his gravesite which formed a monumental mound in the center of Wright Square was destroyed to make room for the erection of the Gordon Monument. The wife of the governor of the time took it upon herself to take up arms in defense of Tomo-Chi-Chi and managed to get a memorial placed in the square. On it an inscription reads: "In memory of Tom-o-chi-chi. The mico of the Yamacraws, The Companion of Oglethorpe, and the Friend and Ally of the Colony of Georgia." it is possible this is the only memorial erected for a Native American by descendants of European settlers.
SD told us that the ground around the stone is beaten flat and kept weed-free by the many Girl Scouts that he takes on tours, he gets them to run round the stone three times chanting, “Speak to us Tomo-Chi-Chi great Mico of the Yamacraw” when they complete their circuits he tells them to put their ears against the stone to hear what he says.
He then asks what they heard and someone always says, “Nothing!” To which he replies, “He always says that!” SD went on to say that there is always one Girl Scout who doesn’t get it, “Bless her heart” he remarked.
The best bit of the tour is Forrest Gump’s bench. First SD pointed out the iconic white steeple which the feather drifts past on the wind, then we reached Chipawa Square, there is a flowerbed by the roadside but no bench. This was where they filmed the opening scene, when Forrest is waiting for a bus. The first bus approaches from the right of the shot and Forrest remains seated. As SD pointed out, the bus arrives coming the wrong way down a one way street, this meant that in addition to all the other arrangements made for the filming the traffic was rerouted. There were most of the Savannah police and Sheriff’s department was at the shoot. There was no great excitement about the whole thing at the time; in fact most people felt that Tom Hanks looking stupid was not news. However, when the film broke box office records and won Oscars, Savannah regretted their previous indifference and wanted as much credit for their part in the venture as possible. They requested a bench to be placed in the municipal museum and the film makers obliged with one of several they had produced in fibre glass for studio takes. Meanwhile the original bench was unaccounted for, SD told us that when shooting was finally over and the circus was moving on, the props master faced with the choice of packing the bench away or offering it to anyone who wanted it he took the easier option, which is why it is in the back yard of a Savannah police sergeant to this day.
We had preceded a couple of blocks when Forrest Gump ran down the other side of the street, without breaking stride SD remarked, “That there is Forrest Gump. Coach. Just a local idiot.” Quoting straight from the movie.
We passed the home of the American Girl Scouts where they were founded. Juliette "Daisy" Gordon Low assembled 18 girls from Savannah, Georgia, on March 12, 1912, for a local Girl Scout meeting. She believed that all girls should be given the opportunity to develop physically, mentally, and spiritually. With the goal of bringing girls out of isolated home environments and into community service and the open air, Girl Scouts hiked, played basketball, went on camping trips, learned how to tell time by the stars, and studied first aid. It also, as SD told us, gave her something to do while her wealthy husband ignored her and brought his mistress into their house.
The tour was one of the best things we did on our entire trip; I would have loved to record the full commentary. When we passed the cemetery he told us two stories which stick with me.
When Henry Ford launched production of his Model T Ford he used a plentiful natural resource, Spanish Moss, to stuff the upholstery as it was so much cheaper than horse hair. Within weeks the mites in the vegetation had bitten all the drivers causing itching and soreness, this led to the first ever total recall, all 32 vehicles.
When Savannah was taken by the Union army their troops were billeted in the cemetery, they made space for their tents by breaking the headstones off at ground level and stacking them against the outer walls. They also evicted the remains from mausoleums in order to sleep inside. Less understandable was the looting from the bodies and the vandalism of headstones for humour, apparently by altering letters and numbers with their bayonet points they produced people who had died before they were born. SD was still quite bitter about all this and he remarked, “The North won the war but we got Sweet tea, Nascar and Lynyrd Skynyrd so its all good!”
While I was amused by his quip I actually take issue with the idea that the sort of hardened soldiers who had fought through the Civil War and seen all its horrors could be criticized for not being sensitive to the long dead in the territory of their enemy.
At the end of the tour we paid SD and he said that please feel free to write positive reviews of him on the various travel sites but could we please not claim he had any supernatural powers for fear of his next customers being disappointed that he couldn’t fly.
Our first stop in Savannah now we were free to explore was Leopold’s Ice Cream Parlour, SD had told us its story as we had passed, it basically combines the best ice cream in the world with movie memorabilia. Having originally opened in 1919 by three immigrant brothers from Greece: George, Peter, and Basil Leopold who learned the art of candy and dessert from an uncle who had already settled in America. The brothers perfected the secret formulas and created the world famous Leopold’s VeriBest ice cream. The original Leopold’s Ice Cream shop closed in 1969. Stratton Leopold, the youngest child of Peter Leopold, kept many of the original fixtures in storage while he pursued his dreams of working in Hollywood. On August 18 of 2004, Stratton and his wife Mary officially reopened the legendary family business. The original fixtures Stratton had kept were used, including the black marble soda fountain and wooden interior phone booth. The shop has a beautiful old-fashioned flair with some modern decorative additions – posters and props from Stratton Leopold’s film career.
We opted for a double scoop on a cornet and immediately realised that a single scoop would have been enough but it was so good.
Next we headed down to the dockside and walked along, as we strolled there was a fly past of two WW2 bombers and I got a great shot of the B17 Flying Fortress but the Liberator was almost out of range.
We next walked up Martin Luther King Street to the tourist information office, Julia went in and asked about the planes and the staff suggested going to visit the Museum of the Mighty Eighth Airforce.
We drove out to Pooler and found the Mighty Eighth Airforce Museum, it took me some time but I worked out eventually that the Eighth was a large combination of all the USAF aircraft operating out of the UK. These aircraft were either long range bombers or their escorts. The RAF undertook the night operations over occupied Europe and Germany while the Americans did the day light operations. Both forces suffered horrendous casualties, the RAF Bomber command suffered 55% losses over the duration of the war and the USAF were similar. I recently watched a programme on TV about the famous Dambuster raid, the Squadron Leader was Guy Gibson, he not only dropped the first bomb but he then followed the rest of his team down their bombing runs to draw some of the enemy antiaircraft fire, anyway his plane and crew returned safe from that raid but by the end of the war they were all dead.
Bomber Command has a personal significance for Julia’s family, her uncle Geoff, her mother’s brother aged 20, was killed on a bombing raid when his plane was shot down, of course that meant that Julia never knew Geoff, Uncle Albert survived the war despite being shot down over Holland. His story needs to be told, when the plane was on fire and doomed, he could not persuade another crew member to jump, and eventually he had to leave him. After being looked after by a Dutch family for several days, Albert decided that he could not keep putting them at risk and left their house. When he was captured and interrogated he asked innocently about which part of Germany he was in, hoping that this would imply he had been hiding from everyone since he had landed. It may have worked because I know he went back to visit the family after the war.
It was poignant then that the museum has an Escape and Evasion Exhibit which is housed within a helper’s home known as a safe house, which allowed many downed fliers to escape from Nazi-occupied countries and return to England.
The POW Exhibit explores daily life for those fliers captured by the Germans, including an examination of their treatment and living conditions, Albert was involved in a “Death March” as his POW camp was evacuated in the face of the allied advance but he survived again.
The exhibits were impressive; I always enjoy the real planes so the Museum’s very own B-17 Flying Fortress being restored as the “City of Savannah” had a special appeal. This time however I enjoyed as much a model of a USAF base showing the base of the 401st Bomb Group. Each 8th Air Force Bomb or Fighter Group had its own air base in England with a similar layout. I found it helped me understand what we had seen in York when we visited RAF Elvington which was a wartime bombing station and is now home to The Yorkshire Air Museum. The control tower at Elvington has a situations board displayed which shows a flight of Halfax bombers, listed by their call signs, that have just undertaken a mission, one failed to set out, engine trouble, several had returned at various times dependant on their damage, and at least three were overdue, feared lost. It brought home something of the true feelings of the time.
In the same way at Pooler visitors have the opportunity to reflect on the sacrifices made by the veterans as they visit the Chapel of the Fallen Eagles. This beautiful stone chapel is built to resemble an English chapel and is meant to give visitors a place of quiet reflection it may in fact do more since not all Americans travel abroad and they may have little clear idea where loved ones spent their last days.
Incidentally while speaking to one of the veterans at the museum I was introduced to the legend of Major General Lewis E. Lyle, he was instrumental in getting the museum up and running but as a younger man he flew a record number of missions from England, I was told he flew many more than were recorded due to his habit of briefing the squadron then as they arrived at their aircraft to make final preparations he would pick a pilot, and give him the night off in order to fly in his place. Since he always brought his plane back the rest of the crew were quite happy with the swap. He did survive the war and in building the museum he joined a group of veterans pledged to honor the courage and commitment of more than 350,000 members of the 8th Air Force. Of this number, 26,000 were killed in action and 28,000 became prisoners of war during World War II.
We returned to the hotel and later drove along to the same area as we were the previous night but we ate at a more expensive venue, The Longhorn Steak House – when we got the credit card bill at home it still looked very good value.

Deep South Tour - Fall 2011 - Day 15

We had considerable debate about Montgomery v Birmingham in Alabama; it was mainly wasted energy because we had little time available for either, we opted for Montgomery as Birmingham added time onto both the day before and after. There is quite a lot to see in both mainly concerning Civil Rights but we had our longest day’s journey ahead of us, 340 miles in, multimap suggested, 5 hours and 20 minutes.
We set off by about 11.00am and we travelled pretty well and reached our Savannah La Quinta by about 5.30pm. I have hardly mentioned check in at any hotel up to now because they had all been smoothly accomplished. We were very practiced by now and had our passports available, our credit card poised and our voucher proffered. The receptionist was charming but, from early on, things did not appear to be normal, she battled with the computer, looked puzzled, looked at us confidently waiting for her to sort it out and returned to assaulting the computer. Then she started to ask us questions that we had not been asked previously, like what beds do you want? I realised something was wrong so I asked if we had a booking on her system, when she admitted that we had not I started checking my file; we were at the wrong Savannah La Quinta! It had the same road address but a different number. Once explained we reset the SatNav and set off again, we were frustrated by the delay after a long drive, and puzzled by the route on the screen, turning us off and sending us in a loop, compared to the receptionist telling us we needed to stay on the same road. We stuck with SatNav, we had known her longer than the receptionist, but they were both right, we rejoined the same road much further on and this time the Savannah La Quinta, knew we were coming and had all ready for us.
We were going to be here for two days and the hotel was further out of town than we would have wished but that discovery was for tomorrow. We asked for the nearest places to eat and when we were told that there was a Chilis only five blocks up the highway we were decided. After a quick change we there eating for $20 but I forgot the two for one beer offer and drank a bottled Corona.
We hit our beds that night well contented.

Deep South Tour - Fall 2011 - Day 14

After breakfast we set off again, after a 36+ hour break from driving Julia was back at the wheel. Our first stop was at Sheila’s house to say goodbye.
The SatNav guided us well and while we were there Sheila phoned her friend, Bobby, an Atlanta taxi driver, so that he would be ready to assist us when we finished in Atlanta having returned our rental car. We were so amused to overhear the conversation, when she told him to look after her English relatives. When she told him our hotel in Atlanta, he must have expressed some concern because she replied, “These relatives are white but they’ll be cool with the location.” We were flattered by her description and confidence in us.
We were all hoping that she would find herself able to join us in Atlanta but she had contractors to deal with in New Orleans so, it had to be doubtful, having Bobby’s number was a good back-up.
We got on our way again, knowing we had 310 miles to Montgomery, our Alabama stop, at the Comfort Inn and Suites. On the way we would go through Mobile and take a time-out to visit the USS Alabama, a WW2 battleship.
The battleship resides on a memorial park next to the ocean which also features a variety of aircraft, tanks, military vehicles and two submarines. Although we spent considerable time there we still did not see everything.
The facts I recall, and have researched later, about the USS Alabama are interesting, the major message is that the Alabama was built when clearer sighted naval experts had realised that the battleship as a concept was finished, the queen of the seas was now the aircraft carrier.
The Alabama was built, costing $80 million, in a record time of 30 months using 24 hour shifts to complete her; she was commissioned in 1943 and fought until the end of the war in 1945 a similar length of time as it took to build her. She is the fifth newest battleship ever built, and no more battleships will ever be built. She was mothballed in 1947 and would have been scrapped in 1963 but was saved by public appeal.
She was called the Lucky A because, during World War II, she lost no American lives aboard her due to enemy fire – the crew lost only 5 men in combat situations during that time, none to enemy fire. Average age of the 2,500-man crew was only 21 years old – it was a young man’s war.
The battle ship was basically a platform to deliver massive fire-power against other big ships or coastal targets, with a secondary armament to defend itself from smaller ships and aircraft.
The USS Alabama had nine 16 inch guns housed in three turrets with three guns each, two turrets forward and one aft. Each 16 inch Big Gun could shoot up to 21 miles accurately. Each time the big guns fired, the shell weighed up to 2,700 pounds, the equivalent of shooting a small automobile, and it took 540 pounds of black gunpowder to shoot it, each time, and the big guns could shoot at least once every 30 seconds. So when the big guns were firing, more than 58,000 pounds or 29 TONS left the battleship each minute!
It took 140 men to man each of the big gun turrets, which were 5 levels deep on the ship. The big gun turrets on the battleship could turn up to 270 degrees, but were not attached to the ship in any way, so if the ship turned over, the turrets would fall out.
There was a colour-coded self-guided tour round the battleship which would easily take two hours to complete.
On the site there is a civil war submarine which was closed up but just walking round it you got the message of how vulnerable the men crammed into it would be, its attack plan was to sneak up to surface ships and fix a mine to them before sneaking off again hopefully before the mine, known at this time as a torpedo, exploded.
There is also USS Drum a WW2 submarine, for which there was another self-guided tour but this time no colours were required, the tour goes, climb down the ladder, walk through the boat, bending to get through doors, squeezing through small gaps, climb up the ladder at the other end! I defy anyone to make this tour last over 15 minutes.
While the crew of the battleship was normally 2,500, bigger than most towns in Alabama, the crew of the submarine was only 72, 7 Officers and 65 enlisted. I cannot grasp how 72 men lived and fought under such cramped conditions.
Interestingly Battleship Alabama won 9 Battle Stars, mainly by shooting down enemy aircraft and shelling islands held by the Japanese while Submarine Drum won 12 Battle Stars by sinking enemy shipping, this as much as anything is a pointer to how naval power was to develop. Head to head the Drum would likely sink the Alabama by a stealthy torpedo attack while the battleship would be unaware of its presence until too late, so the civil war submariners were onto something.
We went round the aircraft display and enjoyed the experience, our favourite aircraft were a P-51D Mustang, inside the display, a B-25J Mitchell parked close to the Alabama, and the Douglas Dakota which must have the world record for longevity as a model and for number of miles flown in all areas.
We needed to move on before we could check out the tanks and armored vehicles, we also missed the memorials.
Vietnam veterans designed, financed, and built the Alabama Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the Park. The black granite walls honor the 175 Mobile and Baldwin County deceased, as well as the 1,213 Alabama Vietnam veterans who made the ultimate sacrifice. The new equally impressive Alabama Korean War Veterans Memorial was dedicated on June 25, 2002, and stands next to the Vietnam Memorial, with 752 Alabamians remembered on the gray granite.
We arrived at the Comfort Inn & Suites on the edge of Montgomery to find it filling up rapidly with fans returning from the Auburn University Football match v Ole Miss, a really big game. Overnight the hotel was full and breakfast was the most crowded we encountered anywhere on our tour.
We ventured out to find dinner but our instructions let us down and we ended up close to the hotel, eating at Cracker Barrel – upside very economic and nicely home cooked – downside the staff were far to keen on getting you in and out in the minimum time possible.

Deep South Tour - Fall 2011 - Day 13

Sheila picked us up after breakfast and we set off again for the day. We started by riding the ferry over the Mississippi as we could not fit a proper boat trip into our busy schedule. As we crossed the river we saw two traditional style riverboats the Creole Queen and the Natchez. Although it was a short trip it served its purpose and ticked a box.
We returned into the city using the bridge and Sheila set course for the worst affected areas of New Orleans when Katrina struck. Over our two days, from Sheila and others we heard two phrases repeated often joined together, they were “after Katrina” and “they never came back”. The level of destruction is hard to imagine and even now, over six years later, things are still shocking on lots of levels. When driving round the low-lying poor areas which bore the brunt of the disaster some things were obvious, wrecked houses, skeletal filling stations but less obvious to us Sheila explained that for every grassed area there were houses that had gone completely. In any given street there were houses which were occupied and those which were deserted, sometimes the deserted ones were in at least as good shape as those which were being lived in, and there were gaps.
The photo I never took is still in my mind, a pair of tennis courts with no netting around them and no net, surrounded by grass with concrete piles standing two or three feet high like headstones for the houses they had once supported.
The same applied to Sheila’s street, she had suffered massive water damage to her home and is still completing the recovery, she had to organise the repairs while still based in Atlanta and it is little wonder that many people couldn’t manage or even face this task, they never came back.
As people talk about Katrina there is some bitterness about big business and government help. Insurance companies coughed up grudgingly and when owners received government compensation it was inadequate and the insurance companies clawed back what they had paid out. There is little incentive for paying home insurance based on this experience. In the areas hardest hit the infrastructure has only recovered in part, schools are operating without being fully repaired, hospitals have remained closed after Katrina, and the shops which operated in the area and made it a community never came back.
There was a limited boom after Katrina, when the money started coming through, there sprang up building suppliers, fast food outlets and cheap motels, all to service the returning people whose houses were not fit to live in.
For those unable to flee the city after New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin ordered the first-ever mandatory evacuation of the city, calling Katrina "a storm that most of us have long feared", the city government established several "refuges of last resort", including the massive Louisiana Superdome, which sheltered approximately 26,000 people and provided them with food and water for several days as the storm came ashore. Others were less fortunate and simply ended up on any high structure above the flooding; when we mentioned TV coverage of people trapped on an overpass Sheila shockingly told us that she had a cousin who died there.
In the aftermath of the disaster there were many stories which portrayed the population left in New Orleans in a poor light, many of these have been discredited but the resentment remains.
From Sheila’s side of New Orleans we set off for our Swamp tour, Sheila has a sophisticated phone set-up in her car and from it she had spoken to various friends who had delighted in telling us that a swamp boat had capsized and those tourists who didn’t drown were eaten by alligators. We were still intent on taking the risk. Julia had looked up from the internet Dr Wagner’s Honey Island Swamp Tours and Sheila had taken it from there, sorting out all we had to do, and the arrangements.
It was about half an hour out of the suburbs of the city and we were well off the beaten track by the time we reached the venue. We checked in and were set to go when called by the resident Drill Sergeant. The trips coming back were school children and they seemed undamaged. They were wearing life jackets but when we set off to our boat none were offered or issued to us. Each boat takes about 24 passengers sitting either along the side or on a central bench. I’m sure the driver/guides are all equally well trained but there is still the luck of the draw, our guide was, I’m confident, the best. As Brian Clough once said “I may not be the best but I’m in the top one”. He found us the wildlife we sought, he drove the boat with flair, he amused us with his anecdotes and he was a fund of general knowledge.
The early part of the tour takes you into the swamp, and our first piece of information was that a swamp is a flooded forest. The trees are adapted to their footing with either roots which protrude from the water to let the tree breathe or very thick bases to their trunk. Both of these features make for great photos and the high water mark on the trees looks as clear as if it is painted on.
We docked by bumping the flat bottom of the boat onto a tree root and our guide answered questions, having given us a warning that he didn’t do politically correct.
Q. Is there such a thing as Big Foot in the swamp?
A. No, we would have a dead one by now if there was, a young one killed on the highway, some idiot hunter would have shot one thinking it was a deer, the way I see it no dead ones means no live ones!
Q. Do you eat Alligator?
A. No I’m a local, why would I eat something expensive and tough with a not great taste?
Q. But people do eat them don’t they?
A. Only tourists and idiots!
Q. Has anyone ever been killed by an alligator in Louisiana?
A. Not since there have been records, perhaps some Native American kid wandered too close to the water and made a new addition to their menu but never since. A few arms and legs have gone missing though so keep your limbs inside the boat.
We set off again, we saw several Heron and Egrets, and then pulled in to see a snake basking in the weak sunshine. Julia is scared of snakes, not like anyone would be scared of a rattle snake in their sleeping bag but scared of any size, any type, anywhere so she was grateful that he didn’t take the boat too close. Later he told us all the ultimate snake story but that comes later.
Across our path he spotted a female alligator swimming at right angles to us some distance ahead.
Q. How did you know it was a female?
A. Lady, this ain’t my first day on the job, this ain’t my first dance. Too small to be male, if it was that size and male it would be a meal for a full-grown male.
He then continued to tell us that we were late in the day and later in the season so we would be very lucky to see a big male at all as they would be hibernating in the mud by now. One male alligator controls over a mile of river and fights to the death any other male that encroaches into their territory.
One of the earlier tours had seen a big male so he headed to where it had been, bracing us for disappointment. By memory the biggest alligators are up to 21 feet long. Suddenly he spotted the big one that had been reported earlier and he got us up close without disturbing it. It was in the shallows and was at least 15 feet long, we watched and photographed it before leaving it alone to head out into the river, it decided that its hibernation spot was calling and it followed us. We stopped and it swam past us, he reckoned that it was heading to a nice muddy area to bury itself and hibernate.
Q. Could you run away from a big male on land?
A. Forget it, they are scary fast, about 35 mph in a burst, and forget any zig-zag crap, they can change direction faster than you.
I thought we were returning to the starting point, which would have made the tour short but interesting, we crept past the floating fishing camps, taking heed of the “Slow watch your Wake” notices, then we continued past the jetty and into the river.
As soon as we were in the wider stream our guide announced, “Lets get some air” and opened the throttle, we flew along and as he turned the boat leant over like a motorbike.
Along the river banks there were nice houses and fishing camps, mainly reached by boat. Apparently new arrivals in the area would let their domestic dog out in the evening and some didn’t return having met up with a local alligator and become dinner.
Amongst the well-maintained buildings were some still wrecked by Katrina, another echo of they never came back, because if your real home was smashed and you now lived in Houston or Atlanta you probably never even checked out your fishing camp. It was also fun to notice that the trees grew real close to the water and in some places the houses had a solid tree growing up through their decking and out through their front porch roof. We progressed quite some way up the river passing under the highway we would need to use tomorrow before we turned back and again “got some air”.
Although we were going pretty fast he pulled the boat in towards the bank where there was usually a female alligator, he called it and when it approached he fed it a hotdog sausage which he had speared on a twig.
We returned towards base and he told the snake story, apparently he had collected a troop of girl scouts for his first run and without knowing a large snake, which had slept the night under the engine cover. When he “got some air” the snake was disturbed and slithered up onto the central aisle of the boat. The Girl Scouts and their leader were all looking outward while he watched several feet of snake appear, as soon as it was all out and on the flat surface, heading towards the front of the boat, he grabbed its tail and flung it over the side, the female scout leader caught sight of it flying past her head and never spoke again on the tour!
We returned to the base and clearly they were packing up for the night and putting the boats away, the drill sergeant was coordinating this, while we tipped our guide who has three daughters attending LSU, I should have asked him to send our best wishes via them to my tennis teammate, Chris Simpson, who is there and his being English means that the chances are they would know him.
Sheila was slightly out of her comfort zone on the boat tour and it was also the longest we went in public without someone recognizing her.
Back in the car however she was in command again, we drove to a Casino and ate the buffet before heading back into town. I struggled with the crabs as the shells refused to slide off the meat as easily as they should. While we walked through the gaming area I was politely reminded that there was no photography and my lens-cap was off my camera as it hung round my neck, I assured the guy that I was not taking any pictures and closed down the camera.
We arrived back on Bourbon Street, Sheila repeated her parking miracle and we walked down the centre of the road sightseeing. It was a much colder night and less inviting. We settled into a bar and watched a group fronted by a girl wearing a kimono and shoulder length black straight hair. She had a powerful voice and we enjoyed the music. After a few songs she pulled off her wig to reveal her shaven head, her explanation that she was too Blankety Blank Hot announced that the money spent on her Swiss finishing school was indeed wasted. It was also brilliant for people watching; there were four incidents/sights which I will share.
1) The doorman was the biggest guy I have ever seen in the flesh, bear in mind I hang out with basketball players and am usually immune to height, he was at least 7 feet tall, he sat on a tall bar stool with his feet flat on the floor.
2) The waitress was wearing a sweatshirt and a hood/mask of a skeleton, making for great pictures as she took orders.
3) Three 30+ ladies were dancing drunkenly in the small area in front of the band, when one of them knocked a beer off one of the front tables she just replaced the now empty bottle on the table and neither wiped up the mess nor confessed to its owner.
4) The group in front of us consisted of a girl, with several friends, she signed up to have her photo taken by a guy with a camera and printer, then to be sketched by a passing artist, only to tell both she had no money! Then by borrowing from her friends and sweet-talking the trader she ended up with both pictures!
We walked back to the car and from there were dropped off back at the hotel, we again went straight to bed having had one of the best of days.

Deep South Tour - Fall 2011 - Day 12

It surprised me how much we retraced our steps as we went from Lafayette towards New Orleans, much of the route was on highways built above water making for really great views and distinctly less great photos.
As we passed Baton Rouge we called ahead to Sheila our friend and guide for our visit to New Orleans; she agreed to meet us at our hotel, The Best Western French Quarter Landmark Hotel. As a contrast Joe Montgomery remembered that we were coming to visit with him when he received our text on the day we arrived, Sheila had been planning our visit and helping plan our tour since we had met in London two months previously, she had warned us to be well rested before New Orleans as she intended to fit as much as possible into her two days.
We arrived and checked into the hotel and as its title implies we were on the edge of the lively French quarter. Ominously the receptionist told us that the area behind the hotel was quite safe during the day but after dark we were to only use one of two streets to return to the hotel as they had bars on every corner and thus there would be people about. When we told her we had a local friend to look after us she looked quite relieved. The hotel was one of the nicer ones we experienced but we were to see very little of it.
On this day it was hot and there were people sunbathing and swimming in the enclosed courtyard, we had a seat in the same area and very shortly Sheila appeared. We showed her our room as she wanted to know if she could recommend the hotel in future, it passed that inspection. Sheila pointed out that the courtyard is a common feature of older New Orleans homes as it was where the slave quarters were located.
We set off on our tour. We rode in Sheila’s new car, a Hyundai, and from the start I was impressed by its gadgets, it had a rear facing camera to assist in reversing but the most amusing feature was on the rear view mirror there was a small readout of the direction the car was traveling. As I was in the back seat I could see this while Julia in the passenger position couldn’t – whenever Julia’s famous sense of direction was challenged she was outraged to find I knew better our position, on the second day I had to tell her my secret advantage.
The first part of our tour was through the French Quarter, driving down Bourbon Street while it still slept, Sheila promised that we would return and see it differently. We then covered the rest of the city taking in the best residential areas and all seven universities?
Sheila so clearly loves her city and her enthusiasm is catching. On this first day we saw little evidence of the damage wrought by hurricane Katrina but that was on the agenda for the following day. Sheila herself evacuated from New Orleans to Atlanta where she still owns an apartment which is rented out, she took her mother to Atlanta and sadly she passed away while there.
Having seen a lot of the city we headed out to do a plantation tour. We drove some miles out of the city to Plantation Parade on the Great River Road – there are four plantations on this tour and we started at the San Francisco Plantation.
To quote - Today the San Francisco Plantation remains a major attraction in Louisiana being visited annually by over 100,000 people. Although the house is antebellum in a chronological sense, it is certainly not typical of the period. Its style and coloration are totally distinctive, and its memories are now locked in time just prior to the War Between the States, when the house was at the height of its splendor.
As we arrived we noted that we had missed the last tour of the house at 4.30 and it would have cost $15 each, we walked in the grounds and I took some photos of the house which should have cost us $10 but nobody asked for that. I have a great picture of Sheila approaching the house to be met by a blonde Southern Belle in period costume; it could make a really challenging caption competition.
We next drove on to the Laura Plantation, here the same provisions applied but the staff were happy to turn a blind eye to me taking some photos in the garden. The Laura house was less ostentatious than the San Francisco being a more modern design and much less ornate.
We moved on to the Oak Alley Plantation, so named for its avenue of oak trees leading up to the front of the mansion. Here we were in limbo, between the gift shop closing and the plantation closing altogether, we wandered freely in the grounds and again I took some memorable photos.
All four plantations were sugar producers and this was evidenced by the huge metal bowls which featured everywhere as decorative items. In the grounds of Oak Alley there was a notice listing the slave inventory of the plantation and on looking up these plantations I found such inventories for every one. The listings include such items as:
Marie, Creole Mulatress, 35, cook, $900
Marseille, Creole Negro, 70, $25
Mary Sally, American Negress, 36, and her child Adam, 2, $900
Mathilde, Creole Negress, 10, $600
Mengo, American Negro, 30, one-eyed, $1,200
Michel, Creole Negro, 12, $600
Ned, American Negro, 35, $1,200
I am reminded that while watching the US Civil War documentary it was mentioned that slavery was the highest value industry in the country and it exceeded all the other industries put together but somehow reading this list the inhumanity of it strikes home. Also by consulting the San Francisco inventories for 1843 and 1856 only 13 years apart the value of an average slave has risen by over 100%; so as war approached the assets of the South were increasing in value and they could see no reasonable way to manage without their slaves.
We headed back into the city and stopped at Deanies Restaurant. We had Gumbo to start and split an order of fried sea food, a Half Seafood Platter, I enjoyed the soft shelled crab but it is hard to get your head round the idea that it is simply dropped into the deep-fryer and you eat the lot.
From the restaurant we headed back to the French Quarter, Sheila’s comment about Bourbon Street coming alive in the evening was so true, she cruised the area and a guy was just getting his car out of a small parking space, as he did so Julia asked if Sheila could fit in, she replied, “If he can get out I can get in!” and she did.
Our time on Bourbon Street was enjoyable and we felt safe in Sheila’s care, it always helps to be with a veteran. Before we entered our first bar I demonstrated my age, glancing at an attractive young lady I thought that brightly coloured T-shirt is very tight, only to realise that her bare chest was painted!
In the first bar we started to realise that Sheila knew nearly everyone, her friend was on drums and she had already been greeted by every doorman we passed. I was approached by a young lady carrying a rack of test tubes full of brightly coloured liquid, she inserted the base of a tube in her mouth and indicated that she wanted to transfer the liquid into my mouth, I could have refused but a steely glare from Sheila sent her on her way without a word.
We looked into several other bars and nobody suggested we should pay a cover charge even if others were. It was really just window shopping until we settled in to Irvin Mayfield's Jazz Playhouse in a luxurious venue on the lobby level of the Royal Sonesta Hotel New Orleans. The live band was lead by a black trumpeter who knew his stuff but was on an ego-trip to end ego-trips. He sat out several pieces but he was quite capable of elbowing the drummer off his seat and taking over. He was a good vocalist but the base player and the saxophonist seemed, to me, to carry the band. We had a couple rounds of drinks and enjoyed the atmosphere. An older guy who knew Sheila got up and did a couple of songs, it was his seventieth birthday, and he still had it. The ex-quarterback of the New Orleans Saints got up and sang, trying to research this guy my best guess is he was Billy Joe Tolliver but I am far from convinced.
Also in the audience was a guy called Steamboat Willie, he was clearly a well respected figure and several attempts were made to get him on stage but he was able to refuse gracefully. At the other end of the spectrum there was a girl of about twenty-three who gave an unasked solo on her harmonica while the band was resting offstage, she then made a play for the lead singer and eventually settled for the band’s manager.
Meanwhile the band was being plied with drink by the “Red Bull” man and they were showing some effects by the time we were thinking of leaving.
As the resident Scrooge, Killjoy, homebody, you get the picture, I was resolved not to try to end the evening while the ladies were enjoying it, imagine my surprise when Julia asked Sheila if we could go back to the hotel at about 12.30.
We offered to walk back but Sheila knew better than taking her eyes off us, Babes in the Wood, so she drove us back to the hotel, even then she was keen to check if we needed some supper on the way but sleep was all we craved!

Deep South Tour - Fall 2011 - Day 11

We travelled on to Lafayette after the buffet breakfast. We arrived at the hotel, La Quinta North, which proved to be the noisiest hotel on our tour but in fairness we had no problem sleeping.
Having checked in we sent a text to Joe Montgomery, the US import in the year after Joe Barber, and he called back agreeing to meet up with us that evening.
During the afternoon we took a ride to the Acadian Centre where we learnt about the development of the Cajun population of the area. There were several houses of various periods transplanted into a small town and all of it right next to a creek which made for some excellent photos.
It was an interesting afternoon with several enthusiasts acting out roles in the houses:
There was a fiddler - creepy guy but our phone went and we were able to flee to take the call – thanks Joe.
There was a gardener – very interesting many of the local plants and vegetables originated in Spain.
There was a wood carver – no conversation and he had barely started on his next project so basically a man with a knife and a lump of wood.
Then there was a black lady doing basketwork – she was so amusing, she told us she came from a large family and decided early that she wasn’t having many kids, as she put it “I had two and that was enough but then another sneaked home and we quit at three!”
Julia and I tried to pull ourselves across the creek on the raft bridge; you are supposed to walk yourself along a fixed rope. We were exhausted when we were only six feet from the dock so we backed up and landed ourselves back where we started.
When we got back to the hotel we brewed up and slowly got organised for the evening. We were expecting to drive as Joe said his truck had too much stuff in it so we waited in front of the hotel with our car. Actually Joe and his wife, Marquita, turned up in her truck and she drove us to the restaurant. We ate at Copelands Restaurant and we enjoyed a really nice evening. Although Joe Barber seemed exactly the same as I remembered him Joe Montgomery had changed, he was much less a basketballer and much more a business man. They are a lovely couple and we found conversation easy. We had a photo-call outside the restaurant and they dropped us back at the hotel having made us promise to stay with them next time we were in the South.

Deep South Tour - Fall 2011 - Day 10

After breakfast we set off hoping that Natchez would redeem itself, and, in due course, it did. We set off back along the Natchez Trace Parkway for a very short distance before turning off into Melrose house, as Natchez dodged most of the Civil war there remain several notable antebellum houses which my learned partner tells me means pre-civil war. Melrose is in many ways the most notable of them; it was built by a successful lawyer John T McMurran.
During the 1830s, Mr. McMurran’s law practice prospered. He and his wife, Mary Louisa, who came from a much wealthier family than her husband, began construction on their estate, Melrose, in 1841. The family moved into the magnificent Greek-revival style home early in 1849. By the mid-1850s, John owned or held interest in five plantations, which included over 9,600 acres of land and 325 slaves.
Melrose is a mansion that is said to reflect "perfection" in its Greek Revival design. The 80-acre estate is now part of Natchez National Historical Park and is open to the public by guided tours, which we took advantage of on this occasion. The house is furnished for the period just before the Civil War. Melrose was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974 despite this date we were told that the house was operating as an upscale bed & breakfast until 1990 and some of the furnishings had never left the house in all that time.
We were shown round the house by an enthusiastic female ranger and we noted the Punka, a fan like device to keep flies off the food, positioned over the dinner table. The downstairs floor coverings were oil cloth which looked like carpet but were painted by hand and were thus easier to clean than carpet. Ironically they are covered by identical carpet to preserve them from our modern shoes, areas are left uncarpeted to allow us to view but never touch the oil cloth and we are expected to accept that the floor is entirely covered but you have to wonder.
Outside of the house there are several outbuildings including the two storied kitchen and dairy buildings, octagonal cistern houses, a smoke house, a privy, slave quarters, a barn and a carriage house. In the hierarchy of slavery the House slaves lived in the upper floor of the kitchen and dairy while the Field slaves had a series of sheds close to the stables. These Field slaves tended the grounds of the estate and it was generally accepted that their lot was significantly harder than the House slaves but nothing like as tough as slaves on the plantations. If a slave misbehaved they could be demoted down the pecking order but that was the sort of reaction you might expect from the most benign of owners, flogging, or branding were also available as a disciplinary option.
In the slave quarters there is a display of various documents relating to slavery, one story relates to the abuse both sexual and physical of a young female slave by a neighbour, with all the good intentions of Mary Lousia and like minded members of the community the best solution they could engineer was to buy the unfortunate girl when her owner had tired of her.
I took a photo of an entry in Mary L’s diary which I will type out in its entirety as it illustrates the best and worst of the paternal Southern view of slavery. She writes:
“We were preparing for the wedding of two of our young servants – two we have reared and trained in the family – the children of old and favourite servants. They were married last Thursday, in our presence, and behaved extremely well with perfect dignity and propriety. They then retired and passed the evening with some invited friends, and had a fine supper, as happy and merry a company as one would wish to see. Would Mrs. Stowe could have viewed the scene, perhaps it might have changed some of her erroneous opinions.”
The above needs no additional comment from me. Along, with the easy observation that the stable block was better appointed than the slave quarters, this brought home the reality of slavery.
As we left Melrose we observed our first Spanish Moss hanging from the trees which is another abiding image of the holiday.
As we returned to the NTP we spotted a sign for Duncan Park Tennis Center and followed its directions. Duncan Park is large and the tennis area is well sited and greets you as you enter the park. There are eight floodlit courts some viewing areas and a pro shop. In the pro shop, not unexpectedly, I met the pro, Henry Hawk Harris. Since we are of a similar vintage we were soon chatting and had I been there longer we would have played. He told me that since many of his players come across the state line from Arkansas and there is a new tennis centre opening there the Natchez response is to build him another 12 courts when previously they had balked at adding four more. I now have an open invitation to play there but I cannot imagine taking him up on it.
We headed on to Natchez and found the self-guided walking tour, the Natchez Trail, which was interesting. We knew from Melrose House that there was another National Historic Home that of William Johnson.
Known as the “barber” of Natchez, William Johnson began his life as a slave. His freedom at age eleven followed that of his mother Amy and his sister Adelia. After working as an apprentice to his brother –in-law James Miller, Johnson bought the barber shop in 1830 for three hundred dollars and taught the trade to free black boys. It was shortly after he established a barber shop in downtown Natchez that he began to keep a diary. The diary was a mainstay in Johnson’s life until his death in 1851.
In 1851 a boundary dispute with his neighbor Baylor Winn found the two men in court. Although, the judge ruled in Johnson’s favor, Winn was not satisfied. Winn, also a free black ambushed Johnson returning from his farm and shot him. Johnson lived long enough to name Winn as the guilty party. Through strange circumstances, Winn was never convicted of the killing. Winn and his defense argued that he was actually white and not a free person of color because of his Indian ancestry in Virginia. Therefore, the “mulatto” boy who accompanied Johnson on that fateful day could not testify against Winn. Mississippi law allowed for blacks to testify against whites in civil cases, but not in criminal cases. Two hung juries could not decide if he was white or black, so Johnson’s Killer walked free.
Although a black man, at the time of his death, Johnson’s owned sixteen slaves. He writes openly in his diary about his slaves and his trial and tribulations of being a slave owner. William Johnson’s diary encapsulates sixteen years of his life. From 1835-1851, Johnson filled fourteen leather bound volumes with diary entries. Today, his diary is an important resource for the study of free blacks, African –American History and American History in general. It is also an important part of his legacy and what sets William Johnson apart from other free blacks during the time period.
Johnson’s house on State Street in downtown Natchez continued to be owned by the family until they sold it to the Ellicott Hill Preservation Society in 1976. The house was then donated to the city who in turn donated to the National Park Service in 1990. After an extensive restoration process, the National Park Service opened the house as a museum detailing William Johnson’s life in 2005.
Our reading of the information in the house yielded another observation; it seemed that most of the freed slaves mentioned were the products of unions between the owner and a female slave, thus creating either embarrassment for the master or some feeling of responsibility for their offspring, either which may have lead them to get their embarrassment/responsibility out of the picture by setting them up away from the situation.
We finished our tour at the Pig Out Inn where I had a “pulled pork” sandwich while Julia had an ice-cream. Later I again refused the supper at the hotel so while Julia had a portion of it I ate the remainder of the previous day’s pizza.
After that we drove back into Natchez and I took far too many shots of the sun going down behind the bridge over the Mississippi – some of which turned out ok. We then stopped off at the tennis club as Hawk had told us that there was a veterans’ session on, there was play but the standard was nothing special.

Deep South US Tour - Fall 2011 - Day 9

Jackson was one of our shortest stops after breakfast we headed on for Natchez knowing that we intended to break our journey at Vicksburg.
The basics of Vicksburg are:
In May and June of 1863, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s armies converged on Vicksburg, investing the city and entrapping a Confederate army under Lt. Gen. John Pemberton. On July 4, Vicksburg surrendered after prolonged siege operations. This was the culmination of one of the most brilliant military campaigns of the war. With the loss of Pemberton’s army and this vital stronghold on the Mississippi, the Confederacy was effectively split in half. Grant's successes in the West boosted his reputation, leading ultimately to his appointment as General-in-Chief of the Union armies.
Dates - May 18 - July 4, 1863
Union Commander - Ulysses S. Grant
Confederate Commander - John C. Pemberton
Forces Engaged - 77,000 Union v 33,000 Confederate
Estimated Casualties - 10,142 Union v 9,091 Confederate
Result - Union Victory
We arrived at the Vicksburg National Military Park by lunch time. By the time we got to Natchez we had traveled the other two sides of a rectangle than we would have if we had taken the route given by our computer. It must have been a similar distance overall but perhaps on slower roads.
The Mississippi River was important in the Civil War because whoever controlled the river controlled the nation, and Vicksburg built atop a 300-foot-high bluff overlooking a bend in the river, occupied perhaps the most strategic location. President Abraham Lincoln called Vicksburg "the key" and believed that "the war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket."
The defenders were very well dug in and had the advantage of the higher ground. The strength of the defense meant that Grant settled in for a siege during which the town of Vicksburg suffered from the regular shelling and starvation as supplies were cut off from them. The rebels capitulated on July the 4th and this has meant that the date, Independence Day, was never celebrated in the area until 1945.
We watched a video presentation in the visitors’ centre which made clear how the events had progressed and from there we drove round the marked route of the battlefield tour with a better idea of what we were seeing.
The battlefield tour is impressive, at all the numbered stops we found the markers that we had grown accustomed to, field artillery to indicate the positions of batteries and many monuments to troops from both sides. Notable amongst the monuments is one to African American troops, mainly freed slaves, fighting on the Union side. The level of prejudice against blacks even amongst the Northern population was such that initially black troops were only given supporting duties away from the front line. At Vicksburg they struck a blow for their respect when such a group were attacked by greater numbers of a Confederate raiding party and drove them off using their discharged rifles as clubs. On occasions where Northern troops in the front line were overrun by Southern forces the white soldiers were captured and the black troops were killed.
About halfway round the tour we had a great view of the Mississippi from the defenders position atop the cliffs and here we saw a unique exhibit. The Ironclad Gunboat Cairo, which was sunk by a mine, though confusingly at the time such mines were called torpedoes, in December 1862, has been raised from the riverbed where the mud and silt had preserved it remarkably.
By studying contemporary documents and maps, Edwin C. Bearss, Historian at Vicksburg National Military Park, was able to plot the approximate site of the wreck. With the help of a pocket compass and iron bar probes, Bearss and two companions, Don Jacks and Warren Grabau, set out to discover the grave of the Cairo in 1956. The three searchers were reasonably convinced they had found the Cairo, but three years lapsed before divers brought up armored port covers to positively confirm the find. A heavy accumulation of silt, swift current, and the ever-muddy river deterred the divers as they explored the gunboat. Local enthusiasm and interest began to grow in 1960 with the recovery of the pilothouse, an 8-inch smoothbore cannon, its white oak carriage and other artifacts well preserved by the Yazoo mud. With financial support from the State of Mississippi, the Warren County Board of Supervisors and funds raised locally, efforts to salvage the gunboat began in earnest.
Hopes of lifting the ironclad and her cargo of artifacts intact were crushed in October of 1964 when the three inch cables being used to lift the Cairo cut deeply into its wooden hull. It then became a question of saving as much of the vessel as possible. A decision was made to cut the Cairo into three sections. By the end of December the battered remains were put on barges and towed to Vicksburg. In the summer of 1965 the barges carrying the Cairo were towed to Ingalls Shipyard on the Gulf Coast in Pascagula, Mississippi. There the armor was removed, cleaned and stored. The two engines were taken apart, cleaned and reassembled. Sections of the hull were braced internally and a sprinkler system was operated continually to keep the white oak structural timbers from warping and checking.
In 1972, the U.S. Congress enacted legislation authorizing the National Park Service to accept title to the Cairo and restore the gunboat for display in Vicksburg National Military Park. Delays in funding the project halted progress until June of 1977, when the vessel was transported to the park and partially reconstructed on a concrete foundation near the Vicksburg National Cemetery. The recovery of artifacts from the Cairo revealed a treasure trove of weapons, munitions, naval stores and personal gear of the sailors who served on board. The gunboat and its artifacts can now be seen along the tour road at the U.S.S. Cairo Museum.
Those reconstructing the ship have struck an elegant balance between rebuilding it and leaving it a skeleton, they have only added new structure where it is vital to convey the design and purpose of the ship.
It must have been 3.00pm when we left the VNMP and continued on to Natchez. The final part of the trip being on the Natchez Trace Parkway, which is a 444-mile drive through exceptional scenery and 10000 years of North American history. We travelled much less than 400 miles on it but it was pleasant to drive at 50mph with few cars in sight and no pressure on our time. As we drove we noticed a round object by the edge of the road, slowing down we saw it was an armadillo about the size of a softball, it was walking briskly alongside the road and as we progressed we saw quite a few more.
We successfully checked into the Bays Inn of Natchez which along with a free buffet breakfast it advertised a free dinner from 5.30pm. Our timing was great we had time to settle into our room and wander back to the foyer to check out dinner. Unfortunately for me the one pot, first come, first served, meal was Chili Con Carne which I dislike so Julia had a small portion and I ate some cornbread. On these holidays we rarely bother with lunch often waiting until we reach that day’s hotel to have a mug of tea and some cookies before we go out to eat properly in the evening.
This night we drove into Natchez but to all intents and purposes, apart from the casino, it was shut. We navigated back to the hotel and ate at Pizza hut across the road from the motel. It was noisy and not great but any port in a storm.
One of our friends had recommended editing a day from Natchez and, had we done so, we would have set off in the morning with no good feelings about the place.

Deep South Tour - Fall 2011 - Day 8

Day 8
Again we refused the hotel breakfast and set off to find Sun Studios before traveling on to Jackson. Having parked at our objective quite close to the Lorraine Motel we found that the studio tours and the building opened at 10.00am. We walked up the street less than a block to find a bar open which would serve us with breakfast. We repeated our order from the previous day but this time we had a considerable wait for our food to come. Initially in a window seat we moved to sit at the bar to get out of the draught.
The owner was coming and going between the bar and the backroom and kept apologizing for the delay – we got the distinct impression the whole place was better suited to the evening! While we chatted to the manager at the bar he asked what we had seen so far and we mentioned Jack Daniels and noted that he had a dispenser of Jack & Honey opposite where we were sitting. I asked what that entailed; he said exactly what it sounds like and drew us off a tot to try, just past 10.00 in the morning. It was sweet and smooth but pretty strong. The food when it came was good and we returned to Sun studios. Julia’s research had led her to the belief that the tour was free but we had to pay over $12 and sign up for the 11.30am tour.
As we waited for our tour we chatted with a lady whose partner, a scot, was on the 10.30 tour, she had decided against it as she had done the tour before and had worked there as a studio musician.
From our tour guide, Phoenix, a musician trying to break into the business, we learnt that Sun Studio is a recording studio opened by rock pioneer Sam Phillips in Memphis, Tennessee, on January 3, 1950. It was originally called Memphis Recording Service, sharing the same building with the Sun Records label business. Reputedly the first rock-and-roll single, Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats' "Rocket 88" was recorded there in 1951 with song composer Ike Turner on keyboards, leading the studio to claim status as the birthplace of rock & roll. Blues and R&B artists like Howlin' Wolf, Junior Parker, Little Milton, B.B. King, James Cotton, Rufus Thomas, and Rosco Gordon recorded there in the early 1950s.
Rock-and-roll, country music, and rockabilly artists, including Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Charlie Feathers, Ray Harris, Warren Smith, Charlie Rich, and Jerry Lee Lewis, recorded there throughout the mid to late 1950s until the studio outgrew its Union Avenue location. Sam Phillips opened the larger Sam C. Phillips Recording Studio, better known as Phillips Recording, in 1959 to take the place of the older facility.
In 1969, Sam Phillips sold the label to Shelby Singleton, and there was no recording-related or label-related activity again in the building until the September 1985 Class of '55 recording sessions with Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash.
In 1987, the original building housing the Sun Records label and Memphis Recording Service was reopened by Gary Hardy as "Sun Studio," a recording label and tourist attraction that has attracted many notable artists, such as U2, Def Leppard, and Ringo Starr.
Phoenix played us samples of the music that grew up there and he made the point that Elvis had to work very hard to convince Phillips that he had talent; the owners dream was to promote the rougher voice of Howlin’ Wolf.
When we had finished upstairs we took the place of the previous tour downstairs in the recording studio part of the building. The fact that it is still the iconic site that it is comes about by pure luck; by the mid 1960s, Phillips had lost interest in recording and had instead branched out into radio. He opened several radio stations, beginning in the late 1950s, and Sun lost its reputation as an innovative recording studio. In 1968, Sun released its last record. In 1969, Mercury Records label producer Shelby Singleton purchased the Sun label from Phillips. Singleton moved the firm to Nashville, and sold the building to a plumbing company, who eventually sold it to an auto parts store, despite all of this the soundproofing was never removed from the walls and ceiling so it was a simple process to restore the studio fittings in 1987. The amusing thing is that the tours and gift shop are so popular the recordings take place mainly at night.
Phillips is held up as an example of poor business practice because he sold Elvis before he became huge but Phoenix contended that the sale to RCA was a good deal at the time. As Phillips saw his label expand massively due to the success of Presley's records, Radio stations and record stores all over the South were eager to play his records, and Phillips realized Sun was not large enough to break him nationally. In February 1955, Phillips met with Colonel Tom Parker, a man as famous for his hustling skills as his managerial skills. Parker persuaded Phillips that Presley needed a national record label to help him further his career, and after several more months Phillips agreed to sell Presley's contract for a $35,000 buy out fee. At the time, $35,000 was an unheard of amount of money for a recording artist's contract, especially one who had yet to prove himself on the national stage.
Although Presley didn't want to leave Sun, Phillips sold his contract because he needed the money to settle debts and pay off costs of a copyright-infringement suit. Phillips, however, insisted that he only offered Presley's contract for $35,000 because he believed it would put off any other record label from purchasing it. Regardless, Presley signed a record contract with RCA Victor in November 1955, and left Sun. Phillips used some of the money to further advance the careers of his other artists, by now featuring Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Roy Orbison.
We enjoyed our tour and soon set off for Jackson, it was a long ride in damp conditions and when we reached the hotel, La Quinta Inn, we settled there rather than exploring the area.
That evening we walked across the interstate over a bridge and settled into Chilis for their generous meal for two for $20. I also scored by ordering a beer and getting two as it was the early evening offer. I suspect that this offer was being well used by a large group of guys eating and watching a football game because strong opinions were being expressed on every play – it really enhanced the atmosphere.

Deep South - Fall 2011 - Day 7 - Memphis

The following day we were based in Memphis and had two of the most popular visits to do, even at this point without benefit of hindsight, we were keener on one than the other. We SatNaved out of the hotel to Graceland. The hotel breakfast was not complimentary so we set off without eating and right after paying $10 to park in the Graceland car park we walked next door to a great diner. Julia had a “short stack” of pancakes and I had bacon and fried eggs “over easy”. Great food and great value. Annoyingly another customer was also going to visit Graceland and the staff were quite happy fort him to leave his car on their parking lot while he did so!
While we were eating a party of four arrived, both men heavily tattooed with Aryan symbols and they ordered big breakfasts – I hope the black lady cooking their meals either didn’t see their ink or exercised some restraint in what she added to their food.
Heading back next door into the ticket sales we opted for Platinum tours at $35 each, this gave us self guided tours of the house and grounds, his car collection, his private planes and other bits and pieces. We then stood in line for the shuttle bus; we managed to be immediately followed by a mother, daughter and two rowdy sons. We were issued with our tour headsets. Two shuttles came and went and the third took us and the annoying boys over the road into the grounds. Julia and I are not great Elvis fans so it is fair to say that the “must see” attraction of Graceland left us a bit cool. We entered the house and were led by the commentary round the ground floor and basement. Inside the house we could use non-flash photography and outside we were free to take unlimited pictures. The furnishings were clearly cutting edge for their time, expensive but on the flashy side. The lounge was the most normal room with a white three piece suit and coffee table but next to it was a music room with a grand piano. Mirrors were not in short supply wherever you looked. We, like many of Elvis’ actual guests, were not allowed upstairs. The dinning room was set out with the best service and looked like a plantation home rather than of its real period. We passed a kitchen but apart from it looking like one we updated at home there was nothing notable about it. From his Jungle room, furnished with African artifacts and fitted carpet on the floor and ceiling, we went downstairs to his TV room, where based on something he had read about a president, he watched three sets simultaneously, Next came the pool room, one of the endearing things I noted was that as a group Elvis and his associates were always playing or competing with each other.
After the house the tour seemed to me to be more about the records and films rather than the man but there were two or three interesting glimpses, in the garage block there was an improvised shooting gallery complete with a man shaped target pinned to some sizable chunks of wood, railway sleepers? Typical of the cult status of Elvis his discarded brass, cartridge cases, were displayed with reverence. He had also enjoyed playing Racquetball so in 1975 he built a court in the grounds of the house; it was state of the art including a weight training area, jacuzzi, the full size court with a viewing gallery and luxury sitting area. Sadly, from my point of view, only the seating area survived, the court area was now another gallery of his record successes.
Leaving this area we arrived at the Meditation Garden. Elvis who died at the estate on August 16, 1977, his parents Gladys and Vernon Presley, and his grandmother, are buried there. A memorial gravestone for Presley's twin brother, Jesse Garon, who died at birth, is also at the site. We didn’t linger here and we soon rejoined the shuttle bus which returned us to the other side of the road,
We checked out the collection of Elvis’ cars without a great deal of enthusiasm but it was much more interesting to get aboard his private planes. It brings home the real wealth of someone who owns a jet airliner and a smaller plane for more intimate journeys.
By now we had overdosed on Elvis and set off to find the National Museum of Civil Rights placed with a deft touch at the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated.
The SatNav again took us accurately to the area but there was something going on and the parking lot was closed and several streets blocked off. We worried for a bit that the museum was also closed but we were able to park a few blocks away and walk back.
Approaching the Lorraine Motel you could easily fool yourself into thinking it is open for business but entering takes you into the most thought provoking series of displays which I defy anyone to pass through without shedding a tear.
Before dealing with our museum experience here is a piece of research about the motel/museum’s history.
The first hotel on the site was the 16 room Windsor Hotel built on the northern side of the complex around 1925 which was renamed the Marquette Hotel. Walter Bailey purchased it in 1945 and renamed it for his wife Loree and the song Sweet Lorraine. During segregation it was an upscale accommodation that catered to a black clientele. He added a second floor and then drive up access for more rooms on the south side of the complex converting the name from Lorraine Hotel to Lorraine Motel. Its guests included musicians going to Stax Records including Ray Charles, Lionel Hampton, Aretha Franklin, Ethel Waters, Otis Redding, The Staple Singers and Wilson Pickett.
Following the assassination of King, Bailey left Room 306 outside of which King was assassinated and the adjoining room 307 unoccupied as a memorial to King. Bailey's wife Loree, who suffered a stroke hours after the assassination, died five days later. He converted the other motel rooms to single room occupancy.
Bailey worked with Chuck Scruggs, program director of WDIA and attorney D'Army Bailey, to raise funds to "Save the Lorraine" in the newly formed Martin Luther King Memorial Foundation and bought the motel on the Shelby County Courthouse steps for $144,000 following foreclosure in December 1982. It changed its name to Lorraine Civil Rights Museum Foundation in 1984. The Lorraine closed as a motel on March 2, 1988 when sheriff's deputies forcibly evicted the last holdout tenant, Jacqueline Smith, in preparation for an $8.8 million overhaul. Bailey died in July 1988. Smithsonian Institution curator Benjamin Lawless created a design for saving historical aspects. The Nashville, Tennessee firm McKissack and McKissack, which claims to be the oldest minority owned architect firm in the United States, was tapped to design a modern museum on grounds of the motel that were not directly related to the assassination.
The museum was dedicated on July 4, 1991 and officially opened to the public on Sept. 28, 1991.
In 1999 the Foundation acquired the Young and Morrow Building and its associated vacant lot on a hill on the west side of Mulberry. A tunnel was built under the lot connecting it with the motel. The Foundation became the custodian of the police and evidence files associated with the assassination including the rifle and fatal bullet which are on display in a 12,800 sq. foot exhibit in the building which opened Sept. 28, 2002.
Once inside the museum we were made really welcome, the staff seemed to care deeply that we should get the best out of the experience and the free commentary headset was brilliant although if you only followed its instructions you would be a little rushed through the displays. The connecting route through the building was brilliantly designed and the experiences differed from hands-on to video. There is far too much to list and the rule against photography inside means that I have no easy reminders of the exhibits but perhaps that makes one concentrate on what you are experiencing. I saw with horror photos of black men being lynched in front of large crowds. I sat on a bus next to Rosa Parkes as she was ordered to go to the back, the irony being if I had got on that bus she would normally have given up her seat to me. I saw a Woolworth’s food counter being peacefully occupied by black students, trained how to take a beating without fighting back. I passed a burnt out Greyhound bus used by the freedom riders. I walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. I saw Martin Luther King’s cell in Birmingham Jail. I experienced the triumph of the March on Washington and with some foreboding I heard MLK’s words: Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.From there you arrive at his motel room, left untouched because even then people recognised the history in that moment, and looking out you see the wreath on the balcony – it is a very powerful moment.
In our case we realised that the museum was half an hour from closing and we went downstairs, the staff urged us to go across the road to the Young and Morrow Building at 422 Main Street on the west side of Mulberry up a small hill across the street from the motel which was the site where James Earl Ray initially confessed (and later recanted) to shooting King from a second story bathroom window as well as the Canipe’s Amusement Store at 418 Main Street next door to the rooming house where the alleged murder weapon with Ray's fingerprints was found. Included on the grounds is the brushy lot that stood between the rooming house and the motel where a differing theory says the fatal shot came from a different weapon at ground level in a conspiracy involving Loyd Jowers who operated Jim's Grill which opened onto the lot.
Here we had little enough time to take in all the exhibits but we saw the bathroom window from which James Earl Ray probably fired and, in another claim to fame, we saw the actual assassination weapon, the only one ever released by the FBI after any of the famous assassinations.
As the museum closed we left with very deep thoughts, the deepest of which is, and always will be, would I have had the courage to stand up and be counted?
The area was crowded because of the River Arts Fest and, despite our sombre mood, it was a vibrant and tuneful wander as we took a roundabout route to the parked car.
Back at the hotel we decided to walk to the TGIF restaurant we had seen from the shuttle the previous night, we set off and needed to return to the hotel after five or so blocks because neither of us had picked up any money. We made it on the second attempt and we had a great meal at a very reasonable price before getting a relatively early night in anticipation of another 200 mile plus journey to Jackson the next day.

Deep South - Fall 2011 - Day 6

Nashville was only a one night stop; we had removed a night there from our plan in order to fit in basketball matches on the Saturday before we set off. We knew that this would make seeing much of Nashville a problem particularly when we knew the journey on was over 200 miles.
Our best solution was a bus tour in the morning before moving on, we chose as we have done before Gray Line Buses and this time it turned out to be a tram type bus where I was able to take my photos through an open window rather than through glass. Before we bought our ticket at the riverside terminus we had to find somewhere to park. We located a parking lot which was pay and display but since firstly the ticket machine refused to work and secondly no other vehicles were displaying any tickets we decided to take a chance on leaving the car there without doing either.
The strange thing with the Hop On Hop Off system is that the drivers who commentate as they drive have little or no incentive to check passengers have a ticket as they are paid to drive and their tips add to their income so the more passengers the more chance of a tip.
From the terminus we were directed to the start of the circuit where there were people also buying tickets, since we had ours already we got straight onto the bus, without showing anything to the driver. We set off when the bus was full and soon learned that the bus driver/guide by day was a musician by night. He was very informative and he must have been quite successful as a musician because he seemed to have played in pretty much every venue he mentioned on the tour. As we were enjoying his commentary and also we needed to be on the road again as soon as possible we didn’t take advantage of the HOHO option but had we done so it would have been at the Centenary Park where there was a brilliant time line covering the history of the city.
As a taster of Nashville the bus ride was great; we got a personal buzz when we passed the Red Rooster and our driver told us what a great venue it was but there again he complimented the food and that was a step too far in our opinion.
Returning to the start we left the bus, tipped the driver, and took away our unchecked tickets. The car was fine, not decorated by a parking ticket and we set off for Memphis via the Shiloh Battle Site National park. This was only a short detour from our direct route and well worth it.
Even before entering the visitors centre we happened on a school party being shown how to load and fire a Civil War musket – being American kids I bet half of them already knew more than enough about shooting but it was interesting to us. The young lady dressed in Confederate Grey fired three rounds and even such a small volley of fire made us realise just how the noise and smoke would have made the battles a hell on earth. We were told later at a similar demonstration it was difficult for inexperienced soldiers to know if their gun had fired properly in the heat of battle; a fact illustrated by the recorded finding of muskets with up to ten loads of undischarged gun powder down their barrel. These were weapons that remained intact to be discovered later there must have been more in that state that finally ignited the powder and blew up the gun and gunner.
The battle takes its name from the Shiloh chapel which was pretty central to the action and on the Shiloh National Military Park there is a battle trail of some 30 miles that we drove in the car and followed on the free map which we were given in the visitor centre.
As I decided earlier I will give the bare facts in the format I have used earlier but this time they cannot stand alone!
Dates - April 6 - 7, 1862
Union Commander - Ulysses S. Grant
Confederate Commander - Albert Sydney Johnston & P. G. T. Beauregard
Forces Engaged - 65,085 Union v 44,968 Confederate
Estimated Casualties - 13,047 Union v 10,669 Confederate
Result - Union Victory
This battle was a game of two halves, on the first day the Southern forces swept the Northern armies before them and took lots of ground however the following day the Union pushed the Confederates back to their starting points and beyond.
To quote official sources:
Attacking the Union troops on the morning of the 6th, the Confederates surprised them, routing many. Some Federals made determined stands and by afternoon, they had established a battle line at the sunken road, known as the “Hornets Nest.” Repeated Rebel attacks failed to carry the Hornets Nest, but massed artillery helped to turn the tide as Confederates surrounded the Union troops and captured, killed, or wounded most. Johnston had been mortally wounded earlier and his second in command, Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, took over. The Union troops established another line covering Pittsburg Landing, anchored with artillery and augmented by Buell’s men who began to arrive and take up positions. Fighting continued until after dark, but the Federals held. By the next morning, the combined Federal forces numbered about 40,000, outnumbering Beauregard’s army of less than 30,000. Beauregard was unaware of the arrival of Buell’s army and launched a counterattack in response to a two-mile advance by William Nelson’s division of Buell’s army at 6:00 am, which was, at first, successful. Union troops stiffened and began forcing the Confederates back. Beauregard ordered a counterattack, which stopped the Union advance but did not break its battle line. At this point, Beauregard realized that he could not win and, having suffered too many casualties, he retired from the field and headed back to Corinth. On the 8th, Grant sent Brig. Gen. William T. Sherman, with two brigades, and Brig. Gen. Thomas J. Wood, with his division, in pursuit of Beauregard. They ran into the Rebel rearguard, commanded by Col. Nathan Bedford Forrest, at Fallen Timbers. Forrest’s aggressive tactics influenced the Union troops to return to Pittsburg Landing. Grant’s mastery of the Confederate forces continued; he had beaten them once again. The Confederates continued to fall back until launching their mid-August offensive.
Shiloh is one of the nation's oldest and best preserved battlefield parks. In the late 1890s, returning veterans used more than 150 monuments, 200 cannon, and 650 historic tablets to "suitable mark" the 4,000 acre site.
As we travelled the battlefield trail we encountered similar signs to those at Chickamauga red on white for the Confederate forces and white on blue for the Union, but this time there were rectangular signs for the first day and lozenge shape for the second. In many places the same regiments appeared on both days but in retreat once and moving forward the other – it was a superb illustration of the futility of war.
We moved on to Memphis and arrived safely at the Crowne Plaza Memphis Downtown, a much more up-market hotel than most of the others. It had all the usual advantages of a better class establishment; we had to pay for parking and breakfast!
As with most days when Julia had driven we preferred not to drive for our evening meal but we were able to catch the hotel shuttle to Beale Street; this is a street in Downtown Memphis, Tennessee, which runs from the Mississippi River to East Street, a distance of approximately 1.8 miles. It is a significant location in the city's history, as well as in the history of the blues. Today, the blues clubs and restaurants that line Beale Street are major tourist attractions in Memphis. Festivals and outdoor concerts periodically bring large crowds to the street and its surrounding areas. Though given an exemption by the state of Tennessee to keep clubs open until 5 a.m., there is now an effort to reduce the hours to a 3 am closing time.
We enjoyed a stroll up and down and settled on a jazz playing bar where the choice was to sit right next to the live band or at the bar – we opted for the bar.
The meal was fine and we washed it down with a couple of beers, the barman was great company and we enjoyed his conversation. As Julia had gone to the restroom he was creating a cocktail which was a major work of art, on the point of finishing it he cracked the glass and had to start over. Commenting on his run of bad luck he leaned over to me and said, “If it rained whores mine would be a lesbian!” When I get my next bad call or get beaten by a lucky netcord I’ll perhaps think of him and smile.
Shortly after midnight but long before 3.00am we called the shuttle and he dropped us and other back at the hotel, we chatted to a Harley Davison couple on the ride back and discovered that there were no cheap rooms available in Memphis but they nor the driver had any idea why it was so busy.

Deep South - Fall 2011 - Day 5

We knew this was to be a long day so we had an early breakfast and moved on from the hotel. The breakfast had a buffet option in the Garden restaurant again but we both opted for a cooked choice, Julia had a stack of pancakes while I had the Conductor’s Choice, three fried eggs on a bacon and hash brown base – it proved a very good start to the day. Incidentally we took our tea bags down to breakfast and the waiter was happy to provide mugs of boiling water to get our start of the day fix of caffeine in tea form.
Next we headed to the Incline Railway up Lookout Mountain; we parked and caught a train up the mountainside at about 10.00. We sat facing down the slope and crossed with the other car at the halfway point, the only stretch of double track. As we ascended there was an excellent commentary which covered the “Battle above the Clouds” where the Union forces fought up the almost impossible slopes to dislodge the Confederates who were dug in at the summit. This was an important part of the raising of the siege of Chattanooga by the Southern troops after their victory at Chickamauga.
On reaching the top of Lookout Mountain the views were tremendous and we took some good pictures before walking some 200 yards to the Battles for Chattanooga Information Centre, here at a very reasonable price we watched a presentation involving video, a large relief model and thousands of pinpoint lights, which explained everything that happened from before the Chickamauga battle up to the Union driving the Confederates away from Chattanooga. It was an amazingly effective teaching tool.
To summarize the battles which combined under the name of Chattanooga:
Dates - November 23 - 25, 1863
Union Commander - Ulysses S. Grant
Confederate Commander - Braxton Bragg
Forces Engaged - 56,359 Union v 44,010 Confederate
Estimated Casualties - 5,815 Union v 6,670 Confederate
Result - Union Victory
We took a return ride down the mountain and set off for Nashville some 150 miles away but further for us as we had it in mind to visit the Jack Daniels Distillery in Lynchburg TN.
We made good time and reached the visitor centre and registered for a guided tour, we did not sign up for the interpreter which may have been offered and certainly we needed. Our guide spoke English with the heaviest southern drawl that either of us can ever remember. Julia claimed not to understand anything while I kept thinking I had got on the right wavelength for short bursts before losing it again. I’m sure she was excellent and in fact very funny but that’s only by judging the reaction of others in our tour. Even before the tour we had noted that amongst the cars and trucks in the parking lot there were several campervans and some strange equipment on trailers, one of the few things I understood from our guide was that the annual BBQ competition was due to take place over the next weekend. With this in mind she asked everyone if they were “competing or eating?” She was judging but since some of the competitors were from Australia I doubt they ever worked out if they won or not.
The tour was interesting, what we understood of it, and here are some facts which I recall:
1) All Jack Daniels sold anywhere is distilled at this one site.
2) Jack Daniels was a very small guy
3) Nobody knows why his label is marked “No 7”
4) He died of an infection in his foot caused by him kicking his safe in frustration.
The most notable fact of all is that Lynchburg is in a dry county so we could not sample the drink and only recently had the firm been allowed to sell their products at the distillery on the understanding they were sold as souvenirs.
We later bought a bottle of Green Label as a present for an English friend who would not have seen it as it only sells in 44 of the United States to date.
We traveled on to Nashville and found the hotel, Best Western Downtown Music Row, by about 17.00, there was no restaurant in the hotel and we didn’t want to get into the car again so while Julia chilled out after her driving I scouted the neighbourhood. Within easy walking distance I found two pubs that served food, the second of which was the Red Rooster and this got my vote as there was a live group on.
We were agreed and the Red Rooster was indeed an experience, the food was passable and the atmosphere was unique in our experience. The audience was very varied and there were several women with children who were looked after by almost anyone there and just as we thought we had identified a lady as the partner of one of the singers that singer would leave the stage and completely ignore the lady. On a regular basis new people would come into the bar and clearly they were celebrities at this level but of course we had no chance to recognise them. The group of four musicians on the stage was not a group, they were four solo singers and they each delivered a song in turn and sort of supported each other if they could be bothered. After two songs each they were applauded off the stage and almost at once replaced by another four soloists, we saw two changes before needing to sleep.

Deep South - Fall 2011 - Day 4

Joe met us over breakfast and he assured us that we had made the right decision regarding his match the previous evening. It had been a long journey to and from the game and during the game both before and at halftime there had been almost an hour of testimony as it is a religiously based team that he plays for. He was tired and it would have been a poor preparation for us travelling on to Chattanooga this day. Joe warned us that the weather was expected to deteriorate during the day and that we were likely to travel through rain. It was great catching up with him but all too soon he had to leave us to go into work.
We decided that we would heed Joe’s weather advice and get on the road to Chattanooga as soon as possible, this decision sacrificed our chance to experience the Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway in order to clear the bad weather.
As it happened it rained quire hard for most of the 220 mile trip, Julia handled the conditions well and despite being a bit noisy the Ford we had selected never let us down. Strangely we ran out of the rain just as we were reaching the edge of Chattanooga, we then reset the SatNav for the first of our on route visits, the Chickamauga Battle Information Centre. It was a slightly bizarre experience when we were told that we had “reached our destination” in a car park of a law firm right next to the highway. We never solved this part of the puzzle but as we drove around the side streets we came upon the signs which would soon become very familiar to us, white rectangular signs printed in red show Confederate troop placements at vital times in the battle, while similar signs with white writing on blue show the Union troop placements. The first sign we stopped to read was red and gave us the position of troops led by Brig. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest – look him up! He was a military genius who was hugely successful commanding his cavalry against the Northern forces in the Civil War but his infamy comes from his founding of the Klu Klux Klan – film buffs will remember that Forrest Gump was named after him as he explained “And anyway, that's how I got my name, Forrest Gump. Mama said the Forrest part was to remind me that sometimes we all do things that, well, just don't make no sense.” More of that great philosopher later.
So after some dozen signs and three statues we were thinking that there should have been a little more but we got back onto the highway and almost at once spotted a sign sending us off to the right for the 6th Calvary Museum. We took this option hoping it might be linked to the Battle of Chickamauga in some way.
We pulled into a car park next to an attack helicopter on a stand, similar to the Airfix kits I used to make but instead of 1-72 scale this was 1 – 1! We were the only visitors and the curator/volunteer was the most attentive of hosts.
To quote from their website:
The 6th U.S. Cavalry was organized in Pittsburgh, PA in 1861, fighting in the Civil War with notable success at Williamsburg in 1862 and during the Battle of Gettysburg at Fairfield. The 6th received 16 battle streamers for their efforts with three 6th cavalrymen receiving the Medal of Honor.
Following the Civil War, the 6th fought the Indian Wars adding ten battle streamers to their Regimental Standard with 46 Medals of Honor given for individual bravery. 6th Cavalryman Lt. Charles Gatewood convinced Geronimo to surrender and return to the reservation, ending a year of murder and terror on the plains.
The Spanish-American War of 1898, saw the 6th Cavalry side-by-side with Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders as they won the war in Cuba. The 6th continued on with service in the Boxer Rebellion, Philippines, Mexican Punitive Exhibition, and Yellowstone National Park.
World War I saw little action for the 6th as the Armistice was signed as the regiment was preparing for front line combat. Upon returning to the U.S., the 6th was permanently stationed at The Post at Fort Oglethorpe (1919 – 1942). During this period the Regiment became a “spit and polish” outfit. Competitive polo, military horse tournaments, team sports competition, parades and troop reviews were a way of life at the Post as were the many social activities that brought Chattanooga residents south to North Georgia. The training year annually closed with marches or maneuvers to Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina.
In 1933, the 6th furnished officers and men to organize and instruct the newly formed Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which saw the civilians paid more than the soldiers.
In 1938, the 6th formed the guard for FDR’s visit to Gainesville, Georgia and Chattanooga, Tennessee.
While stationed at Fort Oglethorpe the 6th experimented with the merger of horse and mechanization, field tested the Bantam Car (later to be known as the Jeep) and motorcycle. The use of horses was over and when called for duty in WWII, the 6th Cavalry (Mechanized) landed in Northern Ireland without any horses.
The 6th entered World War II assigned to Patton’s Third Army doing reconnaissance and landed at Utah Beach at D-Day+33. The 6th earned the Presidential Unit Citation for its part in the Battle of the Bulge 1944-1945. At war’s end in Europe, the 6th Cavalry Group had participated in 281 days of continuous and victorious combat. Five battle streamers were awarded for their service in World War II.
Following World War II, the Post at Fort Oglethorpe was determined to be too small for military use, with the buildings and property sold through sealed bid by the War Assets Department to private citizens. The City of Fort Oglethorpe was officially incorporated in 1949, the first new town in Georgia in 25 years.
The Regiment remained in Europe where it patrolled 172 miles of rugged mountain country along the German-Czech border. Also assisting in the reconstruction of Germany and helping at orphanages and schools.
The Bavarian Government was so thankful for the Regiment’s help that it presented a beautiful silver plaque embossed with the Shield of Bavaria. This gift is on display at the museum and is the only known official recognition given an American unit by a German State.
We noticed from the displays that the 6th had set off on D-Day from Weymouth which is a link to my sister and their family who traditionally holiday there; hopefully we will get a chance to see what traces of the US forces remain there some time in the future.
I was allowed to sit in a Willy’s Jeep and politely refused to climb into a M47 Patton Tank, with my unreliable knee I might have struggled to re-emerge!
Our guide clarified where the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park / Chickamauga Battlefield actually was, just to bring home the shadow the Civil War still casts today he told us his Great, Great Grandfather and his son, or father, had lived only 30 miles from the museum and eventually fought for the Confederacy at Chickamauga, the older one was captured by the Union forces and was later traded as a prisoner of war for a mule. I knew that at times prisoners were released having given their word not to continue fighting and there were POW exchanges but I assumed up to then it was men for men!
We made our way to the Battlefield Visitor Centre and were very impressed. In all our travels this was the clearest display of the Civil War timeline. We spend quite a long time inside the visitor centre, after all every sign must be read and understood! Thus we only had limited time to drive round the huge battlefield itself.
The visitor centres are run by the US National Parks Department and the Rangers who man these centres are incredibly knowledgeable but not always equally tactful. I saw a man of about my vintage telling the Ranger behind the information desk that he had traced a relative of his to a certain unit which took part in this particular battle, the Ranger visibly deflated his visitor, when he announced that the unit in question had run away at the first shot! Did it need saying?
Our first impression, reinforced many times on the tour, was the huge number of artillery pieces which have been gathered up on these sites to illustrate their history – I’m convinced the South could re-arm at a primitive level just by re-drilling these guns!
Since we visited several battle sites I feel I should minimize the accounts of them because there are many better sources than me to consult if the reader is interested. On that basis the bare bones of Chickamauga are:
Dates - September 18 - 20, 1863
Union Commander - William S. Rosecrans
Confederate Commanders - Braxton Bragg & James Longstreet
Forces Engaged - 60,000 Union v 65,000 Confederate
Estimated Casualties - 16,170 Union v 18,454 Confederate
Result - Confederate Victory
As we observed many times the area of the battles were large and very often the winning side should/might have pushed home their advantage but failed to do so for various reasons not least the simple human necessities of eating and sleeping, Buford on this occasion wanted to pursue the Northern forces, “keepin’ on the skeer” as he called it but he was overruled by his Commander Bragg.
We clicked the SatNav back to the, don’t laugh, Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel and we were soon in the hugely impressive lobby, clearly it was an old railway concourse which the hotel had kept to a very high standard of décor.
The rest of our hotel experience did not quite live up to the lobby. We were in Building Two a very standard square built block with no working elevator and a major dirty water leak in the corridor outside our room. I guess railways tend to run through the less affluent areas of a town and certainly our surroundings did not encourage us to seek the evening meal out of the hotel. We elected to eat in the Garden Restaurant having discovered that the Buffet Car option was not available during the week.
Mentioning the Buffet Car pushes me towards explaining how the hotel is set out, the reception area is the railway station and the best rooms are in old style parked trains which are on either side of three platforms which again are probably the authentic ones from the working station in the past. With hind-sight we should perhaps have specified one of these rooms and paid the difference for a more memorable experience.
Our dinner in the restaurant was good if a little more expensive than elsewhere, we opted for the buffet and we were well satisfied when we retired to the bar for a night-cap.