Southern vacay was all wet
AT JFK restaurant AeroNuova, server Jose Vasquez asked: “Going to Savannah? Why?” Answer: “Because it’s there, and I’ve never been there.”
So I went, and it rained my whole three days.
Do Savannah River’s open-air riverboat cruise in the downpour? No. Walking the town’s 24 famous park squares while wet? Naah. Dolphin tours in the downpour? Nyet. Wading mud puddles to go shopping? Uh-uh. Get close and personal with wolves, alligators, wildcats, bison, owls and eagles in the damp Wildlife Center? Please. Stroll open-air walkways? Yeah, you first.
And, suddenly, tuna with mayo was my idea of deep-sea fishing.
My chauffeur picked me up in his truck. His optometrist wife drove an Uber offhours. Gangs work a part of town so another lady driver who also hustled homemade gifts was “carrying.”
Begun 1733, after King George sent over a ship, this historic city is where Ben Franklin walked, Gen. Sherman stayed and Andrew Jackson’s Sec’y of State lived. Where Eli Whitney cranked out the cotton gin. Where SS Savannah, first steamship to cross Miley Cyrus: Filmed “The Last Song” in Savannah, Ga. the Atlantic, was built. Site of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Where Paula Deen’s 200 borrowed bucks opened her first sandwich shop. And Robert Louis Stevenson wrote whatever. It’s where “Forrest Gump” filmed, and Miley Cyrus shot 2010’s “The Last Song.” Where Justice Clarence Thomas, Johnny Mercer and his grandpa were born. Anciently, it banned lawyers. Nobody knows why, but clearly they knew something. In ’97, Kevin Spacey filmed Clint Eastwood’s “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” locally, so guides showed the blackand-white house in which Spacey lived. They do not feel they’ll be expecting him again shortly.
A taste of the city
THE welcoming city is gracious. Friendly. I admired hotel clerk Jas
mine’s hair bow. She gave it to me. Its River Street’s cobblestones date to the 1700s. It’s comfort food, bakeries, sweet shops. Eating’s gorgeous. Grits in heavy cream, buttermilk biscuits, corn muffins, shrimp, oysters, fish, thick soups, fried green tomatoes, chardonnay butter sauce, fried everything. The nearest anorexic’s in Utah.
Into the spirit
THE book “Savannah: A Southern Journey” describes its scary side. Ghosts, goblins and creepy underground where un-nice pirates did what un-nice pirates do. Supposedly, below ancient wooden floorboards is where bad-boy Bluebeard did his badboying in an old tunnel under what’s called the Pirates’ House restaurant.
Arriving Feb. 23, 1733, at something called Yamacraw Bluff on the first shipload to pull in, Savannah’s founder Gen. James Oglethorpe negotiated with the area’s Native American chiefs, and it is Jimmy who laid out the town.
When it rains . . .
SINCE it rained my whole damn three days, no idea what the city’s like dry. However, few of its citizens look like they ever went dry. I’ve seen Siberia, China, the Outback, the Congo, the Sahara, the Galápagos, the Arctic, the Equator — but time now to see America first. Only, for me, it’s only in New York, kids, only in New York.