pink = where I went
I made three trips to Georgia while doing this project. In 2017 my wife and I went to Savannah. In 2018 on my way to Chattanooga, I visited the house where my wife grew up in a suburb of Atlanta. On that same trip, a student of the University of Tennessee - Chattanooga gave me a whirlwind toor of Chickamauga. In 2019 my wife and son and I visited her parents at their house in the mountains.
A few special times when we’ve visited Anna’s parents in Florida, Asher has stayed with them while Anna and I go to Savannah for an overnight trip. On this trip, her parents treated us to a night in a B&B for our anniversary.
After dinner, we wandered through the stores along the riverfront. At a hat store, we talked with the woman working there. I asked her if there was a place meaningful to her that she thought we should visit. She knew right away where we should go. Her grandmother lived at 318 W. Park Ave in a little yellow house. “It’s been many colors in the past, like green and pink, but now it’s yellow.” Her grandmother was someone who took care of everyone. “If you needed a meal, a place to stay, you went there.” When she was a baby coming home from the hospital, she went there; this was true for all the kids in her family, the first place after birth. The first time she was homeless, after 5 months on the street, she found shelter and love at her grandmother’s house. Her grandmother, Viola, passed in 2007. Unfortunately when Viola died, the house passed into hands that haven’t been as welcoming. “The house was like a living body. Now it’s just dead.” She showed me the “Viola” tattoo on her leg.
The next day, in the morning, it was just the two of us eating, so I went into the kitchen and asked the two women working there if they had a few minutes to talk.
I asked them if there was a place in Savannah that is special to them, that they think we should see. One woman said the First African Baptist Church is important to her, and that we should go there. We talked about traveling to new places. She just turned 40, and she said that since her children are grown, it’s time to start living her life. She really wants to go to Miami and Africa. She is a new cook at the B&B. She also cooks at the local school.
The austere exterior of the church is a reasonable defense for the tenderness of the inside, which is like a cake whose frosting tells the story of the hands that smoothed it. The least smooth places are where it tries to be flat.
The church was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Holes in the floor gave air circulation to the 4’ high space where runaways hid. The church website shares that the holes “are in the shape of an African prayer symbol known to some as a BaKongo Cosmogram. In parts of Africa, it also means ‘Flash of the Spirits’ and represents birth, life, death, and rebirth.”
The pews were built by enslaved Africans. Markings of ancient African languages on the side of each pew were given by their maker to reflect their own tribal ancestry.
The 3 x 3 grid on the ceiling told all who spoke the language of the Underground Railroad that this was a stop.
In fall of 2018, when I stopped by Anna’s childhood home in Gainesville on my way to Chattanooga, her parents had just put it on the market. So, even though the house still technically belonged to her parents, it felt like it was in limbo, and I felt voyeuristic as I walked through the backyard. The house is at the top of a slope which winds down into woods with a little creek running through. She had told me about a spot she used to play as a child. I found where I thought it was and later sent her a picture; she said I had had gotten it right. In that place, I felt like I was meeting child Anna, like I had been transported in time. I watched her make mud pies and forts.
After my talk in Chattanooga, many students came up afterwards to talk to me and tell me where I should go in their state. Alex, a sophomore at UTC, begged me to let her take me to Chickamauga, Georgia. Right now. It’smyhometownanditsanamazingplacewithlotsofhistoryithasthebattlefieldofoneofthebloodiestcivilwarbattlesanditonlytakes30minutestogettherebutwehavetoleaverightnowIwillskipmynextclassandtakeyoubutwehavetoleaverightnowiwilltotallytakeyouitwillonlytake30minutestogetthereitisanamazingplaceyouhavetoseeitbutwehavetoleaverightnow. So I went to Chickamauga with Alex.
Our first stop was the Coke Ovens. In the early 1900’s coal was burned in these beehive ovens to create a purified coal substance called coke, which was used in foundries to make steel and iron. Alex told me the setting is a popular place for prom pictures.
Alex, like all the UTC students I talked to, was so respectful and polite, attentively answering my questions with “Yes, Ma’am.” Once when we were getting back in the car after a stop early in our journey, a song came on forcefully with “hey motherf*!#er…” and she was mortified. She couldn’t turn it off fast enough and apologized profusely. She was saying, “I can’t believe that just happened, I am so sorry it’s what I listen to in the morning to wake up, I am so embarrassed,” and I was, “Oh my, do you think I am an old lady?”
Her old school is the place Alex was most eager to show me, though the school she really wanted to show me isn’t there anymore. Not up to code and too small, the old school was torn down and now a brand new school stands in the fresh rubble. Like much of the town, she was heartbroken when the school was torn down. I told her we could still go to the new school; I would take pictures of the rubble. She wanted to introduce me to her art teacher but couldn’t get into the school without arranging for someone to let her in. Because of the increasing frequency of school shootings in the U.S., the new school was designed with security as a top priority and is locked to all unplanned visitors.
Amazingly, Alex’s former art teacher was standing in the main office right by the window and let us in!
Alex introduced us, and Mrs. Stansell brought us up to her new beautiful art room, which she explained is a big step up from her old room. The students were so enamored of the new rolling chairs that she had them roll around and around the room on the first day of school to get it out of their systems.
I asked if the school was very diverse and Alex said no, as far as she knows all the students are white; it would be very out of the ordinary for a Black student to come here. She explained that it is a public school, but you have to apply to go there.
Across a vast lawn from the school is Gordon Lee mansion, which served as an over-stressed hospital during the Civil War. In high school Alex had a job giving tours of the mansion and pointed out blood stains on the hardwood floors as we peered in the windows.
She said that doing their best to prevent the spread of disease while treating too many patients, medical staff had no choice but to dispose of body parts by throwing them out the window. This window.
In November of 2016, Alex was one month away from her 18th birthday so she was unable to vote in the presidential election. I asked her if she would have voted had she been able to, and she said no. She said she felt a lot of pressure from peers on both sides and didn’t know what to do. She said she, like a lot of people she knows, wanted to stay out of it. Yet, as she watched Trump win the election, she cried and said, “We’re going straight to war because he doesn’t know how to shut his mouth.”
We stopped by Crystal Lake and walked down to the clear water whose source is an underground cave. In the background stand chimneys from the old textile mill, which was once the city’s industrial center. Alex said the lake has always been a favorite place to come to be alone.
Chickamauga is the site of the bloodiest battle of the civil war. We climbed Wilder Tower and looked out across the miles of battlefield where the Battle of Chickamauga was fought.
Alex said people still go out with metal detectors and find things from the Civil War. Her step-grandpa had a whole cabinet full of stuff, mostly bullets.
The monuments dotting the landscape represent both Confederate and Union battalions that fought in the battle. Alex is passionate about preserving the monuments and believes they are an important part of history that should be studied rather than erased.
We ended our tour with a stop at her house. I met her mom, who let me help dole out cheerios to their two dogs and a chinchilla.
The larger white dog with the striking eyes is Alex’s service dog, Obie. He senses when she is about to have a panic attack and pets her with his paw until the early symptoms subside without escalating. Alex's mom usually isn't home this early in the afternoon. She was home that day because she had lost her job just a few days before. She was an Appeals and Denials Coordinator, and her position was eliminated.
On our way out of town we drove down part of the Trail of Tears, which goes right through the battlefield. Now, it is a frequent stop for people playing Pokémon.
I have been to many towns, cities, states, and countries. I have never met anyone more excited about where they are from than Alex. She was exuberant with pride for her hometown and the hours we spent together were barely sufficient for her breadth of knowledge and love of this place, which is undeniably hers. The history and stories she shared were all in the first person and began with “my” or “our”: That’s our funeral home; this is where we take prom pictures; our school was torn down to build a new one; we do candlelight tours at the mansion. I am so grateful to have spent time with this generous young person who inspired me to think about both my hometown and my chosen town in a new way.
Finally, my last visit to Georgia during this project was to Anna’s parents’ house in the mountains in Helen, in the summer of 2019. Our last family trip before the pandemic. This visit was the first time we got together with her siblings and their families after a falling out about politics that happened in November 2016.
Asher was really happy to be with his cousins– Anna E, Thomas, and Mary Michael.
Anna’s brother Michael’s wife, Jeannine, made a bundt cake that she is famous for.
I shot a gun (Thomas’s BB gun) for the first time in my life. Surprisingly, I hit a coke can with each shot; five out of five.
I asked Michael and Jeannine where we should go while we were there, and they invited us to visit them in Gainesville and go on their boat on Lake Lenier! We went the next day.
Michael was really sweet with Asher. He let him steer the boat. We took turns getting whipped around in a water ski tube. Afterwards we went swimming at pool at their country club.
This visit was big in our family story. There wasn’t any processing about what happened three years earlier, but there was kindness and generosity.
Near Helen is the birthplace of Cabbage Patch Kids. Since Anna and I seriously mothered Cabbage Patch Kids in our youth, and Asher had grown fond of the one Anna’s parents kept from her childhood, we had to go.
I’m still trying to make sense of this somewhat disturbing peek behind the curtain. There are some babies with price tags, some that have fallen on the floor in the gift shop section, some emerging from cabbages nestled among magic crystals under a tree mother, and then some being cradled by human “nurses” in delivery room performances that happen on the hour. Despite (or maybe because of?) the fact that these hard-headed babies with signatures on their bottoms are “delivered” to Babyland General by storks, there is some complicit harmless obscenity I can’t place.
But it was fun, and weird, and maybe not any weirder than everything else I don’t have words for.