RETURN FOR A NATIVE

Having been brought up in Savannah and spent many years there since, I knew what to expect when I chose it over a cruise to Barbados or a couple of months on the US Gulf coast. It would be a generally mild winter with a couple of frigid, i.e. below freezing, nights but with speedy warm ups. It did not disappoint. Of course my primary residence north of Atlanta also had a milder than usual winter but still the change of venue was good.

Savannah has changed though since I left it in 2005/6 ish as I suppose my living in Roswell this decade+ has changed me. It wasn’t a holiday time but the city was always packed with tourists. Tourists originally came in the hopes of getting a peek at the, some might say odd balls portrayed in the best seller, Midnight in the garden of Good and Evil, but I prefer the term unique people who make up the population. And, of course, they come to see the unparalleled architecture and notorious city planning of our founding fathers. Wlliamsburg, Va. has similar architecture but it is a replica, built in the 20th century, as I  recall with Rockefeller money. Only Charleston and Beaufort in S.C. have the authentic architecture and though they have other historical features they lack the gorgeous parks called squares by natives (though they’re really ovals).

The tourists are so numerous in fact that the tables have turned and the city’s population, or at least those that dare the impossibility of parking and very slow and POLITE drivers in the Historic District, gape at the outlandish get-ups of tourists. Don’t these people have mirrors in their hotel rooms? It has become a city where tourists come to marvel at other odd-ball tourists… whether they know it or not, I‘m not sure. Still it works… though at first I thought surely someone is paying these people to parade by and entertain me.

It was a very restful visit. I felt as if I were living, through time travel, in about 1930. For those who wish they‘d lived in the olden days when life was slow, I recommend it. The PEDESTRIANS, carriages, bikes (not as many as Asia but getting there) and two-wheeled-platform gizmos are the predominant means of transport though others which challenge Rube Goldberg apparatuses are also in use. As mentioned the few cars are so polite you become accustomed to drivers who gesture to each other, “you go” and get the response, “no, after you.”

Which brings me to my moment of alarming realization: I was indeed home but forgot what it really was like. I’d been to the grocers and parked at my front door. Carrying my groceries across the sidewalk, I paused when a very rapidly walking student passed but abruptly stopped and spoke to me in shock, “M’am, how far do you have to carry those? I’m late but…”
I interrupted him saying, “Just up the step to my front door. I’m fine but thank you.”

Sadly there were no tourists to witness that exchange between two obviously rare but authentic odd ball Savannahians.