Leaving the South

Post date: Mar 5, 2015 4:13:59 PM

We're in Ocean City, Maryland now and I feel as though we've left the "South" behind.  It's true that Maryland was below the Mason-Dixon line, but it just doesn't feel Southern. Everyone here sounds like they are from San Luis Obispo, the weather is Arctic and the food is just food. I'm reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (again) right now, and it reminds me of what we both loved about Savannah and Charleston - crazy people with really good manners, gorgeous mansions and fabulous cuisine. I know that's the romanticized view, considering their homophobia, civil rights offenses past and present, poverty, conservatism and even willingness to name an avenue after Clarence Thomas (we saw it!). Still, I loved being there.

History comes alive there. We visited a reproduced 17th/18th century town in Salem, North Carolina.  They have a museum there of restored rooms filled with elegant furniture hand-crafted by North & South Carolina, Virginia & Georgia artisans. In many houses there were docents dressed in period costumes, who told us about the ways they lived, worked, made chocolate, built homes and worshiped (see video of woman playing church organ). We spent the day in St. Augustine, founded in 1565, the oldest continually-occupied settlement in the U.S. We saw remnants of walls they had built from oyster shells. Their lives became real to us.

I had never realized the sheer wealth of the anti-bellum South until I saw the restored mansions in Charleston and Savannah and the Magnolia Plantation near Charleston. I now understand why the South fought so hard to preserve their way of life, the most impressive example being their against-all-odds retention of Fort Sumter. They held on throughout the Civil War, even when the fort was reduced to rubble and they were starving in tunnels below it. It seems as though the South didn't really lose the Civil War (or "War of Northern Aggression" as they call it) - they just got pounded into submission.

Most of the people we met were incredibly gracious, which is probably more than you could say if you were touring Los Angeles.  We had fun walking the beaches, attending a state fair, sampling fried chicken, hush puppies and various types of barbecue, seeing the gorgeous furnishings of the Mercer-Williams house, visiting wineries and riding in trolleys, horse-drawn carriages and paddle-wheel steamboats.  Maybe we'll return someday.