| Submitted by: Evelyn C. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 15 February 2005 |
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One of the first displays pointed out was a plane that was involved in the April 18, 1942, Tokyo bombing runs under General Jimmy Doolittle. These bombings did little damage, but were a great boost to morale. (The real damage came from later attacks.) This plane flew off the U. S. S. Hornet rather than the Yorktown, which underlines the fact that this is not just a Yorktown museum, but really a carrier museum and a general naval museum.
The guide warned us about the low ceilings, but pointed out that people were shorter then. (Someone who was over six feet was considered a real giant.)
One of the stories the guide told us was about how newcomers would be hazed. The toilet was a trough with sea water running through it and a plank with holes in it above it to sit on. Sailors would place paper or other flammable objects on something that would float, light them, then float them under the newcomers!
Watertight hatches between compartments are labeled X, Y, Z, or W, depending on when the hatches should be shut and when they should be open.
I wondered how people found their way around the way. Well, every compartment is labeled. For example, 'C 210L / 3rd div / Fr 176 184' meant the compartment was in section C, deck 2, compartment 10 (even numbers are on starboard, odd on port), type L (living area), between frames 176 and 184. (From fore to aft, there are 210 frames on the Yorktown.)
We saw an exhibit on the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) and the WACS (Women's Army Corps). In addition to clerical tasks, women also did such jobs as ferrying fighter planes and bombers to their destinations.
We saw an exhibit about 'baby flattops' as escorts in the Atlantic. We saw an exhibit on the Yamato and her sister ship, the Mushashi, which weighed 70,000 tons (twice as much as our ships) and had guns that could fire thirty-five miles. We saw a bassinet used for a baby delivered on the ship to a native woman. And we got a recipe for 10,000 chocolate chip cookies. All in all, it was a little bit of everything.
They had a theater where they showed the Academy Award-winning documentary 'The Fighting Lady.' When it was made they couldn't name the ship that was the subject, but afterwards when it became known it was the Yorktown, that became her nickname. After the documentary, they had a little bit more about what happened to the people who were featured.
The U. S. S. Clamagore is a submarine very similar to the U. S. S. Drum, so I won't say much about it here.
We also toured the U. S. C. G. C. (United States Coast Guard Cutter) Ingham and the destroyer, the U. S. S. Laffey. By the end we were pretty tired from all the walking and climbing.
I have to say that AAA woefully underestimates the time required to see both ships and space centers. With space centers, we pretty much knew that we wanted the whole day. With this we thought that the time after the Fort Sumter tour to closing (five hours) would be enough. Because of the scheduling change, we ended up with seven hours here, and that was barely enough.
Dinner was at a place called Toucan's, where I had what they called a steamed vegetable burger. It was actually steamed vegetables with mozzarella cheese on them holding them together on a bun.
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We started out at Fort Moultrie, one of the forts that shelled Fort Sumter. We saw the videotape 'To Preserve, To Resist, To Protect' about the history of United States coastal defenses.
The first Fort Moultrie was built in 1776 and was constructed of palmetto logs. In spite of its defense, the British took Charleston anyway. The logs stood up well to the British cannon, but not to the coastal storms, and within a few years the fort was gone. In 1798 they built the second Fort Moultrie of earthworks and timber. This one was swept away by a hurricane in 1804. In 1809 they built the third Fort Moultrie as part of the 'Second System of Forts.' This was of brick and masonry, and was unchallenged in the War of 1812. However, in 1829 the United States decided that a fort in the center of the harbor was needed and started Fort Sumter of brick and granite, as part of the 'Third System of Forts.' But ironclads and rifled artillery changed the nature of coastal defense during the Civil War. It was modified over the years and during World War II it was used as an Army-Navy command post. In August 1947 it was closed.
The fort is now kept as an example of all its periods. That is, part is the way it was during the Revolutionary War, part the way it was during the War of 1812, and so on. Walking through it is like walking back through time.
Fort Moultrie's most famous resident was Oceola, who died there January 30, 1838, and is buried just outside its walls.
We left Fort Moultrie at 10 AM so that we could take the 10:45 AM boat to Fort Sumter ($10.50). Since Fort Sumter is on an island, the only access is by boat. Surprisingly, there are only five boat trips per day to it (three from the Charleston City Marina, and two from Patriots Point). Even in the summer, they only add one more trip. That doesn't seem like nearly enough for a place like Fort Sumter.
On December 20, 1863, South Carolina voted to secede from the Union. On December 26, 1860, Fort Moultrie under Major Robert Anderson was evacuated to Fort Sumter. South Carolina moved into Fort Moultrie the next day.
There was a stand-off for several months. Then on April 7, 1861, General Beauregard besieged Fort Sumter. He knew Lincoln was sending supplies, so on April 11, 1861, he asked for an immediate surrender and, not getting one, fired on Fort Sumter from Fort Johnson at 4:30 AM, April 12, 1861. Captain George S. James fired the first shot, and at Fort Sumter Captain Abner Doubleday fired the first Union shot in return. During the battle, Forts Moultrie, Wagner, and Johnson all fired on Fort Sumter.
Now, when the fort was built, it 'faced' the sea the powder magazine was put at rear to protect it. When Beauregard shelled it from land, that made the powder magazine vulnerable. (This idea will be familiar to people who have seen Lawrence of Arabia, though Fort Sumter's guns could be turned.)
Anderson realized this, and negotiated a surrender. Since neither side was very sure of the situation, the terms were quite liberal. Anderson got to lower the Union flag and retain it, and all the soldiers from Fort Sumter got to return to the North.
No one was actually killed in the battle, but Union Private Daniel Howe was killed during the hundred-gun salute after the South Carolina flag was raised when a gun fired prematurely-he was the first fatality of the Civil War. (The Palmetto Flag was first flag raised over Fort Sumter after the rebellion, although it was a regimental flag with a star rather than the crescent. The Stars and Bars was also raised the same day, but later.)
Of this, Abraham Lincoln said, 'The last ray of hope for preserving the Union peaceably expired at the assault upon Fort Sumter.' And Jefferson Davis referred to it as 'Fort Sumter, where was first given to the breeze the flag of the Confederacy.'
This wasn't the end, of course. Fort Sumter was besieged by Union forces for 587 days between July 11, 1863, and February 17, 1865. At the beginning of this siege, the 54th Massachusetts attempted to charge the batteries at Fort Wagner on Morris Island (on July 18, 1863). They failed, and sustained 42% losses. I mention this, because this was the climax of the movie Glory. During the siege, on December 11, 1863, there was a mysterious powder magazine explosion, which no one to this day knows the cause of. The Third Flag of the Confederacy never flew over Sumter-it was created March 4, 1865, but the Confederates evacuated Fort Sumter on February 18.
Fort Sumter is generally considered the start of the Civil War. However, the Union ship 'Star of the West' was fired on by Citadel cadets earlier in 1861, but within without returning fire. (This of course is in keeping with the forward-thinking of that school.)
Also at Charleston, the C. S. S. H. L. Hunley became the first submarine to sink an enemy ship (the U. S. S. Housatonic) on February 17, 1864. Of course, the crew of the H. L. Hunley was caught in the explosion and also died.
I should mention that Fort Sumter looks very different now than it did then. At the time of the Civil War there were three-story barracks which are no longer there, and a new battery of guns was added during the Spanish-American war.
Riding back on the boat, we saw pelicans, which do look a lot like pterodactyls when flying. Charleston, by the way, has two rivers, the Ashley and the Cooper, both named for Ashley Cooper
After returning to Fort Moultrie to finish up what we hadn't had time for in the morning, we drove to Pineville, North Carolina.
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Our first stop this morning was the James K. Polk State Historic Site (http://www.plcmc.lib.nc.us/branch/main/carolina/polk.htm). I presume that you recognize that Polk was one of the United States Presidents (in fact, the eleventh), but you're probably asking, 'Why are they visiting the James K. Polk State Historic Site?' Well, partly it was to find out what would be at a site dedicated to (let's face it) one of the second- or possibly even third-string Presidents. I mean, everyone understands visiting Mount Vernon or Hyde Park, and even the Hermitage (Andrew Jackson's home) would probably seem reasonable. But Polk?
You're not alone in that reaction, by the way. When Polk was nominated he was the first 'dark horse' candidate, and even the newspapers were asking, 'Who is Polk?'
James Knox Polk was the oldest of ten children born to Samuel and Jane (Knox) Polk. He was born in 1795 in Old Mecklenburg, North Carolina. Of this time and area, Dr. J. M. G. Ramsey said, 'The primitive simplicity of the pastoral stage of society, with its calm, quiet and security, its freedom from care, from service and the rivalries of older communities, stamped the infant settlements....' (One suspects he didn't study them very closely.)
Polk's family was Presbyterian, but his father refused to make a public profession of faith, so James wasn't baptized until shortly before his death-and then as a Methodist. Ironically, his grandfather, Colonel Ezekial Polk, hated Methodists so much that he maligned them on his tombstone! His family were also slave owners; his father owned five slaves in 1810, and his wife inherited two slaves from her family. Polk was in poor health until age seventeen, which a (then) dangerous gallstone operation restored him to health.
The second part of Polk's life was during what is called the Spirited Age (1820-1850). An up-and-coming political party was the Nativists (also called the Know-Nothings), but the 1844 election was between the Whigs (who followed Washington and Jefferson's notion of democracy) and the Democrats (who followed Jackson's more populist approach). The Democrats were in a quandary over whether to invite the Republic of Texas to join the Union. After several potential candidates were defeated at the convention, Polk was proposed as the first 'dark horse' candidate. He was a friend of Jackson (his nickname was even 'Young Hickory') but was also in favor of Texas annexation, so he managed to get enough votes to get the nomination. So the Democratic ticket was James K. Polk and George M. Dallas; the Republican ticket was Henry Clay and Theodore Frelinghuysen. Clay tried to straddle the fence on Texas and an anti-slavery party took away votes from the Whigs, putting Polk in the White House. Somewhat ironically, Texas was invited to join one day before Polk's inauguration.
This inauguration was the first one at which 'Hail to the Chief' was played. It also had the first inaugural ball that showed a profit (which was donated to charity). and was the first time that news of an inauguration was telegraphed to another city (Baltimore).
During his campaign, Polk had promised to settle the Oregon issue and to acquire California from Mexico. He did these, but the latter was more a side-effect of the Mexican War than anything he set out to do. This was not a popular war, and was also known as 'Mr. Polk's War.' (Henry David Thoreau spent a night in prison for refusing to pay taxes toward this war.) There were 13,000 American deaths in Mexican War, 12,000 of those from disease. (To compare this with Vietnam, consider that the population in 1846 was about 23,000,000, so the death rate was about 0.057%. In Vietnam there were 50,000 American deaths out of a population of about 200,000,000 for a rate of 0.025%, or less than half. And the Mexican War was much shorter.)
During Polk's administration, Texas, Florida, Iowa, and Wisconsin became states; the Oregon boundary was settled (at the 49th parallel); the Department of the Interior and the Naval Academy at Annapolis were established; an independent treasury was established and the first gold dollar and double eagle were minted; the first United States postage stamp was printed; gas lighting was installed in the Capitol building; the cornerstone of the Washington Monument was laid; and a uniform election day established. (Until then, voting took place over a period of several days.) Also during this time the first baseball game was played, the sewing machine was invented, the Mormons arrived at Salt Lake City, gold was discovered in California, and the first Women's Rights Convention was held.
Citing the statement of the time that '[America's] manifest destiny [is] to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty,' the exhibit claimed that Polk took us 'from sea to shining sea' with his acquisition of California. (But if we already had Oregon, albeit with a dispute over its northern boundary, weren't we already 'from sea to shining sea'?)
It also claimed Polk was 'last president with any chance to master the furor that would eventually tear the nation apart. He could not.' Later, the videotape about him said that he 'entered the Presidency with a plan and made every point of that plan work.' I guess it was just the wrong plan. Polk might have been the last President strong enough to save the Union (though I suspect that Franklin was right in saying that because the Constitution didn't resolve the issue of slavery it would tear us apart), but in any case he apparently had no idea that this was an important issue. (He was followed as President by Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan before Lincoln.)
Polk left office early in 1849, and died June 15, 1849.
We also saw a recreation of his childhood home, with furnishings of the time.
After this we drove to Greensboro, where we had lunch at a Steak n Shake. (Actually, it should be called 'Steakburger n Shake,' since they serve burgers, not steaks.)
We were visiting Greensboro mostly so that Mark could visit a high school friend of his. But since we had time we went to the Greensboro Historical Museum. This had an exhibit on O. Henry (William Sidney Porter), because he was born in Greensboro in 1862. (Porter changed the spelling of his name later to William Sydney Porter.
Porter lived in Texas during late the 1880s and early 1890s. He came back east and got a job in the First National Bank. In 1894 he was discovered to have embezzled $5624.20 from them. He fled to Honduras in 1896 to avoid a prison sentence, but returned to next year because his wife was dying. After her death, he became prisoner #30664 at the Federal Penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio. While in prison he began writing, his first published story being 'Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking' (1899). He was released in 1901, died in 1910, and is buried in Asheville, North Carolina.
Porter's books include Cabbages and Kings (stories set in Central and South America), The Four Million (stories set in New York City), Heart of the West (stories set in Texas), and Let Me Feel Your Pulse (his only book with a North Carolina setting). He once said, 'There is more poetry in a block of New York than in twenty daisied lanes.'
There was a section on the various ethnic groups that settled the Greensboro area. There was a Judaica section, with far more explanation of the Torah, Star of David, etc., than would be necessary in New York. In this section also was a copy of Upton Sinclair's 'Bill Porter (A Drama of O. Henry in Prison),' which had been requested by a Jew for the O. Henry collection but ended up in Judaica collection instead. This section also noted that Beth-David Congregation was named for Beth and David Stadiem-I wonder if that's true.
Of course, everywhere we stop has some major significance, even if we didn't plan it that way, and Greensboro was no exception. It was the site, on February 1, 1960, of the first lunch counter sit-ins, and there is a small exhibit on this, complete with counter stools donated by F. W. Woolworth's. Because of the actions of David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair, Jr. (later Jibreel Khazan), and Joseph McNeil, Woolworth's was integrated July 25, as was Kress. (We drove by the site later, and both Woolworth's and Kress are out of business. There is a Civil Rights Museum on that stretch of street which I think is in the old Woolworth's location.)
Another exhibit honors Dolley Madison, born Dolley Payne on May 20, 1768. She came to Greensboro as a very young girl with her Quaker family. She married John Todd, Jr., in January 1790, but he died of yellow fever in 1793. In May 1794, she met James Madison through their friend Aaron Burr, and married Madison September 15. She served as a hostess through Madison's term as Secretary of State (1801-1808) as well as his Presidency (1809-1817). She decorated the public areas of the White House, sent the second telegraph message (after her friend Samuel Morse sent the first), and saved the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington as well as government papers well the government fled the District of Columbia before the British burned it during the War of 1812. She was the friend of eleven presidents, but suffered financial problems after Madison's death. She is buried in Montpelier, Virginia.
The Civil War section starts, 'The Civil War, also called the War for Southern Independence....'
The war must have been confusing. There were three major Confederate generals named Johnston: General Albert Sidney Johnston (who was killed at Shiloh). Brigadier General Robert Daniel Johnston (who was at Gettysburg and Chancellorsville), and General Joe Johnston (who was at Vicksburg, was replaced by Davis in Georgia, and surrendered to Sherman April 26, 1865).
There was a pocket-sized copy of 'Sayings of the Fathers', ethical teachings from the Talmud, in Hebrew in Civil War section which a Confederate soldier carried with him. Unlike the Union armies, which insisted until into 1862 that chaplains be Christian clergy, the Confederate armies merely insisted that they be clergy.
Another son of Greensboro mentioned in the museum was Edward R. Murrow, but since he left Greensboro when he was still very young, not much was said about him. Also honored was Lunsford Richardson II, the founder of the Vick Pharmaceutical Company, and a benefactor of the museum.
After this we still had a little time, so we went over to the Weatherspoon Art Gallery, which had a Matisse collection of lithographs and bronzes from Claribel and Etta Cone, who were mentioned in the Judaica section of the Historical Museum. Other than that, I found everything here very 'modern.' (There was an interesting frieze by Tom Otterness.)
We picked up Mark's friend at the airport (he was returning from a trip) and spent the evening with him and his wife.
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We drove to Raleigh, North Carolina, and stopped in the North Carolina Museum of Art. This was quite a good art museum with Medieval, Flemish, Baroque, Rococo, British Portraiture, and French Impressionist art. They had a bronze by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, 'The Puritan,' which Mark thinks is a small copy of the statue in the Quadrangle in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Most of the day was spent driving to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, including being stopped by the police for a warning about going too fast. (And people said it was in Louisiana we would be stopped!)
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In the interests of making sure we had enough time at the Mariners' museum in Newport News, Virginia, we skipped Fort Raleigh Historic Monument-and a wise decision it was. (Well, you can't really see anything except some earthworks that may have been part of the fort, and no one knows what happened to it.)
Instead we drove to the Wright Brothers National Memorial. The memorial itself is on top of Big Kill Devil Hill from which they made their flights-except that in the twenty-five years between when the flights occurred and when the monument was put up, the hill had moved 450 feet southwest. Deer were wandering around, not too worried about the visitors (who admittedly weren't all that close).
At the base of the memorial it says, 'In commemoration of the conquest of the air by the brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright conceived by genius achieved by dauntless resolution and unconquerable faith.'
On December 17, 1903, after two years of experiments costing a total of about a thousand dollars, the Wright Brothers made their four flights:
10:35, Orville, 120 feet, 12 seconds
11:20, Wilbur, 175 feet, 12 seconds
11:40, Orville, 220 feet, 15 seconds
12 noon, Wilbur, 852 feet, 59 seconds
They had succeeded; 'a machine carrying a man had raised itself by its own power into the air in full flight, had sailed forward without reduction of speed, and had finally landed at a point as high as that from which it started.'
They had chosen the Outer Banks because it was sandy for soft landings and free of trees or shrubs, and had winds of ten to twenty miles per hour. However, on the day they succeeded, the winds were up to thirty-five miles per hour. Their plane weighed 605 pounds (compare that to the Rand-Robinson KR-1 I mentioned earlier at 310 pounds).
Of the original machine, the museum has a propeller and a piece of the engine. (The machine itself seems to have been distributed to many places.)
In the Wright family, both the parents had college degrees, but neither of the brothers did. Their mother repaired appliances and invented gadgets: their father brought kites and puddle-jumpers home from trips. And the really key invention they needed was the internal combustion engine.
John Daniels took the photograph of the first flight, and the guide said that he liked to think that the 'footprints on the sand [in the picture] where Wilbur ran along ended on the moon.'
'It is not really necessary to look too far into the future; we see enough already to be certain it will be magnificent. Only let us hurry and open the roads.' --Wilbur Wright
We then drove to Newport News, Virginia, stopping in Powells, North Carolina, for lunch at Thai Cuisine. This is what passes for regional cuisine these days.
The main attraction for us in Newport News was the Mariners' Museum (http://www.mariner.org/mariner) ($5 minus $1 AAA discount). There was a videotape showing life on a variety of ships: an Indian cargo ship, a container ship, a carrier, a fishing trawler, an ocean-going tug, and an inter-island beater.
We first went to the key displays. One was on the battle between the U. S. S. Monitor versus the C. S. S. Virginia (which had previously been the U. S. S. Merrimack) on March 9, 1862. Though most historians say the battle was a draw, in that neither was sunk, according to the person explaining the display, the Virginia went on to sink several more ships, while the Monitor basically left the battle. In any case, the Virginia was scuttled on May 11, 1862, and the Monitor sank in a storm December 31, 1862. It is probably worth noting that the first ironclads were Korean, used around 1592 by Admiral Yi against a Japanese invasion.
The other area of interest was their main temporary exhibit: 'Under the Black Flag: Life Among the Pirates.' This talked about pirates, buccaneers, corsairs, privateers, and Vikings, and gave brief histories of such pirates as Mary Read, Anne Bonney, William Kidd, Edward Teach (Blackbeard), Bartholomew Roberts (Black Bart), Jean and Pierre Lafitte, John Paul Jones, Sir Francis Drake, Alwilda, and Granuaille. It also had a blurb on Alexander Selkirk, who was a pirate marooned on the island of Juan Fernandez and served as the model for Robinson Crusoe.
The exhibit's text portrayed pirates as on the whole a thoroughly vicious and murderous lot, and talked about how they exist even today, but the exhibit itself seems to work against this. Children are encouraged to fold pirate hats (and buy all sorts of pirate paraphernalia in the shop), and the exhibit refers to 'The Golden Age of Piracy.' If the idea is to teach the truth about piracy, I think the exhibit probably fails. (The inclusion of film clips from Treasure Island, Captain Blood, and The Sea Hawk, as well as posters from other inaccurate movies, doesn't help.)
The rest of the exhibits were good, but probably not worth describing in detail.
Dinner was at a Vietnamese restaurant which was actually mostly French. It was all right, but nothing special.
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We left early, figuring we'd drive until midday or so and then find something to see in that vicinity. That turned out to be Manassas [Bull Run] National Battlefield Park. (The North calls the two battles here the battles of Bull Run; the South calls them Manassas, just as Antietam and Sharpsburg are different names for the same battle.)
First Manassas was the first major Civil War battle, taking place on July 21, 1861. Before the war was over there would be 2143 military actions in Virginia, and over 10,000 in the entire United States. There would be 4,137,304 soldiers out of a population of 32,000,000 (1 in 8), and 622,000 dead (1 in 51).
For comparison, World War I had 3,665,000 soldiers out of a population of 150,000,000 (1 in 30), and 116,000 Americans dead (1 in 1300). World War II had 8,291,335 soldiers out of a population of 133,000,000 (1 in 15), and 400,000 Americans dead (1 in 333). (Of course, all this is very parochial, since World Wars I and II had far more non-American deaths than American ones. But the display was talking in terms of American mobilization.) In the television series 'The Civil War' Shelby Foote notes that as many soldiers fell at Shiloh as at Waterloo-but that after Shiloh, there were still forty-five more Waterloos to come.
I mentioned the confusion over flags earlier. The same was true over uniforms, and the battle may well have been lost because a Union artillery commander was ordered not to fire on men he was sure were Confederates because his commander thought they were Union reinforcements. He was right, but that was discovered until the soldiers in question had advanced to within a few yards and opened up a deadly volley of rifle fire.
This is the battle where Brigadier General Bernard Bee, to rally his troops, cried, 'Look! There stands Jackson like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians!' thus giving Stonewall Jackson his nickname.
Judith Henry, age 85, was the only civilian killed during First Manassas. She was too ill to leave when her house was used as a Confederate sharpshooter post and she was killed when the Union shelled it. Her two companions survived.
After First Manassas a local farmer, Wilmer McLean, decided to take his family away from Manassas and away from the war. He moved west, to a small town in Virginia named Appomattox Courthouse. It was in his parlor that the surrender was signed four years later.
Second Manassas was a totally unrelated battle (though of course it was in the same war) about a year later on August 28 through August 30, 1862. It covered a much wider area; one thing that helps the visitor keep them straight is that the first battle is covered by a walking tour, while the second has a much wider-ranging driving tour.
After this it was just a question of driving home.
One of the nice things about a vacation like this is that at the end we don't have to try to fit everything into a few pieces of luggage and wrestle it (and ourselves) onto a plane. Of course, knowing this we accumulated a lot more stuff, and the car was getting pretty crowded by the end.
We discovered that one problem is that we haven't learned to pace ourselves, and go about a five-week vacation with the same intensity that we would apply to a one-week vacation. (Anyone who has looked at our itinerary has already figured that out!) We have basically been on the go since July 26, first with a ten-day vacation to Alaska ending in a red-eye flight home, then two weeks of work with the weekend spent hosting out-of-town guests and their three teenage daughters, and now five weeks of vacation through the South. I think my plans for the weekend of September 27 and 28 are to have no plans.
We covered 6915 miles in thirteen states, ranging between 74 and 98 degrees west longitude and 29 and 40 degrees north latitude. We saw license plates from all but five states, as well as from two Canadian provinces, and three Mexican states, and a variety of government and diplomatic plates. (Apparently people from North Dakota, South Dakota, and Vermont don't make long automobile journeys. Alaska and Hawai'i get exemptions.) I had thought I was the only person who kept track of things like this, but we met a couple from Connecticut who had seen all but four.
Tchatchkas were a bottle of magic potion (Tennessee), soap (Arkansas), bottle of hot sauce (Texas), bottle of Tabasco (Louisiana), Confederate battle jack (Mississippi), Confederate naval jack (Alabama), Stars and Bars (Georgia), Palmetto Flag and 35-star United States flag (South Carolina), book of O. Henry stories (North Carolina), and ? (Virginia). We weren't in Maryland or Delaware long enough to warrant tchatchka purchases, and we live in New Jersey.
A souvenir cassette of this trip (were I to make one) would include:
'Rum, Molasses, and Slaves' (from 1776)
'The Battle of New Orleans'
'The Alamo' (theme song from the movie)
'Napoleon of the Stump' (by They Might Be Giants)
'Tara's Theme' (from Gone with the Wind)
'Lorena'
'Old Time Religion'
'Wernher von Braun' (by Tom Lehrer)
some Elvis Presley song
'We Shall Overcome'
'Abraham, Martin, and John' (by Dion)
This was a very cheap trip: Lodging 1963.31
Food 1002.40
Gas, parking, etc. 300.11
Miscellaneous 1249.98
TOTAL $4515.80
Rec.Travel Library
The World
North America
The USA
Read Mark's point of view of this trip.
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| Copyright © - "Evelyn C. Leeper" |
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