| Submitted by: Mark R. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 15 February 2005 |
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It shows a bomber on the back and says '30 minutes or less-or we bomb your next city for free.'
Next we try the Spacewalker. You are placed in seats on a long lever arm and are counter-balanced. If you kick the ground you float up twenty or so feet in the air. You just bounce back and forth on the arm. it is kind of a short ride. I tried not pushing off once. I bounced up to the top and stayed there. What happens is the operator comes along and surreptitiously gives you a little push.
From there it was back in for lunch. There is a museum tour at 2 PM and we wanted to be done in time for that. They have a cafeteria with seats. We went to that, but there were a bunch of retirees in front of us in line. Retirees are cautious about what food they get for themselves. Evelyn was concerned that we would not be done in time for the tour. We jumped out of line and went instead to the snack bar. Evelyn picked a hot dog, I wanted their pizza. By the time we got to the front of the line they were out of pizza. We both got hot dogs. I didn't think they were good hot dogs either.
We were done just about in time for the tour. We went to the starting point and we were the only ones there. Our tour guide turned out to be a teen who had memorized a twenty-five-minute spiel like a school report. I was a little embarrassed to be there getting it and he would have rather not been giving it.
We returned to the Journey to Jupiter exhibit. This is a full motion machine with a 70mm film showing a journey to... well... Jupiter. You go through a sort of accelerator. All of it feels reasonably realistic with the whole theater moving to give the proper feel. The one problem is that after they get good special effects on the film, they put it on grainy celluloid. Little flecks get in the way of the credibility.
Next we went to the Mission to Mars exhibit. It appears to be the forerunner of the Journey to Jupiter in more ways than one. It handles two people at a time. It rocks to the left and right. It takes about ten minutes. I guess the next one will be 'Sojourn to Saturn.'
We returned outside for the Spaceshot simulator. This is much more an amusement park ride than the others. It shoots the passenger up a rail something like fifty feet in the air, then drops you down forty, then up and down maybe once or twice more. You go through a few tenths of a second of free-fall. It was fun and an instant of pure terror.
After that was some walking around an area called 'Shuttle Park' the main feature of which is a full-sized shuttle with tank and booster rockets. Pretty darn big. They have a ride here called 'Shuttle to Tomorrow.' I think it is a tame version of 'Journey to Jupiter' with a little more humor. Still not very interesting.
Well, the rest of the visit was pretty much repeats of things we had already done. Overall I would say that the U.S. Space & Rocket Center does a better job and is a more interesting visit than the Houston Space Center we saw eight days before.
Back to the room afterward at about 7 PM we went to dinner at a Korean restaurant. We were the only non-Koreans there. The woman probably didn't get a lot of non-Koreans even coming in. That can mean problems. Americans can be very provincial about their food. Within about a minute of getting the menu we were ready to order. Menu closed, Evelyn ordered Soon Doo Boo Jigae. The woman started to explain what that was and that it was a little spicy. Evelyn interrupted saying she knew what it was and make it very spicy. Also from a closed menu I asked for O Jingeau Bokum, very spicy. She brought the dishes with six small dishes of unusual side dish foods. Twenty minutes later one side dish was half-eaten. Everything else had gotten the seven-year locust treatment. Looking at the empty dishes she said, 'I guess you must have liked it.'
Something similar happened with five of us traveling in Thailand. We rather surprised the owner of a restaurant in Krabi that some Americans really like Thai food.
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09/12/97--Chattanooga, Tennessee and Chickamauga, Georgia:
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Up. Continental breakfast at motel. A couple miles and we are out in the country again.
We cross over to Tennessee. There seem to be billboards all over for fireworks. A place we pass bills itself as a fireworks supermarket. I bet they have 'No Smoking' signs. It really looks like it must be the biggest product in the local economy. Funny, we didn't see so much before when we were in the state. It must be just this area. This has got to be the fireworks capitol of the country. Maybe not the whole state, but this little piece of Tennessee borders very near both Alabama and Georgia and probably selling fireworks is illegal there. Anyway it seems like every half mile there is a billboard for someplace or other selling fireworks. We are in hilly country here on the Tennessee-Georgia border. We are near a historic pair of battles on the border. One of them was so noisy, it could be heard in a town fifty miles away. These are the late 1863 battles of Chickamauga, Georgia and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Earlier we talked about how control of the Mississippi was grabbed by the Union at Vicksburg. The key to capturing control of the railroad was in capturing Chattanooga, the railhead and the road to much of the South.
Chickamauga (aptly named, in Indian it means 'River of Death') was sort of a battle of personalities. It was fought commanded by General William Rosecrans fighting for the Union and General Braxton Bragg for the Confederacy. Neither got on well with the people they commanded and that would become very important in the battle of Chickamauga. Bragg and Rosecrans had fought previous battles, but Bragg was now reinforced with General Longstreet and two of his divisions, veterans of Gettysburg. Bragg got along with nobody and that included Longstreet. (Grant tells in his memoirs a story that Bragg once had two conflicting responsibilities, wrote out a long argument with himself, and submitted it to his superior for mediation. His superior noted that Bragg had run out of other people to argue with and had started in on himself.) Bragg figured that the time had come when he could lure Rosecrans into the mountains where he could easily divide and conquer the three Union divisions. Bragg, placed himself between Rosecrans and Chattanooga, but then sent fake deserters to the Union side with tales of Confederate retreat. Pulling them down from the Northeast, Bragg hoped to put this 'deserted' army between Rosecrans and Chattanooga, using Chattanooga as bait. On September 19, 1863, they met near Chickamauga Creek.
The fighting went on all day with Bragg trying to turn the Union line to the left and failing. Overnight the Union did not sleep, but felled trees to make fences (or breastworks) to fight behind. Longstreet himself arrived over night. Bragg set up a line with Longstreet commanding the left and Leonidas Polk commanding the right. At dawn they were supposed to attack. Longstreet attacked at dawn but could do little against the breastworks. Apparently to be uncooperative with Bragg and to assert himself, Polk simply refused to begin his attack until several hours had passed. His spite got a lot of Confederates killed.
Bragg could get no cooperation from Polk and ordered Longstreet forward. But the North was about to make a bigger mistake. Rosecrans sent a staff officer out to be sure his line was in place. Looking in the woods where Rosecrans's men were supposed to be concealed he saw nothing. The staff officer in panic reported to Rosecrans that there was a gap in the line. In fact, the men were in place, just very well concealed. Rosecrans ordered the next division over to fill the gap. The commander of that division had just been reprimanded for not following orders. He was sure this was a stupid order and there was no gap in the line, but he dared not disobey more orders and so closed the false gap, effectively creating a real one.
Longstreet found the gap and charged through surrounding and sending flying half of Rosecrans's army including Rosecrans. General George Thomas took command of the remaining men, stood his ground, formed a line of battle on Snodgrass Hill, and held all day, withdrawing after dark. Longstreet wanted Bragg to pursue the Union soldiers and complete the victory. Bragg looked at the terrible losses he had already sustained and refused. He claimed the enemy had been routed and would not stay. The Union Troops quickly occupied Chattanooga.
Bragg went after them eventually, but took positions on Missionary Ridge, Lookout Mountain, and the Chattanooga Valley. They blockaded the city and prepared to starve out the Union troops. Meanwhile there was great disgust with Bragg in the Confederate command. Bragg had won a great victory at Chickamauga Creek, but the North had still occupied Chattanooga. Of course, they were slowly starving.
Lincoln wanted to turn the slow-motion disaster of Chattanooga into a victory. He sent Grant. Grant immediately removed Rosecrans and gave his command to Thomas, who had stood his ground at Chickamauga. Grant brought in Sherman, his frequent right-hand man.
Meanwhile the conflict between Bragg and his seconds in command heated up. Bragg dismissed Polk and two other generals for slowness to obey orders. Longstreet complained to the secretary of war that Bragg was not up to the job.
Reportedly, Jefferson Davis offered Bragg's command to Longstreet. Longstreet refused it and suggested it be given to Joe Johnston. Wrong choice. Davis was still disgusted with Johnston for not coming to Pemberton's aid and allowing Vicksburg to fall to the Yankees. He did not think that Johnston would do enough here either. Johnston was a good man, but Lee was used to traditional battlefield tactics . Johnston bled the enemy where Lee wanted to see them annihilated.
Grant planned a counter-offensive, but gave the Thomas and the Chickamauga troops only a secondary role, feeling they were demoralized. The Union troops stormed Lookout Hill, forcing Bragg to move his troops to Missionary Ridge. The became known as the Battle Above the Clouds. Grant's attempts to dislodge Bragg from Missionary Ridge bogged down. He decided to ask Thomas to join the assault. He wanted him merely to take out some rifle emplacements at the base of the ridge. It was nominal participation. To the horror of Grant and the Union commanders, Thomas's men treated it as an order to charge across two miles of open ground toward Missionary Ridge. McPherson claims this should have been a worse suicide charge than Pickett's Charge. It was a tremendous opportunity for Bragg and the South.
Grant angrily asked Thomas if this charge was his idea and Thomas denied it. As they watched expecting the troops to be ground to mincemeat, instead they saw Bragg's men turn around and run. What should have been an easy slaughter of Union troops turned into a humiliating defeat of Bragg's men.
There was no good explanation why the result was what it was beyond that bad commanders and politics had demoralized the Southern troops. Grant lucked out. But he had the rail head and he had the Mississippi. The war had turned very sour for the South.
Bragg apologized to Jefferson Davis and suggested he should have been replaced after all. But Davis had no general he respected to replace Bragg. Reluctantly he gave the command to Joe Johnston who he felt let him down at the battle of Vicksburg.
Well, we got to the Chickamauga Visitor center. Here you do not buy a tape tour for $4.50 as you did at Vicksburg, you rent it for $3 or you buy it for $7. We rented it. You get a tape player, but we had that anyway. They have an orientation film, but it is part of a program that you have to pay for. |
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