| Submitted by: Mark R. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 15 February 2005 |
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We were winded, but we are in our forties and eventually climbed it. I can see why if I had rebels shooting at me and throwing down rocks I might have made slow progress. But it must have been a great way to keep in shape.
We had a little time-out going to a Kroger Grocery in the park. We got some fruit, bread, and cheddar. I saw some bumper stickers on a car in the lot. 'God saw what you did back there' and 'Do You Follow Christ This Close?' At the next stop on the back on the tour we stopped under a tree and had lunch.
There is a tribute here to Confederate Col. William Marton. It seems that in the heat of battle there were Union wounded all over the ground. As the battle continued stray bullets set the forest on fire. The Union soldiers were afraid to try and pull their comrades from the fire leaving themselves vulnerable to being shot down in the process. Marton waved a flag of truce. He suggested that they stop fighting long enough to move the wounded away from the fire. Confederates and Federals side-by-side fought the fire and pulled soldiers to safety. That done, they resumed trying to kill each other. The following day Union officers presented Marton with a pair of Colt revolvers.
Evelyn and I were both behind in our logs and exhausted. I suggested to Evelyn that we take it easy. We should go to a motel, do a wash, and soak in a pool. We drove to Norcross outside of Atlanta. There we check into a Motel 6 and did exactly what I had suggested.
Evelyn found a Thai restaurant in the yellow pages. It was great. I had a curry with coconut milk. Evelyn had a seafood dish. We asked for it Thai spicy and I think they did not trust us to really want it that way. They undercharged us by about $4. I pointed it out to them. They probably figured we were on expense accounts.
Actually when it comes to money we are spending about $1000 a week. That is just about our cheapest vacation ever. Not a bad expense for two people. But we ought to go on an exotic vacation at some point soon. We are talking about Turkey.
Back at the room we called Pete and Joan Lux. There seems to have been some mix-up on when we would get together with them. We were thinking that it would be Wednesday night. They thought that we had agreed on Monday. We rescheduled for Thursday night. Pete will just be back from a business trip. We will pick him up at the airport.
We spent the evening writing. I went to sleep watching Dirty Harry.
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09/14/97--Atlanta and Robins, Georgia:
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Breakfast at the Waffle House next to the motel. I had an omelet. With hot sauce.
Our plan for the morning was to go see Stone Mountain. Carved out of a mountain are the nine-story figures of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson. We wanted to just see the mountain. Parking to do that was $6. Perhaps we should have gone ahead, but that seemed a ridiculous price for just parking. It was more for people intending to spend the whole day. We quickly reformulated our plans.
We decided to continue on to what was the next activity on our agenda, the CNN tour. We drove into the center of Atlanta. We assumed the place would be pretty dull this early on a Sunday morning. Guess again. There was a baseball game and there was some sort of art festival in Olympic Centennial Park. It was almost impossible to find a place to park on the street. We did find one however. It was just on the other side of Centennial Park from the CNN building. We found the CNN building an impressive building of ten or more stories, open in the center. All over there are ads for the ten or so Turner 'networks.' Actually they are cable stations. We were in about 10:20 AM and got tickets for the 10:45 AM. We spent the time in the CNN store though we got nothing. We did see one of the Oscars they inherited with everything else from Gone with the Wind. Come the appointed time we started the tour. There are ads hung up for something called Stupid Computer. I am not sure what that is. It is interesting how words that were negative in the past become marks of pride and words that were positive become negative. A girl who is homely is now thought to be unattractive. But crazy is considered to be a positive, particularly in things aimed at children. Anything that is complex, calling it stupid or for dummies is a good thing.
The tour is about forty minutes, but it is actually somewhat less. That includes some time going through airport-style security. You then go up an eight-story escalator. At the top you can see various pieces of memorabilia from the history of Turner's career. There are scripts from both versions of Ben Hur and another Oscar. (I thought that Oscars went back to the academy rather than be legally sold.) Other souvenirs include the jacket that Peter Arnette wore into Iraq with $100,000 sewn into the lining.
James Earl Jones has recorded messages played for the tour. You see a short film on the career of Ted Turner. His broadcasting career began in 1970 when he purchased a local television station and arranged to have it beamed by satellite across the country. From there one thing sort of led to another. Now he owns TBS, TNT, TCN, CNN, CNN-HEADLINE, the Washington Monument, Castle Rock films, the Cartoon Network, the RKO and MGM film libraries, Jane Fonda, the Atlanta Braves, and lots of other stuff. (I lied about the Washington Monument.) (I think.)
After that you see their special effects room. They show you the Chromakey wall. They show you how the camera is also the TelePrompTer through use of a half-silvered mirror. That way looking directly at the TelePrompTer is looking directly at the camera.
Go down another floor and you have the CNN news-room. They have monitors up for various shots for the incoming news story, they also have monitors for what is currently on ABC, CBS, and NBC just to see what their coverage is. The news is written right on the floor. They have the information processors and the writers right there behind the anchorperson for a feel of immediacy. That means that even the news-writers have a dress code since they really are on TV.
There is not enough room on each floor to have a lot of different activities. Our group has to walk from floor to floor, but they are heavily shepherded to make sure there is not too much that can go wrong.A lower floor had CNN Headline news. It has a smaller staff, but it is run like the upper floor, though completely independently. They write their own text.
A little further down you see CNN International, CNN-on-line, CNN en Espanol. And of course there is the souvenir shop.
As we returned to the car we walked through Olympic Centennial Park. They were having some sort of art fair. A lot of people running through fountains, buying art, buying refreshments. And I started to ask myself, what if I could go back to say 1866, grab Jefferson Davis and walk him through Olympic Centennial Park on September 14, 1997. What would his reaction be? He probably would be very much conflicted. Negatives would be blacks among whites on a pretty even footing. It looks like blacks have things pretty good. But then it looks like whites have things pretty much equally good. Better. Our society can give a good life to both. Old Jeff Davis might be scandalized by the clothing. People of both sexes with naked arms and legs. But let's assume that he was sufficiently broadminded to overlook fashions that would have been shameful in 1863. He might look around the city and see buildings as tall as cliffs in his day, huge stone bridges, newspapers turned into the CNN building. What was looked on as the good life in his time, a way of life that tens of thousands died for in a single week, by today's standards would be poverty and misery. You don't see whole families dying out in the sickly season of summer. We pass by a parking garage. To us it is a minor eyesore. If he saw just that one building it would look like a beautiful geometric structure, much as the Crystal Palace was thought beautiful. The issues that Jeff Davis fought about would still be issues today. States Rights versus Federal Power still make a difference today, but their total effect is in the details. The rising tide of progress has lifted all boats. Everything the South fought for they lost. Atlanta was burned in the process. Yet somehow modern Atlanta is not suffering. (Not to mix science fiction metaphors, but...) If it were put to a vote today to stay put or jump to a timeline in which the South somehow won the Civil War most Atlantans-even most white Atlantans-would probably leave things they way they are. That kind of puts a new perspective on the Civil War. So what do you think, Mr. Davis?
We continued off toward Savannah, via Macon.
We saw signs for the Warner-Robins Museum of Aviation. It was not on our itinerary, but that didn't stop us. This is a flight museum associated with Robins Air Force Base. There is a main building with exhibits, model planes and full-sized planes. There are three floors. They have an exhibit on Flying Tigers in China. They have planes on the floor (too many to list though I started with a P-40N and a T-6G trainer).
They has a Norden Bombsight. Of some interest was that this was like the enigma machine in reverse. We kept it a jealously guarded secret not knowing the Nazis had stolen the plans in the 30s. They had an exhibit on Chennault's 14th Air Force in Burma.
There was an exhibit on the pitch of propellers. The less pitch the faster you have to run it but the greater the pull since the less each revolution pulls you forward. A plane with fixed pitch had to decide what pitch it could live with. Lindbergh barely made it over the trees when the took off, so his pitch was almost too great, but then he had only a couple of gallons when he landed so his pitch was almost too great. Lindbergh must have had perfect pitch.
They have screen up with government short documentaries of World War II flying. The third floor was mostly airplane models. Other buildings had planes including a MiG fighter and an exhibit on the Tuskegee Airmen, the black pilots whom the army did not trust at the beginning of the war but who proved their mettle. There is a computerized flight simulator, basically a steering wheel and a computer screen. They also had a trainer cockpit that was pretty much the real thing.
The third building had a film that starts about Declaration of Independence, then goes into how laws are made, then history of the flying in the military, and finally it is about famous Georgians in government, especially Sam Nunn. They apparently had little idea what all they wanted to cram into this film except the tribute to Sam Nunn, head of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The film was almost funny to watch.
Afterward the field has a large number of planes to look at up close. Many are not in very good condition. They have Globemasters and Skymasters and a whole lot of masters. We saw the planes in back, but still missed a bunch because of the punishing hot weather. It is still hot and generally dry. The dry part is good for us, but not the farmers.
For dinner we went back into town and ate at a Po Folks restaurant. We saw darn few of them this trip which is a pity. It is a darn good restaurant chain, one of the few I always expect to be good. The style of cooking is Southern Down Home. I had chicken and dumplings, two vegetables, a biscuit, and too much lemonade. Evelyn had four vegetables, biscuit, and iced tea. With tip it came to a little over $13. I wish we had them in Joisy.
I had to find a place to stay the night off I-16, the road between Macon and Savannah. There don't seem to be any towns on the road, but Vidalia seems to be just off the road. I picked a Days Inn. Well, I judged wrong. |
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