Georgia day 1

September 26

This morning we awoke to the sounds of our neighbors packing up and leaving. The station wagon and trailer I'd seen at the edge of the parking lot were gone by the time I was out of bed. The night had passed without incident. I took time this morning to post two blog entries before we went to breakfast. The Indian man who had checked us in yesterday evening was replaced by his Indian wife this morning. Razelle explained to this woman that her husband's smile wasn't received here the way he thought it might and the woman was grateful for Razelle's insightfulness. This Indian couple had only been here a few days. The motel franchise they had previously worked at was in Kansas and the clientele there was much easier to deal with. This motel, and the tension I had felt during the night because of the crudeness of our neighbors, taught me something (as did the cockroach hatchling I found in our room): If the rate is ridiculously low, then the clientele and upkeep will be commensurately low, too.

As I locked the door so we could go to breakfast a cleaning woman, dressed in a sari, indicated that she was prepared to clean our room. I answered in the negative but I saw that she didn't understand a word I said. She did catch on though, and went to clean a different room.

Breakfast consisted of a few items on a counter by the check out desk. There was a table with four chairs around it, in case you wanted to eat sitting down.

We packed up and drove to the Reebok outlet. Razelle stayed in the van and read a book while I went in. I showed the salesperson what I was wearing (size 13.5, in black) and asked if anything like this existed in her store. I hadn't expected her to say yes, and she didn't. However, she did have size 13 shoes. They were of a style I'd seen advertized but never ordered because it would have been hard to return them if they had turned out to be uncomfortable. I humored her and tried on a pair. What a pleasant surprise! They were very comfortable indeed! She told me that a second pair would be half price. I picked out a pair of brown suede shoes that were equally comfortable and also bought a can of suede waterproofing spray. The past few days I had agonized over ordering shoes my size from the Internet site I always order from. I wasn't sure if I should have them sent to Razelle's brother Ralph in Baltimore, MD, or to my brother Monte in Oceanside, NY. But here I was, all set, with two pair of shoes I was really happy with!

It seemed more than serendipitous that our stay in Savannah would be next door to this shoe outlet. Razelle looked over her shoulder while I was shopping and saw an outlet store she also wanted to visit. When I came out grinning with my packages, she went into the other outlet store to investigate and shortly thereafter came out grinning too, with her purchases in hand.

We then drove into the historic district of Savannah along Abercorn Street. The closer we got to this district the longer the beards of Spanish moss that hung down from the overarching branches of the trees that lined the road. It was very exciting to be moving forward along the pavement and yet backward in time into a scene straight out of movies set in the Old South. My GPS was programmed to take us to Congregation Mickve Israel, the Reform synagogue in the heart of the historic district.

We found a large commemorative plaque describing it as the oldest Reform practicing synagogue in the USA. I parked the van and fed quarters into the parking meter. Walking around the building we found an entrance, through which we were buzzed in. We were told that we could take a guided tour. That appealed to us very much. I went back and added some more quarters to the meter and then our guide took us, along with a second couple, to see the features of this venerated house of worship. She pointed out the cruciform shape of the building and explained that despite this shape this building had never been a church. It had always been a synagogue. It simply was the style of the day for a house of worship to be built that way. We got to hear a recording of the organ playing a liturgical piece from the High Holiday service. Each of the stained glass windows had a Jewish theme and a history.

Upstairs was a small museum with some important artifacts, including a deerskin Torah scroll, and letters written to the congregation by many of the US presidents, from George Washington to present times. The congregation gradually adopted Reform Jewish practices and by the beginning of the 20th Century it had joined the Hebrew Union. It was at about that time that my namesake great-grandfather Aaron and my maternal grandfather Herman immigrated to Savannah. The gift shop had books about the history of Savannah Jewry. I leafed through one of them and found a photo of my Grandpa Herman in it, taken in 1917 when he was 19 years old. Naturally, I bought a copy. From what I understood about the Jewish community of Savannah in the early years of the 20th Century, I would assume that my relatives most likely would have belonged to one of the other synagogues.

It took some exploring, but I found the building our guide described as once having served as a synagogue, on the corner of Montgomery and State Streets, now part of the Savannah College of Art and Design. I parked the van next to a parking meter that had over two hours left on it (a gift from an unknown stranger), with Razelle inside, contentedly reading a book. After taking several photos, and trying to imagine my relatives worshiping here – though I wasn't overcome with a feeling of certainty that this was the right place – I walked back to Razelle and passed a Middle Eastern restaurant that advertized falafel. The juxtaposition of the landmark building I was looking for and the parking spot we didn't have to pay for and a restaurant that served the kind of food we missed seemed more than significant.

Razelle agreed to try out the restaurant. The proprietor was formerly an Iranian veteran of his country's war against Iraq. He was very opinionated, and talked at length about his interests. These involved improving ones mind by reading, and improving ones health by eating correctly. We decided not to tell him we came from Israel and he never asked. He spent too much time hovering over us and his falafel wasn't so great, so we were glad to eat and leave. He added up our bill in an odd way: each item was listed as its price with tax included, rather than adding up all the items and then calculating the tax as the last step. We got into our van and still had time left on the meter.

My reason for adding Savannah to our round-the-world itinerary was originally to visit my great-grandpa Aaron's grave. I was certain that I knew in which cemetery and in which plot I would find it. I had visited his grave once before in my lifetime, over twenty years ago, with my mother. However, when we arrived at the Jewish section of the Bonaventure Cemetery and I walked to the grave, I discovered that the information provided to me over the phone by the Bonaventure Cemetery office was erroneous. I walked into the office and asked the clerks to recheck their records. One of the clerks walked with me to the grave, to find that their records were indeed wrong. I gave them my email address so they could send me an update once they investigated further. 

Since I was already there, I thought I'd do a little more searching. I found the graves of other relatives ("bouncy-ball" Siegel – it's a long story – was my great-aunt and I found her grave) but not the grave I came specifically to visit. The cemetery closed at 5:00 PM and Razelle, who had waited patiently reading a book in the van during my futile hour and a half search, called my phone to tell me we were being asked to leave. I never did find his grave, but the long beards of Spanish-moss and the close and muggy atmosphere on this heavily overcast day gave Bonaventure Cemetery a dreary but peaceful atmosphere I will remember for perpetuity.

Savannah looks like a place worth spending much more time than we gave it. We even considered spending more time here riding around on a tour bus or horse-drawn carriage, but Atlanta beckoned and Rosh Hashanah is coming. So we left.

Driving to Atlanta from Savannah involved joining all the truck traffic from the Port of Savannah laden with huge boxy shipping containers. My GPS gave me a driving time of about 5 hours to reach Uncle Sandy and Aunt Joan in the suburb of Dunwoody, GA. We had heard from them more than once during the day. They wanted us to know they would not be home until after 10:00 PM, so I wasn't concerned about the slowness of all these trucks. As we got further along, traffic eventually sorted itself out and we were able to make better time. We reached Macon in the dark, after stopping at a rest stop at sunset for the needed pause that refreshes. We joined I-75 here (we've been on this road before, in Michigan, Ohio and Florida) and drove up and down the rolling topography in the dark. Trucks labored to climb the uphill parts and I, with my cruise control on, drove past them; then these same trucks came hurtling down the downhill parts and rolled on past me. This game of bumper tag in the night was getting on my nerves, and it seemed downright dangerous. I was relieved when we reached the loop road that took us around Atlanta to the east. The trucks didn't follow me on this detour to the suburbs. The tricky part was staying alert for the exit I needed to get off. I was exhausted from the strain of night driving and peering into headlights coming at me and also blinding me from behind in my rearview mirror. By the time we reached Uncle Sandy and Aunt Joan's subdivision I was more than ready to turn off the engine.

We were greeted by my aunt and uncle as we drove up their steep driveway, far too steep for us to even consider sleeping in the van tonight, although the weather was much cooler and inviting here in Atlanta at night than it had been in Savannah. They had only returned home themselves a short while ago from a wonderful lecture they had attended, so our timing couldn't have been better. We were shown our room and we dragged a few items in that we would need for the night.

Uncle Sandy made sure we felt welcome. He offered us things to eat, and tried to help us get set up with the Internet. There was a technical problem with that, so I used my own broadband USB modem. After a lot of getting acquainted and some eating, and some television viewing (Razelle was elated to see the news channels and the late night programming) we finally all went to bed.