Yesterday we
walked our toes off. Not a ton of miles,
maybe 6-7. But for fogies who don’t
normally walk too far each day this was true exercise. And all along the way we were reminded of
what wimps we were. Tomorrow is the Rock and Roll Marathon in Savannah, GA. Tents, barricades, and signs everywhere.
And we have not been invited to participate.
J
Yes, we
walked downtown Savannah, which is not to say its anything like downtown New
York or San Francisco. This is a
relatively small, pretty much antebellum, town.
And the cool thing is that while its surrender to Sherman in the Civil
War slowed its progress economically to a crawl, it also slowed its
architectural demise. 
So, like
Charleston, SC about two hours north, this is a trip back in time. And Savannah’s
center and historic district is smaller,
and quieter, and more open, than Charleston’s. And it is filled with its
original parks, and new ones as well.
26 downtown
parks, each within 2-3 short blocks of the next, make this one of the greenest
and most entrancing cities in America; maybe the world. 
The city was
laid out from the start to be like this when James Oglethorpe arrived from
England in the 1730’s to settle his colony. Charles Wesley, pastor, and famous Methodist
hymn writer, was Oglethorp’s secretary. John Wesley, the founder of worldwide
Methodism, came over later and walked these
parks and preached in an Anglican chapel on the same site as the pre-Civil War
Episcopal church today.
Interesting
note: After establishing the colony first at Fort Frederick on Saint Simons
Island to our south, Oglethorpe went back to England and petitioned the king to
make Georgia a slave-free colony. Oh, if only it could have so remained.
Sherman
ended his march to the sea here and used several of the homes which are still today
as they were in 1865 as his personal and administrative headquarters.
Many of the
live oak trees in these parks and along these streets are over 200 years old.
Oh if they could only talk.
We learned
that up until several decades ago Savannah’s leaders wanted to continue the
quiet and almost hidden life of the town, keeping it very low key as a tourist
destination. There own secret paradise
of southern, and Confederate, peace and quiet. 
But the rise
of Hilton Head Island’s popularity to the north, and the opening of I-95 right
past its side door (its front door is to the north, on the Savannah River (Moon
River, to Johnny Mercer. The local super star before John Berendt, author of Midnight
in the Garden of Good and Evil was printed ).
Savannah has
always been known for Juliet Low’s home and founding site of the Girl Scouts of
America, and you probably know the ‘Life is like a box of chocolates’ Forrest
Gump quote took place for that movie on a park bench now in a local museum. But
it’s the parks themselves that provide a glorious breathing space, and models
for countless artists from SCAD, the now huge Savannah College of Art and
Design whose students are everywhere in town making this place a combination Nederland,
CO and Charleston, SC. Yuppies, hippies,
and grayhairs like Mona and me. The
latter especially this time of year.
All our
photos of each of the parks we walked through are on Facebook. Enjoy.
Today,
Friday, our Cummins Tech Matthew tried a workaround on the engine turbocharger
connector hose to the exhaust. It didn’t work.
Now he’s ordering a local machine shop to come in and design a part in
steel to replace the original part. Overbuild
it so it hopefully never needs replaced again.
We’ll be
here into next week now. And we’ll try
to get the post office to hold our next mail packet at St. Simons Island longer
than their normal 10 days.
But that’s
only 100 miles south, so all should be fine.
If you want to keep us in prayer do so that the Shop manager, Dwayne,
can still honor his original pledge to not charge us for any of these
repairs. We’re a small job in this shop
of dozens of trucks, buses, and RV’s and house sized generators, but he’s
already put a couple of thousand in work hours into this second repair and the
design of a unique part can’t be cheap.
It’s getting
time to head farther south. It’s getting cooler again here in Georgia. Florida calls.
-Ken
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