Underwater Atlanta

Jan. 20-23

On Sunday, our last full day in Savannah, we made it to the Latin mass at the Cathedral of St. John. 

The service begins at one in the afternoon. 

Not knowing how long the trip would take—particularly the part about finding a parking place— we left early. We zipped along, parked a block away and arrived before the previous service had finished. 

It was too chilly to enjoy a stroll, so we sat out that service at the back. The music was fantastic. 

I didn’t get to see the choir for the service that was ending. Joanna and I were at the back under the choir loft.

We moved forward for the Latin service, which was largely sung. There was a small choir, four or five chanters, whose voices filled the space.

I’ve heard the Latin service a few times, but am not familiar with much of it. I know a few responses and can start the Pater Noster. I had a booklet with much of the text, and when I didn’t get lost, was able to follow along with the choir.

It was around two when the service let out, and a long time since our light breakfast. So we stopped at a luncheonette called Clary’s, which we passed on Abercorn St. on the way back to the car.

They have Reuben as big as your head, that was calling my name. But I opted instead for yet another Confederate breakfast, grits, biscuit, and eggs. I’d save the calories for beer later.

On the wall is an illustration that looks like a stained-glass window of the Bird Girl.

We went to Orleans Square for a look at a particularly striking fountain which had been used as a cover photo for the Savannah visitor guide at the hotel.

We couldn’t get a photo even close to the one on the book, because it was already late winter afternoon and the shadow of one of the live oaks was on half the fountain. 

Had it been all in shade or all in sun, the camera would have been able to get a more detailed shot. 

Forsyth Park, a few blocks south, is a large park. It has two buildings that were originally built as mock forts for military training during World War I.

One of the attractions is the Forsyth Fountain, a large marble fountain with water spouting from fish and from sea gods’ trumpets. There are herons in reeds near the top.

The park also has an obelisk commemorating the Confederate dead, erected by some ladies’ group in the 1870s. It originally was to be surmounted by two mourning women, but maybe that idea was considered too emo, so now there’s a Confederate soldier on top with a floppy hat.

The monument was made in Canada of Canadian limestone. It was transported by ship to Savannah so it would not touch northern soil.

There are also two busts of prominent citizens who were Confederate officers.

We had dinner at a place called 5 Spot for burgers with a side of collards.

It was good food. The place bills itself as the “neighborhood kitchen and bar. Like a lot of neighborhood bars, the beer selection was mediocre. Sam Adams IPA is OK but not the best; Brown Bear (Catawba NC) brown ale is slightly sweet; Goose Island is always good, can or tap.

On our way out of town Monday, we took a detour to see the Mercer-Williams House. The house was built for Hugh Mercer, the Confederate general, not the apothecary in Washington’s army. 

This Hugh never got to live in the house. The Civil War started before he moved in. By the time he got back from the war, someone else had taken over the property.

It was eventually abandoned until a prominent local antiques dealer, Jim Williams, bought and restored the building.

Williams later shot and killed a male prostitute in the house. The story is the basis of  “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” 

Williams was acquitted after four trials, and then died unexpectedly inside the house a few years later. The place is now owned by his sister, who operates it as a museum.

The house faces Monterey Square, which is the site of a monument to Count Pulaski, the Revolutionary War hero who was killed in action near Savannah. He is the eponym of the Pulaski Skyway in New Jersey.

We stopped on the way to Atlanta at a Huddle House. It’s almost identical in layout to Waffle House, but neater. I kind of missed the blackened pans and the spattered waffle batter.

Joanna had one of her favorite breakfasts, pancakes and bacon. Instead of grits, this time I had a waffle with my eggs and sausage.

The coffee was a little weak, but that was just as well. The hour was far past noon, and for me that’s late in the day for coffee.

I learned to be careful with that stuff. I used to drink so much coffee—at least a half gallon a day, literally—that I couldn’t get to sleep till midnight or one. 

I cut that out years ago, and now usually limit myself to a couple or three cups in the morning. 

We finished our drive in the suburbs of Atlanta, a section called Druid Hills. Judging by the franchises on the roadside, these Druids eat a lot of tacos.

I later read in a local alternative paper, “Creative Loafing,” that the neighborhood is heavily Mexican. Maybe because the Consulado General de Mexico is here, overlooking the highway near the hotel.

But it is a smiling Korean lady who runs the laundry up the road at the Sun Tan strip mall.

She gave us a lot of help. Using the machines there is slightly different from the ones at my usual laundromat in New Jersey, but it’s similar enough to be confusing.

Between the two of us, Joanna and I had collected quite a bag of socks and whatnot in the past week and a half. But we finished in record time.

Still, it was after five when we left, so we were feeling the pangs of hunger. Rather than drive to downtown, where all the good restaurants are, we just rode around Druid Hills looking for a place to eat.

The landscape was full of franchises selling tacos and fast food, which is how we wound up at the Grub Burger Bar.

Joanna had a salad of salmon (or maybe tuna; I don’t remember) over things like corn and black beans. It was served cold. I tried a taste and maybe it would be better hot. 

My burger was all right.

The only ale on tap was Hopsecutioner, which I’ve had a few times before. It’s made by Terrapin Brewing in Athens, Ga. Mildly fragrant but full of flavor, it’s a drink-worthy IPA.

Tuesday we went to a novelty of the city, Underground Atlanta, which we found closed. A security guard told us many of the surface buildings will be replaced by. high-rise apartment houses and the underground mall will be redesigned.

The underground part is a couple of city blocks that were the original street level. At that time, that meant the cross streets were grade crossings on the network of tracks near the rail station. 

For safety reasons, the streets were raised to pass well above the tracks, and what had been ground-floor shops and restaurants, went underground. Literally and figuratively. For a while it was a notorious neighborhood of brothels, speakeasies, and gambling dens.

When I saw it first, a few years ago, it had been transformed into a mall with an arcade feeling. I remember there was a bronze statue of a street performer working with a bear, supposedly based on a real person who used to show up there, probably in the care-free days before bears were regulated.

The only bronze I could find this time is on the upper level, a man holding a child.

We met Maryellen and Ken, my sister-in-law and brother-in-law, at a terrific Italian restaurant called Baraonda. Mare, Ken, and I had eaten there once before when I was in town. 

As I recall, we had been walking on Peachtree Street a block north of the Fox Theatre and found the place by accident.

It ranks with the best Italian-fare restaurants I know.

Joanna had the ravioli, which is outstanding. Mare ordered it on our first visit and gave me a sample. Joanna’s was equally good.

My dinner was Garganelli ragu. The sauce was made with ground beef instead of the beef chunks that fall apart, which is the way I think of ragu. But it was very tasty—savory with no sugar (or very little) added—and I believe it contained plenty of wine. I’d definitely ask for this one again sometime.

The Montepulciano d’Abruzzo was also very good. 

On the way home, I stopped at Terrific Package Store a mile or so from the hotel.

It was pretty terrific in its way. Sitting right next to the Naughty Lady Lingerie shop, it had iron bars on the windows and doors. The clerk worked behind bullet-proof glass.

The place was so heavily armored, it felt like I was coming to bail out a prisoner instead of a bottle of wine.

Joanna came in with me. She didn’t want to sit in the car in this neighborhood. 

It was fun for a short visit, but I was glad that our hotel was in a less ominous part of Druid Hills.

I bought a cheap bottle of California Pinot Noir. It was OK, but certainly wasn’t Montepulciano d’Abruzzo.

Wednesday had a forecast of rain, so we went to the Georgia Aquarium in the afternoon. 

We got there just in time to see the dolphin show. Each animal works with its trainer. They perform in a pool with a plexiglass wall so you can see below the water.

They dance, and they wave. They stand on their front flippers. Sometimes they come up to the edge of the pool and rest their front flippers on the edge, much like a kid at the side of swimming pool. 

The dolphin show was over the top. You’re warned repeatedly before the show starts that the first ten rows are in the “soak zone.”

Everything starts with leaping and spinning dolphins, and yeah, that puts up a splash. Before it’s over, though, a half dozen animals are at the edge of the pool using their tails to scoop water into the audience.

The dolphins pull their trainers through the water. One stunt doesn’t look humanly possible. A trainer stands up on one foot, which—try to picture this—rests on the tip of the dolphin’s snout as it races across the pool.

I can’t imagine how anyone could stand with both feet maybe on two dolphins' noses for better balance, not even if they stayed stock still.

The biggest attraction in the aquarium, though, isn’t a show at all. The area called Ocean Voyager is a salt-water tank filled with rays, sharks, schools of colorful fish and dull fish.

You look through windows into the tank. You walk through a tunnel that surrounds you with the fish without getting wet. 

Then you come to a small theater with carpeted steps where you can sit and watch the entire tank through a window about the size of a movie screen in your local multiplex.

The aquarium has two whale sharks. It is the largest species of fish in the world and when you see them from underneath, they indeed look like whales with their wide bodies and blunt heads.

It’s fascinating just to sit and watch. As one of the aquarium people put it, “You can sit here and clean your mind.”

A section devoted to river life includes a small tank of piranhas. They swim very calmly looking like they wouldn’t bite a fly. 

A monitor on the wall shows them at feeding time. A dead fish is dropped into the water on a line. They clean it in seconds.

The Georgia Aquarium, its name notwithstanding, isn’t a state organization. It is a non-profit. The various exhibits have corporate sponsors. For instance, Sun Trust supports the sea lions, AT&T the dolphins, and Southern Co. the river exhibits.

It was outside the aquarium that we ran into the second disappointment of our sojourn in Atlanta.

One of the additional sources of fun at the aquarium was that Legal Sea Food was right across the street. This is a restaurant chain that claims “our fish is so fresh that an entree once took a bite out of the appetizer.” 

Wow, just like the piranhas.

We had planned to go there for dinner, but the restaurant has, alas, closed. Maybe fish isn’t popular in Atlanta. Or maybe people got nervous eating fish close to their toothy cousins.

We started driving back to the hotel, expecting to find a promising place on the way. And we didn’t have to go far. 

A couple of blocks away, near the Olympic Park, we saw a sign for Ted’s Montana Grill. We had been of those restaurants in Bozeman. 

This one was in the Ted Turner Building on Ted Turner Blvd. You can see the CNN building nearby. 

Ted’s Montana bills its fare as “authentic American dining.”

Even the wines are American. We had two very good ones from California. 

Since we were sitting at the bar in front of a mounted buffalo head, Joanna’s wine was very appropriate—a smooth Merlot labeled Bison Ridge. I had a spicy Pinot Noir from MacMurray Ranch on the Central Coast.

Dinner for Joanna was half a roast chicken. I chose a bison filet. I don’t think it was taken from the animal on the wall. It came planted with a small paper American flag on a toothpick.

Both choices were excellent, the chicken savory, the bison actually tender.

Bison has a slightly gamy edge that distinguishes it from beef. It’s not to everyone’s taste. Joanna isn’t crazy about it, for instance. But I love it. 

I come from a long line of deer hunters and poachers. I was raised on venison, not all of it taken in season. So farm-bred buffalo is a treat.

Here’s hoping for treats all around.

Good night, gang. And if you ever sleep with the fishes, be sure they’re not piranhas.

Harry