One Lap

Date: 11/07/2013

Day: 42

Location:  Montgomery, AL

Miles Today: 281

Total Miles:  9592

Editorial Note, On the Road North, then WEST, A Problem with this Part of the World,  A Place to Rest, Another Life, Seen on the Road, Tomorrow

Editorial Note

Agatha Christie, when asked about her choice of an elderly, retired Belgian detective as her foremost character, recommended that authors think hard about the effect of such choices.  If you ever decide to embark on a blog, consider carefully about writing in the third person.  It is a pain, clumsy at best, pompous and silly at worst. 

I am allowing myself a one day vacation from this stricture -- I've some things to write about that aren't suited for it.  I'll be back at it tomorrow, a bed made must be lied in

What follows is probably about as dark/uninteresting as I am likely to get.  You have my blessing if you want to skip this and come back tomorrow

 

On the Road

Aiming for a stop in Columbus, Georgia, I began today traveling North from Valdosta, then, after a stop at Columbus turned west toward Montgomery, Alabama.  I should maintain this westerly direction pretty much all the way to San Diego.  HOORAY!  Headin' for home!

Above and below, more cotton in the field.   This late in the season, the cotton is white, the dried bushes almost black.  The cotton boles are interesting.  Each bole has several segments that look like cotton balls out of a box, but each has cotton seeds, several of them, inside.

 

Above and below, Pecan trees; stately and beautiful.

 

 

 

A Problem with this Part of the World

I have no patience at all for the Confederacy.  A criminal, fundamentally evil undertaking, intending to sustain and expand our national original sin.  As master of that criminal enterprise, Jefferson Davis is probably burning in the next hole over from Hitler and Himmler, or would be if there is justice in the afterlife.  And yet I found myself driving on the Jefferson Davis memorial highway, AKA US Hwy 278, GA Route 12.  Can you believe that there was once (in the 1910's and '20's) a planed Jefferson Davis transcontinental highway, stretching form Washington DC to San Diego  True, you could look it up.  At least the Germans have the moral sensitivity to be ashamed.

 

 

A Place to Rest

 

I saw this sign and had to stop and go back for a picture.  Glad to say that I do not qualify -- my people come from Ohio and the plains of the Ukraine.

 



When I got back there and out of the car, I saw my first, and so far only, Confederate battle flag.

This is a small, unattended, unfenced cemetery by the side of the road, approachable by a disused path.  It is not at all uncommon to see a cluster of graves by the side of the road in the south.

And what you see there is this and more like it.  Richard M. Cole, nineteen.  Company K of the 17th Georgia Infantry.  Poor kid.  He died early and most likely badly, in defense of evil.  I'm sure he thought of it as defending his home from invaders.  Sadly, however pure his intentions -- and I gladly offer this boy the benefit of the doubt -- he was wrong.  I have no problem with the Daughters of the Confederacy or the Sons of Confederate Veterans putting up markers for individual graves, but a really can't stand the nasty flag.

 

Another life a couple lifetimes ago

While in the Army, I lived in Columbus Georgia long enough to register to vote, had I cared to do so.  Which I certainly did not.  A few months at the Infantry Officer Candidate School, a couple years as a weapons instructor at the Infantry School.  Unsurprisingly, not much is there that was there 40 years ago.  I still find it comfortable to be surrounded by very fit, very thin young men in uniform.  I am now old enough that Majors and Lt. Cols, fearsome creatures when I was a Lieutenant, look very young indeed. 

Something new is the National Infantry Museum. 

Although of minimal interest to most of the folks who might read this, I found it a very interesting place indeed.  When I was at Ft. Benning, this museum was a tatty collection of  dusty and undistinguished displays in an old hospital building.  This place is almost 200,000 square feet, state of the art throughout and includes an IMAX theater.  It even offers visitors a chance to work  -- for a fee -- with Army tank and rifle simulators; video games for big kids. 

If you were to visit, you might find, as I did, the intention of the exercise difficult to fathom.  There is lots of hardware, of course, all that Army stuff; rifles and bayonets and night vision goggles.  But there are also uniforms of soldiers who died in Europe and Korea, uniforms worn when men were POW's.  The impression, at least on me, is not triumphalist.  It hits the sacrifice button hard.  They do not make this job look like fun.  Still, in attendance are many young soldiers (I mean 18 and 19 year old privates) with their young women in tow.  I cannot imaging how this goes down in their minds.

It is very unlikely that anyone who might read this will ever visit this place.  If you do, I would very much like to know your emotional, not intellectual impression of it.

 

Two images only from the Museum -- I don't want to loose you forever.  This guy was called Iron Mike when I was there and stood outside the Infantry School  building.  Now that he lives at a museum, no nickname is evident.  Formally, it is "The Spirit of the Infantry."  The plaque says "Follow Me."

 Typical of the odd atmospheric is this gif, showing WWII soldiers marching somewhere in Europe, projected on an American flag.  They have the 1000 yard stare and look as stressed and dirty as those soldiers were.  I apologize for the fuzzy image, but they it is a moving image.  They are marching and they never stop.

Powerful yes, but what do the clever people who put it here want us to take away from seeing this image?

 

Seen on the Road

 

Unfortunately, Worth gins cotton, not ... gin.  I have no idea what the school bus is for -- moving field workers?

Mark gets full marks for signage so far as I am concerned.

More pumpkins than melons, but it is November.  Nicely arranged stand.

Tomorrow

I am working up to a screed on the place of the military in American culture, but no time soon.  I promise a much lighter and more enjoyable to read tomorrow.  It will include my first visit to New Orleans.  Two days! 

 

 

Wellington Boot, Col.