My final day on the road involved a visit to two sacred places that probably wouldn’t be on most people’s must see stops. But in some strange way, they seemed appropriate in the context of the drive from Annapolis to Tallahassee.
The first was in Macon, within sight of of my motel. So I combined my usual breakfast of fresh fruit with a leisurely walk on a gloriously warm and sunny morning through the completely empty, historic Rose Hill Cemetery. There was a method to my madness. It was about closing the circle on the Allman Brothers – or better yet, “hittin’ the note.”
The cemetery seemed to go on forever, the jumble of gravestones spreading across several lush rolling hills, overlooking the still active railroad tracks that run through Macon and the lazy brown Ocmulgee River. It was filled with a myriad of stone angels; mini-Washington Monuments, identifying former Masons; family mausoleums; ornate headstones of the rich and famous; and, of course, an expansive section for the Confederate (and Union) dead. Many of the graves were in various states of disrepair, but the cemetery itself was well-maintained.
But I wasn’t there to see any of that, though I found it all quite interesting and peaceful.
I wanted to pay my respects at the place where Duane Allman and Berry Oakley were buried. Like Jim Morrison’s grave in Paris, the Rose Hill Cemetery draws people from around the world, looking – for what? It’s hard to put into words. It was actually the first time in my life that I went out of my way to visit someone other than a family member or close friend’s burial site. Why visit a stranger’s grave, someone I didn’t even know? I can’t really answer the question other than to say that I was already there in Macon and I felt compelled. Maybe because the two musicians represented the most vivid part of my life, when I felt most alive, and I just wanted to say hello and thanks. I’m not a religious man, but I am spiritual, so I was pretty convinced they would take note.
Duane Allman and Berry Oakley’s grave site is nestled in a little gully between Forest Hill and Carnation Ridge in a thick copse of evergreen bushes that completely shield the site, making it appear to be nothing more than a clump of bushes and cactus. It’s like a wild space amidst the manicured tombstones that surround the little gully by the brown river. It took me awhile to find the sacred spot. The graves were ringed by a wrought iron black fence with a locked gate to prevent vandalism. And the tombs were guarded by little white stone angels named after their daughters, Galadrielle and Brittany.
I was playing the Allman Brothers on my phone as I strolled through the cemetery. The song list was set on shuffle. I finally stumbled on the grave site as I was bushwacking off Soldiers Ridge. Muddy Waters’ blues classic “Trouble No More”, with Duane’s wailing slide and his brother Greg’s blues growl, were blasting in my earphones. Symmetry.
I stood by the polished white marble graves, and in Duane’s honor I played “Melissa”, Greg’s plaintive ballad about Duane’s love for his guitar named Melissa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFJ20eNspzo
As I was heading back to my car and approached the white, stone-arched cemetery gate, Sonny Boy Williams’ “One Way Out” kicked in and I looked to the sky and laughed out loud. Some lady’s from the local garden club were planting flowers by the main gate and they gave me the evil eye. I waved a friendly hello and their frowns turned to smiles and they returned my greeting. Who says there isn’t a “higher” spirit?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez-Klb36O0E
I-75 south of Macon was not crowded and a welcome relief after the insanely congested conditions that had started 50 miles north of Atlanta.
There wasn’t much to see along the fairly undeveloped stretch of highway, other than the little town of Byron, about thirty miles south of Macon, an ugly collection of roadside motels, fast food, gas stations and adult toy stores and Strippers “We Bare It All!”.
My next stop was in keeping with the first in a weird way. I have always been fascinated by the Civil War and have visited most of the big battle sites in Pennsylvania (Gettysburg), Maryland (Antietam), Virginia (Chancellorsville, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, Fredericksburg, and Manassas), but ever since I read MacKinlay Kantor’s classic book “Andersonville”, I had wanted to visit the infamous Union prison camp.
I turned off I-85 onto winding Route 127, heading due west past cattle ranches and farms for about twenty miles and then headed south on Route 49 through the little town of Montezuma, named after the the famous Aztec leader by soldiers returning from the Mexican-American War in 1848. How strange.
Route 49 eventually led me to Cemetery Road and the entrance to the Andersonville National Historic Site, which is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. And that was exactly how the Confederates planned it because it would make escape virtually impossible. You were so deep in the South, where would you go?
The iconic shrine is also home to the National POW Museum and the National Cemetery. It is run by the National Park Service and it’s free, though they do welcome donations. As fitting, everything is solemn and understated.
As I slowly walked up to the Visitor Center, it felt like I was entering a tomb.
Inside, there were some very informative exhibits – something the Park Service always does really well – an excellent gift shop stocked with a library of Civil War books, and the usual key chains, t-shirts, fridge magnets, dishes and cups, bearing the Andersonville logo. Other than the books, that’s a tough sell. It would be like wearing a hat with the logo of Guantanamo Prison.
I watched two excellent 30-minute movies. The first was about POW’s throughout modern history, featuring that “loser” Senator John McCain who spent six torturous years in the Hanoi Hilton. And the second film was about Andersonville. They were both depressing as hell.
There’s a one mile road/trail that runs around the outside perimeter of the prison camp. I filled my water bottle and ventured out into the hot, noonday sun. I was amazed to find that one mile is just too long for people to walk. I was the only hiker. Everybody toured the site in their air-conditioned SUV’s. That was depressing too.
Andersonville was located on the site of Camp Sumter and was built during the final twelve months of the Civil War. Things were not going well for the Confederacy and there was a vindictive undercurrent to the prison’s history. From the very beginning it was understaffed and under-supplied. It was doomed to fail.
Prison camps came late to the Civil War. For the first three years, captured prisoners were paroled with regularity. There was a large camp in my hometown of Annapolis, which is still called Parole to this day, and is home to many of the descendants of African-Americans who serviced the camp in its heyday.
But when the North started recruiting blacks to fight, the South balked at treating captured African-Americans as soldiers, and discontinued the policy of exchanging POW’s. And Andersonville was born.
The 17-acre site itself was actually chosen quite well, with two sloping hills facing one another and a small stream running through the middle to supply clean water, all surrounded by a 15-foot-tall stockade made of sturdy Georgia pine. The facility was supposed to to hold about 10,000, but the POW’s just kept rolling in each week. It was soon expanded to 27 acres (1,600’ x 800’) and at its peak there were 32,000 prisoners, rotting away with no shelter, drinking and bathing in contaminated water, starving on minimal food, and dying with no hope. Of the 45,000 POW’s that came through Andersonville, 13,000 died (178 from Maryland).
I will spare you the details.
Interestingly, the artillery pieces were aimed outward, in fear of Northern attack, which eventually came in the form of General William Tecumseh Sherman in May of 1865. When word and photos of Andersonville spread North, the people were horrified. The camp commandant, a Swiss-born Confederate officer named Henry Wirz, became the national poster child for atrocity, even though the written record was clear that he had requested more resources from the day he took over the prison. It didn’t matter. The nation wanted its pound of flesh. Captain Wirz was tried and convicted at a highly-celebrated trial in Washington, D.C., and then publicly hanged. He was the only person accused of a war crime during the entire Civil War.
There is very little left of the prison itself, just a few re-created sections of fence and the west entrance, along with post holes showing where the stockade would have been. There were the typical marble and granite state monuments that you find at every Civil War battlefield. And there was a small granite shrine erected over a tiny spring that supposedly was revealed by a providential bolt of lightning that struck the ground in a terrible storm during Andersonville’s darkest hour, and which brought desperately needed fresh water to the prisoners. But for the most part, it was just two big grassy hills and a trickle of a stream with nothing to illustrate the horrors of war. And that was just fine with me. Give it a rest.
I did not have the stomach or heart to check out the National Cemetery where any American POW from any war can be buried. They are all essentially the same – white marble markers in neat little rows, all shining in the sun’s glory, testifying to the ultimate sacrifice a man or woman can make for their country.
Andersonville represents man’s inhumanity to man, for sure, but what gets lost in the terrible story is the fact that the North had equally bad prisons. Elmira Prison in upstate New York was every bit as awful as Andersonville. And Camp Douglas near Chicago had an even higher death rate. But the winners get to write history, so only the horrors of Andersonville have been remembered over time.
I found myself crying as I drove out the leafy exit road and turned south onto Route 49.
By southern Georgia, the brown-curtained live oaks were dancing in the wind and the grass was green and growing. I saw a man already mowing his lawn in the little town of Montezuma. And grass means cows. Industrial strength cattle ranches. Seeing how many cows they could put on a lush field of grass, it wasn’t hard to understand how Georgia is one of the top three cattle producing states in the country. Nevada, the wild west home of the cowboy myth, and the recent scene of the Bundy Revolt, is the most heavily federally subsidized grazing state in America. But it is 35th in cattle production, right behind tiny Vermont. Florida, Georgia and Alabama lead the nation. Because it rains!
Divided Highways in Georgia are maddening. They abruptly end and then dump you into some commercial strip where there is a big bollixed intersection with lots of tractor trailers and farm trucks, making for an aggravating mix. Then you come into a little town of shabby mercantile buildings and a few churches. And once outside town, the divided highway starts anew. They apparently have not heard of, or simply can’t afford to build, interchanges. So you need to add additional time to your trip because 120 miles on a Georgia highway can easily take three hours.
The sun was setting when I finally neared Tallahassee. As I crossed the border from Georgia into Florida, the farm fields gave way to timber lands and tree farms that showed signs of recent harvest and fire. Cypress swamps with their goofy wooden knees and Spanish moss-covered trees crowded Highway 139 into town. At times the road seemed to be cut like a tunnel through the trees. The low sunlight bathed the opening in a bright orange glow. Welcome to Florida!
My 950-mile journey across the south had taken me through five states – Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida – each unusual in their own special ways. I mean, South Carolina really is different from North Carolina in manners, style, and attitude. It’s more than just a name. And they are both constantly reinventing their own cultural identities.
That said, virtually every interchange along I-85 looked exactly the same – the same McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell, gas stations, Motel 6, Super 8, Econo Lodge. It looked like they had all been laid out by some universal design team, following a compulsory regional zoning plan. It was not a pretty picture. Most folks would probably nod and say, “Sure, that’s America.” But let me assure you that if you traveled the length of Europe, you would never see such cookie-cutter uniformity and bland ugliness. And remember this: first impressions are the ones that last. Is this really the face we want to show the world?
There has been a lot of talk this past year about “making America great again”. I’m not sure what the hell that means. I guess it’s about the olden golden days. But what I remember of the South from my boyhood days, traveling each spring to Florida with my parents, was a place of magic. It was often hokey and strange, but it was unique. We would do well to remember that vision and work together to create an America that stands out, not blends in.
