Memories Of The Savannah

 

–Savannah River from the Bridge, Augusta, Georgia, June 8th, 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

“It seems I have always lived near rivers and trains.”

The day we went to Eve Street, I remembered I hadn’t taken any photographs of the Savannah. I had zipped off a couple of shots of the 5th Street Bridge, a landmark in disrepair. My grandfather helped build that bridge. It was strange to go back to a place where my family had so much history. I’m used to living in towns and cities where I have no immediate blood kin.

It stands to follow that in those places, I have to forge my own bits of history. But spending time in a city where family members are woven through architecture, church, field, and stream, made me feel connected. Close. The water there plays a big part in my childhood.

The Savannah River is about 350 miles long and its source is in eastern Georgia at a confluence of the Seneca and Tugaloo Rivers. The headwaters originate in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia near Ellicott Rock, the point where the borders of those three states meet. The river flows from a cool, clear stream in the Blue Ridge Mountains and empties through tidal plains into the Atlantic.

Savannah and Augusta are the largest cities on the Savannah River and most of their history evolved from commerce and trade on her waters. Savannah is on the Atlantic, Augusta on the fall line.

Lake Hartwell is a 56,000 acre manmade lake built in 1963 by the Army Corp of Engineers on the headwaters of the Savannah. The 71,535 acre Clarks Hill Reservoir was built by the Corp in 1954 and is 22 miles north of Augusta. Clarks Hill is where my mother wants her ashes to be scattered. She says she spent some of the happiest times of her life waterskiing and swimming in Clarks Hill.

The Savannah River’s history goes back some 12,000 years to the Ice Age. That makes my 400-year-old family history look paltry. Human history along her banks includes Hernando de Soto, James Edward Oglethorpe, the Westo Indians, and a wandering tribe called the Savannah Indians, armed by a group of Carolinians, who drove out the Westos in the Westo War of 1680 and gave their name to the river.

Part of my ancestry can be traced back to Oglethorpe. But the memories I have are of Grandmama Elise picking me up from Belvedere Circle in her black, 40’s Pontiac and singing The Good Ship Lollipop to me as we crossed the 5th Street Bridge. (My great grandfather told them they would run into quicksand when they built it, but they didn’t listen.) When we drove across the river border between South Carolina and Georgia, the wind from the rolled down passenger window roared through my hair; the smell of the paper mill on the river is something a child never forgets.

The memories I have are of rolling over the river to Reynolds Street and my Granddaddy’s shop where my step-dad worked part-time as a mechanic (in addition to his full-time job). I remember the girly calendar on the wall, the smell of grease and Gojo, and pulling an ice cold Coke out of a shiny, red vending machine that gripped the blue-glass bottles like a vice. Then we’d drop salted peanuts from a bag of Planter’s into the lip and alternate swigs of Coke with the soggy crunch of peanuts between our teeth.

My memories are from four years ago, scooting along the Riverwalk in Augusta with my sister and her family when we drove down to visit relatives. We were fresh and tan after body surfing in the Atlantic at Ocean City, Maryland, and spent the day ambling around the Riverwalk museum where we stuffed ourselves into a photo booth for a couple of crazy, animated snapshots. 

My memories are from a week ago, driving back and forth across the Savannah River, photographing landmarks, recording conversations, creating new memories with my step-dad and mother, laughing and conjuring up times long past. My memories are of breaking and mending, of leaving and of coming home.

Here they are, details on the page, the beginning of something much bigger, a creative force spawned from the bowels of rivers and oceans and mountains and trees. Bones. Here are the memories of last week’s water wings, and the flowing, dry humidity of the Savannah.

But I sit on a gray deck near the banks of the wide and rambling Mississippi whose mouth bubbles out not far from the Canadian border in a lake called Itasca.

Sunday, June 17th, 2007

-from Topic post, Water Wings

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My Father’s Smile

By Beth Bro Howard

One day, when my husband was 40 years old, he came home from work, looking surprised and said, “I learned the most amazing thing today. When you smile at people, they smile back!”

Apparently, he had conducted his own little experiment while walking down the street. He would make eye contact and smile at people as they walked past him and he was delighted when they smiled back, which he noted, they usually did.

When he shared his discovery with me, I laughed and said, “I am so happy that you’ve learned this when you are 40. You could have lived your whole life and never known this.” At the same time, I realized that this was something I had always known. I’d learned it growing up with my father. My father had a wonderful, easy smile. His teeth were not perfect. He had an overbite, which accentuated the front teeth showing in his smile, offering a bigger grin.

My father didn’t just smile with his mouth, though. His whole face lit up. My father’s friend Paul Newman (not the actor) described my dad best in his memoir, when he wrote, “Kenny was a powerful and joyous force of nature that could not be stopped.” He was exactly that.

I grew up seeing my father bring that smile with him into every situation: from the breakfast table to a formal dinner; from greeting family and old friends to meeting total strangers. He used his smile liberally and especially when thanking someone for their help or for service rendered to him…even bad service.

Later in life, after heart by-pass surgery, the nurses at Evanston Hospital gifted my father a “Best Patient Award” and ribbon. I have no doubt that he won it with his smile, which may have been a rare sight for nurses in a post-surgical hospital setting.

I witnessed over and over again how my father’s smile put people at ease. I watched their faces brighten and felt its effect on my own face, too.

Even at the end of my father’s life, when he was very ill with leukemia and could not get out of bed, he would greet the day and me with a smile. The last thing he said to me was, “I hope to see you again.”

I said, “I hope so, too, Dad,” and we left each other with a smile.

After he died, the most frequent comment written in sympathy notes to our family was, “I will miss his smile.” We do, too.

Now, when someone mentions that they enjoy my smile, I sometimes say, but always think, “Thank you. It was a gift from my father.”

    My Father’s Smile, photo © 2007 by Beth Bro Howard. All rights reserved.

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