Food Diary

Dining is half the fun of traveling, at least for me. I do enjoy learning about the history of the place, but to get a real sense of the “local color” as my father used to say, there’s nothing like rubbing elbows with the natives or, if you choose a tourist hot spot, getting to know the wait staff.

On our recent trip south, our first dinner was on Jacksonville Beach at Joe’s Crab Shack. Yeah, I know it’s a chain, it’s a tourist focus, but we had avoided the one here in Pittsburgh (where’s the sand?) and thought it was time to see what it was all about. Plus it was right on the beach. We chose to sit outside, although at first it was rather windy it did calm down. The place was packed on a Wednesday evening but our drinks came fast and the waitress took our order promptly. And then we waited. And waited. Anne, our waiter, was nearly in tears as she apologized for the lost order; it was over an hour before we got our food. Jeremy, the manager, was good enough to take half off the food bill and give us free dessert. I chose Key Lime pie, because I really like the tartness and it was a favorite of my father’s.

Before we met our realtor on Thursday morning we had breakfast at The Fox Restaurant in Avondale, a kitschy diner that has a huge local fan club. I’m told that some mornings the line is out the door but we were lucky that morning. The staff was all heavily tattooed, including the waitresses, and everyone was very friendly. The realtor’s office was down the street one block so when we came back early afternoon she treated us to lunch at The Brick, across the street from The Fox. That was a nice, trendy, empty restaurant, with some interesting paintings on the walls. For dinner that evening, we walked across the Main Street Bridge (a blue bridge built in 1941 and quite the sight at night) to Jacksonville Landing and ate at The American Café. There was a concert in the square by a local band that had a following of motorcyclists … yes, it was loud.

Friday morning before we headed to Savannah, we walked back across the blue bridge and had breakfast at the Landing again, at The Village Bread Company, then perused a small artists’ market set up right outside but found nothing I couldn’t live without. We left Jacksonville well after noon and headed north on I-95, stopping in Brunswick, GA at an interesting combination of a ‘50s style Denny’s with a bowling alley and video arcade. It wasn’t the cleanest restaurant I’ve eaten at, and that seems to be true of Denny’s in most places. I’d stop eating there but they have the best breakfasts, especially the cheesy scrambled eggs, of any place I’ve been.

After walking around downtown Savannah along River Street we decided to drive east to Tybee Island and find a place to eat on the beach. We happened on Marlin Monroe’s Surfside Grill, tucked behind a high-rise hotel, but it was so incredibly windy with a storm moving in that we chose to eat inside. A trio was performing, two guitarists and a singer, and our waiter was an engaging young man, who had spent the winter working on a shrimp boat.

Saturday evening, after an incredibly long day of looking at townhouses, condos and marinas, we decided to walk back down to River Street and eat at River House Seafood, in a very old building. One of the drink specialties was some type of plantation punch that had every kind of liquor you can think of plus champagne; we both passed on that! Our waiter was from East Liverpool, OH and had graduated from one of Pittsburgh’s cooking schools. She wanted to start her own catering business in Savannah and talked her mother into moving down from Ohio.

Since we were staying at a Hampton Inn in the Historic District, we had a quick, light breakfast there on Sunday. The breakfast area was a zoo as there were three large groups all eating and departing at the same time that morning: a family reunion; a church youth group returning from a mission trip, and a Girl Scout troop. I think we were lucky to get our boxes of Raisin Bran!

After a disappointing morning visiting marinas, we went back to Tybee Island for lunch at Fannie’s on the Beach, where I think I picked up the chiggers that have been feasting on my ankles and shins all week. Our final meal in Savannah, not that we had planned on it, was at an airport restaurant because our flight was delayed over two hours. I had a pretty darn good chicken quesadilla and Bill had some tasty wings.

 So we may not have found THE city yet, but we had fun visiting and sampling the cuisine!

Savannah: Moon River Land

The back story about Savannah, Georgia is the Back River, a small tributary north of the Savannah River, which in turn is north of the city. Songwriter Johnny Mercer grew up in Savannah, spending his boyhood playing around Savannah’s waters. Enamored of the Back River, or so the story goes, Mercer wrote the song Moon River in its honor, after which the Savannah Chamber of Commerce renamed the Back River in honor of the song.

I found Savannah, established in 1733, a charming small city. It’s less than 75 square miles but packs a lot of homes into the grid that’s composed of the Historical District, the Victorian District and the Thomas Ward District, before branching out into nearby islands and suburbs. Our realtor, a native Savannian, was a wealth of information and we spent part of the morning just touring the city. She is also quite a casual driver, stopping in the middle of the street to point out the birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts, or twice running solidly red lights while talking a mile a minute. I know Bill saw the hair rise on the back of my neck!

We toured homes as old as the 1800s (I could feel my childhood asthma coming on while standing in the middle of a gutted old building) to new resort-style patio homes. While there were two or three possibilities for land-based domiciles, the marinas were a huge disappointment. The Savannah River has no pleasure craft traffic; it’s solely used for tremendously large container ships, all of which seem to have Chinese registrations. The other rivers are brackish water and affected by the ocean tides, leaving eight to ten feet of muck on the shore during low tide. And yes, there are alligators! I saw one sunning itself on the bank of a man-made pond in one of the resort-like developments. Our realtor casually suggested running in a zig-zag as those creatures can’t exactly turn on a dime.

So, housing was a B. I give the marinas a D (most were geared toward fishing recreation and none really legally able to accommodate houseboats). Job opportunities are also a D; the four primary industries are shipping, manufacturing (the Gulfstream business jet corporation calls Savannah home), tourism and education, most of which is through SCAD, the Savannah College of Art and Design. Our realtor suggested that Bill look for a job teaching American Sign Language!

We did have two enjoyable dinners there. On Friday evening we drove out to Tybee Island for dinner at Marlin Monroe’s (yes, their logo is a fish in a dress) and on Saturday we ate in the Historic District at the River House Seafood Restaurant. After dinner Bill talked me into buying a cute little sundress so I surprised him by wearing it out of the store. The clerks were amused but I’m sure they’ve seen it before!

Sunday lunch found us back out at the beach on Tybee Island, where we took a nice long hot walk before heading back to the airport, only to find that our connecting flight to Charlotte was delayed by two and a half hours, putting us home well after midnight.

Oh, by the way, the Back River (aka Moon River) is not wider than a mile!

Jacksonville: Good to the Last Drop

I have some history with Jacksonville, not that I can remember it. When I was a little over two years old my father’s first congregation after graduating from the seminary was to an all black church in Jacksonville. The story goes that the elders of the church took my father on a neighborhood tour of all the bars, dives and pool halls so that the “brothers” would know that the Honky Father was A-OK and not to be messed with. Another family story is that I swapped a white baby doll for a black baby doll with a little girl in the congregation but I don’t remember that at all and we were only in Jacksonville for about a year or two at most.

The city is huge. At about 850 square miles (plus or minus, depending on your source), it’s the largest city by area in the lower 48 states and the 11^th largest in population. There is a lot of diverse industry and businesses so I would give this city an A for potential job opportunities. Maxwell House Coffee is headquartered here, along with CSX, Winn-Dixie Stores, Stein Mart, Huckins Yacht Corporation, the Jacksonville Jaguars, many banks and hospitals, along with the military.

Speaking of the Jaguars, the owners of the team personally bankrolled the renovation of The John Gorrie, a 1930s school building, into a delightful condominium complex and they had just opened it to the market in late June. No two of the 68 units are alike in layout, but all were decorated with the same color palette, cabinetry and appliances. The ceilings had to be 20 feet high and the windows were almost floor to ceiling. All Bill could think about was the cost of draperies! I was most impressed with The John Gorrie, which was situated in the historic Riverside district, along the Ortega River. Since we started with the best, the housing seemed to go down a bit in quality from The John Gorrie, although I would give area housing in general a B+ at this point.

We visited six marinas, some for just a few minutes as it was obvious they did not have the amenities we’re so spoiled with at the Fox Chapel Yacht Club, but there were three we spent a fair amount of time at and feel that the Marina at Ortega Landing is pretty classy. It includes a nearly empty condominium on the property but they ran in excess of $1 million prior to going into bankruptcy! The marina has nice concrete floating docks with built-in waste pump-out (yes, that’s important!), a beautiful small pool and a beautiful clubhouse, including a small laundry facility.

The Ortega River feeds into the St. John’s River which runs through downtown Jacksonville. It’s not terribly affected by the tides, perhaps moving about 18 inches at low tide. Two of the other nearby marinas offer full-service maintenance and fuel so we’ll be able to have the flybridge reassembled and the boat launched should we choose Jacksonville as our final destination. There are no locks and dams on the rivers here, but they do have draw bridges! I guess it doesn't matter whether you're waiting 15 minutes to lock down or pass through, it's all very interesting!

After this whirlwind trip, where we saw more housing than I can keep track of, we are still not decided. There may be another trip in the near future if we can figure out where to find 5-star marinas, affordable quality housing, and a good job market on a river!

Hugger Mugger

It’s a funny word, isn’t it? I first encountered it over 20 years ago when a business acquaintance, Diana Carlston, invented a game to rival Trivial Pursuit. Her premise was to offer a game geared towards people who liked words – the spelling, definition or word play of such – versus those who stored a lot of trivia in their brains.

A “hugger mugger” is a secret, a mystery, or something unrevealed. Diana’s game began with a mystery word that was eventually revealed through a series of thoughtful (pun intended) game plays: unscramble letters to form a word; spell a word; choose the correct definition of a word; answer a random trivia question, or create a list of words, for example, that begin with “en”.

I was able to purchase one of the first 100 signed editions of the game in 1989. Then it sat on a shelf gathering dust for the next 22 years. I did not play it once and I love words! At a recent garage sale I put it out with a modest price: $4. Toward the end of the sale someone came by and picked it up, wondering aloud what it was about. Before I had a chance to explain, another browsing customer very enthusiastically gave a personal review. Her “testimony” was enough to convince the other customer to buy it.

The Triune God is a real hugger mugger. While each person in the Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – are revealed through the Word, we really don’t know or understand how three can be one. Faith – trust without reservation – allows us to accept this hugger mugger and worship the Triune God freely and fully.

Some people have a hard time with mysteries. They need them to be solved. The secret must be revealed! Those same people probably need to know what’s in every package under the Christmas tree before they’re opened! Personally, I like a little unsolved mystery but I also know that God will reveal all at the right time in eternity. Someday I’ll know all three persons in the one God. I’ll know why loved ones were taken to Heaven before I was ready to let them go. I’ll find out how faith the size of a tiny, tiny mustard seed can move the largest, most immobile mountain in the world. And I’ll see the fullness of His love for me and all mankind. The hugger mugger will be revealed. I hope that my “testimony” will someday be enough to convince someone to seek the One who is love beyond all fathom.