Dance After Dark Photography

I don’t think I’ve written a composition like this since elementary school. Well, maybe not. Now that I think of it, I did write a tongue-in-cheek “what I did with my summer” essay in 7th grade. That was the year I fell out of a tree in my front yard and broke my collarbone, and the essay began with the line “I fell on my head.”

This year, thankfully, I neither fell on my head nor broke anything. My mother, my grandmother, and I took a road trip to Greenville, SC, to attend the annual Adair family reunion.  My great grandmother was Mettie Adair. The only memories I have of her are vague impressions and stories I’ve been told, but there are pictures of her with me as an infant. I’ve heard time and again how delighted she was with me because I was the smallest baby she’d ever seen. I was only 4lbs 5oz at birth. My, how things change.

We decided to take a long, ambling route to get to the reunion. We drove to Savannah on Sunday, July 29th, and we stayed there for a few days just wandering around the city. Sunday afternoon we ate lunch at the old Cotton Exchange on River Street. Like all of the other shops and restaurants along the Savannah River, the Cotton Exchange is a historic building that’s been renovated and only marginally redecorated. The exposed beams in the ceiling and the rough brick of the walls give the place an old world feel. The tables were old doors that had been heavily lacquered to make a smooth surface. Sit along the front wall, and you’re likely to sit next to a glassed-in doorway that once served as a loading dock.

After lunch we wandered along the cobblestones of River Street, visiting a few touristy shops at my mother’s insistence and by mutual accord spending about half an hour at the Savannah Candy Kitchen. They give free samples of their fresh-made pecan pralines and toffee. We bought a pound and a half of pralines, dividing it between the traditional and chocolate recipes. Of course, I’ve barely touched them because it’s almost pure sugar. They’re dangerous! Good, though.

On Monday we ate lunch at Mrs. Wilkes Boarding House, which is not your typical restaurant. You’re expected to bus your own dishes, just like when the place really was a boarding house, but the food and conversation are well worth the extra effort. You sit at a huge table with 10-12 other people. At our table, there were a few locals, a biker and his family from Orlando, and a group of friends who’d come down from Baltimore for the weekend. At $15 per person the lunch price is a little steep, but I’ve never had such good fried chicken, ham, and biscuits. Everyone raved over the rutabagas, though that’s not one of my favorite vegetables. You pass the dishes around the table, and the staff brings more whenever any particular dish runs out. My only suggestion would be that they keep a few handtrucks nearby to help get satiated customers out the door.

We spent the rest of Monday wandering along River Street again, this time stopping in the River Street Gallery. Mom embarrassed me by telling the lady behind the counter that my photos were much better than the ones on the wall. I apologized to the lady because, like the cooperative galleries in Orlando, it’s the artists themselves who run the place. Thankfully she wasn’t the photographer in question, but that was an awkward moment. I also talked to a young lady who makes ceramic corsets. For now they’re objets d’art made on a smaller scale, but she’s thinking about making wearable ceramic corsets. We talked a bit about an artist I somewhat-know in Oklahoma who does that now. Interesting conversation.

We left Savannah on Tuesday morning and headed northwest toward Helen, GA. No interstates! I’ll save the story of Helen and northeast Georgia for the next time.

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