Atlanta

Tuesday January 26th, my mothers birthday. I got up for the gathering and actually spoke this time. It seemed appropriate to use the gathering as a time when I thanked the community for their hospitality and kindness. I was going to walk to the bus station but one of the guys was on his way to work and gave me a lift. The bus station is not in a bad part of town and is an easy walk from the historic district. Makes a nice change. I got my ticket, put my bag in line at the boarding gate and sat down to wait. The station may not be in a bad part of time but it turned out to be a trip where I found out that one of the things I had been told about Greyhound was not an urban myth designed to scare tourists like me. A white mini van drew up to the station with "Georgia Dept. of Corrections" printed on the side, out got about 15 guys in matching outfits. And when I say matching, I mean matching, the same t-shirts, shirts, belts, right down to the shoes. These guys had obviously just been released and were getting sent home courtesy of the tax payer. When I got on the bus I was kind of hoping that one of these guys would sit next to me, I was curious. Not about what they had done, but just in general. Instead I got a smoker sitting next me, he smelled so badly of cigarettes that I just knew he was going to be one of those people who have to get off at every stop and have a fag. At the first stop he didn't disappoint, I got off to stretch my legs.
I got back on and there was one of the ex-prisoners sat in the seat next to me. As we pulled away I could see three other ex-prisoners running after the bus. I don't know if the driver saw them or not but he wasn't stopping and they were left behind. The guy sat next to me, Calvin was really nice. He was from Atlanta and gave me lots of tips on things to do while I was in the city. When we arrived he even pointed me in the right direction for the library. I hope things go well for him. The bus had arrived on time and now I needed to know how I was getting to my couch, I was surfing with a girl and her boyfriend this time. I found the local visitor information centre first and chatted with the lovely lady there. She gave me a recommendation for a Southern food restaurant and a nail salon. Now I've started having pedicures I no longer touch my toe nails and right now they are like claws! This of course goes with the hairy legs to make me irresistible!! Not. That's what wearing trousers all the time and not having physical contact with a man will do for you. I was the same in Japan as regards shaving, the nails were in better condition if unpainted. I got to the library and then had time to kill, so I hung out in the downtown area until a police officer stopped and advised me to get out of the area before 8pm. He directed me to a safer place to wait until I could go to Anna's, my host house. I was glad to see the end of the day, Anna and her boyfriend Greg seemed lovely and I had a nice place to stay for three nights. After that I would move to the hostel in town.
When I went into downtown Atlanta the next day I actually had a plan for the day. I went to the CNN building and signed up for a tour. You're not allowed to take pictures but it was a cool tour. The best thing for me was to just see a t.v. programme on air as I was watching it live. There is also a part were they put you in a theatre and then link you into a programme control room. You get to see what the viewers at home see but also hear what the director/producer is saying and see the screens that they are cuing up for the next shot. After leaving the CNN building I wandered around Centennial Park, built to celebrate the 100th birthday of the Olympic Games. I took a few photos in front of the Olympic Rings fountain but I was definitely underwhelmed. And I still haven't achieved my goal of getting into an Olympic stadium. One of the stadiums they used for the 1996 games is now home to the baseball team and is apparently much changed from when it was an Olympic venue. I guess I'm going to have to wait for the London games. The rest of the day was spent wandering around the city. I didn't bother with Coca Cola World, I don't like soda so much that I am willing to spend $15 to go into a museum about it. In the evening I had dinner with my hosts and another guy,James, who is on the CS website. Nice evening, but I was tired at the end and as I was sleeping on an inflatable mattress in Anna's sitting room I had to wait for them to go to bed before I could sleep.
My second day in Atlanta turned out to be the big sightseeing day. I was up and out of the apartment early as I had to be at the Fox Theatre for 10am. The Fox Theatre was originally conceived as a meeting house for the Shriners, a kind off shoot of the Masons. In Atlanta they had five thousand members and nowhere big enough to hold their meetings. The members raised over a million dollars (back in the 1920's) and held a competition for building designs. When the plans were drawn up the final cost ended up being about three million dollars and the Shriners couldn't raise the money so they turned to William Fox. Fox was a movie mogul and his company were in the process of building huge cinemas across America. He said that he would meet the rest of the cost of the building if they made a few changes to the plans. The Shriners agreed and the cinema was built, complete with air conditioning in the auditorium. The White House didn't have air conditioning until three years after the cinema opened. The theatre has to be seen to be believed, outside it looks like a mosque, inside the decorations swing between a scene out of the Arabian nights and Cleopatra's palace. It's an incredible place and well worth visiting. The guide told us the story of Joe Patten, Joe loved the theatre so much that he restored the organ, even though he was not an organist. He then moved on to become a trustee on the board of the Atlanta Landmarks, which was formed to save the Fox from being demolished. Joe decided that he wanted to move house to be closer to the theatre, so he suggested turning some free space at the back of the theatre building into an apartment. The board agreed and Joe is still there, in his eight thousand feet apartment on Peachtree St. I didn't get to see him unfortunately.
I did take a tour of the Capitol building, it was interesting. In the rotunda they are busts of the three signers of the Declaration of Independence from Georgia as well as paintings of various famous Americans. Around the outside of the rotunda they have paintings of all the State Governors, including Jimmy Carter. I didn't know that he was the Governor for Georgia. They also have a painting of Martin Luther King Jr. as their first Noble Peace prize winner, Jimmy Carter was their second. I went to the MLK historic district, he was born in Atlanta and is buried there. The visitor centre is awesome, they have a really good exhibition of newspaper reports, videos, audio of MLK's speeches and it's just well put together. Again this is not a part of American history that I am very familiar with. I was, of course, aware of segregation but not aware of the details. The exhibition really brought home the day to day horror of it and how African Americans were considered to be beneath contempt. How rigidly segregation was enforced. That African Americans could only stay in Black owned hotels and they weren't many of those. So the people were effectively confined to their locality and didn't have any real opportunity to travel. Hattie McDaniels who played Mammy in "Gone with the Wind" was not present at the Atlanta premier of the movie and was not mentioned in any of the press releases there. The centre has a list of some of the laws that were passed in the southern states, they thought of everything, nothing was to trivial to escape their notice.
I was lucky and was able to take a tour of MLK's childhood home, it was the 4pm tour and it was just me and the park ranger. My guide was excellent, he of course explained what the rooms were used for and who slept where. In addition to that he had a lot of stories that MLK's sister, Willie Christine had told them so I got a more interesting view of him, the private side. His sister is still alive and lives in Atlanta, his brother, Alfred, committed suicide in 1969 a year after his brother was assassinated in Memphis. I walked back into downtown and stopped at the "Sweet Auburn Bakery" shop, the shop is famous for it's sweet potato cheesecake. I figured if it was good enough for Bill Clinton, then it was good enough for me. And it was good, but not great.
I finished up my day at the "High" Museum of Art, I hadn't planned to go but Anna had given me a free pass, so I went. The special exhibition is a collection of Da Vinci drawings. They have also created a model of a horse statue that he made designs for but never produced. The horse stands about twenty six feet high and is outside in the museum courtyard. The exhibition was great, a lot of the drawings are on loan from Queen Elizabeth II, you can tell which ones belong to her as they all have her seal on them! What I enjoyed the most was the 19th century American permanent collection. Some the sculptures were amazing, the paintings weren't so great, but the collection is arranged in an interesting manner. There is a flow to the displays and it seems less rigid than other museums I've been to, similar to the Gardener museum in Boston. And of course the building itself is beautiful, it's a stunning space. I am so glad I went. I finished my day with dinner alone and a beer. It had been a productive day.