Day Nine

We did our usual morning routine.  We drove over to the other hotel, so Mona and crew could say goodbye to the family.  There was no eleventh hour reprieve from Mort so they could stay one more day.  Mona never got to go to the World of Coca Cola and she wanted to go.  She didn’t get to go to the Varsity.  The Varsity was an Atlanta instutition and the world’s largest drive-in restaurant.  Next visit, she could hit up those places.

After saying goodbye, we hung out at the hotel waiting for Mort and Renee to drive over.  We knew we had a good two hours before they showed up, so we helped back the SUV and waited.  They showed up and now it was time to say goodbye.

I miss Mona.  I don’t care where we go on vacation as long as we’re together.  I had spent the last few days suggesting places near LA she could live, so I could at least see her on weekends.  So we could still see her at family functions, but to no avail.  But I pray and hope, one day she’ll move back to LA.  I miss seeing the kids grow up.

Mijo was searching for some wipes.  I told him I had some in the car.  As he went off to get them, I asked why he needed them and Mona said, because he wants to clean his tennis shoes.  And when I saw him the night before last doing laundry, it was because he didn’t have enough clean clothes to wear for the last two days.  The guys I knew in high school picked up the shirt and if smelt clean they wore it, obviously that was not my Mijo.  My Mijo, my once upon a time tiny baby boy, was a teenager.

And my Tigger was growing up, in the time we spent apart.  I grabbed him and pulled him into my lap while I kissed him, hugged him, and tickled him.  I could tell he was uncomfortable, so I stopped tickling him and asked him, did he feel uncomfortable. He said, yes.  I asked him, why.

And he said, “Because I’m a grown man sitting in your lap.”

I let him get up and told Mona what he said and we laughed at him.  My eleven-year-old nephew was a grown man.  Ooookay.  Time was passing quickly and our family was missing see them grow and change.  Even Kayla was talking different, getting older.  Many years had seemingly past since she was Mona’s unfriendly, didn’t want anyone to touch or hold her baby.

We hugged and kissed and said our goodbyes and then they were off, then we got into our rent-a-car and followed behind them.  They headed west and we headed east to finish up all the things we hadn’t gotten to.

We drove back to the Oakland Cemetery so we could finish our driving Civil War tour.  This city should be up a sign that says, “Don’t visit!”  that way people won’t be surprised if they still came and saw there were no street signs at lights, which makes it difficult to find streets to turn on.   

They would have been forewarned that the city wasn’t meant for tourists.  But the missing signs didn’t stop us from our tour.  We pressed and drove through Inman Park, where “On July 22, 1864, some of the bloodiest fighting in the Battle of Atlanta took place in this now-peaceful neighborhood. After the Civil War, Inman Park became Atlanta's first planned community and one of the nation's first garden suburbs.”

From there we stopped at the Family Dollar Store to get some quick items.  I ran inside to get what we needed and when I came out to the car, it was on full lock down.  I climbed into the car and asked, what was up.  My mom told me that a man had just sold an older woman drugs in front of the store.  Really?!  Really?!  Really people, you live between the Jimmy Carter Library and the Martin Luther King, Junior, National park, both men stood for peace, and you’re selling drugs?  I quickly backed out and used the helpful knowledge another patron in the store gave me on the street I had missed, because it had no sign.

The twists and turns of the tour landed us at the Carter Center and I drove around the various parking lots until I found the Battle of Atlanta marker, where I read, “ On July 22, 1864, General Sherman used Augustus Hurt's home on Copenhill (where the Carter Center is now located) as his headquarters. It is said that Sherman sat on this hill and watched the city burn.”  I loved this driving Civil War tour, but it was hard to imagine instead of a peaceful, serene garden that I was now looking at once stood a house and below it a town burning, people dying.  The ugliness of war, thankfully was hard to imagine, when it was all burnt to the ground.  I would have liked to have seen reminents, but I guess Sherman thought I didn’t need to see them.

 

 See that greenery, it didn't exist ater Sherman left.  It was all burnt ground with burnt houses and carriages and ashes.

With the tour done, which Jory once again slept through, we headed off to the Varsity.  We weren’t really hungry, so my mom got a sandwich and I ordered fries.  Our car hop was an older man and wasn’t very helpful.  So when I returned our tray from the car window, I asked another car hop where the Hard Rock Café was, I had to get my t-shirt.  Of course, it was on Peachtree.  Of course it was.  Where else could it possibly be?  We found it and dropped Oma off to get the t-shirt since no parking could be seen.  I was able to sit through three lights before I had to move and circle the block or rather blocks because I was in a town of one way streets.  Two circles and bam she was out of the gift store and back in the car.

Next on the list was to visit the historic Morehouse College and Spellman College and we got lost, but something so wonderful about the South, besides the iced tea with sugar already in it (SCORE!) was the fact that the people working at the gas stations could actually give directions.  What a novel concept, not one I’ve found in LA.  This time the homeless man outside the gas station store told me how to find the campuses.  We were off on our way again and there they were just like he said, we even passed the restaurant Paschal’s, which I wanted to go to as it was a meeting place for a lot of civil right meetings and leaders.  When they said Spellman and Morehouse were acorss the street from each other, I never took it to mean literally.  But literally there were.  At the intersection we were at, I thought can you even call this an all-male college when all he has to do is cross the street and he’s on the female college campus?  Because TTT were sleep and there were no students around, I just hopped out the car, took pictures of the signs and hopped back in.

 It's a different world, then where you came from

We were heading home, when my mother insisted we stop at the JCP’s outlet she had seen every day from the freeway.  We found it and went shopping.  Other family members had gone shopping earlier in the week.  I wondered why?  Why would I go shopping in stores that were exactly the same as the ones back home?  Why would  I need to go shopping while on vacation?  So I could get a style of blouse that they don’t sell at the JCP in Culver City?  Really?  But bygones, the girls were able to score matching outfits to wear on the plane ride home.  We got in line as the place was closing, perfect timing.

Then we were done minus the Civil War Museum, we had seen everything I had set out to seen in the ATL.  Now it was back to the hotel to partake in all of the leftovers we had collected over the last few meals, so we could pack and clean out the fridge, after swimming off course.

I washed some clothes, while they swam.   As per usual, we shut the place down, grabbed our final Cokes and popcorn, and headed to the room to pack.  It was strange not stopping by Mona’s room to see what they were up to.  The kids played and I packed, got the backpacks together.  We were set for our direct flight out of Atlanta.

We watched a little TV and then we closed our eyes bringing our last full day in Atlanta to a close.