Sunday, March 28, 2010

Americana

We're on another coast to coast drive, and it's glorious! I love being on the road again... can't help myself. Every time I look out the car window and see a little road off in the distance, or a river winding its way along, I ask myself "I wonder where that goes? What's at the end of that?" There's no such thing as the middle of nowhere to me - the middle of nowhere is where all the good stuff is!

Once again, we started in South Florida, where our kind and generous friends have been taking care of our car and our mail... and last week they took care of us, with food, drink, shelter, tennis, friendship and laughter.

Traveling up the Florida Turnpike - sunny rest stops where they sell fresh mangoes (I love love love this!), through the Florida Panhandle to surprisingly handsome Mobile, Alabama; then side stepping NOLA, my favorite city, in favor of Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi. Breakfast in Gulfport, birthplace of our friend John Fabian, is an all-American treat - cheese omelette, ham, grits and biscuits at the Palace Grill, which I'm sure was there before John and will be there long after. Just a few blocks from the shrimp boats bobbing in the Gulf, Palace Grill boasts one of the best bulletin boards ever, including a sign that reads, "Drink some coffee - then you can do really stupid stuff faster and with more energy!"

While in the bayous and Cajun country along the Gulf, known as the "Redneck Riviera", we enjoy boiled shrimp, gumbo and an oyster PoBoy before we even get over the border into Texas. Driving through Texas is a career in itself... I've spent so much time involved in that activity, I should put it on my resume. We obey the law and stick with the 80 MPH speed limit, but despite the signs reminding us to "Drive Friendly - the Texas Way", people blaze past us as if we're standing still. Kind of like the Autobahn, only with gigantic black pickups and gun racks.

We stop to Remember the Alamo and eat chiles rellenos in San Antonio - a green and shady, charming, historic and friendly city; then continue through the surprisingly beautiful Texas hill country around Kerrville. (Quiz Question: what famous American has a ranch near Kerrville? Hint: His initials are GWB and he looks like Howdy Doody.)

Last night we were in Ozona, Texas, home of the Davy Crockett Memorial and the Hitching Post Steak House, where we were only allowed to have a cocktail if we purchased a membership - which was OK with me. I like the idea that if we're ever back in Ozona, we will feel right at home. We can flash our membership card at the Hitching Post and that nice waitress will smile and say, "Hey, Hon - how y'all doin'?"

Friday, March 26, 2010

Biloxi Babies

It all started with a photograph of my beautiful mother on her honeymoon. She sat on a seawall in Biloxi, Mississippi, dressed in an off the shoulder blouse and flouncy skirt, gazing coquettishly at my adoring father as he snapped the photograph. The seawall was patterned brick, the Gulf frothing with whitecaps... as a child, it was one of my favorite photographs.

So as we breezed along I-10 West on a beautiful spring morning this week, I saw an exit for Biloxi and said, "Hey - let's spend the night here!" I had a fantasy about finding that sea wall and having my picture taken, for old time's sake.

Of course I should have realized that Hurricane Katrina had done away with pretty much everything on the beach in Biloxi. Except for the casinos, of course, which lurk along the beachfront like gaudy predators ready to pounce on the unsuspecting geriatrics who enter their doors with a few bucks in their plaid pants pockets.

Undaunted, we reserved a bargain casino hotel room and ventured out onto the beach. As Dick prepared to take a photo of me on the new and unlovely sea wall, we noticed in the background an architectural wonder under construction that could have been created by no one other than Frank Gehry. We investigated and discovered that it was, in fact, a Gehry building which will house the Ohr-O'Keefe Art Museum. The museum was intended to open in 2006, but of course, Katrina destroyed the early construction - now the Museum should open in Fall 2010.

Why is it called Ohr-O'Keefe? The O'Keefe part is easy - he was a former mayor of Biloxi and local philanthropist who donated most of the money for the museum. The Ohr part is a wonderful story - about George E. Ohr, the "Mad Potter of Biloxi", whose collection of eccentric pottery will be housed in the museum. According to Smithsonian Magazine, Ohr was born in Biloxi in 1857, went to school in New Orleans, then apprenticed as a file cutter, a tinker, an assistant in his father’s blacksmith shop, and even put out to sea before chancing upon his life's work at 22, when he became a potter in New Orleans.

The rest, apparently, is history. He came back to Biloxi, built a pottery shop next door to his parent's house, and used clay from the Tchoutacabouffa River to make some of the wildest pottery the locals had ever seen. His humorous signs promoting his “Pot-Ohr-E” gave Ohr a reputation as an eccentric whose shop was worth a visit mainly for a laugh. As you can see in the photograph, he was a 19th century version of Salvador Dali - taking wacky photos of himself, letting his beard grow long, racing a motorcycle on the beach and walking the streets of Biloxi in a flowing robe, dressed as Father Time.

He often spoke and wrote in a disjointed stream of consciousness: “We are living in an Age of Wheels—more wheels, and wheels within Wheels—And MACHINE ART Works—is A fake and Fraud of the deepest die.” Right, George - I think.

At any rate, his work was discovered and became famous when Jasper Johns used images of Ohr pots in some of his paintings, and now, of course, Ohr's works of art sell for up to $60,000 each - although he sold very few while he was alive. 7,000 pots were rescued from his son's auto repair shop in Biloxi in order to build the Museum's collection. I have set up this true story as an inspiration to my husband - and other eccentrics we know - it's not too late to be a successful artist!

To our friends who are wondering what the heck we were doing in Biloxi in the first place: we've picked up Dick's car in Florida and are on our way back to pick up my car in Marin County... more to come soon. Cheers - we'll drink a toast tonight to George E. Ohr - my new hero.

Monday, March 8, 2010

A Perfect Place

"... to be or not to be..." that is the question that Hamlet asks every night during his performance at the Shakespeare Festival here in Ashland, Oregon - and that is our quandary once again. Ashland is certainly a perfect place if we go down our checklist: mountain scenery, flowering fruit trees, rows of grapevines marching up to rolling green hills, quaint neighborhoods of Victorians and Craftsman bungalows lining a downtown area that features a university, a 9-month theatrical festival at three venues, an independent film festival and a burgeoning food culture - even covered tennis courts to feed our shared addiction to hitting that little yellow ball.

When we moved to the Bay Area in 1981, I remember crossing the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County and having the perfectly formed thought, "This is the landscape of my heart." The poetry of the thought surprised me, but it was true - the white capped Bay, ships silently steaming under the Bridge, the green Marin Headlands with their rocky outcrops - and the City side was Oz, the shining city of hills which never failed to thrill me. Many happy years and dear friends later, it's still true.

But there's a price to pay for Paradise - a price too steep for two potential retirees.

In our travels we've learned that there's no such thing as a perfect place - but that there are many, many places to love in the world. Places, like people, have their flaws, and, as with people, we often fall in love because and not in spite of them.

"My heart, being hungry
Feeds on food the fat of heart despise
Beauty where beauty never stood
And sweet where no sweet lies
I gather to my querulous need
Having a growing heart to feed..."
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

So what's next? Maybe a perfect place, maybe not - but a place to call home... wherever that might be. We'll keep you posted.