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The Southern
U.S. Linguistics Tour
This was a fun trip. My
daughter, a college student at the time, won a grant to study speech
patterns in the southern United States. It was an opportunity
for a road trip. We met at the airport in Atlanta (I have friends in
Georgia from prior consulting engagements), and from there we traveled
through Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, and back to
Georgia. This was a great trip and a lot of fun.
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Our first night visiting with
friends Barry and Lisa in Cedartown, Georgia. We had a great
barbeque dinner. |
| Here's a mural on the store
across the parking lot from Jo's restaurant in Cedartown, with my daughter
posing in front of it..
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Cave Spring is a charming
little town in northwestern Georgia, with numerous antique shops. |
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A Sony CD400 macro shot in one
of the antique shops. |
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More antique shop wares... |
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An interesting barbeque.
Smelled great, too. |
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Another shot of one of the
antique stores. |
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And another. |
| We only spent an hour or so in
Cave Spring, and then it was on to Rome. We asked a fellow in one of the stores if
we should go to the right or to the left when we left town to reach
Rome. He said it didn't matter, and smiled.
Of course.
All roads lead to Rome....
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Romulus and Remus, and the
wolf that raised them... |
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The Cherokee Lodge in downtown
Rome. The Cherokee Indians, their culture, and the Trail of Tears
play a significant role in many parts of the South. |
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An interesting door in Rome. |
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An Indian statue outside one of
the Rome stores.
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On the road again...
The view on a country road in northern
Alabama, through our bug-splattered windshield. |
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The Clarkson covered bridge.
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Inside the covered bridge. |
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Lauren relaxing inside the
covered bridge. |
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One of the South's staples,
where we stopped to pick up a few items. Walmarts are major shopping
centers in the South.
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We had lunch with the monks at
the St. Bernard Monastery just outside of Cullman, Alabama.
The monastery is adjacent to the Ave Maria
Grotto, a collection of miniaturized replicas of famous churches
and other religious scenes. |
| The University of Mississippi
campus is, in a word, beautiful. |
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One U.S. Senator's influence
on the campus.... |
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Another view of the
University of Mississippi's campus. |
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A beautiful building on campus,
near the Grove. |
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The observatory, with the
stadium in the background. While I was there, I heard someone say
that the northern half of the state shows up for an "Ole Miss"
home game. |
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Oxford is a very interesting,
very small town just a few miles west of Tupelo.
Tupelo, of course, is the birthplace of
Elvis Presley.
One of the things I noticed traveling
extensively through the south is that there are differences in the
southern accent, and these differences vary by region.
The man who served us food at dinner in
Oxford had a hauntingly familiar accent that I couldn't quite place until
I paid the bill.
"Thank you very much," he
said. I thought I had just listened to Elvis Presley. |
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William Faulkner (winner of
the 1949 Nobel Prize for literature) was from
Oxford, a fact not lost on the city. |
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The county
courthouse on the square in downtown Oxford. Faulkner used a
fictionalized setting based on this town for his novels.
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"But
above all, the courthouse: the center, the focus, the hub; sitting looming
in the center of the country's circumference like a single cloud in its
ring of horizon, laying its vast shadow to the uttermost rim of horizon;
musing, brooding, symbolic and ponderable, tall as cloud, solid as rock,
dominating all: protector of the weak, judiciate and curb of the passions
and lusts, repository and guardian of the aspirations and hopes..." -
William Faulkner |
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Bourbon Street, perhaps the best
known street in New Orleans' French Quarter.
We hit New Orleans about 9:00 p.m., after
driving straight through from Oxford. |
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The Mango, one of the bars on Bourbon
Street. This is the old Absinthe bar, where guys like Mark Twain
used to hang out.
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The night scene along Bourbon
Street. |
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A door to one of the hotels
in the French Quarter. The hotels looked magnificent, and several
were located in the heart of the French Quarter. We stayed in a
Holiday Inn Express just a couple of blocks outside the French
Quarter. In fact, we stayed in Holiday Inn Express hotels every
night. |
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The next morning in the French
Quarter.
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An interesting doorway along of
the French Quarter streets. I took quite a few more photos in the
French quarter, but many of them may be lost forever (read the next
paragraph...). |
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After shooting another 80 or so pictures in New
Orleans with the Sony Mavica CD400, the camera would not finalize the CD
ROM. I tried several additional disks (thinking that perhaps it was a
specific disk problem), but it soon became apparent that the camera was
toast. Wow, was I upset! Here I was in what has to be one of the
most photogenic spots on earth, I didn't have a camera, and the last 80 shots
were probably lost.
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After arriving in Athens and
walking around the town that evening, I decided I needed to get a
camera. To cut to the chase, I found a super deal on a Minolta XT
35mm SLR kit in an Athens Target department store, and I converted back to
film (instead of digital) for the rest of this trip.
This is Athens City
Hall. Not a bad shot, especially considering how inexpensive the
Minolta XT was.
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Athens is a college town with
quite a few nightspots. Several famous bands started here.
This is a scene along College Avenue in Athens. |
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The University of Georgia's
mascot is a bulldog. These figures were all over Athens. |
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Not sure what the message is
here, but it seemed artistic and it made for an interesting photo. |
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UGA has a beautiful
campus. As I wandered around it, it reminded me of Ivy League
campuses I'd visited at Princeton, Brown, Harvard, and other prestigious
schools. Classic Greek architecture and meticulously-maintained
grounds characterized UGA. |
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This was a good time to be on
the UGA campus....everything was in bloom. The day was overcast,
which made for better lighting. |
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Savannah was a good 5 to 6
hours from Athens. There were more direct routes through the
country, but everyone we spoke to advised us to take the interstates back
to Atlanta, and then from Atlanta to Savannah. It was a long, but
enjoyable freeway blur.
This is a shot along the old
cotton warehouses that line the Savannah River, with City Hall in the
background. |
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One of the riverboats in
Savannah. |
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Many interesting buildings
lined the waterfront. |
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Savannah's riverfront has become
a major tourist attraction. Here's a cool reflected shot of a chrome
pig for sale. |
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A very cool shot of Lauren and
me in a storefront window. |
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This bas-relief adorned a
church we saw in Savannah's historic district. |
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Here's another shot of the same
church, framed by the trees in one of the Historic Districts many city
squares. |
| A typical restored home in
Savannah's Historic District. |
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| So, after driving through
Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and back again, we headed back
to the airport for my daughter to return to school, and me to return to
California. It was a great trip with a lot of great memories. |
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