Peripheral Vision And Hearing: On The Road And Back Again This Week

A few images and thoughts from this week's travels in Tennessee, Georgia, Florida and the Carolinas:

A real giggle occurred at the Georgia border, on I-75 just south of Chattanooga, TN. Someone has purchased a billboard openly petitioning Our Lord to hasten his return to Earth sooner rather than later. As devout Christians, Mr. and Mrs. OS do understand that this day will arrive, because it has been promised by Christ himself, at a date known only to the Almighty. The billboard was a bit of a shock, implying that we would be able to pull this date forward, if we were to try devoutly enough.

Of course, given the traffic that followed in Georgia for the next several hours, one might understand the sentiment behind the sign. The afternoon was exhausting and harrowing, and it was Saturday! The road was rough, littered with shreds of blown and failed truck tires, along with much other debris. Never again. Never another drive through central Georgia.

A few days later, we met a refugee from Atlanta, waitressing at a restaurant. Three years ago, she was married, a homeowner, working in accountancy at a large construction firm. Everything fell apart at once, and now divorced, she sleeps on a friend's couch near Jacksonville, with the house on short sale (with no interest shown), happy to be working as a waitress, with a place to sleep. Away from Atlanta, and the traffic, and the life built on 'keeping up with the Joneses'-her quote. She said she used to feel ashamed at all that happened, losing the house, losing the marriage, losing the life. She says that many of her friends and acquaintances are bailing out of Atlanta, that the jobs have simply disappeared, and laughed grimly at the suggestion that news reports tout a recovery underway. She reports that rents are dropping rapidly on beachfront property, and is looking for a more permanent place to settle.

In Jacksonville, much vacant retail space, and a real shabbiness to many parts of the city, in contrast to the manicured privacy of the upscale developments. OS hit two golf courses, one in an older section of town. The course and clubhouse had certainly seen better days. The drive home in the afternoon was sobering, with scores of young men just hanging out on the stoops and street-corners, no place to go evidently. The newer course was in a planned development near the beach, and was impeccable. OS walked his holes, and had the course to himself.

The drive back to Tennessee took us through the Carolinas, via I-95 to I-16. A stop at an outlet mall south of Savannah was revealing. Three-quarters of the retail space empty, with other stores obviously on clearance. Our visit with friends in the Tryon, NC area was a true contrast. The little towns were thriving, well-groomed, with a wide variety of goods and services. Very little empty storefront evident. We hope to visit again soon. Something is being done right here. A town of 1500 with four prospering bookstores has something good going on.

A visit in one of the larger towns was poignant, as OS overheard a retail store clerk recount that 'this was the job he could find', as the middle-management corporate job went away months ago. In a high-end antique store, a middle-aged gent walked in, attempting to flog a print given to him twenty-seven years earlier by his mom as a wedding gift. Marriage had recently ended, and evidently he was liquidating what remained of that life. The owner was kind, but unwilling to purchase without a clear provenance on the item. It was painful to overhear, and we quietly headed out the door to allow them to finish the conversation without spectators.

The drive home was extended by a closure of I-40 on the North Carolina side. A detour and overnight in Kingsport up I-26 took us through breathtakingly beautiful country. We wandered about in search of a place to eat after checking in to our hotel, and drove a few miles into Virginia up Highway 23. As depressing a sight as we have seen in years. The despair hung thick in the air.

Home again the next day, and grateful to be back. The contractors begin arriving this week to restore the damage wreaked by The Great Middle Tennessee Flood. We'll be living with the contents of a large living room stowed in the rest of the house. Never knew we owned that much china...

Still, so very grateful for our lives, one another, our kids, our friends, our work, our cats and dogs.

The economy is obviously not in free-fall as in 2008, but there are a lot of people still in a world of hurt, and many more yet to go through the wringer as we go through the inevitable de-leveraging after the governmet's attempts to pump everything back up. The road back will be long and hard.

More to tell, with one particularly poignant foreclosure tale to tell, but that's for another day.

So happy to be home.

Video Of the Gulf Of Mexico Taken This Weekend: From Gulf Shores To The Deepwater Horizon And Back To Louisiana

This is disturbing footage to watch, especially knowing that the Obama administration sits on its hands as this situation unfolds. OS does not endorse the narrative questioning why BP is doing 'x' vs. 'y' at the spill site, or the final bit with the anthropomorphization of the dolphins. That's a bit odd. But the simple documentation of the spill itself is sobering.

All we need now is a big hurricane...sucking up all that oil to deposit inland.

When OS was a small lad, he visited the Bon Secour Peninsula for many summers in the 1960's. It was a different place then, largely undeveloped, with just a country road running from the village of Gulf Shores out to Fort Morgan, used during the Civil War to guard Mobile Bay. His uncle would take him shrimping in the shallows of Bon Secour Bay, in a small boat, and let him sort through the groaning nets for shrimp and crab, to be served that evening for dinner. It was an enchanted place and time, and the little boy knew it. It was a place apart.

Perhaps, OS's grandchildren, or their children, will be able to experience it for themselves. Heaven only knows what it will take to undo this damage.

Downtime: On The Florida Atlantic Coast

OldSouth and the sainted Mrs. OS are taking some down-time, on the Atlantic side of Florida. The oil hasn't reached here, yet.

No particular insights to offer, except to convey a decision made. OS has made his final journey through Atlanta and central Georgia by auto. To encounter major traffic jams fifty miles (and more) from the center of the city, on a Saturday, not a holiday weekend, no major construction underway--simply volume of traffic--was maddening, and disheartening.

Something, somehow has gone terribly awry in that part of our wonderful country. Life was never meant to look like this; late-model cars stacked nose-to-tail as far as the eye can see, on their way to and from housing developments that have eaten every small town and county for as far as the eye can see, each shopping area indistinguishable from the next, all the color and joy utterly squeezed out of existence. Just pine trees, humidity, banality, and traffic.

The New South.

We made a decision--return via Alabama or the North Carolina. The map says it's hundreds of miles of additional driving. Reality says we'll arrive home sooner, and saner.

In the meantime, the golf course awaits,(a Donald Ross course!) and Red Stripe beer is chilling next to the salsa in the fridge.

And, congrats to Northern Ireland's pride and joy on an inspiring performance at the US Open.

OS knew he had it clenched when McDowell was standing over his second shot on the eighteenth, needing par to win, took a short iron and laid up. Third shot safely past the hole, putt-putt. Win.

Three cheers for sanity. And for his gracious humility as he accepted the trophy.

Tiger, take notes. You tied fourth in the US Open, when the USGA could have understandably uninvited you.

Learn, for once, to say blinkin' Thank You.

Oskaloosa Island: Screw The Feds, We'll Take Care Of Ourselves

OldSouth keeps watching events from afar, but will be traveling Florida himself tomorrow for a few days.

His basic premise is that once we take action to fix the culture, we'll be on the way to fixing the economy. And, slowly but surely, a narrative is beginning to take hold:

Two themes emerge:

The Federal Government is incompetent, venal, intrusive, and absolutely oblivious and uncaring about the consequences of its decisions and behaviours in the lives of the citizens. The same government that brought us the SEC that looked the other way as Madoff and company looted and burned down the economy of this country (while the regulators were surfing porn and angling for jobs with the looters) is the same government that seized Alabama's oil boom, grounded the skimming boats in Louisiana, and delayed the building of the sand berms that would have saved many square miles of marshes--all in the name of 'we know best, and if you dare disagree we'll come after you'.

Local governments and citizens are beginning to take matters into their own hands. Today's story of Oskaloosa Island is just one of what may well be many to come. They played by the Fed'ral Guv'mint rules, and it became clear that only disaster awaited them if they continued to play by the Fed'ral Guv'mint rules. So they took matters into their own hands.

So, what's the Fed'ral Guv'mint gonna do?

Arrest the mayor and city council? Just imagine that jury trial, with full discovery required! Wouldn't you just love to sit in that jury box?

Sue the city? Ditto on that thar' trial thingy--discovery and deposition can really be a bitch! And there's that little inconvenient thang called the counter-suit. And juries determining culpability and awards. Makes one salivate, just to think of it.

Send in the National Guard to seize the city? Are those troops really going to fire on the citizens? Which officer will order them to open fire, here in the Age of YouTube? The citizens may well fire on the troops, if push comes to shove. The citizens have a lot more guns and ammo than your average Guard unit, the local knowledge of the terrain, and a hell of a lot more motivation than that enlisted Guardsman. The last time the Guard fired on citizens was 1969, Kent State University. Look it up, if you wish. Things did not go well for the Ohio Guard that day or subsequently.

It's always heartening to see Americans acting like Americans. This is something The Winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize probably did not factor in when he set about to create chaos on the Gulf Coast. One part of OS's family hails from that coast. These are tough, tough, determined, hard-headed, proud and cantankerous people. They are not impressed by your Harvard JD.

Now comes the big question: What if folks in Ohio and Utah and Nebraska and Tennessee tumble to the same conclusion as they watch events unfold on the Gulf Coast?

Can ya'll say 'Katie, bar the door!'?

So, a bit of the story of Oskaloosa Island.

A Florida Panhandle community that's been victimized by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico says it can fight the destruction of its beaches and waterways better than the federal government -- but it's left with one problem: "Who will pay the bill?

Now that tar balls are washing ashore along the beaches of Okaloosa Island, county commissioners say it's time to stop waiting for the federal government's Unified Command Center to approve closing its East Pass -- the area leading to the docks of the profitable fishing village in the town of Destin.

“Over the last 50 days," Okaloosa County Commissioner Chairman Wayne Harris told FoxNews.com, "I like to say we played the game, if you will. We did what we were required to do, which was wait for all the permitting processes and wait for all the permission ....

"Over that period of time, it was obvious to us that somebody in those levels were not communicating with each other.”

Frustration started when the county devised a $9 million plan to implement an extensive boom system of barges and air curtains to close off all inlets and bayous from incoming oil. But the government rejected that proposal and began reducing the number of areas a system would protect. That, Harris says, is when the county decided to take matters into its own hands.

“We were getting the bureaucratic shuffle," he said. "We couldn’t wait for the bureaucratic process. We could not wait for indecisiveness.

"This is our county, and our people depend on us to make decisions.”

Our county, our people, our decisions, our lives, our homes, our businesses.

We've had enough, ya'll. We'll get it done, and figure out how it gets paid for.

Screw the Feds. They are the problem, not the solution.

(And this insight from Planet Gore, with a journey down Memory Lane.)