I went to move my car the other night. It was the eve of Savannah's Rock-n-Roll Marathon and downtown residents had been warned for a couple weeks about towing if cars interfered with the race course. I saw Tess, my neighbor in the big house on the corner, returning from the same errand. It was dark and I barely made out her cropped blonde hair.
"Tess, Hi," I ventured.
"Why, Hi!"
Tess is amazingly friendly. She personifies Southern friendly for me -- or at least Savannah friendly. With a drawl she'll ask you all about yourself and tell you something about herself that's totally unexpected.
I asked her how she fared with the Hurricane. (Hurricane Matthew came through Savannah in mid-October.)
"Well, we stayed here." Mah husband thought maybe we should go someplace but I thought about him in the front, driving, and drinking scotch and me in the back with the cats. I just hunkered down in my bed. Somehow, we were fine. Georgia's bigger than the hurricane and God's bigger than Georgia. That's what I say."
Tess also told me that she goes down to the cathedral and prays every morning. (Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, apparently known as "the Cathedral" is a huge French Gothic structure just north of Lafayette Square.) I imagined Tess as a fixture there, greeting everybody each morning.
"Tell me again where you work," she asked. "Oh yes, we used to have a Jewish neighbor that worked at SCAD. Very nice fella.
Soon after that, election season took hold and a Trump sign appeared in Tess's front yard, along with an American flag on the porch. I also noticed a "Pray to End Abortion" sign in a first floor window as I walked along the side of her house one day.
Fall in Savannah was marked by the hurricane and of course the election. One, if not both events were a way to get to know each other better.
