Diane and I were in Savannah, GA during Holy Week in 2011 What a beautiful place, established in 1733; imbued with art and architecture, designed by artisans and craftsmen and used as a canvas for just about every period of formative American history that one could imagine. It started out as a slave-free colony, mutual liberty for all was the law laid down by James Oglethorpe. However when he stepped down from power, the landowners and business men sought to reverse that, and ultimately won out. Having slaves was good for business, more profitable they said.
Oglethorpe also banned Catholicism, because he was afraid that Catholics would side with the Spaniards in a conflict since they were at war at the time. Well freedom of religion eventually took a foothold as there was now a rather sizable Catholic church there, St John the Baptist Cathedral.
We stayed at the Park Ave Manor Bed & Breakfast (www.parkavenuemanor.com), kiddie corner from Forsythe Park. As we walked through the park earlier in the week we noticed a bunch of U-Hauls unloading a equipment and workers fencing in an area. Lots of activity.
Great place, highly recommended.
More recently Savannah has been used as a backdrop for many a film. Just take a tour, they'll point out all of the spots that were used; Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was filmed there, and The Conspiracy was filmed there, Glory in that house over there and Forest Gump was filmed over there. In fact they batted you over the head with Forest Gump; where the feather came down, where the bench was... The Savannah scenes all happened in Chippewa Square.
In the fall of 1993, there was a park bench here that Tom Hanks sat on, with his box of chocolates.
And you know you couldn't help but think about Bubba and Lt Dan...
On Wednesday we went to Bonaventure Cemetery. Pretty amazing place. The Bird Girl from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was originally there. She has since been relocated to the Telfair Museum in Savannah where she can be watched over. Just like the old strong oak trees that are watching over all of those who are buried at Bonaventure, souls that once walked the earth and felt the warmth of the sun in their face.
View from the top of the lighthouse
Then we went to Tybee Island.
We did the tour of the Tybee Island Lighthouse, then Fort Screven across the street from the lighthouse and stopped for lunch at the North Beach Bar and Grill, a little place next to Fort Screven, right by the beach.
Our waiters name was George. I had remarked to Diane how you hardly ever see waitstaff over the age of 30 anymore at a previous meal and here comes good ol’ 50 something George.
About 10 minutes after we sit down a young couple sat down next to us with their little boy, who looked to be maybe 3 years old. Well behaved but excited to be at the beach. The mother was pensive. The father had a heavily tattooed left arm and a huge ovoid 5-6 inch scar on the back of his right arm, over the triceps muscle. His hair was cropped short, not long enough to hide the small scars on his scalp. He was very muscular and he looked around a lot. He sat with his back to me so I could get away with a prolonged observation. The woman seemed to spend as much time keeping on eye on him as she did keeping an eye on the boy.
The boy's father was missing his left leg. In its place was a rather high-tech looking artificial limb. Polished aluminum as finely sculpted as the rest of this young man’s body. Just above the heel was a small mono-shock looking cylinder that reminded me of the off road bikes I used to work on at Suzuki Ann Arbor, when I was going to college.
On the way out of the Restaurant I walked up to their waitress and gave her $40. “The Family over there that you’ve been waiting on, the one with the little boy. Here… I am paying for their meal.”
She looked startled, baffled even, like I had recited a calculus problem unsolicited. Then it chimed in with her what I was doing and she smiled, “That is very kind of you.”
“Tell him ‘Thank You’” and I turned and walked out.
We eventually drove back to Park Ave Manor and decided to go to Corleone’s for dinner. That was a movie too, right?
My thoughts kept returning to the young boy and his father. Did I do the right thing? What was his reaction? I played out different scenarios in my head, that maybe I facilitated some positive change, maybe I answered a prayer. Or that maybe the dad, angered over yet another reminder that he is no longer the person he once was, and that somebody noticed. Maybe he told the waitress to keep it and he can pay for his own damn dinner. Plus as Diane pointed out, how do you know he was a vet? It could have been a motorcycle accident. My gut and my heart told me otherwise. There was something very edgy about this man... a sort of detached edgyness. His son, with his adolescent hyperactivity seemed to snap him out of it.
I have seen this before in my own father. He was 1 of 7 from his battalion that got through the Battle of the Bulge without a scratch, but the conflict haunted him for years. It took it's toll on our family. Eventually Dad left. It was the only escape route he could envision.
Sometime during the course of the meal I realized that it wasn’t the father I was buying lunch for, it was the son. Because although he was a cute little 3 year old now, eventually he would grow up and he would have conflicts with his father. Any reminder Dad had that he is not the wonderful human being that he wants to be, would lead to the rejection of all of those around him who remind him of the conflict still churning inside.
I have heard it said that the only sin that God doesn’t forgive, is the sin that we refuse to forgive ourselves for. That God’s love is greater than any sin we could commit. I think that war is a stain upon our humanity. We go to war under the banner of liberty and freedom, but I suspect that many of those who fight for our country feel neither when they return. The stain lingers and finding peace with it is difficult when it becomes more real then the reality of the moment, when it steals the present from us, when the subconscious re-visits it in the middle of the night, or when a young adult child rebels. When the stain comes back it pushes forgiveness away. So buying a meal for a stranger isn’t about feeding as much as it is about planting the seeds of forgiveness, so that it can grow as strong and live as long as the oaks in Savannah.
As a country, I don't believe that we can have liberty and freedom until we can give back to our veterans what they have given to us. Oglethorpe was right, Liberty has to be mutual.
After dinner we drove back, parked the car and we could hear music coming from Forsythe Park. Someone was playing in the venue setup that we had been seeing set up on Monday and Tuesday.
“Comeon let’s go” and I grabbed Diane’s hand.
She pulled back a little, “Sounds RAP-ish”
“We can only hear the bass from here. Come on! It could be any kind of music.” I played bass in a band for a while and I know good bass when I hear it.
So we walked the third of a mile or so to the Venue and as we got closer we could make out what sounded like Motown and a pretty substantial stage with a horn section on it and two drummers and 4 singers, 2 guitars and a bass player and two large screens on either side of the stage. And on the screens was a very familiar face.
I walked up to a security guard and asked, “Is that…”
“… Lt Dan,” he cut me off and from the tone of his voice I was the hundredth idiot to have asked him that question.
“How do we…”
“You don’t”, he said. Geez… no door prize for being the hundredth idiot.
Well first of all I didn’t know that Gary Sinise was a musician. On the baffle-me-meter, I venture to say that right next to unsolicited calculus, is unsolicited demonstration of advanced musical skill from someone whom you perceive to be something other then a musician.
And second of all, he played the guy who had both of his legs blown off in Forest Gump, angry at God and the world, mired in his own internal hell. And in the end he transcended his anger and found peace.
And third of all…
Diane was totally invested in this gig. Gary Sinise is an incredible bass player and the Lieutenant Dan Band (www.ltdanband.com) does 100 gigs a year and as it turns out they’re for hire. Also in a wonderfully bizarre kind of way on this night they were playing for the Liberty Mutual insurance company’s annual golf outing. And did I mention that they were for hire?
After the last song, he gave a little speech... they do over 100 gigs a year... they play a lot of USO concerts. I realized that I had totally forgotten about the family at the beach with the little boy by this time.
He said, “You know when you see a vet, it’s OK to go up and thank them. If they are in an airport or wherever they are. It’s OK to let them know that you care. It really means a lot to them.”
I guess in my own stream of consciousness, impulsive, intuitive, feeling way in which I naviagate though life, it was God telling me that I did the right thing.
Sometimes Easter Eggs aren’t eggs at all. Sometimes they’re people. Sometimes they’re like a Faberge Egg with the child inside of the Mom inside of the Dad and it’s eggs all the way down. And sometimes it’s coincidences on top of coincidences.
And sometimes the best Easter Egg of all is the one given to you when you least expect it, from someone you don’t know.
