Editor’s Note: Marlow starts us off on several tales of wonder involving his experience in The Coastal Empire. It is a place that can draw you right in.
– Vic

First

Savannah’s River Street in the 1970s

Savannah’s River Street 2022

During my first visit to the Empire almost 50 years ago, the big empty lobby of our hotel told me it used to be a swank place. The town as well. It still was, kinda. It was also kinda decrepit.

Hotel and city concierges were snappy, but not fast-talkers, long-haired men and women in blazers. Most started their shifts with a cocktail in a small throwaway paper coffee cup off to the side out of view of most of their guests. I imagined they’d say if asked, “We’re not alcoholics, are we — one drink won’t kill us.”

Still, this Yankee was surprised to see the numbers of people who openly conducted midday Happy Hours in the city’s squares and parks without even a care to conceal what it was they were imbibing. Some even drank out of fine cut glass or crystal ware.

Savannah, the Coastal Empire’s crown jewel, was spared by the Yankees after many mugs pitchers bowls tubs of Chatham Artillery punch. What the men in the blue didn’t take and left undisturbed a century ago, Father Time was now slowly crushing. At least there were finer cocktails to ease the pain, encourage conversation and tale telling as the sun, moon and stars moved across the horizon.

What surprised me the most was how deathly quiet and empty everything was. Like Christmas morning quiet at shuttered bars and grills. There was zero hubbub, parties, get-togethers — unless you counted those twosomes and threesomes and their strange brews lounging on the squares’ benches.

Now and then as the day passed, Southern archetypes like well turned-out gentlemen, princesses, and dowagers in formal attire as well as people with various and sundry pets appeared in these green spaces — not just leashed and unleashed dogs, but cats, parrots, ‘keets, squirrels, lizards, snakes, monkeys and other furry and scaled creatures I could not squarely identify.

Up north, this would be mega weird, hippie stoned and potions-n-spells sh#t. Here in Savannah, it was breezy 78-in-the-shade normal.

Surprisingly most of all to me was despite gargantuan levels of inebriation, no one relieved themselves in public nor were the city’s fountains and water features used as pools or spas. Why this was would only come out of the shadows over time.

I made plans to sit in a square or two the next day to observe after consulting with the concierge as to which ones were the prime locations.

In a word, a square in a square or two was my plan.

Postscript. The secrets and mysteries of places and people exert an unseen power. You crack open their vessels, and they might disappear forever. Bad ones will rip us apart, but the good ones are the those we cherish and seek. In the end, when all the people we knew are dead and gone, all we’ll have left are our own secrets. And when we die, our vessels are emptied and they all blow away — dust to dust — all the anger, jealousy, desire and love just blow away.

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