AB1 Tour 2014 - Week 10 - Atlanta, GA

The first day of June!  Oh, glorious June!  With the sweet smell of magnolias, the state flower, in the air, we made our way to Atlanta.
     

On the drive, I was totally surprised when, on the side of the freeway, I noticed a sign advertising “The Laurel and Hardy Museum” in Harlem, GA. This was it for me; along with the Marx Brothers, the L&H boys were who really got me into comedy during my formative years (you probably think that was last week … not so!) I was so excited to make this side trip, ONLY I soon found out that the museum was not open on Sundays.
     CURSES!
     I turned to Diedre and loudly announced, “HERE’S ANOTHER NICE MESS YOU’VE GOTTEN ME INTO!” Of course it was not her fault, but I needed to use that key Laurel & Hardy line somehow. Yes, I was crushed that it wasn't open that day, but in future-hindsight, the boys’ museum will be on the itinerary for our return trip to this region in 2017.
     

The Atlanta portion of this trip was not really going to be very much about Atlanta, other than seeing a Braves game. We’ve got a nephew with a wife, four kids, and a dog; a cousin with a husband, two kids, and two dogs; and a college buddy with a wife and a dog (What’s up with all these dogs? Aren’t there any cat-people out there?) to visit, leaving very little time to see the highlights of the city such as their “Monument to Cheese” or “The National Guy-On-The-Corner-Spinning-a-Sign Museum.” But please, hang with me. I’ll try to make it as interesting as possible. I’ll even use verbs this time.
     

Julia and Caroline Versluis with one of their coaches

With a busy slate before us, we forewent our usual “All-Sloth Monday” and went back on the road, this time to see our three grand-nieces at their gymnastics practice (grand-nephew Grant [11] would be out of town for the week on some sort of spy mission, so we would miss seeing him). The Versluis girls, Caroline (14), Julia (9), and little Lilah (7), are not just some kids out there doing somersaults and deep-knee-bends. These girls can GYMNAST! (Is that a verb? If not, it will be one as soon I talk to Webster.) They’re all ranked very high at a state level, and little Julia informs us that she WILL be at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016, so we’re saving up for that trip by putting all our nickels and dimes in a large mayonnaise jar (We may have enough for the 2020 Olympics which, I believe, are being held in Tierra del Fuego, Chile.)

Julia Versluis

     As we were watching the girls do one incredibly difficult routine after another, Diedre kept asking me what they were doing. Fortunately, I was able to lend my expertise and explain a few things to her based upon my watching gymnastics once every four years during the Olympics.

Ad-Cap

   From there, we made it over to nephew Rolf Versluis and niece's-in-law, Chris, place of business, which it turns out, is actually THEIR business. Rolf is a graduate of the Annapolis Naval Academy and went on to serve as an officer on submarines. After marrying, this ever-resourceful duo (can you tell we’re proud relatives?) eventually started their own business setting up communication systems for companies. They’ve grown immensely, up to 60 employees now, which is pretty big for a “small” company.  They also have won numerous awards that are prominently displayed in their beautiful lobby.
     We then went to a “big” company which has somehow become a bit smaller. We sought out a “Target” to get one of my prescriptions filled (I think it was for “logo-on-the-mogogo,” a rare tropical disease for which there are neither any cures nor any symptoms.) But when we arrived, well, the parking lot was there, the identifiable Target building with sign was there, but, and now here’s the important part, there were no cars anywhere to be seen. No people!  Where were all the people?! Was this an updated version of “The Twilight Zone”?
     We then noticed the random growth of weeds growing up willy-nilly in the parking lot. The Target I know would never have let that happen. Of course, all the Targets I know are actually in business, whereas this Atlanta one wasn’t. I mean, come on! They’re OUT OF BUSINESS!? Who ever heard of a Target going out of business?
     Moving on.
     

Our campground was in Stone Mountain, Georgia. But unlike Mount Pleasant, Michigan, Stone Mountain actually HAS a mountain and amazingly enough … it’s made out of stone. It was a very nice campground, receiving a “10” on the coveted “Alexx Campground Rating and Radiation Detection System.” Of course, that’s out of “14” on the ACRRDS. Still, not too bad.
     Tuesday was our lone day to check out the city, so we narrowed all that Atlanta had to offer down to two things: a cemetery and a ball park. That’s just so “us.”
     

Historic Oakland Cemetery was our first stop. Back in 1850, the burgeoning town of Atlanta had outgrown their original cemetery. The place was so popular that people were just dying to get in … I know, old joke. Anyway, they needed a new one, so land on the then-outskirts of town was purchased. Soon enough it became the final resting place for more than 7,000 Confederate soldiers. It’s also home to “Gone With the Wind” author Margaret Mitchell as well as golfing legend Bobby Jones.

He was not only the greatest amateur golfer of all time but was also co-founder and co-designer of Augusta National, home of the Masters golf tournament. When we got to his grave, there were so many golf balls left by fans that someone was able to fashion a respectable pyramid out of them.

 Of all the graves we saw at the cemetery, the one that really caused us both to mist up a bit was “The Lion of Atlanta.” This monument honors the unknown Confederate dead, more than 3,000 strong, buried there. It gave us a chill to see the stone-carved, mortally wounded lion (representing courage) clutching the Confederate battle flag as he lay atop the unknowns guarding their graves. It was just so moving. Nearby was the massive Confederate Obelisk which honors all Confederate soldiers. 

That night, the Seattle Mariners-Atlanta Braves baseball game at Turner Field would be stadium #20 in our quest to see games at all 30 major league ball parks. This same baseball stadium served as the Olympic Stadium for the 1996 Summer Olympics. We were really looking forward to this.
     Now when we go to see a major league ballpark for the first time, we like to get there at least an hour before the game so that we can check out the surrounding neighborhood and then walk the entire stadium inside. We also take our standard pre-game photo of each field, usually from an upper deck somewhere between home plate and first base. However, in Atlanta, that plan went a little awry.
A Mellow Mushroom dinner took a bit longer than expected, so we weren’t able to leave for the game until an hour before the start. Still, it was just 11 miles. How long could that take?
     Answer: a lot longer than we chimps thought.
     We got to our seats in the 2nd inning. The traffic, complete with an accident blocking the freeway, was a bit thick, and the parking was a zoo … literally … we had a baboon valet our car over near the lions’ cages.
     Adding to our late seat-arrival time, of course, were the photographs that just HAD to be taken. There’s one of me with three giant baseballs signed by legendary Braves pitcher Phil Niekro. Diedre likes to call this portrait: “Three Knuckleballs and a Knucklehead.”

     How droll.
     
Hank Aaron was always my baseball hero, going back to when I was four years old. He even helped me learn how to read. I had to know how he had done each day, so my mom showed me how to read box scores so I could keep up with Hammerin’ Hank. So tonight at the stadium, when I saw “The Hank Aaron Room,” well, I just had to have a photo of me with it, even whilst the Braves were scoring yet another run and the thunderous roars of the crowd were cascading down upon me and my hapless photographer.
     I can now say this: we’ve achieved both ends of the baseball spectrum: in Houston, due to a parking meter miscalculation, we missed the end of the game, whereas here, due to a traffic-time miscalculation, we missed the start. And to add insult to injury on this evening, all the scoring by the Braves took place when we weren’t there. They were up 5-0 before we even saw the field. By the 5th inning however, Seattle had rallied to make it 5-5, so it was like we were getting to see a brand new game. Good for us; not so good for the home town Braves.
     I had something of a first for me at that night’s ball game. You know how when you go to a sporting event or a movie or when you’re seated on a plane, you always end up sitting either in front of a kid kicking your seat or an old guy grabbing your seat back to help him sit down? Well, there was a new one in that category tonight. A young lady in front of me had such long hair that when she shook her head to the left and then to the right, which I might add, she did A LOT, it kept dragging back and forth across my knobby, 63-year old knees. I mean, the old boys were getting a good case of whiplash from her Prell-inspired hair. Diedre scoffed, implying that I was getting old, that as a young man, I would have loved it. That made me think of porn …
     Now just hear me out.
     The last time I was forced to see something lewd, as I recall, it concerned a young pizza delivery boy bringing a pizza to a lonely divorcee. Well, before you knew it, they were going at it, and me, well I should have figured that I was indeed growing old, because all I could think was: “Man! That pizza’s gonna get COLD!”

     Back to the game. John Buck of Seattle hit the crap out of the ball all night. He ripped off three base-hits to start with, then crushed a mammoth two-run homer in the 7th to put Seattle ahead for good. And that’s “John” Buck, not “Joe” Buck from “Midnight Cowboy.” Different professions.  After the second inning, the Braves only got two more hits. Seattle wins 7-5. Our home-team support record falls to 4-3.  Oh drat!
    

 On Wednesday morning, we made the long, arduous climb up the entirely-made-of-granite Stone Mountain, all 1.3 miles of it. As I stumbled and wheezed and took myriad breaks, I was regularly passed by four-year old kids on a field trip and a gaggle of nuns wearing the old habits (which are hard to break).   To make it easier to find your way to the top, someone had painted a yellow dot line (not brick road) all the way up. During our ascent, I found a carving in the rock that read “Mike Gibson, 1968.” That jogged my rather feeble mind: during my first year at the University of Michigan, my roommate and fellow teammate on the freshman basketball team was … Mike Gibson ... and cue “The Twilight Zone” music … that was 1968.
     Spooky.
  (Wait, was that the second “Twilight Zone” reference?  COME ON, ALEXX!  Get some new material!)
Led by my plucky bride, we did make it all the way to the summit. Arriving first, Diedre threw back her arms and shouted, “TOP OF THE WORLD, MA! TOP OF THE WORLD!”
     I don’t know where she gets that crap from.

     We spent the evening with my cousin, Allyson Richey, and her husband, Brain, and high-school age kids Max and Claire. Max is an exceptional lacrosse player, although he was benched while we were there due to a “snowboarding on grass” injury. Yeah, kids.

Alexander/Richey Cousins!

     Claire is into horseback riding big time, although unlike her aunt Lesley who had her own horse as a teenager, Claire has to “lease” a horse. I think she contracts with “Hertz-Rent-a-Horse.”
     Hubby Brian is a man of extreme loyalty and commitments. He met cousin Allyson in college at the University of Kansas, and they’ve been together ever since. And the very successful business he runs is co-owned and co-run by him and his buddy whom he has known since they were both age four.  The family recklessly let me choose where we were going to dinner that night, so I opted for, based upon my love for the TV show “Seinfeld,” a restaurant called “Kozmo’s.” It turned out to be very good, although they did not offer any pasta primavera.

     The next day was our chance to fight back against all the humid southern weather we’d been experiencing with a day at the pool of Rolf and Chris. And dinner barbecued out back would follow. Does it get any better than that?
     When we arrived at the Versluis’s, we were greeted in the driveway by Rolf.  Lilah was the only one of the daughters home as the two older girls had an afternoon gymnastics practice. Lilah showed us all the ropes, giving me an inflatable raft to buoyantly keep my non-buoyant body above water. 


She and Diedre did some pool yoga with the leg exercises definitely going much higher for the young Lilah than her 57-year-to-the-senior side Aunt Diedre. She later showed us that new backyard game where you sling ropes which have golf balls on each end at a mini-ladder with three rungs. You get different points for wrapping the ropes around different rungs. I now know how David must have felt when he slew Goliath.
     The other two gymnasts showed up late that afternoon and then the full power of the backyard went into overdrive. A ground level trampoline got a great workout from the four of them while the adults (read: Rolf) finished making dinner. 

Caroline and Lilah Versluis

Rolf and Chris Versluis

Kabobs on the grill were wonderful. It was really nice to get a good home-cooked meal since I … well, I pretty much get them all the time from Chef Diedre, but you get what I’m saying. A good time was had by all.

Stone Mountain Park was where we were actually staying in Stone Mountain, Georgia. The park has everything for families. And Stone Mountain, that massive dome of granite, has other attributes other than just sitting there waiting for overweight (not us) Yankee tourists to scale her back. This 1,683-foot tall mountain, 300-million years in the making as of, I believe, next Tuesday, sports an eerie, lunar-like surface. And just like other great mountains we’ve climbed (Everest, the Matterhorn, Mount Pleasant, MI), this one, too, had a gift shop and snack bar at the top.  My point, and I do have one so quit your worrying, is that the mountain also has carved into its sheer north face an enormous bas-relief (what the hell is that?) sculpture of the three major Civil War Confederate personalities: General Robert E. Lee, General Stonewall Jackson, and President Jefferson Davis (Yeah, you were pretty sure I was going to say, “Moe, Larry, and Curly.”) The carving is the size of a city block. It was carved by Gutzon Borglum, the same guy who chiseled the four presidents’ heads into Mount Rushmore, SD. It took him 57 years to complete this one, mainly due to him calling in sick for 36 years.
     So, on the side of the mountain right where the generals are, the Park people staged a wonderful, one-hour laser show. It covered everything from the history of the country to the Civil War to modern Atlanta, all backed by wonderful music. The Versluis family joined us and Diedre, ever the clever one, bought us reserved VIP seating that got us not only cushy chairs but also (be still my heart) unlimited popcorn and diet Coke, plus I was allowed one helping of that tasty treat of my bygone days, Dippin' Dots ice cream.  Yikes!
     The night ended with a wonderful fireworks show. Everyone had a great time.  Rolf, Chris, and the girls followed us back to our camp to see how the other half (Rv’ers) live. It was truly just a most memorable night.
     
On Saturday morning we did something we normally never do. We left Stone Mountain a day early, having been talked into parking in the massive driveway of longtime friends Howard and Jamie Deichen in nearby Roswell, GA. For the first time in our two-year RV'ing career, we would be sleeping in a bed not enclosed by AB1. But if you’d have seen the Deichens’ house, you’d understand our bedroom lust.
     
I first met Howard at Carleton College in 1971. He was a 6’6” monster on the freshman basketball team while I was the 6’3” captain of the varsity (Somehow Diedre knew I had to slip that in). I’ve been friends with Howard now for 43 years and Jamie almost as long. Diedre first met Jamie at the ladies stag party (Bambi party?) in Chicago a week before the Deichens’ wedding in 1988; after that night, Jamie and her sister in-law determined that Diedre was the perfect one for me and that we should be married. I never had a chance.
     Howard is a big-shot CFO, COO, CEO, IOU (one of those abbreviations) for a health company, but he's nearing retirement now, so he and Jamie are in the midst of planning the construction of their dream house in Napa, California. Now if you saw their Atlanta house, you’d have no guess as to what a dream house means to them.  I only know because Howard has all their plans on his I-Pad.
     Howard's hobby is collecting cars and Jamie’s is to keep Howard's hobby under control, although truth be told, she does own a sweet little ’56 turquoise, Thunderbird convertible. Among the cars in Howard’s 10-car garage are three Ferraris, a Lamborgini, a Shelby Cobra, a Mazeratti, a Tortellini, an Astin-Martin, a Corvette, and, strangely enough, a little Nash Rambler that goes “Beep- Beep! Beep-Beep!” (I’m probably way off on this inventory. I think alcohol was involved during the two-hour car tour.  Extra time was devoted to a study session before the final exam.)
     We spent the day poolside negotiating their whip-action pool slide. 

Later, I duplicated one of Napoleon’s feats by “sabering” a bottle of champagne. Apparently, Napoleon’s men didn't have the time or good sense to open a bottle the correct way, so when they were on horseback after a big victory, they would run their swords up the side of the champagne bottle and take the entire tip off.  Try it.  It really works.  You just have to hit the top at the glass seam. I was able to do it on my first attempt, and amazingly, very few of us had to go to the hospital.

That afternoon, my heart was broken as we watched the Belmont Stakes. I so wanted California Chrome to be the first horse to win the Triple Crown since Affirmed back in 1978. He gave it his best, but three races in five weeks is a lot to ask, especially against world class competition.     After a wonderful dinner, I was blindfolded pre-dessert and then allowed a bite of what turned out to be a most delicious éclair. Inside joke: in college, we always thought it was funny that small-town boy Howard always ordered an “O-clair.” It didn’t take much to amuse our small minds back in those pre-interweb days.
     

Howard related a great story about his dad. In 1932, Howard’s father had a bit of a crush on the great movie star, Mary Pickford. So on an impulse, he flew his plane all the way from Waseca, MN, to Hollywood.  Once there, he flew over “Pickfair,” the gigantic estate owned by Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Now, air transport was still in a bit of its infancy then and air photography even more so. But a determined Mr. Deichen took one hell of a picture of the estate from high above, then landed his plane and walked the eight miles to the Pickfair estate to present them with the enlarged, framed photo. When he rang the doorbell, amazingly enough the butler invited him in. The celebrity couple was charmed by the picture and gratefully accepted his gift. The two-foot by three-foot photo still hangs over the fireplace at the home now some 82 years later. (The blog photographer forgot to take a picture of Mr. Deichen's photo so nabbed this one from a wonderful blog that also has other photos of the interior of Pickfair and the story of it's development - very interesting! (Click here to link to the blog about Pickfair. After opening scroll past the photo to the article.)
     The night was finished off with a blood-thirsty game of “Table Shuffleboard,” then we were off to dreamland in one of the cushy, guest room king-sized beds. And, fearing for the heat in AB1, the cats had even moved into their own room at the Deichen manse, complete with platinum cat food dishes and running mice in every faucet.
      

The next morning after a healthy breakfast of eclairs and Spam, we were on our way, once again ensconced in the security of AB1, on our way out of the deep-south and into the medium-south. Charlotte, NC, was next up on the RV menu.
     OK, bathroom break.  Then I’ll see you back for the next exciting chapter of “Flash Gordon and His Wonder Rain Coat.”