The speaker asks the audience to share their thoughts on fasting. “I was just talking to the Lord,” one of the participants starts to answer. Yes. There are people out there who claim to have real, actual conversations with God; they talk to Him, He talks to them and they exchange views.
Don’t ask me.
At the end of the study we are treated to a gift from a local bakery: breads, Danish, cookies, muffins. It’s good to talk about fasting as long as it ends with a muffin.
It’s also good to speak of racial equality in a church that allows whites to attend services and accepts donations from whites, but will not accept whites as members.
The African Methodist Episcopal Church, if I understand correctly, was actually founded in the early nineteenth century in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. That’s enough time, one would assume, to start practicing racial equality and open the Church’s doors to all colors. But, I guess, not everything we assume turns out to be reality.
Gate Twenty-Seven
In the turtle hospital, every turtle has health insurance
I KEEP DRIVING SOUTH, AS IF THERE’S GOLD THE FURTHER SOUTH I GO. YES, I’m still in the South, Oscar! I enter Georgia, driving in the direction of Savannah, where the gold should be.
Hotels in Savannah, in the downtown area, charge hundreds of dollars per night. But I want to beat the system. I go online and find myself a hotel room a few miles from downtown Savannah for thirty-nine dollars a night. I like the hotel’s description: “Simple chain hotel offering extended-stay deals, an outdoor pool and a computer for guests.”
I park the Caravan next to the hotel, Masters Inn in Garden City, and go to pick up my room key. There’s a big sign on a high pole with the hotel’s name, but I can’t find the actual hotel. It takes me a while to find it, and then I see a small structure with the hotel’s name on it.
This cannot be the hotel, unless this hotel has only one room. I walk in there anyway. It’s the hotel’s reception area. Where’s the hotel? I have no idea. But before I have the chance to open my mouth, the lady at the desk looks at me, takes notice of my white skin and asks if I really want to be here.
What’s the problem?
“Would you like me to give you the key and you see for yourself?”
Do you have smoking rooms?
“Yes, but you wouldn’t want to be there.”
Why not?
“Trust me!”
Where’s the hotel?
The lady points to some big, dark structures and says that the hotel is there. “I give you the best room I have, but you’ll have to tell me if you want to stay here.”
What’s going on, lady?
“Go and see.”
I go.
Poor families, all black, congregate in different spots of this Masters’ hotel, and young men sit down on the floor and on the stairs in various places, each of them extremely busy doing nothing. As I pass by them they look at me, wondering what the hell I’m doing here.
What is this place? I enter one of the buildings, looking for my room. In the stairway I see notices on the walls warning people that if they misbehave they will be thrown out of here at once.
What the heck is going on here? Better that I not know. I go back to the car and move on. Hotel after hotel, each looking worse than the other, decorate the roads I drive on. Some are rumored to be the abode of whores; others are beyond rumors.
What’s going on with this Georgia?
Just before I’m ready to give up on hotels I find the Deluxe Inn, a hotel with an almost empty parking lot. I have never been to a hotel where I’m its only guest; it’s time I try.
On the small refrigerator in the room I read this: “Alarm + Police = Jail.” What is this? Better that I not know. The good thing is that all rooms are smoking rooms. Perfect for me. I unpack, light up and try to take my mind off of where I am.
I start with Fox News. They are often entertaining, and I need that now. Fox reports that “Eight ISIS terrorists wielding AK-47s and wearing suicide belts carried out coordinated attacks at six sites around Paris Friday night, killing at least 127 people and wounding at least 180 others.” Oops. This is not exactly entertaining.
Eighty-nine of those people died in a concert hall where the American rock band Eagles of Death Metal performed. What a prophetic name for a band.
The good news is this: As far as I know, ISIS is not planning anything spectacular in Georgia. This hotel is empty.
• • •
When the sun shines on the next day, it’s Saturday. Time to get out of this hole and explore Savannah with Mr. Caravan. Right off Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard is St. Luke Baptist Church, also known as St. Luke Missionary Baptist Church, and there I see people going in. Are they having their service on Saturday instead of Sunday? It sure looks like it, and I stop by to watch this wonder.
An attendant stops me and asks if I have locked my car. Some folks around here are praying, and others are stealing. I walk in.
Oh, God! I almost get a heart attack in this wonder church. Right in front, by the podium, lies a dead man. This is not a “Sabbath” service; this is a wake!
A dead black man in a white coffin, half his dead body on display.
My first reaction: Run out of here! I’ve never seen a dead person and I don’t want to do it now. But as soon as I run out, I walk back in. It’s called curiosity.
I sit down in the back, as far away as possible from the dead. About twenty people are in attendance. Nothing is happening. No dead is moving, and neither are the living.
Time passes. More people come in.
All are black. I think of the black theater in Fort Worth and what the guy told me about the whites who attend black events. This ain’t Sunday, I say to myself, when the whites might show up so that a day later they could brag about their “diversity.” Not a single white.
The clock is moving. Over the next half hour or so, more and more people come in. And slowly a crowd forms, numbering well over one hundred. Not one of them is white. Didn’t this dead man have one white friend, or acquaintance, who would come to pay last respects, to say one final goodbye?
Above the coffin, on the front wall, is a painting of Jesus and John the Baptist, both in a pool of water, and both are dark-skinned.
The service starts.
The cover of the coffin is lowered and we don’t see the dead anymore. A female singer and a choir are on the stage. “Praise the Lord, Hallelujah,” they sing. Everyone on stage is clapping, as if this were a wedding, and the audience joins in. Speeches and stories follow.
The audience members in the church are old and young, male and female, and all are black. The deceased, Henry C. Edwards Jr., was born in 1945 and died of heart disease one week ago.
I stick around for over two hours in the hope of seeing one white person, but, alas, the only white here is me. In American English this is called diversity; in other languages they call it segregation.
“This is a celebration of life,” says a speaker, and the audience applauds. A lady opens in song, with resounding words that repeat over and over: “I say, thank you.” This lady knows how to schlep out a tune. Her I goes longer than the train to Alaska. Oscar would be a good match for her. This is a black church, and when the lady sings well, the audience roars in approval. Whites usually don’t do that – their loss.
A preacher goes to the stage and speaks. He knows when he hits the right chord because the audience will respond with “yeah,” “right” or “amen.” What’s cooking here is a dialogue, not a monologue.
“Whatever you need your God to be, the Lord will be for you!” he says, and they say, “Yeah!” Henry, who won’t be part of this again, will surely miss it.
In due course the service is over and the procession starts out: a sea of blacks and one white. Just like it was on the Red Line train in Chicago. Outside, ready to enter his car, I meet Albert, Henry’s cousin, who came down here from Brooklyn, New York.
There is not one white person here, I say to
him, and I ask him why. “That’s a good question,” he says. “I never paid attention to that. Henry had white friends; they didn’t come in.”
They are not real friends –
“This is America!”
Is diversity just a word, a PR word?
“Yeah. Exactly. And New York is the same way. Brooklyn is pretty much the same way. Whites do their own things, and blacks do what they do.”
I tell him that the event in the church touched me.
“We all gotta go through this one day. Gotta make that journey!”
A group of people stands not far away, most of them women, and I ask them the same thing: How come not one white person showed up to say goodbye? They nod with their heads, but have no words. Reality hurts.
Diversity.
A minute’s drive from here is downtown, where the expensive hotels are and where people, enlightened whites, come to feel they are in the midst of diverse America. I drive back and forth in downtown, looking at them. The color here is almost all white.
Cafés, shops, more cafés and more shops. The whites have a good time. They have come from every corner of America to feel Southern culture firsthand. They are wined and dined by black waiters and they feel “diversified.”
But Henry is gone and no white “friend” has come to say goodbye. It hurts to witness all this.
Downtown Savannah is similar to downtown Charleston, but now both ring very hollow to me, as both tell a tale of illusion and delusion.
• • •
I drive on, learning more about the Caravan as we go. As the day is about to pass I get on the highway and drive in the direction of Florida. Somewhere on the highway I see a road sign leading to a visitors center. Am I in Florida already? I get off the highway and stop off at the center.
There I see a brochure called the Golden Isles official visitor’s guide. Is this Florida’s nickname? No, I’m still in Georgia. “You should visit Jekyll Island,” a lady tells me.
What’s Jekyll Island?
“That’s where the richest people of America once lived, and no one but the richest people could enter the island. One day they were sitting and drinking, and after some drinks one of them threw out this idea of creating the Fed [the Federal Reserve]. That’s how the Fed started.”
In the brochure I read:
The island has long been appreciated for its historic landmark district coined the “Millionaires Village.”… The Jekyll Island Club Hotel and the surrounding cottages were once home to the most exclusive club in the world, consisting of America’s most influential, the Morgans, Pulitzers, Vanderbilts and Cranes, among others. It was used as a hunting and golf resort and has been the setting of many historic moments, including the making of the first transcontinental telephone call and the first meeting of the Federal Reserve.
America: from the first swivel chair to the first transcontinental telephone call. Jekyll Island. That’s a place for me. It’ll be good medicine after a wake.
I drive there. What an amazing place! Jekyll Island is a Garden of Eden on earth. Here’s where real Chosen People, the ones with the healthy pockets, come to refresh. I walk on the beach, which is clean and beautiful, and feel like the luckiest man on the planet.
The streets here are narrow, with the greenest of grass and trees all around, and the overall effect here is a “life as a dream” reality.
I see a young couple playing with their children on the grass. Who did you vote for in the last presidential election? I ask them. They look at me and then at each other, each waiting to hear what the other will say.
Why? Neither of them knows whom the other voted for, they tell me. It’s such a “controversial” issue that they don’t discuss it even between themselves.
Oy!
The Jekyll Island Club Hotel, which has a number of properties on the island, looks like a nice hotel. I think I should stay here a bit.
• • •
The Savannah Morning News reports today that “Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal has issued an executive order declaring that no state agency can accept refugees from Syria in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks, due in part to concerns that terrorists might use the refugees as cover to sneak across borders.”
The News also reports that “Gov. Nathan Deal is scheduled to arrive today in Jekyll Island for what’s been billed as a ‘rededication’ ceremony touting all that’s new at the state-owned island park.” This island was privately owned in the past, but now it’s owned by the state.
This event is just a few feet from my hotel room, and so I go to check it out. When I get there I see a big tent with hundreds of people. Most of them sit, some stand, and I take a look at the attendees. In the front rows, almost all of them are white. In the back portion, there are about fifty blacks and they are wearing tricolored robes: maroon, gold and white.
I walk to where the blacks sit, and I sit with them. Before I can figure out who they really are, a speaker goes to the podium and tells us that this event is in celebration of the $195 million investment for the revitalization of Jekyll Island. I don’t know what he’s talking about but, personally, I’d be much happier if part of that money went to buy me a robe.
His Excellency Governor Deal approaches the stage, from where he thanks all those who, over the years, have passed through this island and collectively made it what it is. Among the thanked: the Native Americans and the “Millionaires Club.”
He doesn’t thank me. Toward the end of his speech the blacks get up and start marching. Where to? I don’t know, but I join them anyway: a lone white in a little sea of fifty blacks. It’s my new habit: where there are blacks, there am I.
Where are we all going to? Oops, to the stage.
Okay with me, as long as it’s not another wake. They sing:
Oh, happy day
When Jesus washed
When He washed
My sins away.
I join them in song and dance on the stage.
A PR lady for the event, watching this in horror, quickly approaches me and asks that I dismount the stage at once. S--t. The blacks get to wash their sins away, but I don’t. They sing a little more, and when their sins are all washed away the ceremony is over.
What was this all about? Why was this choir brought in to sing Jesus songs in an event that has nothing to do with Christianity? Ask the PR lady. I have more burning questions. For example: Why is it that when whites get to make tons of money, blacks break out in song and dance?
I should find me someone who understands these things better than me – Governor Nathan Deal, naturally.
To make our acquaintance, I ask His Highness to explain Georgia to me. “We are, for those who are interested in business, we have been for the third year in a row designated as the best state in the United States in which to do business.”
Who designated them? I have no idea. But it doesn’t matter; it sounds good, and that’s enough.
From what I have seen in Georgia, I share with His Excellency, there is a huge divide between blacks and whites, especially in terms of the distribution of wealth. Is my impression wrong?
Wrong, of course.
His Excellency asserts that “We have extended great opportunities to our minority community,” and that “Georgia doesn’t get the designation of ‘best state in the country with which to do business’ unless we are distributing that wealth appropriately. I think we are.”
I can’t say if this true or not, but what I can say is this: turtles are well taken care of on this island and they get their fair share of the wealth here, no matter what anybody says.
Yes, Turtles. Forget blacks, think turtles. Yeah, there is a “Sea Turtle Hospital” on Jekyll Island. I go to see it.
A “surgical removal of fungal mass” is taking place at the hospital when I enter the facility. A nurse holds a turtle tightly while a doctor performs the procedure with surgical scissors. The turtle pushes out its dark front flippers. It’s amazing to watch. Who’s paying for this? I don�
�t know. Maybe the turtles have Obamacare.
Oh, happy day
When Jesus washed
When He washed
My sins away.
Rich folks love turtles. Don’t ask me to explain.
• • •
A short boat cruise, or a longer road drive, will take you to Sea Island, a private island where the super-Chosen live, the Millionaires Club of today. You can’t get in unless you live there or have a reservation at the local hotel – for which you will have to pay an extraordinary number of Dead Presidents. Another class of people who can enter this exclusive place are those who have some official capacity that requires them to be there.
The fourth and the fastest way to get in: hook up with one of the three above. Which is exactly what I do. I find me such a person, and he’s driving me around. We pass by the hotel property and I take a look at the guests, not one of whom is black. Blacks go to the Masters Inn. We drive on.
Sea Island, where the leaders of the G8 Summit (Group of Eight) convened in 2004, is where the richest of Americans, often called the “one percent,” live their special lives. If you are into more precise terms, you may refer to the residents of this island as the “0.001 percent.”
Houses here run in the millions of dollars – three million, ten million, nobody really counts. But you will be hard-pressed to find grandiose mansions here, such as those in many of America’s other exclusive neighborhoods. The residents of Sea Island, my new friend tells me, are not stodgy, pretentious people. Their homes are understated because no one on this Sea Island is trying to impress anybody else. There’s no need. If you were not of the 0.001 percent, you wouldn’t be living here.
Still, I can’t but be impressed by these “simple” homes. Even though they are not that big, each and every one of them looks like a rare gem – made of masterfully drawn colors, shapes and designs.
The most unique feature of this place is that you can see zero percent of its residents. Nobody’s out, except for the occasional worker. Where are the people? The rich are hiding inside their fortresses, sitting by mirrors and talking to themselves.
The Lies They Tell Page 33