My Review of Charleston, West Virginia

Just after Raleigh, I spent a bit of time in DC to watch Nicky and Brian's cats, catch up with friends, and catch up on my blog (which I completely failed to do, despite having a lot of time and few obligations).

But my next real stop on my journey was Charleston, West Virginia, which was one of the original eight cities I picked out ahead of time to test drive as a possible new home.  You may be wondering why Charleston was on the list in the first place.  It's because several years ago, I took some quiz on the internet telling me where I should live, and its top result was Charleston, WV.  So I went.

The best thing about Charleston is it's got the cheapest gas in the whole U.S!

Just kidding, it actually has very expensive gas.  $3.49 in Charleston on the same day it was $3.19 in Northern Virginia.  This sign is from an out-of-business gas station, a testament to the declining economy of Charleston, which from the sounds of it, has been hit harder than the U.S. overall during the recession.

Since I don't want to give anyone the wrong impression, I probably won't put "susceptibility to recessions" on my list of factors by which I will judge the cities I'm considering.  If I did, Cleveland would probably be right out, but being my home town, Cleveland will definitely be a contender.

I will, however, have "physical beauty" on my list of factors by which I'll judge a city.  And in this category, Charleston earns the dubious distinction of being the most beautiful and the least beautiful city I auditioned this year.  Its natural beauty is stunning.  Charleston is nestled in a valley along the banks of two rivers.  Even in early winter, with no leaves on the trees or snow on the ground, the area surrounding Charleston is very pretty.

Not bad, even in winter, eh?

Sadly, there is a thick patina of man-made ugliness on top of all of the natural beauty.  Downtown, there are  above-ground parking garages on every corner.  All over town, billboards mar the scenery.  I don't know how much Charlestonians recycle or rely on clean energy, but I didn't see obvious signs of either, such as recycling bins next to public garbage cans.  And on my driving tours of the greater city area, I saw a lot more run down neighborhoods than I've seen elsewhere.  Every city has some poor parts or bad parts, but there seemed to be a lot more in Charleston than other towns I visited.

An example of ... the entire town.

Among the things I liked about Charleston were its size, the ease with which I could get around (including a very easy drive to and from the airport), and the willingness of the locals to talk to me about the city.  Charleston has a few unique places to shop and eat, like the Capitol Market and The Seoul of Charleston, which serves Korean and soul food.  They go surprisingly well together!

Fancy foods sold here!

The food is good and the price is right.

I also liked this feature of many 3-way intersections in town, which I've never seen before:  When a traffic light is at a T-shaped intersection, the right-hand lane of the straightaway traffic opposite the side street always has a green light.  Maybe this exists elsewhere, but I've never seen it.  It really keeps traffic flowing smoothly, because one of the three directions of traffic is moving at all times:

See the green arrow above the right hand land, which is separated from the rest of the intersection by the white posts?  Very efficient.

Of course, I'm not going to move to a city because of a unique and efficient traffic pattern, so while I found this noteworthy, it didn't sell me on the city.

Another thing that did not sell me on the city was how close a massive amount of industry was to downtown.  On my driving tour, I went to check out a golf course, and not 1/4 mile down the road was the start of a mile-long industrial park, spewing all sorts of crap into the air.  :(  Not how I'd want to spend a day on the course or jogging along the river.  (I'm under the impression that West Virginia generally isn't super concerned with treating the environment all that great, e.g., by strip-mining and stuff like that.  I'm also under the impression that the mining industry has really shrunk over the years, adding to WV's economic woes, but hopefully improving its physical environment.)

That smoke is heading straight to the park & golf course next door.

Charleston is also the only town I visited that failed my sushi test!  If you're wondering what the sushi test is, I basically wanted to confirm in each town that it had at least one sushi restaurant with fish I'd like to eat.  I was unable to test this in a couple of places (Des Moines & Asheville) but I made sure to eat other meals at seafood places, so I could gauge whether the city at least had good fish.  And everyplace either had good sushi or good fish.

Charleston on the other hand ... Well, first of all, the sushi bar was out of my two favorite pieces, and its overall selection was pretty small.  I ordered a spicy tuna roll, which is on every sushi menu and which can vary widely.  And it was really untasty.  :(  I couldn't even finish it, it was spiced so bizarrely.  The final blow was getting cold nigiri, as if the fish had just come out of the freezer.  As with a number of other factors, I doubt that the quality of Charleston's sushi would make or break my decision to move there.  But it sure didn't boost my opinion of the city.  (Nor did my observation that there are far more chain restaurants than local restaurants.  In fact, twice I asked people for restaurant recommendations, saying I wanted "something local" and they'd recommend something like the Cracker Barrel that was only two blocks away.  When I'd clarify that I meant "something only Charleston can offer," they'd scratch their heads.  Sigh...

Back to something I liked:  I liked downtown.  Although there's not a lot of housing downtown, there is some.  And aside from the parking garages (which, sadly, are everywhere), the downtown is fairly attractive.

Around town, I ran my usual errands that I save for my auditions cities (things like changing my car's oil, beauty treatments, shopping for necessities) because it allows me to interact with people.  Everyone I met while doing chores seemed pretty pleasant.  But I also... I'm not sure how to phrase this... picked up a weird vibe from the population generally that indicated they just don't care.  About their surroundings, about being polite to strangers, I dunno.  Maybe as if, a lot of the residents of the city were born in a barn and don't know how to act when they move to the big city.

I wound up talking at some length to four women (in three different groups).  All four were very nice, but while two of them liked Charleston a lot, and urged me to move there, two others -- Donna and Mary -- hated it and could think of no reason to recommend it.  The two who hated it grew up, moved away for several years, and moved back because of family obligations.  And have regretted moving back ever since.  They went on and on about how the area was plagued by drugs, low wages, gossiping neighbors, government corruption, lazy cops, ignorant people, etc. etc.  The conversation sure made me laugh, but didn't paint Charleston as a great place to move to.

Birthplace of Booker T. Washington.  In the background are Donna & Mary, who knew I was from out of town by the number of photos they watched me take.

Well, I hope I'm not forgetting any key pieces of information about Charleston.  I can say that Charleston is no longer on the list of cities I will consider moving to.  Even without the two thumbs down from Donna and Mary, I don't think it would make my short list, due to all of the things I didn't like about it, listed above.  I'm a little sad I didn't like the city all that much, but every time I can cross a city off my list of possibilities, the easier the next part of my analysis will be.

Revisiting Raleigh

I used to live in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I am ashamed to say that the only time I've been back since I moved away in 2001 was a couple of weeks ago, near the end of my cross-country road trip.  I felt a little nervous about visiting again.  What if it had changed and was awful?  What if I loved it, and then regretted ever moving away?  Well, like most of my fears, neither one came to pass (the bad parts, at least).

Raleigh has changed during my 10-year absence.  There were some new buildings downtown (which is to be expected) and some new stoplights and intersections (same, alas!) but so much of it was recognizable, it was more like I'd never left than I'd been gone for 10 years.

And, as I remembered, the people in Raleigh are super nice.  When I first arrived in town, I drove around the downtown area (no one lives there, but I wanted to check it out anyway) then headed to my old apartment building.  I worried before I got there that it had been knocked down and replaced with some new shiny structure, but it was still there, quaint and shabby as always:

There was a man on the lawn next door with his kids.  We got to talking and it turns out he lives in the building now, and thinks it's great.  It was nice, just getting out of my car and starting a conversation with someone.  Raleigh is not the only city I've done that in, but I am pleased that Raleigh is like that.

I spent the rest of my first day in Raleigh walking around my old neighborhood.  The biggest changes I saw were to the traffic patterns and the rebuilt YMCA.  Most of the buildings and even businesses were the same.  I never thought that crappy little market on the corner would still be in business, but it was!  And the library where I used to work is still going strong, although it's been remodeled and expanded (looks nice).

My second day in Raleigh started with a trip to the Leg Caf (pronounced "ledge calf", short for Legislative Cafeteria) where anyone can get a tasty and inexpensive lunch, apparently because the food is subsidized by the taxpayers (or maybe it's just inexpensive).  I'm not sure anything at all was new about the Leg Cafe, which was fine, because it meant I could still make my favorite salad.  Sadly, I was there on a Monday and not a Tuesday, so I missed by favorite soup (lemon chicken rice).

As I was leaving the Caf, I got to talking with a stranger.  And we wound up sitting on the grounds of the capitol for 45 minutes, talking about Raleigh and my travels and my upcoming job search.  Turns out the guy is a lawyer in town, and so knew some of the people I used to work with at the Court of Appeals.  In addition to being glad I met yet another really nice stranger, I'm glad he encouraged me to stop by the Court and hunt down some people I used to know there.

So my next stop was the Court, where I stared at John Connell through the window until he noticed me, then he smiled and waved me in.  We talked for a while about all sorts of things, then he found Judge Wynn's contact info for me.  I recently learned that Judge Wynn (who I clerked for right after law school on the North Carolina Court of Appeals) had (finally!) been appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.  For those of you who don't know much about the appointment of judges, that is a very prestigious appointment!

Fortunately for me, Judge Wynn was both in his new office and had some free time, so I walked over to see him (looking my best!  Ha.).  He hasn't aged a bit, and seems very happy and proud of his new position, as well he should be.  So we caught up for a while, and I chatted with an old fellow clerk I knew from back in the day.  Then I had to get going so I could meet up with another old friend for dinner...

Me & Judge Wynn.  He always manages to make it into the middle of the photo!

Dena Roberts is one of the kindest and biggest-hearted people I know.  When I was a student in Durham, I was in her consignment shop one day and when I went to buy my items, she asked "You're a student, aren't you?  Would you like to come in and work this weekend and pay for your clothes that way?"  So I said "sure!" and working at Closet Classics Consignment became my part time job during the next two years of law school.  I really liked it there, although it was only a slightly-above minimum wage position.  I met a lot of locals there and had many laughs.  And of course, made friends with Dena.  So I went to her home for dinner with her and her family.  It was great catching up, and made me feel less guilty for not keeping up the friendships I made in N.C.

Me & Dena

See, since I left Raleigh in January 2001, I had not been back once to visit, despite knowing people there and it being only about 4 hours away from D.C.  I didn't even keep up on the phone or email with people I cared about, like the Judge and Dena.  I felt so bad about it, in fact, that I almost skipped visiting Raleigh at all.  I know that doesn't make any sense, but I spent a long time looking at my map, and at the roads between Charleston, S.C. and Washington, D.C. (where I was scheduled to house-sit Nicky's cats) and wondered if there were any way I could reasonably avoid Raleigh.  Well, first of all, there wasn't, short of taking the really long way to D.C.  And second, I didn't really want to avoid Raleigh anyway.  I just felt this weird trepidation about returning after so long.  Fortunately, I liked what I saw and the people I got to visit seemed quite happy to have me.  I'm just sorry I took so long.  [Hmm, I just re-read the start of this post and realized I expressed some of the same thoughts twice.  I've decided to leave them in both times to emphasize how nervous I was about visiting Raleigh, and how glad I was that I did.]

Charleston, South Carolina

Reaching South Carolina meant reaching one of my goals for the year:  To have visited all 48 of the continental United States.  I still have Alaska and Hawaii left, but their distance from the rest of the States makes them ideal candidates for separate trips.  I had toyed with the idea of driving to Alaska from Washington State while on this really long road trip.  But when I learned it was 2000 miles just from Seattle to Anchorage, not counting any other touring of that state, I decided to pass.

So South Carolina = 48 States seen, a feat of which I am quite proud.

I split my time in Charleston between the old city area and an 18th-Century Plantation several miles outside of the city.

I'm glad I took many photos of Charleston and Savannah both, and am writing my memories of both, because I suspect that years from now, I might have a hard time keeping them straight were it not for my recordings.  They are both old, southern coastal cities.  Both are beautiful and have similar weather.  They're only about 100 miles apart too, and while I didn't look them up, they probably developed around the same time.  But I found I liked Savannah a lot more than Charleston.

Some homes in historic Charleston, S.C.

Charleston's old city is quite extensive.  One could spend hours walking around the town, and it's big enough that a trolley tour wouldn't be a waste either.  I walked, as the weather was nice and I really like walking.

More Charleston

But unlike Savannah, Charleston seems much more commercial.  It was lot busier than Savannah and had too many shops.  The historic Charleston City Market (pictured below), which looks pretty cool and was probably once a legitimate local market, is now filled with women's clothing stores and Christmas ornament shops (a sure sign that you're in a tourist town).  And wall-to-wall people.  Now that I think back, I was reminded of Georgetown in Washington, D.C.  It's pretty cool to look at and walk around in, but it's now overwhelmed by too many people and commercialism.

Charleston City Market

So downtown Charleston wasn't bad for an afternoon walk around town, but it didn't strike me as a place I'd want to return to.

Outside of downtown, however, are a handful of 18th Century plantation houses.  I visited Drayton Hall, and found it will worth the visit.  The property is owned by the National Trust, which chose to preserve the property rather than restore it.  That is, the property is maintained in good condition in the style in which it existed when the Trust bought it (in the 1980s I think?) rather than being renovated to look like it did when it was first built.

Drayton Hall

So there are a number of places on the property that show architectural details from different eras (and frankly, sometimes don't match very well) but it retains the authenticity of keeping pieces that were installed by the people who lived there, rather than recreating pieces from modern equipment or supplying pieces that were taken from other properties.

Inside Drayton Hall

I was unaware, until this visit, that most upper class southern plantation owners did not live on the property where the crops were grown.  Instead, most of them had homes on "small" plantations, but the crops and the accompanying slaves lived elsewhere.  This is true of Drayton Hall, which is where the family lived (but not true of the Kent Plantation House, which was a middle-class plantation).

Much to my delight, the Drayton property is home to a small african-american cemetery, where a few dozen (maybe more, records are scarce) people from the area were laid to rest from the 18th Century until the 1990s.  In accordance with the wishes of the last person buried there, who was also the main source of information about the graveyard, no efforts are being made to locate more graves or identify bodies.

"Leave 'em rest" was the request of the last person to be buried here.

Most graves are unmarked, or their wooden headstones disappeared long ago.

Georgia: Savannah

The other day trip that Reggie and Tawsha took me on was a trip to the coast to see Savannah.  What a nice city!  Like Seattle, I regret a little bit not staying there longer, but I was very pleased with the time I did spend there and would recommend it as a place to visit for a long weekend or something.

A home on the old town square

Downtown.

One of the reasons I liked it so much was that it wasn't completely overrun by tourists, the way a lot of older and beautiful cities are.  Savannah has a very prominent historic area, but walking around it felt like walking around a more ordinary residential/downtown-ish area.  There were other people, but it was pleasant and easy.  And very pretty.

The Cathedral overlooking the old square

Oh no!  :(

The part of town that seemed to me to be the business district was more crowded, but that felt good too.  It was people on their way home from work or maybe out for the evening.  Bustling, but not a madhouse.  And although I don't think it technically was part of the historic district, the business district was very unique, with its share of old buildings and unusual features, like this business that was built over an existing road:

See the street underneath?

We ate dinner at Moon River Brewing Company, a restaurant featured on The Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures.  Apparently, the restaurant is haunted, although we weren't lucky enough to see any paranormal activity.  :(  The food was pretty good, though, and Reggie and Tawsha tried their first ever flight of beers.  Tawsha and I liked the brew more than Reggie, but that's OK.  More beer for us!

Reggie & Tawsha

But the highlight of our day in Savannah was at the Bonaventure Cemetery.  It was founded in the mid-19th Century, so it's not the oldest cemetery I've seen, but it's definitely one of the most beautiful.  And the spanish moss dangling from all the trees adds to the feeling of being someplace spooky.

Bonaventure has a fair number of graves of Confederate soldiers:

And a sizable Jewish section:

In case you can't read this:  The ashes of 344 people killed by the Nazis.

Live long and prosper!

While many of Bonaventure's beauties are obvious, there are many little touches throughout the cemetery for those who spend time looking:

In my opinion, we need more headstones with character!

Georgia: Macon & Andersonville

If you've looked at my High Noon photos, you've seen me with Tawsha and Reggie, a couple of Warcraft friends who I visited for three nights in Macon, Georgia.  Most of my sightseeing in Georgia was not in Macon because Tawsha and Reggie have a very low opinion of their town and they were loathe to subject me to it.  Fine with me, as I was there to see them and not whatever city they happened to live in.

Reggie & Tawsha & two of their six pets

Reggie and Tawsha were extremely generous with their time and their care of me, especially considering Tawsha had a hurt knee and was on crutches the whole time.  They fattened me up with several home-cooked southern meals, and we went out to eat a couple of times at similarly fattening places.  (Tip for noobs:  In Georgia, when the menu describes something as "butter dipped," expect your food to arrive having been dipped in a vat of hot butter.)  The food was great but so much richer than I'm used to.  After a couple days, I was craving puffed rice.

Tawsha adds a can of cream of mushroom soup to her macaroni  & cheese.  Yum!

One of our two day trips was to the Andersonville Prison Camp, which was the largest Southern POW camp for Union soldiers during the Civil War and was apparently one gigantic hellhole.  (Huh, I just used the word "hellhole" as slang just now, but apparently, that's what everyone called the place.)  It was build to hold 10,000 people but quickly grew to hold 32,000.  Over its year plus of existence, 45,000 men passed through it, and about 1/3 died of disease or starvation.  Real crappy.

The grounds of the former prison camp.

A re-created corner of the camp walls and prisoner-made tents.

Andersonville is also home to the National Prisoner of War Museum, which we toured and which was pretty educational.  It covered POWs from all eras, with displays, letters home, official documents, etc.  I found a quote from and some information about Natalie Crouter, the author of Forbidden Diary, which was a diary she kept while a civilian internee of the Japanese during WWII.  The internees were not permitted to write anything or even keep writing material.  But she wrote anyway, on anything she could find, detailing her time in the camp.  She was also a friend of my grandma's, which is why I know her name and have a copy of her book (and which I will now finally make an effort to read).

After the civil war, Clara Barton and others took charge of moving the Union soldiers who were buried in mass graves near the prison to a National Cemetery right nearby.  So of course, Tawsha, Reggie and I toured that as well.  The majority of occupants of the cemetery are from the Civil War but some are from later times.  Unlike the other National Cemeteries I've seen, this one was notable for how tightly packed the graves are.  I'm guessing, but don't know for sure, that the people who moved the bodies were just overwhelmed with how many there were and couldn't plot out a normal graveyard.  Here are a few highlights:

These are all Union soldiers.  The six graves in the close-up of this photo were the leaders of the Andersonville Raiders, a group of prisoners who started stealing from, beating, and in a few cases, murdering other prisoners.  In response to the raiders, a larger group of prisoners asked their captors for permission to capture and put on trial the raiders.  Most raiders were given some lesser form of punishment, but the six leaders were put on trial sentenced to hanging.  Their graves are set apart from the other men who died in Andersonville.

In all of the National Cemeteries, there is only one "standard" gravestone that differs from the rest.  Here it is.  The dove is not original to the gravestone.  No one knows when it was added, why, or by whom.  Also note how tightly packed all of the stones are.

You know, before I set out on my trip across the U.S., I anticipated taking a lot of photos of falling-down barns, because they are really cool.  Turns out I didn't take a single photo of a falling-down barn, but instead took hundreds of photos of graveyards.  I'm not sure why I didn't realize my love of graveyards before this trip, but I sure do know it now.  My apologies to those readers who are not interested in headstones, because you've seen a lot of them in my blog!  :)  And for those who love them, you'll really enjoy my next post...  ;-)

Montgomery, Alabama

Seriously, if Alabama weren't one of those states that enacted stupid laws that do nothing but get legally employed foreign executives arrested, I'd think it must be a pretty nice place to live.  Montgomery seemed just as nice as Selma, although larger and with more to do and more dining options.

My first stop was at the Rosa Parks Museum, which is run by Troy University, a multi-campus school with one of its branches in Montgomery.

For those of you who, like me, watch college football and so know about the school but have no idea where it is, its main campus is in Troy, Alabama.

The Rosa Parks Museum is pretty small and is very tightly focused on the incident where Rosa Parks got arrested on a bus for not giving up her seat to white people, then the resulting bus boycott by Montgomery's black population (with help from much of its white population).  It was a good museum, and starts the tour with a "movie" of the bus Rosa was on, reenacting the confrontation, then moving on to stills and audio and other material about the boycott.  Among the more obscure facts I learned was that a group of white residents of the city (bus company owners, maybe?) tried to sue the black residents for not riding the bus.  I'm not sure what cause of action that would have been, but how weird is that?  The lawsuit didn't go anywhere, but I think it highlights the frustration the city and bus company must have felt at losing all of the revenue.

Now, I've got to complain about what we learn about Rosa Parks in school.  I feel I got duped about Rosa Parks as badly as I got duped about the Pony Express.  Maybe moreso, because Rosa and the bus boycott were really important events in the civil rights movement, while the Pony Express was an 18 month private boondoggle that cost its investors some money.  For example, I was taught that Rosa was a little old lade who was tired after a long day and she just didn't want to get up.  First of all, Rosa Parks was 43. That's 43, not 63 or 83!  Second, yes she probably was tired after a long day.  But she sure wasn't this helpless and defenseless little lady.  She was the secretary of the Montgomery NAACP.  And when she got arrested, some of Montgomery's most prominent civil rights leaders and attorneys came to bail her out of jail.  She wasn't an innocent caught up in a storm, but someone who was surely aware of the work of civil rights workers and concepts like civil disobedience and passive resistance.  Not that what she did is any less important; I can't imagine the courage it took to stand up to a busload of people yelling and police threatening.  But Ms. Parks wasn't the little old lady I learned about in school.

My second major stop in Montgomery was the Old Oakwood Cemetery, which has graves dating from the mid 1700s to the present.  On my travels this year, I've seen a few other cemeteries dating from the same era, but the carvings and decor of these gravestones were mostly quite different from what I saw along the New England and Canadian coasts.  The men at the cemetery's office gave me a handout about the cemetery (which I think, but don't know, that they got from the web, from some Alabama enthusiast's website).  One of the men also offered to guide my car to some of the farther-off parts of the cemetery, and wound up giving me an impromptu tour, which was really nice of him.  Here are some highlights, starting with the oldest marked grave:

The grave of a man who drowned in the river.  The grave is shaped like waves, and carries a warning not to swim in the river:

The very sad graves of four brothers who ignored that warning, and all drowned on the same day in the river:

The family grave of a woman and all seven of her children who died in an epidemic:

A Confederate soldier cemetery.  The Confederate flag these days usually stands for all sorts of ugliness, but I don't see a problem with it flying over the graves of people who died under it 150 years ago:

Old Oakwood's most famous occupant, Hank Williams.  It was nice of him to put a putting green on his plot like that:

For some reason, several french soldiers from World War II are buried here.  I don't know the story:

The old Jewish section:

And a handful of other interesting graves and markers: