Nights of Columbus, GA

Columbus, GA

I wasn’t exactly sure how our trip to visit my Great Aunt Joan (My dad’s aunt) was going to turn out. I couldn’t even remember the last time that I had come in contact with her. She had married my grandpa’s brother, who was a priest for a good amount of twenty or thirty years, and she herself had been a former nun. Long story short, they left they felt the need to explore other options for their lives and ended up together and lived happily ever after. Now, with the two of us not being religious, I had been a little nervous about showing up to her house. However, my dad and grandma reassured us that everything would be alright, so we traveled away and made our way to her house.

All of our nerves and doubt had been slowly erasing from talking on the phone with her to let her know when we would be arriving, and it was all erased when we pulled into the driveway. She came out to greet us with wide open arms, as if it we had known each other for our whole lives. This was very reassuring. She welcomed us in and treated us to a nice spaghetti and meatball dinner. This was the icing on the cake.

I’m going to drop the “Great” from Aunt Joan’s surname not because she isn’t great, but because she is not “Great Aunt” material. She is still holding onto her youth and working and living a good life, besides she is better than great, she’s fantastic. We sat around talking through the night, which we ended up feeling kind of bad about, since she had just started back up at work that week, for the school district. We talked and talked about everything from the trip to family and such and before we knew it, the time had passed to almost midnight. She said it was not a bother, and although we had a good time talking we were mighty tired as well. Plus, we had the comfort of a nice bed to sleep in with air conditioning, which was a great welcome from camping out in the southern heat.

We had taken that first day after arriving to sort things out and relax a bit. It was much needed as we were roughly a month and a half strong into our travels. We went over our various options of routes and came up with figures relating to cost of each route and so forth. Coming out of New Orleans we were seriously contemplating heading straight up the eastern seaboard that would put an end to the trip in roughly three days. After going over the numbers and sleeping a good night’s sleep in a bed, we decided that we had enough in our tank to make it through our original route. In fact the whole stop in Columbus was a great recharge that would be key to our surviving the rest of the way.

When Joan came home from work she took us on a tour through the town. She took us down to the riverfront and showed us all of old town along with some of the museums and other local hotspots. We drove through old neighborhoods and looked at houses that had been there for over a hundred years. It was all very nice and we had planned to explore a little more on our own the next day. After going around town, we ended up at the restaurant where her son Noel (hope the spelling is correct) worked. The restaurant was a nice Italian place that had splendid food. I had a nice dish of chicken parmigiana, for which I had neglected to eat for far too long. Aunt Joan was really spoiling us. We had gone from eating PB and J’s to fancy Italian restaurants in two days flat. We could really get used to this. Did I mention we were sleeping in a bed with air conditioning? We were contemplating giving up the rest of the voyage and just dropping anchor with Aunt Joan.

The next day we had made those plans to explore the city more and visit some of the museums, but we just couldn’t kick ourselves into gear. No matter how hard we tried, sitting around and relaxing was just way too easy. It had been a long time since we had sat around and did nothing and I think we earned it. When Aunt Joan came home from work, we were spoiled by another dinner out on the town. This time it was some good old barbeque. The dinner was great as well, as we ate until our stomachs nearly exploded. Once again we were being spoiled into comfort and this further inclined us to just stick around in Georgia.

Through talking with Aunt Joan there were surprises around every corner. She had great stories about my grandparents and especially my grandpa and his family. She listened to quite a bit of NPR which was a good common ground for which we had many a conversation about, especially since this was our main source of news. Aunt Joan also had an interesting taste in music that included none other than Lady Gaga and Coldplay. She really is quite a lady. She also had a spectacular collection of old family photos.

There were photos of my grandpa when he was so young, it was amazing. It was also nice to see so much of his family in the photos, of which I had not seen or met many of. The real topper of everything that Aunt Joan had was a recording that she had made of my grandpa’s brother and sister, Brother (nickname, for his real name is Phil) and Margie, telling stories of their youth growing up in New York. Most of the storytelling was done by Margie, who is a fantastic character and great storyteller. Aunt Joan got the great idea to stick a tape recorder on the table while Margie was telling stories to the kids, all the while, dishes are being washed in the background and laughter is all recorded, it truly was an amazing thing. For me to paraphrase these stories would be doing an injustice because it really is something amazing. (When I can get a good recording I will make an mp3 of the file and add it to the post.)

When we were finished listening to the near hour’s worth of story, we sat in awe of everything that just invaded our eardrums. The only word that came to mind was, wow. This is the history that seems to be lost on our generation. Sure, we can sit around and bullshit with friends and family telling “remember when” stories, but to have concrete evidence of generations removed telling it with their own voices, was something marvelous. It was truly one of the best things I had experienced on the trip and I never would have expected to find it in Columbus, Georgia.

I could tell that Aunt Joan had some difficulty listening to the recording and she told us afterwards that it was hard for a long time for her to listen to it, because Uncle Brother’s voice was on it. You see, Uncle Brother passed away a couple years ago, and you can tell how much she loves and misses him by the way she speaks of him. She spoke nothing but the best about him and of all the things that they did together. Every word that came out of her mouth about her husband was filled with echoes of love buried deep within them. I really wish I could have met the man that she loves so much.

The stop in Columbus was truly a great stop. We can’t thank Aunt Joan enough for opening up her house to us as if we were her own children. Visiting her was truly one of the best things on the trip and hopefully it will happen much more often in the future.

Random Facts

Days We Spent Relaxing = 3

Number of Old Dudes We Saw Cleaning Their Shotguns on the Porch = 1

Aunt Joan is Awesome