Billy Sang the High Notes

We crossed the Tennessee River on the 14th Street Bridge and turned onto Market Street to find the restaurant for dinner.  It had been a heavy day of sight-seeing, and we were ready for a relaxing dinner. We had input the restaurant's address into the Acura's navigation system as well as the smart phone.  It became rather amusing hearing two female voices giving directions using different descriptions.  I expected that any minute they might get into an argument. The address was 1400 Market street, and we managed to pass it by but took the next left and found ourselves in an alley. I noticed some people in waiter clotting puffing on cigarettes and surmised that we were near an eatery. As we entered Market from the alley I noticed "Station House" on a sign and knew that we had found the place. But, alas, signage said, "For Hotel Registered Hotel Guests Only" and Claudette would not park in an unauthorized space.  Behind the hotel we found a friendly fellow on a golf cart who said that the restaurant was right behind him and that we could park in the lot behind the hotel. 

We alighted and found ourselves near a number of old railroad cars of various vintages. There were dining, pullman, and regular passenger cars.  There was a multi-colored  nineteenth century steam locomotive and a streetcar from the same era as we followed the signs to the Station House. We entered and a pretty girl in black asked if we would follow her to our table.  I actually would have followed her anywhere, but, of course, I was not alone. It was a huge room and quite dark.  I thought to myself, "This is another of those places where they don't want you to see what you are eating". The room had once been the baggage handling area for the railroad station. You could see flashes of polished brass and light from the neon beer signs and stained glass lamp shades.  There was a large bar in front of us with a bandstand behind it, and I thought I heard a bit of "Sweet Home Alabama" from an electric guitar. (This place was looking good!)

Our waiter announced, "Welcome to the Station House, I'm Billy, and I'll be taking care of you". We ordered a couple of sweet iced teas and headed for the all-you-can-eat salad bar.  It wasn't anything fancy but was fresh and with a lot of variety. There were mounds of peel-and-eat shrimp which I noticed most of the blue jeans and baseball capped customers did not eat.  We ordered our entrees: New York strip for me and prime rib for Claudette when Billy returned.  About halfway through our salads one of the waitresses took off her apron, grabbed a microphone, mounted the stage, and commenced to belt out a great version of Aretha Franklin's "Think". In one of the next songs Billy joined the back-up singers and hit the high notes.  For each song selected waiters and waitresses would remove their aprons, mount the stage, perform, and put their aprons back on before grabbing platters of food to serve hungry customers.  Three girls did a great job on Wilson Phillips, "Hold On", and Claudette got serenaded with a version of, "Jailhouse Rock" by the first performer to leave the stage and continue singing.  Billy, our waiter, brought our food and was summoned to the stage to sing lead in the Hues Corporation's "Don't Rock the Boat'.  We heard quite a few songs from the sixties and seventies and the Andrews Sisters' "Sincerely" from the forties in perfect harmony. We finished up the meal with some apple cheesecake.  The band finally played the obiligatory "Chattanooga Choo-Choo", and we had had about as much fun as we could handle.  We left and crossed the bridge for another night on the steamboat. 

 The Station House has the recipe for good fun and good food.

Film Noir or Not?

I've always been a fan of film noir motion pictures and television shows. Actually, I was a fan before I knew what the term film noir meant.   The literal translation is "black film". Usage started in the press by a film critic back in the 1940s who used it to describe a certain kind of film. Fritz Lang was one of the first to use these techniques for telling stories with motion pictures. Is it a genre?  I don't know.  I suppose it depends on who you ask. I say it is. In the 1940's through the 1950's there was a type of film produced that could be recognized by certain characteristics and these characteristics identify film noir... 

• Low light 
• first person voice-overs
• characters of questionable morals
• protagonists who are the unfortunate or downtrodden 
• unique camera angles
• locales are urban 

Many film noir movie's lighting is so low that the actors are frequently seen in strong sidelight.  And, who can forget  how the shade from Venetian blinds gives the effect reminiscent of prison bars. Camera angles are used to create that special mood.  The villain is much more threatening when viewed from a low angle. The "Dutch" or skewed angle is frequently used as well. The voiceover by the main character not only tells you the back story but lets you know what he's thinking.  Most likely the locale is a big city, and the seedy part of it.


Film noir movies are usually cast with seedy characters. The protagonist is most likely a hard-boiled private detective. Many of these scripts are based on pulp fiction of the forties and fifties; characters like Raymond Chandler's Sam Spade or Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer.  A more modern version of this character can be seen as John McClane in the "Die Hard" films, although these are hardly film noir. The character is always flawed, but has a heart and is usually the good guy. The leading lady was hardly the virtuous sort either. The film noir genre ventured into television as well. Such films as "The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, Night of the Hunter, Sunset Boulevard, and D.O.A. really identify the genre.   In recent years film noir techniques have been used successfully by some directors.  Some examples are Rodrigues's "Sin City", Tarenteno's,"Reservoir Dogs"and Mann's, "Collateral".  One of the more interesting uses of the film noir "look" was in Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner".  Science fiction film noir. 

 What's not to like about film noir? The overuse of flashbacks can be annoying and confusing sometimes, but otherwise, make that last shot a double, grab your best broad, and head on down to the Regency for a double feature!

Whose Blood Runs through My Veins?

Pvt. Samuel Oliver Young, CSA

When I was in the eighth grade I became interested in my ancestry. For a boy of that age there was no better discovery that to find that your great-grandfather was a soldier in the army of the Confederate States of America.  I had been a big fan of "The Grey Ghost" television series and imagined that my ancestor had ridden along with Colonel John S. Mosby, the Confederate cavalry legend.  But alas, I first found out that my great-grandfather was a prisoner of war.  And where I come from being caught and imprisoned by the enemy is hardly the stuff heroes are made of.  I sort of lost interest in the project.

Many years later while visiting a local South Carolina cemetery I noticed that my ancestor's grave had the Maltese cross of a C.S.A. veteran and a marker that said, "Company G 14th Regiment of South Carolina Infantry".  Such information would be a great start for my research.  One of the best books I found was James F. Caldwell's "A History of a Brigade of South Carolinians: Known First As Gregg's Brigade and Subsequently As McGowan's Brigade".  This book was a great help in determining which battles my great-grandfather was in.  He was at Chancellorsville where  great "Stonewall" Jackson was mortally wounded and Gettysburg in which over 50,000 men were lost in one day.  His company was in  General A. P. Hill's Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia when they chased General George Meade's U. S. Army across the  Rappahannock  River in October, 1863.  This concerned me a bit.  Actually, it concerned me a lot!  My grandfather was born in June of 1864.  How could this be? Who was my great-grandfather? I soldiered on... I continued my research and found many interesting facts about the various battles and the heroics of the combatants. One of the most interesting sources was a collection of volumes of Confederate Military History.  These accounts of the war were written by surviving Confederate general officers of the conflict.  As you would imagine there was an inherent bias in the descriptions of the events they witnessed.  

Some of my extended family members had photographs of my great-grandfather and my grandfather. Did they look alike? Well...they were both bearded  men of Scots-Irish ancestry.

While I was studying the war in something of a chronological manner I found that on the day of Lee's surrender all Confederate soldiers became prisoners of war.  Printing presses were set up at Appomattox and POW paroles printed on the spot.  My ancestor was never in a Federal prison and was not captured in the heat of battle.  

Perhaps the most important fact discovered was in a copy of his pay record I received from the S. C. Dept. of Archives and History.  According to the pay records my great-grandfather had been at home on sick furlough during October, 1863! I know whose blood runs through my veins!

Eatin' My Way Down 17A #2

Another episode of “eating my way down 17A”.  Barbecue is a great find anywhere but particularly in the south and no place better than Moose’s Famous BBQ.  Situated in a nondescript cinderblock building on the  outskirts of Moncks Corner, SC, Moose’s serves up the best barbecue I’ve ever tasted.

When you walk in the place I get that down home friendly feeling even if I have to stand in line.  I HATE standing in line! But, not at Moose's!  I don’t mind waiting to give that elderly lady my $11 and get my styrofoam plate and plastic fork. I wish they had paper plates though.  I think that styrofoam affects he flavor of the barbecue meat. Kinda takes some of that smoky flavor away.  Then I feast my eyes on that buffet, and my saliva glands shift into overdrive. Before me, under the lights, are the veggies I grew up on: corn, green beans, potatoes, and okra.  But after them come the meats.  As you look at the meats notice the sign which says, “If you don’t smell smoke, it’s not barbecue!”. There’s chicken fingers and barbecue chicken, but the king of the buffet is the pig meat. There’s pulled pork, and pork loin.  I really believe in barbecue pulled pork, but my cap’s off to the brisket. Moose’s  brisket is the most tender, tastiest, I’ve ever tasted. They slice it right in front of you! Ask how thick do you want the slices and how many. Pour on your choice of sauce, and you have a meal fit for a king or maybe too good for a king. The only thing missing from the buffet are ribs; kinda like having a church without a steeple. But I’ll get over it. You can add on a dessert of banana pudding, peach cobbler, or sweet potato soufflé.  Get that sweet iced tea from that big dispenser yourself in that big styrofoam cup. (Red Solo cups are not available.)

PIG OUT!

Put your trash in the big plastic trash can on the way out.  Be careful going to your car if it’s after dark.  There are big potholes. Kirby Johnson from Kingstree lost his Datsun pickup in one.

National WWII Museum

We flew into New Orleans in the late afternoon and took a quick taxi ride to our hotel in the Garden Quarter.  At check-in I saw a brochure for The National WWII Museum ,and I knew I had to see it.  It's not that I'm super patriotic or a great history buff, but museums about warfare are filled with "guy stuff", and I knew that this would be no exception.  The Museum was actually opened in 2000 as the National D-Day Museum, but in 2003 Congress designated it the National WWII Museum. Friday morning Claudette and I would be there when it opened for the day.

After a short walk from our hotel we entered the Louisiana Pavilion part of the museum.  Its fifty-foot ceiling has a C-47/Gooney Bird/Dakota/Skytrain airplane hanging from the overhead along with a US Navy fighter aircraft of the same era. The C-47  in its olive drab paint job appears to have just returned from a recon mission from war-torn Europe of the early 1940's.  At ground level are a half-track (one of my favorite vehicles combining the tracks of a tank with the front wheels of a truck), a small tank, and a deuce and a half truck, as well as a jeep and a landing craft.  Another very interesting piece was the M1  75MM Pack Howitzer.  This artillery piece was designed to be disassembled into three pieces to be transported by pack mules.  One sour note though. There is an Allison aircraft engine on display that is painted glossy black with red detailing and chrome plated exhaust pipes. Obviously not an artifact of the war.  We climbed the stairways  to two upper levels with overlooks of the main lobby.  These areas have smaller displays of Navy memorabilia.  We had overlooked the main display area. It was on the ground level to the right after the entryway.

The major display area is divided geographically into the European and Pacific theaters.All the displays are extremely modern, and there are many mini-theatres where a half dozen people or less can enjoy a film portraying an event in the war.  These were usually original films shot on location.  This museum provides a lot of information if you read all the signage and watch and listen to all the audio-visuals.  Many artifacts are displayed under Plexiglas, so they can't be touched by little boys and guys like me.  There are many stories about individual soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen.  One that caught my eye was the display of a Japanese katona, a GI's helmet and an American pistol. Reading the captions I find that a Japanese officer had hit the American over the head with his encased sword, denting his helmet.  While falling, the American pulled his piston and dispatched the officer. The museum is full of stories of the undaunted courage of the American fighting man. There is a mock up of a glider used to ferry tops in to France on D-Day very similar to the one at the Airborne and Spec Ops Museum in Fayetteville, NC. The fantastic displays of weapons and machines of warfare are a testament to mankind's technological ability to find ways to destroy his fellow man. 

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit, but in our last hour it was inundated with high school students. But I did get some good photos.