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You mustn’t be taken in by the moonlight and magnolias. There’s more to Savannah than that. Things can get very murky.”
These, then, were the images in my mental gazetteer of Savannah: rum-drinking pirates, strong-willed women, courtly manners, eccentric behavior, gentle words, and lovely music. That and the beauty of the name itself: Savannah.
We have a saying: If you go to Atlanta, the first question people ask you is, ‘What’s your business?’ In Macon they ask, ‘Where do you go to church?’ In Augusta they ask your grandmother’s maiden name. But in Savannah the first question people ask you is ‘What would you like to drink?’”
he devoted considerable attention to one small design detail of the stairway—the so-called false step. The riser of the false step was one inch higher than the other steps so that it would trip up anybody unfamiliar with it and serve as a primitive burglar alarm. This was a device used in many old houses,
I think something like that happens after seven generations in Savannah. Savannah gets to be the only place you can live. We’re like bugs in a jar.”
“It’s what’s called a ‘cooling board.’ Cooling boards are for laying out corpses and preparing them for burial. It’s a typical feature of old houses. The front door doubles as a cooling board. My family’s houses have always had them, so I had one made for myself. When I go, they’ll carry me out on this.”
except the little boys who went out and put a bottle of champagne under the hood of the wedding couple’s car next to the engine block so it would heat up and explode when they drove away.
‘When you play songs, you can bring back people’s memories of when they fell in love. That’s where the power lies.’”
‘Two tears in a bucket. Motherfuck it.’ That’s Mama, she’s a okay girl.”
The city looked inward, sealed off from the noises and distractions of the world at large. It grew inward, too, and in such a way that its people flourished like hothouse plants tended by an indulgent gardener. The ordinary became extraordinary. Eccentrics thrived. Every nuance and quirk of personality achieved greater brilliance in that lush enclosure than would have been possible anywhere else in the world.
