REVISITING MY ROOTS

After blogging during our recent weeks in India, it’s a completely different challenge to write a travel blog about my recent trip to my original home state of Georgia, flying into Atlanta, and then driving in a rental car to my hometown of Columbus, Georgia. My visit also included a trip to my “country place,” my home for the first 18 years of my life, ten miles from the Chattahoochee River outside Phenix City, Alabama.

The cliché is that “you can take the boy out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the boy.” I ponder that as I review my early years, the first twenty years of my life, if you count years 18-20 when I attended Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. Tallahassee has more of the culture of South Georgia, as opposed to the culture emanating from Miami in South Florida, which is not like the rest of Florida and the surrounding Southern states.

The Amazing Atlanta Airport

The Atlanta airport has a tremendous exhibition in the tunnel that runs underground between the six separate parallel concourses. Usually, one takes the train from the main terminal to one of the outlying concourses. But I had enough time on this trip to walk the length of the tunnel and view the long-running exhibits.

Perhaps the most central to the city of Atlanta is the exhibit containing historical photos, artistic representations Atlanta’s long history, with selected quotes by Atlanta natives such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Ted Turner, George Washington Carver, and others.

For me, the most impressive exhibition was a collection of sculptures by African artists. The sculptures line the middle of the tunnel while photos of African wildlife fill the walls. All of the sculptures are museum-quality creations.

Three other rotating exhibits showcase the photographs of Atlanta artists. The featured artists include an African-American Atlanta native with photos of his friends and associates, as well as a Mexican-American Atlanta native, whose photos feature the working class predominated by Mexican immigrants.

Finally, one section of the tunnel contains a surrealistic light display. It is quite dark compared with the rest of the tunnel. But it is nonetheless a unusual experiential environment to be installed in an airport tunnel. Depending on the observer’s experience, the dark surrealistic section could be called psychedelic.

Atlanta’s Legacy

My visit led me to take pride in being a Georgian, recognizing that Atlanta is such a great city…world-class in so many ways. The Atlanta history exhibit does not flinch from presenting the sad history of African slavery, Native-American oppression, culminating in the civil rights movement in which Atlanta led the South in abandoning the Southern tradition of racial oppression following the long legacy of African slavery in the Southern states.   I’m proud that Atlanta is now a thriving liberal city in a state that is still mostly strongly conservative.

The Place Where I Grew Up

Americans who grow up in cities such as New York, San Francisco, or New Orleans, generally do not develop a love of rural areas, particularly rural Alabama where I grew up. I have explained: I don’t care what city you love for its social atmosphere and cultural amenities, you cannot love the concrete and paved streets of any city in the same way that I love the forty-one acre country place in Russell County, Alabama, where I grew up. There is a certain feeling…in the smell, the texture of the soil, the pine trees, the other vegetation, sounds of the wind, the birds, and the insects…all of which adds up to the proverbial “ties to the land” experienced by farmers, ranchers, and people like me who grew up with a garden every year, farm animals, and a fish pond to swim in during the summer. This is the part of my affinity for the South that I will never lose. I consider myself lucky to have grown up close to nature.

Above are two views of the pond where I swam and fished as a boy. The house is visible above, newly painted and improved by my cousin Scott.

Thanksgiving in Columbus

I try to visit Columbus, Georgia, and my Alabama country place every year.  I missed a year during covid.  Next year, 2026, will witness my sixtieth high school reunion. So I will return to Columbus in April for that. I’ve managed to attend every ten-year reunion of the Columbus High School Class of 1966. That was where I played in the band and began my lifelong pursuit of music as my primary interest as a potential career.

Thanksgiving 2025 was my first visit on this holiday in many years. For most of the last two decades, Susan and I would celebrate Thanksgiving in the San Francisco Bay Area with Susan’s brother and other Mazer family relatives. I have a large family of relatives in Columbus. Many of my cousins have their kids who are old enough to have their own kids. I had never met many of my cousins’ kids. I’m the out-of-town relative. We should have had nametags for the Thanksgiving luncheon, since there were so many people I didn’t know.

Above is the family reunion on my father's side of the family. I'm standing on the far right, holding a photo of our aunts and uncles, whose kids (my cousins) are standing with me.

Meeting my beloved music mentor

One of the most heartfelt moments of this visit was spending an hour with the man who initiated my lifelong love of music by teaching me my first instrument, the clarinet, when I was eleven years old in the sixth grade. George Corradino is now ninety-five years old. He is in amazingly good physical shape. He lives in an eldercare facility that seemed excellent during my one visit.

When I saw George walking down the hall, he made the impression of a much younger man, walking straight upright with purpose and energy. Our conversations were rich. He is still mentally clear. Sure, he forgets things…so do I. Our conversations ranged from how he was encouraged to come to Columbus, after having grown up in an Italian family in Miami. We talked about the people we had known in the local music scene when I was growing up here. All of my original music heroes have passed on except for George.

George still performs at parties and special events, playing his saxophone and singing Louis Armstrong's It's a Wonderful World. He also sits in with a local big band that in past years, he used to conduct as their music director.  It is an inspiration and a privilege to have George as a music mentor and role model for the last sixty-six years of my life!

Below is my 95-year-old mentor, George Corradino, and his seventy-year-old daughter.

Above is the entrance to the forty-one-acre country place where I spent the first eighteen years of my life. It's filled with memories of my parents. Several years ago, I sold it to my first cousin Scott, who has made wonderful improvements, keeping it in the family and giving me and Susan free access for the rest of our lives.