Goodbye Sweetwater

After taking part in the Saturday memorial service for Jeremy "Sweetwater" Mullins, we decided to hit the road early Sunday morning so we could attend his final memorial service in Savannah, GA. The service on Saturday was for friends and family in our area and the one on Monday in Savannah was for his students and his work colleagues. His mom wanted Sparky at both services so we attended both.

I had been to Savannah about 12 years ago when we took a beach trip to Hilton Head Island. We drove over to Savannah during that trip and we spent the day sight seeing and enjoying the historic district, so I was not unfamiliar with Savannah. After a 6 and a half hour drive we hit town. This may come as a shock to you but sometimes I'm not the easiest person to travel with. Until I get to where I'm going and I find out generally where all my destinations are I get kind of stressed and I can be a tad, well ok, a whole fucking bunch, testy. So after finally seeing where we were supposed to be for the service on Monday on Tybee Island, which is about 15 miles outside of Savannah, we argued, oops, I mean we drove back to town to find a hotel. We had decided that since we were only there for a couple of days we'd get a nice room in a nice place.

And boy did we ever get a nice room at this place:
It's a shade pricey but it was less than a room on Tybee Island and it was in the heart of the historic district of Savannah. After getting checked in and acclimated, it was after 5 PM so we decided to get in a little sightseeing before supper.
The first sight I saw was the bust across the street from our hotel. As soon as I saw it I began channeling my inner Whiskey Marie. After that bit of fun we hit the shops on River Street to see what we could see.
In addition to Artsy's Art Gallery we saw Fudgey's Fudge-a-teria, Hattie's Hat Emporium, Shirty McShirtyson's Shirt Palace, and many other similarly named stores. Okay, I lied, only Artsy's Art Gallery had a dumb ass name. As luck would have it I ran across a MENSA meeting. These mental giants were discussing which would be more disgusting, if they pissed in the street or the 'woman' on the left flashed her 'boobs' at every one. We scurried away before they came to a decision. Oh, and the reason they look so hot and sweaty in that photo is because it was 95 degrees with 110 percent humidity, I shit you not. And it only got hotter as the days wore on.
One of the things I like about Savannah is that it's a funky old city with a great mix of old colonial buildings and new construction. Everywhere you look downtown you see renovated buildings that may be businesses or someone home. That doggie was livin' large in a renovated house just off one of the city's historic squares.

Another cool thing about Savannah is all the neat shops. This store sold nothing but honey related items:
And this one, called Paris Market, sold a mix of European antiques, books, and a bunch of esoteric stuff:
I loved those two prints a lot. But I didn't love the prices they had on them so much, so I didn't buy them.

Savannah, in addition to being many other things, is a food town. It's got scores of locally owned restaurants, bakeries, and cafes. We had some great meals while there. One of them was at a place on River Street called Huey's. Sparky had shrimp and grits, and they were fabulous, and I had shrimp and crab au gratin with grits and okra. Mine was good too but they got the shrimp and crab au gratin as hot as the surface of the sun before they served it to me. After it cooled it was very good. Dinner the next night was pretty darn good too. We had it at a Thai/Vietnamese place called Saigon. Sparky enjoyed her Vietnamese fried rice with seafood but she would have enjoyed it more without the super chewy calamari. My lemongrass chili seafood with Jasmine rice was excellent.

We had some good breakfasts as well. While walking around downtown Monday morning we searched for a nice place to eat. We walked up and down the downtown streets until we saw this:
That was the line for breakfast at Paula Deen's restaurant. Evidently she's from Savannah and now that she's hit it big, her products are in every store in town and her restaurant is packed all the time. The breakfast special that day was deep fried lard that was dipped in fat and then rolled in flour and sauteed in bacon fat that was then stuffed inside a fat netting and stuffed up the rear end of a suckling pig which had been boiled in fat. Oh wait, that's the breakfast special every day at Paula Deen's restaurant. We decided not to join the rubes and would be star fuckers at Paula's place and we had breakfast around the corner. We didn't have to wait in line, we got in out of the oppressive heat, and our meal was mighty tasty.

For the rest of Monday morning and early afternoon we walked around the historic district.
We went into an antique store that promised three floors of antiques. What it failed to mention that it was three floors of antique chairs and bulky furniture. After a few more visits to some disappointing antique stores and a jaunt back to the room to shower, we decided to venture out once more before heading to Tybee Island for the memorial service. In our afternoon wanderings we found this great used book store:
It was chock full of quality used books on all subjects. I could have stayed in there for days browsing. But since the service beckoned we left after buying three books, one by Amy Sedaris, a book about some dudes travels in India, and a book about food. What can I say, we like our humor, our arm chair travelling, and food.
The memorial service was a home run. Over a hundred people turned out for it and quite a lot of them shared sweet, funny, touching stories about how Jeremy impacted their lives. Some of his students spoke, his past roommates, his former co-workers, and I could tell that his mother loved hearing about what a great friend/teacher/co-worker her son had been. Everyone who spoke made the comment that Jeremy was one of the nicest guys they ever met, which was a credit to his mother and the way she brought him up. After everyone had a chance to share their thoughts and stories about Jeremy the whole crowd followed his mom, his step dad, and his girlfriend down to the ocean where they spread his ashes out over the water.

Judging by how many folks showed up at his service and how well they all spoke of him, Jeremy "Sweetwater" Mullins will be missed, and missed greatly.

AWOL

I'll be AWOL from my blog o' terror for a few days due to a death in our midst. The son of one of Sparky's oldest work friends died unexpectedly and we're attending the various services and helping her out where we can.

Her late son, who's name was Jeremy, was also a friend to Sparky. She baby sat him at work many times when he was 8 and 9 years old. The thing Jeremy loved to do most was to draw and create cartoons. He had been into comic books and superheroes all his life. As he grew his passion for creating never left him. He went on to graduate college and then got an MFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design, or SCAD. For many years he worked for the newspaper in Savannah doing their graphic art stuff and he did web work on the side. A little over a year ago he got his dream job, teaching cartooning and the comic book arts at his alma mater. He loved teaching and his students loved him.
That photo was taken just a few weeks ago at the end of the academic year. By all accounts Jeremy would have made teaching at SCAD his career, and he would have been great at it. But on a hiking trip in the Catskills with his girlfriend he slipped and fell off a high ledge. His girlfriend made it down to where he was and he lasted long enough to pass away as she held him. He was only 32 when he died in that freak accident.

Sparky loved him. She told me about him many times in our years together. She'd tell me how proud of him she was and what a great artist he was and how she'd watch him draw when she watched him while her mother went to meetings at work. She'd watch him amazement as young Jeremy would come up with all kinds of stories to go with his drawings, and he do all the different characters voices as well. It made her so happy to hear about his climb through his profession. Understandably then his death at so young an age has been devastating for his family and for all their friends like Sparky. I never met him but I feel like I knew him from all her stories about him.

Anyway, like I said, we'll be attending various memorial functions for Jeremy that will prevent me from blogging for a few days. I'll be back on the interwebs sooner than you think. I know times are tight and money is in short supply but if you can spare a buck or two then please consider giving it to the scholarship fund his family has set up at SCAD. Here's the address and phone number:

Jeremy Mullins Sequential Art Scholarship
Savannah College of Art and Design
P.O. Box 3146
Savannah, GA 31402-3146
(912) 525-5868

Also if you like you can see some of his art and comics by Googling the words Jeremy Mullins.

I'll see you all in a few days, be sweet and kind to one another while I'm gone because you never know when death is going to come to you and yours.