Help! Travel to US

[Fleetwood Mac]

Yes, but it must be on a credit card, not debit, checks, or cash. I remember when my parents used to be able to write a check and have it held.

Glad you mentioned this.

We tend to go with the 'if the money's not in the bank then you can't afford it' mantra, so neither of us have credit cards.

Seems we need to sort one out.

[RivkahChaya]

I would advise having one while you are here, just because, you never freaking know. Like I said, you will have to pay out of pocket for all your medical care, which means even if you step on a nail, and need to update your tetanus shot, and get some antibiotics. You can go to an emergency room, and if it's a public hospital, they are required to treat you, but hospital emergency rooms cost a lot more than acute care clinics. The same tetanus shot and antibiotic prescription will cost probably $100 at a clinic, or $400 at an ER. The thing is, you will probably have to pay up front at the clinic, while the hospital will bill you, and you can make payments.

Frankly, you can go back to England, and there may not be much the hospital can do, but that's not very nice, and it's not honest.

You can see where having the credit card to pay the clinic would be helpful. Also, using it means less cash to carry, and a second option if you lose you debit card, or the bank system is down.

You can usually avoid interest charges on credit cards if you pay the whole amount every month.

[Ally]

God knows which route we're taking. We were planning on turning up at New Orleans, knowing which places we're going to and just buy a map.

Can't wait for some of this food. I'll just hold my plate out and ask the lad behind the counter to pile as much on as he get on there!

Is a mess of old fried green tomatoes pretty much what it sounds like?

If you don't mind a little expense considering the amount of traveling you plan to do, you might want to stop in a Walmart or Best Buy electronic store and get a Garmin or Tom Tom Navigation system. Cheap ones can run around 75 bucks, but the convenience might be worth the expense. Some rental cars come with them, depending on what you get, but they usually charge you about 10-15 bucks rental a day and if you are going to be using it for two weeks, it's cheaper just to buy one outright. That way you just plug in the address of wherever you are going and it will take you there via the fastest route, which will take you through Birmingham.

Fried green tomatoes are pretty much what they sound like, sliced green (unripe) tomatoes, salted and dipped in a light batter and fried. Definitely a regional specialty you should try. The Irondale cafe is an original where they heap you up cafeteria style (meaning you go to the counter, point out what you want and they load you a plate). Seriously good eating (well it was a few years back, can't vouch for it now) but it's a bit out of the way, and if you aren't into the nostalgia may not be worth the side trip. And you will need a nap after eating there.

[Hunter]

Fried green tomatoes... now you're talkin'.
I rarely let many of mine get ripe because I love 'em so much.

The trick is to let them start to get a little yellow; the center core is not as hard and the taste is more mellow. Slice 'em thick and dip 'em in a beat up egg with a little milk. Then put 'em in a bag of half flour, half corn meal and salt and pepper. Shake 'em up till they're coated good and lay 'em in a skillet of good hot grease. When they're just crispy brown on both sides (flip 'em once) take 'em out and place on a plate with a paper towel on it to soak up some of the grease.

Eat 'em while they're hot with some fried corn, tater cakes and pork chops. Everything fried... good for the circulatory system.

[Hunter]

Is there a lasting legacy, Hunter? In terms of split between the North and South?

I don't think there is as far as any animosity goes for most folks. Even the old veterans of that conflict shared many reunions together and respected each other in a common bond of sharing the same dangers and sacrifice as soldiers.

The best lesson from the Civil War is that America went on together and became great despite this terrible conflict. Most internal conflicts in history don't turn out that way. America is a rare exception. Southerners went on to contribute proportionately large numbers to fight for the U.S. in subsequent wars. Just this forth of July, every house in my neighborhood was flying Old Glory in their yard.

We do, nevertheless, have our own distinct culture that we're proud of. We pull over on the side of the road when a funeral procession goes by.. out of respect. We wave at each other when passing on the road - even if we don't know each other. And we have a paradoxical habit of raising Hell on Saturday night and sitting in a church pew on Sunday morning.

Just thought... its Saturday night and the little tavern down the road has some cold beer and old Hank Williams records on the jukebox...

See Yall later.

[Errata]

New Orleans to Nashville is 8 hours by the math. But bear in mind you drive through several fairly busy cities who have traffic on the interstate within those bounds. I used to drive to St Louis all the time, getting out of nashville took about an hour, getting through kentucky was pretty easy, Indiana had two city type things that took about an hour total to get through, and then from entering St. Louis to the city center took about an hour. I did it at 3 in the morning once, and shaved a 5 hour drive down to 3 1/2 hours.

It does not pay to speed through Mississippi. I got four tickets in Mississippi totaling $2500 dollars.

[Dave O]

Say, I forgot to suggest checking out the Nashville Scene. That'll give you some good ideas for places to go.

http://www.nashvillescene.com/

Dave

[Beowulf]

Fried green tomatoes... now you're talkin'.
I rarely let many of mine get ripe because I love 'em so much.

The trick is to let them start to get a little yellow; the center core is not as hard and the taste is more mellow. Slice 'em thick and dip 'em in a beat up egg with a little milk. Then put 'em in a bag of half flour, half corn meal and salt and pepper. Shake 'em up till they're coated good and lay 'em in a skillet of good hot grease. When they're just crispy brown on both sides (flip 'em once) take 'em out and place on a plate with a paper towel on it to soak up some of the grease.

Eat 'em while they're hot with some fried corn, tater cakes and pork chops. Everything fried... good for the circulatory system.

Yum! That sounds good.

[RivkahChaya]

Yum! That sounds good.

I think it's required that the grease is bacon grease. This is why I've never had any. This is totally a Southern thing. "Fried green tomatos" sounded bizarre to me to; I'd never heard of them until I was an adult, and I read a totally excellent book by Fannie Flagg, of all people, called Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, and no, if you've seen the movie, you don't know anything about it. They cut out half the characters, and they were pretty much all the black people. They also implied something at the end that wasn't true about the book, and destroyed an essential part of the backstory. And, yes, I know it happens all the time-- I'm one of the few people I know who generally likes Audrey Hepburn, but didn't like her in Breakfast at Tiffany's, and it was because I had read the book first, and thought the movie just all kinds of wrong (to be fair, Hepburn probably did the best she could with the part as written).

I need to go to bed. I'm a little hyped, because the boychik had his first solar urticaria episode of the year, and those always freak me out a little.

[Ally]

You can't fry green tomatoes in bacon grease, you need to do them like french fries, which requires vegetable oil. Well you don't, but a restaurant will. No recipe that I've ever known of or tried in a restaurant has done them in bacon grease. Though that's most likely how they done them on ole' timey times, if you go to a restaurant now, I guarantee they'll be done french fry style. Though bacon grease is a glorious thing, hail BG, and something is no doubt lost in the transition. Irondale might still do them that way, and maybe a couple other folksy whimsy diners, but most restaurants? Veg oil.

The place I am talking about in Irondale is the place that inspired the cafe in Flagg's book. They sell her book there and movie memorabilia as well. I mentioned the movie because she's a fairly obscure writer and most people are more likely to have seen the movie than the book. But you shouldn't say "they" when talking about butchering the film, as Flagg herself was one of the writers who wrote the screenplay for the movie, so whatever changes were made, were changes she herself actually visualized for the characters or realized were essential in cutting down a large, character-laden novel into an hour and a half movie. I am not sure which part you are talking about though, but I don't remember an "essential part" being destroyed, other than the timing of one characters death. Ah well different strokes. I did see the movie before the book though and that always works better for me in appreciating both than doing the reverse.

[Hunter]

Nowadays we use corn oil. When I was growing up Momma used Crisco shortening.

[Errata]

You can't fry green tomatoes in bacon grease, you need to do them like french fries, which requires vegetable oil. Well you don't, but a restaurant will. No recipe that I've ever known of or tried in a restaurant has done them in bacon grease. Though that's most likely how they done them on ole' timey times, if you go to a restaurant now, I guarantee they'll be done french fry style. Though bacon grease is a glorious thing, hail BG, and something is no doubt lost in the transition. Irondale might still do them that way, and maybe a couple other folksy whimsy diners, but most restaurants? Veg oil.

The place I am talking about in Irondale is the place that inspired the cafe in Flagg's book. They sell her book there and movie memorabilia as well. I mentioned the movie because she's a fairly obscure writer and most people are more likely to have seen the movie than the book. But you shouldn't say "they" when talking about butchering the film, as Flagg herself was one of the writers who wrote the screenplay for the movie, so whatever changes were made, were changes she herself actually visualized for the characters or realized were essential in cutting down a large, character-laden novel into an hour and a half movie. I am not sure which part you are talking about though, but I don't remember an "essential part" being destroyed, other than the timing of one characters death. Ah well different strokes. I did see the movie before the book though and that always works better for me in appreciating both than doing the reverse.

Here we do pan fried with lard. No that I've ever had them, but they look tasty.

Fannie Flagg wrote another excellent book called If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him which is based on a quote from a female prisoner "If I'd killed him when I met him, I'd be out of prison by now." Again with domestic violence being a strong plot point.

Of course the ultimate Southern female writer is Eudora Welty. She used to sneak in to everything from college lectures to book fairs to attend lectures on her work, and then ream people out who got it wrong. Which is easy to do, since her work is... highly impressionistic. Surreal almost. But she earned my lifelong respect by creating the most random and interesting character in the history of literature.

[RivkahChaya]

Fannie Flagg wrote another excellent book called If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him which is based on a quote from a female prisoner "If I'd killed him when I met him, I'd be out of prison by now." Again with domestic violence being a strong plot point.

No, Sharyn McCrumb wrote that. It is truly excellent. Sharyn McCrumb technically writes genre fiction, but she is a very evocative writer. She really transcends the genre.

Fannie Flagg did write a second book, though, just not that book.

But you shouldn't say "they" when talking about butchering the film, as Flagg herself was one of the writers who wrote the screenplay for the movie,

Ah, by "they" I meant Hollywood.

I am not sure which part you are talking about though, but I don't remember an "essential part" being destroyed, other than the timing of one characters death. Ah well different strokes. I did see the movie before the book though and that always works better for me in appreciating both than doing the reverse.

I mean they implied that one of the present-story characters, who we'll call M had been a past-story character, who we'll call I, which she had not, in fact, been, and eliminated the past-story appearances of M, as well as the present-story appearances of I, which would have cleared up that fact.

Also, it's much more obvious in the book that two women are lovers.

I read the book well before the movie; twice, in fact.

[sleekviper]

If you drive around New Orleans for any length of time, fill up before leaving. The Causeway is a 30 mile bridge over water.

[RivkahChaya]

Oh, yeah, on the rental thing. You can book an economy car, the kind that gets 34 miles to the gallon, and you will lock into the price of the economy car ($130 dollars a week, or something), but they may "upgrade" you to another car if they have a lot of bookings. They will not charge you more for the car-- you'll get the economy price, even if you end up with a Lincoln Continental, or an SUV, but it might end up getting 18 miles a gallon.

If that happens, you can tell the company you really need a gas efficient car, and you want to exchange as soon as one becomes available. They will probably argue with you, but insist, and then you will probably have to drive in to the nearest branch of the rental place at the end of the first leg of your trip, but it's doable. Gas is about $3.75 right now. It's fluctuating between $3.15 and $4.00, but you see where you really need the smallest car that suits your needs.

I just booked a car to go to Pennsylvania. I'm going to have my six-year-old with me, and my husband is not coming, so I really want someone to just come bring me a new car if it breaks down, or I get into an accident. I did some research on GPSs. Apparently, most of them are US-specific, so you need to get one here, and not bring one from home. They cost about $5 per day to rent, or $80 for your trip. The bottom-of-the-line ones are about $90 at Walmart (and bottom-of-the-line is what you get from the rental company-- they work fine, they just have no frills, and a small screen), so you really might want to buy one here, and then sell it on eBay when you are done.