What To Do With All This Low Hanging Fruit?

Ever since my first column gig, people have asked me, “Isn’t it hard to come up with ideas every week?”

And while I’ve been at this since the Dark Ages—before Google existed, can you even?—the answer has always been, “Never.” 

Everywhere I go, this wild world presents an abundance of fascinating people, vexing situations, tantalizing things to eat, and cool-looking rocks that beg to be overturned. I want to ask more questions about all of it, and I usually do. 

Of course, that’s not the same as sitting my hyperactive tushy in a chair for hours on end and plunking out sensical sentences without aggravating my hemorrhoids or getting myself sued, which is hard, and often itchy. But though I may have 99 problems—several that may be attributed to perimenopausal heat intolerance—finding subject matter ain’t one. 

Certainly not around here this week, as Savannah is bursting with low-hanging fruit. Literally. 

Let’s start with the mulberry trees that have been dropping all over town, which you may already be familiar with if someone has tracked purple sludge onto your hallway carpet (Problem #17.) You may also know that General Oglethorpe imported a Chinese variety of these fast-growing trees to the fledgling Georgia colony in the hopes of spurring a domestic silk production venture, which went about as well as his ban on alcohol and slavery. 

As it turned out, silkworms are picky eaters, preferring only the leaves from the limited white mulberry trees (Morus alba) and not the more plentiful, native red variety (Morus rubia). Like so many wide-eyed newcomers with delicate constitutions, the constructive caterpillars did not thrive in the swampy South. While the Salzburgers did have some success upriver, Savannah’s silk dreams, along with its injunctions against rum and enslaved labor, unraveled by the 1750s. But the fruits of their insectual labor remain. 

You can still spot white mulberry trees tucked amongst parks and dead plantations, wrapped up like mummies by the hard-working worms whose ancestors adapted to the humidity—unlike some of Oglethorpe’s original crew who decamped after the Trustees’ economic strategy spoiled. Lucky is the forager who harvests these white berries, which might look unripe but taste just as sweet as the juicy purply-red ones now squished into my rug. The lesson here is that when life gives you a mess of mulberries, you can flee to South Carolina like a little bitch with the rest of the settlers, or you make cobbler. 

Loquats are also throwing down at the moment, much to the delight of local jam makers and backyard bandits. A popular evergreen ornamental found throughout the city, loquat trees (Eriobotrya japonica) bear clusters of tasty orange fruit that reportedly acts as a mild sedative, so watch out for drunk possums. (Problem #65: rodents partying in the attic.) Speaking of tipsy mammals, a splash of loquat simple syrup brightens any cocktail, and dried loquat seeds serve as the basis for a mighty fine liqueur. (You sexy paid subscribers will receive some recipes later in the week.)

Moving on to the metaphorical, other easy pickings over the weekend included the return of carousing in the streets, starting with a pop-up art installation featuring fashion designer Carolina Sarria at the former car wash shack on Bull Street, sponsored by the Andy Warhol Foundation in collaboration with Vantosh Realty. Hey public artmakers: The Bull Shack’s blank canvas is ripe for more colorful hijinks; where y’all at?

Saturday night’s fever spiked (can’t be too soon for post-COVID puns) with an outdoor dance party on the eastside of the historic district, where Savannah’s gorgeous 50-something (give or take) set pounded the pavement with hostesses Leslie Lovell and Mary Sanders under the stars. What a delicious joy to shimmy amongst post-hot flash foxes living life at its greatest height who can still go low low low (Problem #48: Disco attitude, bad hips.)

In more sober offerings, our fair city never fails to provide fodder for the collective social conscience, and the proposed demolition of the Yamacraw Village public housing complex warrants a slow chew. Certainly the several hundred residents of this crumbling concrete facility deserve better, though promises of a right to return to its rebuilt reincarnation seem highly unlikely to be delivered. We all know that this block of land—once the province of true Savannah founder Chief Tomochichi and a working class enclave long before the current housing was built in the 1940s—is the most lip-smacking piece of commercial real estate in town, with developers waiting to descend upon it like, well, drunk possums on a loquat tree. 

If you agree that the most prudent—and ultimately economically sound—outcome for this site would be to build affordable residential housing that gives preference to hospitality workers in the downtown corridor, please share your thoughts with the powers that be. Let’s also make some noise to ensure that the hideously-conceived, historically protected fake plantation house that serves as Yamacraw’s administration building comes down in the demolition, too. 

Getting back to the salacious snacks, nothing’s juicier than flower magnate John Davis’ public feud with a local DUI attorney who crashed his car in front of the flower shop last November. According to the police report, He Who Shall Not Be Named (remember what I said about not getting sued?) changed lanes improperly while driving his Jaguar in the wee hours at an unsafe speed and struck a telephone pole, two parked cars, several street signs, and a power line that knocked out electricity to several businesses. The driver walked away from the accident and returned after the police arrived, eventually charging him with four citations, including reckless driving. 

Tragically, his two dogs were thrown from the car and killed, leaving John to clean up the heartbreaking situation the following morning. John, a tender-hearted animal lover and gleefully unapologetic pot stirrer, has been trolling the guy relentlessly on Facebook ever since. 

“You bet I’ve gone after him! I had to shovel those poor babies off the street,” declared John, who amped up his furious campaign after his offer to return one of the dog’s collars to its owner was met with legal threats. 

During the six months of punctuation-free posts that include photos of piles of debris collected in January with the caption “can you believe we are still cleaning up from [XXX]s dog massacre” and “I need a delivery driver but they have to drive better than [XXX],” the lawyer has repeatedly claimed emotional and financial distress from the barrage on his business page. This week, a 35-page cease-and-desist letter was FedExed—as in physically sent—not only to his nemesis, but to at least 75 people who commented on the Facebook thread. 

Do you think this rebuttal tempered John, who is well-known for “living life out loud”? Of course not. After checking in with his own attorneys, he responded by inviting everyone on the thread to the flower shop for a cocktail memorial to the dead dogs. 

It was a small affair held on Friday afternoon, with John’s wife, Jennifer Abshire, and a dozen or so others in attendance. Naturally, the flower arrangements were lavish, the unclaimed collar draped across a spray of hydrangeas and pink roses. Someone raised a toast to the deceased, and another to the Savannahness of it all, which likely means this is far from over. Donations are suggested to the Humane Society for Greater Savannah in their owner’s name, which can be easily found on John Davis’ public feed. 

So there you have it, friends: Fruit salad cobbled from a week’s worth of Savannah stories. 

And now that wonders have been bestowed and the breeze is blowing, I’ve decided I have no problems, not a single one. 

See y’all in the streets ~ JLL