Chapter Text
Chapter 15 – Georgia
Kennesaw: Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History (The General), Kennesaw Battlefield
"Two- and one-half hour drive… famous last words," Ziva muttered to herself as she crept forward on I-285 on the northern side of Atlanta.
"Say something?" Tony looked up from his tablet, pausing the movie he was watching and taking the earbud out of his left ear.
Ziva sneered, "Nothing important… this traffic is horrible. Almost as bad as DC."
"What exit is that coming up?" Tony opened the GPS app on his phone.
"Ashford-Dunwoody Road is that overpass we can see just ahead, and then Georgia 400 and Northside Drive."
He typed in the destination address for the hotel in Marietta where they would be staying for the next two nights, "Lemme see if I can find an alternate way to get there…"
Ziva glanced at the screen on the dashboard, showing the current location on the onboard GPS, "I do not think it will matter as the map on the dashboard indicates slow-moving traffic on the highways we are supposed to travel."
"When are we going to be there?" Rivka asked from the rear seat. "I'm tired of this ride."
"Yeah, and I'm hungry too!" her twin added. "This traffic is boring."
Tali turned towards her sisters from her middle-row seat, "We ate dinner only a few hours ago, and Abba gave us all snacks about thirty minutes ago. I agree that the traffic is awful, but it's not like we don't have tablets or books to keep us occupied."
"Wasn't talkin' to you Tali; you're not the parent…" Riv stuck her tongue out at her older sister.
LJ watched his sisters, "Abba, Riv stuck her tongue out at Tali!"
Tony sighed, "We are all stuck in the van until further notice. Yes, I get that you are getting grouchy and antsy, but we gotta make the best of it until we get to the hotel." He glanced up at the road sign and noticed two tall buildings with unusual tops on them. He quickly checked his phone app, announcing, "Hey look at these two buildings coming up on the right. They're called the 'King' and 'Queen' buildings."
Anthony leaned towards Tali from his seat behind the driver's seat, "They look like chess pieces; which one is which?"
"I can't see the buildings," LJ complained from his seat behind his older brother. "Can't see through Beth and Riv…" He slouched down in his seat to try to see out the passenger side windows.
Tali found some information about the two buildings on her phone, "The 'King' has the squared top, and the 'Queen' has the rounded top. Says here that they are two of the tallest suburban buildings in the United States. The 'King' is five hundred fifty-three feet tall and the 'Queen' is five hundred seventy feet tall. Both of them have thirty-four stories."
LJ managed to see the buildings from the window by Rivka and then out the rear window before they disappeared from view. Traffic started moving a bit faster as the kids all settled back in their seats again.
"Five miles to I-75 interchange," Tony read from an overhead sign. "Sign says fifteen to seventeen minutes…"
Ziva shook her head slightly, "I will believe it when we get there. This traffic will most likely slow down again before we get to the Cobb cloverleaf."
Forty-five minutes later, she finally steered the family minivan into the parking lot for their hotel.
"That was not two- and one-half hours; it was almost double that time," she noted to her husband as she parked under the canopy for the entrance to the hotel. "Let us get checked in and unload the luggage. I am ready to chill!"
~Georgia~
"First stop, the railroad museum with 'The General' and then the battlefield," Tony announced as the DiNozzos piled into the minivan in the hotel parking lot. "If you're still hungry, it's your own fault," he joked. The hotel had free breakfast, including cereal, fruit, yogurt, make-your-own waffles and/or pancakes, bacon, scrambled eggs, biscuits, sausage gravy, and assorted beverages.
As Ziva turned the minivan into the parking lot across from the Southern Museum of Civil War and Railroad History, a CSX freight train made its way over one of two nearby parallel tracks. The five DiNozzo children, well six, if Ziva counted her big child, ran to the historic Kennesaw Depot on the west side of the parking lot and watched as the long train made its way south towards Atlanta. One of the engineers waved to the group of people, including the DiNozzo family, as the lead engine passed by.
"One... two… three… engines!" Beth announced to the family. "Let's count the cars too."
"Shh… I'm counting…" Riv hushed her twin so she could keep her numbers correct.
LJ tapped Ziva's arm, "Ima, will you help me count and tell me about the different cars?"
"I will help you count. I will also tell you as much as I can about the rail cars," she replied. "See those ones just behind the last engine? Those are tanker cars."
Tony swiped the screen on his phone and opened a notepad app. "I'll keep track of how many of each type of car if all of you will count them. Three engines so far, right?"
Tali pointed to the line of cargo cars, "Ooh, look, those flat cars have military vehicles!"
Anthony held up his hands, "I counted eight tankers at the beginning, Abba."
Six minutes and fifty-three cars later, Tony tallied the numbers and read from his screen to the family, "Three engines in front, one engine in the rear; two groups of tank cars, eight and seven each; five flat cars with military vehicles; nine hoppers with gravel; twelve boxcars; seven auto-racks; and five gondolas with large spools of wire. Did I miss anything?"
"That was a long train!" LJ was excited to be so close to a real-life, moving, train. "Are we going to see more trains? Can we go on a train?"
"We will see a real train in the museum," Tony informed his youngest. "It's called The General and it was part of a train chase during the Civil War."
"Cool!" all of the kids were eager to see a piece of history as the family crossed the street to the museum entrance.
Outside, a retired caboose was open to walk through. All of them climbed the ladder-like steps and viewed the inside of what was once living quarters for train workers when on the job.
In the museum, Ziva showed the family Smithsonian membership card to get the discount entry fees. Each of the seven had a paper entry wristband printed to look like railroad tracks to wear while touring the exhibits. From the places they'd visited, each had at least one souvenir with the entry wristbands.
Once past admissions, Anthony noticed the floor immediately, "Look! The floor is painted to look like railroad tracks. That's cool. It's like we are trains on a track."
The first of the three main themed areas was the history of the railroad in pre-war southern United States, and the rebuilding of the South after the Civil War. The family learned how Atlanta was first named Terminus because it was the end of a rail line built for the Western & Atlantic line in 1837. In 1843, the area was renamed Marthasville after the then-governor's daughter. Just two years later, in 1845, the town was given its final name of Atlanta, after the railroad.
"Atlanta didn't build railroads, rather railroads built Atlanta," Tali read from one of the longer explanations near a vintage image of the rail yards in Atlanta. "Between 1845 and 1854, rail lines from all directions converged in Atlanta, making the small settlement around the zero-mile post for the W&A into a major rail hub for the southern United States."
They learned how the railroads played key roles in the Civil War, from transporting troops to moving wounded, to moving supplies and munitions to the various frontlines, and to being a primary target in Sherman's March to the Sea. As a walk through the history of the area's railroad ties, the exhibit also showed how the railroads played a major part in rebuilding post-war Atlanta and the South.
From the history exhibit, the family moved to the reproduction of the Glover Machine Works factory, the nation's only full-scale reproduction of a belt-driven locomotive assembly line. Casting a New South exhibit offers a fascinating glimpse into the turn-of-the-century business technology that contributed to the rebuilding of the South after the Civil War. The Glover Machine Works of Marietta, Georgia, was the South's last builder of steam locomotives. The exhibition showcases this remarkable company and includes an office, pattern shop, factory equipment, and two locomotives in various stages of completion. The Glover Machine Works manufactured over 200 small steam locomotives in eight different gauges in the early 1900s. The Southern Museum is the home to the company's complete corporate collection.
Finally, the 'tracks' led to the premier, and founding, exhibit of the museum; the history of The Great Locomotive Chase and one of two locomotives from that chase, The General. In one of the most daring episodes of the Civil War, on April 12, 1862, James J. Andrews and a band of Union spies stole the General locomotive from Big Shanty (present-day Kennesaw). Pursued and eventually caught by Confederate conductor William Fuller, the episode came to be known as the Great Locomotive Chase. The exhibition features a movie about the chase, art and artifacts documenting the raid, pop culture objects celebrating the event, a mock-up of a railroad tunnel, and the General itself.
The bravery of "Andrews Raiders" led to the granting of the first Medals of Honor, the nation's highest military award. The medals presented to raiders John Scott and Wilson Brown are featured in the exhibition.
As LJ led his family through the tunnel mock-up, he suddenly stopped In his tracks at the sight of the historic locomotive. "It's real!" he spoke quietly. "It's really a train!"
Ziva read the introduction to the display of the locomotive and its tender, "The General is an American type 4-4-0 locomotive that weighs, when including its tender, approximately 50,300 pounds. The General was built in 1855 in Paterson, New Jersey, by Rogers, Ketchum, and Grosvenor for Georgia's Western & Atlantic Railroad (W&A). It cost $8,850.
The General initially served passengers and freight, but during the Civil War, it also moved troops and equipment. At the end of hostilities, the General was returned to service running between Atlanta and Chattanooga.
The General was retired in the early 1890s in lieu of more powerful modern locomotives. It subsequently traveled to fairs, reunions, and conventions around the country, including the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The General moved under its own power for the last time in the 1960s to commemorate the Civil War centennial. In 1972, the General returned to Kennesaw, Georgia, where it was placed on permanent display a few hundred yards from where it was stolen in 1862." (From museum website)
Tony stood with his mouth open, staring at the train. When he finally spoke, he shared memories with his family, "I never realized until much later in my life that the Lionel train set that my cousins had was a model of a real train. They got it at Christmas in 1961, before I was born, but they always told the year to anyone who asked. Anyhow, it was the General with its tender, two yellow passenger cars, and a flat car with moveable fences that had six horses, two each of black, brown, and white. The tracks made a circle that went around the Christmas tree. They looked like real rail tracks except for the narrow strip in the center that was for powering the O-27 scale train."
"It is smaller than I thought it would be," Ziva commented as she stood along the black metal rail fence around the train. "The large wheels are only five feet in diameter, according to this spec chart. The wheel-base is about as long as our mini-van!"
After many pictures with the famous train, the family followed the 'tracks' to the gift shop. LJ found a wooden whistle that made a train whistle sound. The other bought patches, postcards, and books about the area and railroads. Tony found a reproduction of the train set he remembered from his childhood and after some puppy eyes at his wife, purchased a set to be shipped back home.
"Next stop is take-out food for lunch, and then the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield and Park!" Tony announced as his family crossed over the street back to the parking lot. "We can picnic in the park, if we want."
Tony found a popular sandwich shop on the way to the park and they stopped for subs, chips, and beverages to have the picnic lunch at one of the many picnic areas inside the attraction. Tony drove up to the top of Kennesaw Mountain and they found an empty table in the picnic area. As the DiNozzo family ate their subs, some bold squirrels came near to the table.
"If we were at home, those squirrels would be history," Anthony joked. "Asher and Daisy would have them running for the neighbors' yards."
Two little girls from another family threw some pieces of bread to the animals and laughed as the three gray squirrels squabbled over the scraps. Rivka noticed a black squirrel hanging back a bit from the others and pointed it out to her family.
"Look, there's a black squirrel watching the gray ones," she noted.
The father of the two little girls overheard the DiNozzos talking about the gray squirrels. "These squirrels are just run-of-the-mill critters. Nothin' much impressive about the beggars. Back where I grew up in Florida, there are these huge," he gestured with his hands to indicate a size, "squirrels that are as big as house cats. We called 'em fox squirrels because of their black face masks, similar to a coon."
"Those sound so cool," Beth nudged Tali to check it out with her phone. "I wanna see the big squirrels."
"Sneads, Florida… you can see them near the park where the rivers come together," the man added.
Tali turned her phone, "They are called Sherman's Fox Squirrels; says here that these are the largest squirrels in the Western Hemisphere. The map shows a park called Three Rivers State Park in Florida, just west of the Apalachicola River."
"Can we go there?" LJ, Rivka, and Bath spoke at the same time.
Ziva looked over at her husband who was reading about the squirrels on his own phone, "We shall see… let us finish the tour here and when we get back to the hotel, Abba and I will check the plan for driving to our stops in Florida and see if that fits in the route."
The family finished their lunch, toured the battle areas, the monuments and markers, and the museum of the history of the Atlanta campaign of the Civil War, including much more than just the military aspects. The information was nicely tied in with what they'd seen at the railroad museum earlier in the day.
After dinner at the infamous "Big Chicken" – a landmark in the Marietta area for a national fast food chicken chain, they returned to the hotel for the night. Tony found "The Great Locomotive Chase" film on one of the streaming services to which the family subscribed for them to watch before bedtime.