Listing Through Life

This was one of the highlights of the vacation in Atlanta. A Cyclorama is a long painting that covers the walls of a circular room, giving a 360-degree perspective. I’d read about this one somewhere and wanted to check it out. I’m glad I did.

I arrived just as the next show was beginning. I was ushered into a theater just after a film started. I couldn’t see a thing, but I could tell the room was crowded. I had three choices — stand in the doorway, sit on somebody’s lap or stumble down to the front row. I chose option three. The film was on Sherman’s March leading up to the Battle of Atlanta. It was being shown on a wide screen, and I was so close I couldn’t watch the entire thing at once. And it was loud.

We were led from that theater to the Cyclorama itself. We came up through the floor into a circular seating area in the center of the round room. The painting covered the entire wall. The space between the wall and the seats was filled with figures of soldiers, cannons and terrain features that complimented the painting. It was done so well that it was difficult to tell where the painting stopped and the diorama started.

When the show began, our seats began revolving slowly while a taped narration explained the battle and pointed out significant action and people from the battle.

I got lucky. It just so happened that there wasn’t another tour scheduled after ours so a curator from the museum took us around a second time. She explained the history of the painting itself and pointed out interesting features. She showed us the only woman in the painting — a tiny red dot in the distance that represents a real lady who worked as a nurse in the battle. She showed us a mannequin in the foreground that was painted to resemble Clark Gable. I ate up every second of it.

From Kennesaw Mountain, I fought the confusing Georgia roads for an hour to Big Shanty Museum. It isn’t really a battlefield, but it is a memorial to a battle of sorts. On April 12, 1862, a bunch of Union troops captured the train, which was well behind Confederate lines, and tried to take it north. They were pursued and captured. The engine has been restored. The museum is located about 100 yards from where it was first taken. There wasn’t much to the museum apart from the engine, but it was well done and interesting.

I was planning on spending the day at this park. It didn’t work out that way. Kennesaw Mountain is apparently the the popular place to be for all Atlanta-area yuppies and dog walkers. I strolled around looking at birds, visited the tiny museum in the visitor center, and looked for the Civil War sites.

Notice I didn’t say look AT the Civil War sites. There wasn’t much to see. I hiked to the top of Kennesaw Mountain  itself and saw haze. There were a few cannons scattered about where Confederates set up a battery.

I drove to Pigeon Hill, but the parking lot and trail were full of locals, so I didn’t stop. I continued to Cheatham Hill, where I found the only semblance of a normal battlefield park. This is the Illinois Monument, located where Union troops attacked Confederate entrenchments. They were beaten back, but the Confederates abandoned the hill a few days later.

This is Mebane’s Battery on Cheatham Hill.

These are the remains of Confederate earthworks. They went on like this for at least 150 feet.

This is the Kolb House. The back of the postcard says: Peter Valentine Kolb built this house of hewn logs in 1836 with the help of a Cherokee. Union General Hooker used the house as headquarters prior to General Hood’s savage attack on June 22, 1864. Later the wounded of both armies filled the house.

The cabin is the only building in the park that was there at the time of the battle. It was restored in 1964, but is used as a private residence. At the time of my visit, the backyard was crisscrossed with clotheslines dripping with laundry. Some guy was sitting at a picnic table reading a newspaper. It was noon, and I’d seen everything there was to see.