My Dad liked to travel. He and I took two vacations down the East Coast several years ago. I was sleep deprived, so I didn’t drive much. I wish I had done more driving with all the trouble we had finding the hotel in Atlanta (after Dad had been on the road for seven hours already).
My friend Clay was living just outside of Atlanta at the time. We had known each other from Nashville. Sometimes in conversation, I would bring up things my Dad said. Clay respected my Dad’s ability to say things concisely and profoundly. When Clay came to the hotel, it meant a lot for him to meet my Dad. I think it meant a lot to Dad, too.
On both trips, Dad 
was very accommodating. I wanted to go to the top of the St. Augustine Lighthouse, but there was no way Dad could climb the stairs. He paid, but about three-quarters of the way up, I got such dizziness that I went down. The whole time, I was thinking that they should have a room on the ground floor for people to stretch their legs. I wanted to give Dad his money back since I didn’t make it to the top. Of course, he wouldn’t have of it. (I just saw on television this week that the St. Augustine Lighthouse is supposed to be super haunted.)
My favorite city was Charleston. The place had a peaceful vibe. We walked around the riverfront park on a foggy night. We didn’t make it to Fort Sumter on the first trip, but we did the second time. It’s where the Civil War began. For some reason, I just had to tell the tour guide that I lived in Appomattox.
Mom & Dad took a lot of weekend vacations and day trips. I tagged along to visit the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. It was the neatest excursion. You could scan the radio dial and get nothing but hiss. There was an old dish telescope, a museum piece, next to the Visitor Center. There was a film and a short presentation before the tour. SETI was only mentioned briefly.
There were seven telescopes on the site. They were the proudest of the big one, the one called GBT. The surface of the dish was over two acres. It was the largest moveable object on land in the world. It was an awesome sight.
In order for the telescopes to do their job, there had to be no frequency interference of any kind. No radio signals, no television signals, no cellular signals… There was a profound tranquility about the observatory grounds. It was a sense of calm unlike anything I’ve felt since the trip to St. John’s that we took when I was twelve.
John Brandt • 1938-2014
Green Bank Observatory • Georgia Aquarium • Charleston
dust exchange 