National Geographic July-December 1992 (fél évfolyam) [antikvár]

Inland from the Gulf of Mexico's languid, lapping waters, beyond Mississippi's blinding white coastline and across its serpentine bayous, a dark edge of trees marks the beginning of the great southern pine forest. On my uncle's farm near the fringe of that forest I spent every summer of my youth milking cows and traipsing the woods, as near to heaven as a barefoot boy can be. In the hour before sunrise a mist breathed from sleeping fields scented with animals and hay. Thunderheads laced with snakes' tongues of lightning rose over the Gulf to the south and emerged from the dawn, blue and scarlet and eggshell white, huge stalking gods that spoke to me of horizons of the sea. One morning of my 13th summer, in 1966, a new cloud rose over the trees: a thin, billowing mushroom of steam sent skyward by Saturn V rocket engines at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's test site, newly constructed in coastal Mississippi to help send man to the moon. NASA's arrival spelled the end of ISO-year-old Logtown, which lay within a safety zone cleared of habitation. Twenty-five years later Roy Baxter drives me through vine-hung woods where the hamlet once stood. Mossy live oaks mark the abandoned site of the house where he was born and lived his first 47 years. "But I'm not bitter in any shape or form," he says. "We didn't want 'em. We were getting along fine without 'em. But when NASA came, it was the biggest thing that ever happened here." He is silent for a while as we ride the sandy roads. "Nobody wanted to move, though. Some of the older people couldn't stand the shock. They died within six months." At the John C. Stennis Space Center three monolithic structures of steel and concrete stand as out of place as teleported pyramids in the flat, wooded swampland. Inside the B-1 stand, NASA technicians are preparing a space shuttle main engine for testing. I think of a day long ago when I asked my great-uncle Heber, born before the century turned. Former staff writer Doug Lee covered subjects ranging from Arctic wildlife to Africa's Okavango Delta during his 14-year career with the Geographic. He now lives on Maryland's Eastern Shore. This is photojournalist joel Sartore's first assignment for the magazine. what he thought of the then recent moon landing. He gave me a look of pity. "You believe that stuff, boy?" he asked. "You believe men went to the moon? to the moon?" He shook his head, a skeptical son of the Confederacy. "No, boy. No man ever went to the moon. The gov'mint took pictures in a big tank of water to make everybody think they did. Ain't no telling what they did with all that money." At the test structure a thin hiss of steam swells until, with a chest-palpitating roar, the engine ignites . . . and stops, leaving a silence as loud as the thunder it replaces. A malfunction has shut the test down abruptly. Uncle Heber would have nodded. For better and for worse, the old world of the Gulf Coast has been joined with the new South, sometimes in warm embrace, sometimes in jarring collision. The "third coast" of America long remained a realm of wetlands and unpeopled barrier islands punctuated by a handful of dozing cities. Change began with the discovery of oil in southeastern Texas in 1901, accelerated with the encroachment of military bases and industries in World War II, and in recent decades mushroomed with the Sunbelt's growing fortunes. Houston has grown into the nation's fourth most populous city. And the cities of Tampa and St. Petersburg anchor Florida's booming Sun Coast. Around the Gulf, favored foods range from Florida stone crab claws to Texas barbecue and Mexican tortillas. In between, there are the beloved catfish, red beans and rice, gumbo, and crawfish étouffée. Languages may be Southernese or media-speak American, Spanish, French, or Vietnamese. Yet everyone I met was at heart a Gulf Coaster, sharing the shores and waters, riches and problems of life on the littoral of earth's ninth largest sea. Halfway around the 1,600 miles of crescent Destined for deep water, part of a Louisiana-built oil-drilling-and-production platform rides a barge toward the Gulf. Offshore drilling in the Gulf began 60 years ago, fueling an energy industry that became synonymous with the fortunes of Louisiana and Texas. Recent drilling-industry doldrums have stunted local economies.