Walkin' in My Ancestor's Steps

It had been a long time since I had seen the old house, and this would be different.  Today I would be showing it to my wife as we drove around the countryside searching for dead ancestors in church graveyards.

We parked the Toyota at the bottom of the hill and began the walk up the old road. It had once been the main thoroughfare for at least two centuries, but no more.  Progress had abandoned it. If it could have had feelings, I think it would have been happy knowing that it had done its job well. There were brown pine needles between former wagon tracks of red clay. I remembered red clay from the days when I was a boy on a Carolina farm. I remembered how hard it was and how in late August it would sometimes be very dry and hard.  As boys we would throw chunks of it at at the side of a barn, and it would leave a red mark like chalk on a blackboard, but not today. It had rained in the last week or so. On one side of the road was a thicket of small pines, and on the other was a barbed wire fence. The rusty strands of wire were attached to red cedar posts gnarled and weathered with age. In their day they had held my great-grandfather's  cattle  Today what was once pasture land is now a forest of conifers and hardwoods. Cattle have been replaced with white-tailed deer, grey and red foxes, bobcats, raccoons, possums, rabbits, squirrels, and an occasional coyote. We saw no wildlife.  They could sense our presence.

Claudette and I had walked about one hundred and fifty yards when we came to a large clearing. The road made a gentle curve to the right and began downward. The old house was at the top of the hill just as the ground leveled off. It was at sort of at a right angle to the road. There was a huge oak tree at the front. My knowledge of botany had waned; I was unable to identify the variety.  I remembered that my father could identify trees by their bark.

The quietness was almost eerie.  The only sound was the crunching of leaves under my Reeboks. We began our walk around the house.  It was a two room cabin with an addition on the back. Some of the clapboards were missing, and the logs were visible underneath. The marks of the broadaxe were easily distinguished.  Could my ancestor have swung the axe that made those marks? No one in the family knows exactly when the house was built.  Some of the family members once thought it could be designated the oldest house in the county, but without knowing the date of construction, that was not possible. It was an old hand hewn log structure, though. Some believed that it could have been the house of an even earlier ancestor. Perhaps from the early eighteenth century. Maybe the old Scots-Irishman had built the house in what was then a British colony. The Cherokee Indians had dwelled there. Had he fought the Indians for this land, even though he received it as a and grant? We continued our inspection of the house, bushwhacking our way through brambles, small bushes, and tall broom straw. I related to Claudette how my grandmother made brooms from broomstraw. In my preschool years I had been her able helper.

There was an open porch that ran the width of the front of the house. In an old photo taken in the early 1900s, part of the porch was enclosed.  The porch floor was solid and did not give any under our weight. To the the left of the left front door a local historian had removed the clapboard from a two-foot square section of the exterior wall to reveal the logs underneath. We entered the room. There was a door across from us leading to the addition, which was a kitchen. To the right was the fireplace flanked by the door on its left. The floor felt solid.   I could see the earth through the crack between the boards of the floor. That would allow the cold in during the winter. I knew about cold floors.  As a boy I lived in a house with cracks in the floor. Many colonial frontier homes had  dirt floors.  I wasn't  sure how to determine if this house had had one.. The only place I saw floor joists was under the front porch, and that was a lap-jointed hand hewn beam. If the logs reached the ground, and I'm reasonably sure they did, the logs in contact  with the earth would have been cedar or locust wood. Those woods would have been used because of their durability. As I walked into the other room it mirrored the first one.The ceiling was low as well.  The sunlight streamed through an aged window, making the dust particles in the air sparkle like diamond dust. 

The house was very clean. I remembered visiting it with my father some twenty years prior and it was full of debris. Could it have

been the historian who had cleaned it out? There was access to the loft beside the fireplace. I did not investigate there.  At one time there was a two story addition on the right side of the house, but it had been demolished and removed. My great-grandfather had nine children.  He could have been the resident who added that addition. Just before leaving, I spied a small scrap of paper in the corner of the room. I walked over, bent down, and picked it up. When I smoothed the crumbled piece of newsprint out I was surprised to find a picture of me. It was a newspaper clipping with the headline:"Young Teaches Painting at MCI".  I had once given art lessons to some residents of the prison in McCormick county. There was a photograph of me and five inmates. The inmates were displaying their artwork. Why was this clipping here? I could hardly remember the last residents of this house. Was it saved because of who one of the inmates was? It was a mystery left unsolved. As I looked out the front door of the house I remembered that it once had a split rail fence around the front yard.  The lady of the house probably had flowers there once. There was once a big barn about one hundred feet in front of the house that housed livestock. Some of the ruins remained, providing shelter for smaller wildlife.  I felt Claudette behind me and her hand on my shoulder.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked.

"Samuel Oliver Young, my old great-granddad, would have walked beside that barn on his way to fight armies of the United States of America in the 1860s," I answered.

"He kissed his wife and kids 'Goodbye" right here on this porch," she finished my thought as her hand squeezed my shoulder.

"Yep," I said.

We walked from the darkness of the house into the bright November sunlight. The air was cool and fresh and scented with pine needles. It was going to be a great day.

In a Masculine Vein

Winch at Mont St. Michel

As you've noticed from my posts about our travels we visit a number of different kinds of attractions. Typical of any travel brochure or other travel advertising art museums, churches and restaurants are featured. It seems to me that those things I consider masculine are usually left out.(The museums are usually art museums.) Now I don't have a problem with fancy restaurants or art museums or cathedrals in moderation. But as a fan of things that move and/or make noise I search for other venues.

In our travels I've fed my masculine side with quite a few interesting attractions.  At the onset I would like to say in reference to cathedrals I am  in awe of the construction methods used to build these monumental structures. The builders moved tons of stone long before the invention of the giant machines used in modern day. At Mont Saint Michel in France we saw the winch used to raise building stones to the upper levels in this building.  It reminded me of a giant hamster wheel perhaps seventeen feet in diameter. Men would walk inside the wheel as a rope wound around the axle raising building stones to great heights. At El Escorial in Spain there was a great display of building tools used during the middle ages.   In the museum at Pont du Gard, France, you can see the building methods for the giant aqueducts. I never realized until visiting that museum that forms were used to construct

Template for arch at Pont du Gard

the giant arches that are a hallmark of Roman construction. The Romans were fantastic builders and great engineers. Their structures of 2000 years ago still stand today.

I have a fondness of mechanical things and the way they work. Cutaway engines have given me insight to the internal operation of the mechanics that produce the power. One  of the most notable of these is the 28 cylinder Pratt and Whitney 4360 aircraft engine. I saw an animated cutaway version of one of these in the Pima County Museum of Air and Space near Tucson, AZ. I posted a video I made about this engine on YouTube. It has received more than eighty thousand views thus far. The giant steam engine in the British Museum of Science was incredible to observe in operation.  In Nuremberg, Germany, there is a toy museum.  In it are those great mechanical toys of the early twentieth century. This was long before the advent of plastic and battery power. They were made of

German submarine in Chicago

metal and powered by wound springs and there are videos to show them in operation.   During our travels I have visited submarines, aircraft carriers, battleships and destroyers.  I've enjoyed them all. However, there are times when I think that the exhibitors desire to make an attraction more tourist friendly has destroyed some of the ambiance. For example, on the aircraft carrier, Intrepid,  the "knee knockers" through the bulkheads have  cut down so the tourists won't hit their shins when going through a bulkhead.  And on the German submarine in the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, the subfloor has been removed so tourists

Midget Italian submarine in Venice

will be able to stand up straight when touring the relic. I believe that these modifications prevent a person from experiencing the true effect of being on the vessels. Arms and armor along with the aforementioned ways in which mankind seeks to destroy mankind I find interesting. The mechanical means of destruction is well documented in the Spanish Armory Museum in Segovia where examples of weapons from the spear to rifled cannon are on display. The engraved and ivory inlaid crossbow of a past king is a work of art. One of the most unusual instruments of warfare was the two-man miniature submarine used by the Italian navy during WWII. I'm sure I drooled over it in the Italian Naval Museum in Venice.

Perhaps the item I seek out most on our travels are aircraft displays.  There is just something about these machines that break the bonds of gravity that fascinate me. If I had to pick a favorite it would be the Pima County Museum of Air and Space. The displays are more accessible than the U.S. Air Force Museum or the Museum of Naval Aviation.  In Charleston, SC, the aircraft carrier, Yorktown has a great collection of naval aircraft. It has a much better display than that of the Intrepid in NYC. We've visited at least ten other aircraft museums over the years. When I have the opportunity sit in the cockpit of these flying machines I feel a connection with the men that flew them.  I also realized that the men that flew them were smaller than me.

fighter plane on the USS Yorktown

In the future I look forward to other great museums and attractions.  But without an understanding wife I would never had be able to see the things I have. Of this I am most grateful.

Yesterday

No, I'm not referring to the first word in a song but rather what I did yesterday
I woke up then some calisthenics before going to the gym to walk two miles. I would remiss if I did not mention the family cat laid on my stomach while I waited for my beloved to ready herself for the gym. Enroute we listen to a Harry Bosch novel and try to figure out whodunit. Of course going to the gym also means that I will meet old men there and reminisce about the old days and how the country is going down the crapper. However viewing young women in spandex will lift our spirits. I manage to read the morning national news on my phone while riding an exercise bike.

Then back home for a breakfast of cereal while reading the Post and Courier after that a daily Bible reading and then a short nap before getting to work. I check email, Facebook, and Instagram responding where necessary.  I updated the website and Facebook fan pages I'm responsible for. Then I finished up a short video on the B-29 Superfortress airplane. I love airplanes.

Time for lunch. In the kitchen I had a yearning for white bean soup.  I had to make some.  In my haste I did not look for or find a recipe so I made up my own.

First I sauteed a chopped medium onion with two cloves of chopped garlic in a tablespoonful of olive oil then I added a cup of water and brought it to a boil.  To the boiling water with onion and garlic I added one package of Herb-Ox chicken bouillon and stirred until dissolved. I added a can of white beans and one slice of fried bacon chopped into small pieces.

Then I seasoned the hot soup with one half teaspoon of ground coriander. Next I added about one half dozen spinach leaves.  After the spinach leaves had wilted I added fresh ground black pepper to taste. I served myself with soup and tortilla chips.

After lunch I tidied up the kitchen a bit and after a quick nap continued working on a painting.  The local artist guild of which I'm a member is having its annual show and I needed and entry. I painted prolifically for about ten years before tapering off and channeling my creative talents into social media and storytelling. The painting I was rendering was with acrylic and pallet knife was of balloons over Cappadocia. We had visited Turkey several years ago and gone on a hot air balloon ride. The painting would commemorate that event.

After my wife returned home we went to dinner at Ruby Tuesday's.  We enjoyed a beautiful sunset driving into town.  She had a free meal as a birthday gift.  I foraged at the salad bar.

Later at home we caught up on some old episodes of Arrow.

It was a good day!