Exploring the Past; Seeing Meade County; Following the River:  Day 3 in Kentucky

As the rooster crowed, the cow lowed, the birds sang, and the frogs croaked, I walked around Kirchdofer Lane on my morning walk in cool, fresh morning air.  The sky was a light blue, broken by long strands of feathery white clouds.

After a hearty breakfast, we spent over three hours exploring the resources of the Meade County Genealogical collection at the library getting an understanding of the life and times of the area when my father lived here.  After that, we drove through farmland to Ekron, the community closest to the last farm that Edward Hamilton Hendrick farmed with his family.  We drove north afterwards through more good looking farmland and crossed just into the edge of Indiana.

Our little side trip out of Kentucky was to see the Squire Boone mill, village, and caverns which is a little tourist attraction.  The mill, still operational with its huge water driven wheel, was built by Squire Boone (a brother of Daniel) in 1804.  The water to power the overshot wheel comes from the caverns.  Other artisans on site were making candles, soap, and candy.  There was also a rock shop and a sweet shop which we passed by, thinking ahead to an early supper.

After we crossed the Ohio River back into Kentucky, we drove along the scenic state and county highway which follows the curvy path of the river.  We saw six deer, three of them fawns, saw a rock quarry, spotted barges on the river, and enjoyed the lush foliage on both sides of the road.  Most of the time we were close enough to see the Ohio through the breaks of the foliage.

We got back to Brandenburg for supper and went to Jailhouse Pizza, located in the only local government building that was not destroyed in the severe tornado which flattened much of Brandenburg in 1974, killing 32 people.  After we placed our order we went upstairs and walked around the old cells.  The old iron doors to the cells were extremely heavy!  No breaking out there!

After a little exercise in the pool, us old people are quite happy to call it a day.  After all, we have to get ready for day 4!

Wrolen Pin Cafe, Lincoln, Brandenburg:  Kentucky Day 2

After the thunderstorm during the night, we woke to a much more pleasant Kentucky as we enjoyed coffee in the room and another session of bird watching on the deck.  We headed through the mountains and down into the valleys before finding ourselves in Lincoln country. 

Along the way, we spotted a doe nursing her young fawn near the highway, the first time we had ever seen this.  It was quite reminiscent of Bambi.
Our first tourist stop was the National Historical Park  at the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln which has a granite memorial which houses a log cabin symbolic of the one in which Lincoln was born.  The farm he was born on had a sinking spring which was used for water.  Unfortunately Lincoln's father lost this farm through a title dispute.  After lunch we went further up the old Cumberland Trace to his boyhood home place which was smaller.

Lunch was a delight at the Wrolen Pin Cafe in Hodgenville.  It is located in an old service station.  It is named after the owner's grandmother.  Two sisters were handling things today.  Their great grandmother had been a professional baker who worked in the St. Louis area.  The restaurant features all homemade desserts.  We shared a slice of peanut butter pie just to be sure the desserts were as good as the rest of the meal.  We chose the pork chop, apples, and green beans with a small hoe cake of corn bread.

After lunch we stopped on the square to see the two statues of Lincoln:  one as a boy, one as President before we drove out to see the location of the boyhood home.

We wandered through Elizabethtown, the location of the movie Paula Dean was in, headed northwest, and ended up at Southern Grace Bed and Breakfast near Brandenburg where my father was born in 1917.  Tomorrow we will explore the past at the local library.
As we reflected on our journey from north Florida, we thought of how very different the same trip must have been in 1923 when my Uncle Dan moved the family from Brandenburg to the Tampa area.  I remember my father talking about the trip in the model A Ford.  They camped out along the way.  The roads were much more primitive then and the cars much less developed.  I am in awe that they did this with a car loaded with six people!

After supper at a local cafe, we walked along the Ohio River looking across to Indiana on the site of a Civil War battle.  We have now called it a day.  The sun will set eventually!

Road Trip 2012

The rolling hills around Jasper, Georgia, where we enjoyed spending time with our good friends the Smiths,  grew into mountains as we travelled toward Tennessee and then Kentucky for our long awaited 2012 road trip which had been postponed by my surgery and then a few other things which cropped up.  We are travelling in July which may not be the perfect month for a lot of outdoor hiking, but sometimes, we take what we can get!  The roadsides were alive with wild flowers: Queen Anne's Lace, chicory, and ox-eyed daisies.  The trees have that rich color and full foliage that just shouts "Summer!"

Crossing the Kentucky state line, we did not have far to go to our destination:  Cumberland Falls State Resort  Park where we had a reservation for the night at the DuPont Lodge.   As we watched the thermometer rise to 98 we noticed the signs of drought as we passed through areas where grass had turned brown, plants were wilting, and trees were less vivid.

The DuPont Lodge was a delight.  Constructed of stone, the lobby had a huge fireplace, open beams, and lots of rustic wood.  Our room was comfortable with lots of windows shaded by large awnings.  The air conditioning was definitely appreciated!

We waited until after five before taking a hike through the woods to the falls.  The path was fairly steep and not something we plan to do again.  We found that we could have driven to a parking area close to the visitor's center.  Coming back, we took the road.  Since we had dutifully communed with nature going, we felt we could commune with asphalt on the return trip.

The falls were lovely in the late afternoon, roaring and falling 67 feet in the Cumberland River.  We could feel the mist from the falls all way up to the overlook.

After our hike back to the lobby, we collapsed onto the comfortable sofa for a few minutes before going to the lower level for supper.  We had a good table right by a floor to ceiling window overlooking the bird feeders and the river in the distance.  We enjoyed watching the goldfinches, tufted titmouses, doves, Carolina chickadees, and the chipping sparrows.  All the kids in the restaurant got excited about the two raccoons which were scavenging under the feeders.

We topped our soup and salad supper off with a shared slice of Derby pie with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream.  We felt we had earned it from our almost two miles of demanding hiking.

Neither of us had any desire for more entertainment for the day!  Tomorrow we continue our Kentucky adventure and pray for rain!

In Memory of the Casualties of War: Memorial Day

Memorial Day weekend has rolled around again with a record number of Americans hitting the highways headed to beaches and other get away places.  The three day weekend has become a symbol of the beginning of summer ever since the commemoration day was changed in 1968 to create a long weekend.  Unfortunately, somewhere, somehow, the significance of this day has been lost.  Now there is some sort of foggy understanding that it is a patriotic time to honor all our veterans, eat lots of barbecue, and get our first good sunburn of the season.

Time was when this day was not celebrated in this part of the country.  This was "Yankee Memorial Day" not to be confused with "Decoration Day" when families visited cemeteries, cleaned grave sites, and put out flowers to commemorate the Southern war dead.  That has changed down through the years and I think the change was good.  The War has been over now for nearly 150 years.  It is time for it to be over.

Never has a soldier served in combat without being a casualty of sorts.  Some come home missing limbs; others come home irrevocably changed in mind and spirit.  But the ones we commemorate now are those who paid the ultimate sacrifice, giving their lives in service to our country.

Too often, we abstract war in our minds.  We do not want to face up to what it really is when we are filled with patriotic rhetoric and resolve to take care of business. We don't want to think of real people hurt, real people maimed, and real people killed.  Now that the draft is gone, it has become abstract for whole groups of people.  When every able bodied man of 18 had to register and knew that he had a strong chance of being called up, it was much more of a reality.

I grew up with war and unfortunately, a long list of "conflict" have dotted the historic landscape of my life.  My first real memory of war was watching the airplanes fly overhead in the early forties when ,my father had disappeared to some place called "Camp Blanding" and later to a place called the Philippines and Japan.  Two of my uncles were also gone:  one ultimately to Europe to slog through the Battle of the Bulge, the other to the Pacific aboard an air craft carrier.  Four of Aunt Effie's boys, some lying about their age to join up, were scattered across the globe.  She would walk the fields late at night praying for their safety.  All of our men came home, but in some of them there were scars of the spirit which never healed.

We are still in war.  I fear that too often the majority of the people in this country are more concerned with who is on reality TV and how much the price of gas is than on the cost of this war to individuals and families.  I am not interested in getting into the political/global reasons for being in the war.  I am interested in the fact that we, as Americans, need to understand that this is not just the war of those serving.  It is our war.

So, as we complete this weekend, we can't do much for those who lost their lives fighting for this country other than trying to do everything we can for those other casualties of the many wars we have so nobly fought.  I am talking about looking around, being aware, and taking responsibility for this country of ours.

       Surgery was Friday.  I spent a fair amount of time in the "holding area" before I went in.  I don't remember much after I got to the OR until about four hours later.  It took we a while to climb out of the fog and back to reality in the recovery room.  I can assure you that it was as close to a psychedilic experience as I ever want to have.  Soon after awareness set in, I was in the room with a stream if visitors coming in.

     Fortunately I did not know what I looked like until the next morning.  There is something a little lacking in "hospital" hair!  The nose tube doesn't do much for my looks either.  I spent the afternoon with Rob and Klep pretty much in lala land.  I stupidly felt I should go  as long as I could between pain medicine and by midnight the blood pressure was doing its thing heading upwards.  I came to my senses at that point and started using the Demorol regularly.

     Saturday I was up and walking a little.  Sunday I walked more and sat up for two hours in the chair.  Today I am aiming for six walks.  The pain is much less, the incision looks good; what we need now is for the intestinal tract to go to work.

     I have met some of the most wonderful people in here.  There is Khady who is from Senegal.  There is Cassandra, a tall, slim but strong young lady.  Most of all, though, I have appreiated my night time angel Tonya who just went off her twelve hour shift.  This morning she will take two of her kids to school and then go to her second job.  This will be her last week with the second job.  She has been accepted into the nursing program.  She and I purely had church here in the room the other night when the blood pressure finally leveled off!  Anyway, she goes off duty for seven days, so I probably will not see her again.  There have been lots of others:  Brittany, Tim, Vicky, Judy.  The list goes on and on.  Oh, and there is Marcus who appears at three o'clock in the morning to draw blood so that the results will be ready for the doctors when they do rounds.

Best Laid Plans

The best laid plans are just that -- plans.  When I left home for my routine five year colonoscopy, I fully expected to be enjoying the largest milkshake in Valdosta before noon and to float lazily around the pool in the afternoon while the last vestiges of my meds wore off.

Not so!  Dr. Pennington found a polyp too large to be taken out with a scope.  We had two choices:  go home and start all over getting ready or go into the hospital and have the surgery.  We opted for the second.  So, as the day winds down, I am in room 303 of the surgical wing.  The afternoon has been full of questions, x-rays, blood tests, and telephone calls.

Tomorrow morning is the surgery.  I will not be at my best with a tube down my nose, so I am discouraging visitors until my intestinal tract starts working again.  I do covet your prayers as I go through this.

I have a peace about this whole thing.  The preliminary lab report is that it is benign.  We pray that this is what the next test will show, too.

So, the milkshake will be put on hold for a week.  If everything goes well, I hope to be home by this time next week.

Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head

Raindrops are lightly falling this last Sunday of February at Mosquito Gardens. This last week of above normal temperatures has indeed brought forth the varmint that brought us to jokingly name our home here Mosquito Gardens. I killed my first one of the season, a fine one of good size, yesterday!

When I saw the blob of green hovering just west of us on radar in the predawn hour I awoke, I had a choice to make. The easy one would have been to pull the robe a little tighter around me, settle into the chair, open the blinds, and watch the rain begin. I gave serious thought to doing just that, but my better self won out. At six-fifty I was out the door, headed down the long sidewalk to the driveway, umbrella over my head.

The rain was light, but steady, beating a good cadence for walking as the sidewalk in front of me gradually turned from dots to wet grey. I saw the dogwoods, still green as they begin opening. The showest sight, though, were the Formosan azaleas, resplendent in their brilliant color which falls somewhere in between deep purple and intense pink. Their blooms, fully four inches across, are the true queen of my yard and others in this part of the south. The little miniatures azaleas are pretty and neat, but these huge bushes celebrate the changing of the season like no other in their over the top exuberance of color!

My mind wandered (as minds are likely to do; mine, anyway!) as I walked. I have been walking for exercise and pleasure since the late sixties and I thought back to the last time I actually walked in the rain. It would have to have been while we lived at Green Park, a monstrously large apartment building in Musachino City, a suburb of Tokyo, Japan. We lived there, along with several thousand other Air Force people between May of 1969 to May of 1972 when we moved to Tachikawa where we enjoyed living in an actual house with an actual house.

But, I digress! I started walking at Green Park for exercise and pleasure. After I sent Klep off each morning to his job on the IG team at Headquarters Fifth Air Force, Fuchu, Japan, I would circle the building three times for my morning exercise. Later a friend (usually Carol Griffin that first year) and I would go out the gates and walk through the wonders that surrounded us. Some days we stayed close to home, walking down to the alley where a variety of shops awaited us. Other days might find us a mile or so away at a Shinto shrine or at some pottery shop or coffee shop we had never discovered. It was on these jaunts that we really got to see what our neighborhood was really liked. We learned to let the attention of people snickering geijing under their breath roll off us. Carol could fit in much easier than I, since she was short. Tall American women were always noticed.

My walking started as an effort to take off the excess pounds I had added to my body after I got married. I have battled weight all my life. Face it! I started off in trouble when I was born weighing twelve pounds! The first year of our marriage, we both gained over twenty pounds. The walking helped. So did writing down every bite I put in my mouth for three months. By Christmas, I was within four pounds of my goal. The following Christmas, I was still within four pounds of my goal.

I find myself in that situation again, four pounds shy of where I want to be. Therefore, I walk. Actually, I think that I would walk anyway. To me, it is such a pleasure to be able to move. After my accident in 2005, I gradually tacked on over thirty pounds which did nothing to improve the mobility of the knee with the torn meniscus!

While I walked this morning, I considered the fact that my will power seems to have "got up and left." I also pondered the reasons for this, and wonder if, I somehow have decided to sabotage myself. I don't know since psychology is not one of my strong suits. It may just be that I have an overwhelming desire for chocolate!

I guess I'll just keep pondering, pull out the umbrella when it rains, and go walking! Someday, somehow, I will shed those four pounds!