Bradford, Tennessee

Cooper and I had an interesting day yesterday.  At least it was interesting for me; I'm not so sure what Cooper thought about it, but anyway, he behaved pretty well.

We went with my mom and her sister, my Aunt Gene, to Bradford, Tennessee, to research our family roots.  It's north of Jackson, a little less than 3 hours west of Nashville.

Our first stop was in Skullbone, just a few miles east of Bradford.  This is Skullbone.

We had some family who lived in this town, including a cousin who was the second postmaster there, probably around 1900.

Then it was on to Bradford, for just a brief drive through town on our way to Trenton, to meet my fifth cousin, Tom, who I tracked down while doing some genealogical research.  He is a public defender there.  My mom had contacted him beforehand, and he was able to get off of work and meet us for lunch.  We had a nice 2-hour visit with him and learned more about the family still living in the area.

After that, we went back to Bradford and found my great- and great-great-grandparents' graves at a little cemetery out in the country.  By this time Cooper had been riding in the car and sitting in a restaurant for way too long, so I let him run around in the cemetery.  I know, it is sort of disrespectful, but I turned around at one point and caught him doing this.

In Bradford we found the house my grandmother grew up in and met the lady who lives there now.

We also saw the building where the drugstore once was where my great-grandfather was a pharmacist in the late 1800's and early 1900's.  His dad, my great-great-grandfather, had been a doctor in the area.  He had his office in the front of his house and made his calls on horseback.  After he died, in the 1860's, his wife, my great-great-grandmother, took over his practice.

We got back, exhausted, around 9:00 last night, but it was a really fun day, and I'm glad we got to do it.

Thirty-Four Months Old

Summer has been in full swing, and we have been making this most of it.  We've spent time with friends, going to water parks and other fun places.  Cooper is shown here with my friend Laurie, at the Bicentennial Mall.

Don's parents came for a visit, and we spent a nice weekend with "Mimi and Granddad."

Cooper and I went to Memphis with my mom to visit her college roommate and longtime-friend, Alice.  While there, we went to an orchard and picked peaches, which Cooper loved!  We are still enjoying them.

My garden is giving us lots of goodies, and  Cooper's sunflowers opened up.  We have since cut them down and are drying them so we can hopefully eat some of the seeds.  We've gotten some potatoes too, squash and LOTS of tomatoes.  We've had so many cherry tomatoes that I am just having to let some of them rot because we can't eat them or even give them away fast enough.

Cooper is so inquisitive, learning new things every day.  He is going through a very sweet stage that we are enjoying (almost) every minute of.

Still no news for Don on the job front.  Prayers are appreciated as he continues to search and fill out applications, waiting for a phone call or e-mail.  He gets very frustrated and discouraged some days.

We are looking forward to starting back to Community Bible in a couple of weeks.  I am so thankful that Cooper loves learning about the word of God.  He goes around the house singing Bible songs and loves our Bible story time each morning.  We pray daily that he will grow to know and love Jesus and live for Him, and we are blessed to see that happening.

Lessons from a Chimney

     I was walking one morning while visiting my brother’s family in the mountains of North Carolina, when I noticed an old stone chimney standing in the midst of the brush beside the road.  It got me thinking.

     It appeared the fireplace side faced the road, just a few feet away from it.  “Why would the fireplace face that way?” I wondered.  “That would have put the house right in the middle of the road.”  Moments later I felt silly as I realized this house had stood long before the paved road on which I now walked ever existed.

     So what happened to the house?  Likely it burned.  Did the fire start in that very fireplace, a result of a wife’s effort to cook the game brought in by her husband, or just to keep the house warm on a cold, winter’s night?

     What happened to the family who lived there?  Did they escape and build another house nearby, perhaps leaving descendants who still live in the area?  It’s possible they all perished in the fire.  After all, there were no fire alarms in the house to awaken them at the first sign of smoke, no phones to call 911, bringing a fire truck racing to the rescue, its siren blaring as it tried to get there as quickly as possible to save some remnant of the home.

     More likely neighbors came running when they smelled smoke or saw it billowing over the treetops, bringing buckets to bail water from the nearby creek to throw on the fire and try to keep it from spreading.  Perhaps heroic men ran inside the burning house, risking their own lives to try to save a sleeping child.

     But it was too late, at least to save the house.  The family, if they survived, would have to start again from scratch, cutting trees down in the woods with an ax or a hand saw and building a new home.  No insurance money would come in the mail to reimburse them for their losses, though perhaps a group of friends or neighbors may have rallied together to help them through this time of hardship.

     This family would have lived by the sweat of their brows, growing their own food and storing it up for the winter in root cellars or canning jars, smoking meat from the animals they hunted down, or perhaps, if they could afford it, a hog butchered in the fall.  They probably sent their children out to pick berries on summer days, dodging snakes, bears, Indians and other dangers, known or unknown.  Did they lose their food supply in the fire too?  What, then, did they eat?  After all, there would be no food stamps from the government.

     Or possibly they had already moved out of their home long before it burned, maybe migrating west in a covered wagon in search of new opportunities. 

     Life was much harder then.  Harder, but simpler.  There were no cell phones ringing.  No soccer practice or piano lessons to rush to after school.  No Facebook to catch up on each day.  They simply didn’t have time for such frivolity.  A house didn’t need to be big and beautiful with a lush lawn and fancy cars parked in the garage; it only needed to serve as a shelter for the family who lived there. 

     Was it better, or worse, than the lives we live now?  I could argue either way.  There was much more dependence on one’s family, church and community.  People probably found more satisfaction in their work.  There was joy in simple things.  Divorce was nearly unheard of, as it was almost impossible for either a man or a woman to raise a family on their own.  A person who became widowed usually quickly remarried anyone who was available and willing, without regard for whether they were “in love,” or whether that person would make them happy for the rest of their life.  They just needed a companion to help them survive and care for their family.

     They had to be strong.  They had to work hard, day in and day out.   Medical care and sanitation weren’t nearly as advanced, so most people were much more familiar with the sting of death than we are today.  But as a people, they survived.  Survived to carry on the human race, to move forward and leave behind a heritage that we now enjoy.

     I’m sure this old chimney has quite a story to tell, a story I will probably never hear because it is lost to history.  But it represents the lives of generations past, people who helped make us who we are today.  A past that we, too, will someday be a part of.   

     Our forerunners left behind a legacy of hard work and perseverance, of depending on God and on each other.  Which leaves me to wonder, what is the legacy that we are leaving behind for generations to come?

Family Vacation '13 (Part 2 - Great Smoky Mountains)

After we left Boone, we drove to the Smoky Mountains, where we had rented a cabin for 3 nights.  This one was back in the "sticks," at the top of a REALLY steep hill.  We liked it okay, but it was a little unnerving for us city people to feel so far from civilization.

The first day we drove through the Smokies to Cherokee, an Indian reservation on the North Carolina side of the park.  The drive was beautiful, and we stopped to hike on the Oconoluftee Trail, one of only two hiking trails in the park that allows dogs.

Cooper is sort of in an in-between stage, where he thinks he's too big to ride in a stroller (and this wouldn't have been a great place for a stroller anyway), but he's not really ready for long walks either.  That presented a little challenge, but Don and I took turns piggy-backing him when he got tired of walking.

 

 

There is an old farm there that people can tour, which we have done before but not this time, since we had Nash with us.

The next day we left Nash at the cabin and went to breakfast at a pancake house (a family tradition) and then into Gatlinburg and walked the strip and got a few souvenirs.  This time we made Cooper ride in the stroller, which made things more pleasant for all of us.  I have a special liking for handmade soaps, so I got a few different bars of it there and also some saltwater taffy, another favorite of mine.

Afternoons and evenings were spent relaxing in the cabin, which had a nice porch on the front with rocking chairs and a screened-in one in the back with a swing.  It also had a jacuzzi that was so big Cooper thought it was a swimming pool, and a hot tub.  There was a little TV, but no Internet, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

The last morning we checked out of our cabin and then drove through Cade's Cove, where we saw some beautiful scenery and lots of wildlife: turkeys, deer (including a tiny, speckled fawn with its mother) and a mother bear with two little cubs.

It began to rain while we were in Cade's Cove, and we drove through rain most of the way home, but for the most part we had really nice weather while we were there and in Boone, even a little cooler than usual for this time of year.

It was a fun trip, and I'm thankful things worked out so that we got to take it.

Family Vacation '13 (Part 1 - Boone, NC)

We had already planned our family vacation before Don lost his job, so we decided to go ahead and do it.

We went first to Boone, NC, to visit my brother and his family.  We loved their mountain home, sitting in the chairs on their front porch and enjoying the beauty all around us!  It was great to see them, and Cooper had a fun time visiting with his cousins. 

We celebrated my sister-in-law's and my nephew's birthdays.

My very talented nieces gave us a wonderful concert, which included an impressive rendition of "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider."

They gave us a tour of the town and, among other things, we saw Samaritan's Purse, where my brother works.

 

Then we went on a hike and took in some of the beautiful scenery in the area.

 

On Sunday we went to church with them, then packed up and headed for the Smokies.

(to be continued)

A Day to Remember

This past Saturday was my dad's 77th birthday.  Wow, that's old!

Since my brother and his family moved to Boone, NC, we don't get to see them all that often, so I suggested to my brother that maybe we could all meet in Knoxville (the halfway point) on that day.  He was agreeable.  My dad was thrilled with the idea.  My mom joined us as well.

We decided to meet at the Cracker Barrel in Kodak, TN, just east of Knoxville, since there was a UT game that day and we didn't want to get caught up in the crowd.  After lunch we drove to Jefferson City to Cherokee Dam Park and spent some time there.

My niece, Grace, who has recently started playing the flute (which thrills me to no end), gave us a mini-concert.  

Before we left, his grandchildren sang a lovely rendition of "Happy Birthday" to my dad.

 

All in all (well, aside from that), it was a wonderful day.  It was great to see my brother and his family, and Cooper loved hanging out with his cousins.  I believe my dad, as well as the rest of us, were very blessed by it all.

Happy birthday, Papaw!

Tennessee Aquarium

Don took a couple of days off this week, and on Tuesday we took a day trip to Chattanooga and visited the Tennessee Aquarium.  We had a blast!

I had been before, but it has been years and a lot has changed.  My favorite part this time was getting to see Cooper enjoy it all. 

They had everything from penguins to otters, snakes, turtles, ducks, butterflies, seahorses, sharks, sting rays, jellyfish and more.

The sting rays were touchable, but Cooper wasn't quite ready to take that on.

You could even see some of the fish tanks from the inside.

Admission is a little pricey ($24.95 for adults), but we were able to get a $2.00 discount with our Nashville Zoo passes.  Children under 3 are free.  Parking is also a consideration (we paid $9.00).

It was a really fun day, though, educational for all of us and something I would recommend for both children and adults.

Oklahoma City Memorial

I took sort of an unexpected trip this week, to a place I had never been before.  I only wish it had been for a better reason.  My mom's sister died, and my brother and I, along with Cooper and my niece, accompanied my mom to Oklahoma City for her funeral.
-
While we were there we visited the memorial site for the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, bombed by terrorist Timothy McVeigh on April 19, 1995.  It was a very moving experience. 
-
This is the group of my family members who went with me.

There were two gates, one at each end of the site, with a reflective pool between them, where the building once stood.  The gate at one end is labeled 9:01, representing the minute just before the bombing and the innocence that America still had at that time.  The other gate is labeled 9:03, the minute after the bombing, when America's healing began.

There are chairs representing each of the 168 victims who was killed, arranged in rows by the floors of the building they were on, plus a few others for people who were killed outside of the building.  The smaller chairs represent children. 

A few represented both -- women who were pregnant at the time they were killed.

A piece of the old building that still stands holds plaques with the names of those in the building who survived the bombing.

Besides the victims and the survivors, a third group of people was also affected by the tragedy: all of us.  The reflective pool represents that group, as we can stand over it and look in and see ourselves.

Here is my niece Abbie standing in front of the Survivor's tree, which was in the parking lot of the building.  It caught fire at the time of the bombing, but lived, and now shades a section of the memorial.

An outer wall of a museum across the street (which we didn't go in) displays a saying written by one of the rescue workers just after the bombing.

Many children around the country were deeply affected by the tragedy.  These tiles in the children's area were painted by some of them. 

There are also some chalkboards for visiting children to write messages, as Abbie is doing here.

This fence is part of the original fence constructed around the building after the bombing.  People began placing tokens on it as soon as it was put up and continue to do so.  They are periodically removed and preserved in archives.

This is a beautiful memorial representing a tragedy which probably affected all of us who are old enough to remember it.  If you ever have a chance, I would encourage you to visit it.
-

This blog is dedicated to the memory of my Aunt Gloria, 1931-2012.