A Trip in Mr. Peabody's WABAC Machine

Mr. Fixit and I decided to take a daytrip to explore a little of my history. The trip took us to Whitwell, Marion County, Tennessee where I lived for about a year and a half when I was five years old. Forty years ago when we were visiting my family in Kentucky, we took a trip to see the Whitwell area. I wasn’t driving during that trip so I had no clue now how to find the houses where we had lived. On this trip all we had to rely on my 60 year old memories to find the little community, Sulfur Springs Crossroads, where we lived. It wasn’t on the map.


I don’t know where my dad worked immediately after WW II. I know that he managed a small grocery store in Paducah, Kentucky, when I was three or four. At the time, TVA was building power generating plants in Kentucky and Tennessee, and I suppose that he wanted to make more money so he applied at TVA. He was hired and sent to the southeastern corner of Tennessee. I don’t know for sure the name of the plant in Tennessee, but I think it was probably Hale’s Bar Dam. We moved there the summer when I was 5.

The house we found to rent was very nice. It was furnished and had a nicely appointed kitchen with running water, a “cow patch” across the road, and a mountain in our backyard. There was no indoor bathroom or its own outhouse. We had to use the outhouse of the landlord’s house which was next door. Another drawback was the coal mine trucks and the lumber trucks that raced up and down the road.

Gary, my older brother, learned to milk cows and to trap mink and muskrat. I learned to trap minnows. I also discovered whittling. I traded my cap gun and holster for a pearl handled pocket knife and spent many hours sitting on the porch whittling blocks of wood and sticks down to nothing. We also learned to run into the house when the bobcat who lived on the mountain came to visit. I learned to walk on stilts that my dad made, and I learned to ride my bike. We played cowboys and Indians with the boys across the road and explored the woods. Dad checked us for ticks on a daily basis.

The school we attended had two classrooms which served six grades taught by two teachers. It also had an outhouse and the water was from a pump fed by a sulfur spring. The water was almost undrinkable. And the smell! Horrible!! Miss Wilma, my teacher, wasn’t great, but I learned to read and spell above my grade level. My math, however, was terrible. My dad took over teaching me to add and subtract.

We lived there until after Christmas. I remember the presents I received that year. We had to move when the landlord’s son was unexpectedly discharged from the army.

The house was no longer there when we looked for it on that trip 40 years ago; there was only an empty lot. I was a bit disappointed that Mr. Fixit and I couldn’t locate where the house had been. I remember details about the location, but I had no idea where to start looking.

It's the Little Things

Sometimes it the little things that give me pleasure:

The smell of freshly mown grass.
Getting into a bed with fresh, crisp sheets on a hot, summer night.
Walking into the air conditioned house when the outdoor temperature and humidity are almost
       unbearable.

Follow-up Pics

These photos are a follow-up to my post of August 2, 2010, in which I showed the neighbor's tree after the yard guys had merely clipped the muscadine vines climbing it. I also included some pictures of our cats.

A few days after clipping the vines the young men came back and pulled down some of the dead vines making it look a little better. You can see how the vines killed the foliage on the lower half of the tree.

Little Girl

Little Girl, our inside cat, takes my afternoon nap time reading time as her time to have her tummy

rubbed. Mr. Fixit says she is the spoiled. Nah, not a bit.

Hi!

I'm back! I've tried over the past couple of weeks to leave blogging behind, but here I am again. I discovered something rather alarming. Blogging has become one of my few conversational outlets; it's also a little sad. Even if no one ever comments, it feels like I'm a little more connected to world, and I don't feel so lonely.

While taking this short leave, every day I would see or experience something and  think, "Wow, that would be a good subject to blog about." (Are the grammar police out there? I ended that sentence with a preposition.) Now that I'm sitting at the keyboard, I only have a few ideas. Also, I have a bunch of chores to do today so they will have to wait.

The weather has cooled a bit; the forecast calls for a high of 95 degrees today. The humidity is down a bit. It has been possible to sit on the deck in the late afternoon without sweat pouring and gasping for breath. I'm so glad.

bye

That's Entertainment!

Film

Mr. Fixit and I watched “Avatar” yesterday. I was a bit surprised. We both liked it. Mr. Fixit usually hates fantasy, but he enjoyed this one. I thought I would have the same reaction to this one as I had to “E.T.” when it was in theaters years ago. Everyone thought it was W-O-N-D-E-R-F-U-L. I thought of it as a nice little Disney type film. I’m afraid that I have a new phobia besides my fear of heights. Every time someone lay in the pods, I became a little nauseated when they closed the top. I probably only actually watch 60% of the movie because of the flying and the running in the trees at great heights.

I also watched “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” using the Netflix “Watch Now” feature on the computer. I don’t usually watch movies streamed on the computer because the film always stops several times for buffering which is so aggravating. This was the first time I had been able to sit through a foreign language film with subtitles. It was very interesting, but there were several graphic, disturbing scenes. There was an unexpected ending; at least for me, it was unexpected. I still haven’t decided to read the book. Sometimes it seems to me that books that have been translated from their original language could have been changed from what the author was trying to say. I know, it’s goofy of me, but I always wonder if the translation carries the same emotion as the original. Is Shakespeare in Japanese the same as it is in English?

Books
I read 9 Dragons by Michael Connelly. I wasn’t sure I would like this one, but as usual, Mr. Connelly nailed it. I do think that his main character Harry Bosch is getting to be a little long in the tooth. The character talks about being in Hong Kong 40 years ago on R & R when he was serving in Viet Nam. He's still able to shoot, fight, run, jump, climb and raise a 13-year-old daughter. Is that an agist thing to say?

Radio
Today I visited several old time radio sites to download a few old radio shows. I included several episodes of “Phillip Marlowe,” “Nero Wolfe,”, “Nick Carter,” “Barry Craig,” and “The Falcon.” I then put them on the MP3 player to listen to in the car or at night. There is an unexpected benefit from listening to these old shows at night, in bed, in the dark. Perhaps because even though I am hearing about murder, crime, and mayhem, it takes me back to a more innocent time, and I sleep the sleep of the innocents. That is to say, sometimes I fall asleep five minutes after  the beginning of the show and remain asleep for as long as the shows are on. I always wake up when the list is exhausted and music starts to play. It a nice cure for my insomnia. I have been sleeping as long as two hours at the time. I have been feeling so much better.

I was a little busy today getting Mr. Fixit ready to go on vacation. He’s leaving tomorrow. He’s going to meet some of his family in Connecticut. I didn’t realize flying had become so complicated and expensive. There are extra fees for luggage (he’s only taking a backpack), he had to get his boarding pass himself online, and, of course, there are rules about what you may carry. I liked it better when you could go to your travel agent and let them handle everything, and no cared if you checked bags or if you carried a bottle of shampoo.

After I take him to the airport tomorrow, I'm going to stop at the library so I'll have something to do while he's gone. I'm also going to watch movies, do a little needlework, and continue working on my yard sale stuff. And that's my vacation.

See, I Told You!

According to Asheville (NC) Citizen-Times a 58-year-old woman riding a three wheeled motorcycle became the 5th traffic fatality this year on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Boone, NC.


I had reason to be scared spitless (See July 18, 2010, post).