January 28. 2013. Home via Jonesboro

 

 

 

 

 

January 28. 2013. We are home again. The first photo is Craighead County Lake from the campground this morning. We drove by Mom's house and snapped a couple of pictures of the house and neighborhood before heading home. The house seems to be well kept. There is lumber under the carport. I surmise the owners are continuing to remodel the interior. The final photo is the church which Dad helped to build as chairmen of the board of deacons after the old one was destroyed by fire.

The final results from the photo quiz are in. Emory and Miles got 7-8 out of 10, depending on whether Annie is the grader or whether I am. I am an easier grader than she is. So, we're calling the contest a tie. Annie will give each grandchild (and Buster) five dollars. Jens gets nothin' despite his whining and complaining about being excluded from the contest. He seems to think he is my adopted grandson.

The trip by the numbers: We traveled 3500 miles over the last four weeks and used about 250 gallons of gas. We stayed in one commercial campground, one National Park and one county campground. All the rest were state parks. The average cost was about $30 per night. Harvey performed well. He now has 42,000 miles on the odometer, 30,000 of which we've driven. He'll go back to his cave tomorrow and remain there until we retrieve him again in June. Where will we go in June? We're talking about eastern Canada again. The drawback is that it is probably a 5000-mile trip. That's a lot of driving and leaves little time for sitting and reading. We'll see.

So long for now.



 

January 27, 2013. Trumann Nastalgia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

January 27, 2013.  We made better progress today than expected.  As the sun set, we found ourselves in Jonesboro, AR, the town in which I was born and where my parents lived and died.  Of course, I was raised in Trumann, 15 miles southeast toward Memphis on Highway 63.  We drove around Trumann in route so I could show Annie, for the umpteenth time, where I grew up.  Tomorrow, we will drive by 1811 Greenwood, the home my parents owned after moving to Jonesboro. 

Bill Teague was the Hart's Bread delivery man when I was a youngster.  Melvin Robins helped Bill every weekend by getting up at 3:30 AM and running Bill's route as a helper.  Often I would go along, stacking loaves of bread on shelves in stores in Trumann and in the surrounding area.  Bill worked hard and saved his money.  His dream was to own his own store someday.  The first picture is Teague's Market, Bill's dream.  His store is small and Bill supplements his grocery sales by barbecuing on the side.  Bill would be in his mid-seventies now. 

The second picture is the Maxie Theater, one of two "picture shows" in Trumann in the fifties.  Tuesday night was Dime Night.  You could see a movie, have a soda and a bag of popcorn for a quarter.  In the fifties, movie theaters ran serials, a five to ten-minute continuing series which ended each week with a cliffhanger.  You'd have to go back each week to find out how your hero escaped certain death.  The bricked up door on the side of the theater is the entry to the balcony where black Americans were forced to sit.  They were not allowed to sit downstairs with white Americans.  Separate public facilities were the norm in the south in the fifties. 

The WWII Memorial contains my father's name and the name of Uncle Rex.  Both were extremely proud of their service to the country.  However, neither talked about the war in my presence.  The light brick building in the background is the elementary school I attended through the sixth grade.  The church is the building in which I was baptised as a boy.  It was then the First Baptist Church of Trumann.  The final picture is today's First Baptist Church. 

The yellow house belonged to my Aunt Laurene.  Someone has rescued it.  At her death, the house was terribly run down.  I did not believe it was salvageable.  Aunt Laurene was a hoarder.  Every room in the house was completely filled with stuff she could not discard.  There was a path from the kitchen, to the living room, to the bathroom and to the bedroom.  The house remains in a deteriorating neighborhood, but it looks 100 times better than it did. 

The Community Center was built by the Singer company - Trumann was a Singer Company town.  It was the site of boxing matches, wrestling, basketball games, dances and every other community activity.  Of the the two houses you see, one is where my Uncle Rex and his family lived until he got a little more prosperous.  The second is where my boyhood best friend, Melvin, lived.   The brick house was built on the lot where I was raised.  Dad rented the house after we moved and the tenants ransacked it to the point of worthlessness.  So, Dad gave the house and two lots to the church.  The house was razed and a parsonage was built in its place.  The large trees you see are the same trees that shaded me when I mowed the grass behind a manual push mower during the sweltering Arkansas summers. 

The final house is typical of those built by Singer for its employees.  It is what remains of a three-room shotgun shack, called that because you could fire a shotgun through the front door and blow the contents of the house out the back door.  This one has an add-on at the rear.  The addition was constructed after the house was purchased from Singer.  There were hundreds of these houses in Trumann in the fifties.  Workers who made $28 per week building sewing machine cabinets would pay Singer $8 a week to rent one of these. 

So, there you have it.  A quick tour of the town that made Malachi Farkley.  I hope you enjoyed it.  Annie didn't. 

January 26, 2013. Final Day on the Coast

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

January 26, 2013.  We did it all today, our last day in Gulf Shores, Alabama.  We slept late.  After we cleared our heads, we noticed a commotion across the road where residents were watching two raccoons in a tree.  We sat outside in our big fluffy chairs and read.  We biked for nearly two hours, walked on the beach and we saw the sun set over the Gulf.  Finally, we watched the moon rise over a perfectly still Middle Lake. 

We will start home tomorrow.  Home is 900 miles northwest of Gulf Shores.  We plan to take the trip in three bites of about 300 miles each.  That will get us back Tuesday evening. 

This has been a different trip.  Other trips have been mostly travel with stays of two or three days along the way.  We have been in the Gulf area since January 4.  Most of that time, we have been between Gulf Shores and Panama City, FL, a distance of about 140 miles.  There has been less driving and more biking.  There has been more book reading and less map reading.  Annie likes that.  I like it, too.  I don't know that it will change the way we travel.  Time will tell.

There is a feeling of finality as we spend our last night here.  I could do this longer, I think.  But, Annie's mother is still feeling the effects of a urinary tract infection.  Moreover, there is a break in the weather in the Midwest and we want to get Harvey back to the Harvey cave before the cold weather returns.  Those considerations resulted in our decision to return a few days early. 

The blog may stop here, or I may have a few concluding entries on the way back.  Feel free to drop by.  Don't expect a lot of pictures, though.  If there are some, they'll probably be "through the windshield."  

January 25, 2013. Feral Cats, Snakes, Gators and Trolls

 

 

 

 

 

 

January 25, 2013.  We have feral cats living in the brush behind our campsite.  I tried to approach one this afternoon.  He fixed his eyes on me to be sure I didn't get too close.  An instant after this picture was taken, he scampered back into the brush.  There are also snakes moving about in the campground.  The one shown above apparently was sunning and warming himself on the asphalt drive.  That was unwise.  By the time we happened by, he had been run over by 5-6 cars.  I don't know what kind of snake it was.  Well, yes I do.  It was the dead kind. 

There are alligators here, but we haven't seen them moving about.  Annie wondered aloud if alligators hibernate during the winter.  So, we asked Google.  It turns out that they actually "brummate."  They slow their metabolism but do not hibernate.  They can be active in temperatures down to 40 degrees even though they are cold-blooded reptiles.  In warmer weather (today it was 70 degrees with bright sunshine here) they become very active.  Annie remains vigilant.  Did you know that alligators can hold their breath for 60 minutes underwater? 

Finally, the troll.  We were biking this afternoon on a new trail which featured live oaks covered with Spanish moss.  As we were returning to the campground, another trail merged with ours.  Walking down the other trail was a smallish man with a Rasputin black beard wearing a Leprechaun flat hat.  I was past him before I could ask his permission to take his picture.  I thought about going back, but I was afraid he was one of those trolls whose stare can paralyze his victims.  I rode on. 

So, it has been a day of feral cats, snakes, gators and trolls.  That, and a temperature which reached 70 degrees make it a good day.  I hope you had a good day, too.

January 23, 2013. Ft. Pickens to Gulf Shores, AL

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

January 23, 2013.  Today was move day, but not until we toured Fort Pickens.  I told you yesterday that it was built in 1834.  Actually, it was completed in 1834 after five years of construction.  The walls are four feet thick and constructed of brick made on the site.  Here's something very interesting.  The fort was built by the United States Government using slave labor imported from New Orleans.  The government could find few laborers who were willing to brave the heat and humidity of the Florida coast.  It solved the problem by allowing the contractor to rent slaves from slave owners nearby.  Ironic isn't it;  a fort designed to protect the freedoms of white Americans was built by black men who had no choice in the matter.  And that arrangement was tacitly approved by the United States Government.  Hummmm . . . I wonder what other public projects were bulit using slave labor. 

 

There are many dead trees along the coast.  Pensacola is a common target of hurricanes.  Most recently, it was hit by Dennis (2004) and Ivan (2005).  We drove through this area after Ivan and the devastation was terrible.  It is easy to understand why many trees are striped of leaves and many are dead, waiting for the next big wind to blow them to the ground.  The bare trees do make for productive bird watching.  We spotted several nests with what we thought were Ospreys sitting.  I compared the pictures with pictures of birds inhabiting Pensacola Beach.  Upon more careful inspection, the bird in the picture appears to be a type of heron, probably a Great Blue Heron, although it could be a Green Heron. 

 

We are back at Gulf State Park.  We biked around the park this afternoon.  We rode for more than and hour without retracing ourselves.  This is a big park covering several miles.  Many of the residents are decorating for Mardi Gras.  Across the road from our campsite is the sign warning us not to aggravate the alligators.  I don't think Annie needed to be told that.  The lake behind our campsite looks like prime alligator habitat to me.  Annie is on full alert.  She would say, "I'm just being watchful.  You can't be too careful, you know."    

 

We've been told that Annie's mother has a urinary tract infection.  We are ready to return home if necessary.  However, she has been diagnosed and is on an antibiotic.  So, we'll see how things develop.  We hope to see some improvement as early as tomorrow.