A Man Named Bill

This wood spirit (right) is my first attempt at wood carving.

I want to tell you about Bill Tripp from Michigan.
He and I have become buddies in the RV resort because he has helped me explore the possibilities of wood carving as a new hobby. Bill, who has a shock of perfectly white hair, is in his late 70s and is generally considered a bit of a character in the resort.
He is an old Marine, having served in Korea in the 50's. He has a busy, busy mind that rarely stays on topic for more than a minute or two and he tends not to hear too well. When you repeat a question he usually shoots his right hand up to his head and slaps his ear, saying, "I don't hear so well, y'know. It's the bombs! It's the bombs!"
What I like about this fellow is that he and his wife, Donna, have little money, like us, but they have a routine in which they help their fellow man.
Bill took me along the other day. He had already picked up free, nearly out-of-date bread and rolls from a bakery. He gave some to a Mexican family up the road who run a fruit and vegetable stand. They, in turn, invited him to take away the tired fruit and veggies from their stand.
We drove another few minutes north to a farm where he fed the fruit and veggies to a cow and her two calves. They moo-ed in delight as we split water melons apart and they dug into the fleshy meat of the melons. They loved the stale bread and the tomatoes, peppers and oranges that we threw into their field.
We then moved over to the fruit trees where we gathered ripe pink and white grapefruit and all manner of oranges - bell-shaped, tangerines. We put those into plastic bags and stacked them in the back of his truck.
We then chain-sawed the tired old boards of a house that he had helped demolish on the farm during the past few months. We heaped some of the boards into the back of his truck and drove up to the farmhouse where we dumped the wood on an outdoor fireplace where it will be burned.
Now we started to feed the pig that was snuffling and snorting and rooting around in her muddy pigpen. She is partial to melon but also loves stale bread and anything else he has available.
We moved over to the rooster and his harem. They get white bread. Next door was a peacock, his hen and their two offspring. They get whole wheat bread. By this time, the cow and her two calves had made it through the field and were lined up at the fence next to the pigpen to try for an additional tidbit. Bill opened a pack of dated Snowball sugar puffs, discarded by the bakery though they probably have enough preservatives in them to last another century. I made a friend for life with the cow when I fed her this sugary treat. She moo-ed for more and kept trying to nudge her calves away so she could enjoy this treat which probably will result in awesomely sugary milk.
We washed out the rear of the truck and headed back to the resort, tired from the exertion but knowing the final task was to provide the bags of succulent fruit, just plucked from the trees, to the folks who might want to increase their Vitamin C intake.

The Continuing Soap Opera

We're back in our slot at Terra Ceia RV Resort in Palmetto, Florida. Hello, Boyce, the dim-witted neighbor who worked hard last winter at two jobs - being a janitor at a local school and doing all kinds of things at the nearby Walmart - is gone. Gone. Gone as in his lot is empty and he has moved away.

It only takes a couple of minutes with the neighbors to find out that Boyce was thrown out because he failed to pay his lot rent. He also made a habit of borrowing money from his neighbors and then failing to pay back his debt. When they came to haul away his mobile home, the wheels apparently fell off and this caused a bit of a stir.

He had taken up with a woman in the resort who lived in another home. She, we are told, is a lesbian who is pregnant and large with the child by her black drug dealer. She and Boyce seemed to have a thing when we were here earlier in the year. So who knew. The woman still lives here. But the fact that she is messing about with a black man has incensed some of our more redneck residents.

Jo was bombarded with the word "nigger" by one of our neighbors within the first 10 minutes of our being in our slot. Apparently there is some fear that our black brothers are trying to move into the neighborhood. What they don't seem to realize is when we lived in St. Petersburg back in the 1970s - it is the city immediately to our north, across Tampa Bay - Palmetto then was known as a poor black enclave. Then the whites discovered the real estate values were much lower across the bay and residential developments sprouted like mushrooms.

Soothing waters

These two turtles take in the warm sun on a sunken log in Little Manatee Rivers Park.

Our laminated wooden paddles dip, dip, dip into the tea-colored waters of the Little Manatee River. It is so quiet that the dripping drops of water when we lift the paddles from the river make the only sound.
We slide along under the Spanish moss that hangs from the oak trees on the river bank. Not a sound. There are three turtles sitting on a half-submerged log. They watch our arrival, craning their necks to keep us in view since we represent the greatest threat to them in this peaceful wilderness.
Snook, 18 inches to two feet long, make their way upriver. They seem to move with purpose but nothing is chasing them. Perhaps they are chasing smaller fish. A pileated woodpecker flap, flap, flaps overhead. He/she lands on a dead palm tree and we hear him drumming his beak into the wood.
There is almost a guilty pleasure as we pass slowly and peacefully along this waterway in our canoe.
Earlier in the day, I had connected to the Internet and read that one of my favorite reporters from 30 years ago, Lisa Schnellinger, had just flown into Erbil, Iraq to train two groups of Iraqi journalism trainers on voter-oriented election coverage. Arghhhh! Why am I enjoying myself on the Little Manatee while she is putting her life on the line? See; there's that old Calvinist thing that creates guilt in those who are not struggling!
Well, I'll be thinking about this courageous young woman who's trying to make the world a slightly better place.

Man's Inhumanity

One of the Andersonville POWs at the end of the war.

It was a perfect day to visit Andersonville Prison in the back roads of southwestern Georgia. The drizzling, dreary day was the backdrop to this terrible place. For it was here that the Confederate Army created a POW camp for Yankee prisoners during the Civil War. It was here, in this 26.5 acres of open land with a filthy, bacteria-laden stream running through it, that 45,000 Union soldiers were incarcerated. And 13,000 of them died of disease or starvation.
We came here not to be uplifted, but to feel the pain of war and man's inhumanity to man. This terrible place now is a National Historic Site. It contains a museum honoring all POWs. This, on its own, is a bit overwhelming since it adds layers upon layer to the horrors we and others have perpetrated.
But it forces us, again, to confront our terrible history.

“My heart aches for these poor retches, Yankees though they are, and I am afraid God will suffer some terrible retribution to fall upon us for letting such things happen. If the Yankees should ever come to southwest Georgia and go to Anderson and see the graves there, God have mercy on the land!”
A Southern woman who climbed
a guard tower and looked down upon
the stockade in 1864.

The Southern captain who was in charge of the prison was hanged in Washington after the end of the war. His explanation: “I was following orders.”

Thirty miles away is Plains, Georgia, the home of President Jimmy Carter. We drove down there after lunch and spent time in the Peanut store and in the Plains High School that now is another historic site where Carter is honored. His brother, Billy, had a gas station in town and it has been turned into a museum. Billy died back in the 1980s.
Before we headed here – just 100 miles north of the Florida border, we stopped off in Atlanta to visit the CNN headquarters. I remember when CNN started back in 1980. My how it has grown. Even though CNN is not doing well in the ratings (coming in behind Fox and MSNBC among the 24-hour cable operations) it still is an impressive place to visit. We toured the multiple studios and our guide even took us to a mockup of a weather studio where we could see how the green screen works. He used three youngsters for the demonstration and made them disappear on screen when he placed a green cloth over them. The class clown, of course, had to raise his hand above the cloth and it appeared on the weather map as a disembodied hand.
CNN's International network had anchor studios in Atlanta, London and Hong Kong so they can track with the sun. CNN en Espanol is a massive enterprise, all in Spanish, whereas the International feeds are dubbed into around 40 different languages. All of this came spinning out of the brain of Ted Turner who conceived of the notion of have news 24 hours a day.

Buddha and the Bugs

I just came across this blog from 2004, written when Jo and I were in Siem Reap, Cambodia. It had been filed in a different place than the current blogs. But it made me laugh - again. Maybe it will have the same effect on you.


And the Lord Buddha looked down on Room 15 of Earthwalkers Guest House in Siem Reap Town and he saw the biting bugs climbing on the walls, all one thousand of those bugs. And he saw the bugs walking on the ceiling and on the floor of Room 15. And the Lord Buddha said, “This probably is not so good.”
And the man and the woman in Room 15, trying to sleep in the hot, sultry night, tried to make peace with the one thousand bugs. And they were queasy for the bugs they were not afraid, nor were they shy about biting the man and the woman. And, lo, there were three crickets in the room, placed there by the Lord Buddha so that the man and the woman might find respite from the biting bugs. And the three crickets sought diligently to reach out and eat each of the one thousand biting bugs. And they were sorely unsuccessful.
And the man said unto the woman, “Let us turn off the light that lighteth the room, for the light be the attraction for the biting bugs.” And so they did. And the man and the woman lay in the darkness of Room 15 and they felt the biting bugs jumping upon their persons. And the bugs did bite. And even as the crickets did their best to eat many of the biting bugs they were not successful. And the man rose up in the darkness. And he cursed the biting bugs and said he could not live side by side with the biting bugs.
And the man went unto the first floor of the guest house and spoke with the manservant, Narith. And the man said unto the manservant, “Get thee unto the Room 15 and slay the many biting bugs for it is impossible for us to lay down our heads and sleep. And the manservant picked up the spray can of insecticide and went unto Room 15 and slew the many hundreds of biting bugs, all those that the man had not slain and those that the crickets had not eaten. And there was a great cloud in the air and the man and woman left the room while the manservant slew the biting bugs, for the air was unfit for breathing.
And the manservant brought a broom and he brought also unto Room 15 a shovel and he cleaned the room of the dead biting bugs and even the dead crickets. For they had to be sacrificed so that the man and the woman could inhabit the room. There was no joy in Room 15 that the crickets had to die so that the man and the woman could sleep.
And peace fell upon Room 15. And in the morning, the manservant said unto the manager of the guesthouse that he had never seen so many biting bugs in one place. He said that he was sore afraid of the biting bugs but he had dispatched them and they would bother the guests no more. In the sun of the new day the man and the woman knew in their hearts they would return to the earth in another time and they would come as biting bugs for they had much penance to pay for the death and destructions that they had brought upon the community of biting bugs.

On the Mountain Top

A fast-rolling river cuts through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Elkmont, Tennessee.

“They carefully got all the mud and they laid it out on the rocks. And when it was dry enough, Grandfather threw it out into the water, and it became land. And the buzzard flew with his great wings. Each time when his wings went down, it would make a big valley. And each time the wings would go up, it would make a big mountains.
- Adapted from Living Stories of the Cherokee, “How the World was Made.” Kathi Smith Littlejohn


In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth....And God said, Let the waters under heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear. And it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters he called seas.
- Genesis 1:1,9,10, The Bible, King James Version

It came to pass that we came into the Great Smoky Mountains to camp amid the mountains and the billions of falling leaves. The creeping walking pneumonia that I have been battling since sitting on a ridge in Reston, Virginia, is not better. But sitting in the national park lifted the spirits. Outside our RV on Tuesday night was a man with a sophisticated telescope. He had it trained on Jupiter so we watched that planet in the pristine night air. Four moons orbited around the planet and he said if we watched long enough we would be able to see gas trails coming off the planet. What a treat!

You have no electricity, running water or sewers or other niceties in the National Park. So it was a cold night: temperatures dropped to 36 degrees. Jo and I huddled under layers of comforters and blankets and the cat snuggled into the bend of Jo's knees. She was content to have us back in the rig after two nights when we luxuriated in the welcoming home of old boating buddies Terry and Susan in Banner Elk, North Carolina. Their home is perched on the side of a mountain and sends out vibrations of peacefulness. They took us up Grandfather Mountain. It's a mile high and the ice coated trees at the summit. But there's also a million dollar view up there and we loved watching the bears, deer and two cougars. This was a rare treat.

Now we are enjoying the beauty of the Smokies. But the road in, through Sevierville, Pigeon's Forge and Gatlinburg was the most horrendously commercial, filled with the ticky-tacky detritus of the worst of American consumption and gaudiness. It took more than an hour to drive 18 miles because of the nose-to-tail traffic.

So it was a spiritually uplifting moment to drive to the top of the Smokies and make our way to Clingmans Dome, a sacred mountain to the Cherokees, where the Magic Lake was once seen. The Great Spirit told the Cherokees that, “if they love me, if they love all their brothers and sisters, and if they love the animals of the earth, when they grow old and sick, they can come to a magic lake and be made well again.” My cough and rattling lungs were not healed by the climb to 6,600 feet. But I have faith that the journey in itself is the healing part.

This is where the Cherokee Trail of Tears began. You may remember, back in June, when we parked at the Trail of Tears Park alongside the Mississippi, we told a bit about the trail. This is the place where the Cherokees lived for thousands of years. And this is where the white settlers discovered gold and the fertile land they craved. So the Army pushed the Indians to the unexplored west.

A Ford van from Ohio pulled up alongside us and out stepped a gaggle of Mennonites. The men's pants don't have much in the way of pockets; they had a single button that held a triangular patch that, when closed, acted as a pocket. The ladies were in their white linen hats. All spoke in old German. They, too, came to feel the spirituality of the place.

Meeting George Washington

George Washington rides out.

We've parked our rig on a hill overlooking the capital. We took advantage of our location to visit the home of George Washington at Mount Vernon in Virginia. And we took, among other things, a slave tour. We were left in awe about this rich farmer who managed more than 300 slaves by the end of his life. Our tour guide, a Virginia gentleman named Allen Sandler, did a super job of shining light into the darkness of slave life.
George, like nine other presidents of the U.S., first inherited his father's slaves when the old man died when George was aged 12. When he married Martha, a widow of one of the richest men in the the commonwealth, he picked up about 200 slaves through her dead husband's estate. Interesting to us was that he did not have any right to sell the slaves he had acquired through marriage.
After the war that resulted in independence for the colonies he began to rethink the moral issues of owning other men and women. He decided he never would sell his slaves on the auction block. And that, in itself, created a huge problem for him. It meant he had to feed and clothe these people as their number increased. Remember, when a slave got to be too old for work, you had to effectively put them out to pasture but still feed and clothe them. At one point he complained that the number of slaves could bankrupt him. The entire slave culture was a no-win situation. You had totally unmotivated workers who spent more time trying to figure how to avoid work instead of trying to accomplish tasks. They also spent much of their time trying the cheat and steal from their master because morale was not at highest priority. Then you had to have a class of overseers to push and prod them.
He actually included in his will that his slaves would be freed upon the death of Martha, assuming she outlived him. She in fact lived for more than two years after he died and told her friends that she lived in fear because so many slaves were awaiting her death. Could she really trust Lilly, the cook, for example, or the black ladies who cleaned her house?
We met up with a black re-enactor who was George Washington's riding aide. He did a grand job of explaining his life at the side of his master. I asked him why he felt loyalty to his master and he made an elegant and moving response about believing that his master's leading of the fight for freedom was like a small snowball at the top of the mountain. He said many of the slaves believed this snowball's fall down the mountain would eventually encompass the needs of the slaves. He said he and they didn't realize it would take 63 years after his master's death before the Emancipation Proclamation would be signed by President Lincoln.
We wandered through Mount Vernon, a sprawling home that is quite spectacular. Washington designed it and redesigned through the years. It looks as though it is built of stone, the blocks being beveled and snugly placed row upon row. It turned out, however, that the huge home is built of wood. The wood was cut and beveled and then was varnished and painted. While the paint was still wet, sand was sprinkled on the wood resulting in the fake stone look.
It is situated on a bluff overlooking the Potomac River. It sits on around 5,000 acres. The land mostly was used to grow tobacco – the only crop that could be exported to Europe back then. But George changed that over to wheat and grains because he built a distillery and he could supply his own ingredients for the booze.
But it was labor intensive to farm that many acres in those good old days before the tractor. Hence the need for the Africans.
He also brought in many white indentured servants and Mr. Lee, his riding aide, made it very clear that these indentured servants were similar in many ways to slaves. They signed a contract that paid their passage over and they agreed to work for the master for seven years. But, once here, you began to owe your life to the company store and that, along with transgressions, extended the contract year after year. So the Irish and the Scots who worked his farm were there, effectively, for life.
George brought in a gardener from Scotland and he oversaw a large number of slaves because the master liked fancy gardens and kept a substantial vegetable patch. He also had trees planted, some of which stand majestically along the approach to the house to this day.
His greatest contributions, I think, were twofold. After winning the war of independence he resigned his commission instead of following the advice of some of his officers who suggested he should name himself king of the colonies. And, when he was elected the first president, he ran for only two terms. This set the precedent for all other presidents.
Jo was most impressed with a small exhibit in one of the museums. Inside a low-light room, inside a circular case, were his false teeth. They were not made of wood, despite the circulated myth. These fine choppers were made from human teeth, along with pieces of bone from a cow. They were set in a plate of lead so it is a bit of a miracle that the lead didn't affect his brain.

Restoring the soul

This fine fellow is dressed as an officer of the 42nd regiment of the Black Watch which was sent to New York in 1776 to put down the rebellion in the colonies.

There was a drizzle permeating the air as we rolled over Mohawk Mountain and came to the little village of Goshen in northwest Connecticut where we attended the Scottish Games. This was the culmination of a soul restoration program over the past month that had taken us deep into the backwoods of Maine.
We had canoed in the silent, still waters of Acadia National Park. We had fairly stuffed ourselves with awesomely cheap Maine lobster. Because of over supply, the price has fallen sharply and we were happy to the beneficiaries of the sweet meat at $3.95 a pound.
We had launched our canoe on Sebasticook Lake in the middle of the state where we stayed with old sailing friends. And we had criss-crossed Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, admiring the screaming scarlets and magentas and orange leaves of the maple trees as they prepared to shed their beauty for the coming winter.
Now, on this drizzling day, we came to Goshen. The misty meadows seemed a fitting place for the Highland Games. And the visiting preacher noted the occasion by thanking God for making the day a "perfect replica of what we might experienced were we standing on the beloved old country."
We had come for the sheepdog trials and watched, laughing, as a woman shepherd called to her dog to "come by" and to "stay down; stay down" as he rounded up three geese and tried to bring them down the field. The geese were having none of it, though, and they had to be declared the winners.
Another dog did a great job of rounding up the sheep and bringing them home to the pen.
We watched rugged men and even-more-rugged women throw the hammer across a field. The women were hefty and did a pretty good job. But it took a powerful black man in a plain dark blue kilt to win the event with an awesome throw of 124 feet.
In one of the tents, Jo held up a silver goblet and asked me what it was for. I told her it is a "quaich" and that it's formally used for toasting friends. The owner of the tent spoke up: "You're the first person whose ever pronounced that correctly," he said. I explained I was a native of Scotland, which led to the questions about where. It turned out he and I were from the same town, Inverness. He wanted to know where in Inverness and I told him Haugh Road. He not only knew the road but knew the old grocery shop over which we lived 60 years ago. He and his wife told us they had come over from Scotland 10 years ago. She said Inverness is the fastest-growing town in the whole of Scotland because of a huge spurt in jobs from a medical supply manufacturer.
We wandered over to Camerons, the pie-maker. We bought our Scottish meat pies, some sausage rolls and Forfar bridies. These will be used slowly as we wander south to the warmth of Florida.

This young girl recounts her voyage across the Atlantic to Plimouth Plantation in what would become Massachusetts.

I'm crouched in the forecastle of the Mayflower II, huddling to keep out of the brisk breeze rolling in out of the southeast. Beside me is a young girl, wearing at least four layers of rough-woven clothes. She grasps a pottery jug in which she carries a little water. She is recounting for me the horror of the voyage across the ocean in 1620 – for that is her reality. She tells me her brother and her sister died on the voyage. Her father, mother and another sister survived. There are no histrionics coming from her; just the honest simplicity of her narrative.
I am fully engaged in her make-believe world. I ask what her father did in England and she tells me he was a shop-keeper. But that reality trips me up. For this place to which she has come, Plimouth Plantation, the first settlement of white people in the northern part of the new world, is an inhospitable place. There is no possibility that a shop-keeper can thrive here for this is place where a man must turn his hand to pure survival.
Winter is coming, there are no crops possible for the growing season is over. The ship's master aboard the Mayflower wants to load the hold with furs and other goods to take home to England so his owners will gain something from this voyage. But there is no possibility of this and so he loads the hold of the ship with stones to provide the necessary ballast.
“Why did your father come here?” I asked her. “This is no place for a shop-keeper, surely.” A little smile played on her thin lips, she looked off into the middle distance and said quietly, “We came for the land.” Then she explained how each adult aboard the Mayflower was guaranteed a share. And a share translated to 50 acres of land. She, as a young girl, was entitled to a half share. Her baby brother would be allocated a quarter share – 12.5 acres.
“It is my dowry, you see, sir,” she said to me. This land could never have been her's in England. Now she tells me her father is struggling to get the shares of the dead children put in his name so that he can enlarge his holdings and make up, in a small way, for their deaths.
Jo and I had spent the morning in Plimouth Plantation, mingling with the Wampanaok Indians who worked the land, eking out a living while straddling time. They spoke with us in contemporary English and were able to provide us through their oral history the saga of death that followed the arrival of the white people. They spoke of how their village had been essentially destroyed before the arrival of the men, women and children aboard the Mayflower. French traders had come through and spread their diseases, including yellow fever, which wiped out more than 90 per cent of the village. These were not warlike people. I asked who they considered their enemies before the arrival of the white man and a middle-aged women, marked with zig-zag tattoos on her face and arms, drew her deerskin top around her shoulders and told me the tribe struggled with the Narragansett Indians to the southwest. But mostly they got along, she said.
We left her village and made our way along a primitive path to the Plantation where the new settlers worked at basic survival while fearing God and struggling to maintain order and solidarity in the face of the potential of attacks by the “heathen savages”.
We wandered into the thatched home (just one room inside) of Mr. Brewster who preached to the settlers. He told us he was not an ordained minister and could not serve the sacraments to the people. But all members of the community were required to come to the public meeting house at the top of the hill in the village each sabbath. There, he read from a bible that pre-dated the King James Version because, he told me, he could not accept that the king had the right to to remove all of the explanations in the margins which appeared in the earlier version of the bible. “The king believes – mistakenly, I believe, sir – that the common people need not know the explanations. He believes – mistakenly, I believe, again – that the priest can explain what they need to know.” He worked up quite a lather as he explained to us that the Puritans did not need a church building – for the church is within each person, he said. And then, as I drew him out, he explained there are still Church of England believers in the community and there are Separatists who have a much more austere view of the role of the church and the clergy than even the Puritans. They are a problem for Mr. Brewster for they can upset the potential stability of the tiny community.
We crossed the dirt street and came into the home of a middle-aged woman who worked at her wooden table, cutting eggs which she then placed in a clay bowl with butter and some mustard seeds. She placed that bowl among the embers of the fireplace as she explained to us how hard her life is. More than half of the settlers already were dead, she said. She did praise her rooster which she and her husband had brought across. “Ah, sir, I tell you it was something to see. When a fox came upon my 15 chickens, the fox managed to kill one of the chickens before the cock jumped on his back and rode him out of the yard. I think he will not be back,” she chuckled at the memory.
She told me about a learned man whose house was filled with books that he had brought aboard the Mayflower. I asked her is she was able to read and she half smiled at such a silly notion. “What need do I have for Greek and Latin texts, sir, in this wilderness? I do not read. But my husband does read some.” She then explained that there was no need for a woman to have the reading ability. Her husband would explain to her all she needed to know.
She asked me, if I found her husband up the hill working on making coal – by which she meant charcoal – to tell him she has made buttered eggs for his dinner and he should come home. I promised to do this if I found him.
We found three men, with rich Lincolnshire accents, working on the charcoal. I asked if they sold the charcoal and they laughed and said this was not a commercial enterprise. “We make the coal for the forger, sir, so that he can make nails and spikes for us.” He explained there is no commercial venture possible because there is no money and no need. I asked if he would not trade the charcoal with the Indians and, again, he looked at me as though I had just dropped in from another planet.
“No, no, sir. The Indians have no need of coal for they have no metal except for what we have given them. They have no need for this precious coal and they would know not what to do with it.” I told him his wife awaited him with her buttered eggs and that clearly brightened his day.
Back aboard the Mayflower, we chatted with John Alden, a young fellow, with greasy hair and dirty clothes. He said his job aboard was to be a cooper, making barrels. He suggested I meet the ship's master who would fill me in on the trading with the natives.
We found the master below decks. He played with his stocking, pulling them up and stuffing them under his pantaloons. He had a sharp, aquiline face, not unkind, but you could sense he'd suffer no nonsense aboard his ship.
“I am God aboard my ship, sir. I care not whether you are Puritan, Separatist or Church of England. You can worship any God you choose. But on board this ship my word is the law.”
He told of meeting another captain, John Smith, who had played a major role in setting up the Jamestown Plantation in Virginia.
“Ah, sir, John Smith was a master at negotiating with the savages,” he told me as he pulled his dagger from his belt. He handed me the dagger outside its sheath and then turned away from me. “That is how Capt. Smith negotiated, sir. He handed the Indian such a dagger then turned his back on the savage to show that he trusted the savage not to drive the dagger into his back. In this way, he showed he trusted the savage and, the Indian thus became his friend. I have learned much from Smith,” he said.
And so it went, we were transported back three centuries to that special time when the first settlers left their imprint on the land.
We met many others who helped us understand how the Mayflower worked out by dead reckoning where the ship lay in the great unknown of the vast ocean. We came away with a great sympathy for those who made that initial step. The next time this will transpire most likely will be when we build a settlement on the moon or Mars. The only difference will be that while we might botch the settlement and contaminate a new planet, we probably won't mess up the natives. But do we really know that?

Back on a Boat

Jo paddles down the Winooski River between Burlington and Colchester, Vermont.


We pretty much knew it was a matter of time before we found a boat that met our need to be back on the water.
Our requirements were quite particular: It had to be a canoe. It had to be built of Kevlar to keep it light, light, light. And it had to be affordable. You are in conflict when you use the words Kevlar and Affordable. Kevlar canoes, because they are so light, are at the top of the cost chain. But I kept checking, checking checking as we drove through the country.
We found a demo canoe last year in Freeport, Maine. But it was terribly expensive and we held off. As time went by, however, that canoe looked more and more appealing so we made plans to revisit the manufacturer this year to see if they had another demo.
In the meantime, I would browse Craigslist at every stop along the way as we rolled through Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ontario, New York, Connecticut and, now, Vermont. And so it came to pass that Vermont delivered the goods. An old man with bad knees in St. Albans, VT - the most northerly town in the state - offered his seven-year-old Kevlar canoe for sale. We made contact and visited with him Thursday.
And, today, we own a canoe. It seems to be hardly used. And it comes fully equipped with two life jackets, two paddles, car-carrying pads and straps and even a woven seat back so old guys can have some comfort. And, best of all, it weighs only 42 pounds at 14 feet long.
Jo and I launched it after driving it back south to daughter Stephanie's place in Colchester, VT. We paddled through Malletts Bay, visiting the myriad sailboats moored in the bay. Delightful. We look forward to getting it back to Florida where we can explore the bays and backwaters, rivers and the Gulf of Mexico.

Meanwhile, we are homeless while the repair shop tears apart our damaged coach and rebuilds it.
Before we left Kent, Connecticut, we were invited to one of the best parties we've ever attended. Celia and Rich Pomerantz have been good friends since I employed Celia as an ad sales person back in 1984 after I took over as publisher of the weekly newspaper group in New Milford, CT.
She has the uncanny skill of collecting disparate but interesting people and throwing them together. She did it again last Sunday. We met a screen writer and her boyfriend who is a farmer, two gay guys who are in interior design, and a magazine editor. The designers were fascinating because one of them had just completed a two-year contract to decorate the interior of a - wait for it - $275 million home in Palm Beach, Florida. That's not a misprint!
He regaled us with stories of buying stupendously expensive lamps and Ian Calder mobiles. The owners of the home liked the mobile but were not sure about whether it would fit. So they had an artisan replicate the mobile in finest detail and color and hung it to confirm it was "perfect" for the space. The designer then went ahead and purchased the mobile. He asked if he could keep the replica since it was, for all purposes, a Calder mobile. But the owners insisted it be destroyed so there would be only the original. The great irony is that this $275 million home remains unoccupied because the wife doesn't really like it. We offered to drive down and move in as a house sitter so long as they'd allow us to plug in our motor home at the side!
The designers defended this excessive consumption as the epitome of the American way, saying this is how America stays economically strong. Jo and I, of course, represent the extreme other end of the consumption spectrum and so the debate was sparkling. The screen writer was moderator as she probed our belief system of "simplify, simplify, simplify". She grilled Jo on whether or not she was happy in our modest little motor home and Jo's comment that it was "okay" was seen by Celia as a Maine native's high praise without being too gushing!
The party went into the night and the two designers headed back to New York City, still convinced, I believe, we must be un-American at the very least.
Maybe if they knew we'd bought a Kevlar canoe they would perceive us as at least pulling an oar in doing our part to put the American economy back on its correct footing.

Light at the End of this Tunnel

It only took 9 days to get an insurance adjuster (Progressive) to come look at the damage to our motor home. But we seem to be making some headway now.
The repair facility says the entire rear cap of our motor home will have to be removed to be rebuilt. They said that should take about 40 man-hours - at $90 per hour. Then they must replace the air conditioning unit at the rear. Then they have to replace the ladder, along with cutting and re-welding the bike rack. We will have to move out for all of this work, of course. So we plan to drive our little car north to visit with our daughter Stephanie's family in Vermont. If the repair people tell us they need more time, we'll probably wander eastward, through the mountains of New Hampshire and into Maine to visit with friends.
The overall bill should be something in the neighborhood of $8,000 but we should be better than before.

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Our Home...Our Home

The rear of our motor home after the storm came through.

Jo and I were off in New Haven, Connecticut, when the phone call came from daughter Lynn. "We just had a bad thunderstorm up here in Kent. You motor home was hit by a falling tree."
That focuses your attention. We tried to determine how bad the damage was and she said the ladder on the rear of the home was ripped off. There was damage to the rear air conditioner. There was a piece of the motor home lying on the ground.
When we arrived home, our son in law John had been on the roof and photographed the damage before putting a tarp over the ripped up roof. We checked inside and the contents of the refrigerator and other things were clearly jostled about. But no water got inside the home.
Now we are in the hands of the insurance company. A claims adjuster will be out to look at the damage in the morning and we'll learn the good news or the bad news about our motor home insurance.
We'll let you know.

Canada, Oh Canada

My friend Phil grabbed this picture of a happy sailor as I pushed his brother's boat across Lake Ontario on a perfect sailing day.

Let the re-immersion begin.
We stayed at my sister Rose's home in St. George, Ontario, Canada, where she is in a nice little ghetto of Scots folk. I have always suspected she and they sit around at weekly meetings where they re-enforce each other's Scots accents. And so it turned out to be.
She put on a party on Sunday night and in they all came....wonderful folks who had come over from Auchinleck in Ayrshire, Sorce, next door to Robbie Burns' hangout, and Aberdeen and Penecuik in the center of the country. And, just to be fair, she invited a man who had grown up in Nottingham, England. It was a regular hootenanny with everyone reverting to their local colloquialisms as they talked about “loonies” (boys if you come from Aberdeen) and “quinies” (girls) and lots of other phrases. Poor Jo felt like a foreigner as she tried to disentangle herself from all the Scots who spoke far too fast for her to keep up.
Rose tends to call all women friends “hen” which I always believed to be a male form of Scottish endearment for a woman. So Rose had all her hens bring strawberry tarts and chocolate cake and other tasty treats.
The man from Nottingham had painted the inside of her house and had that typically English double entendre in his speech – most of it smoothly semi-sexual in nature. The hens seemed to give as good and he dished out and there was a night of laughter and great camaraderie.
The day before this in-gathering, Jo and I drove the car to Toronto – about 85 miles to the east. There we met up with Beverley and Phil Tweedie, old friends from Cambodia. Phil and his brother Stan took me out sailing while Bev and Jo took off for the inner harbor area where there was an African musical festival.
We sailed briskly across the harbor and entered the ring of protective islands, passing Buggery Bay, as Phil called the nudist beach which seems to have been taken over by the gay and lesbians population of Toronto. Stand handed me the wheel and out we went into the outer harbor on a sparkling day with smart winds that had us driving that 35-foot sailboat at hull speed across a calm lake. Ah, what a way to restore the spirit.
Phil still wanders the globe, teaching English and western culture, as he did while we were together in Phnom Penh. He currently is negotiating with the Chinese to return there for a year in the fall. It's always good to meet someone who has even itchier feet than I have.
We had dinner with the ladies when we returned to the yacht club, then escaped the city before the fireworks program so we could avoid the thousands of cars making their way home from that waterfront event. Actually, we came to our escape route and found it to be a parking lot, eight lanes wide. There had been a five-car accident and we moved very slowly until we passed the mess.
We came back across the border and came to a private campground in New York state. It was a comedy to watch the registration process. Our hosts were full-time campers Denny and Dianne whom we met in Florida. Denny came with us to sign in. The woman behind the counter refused to take my money. Our host, Denny, she said, had to pay for us. So I stood there bemused until Denny reached out a took my cash which he then handed to the woman. She gave me the change. She then asked for additional money from Denny which I handed to him and he handed to her. She then handed him four red cards which he (not I) had to fill out with our names and addresses.
The park is built around an old stone quarry and has pristine spring-fed lakes.
Now we link up with Jo's brother John, whom she calls “Junior” because John also was her father's name. He, on the other hand, hates being referred to as Junior. She'll have to watch that!

Among the Plain People

Amish buggy waits outside a restaurant in Howe, Indiana.

I'm always more interested in meeting people than seeing things. Now that we are among the Amish in Indiana I'm just in my glory. We came into the tiny town of Howe, a farming community east of Elkhart, Indiana, and we stopped at a campground out in what was once a farm field. We drove "downtown" after we were settled and there they were: two black buggies tied to a hitching post outside a Pizza Hut.
We went to the CVS pharmacy to fill a prescription and there were six buggies tied there.
The next day, Saturday, was market day and we wandered around the central part of Howe and bought the bacon and cheese bread ($1.50) made by a delightful Amish woman whose prim green dress was fastened with plain pins. Her white cap had simple ribbons to tie it down. Next to her were three men, with their beards - but no mustache. Their young boys were bored with the market and sat in chairs with their straw hats over their faces. The men were selling cabbage and cucumbers - organic, of course. We did not shoot pictures of these people because they do not believe their image should be captured.
We wandered along country roads, passing the buggies which clip-clop along in their own lane, and came to the town of Shipshewana, considered a cultural center for the Amish and their less biblically strict brothers, the Mennonites. We stopped into Yodel's meat market and it was humming with the plain people, as they are called. All the meats are wrapped in white paper and are labeled. Jo didn't like that she couldn't see the meat. So she wouldn't buy. But I bought a two-pound dollop of churned butter.
We wandered through town and visited a saddlery since this is such a horse culture. Many of the Amish still plough their fields with big Belgian horses. The saddlery was loaded with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of bits, bridles and other things equestrian. There was a great variety of saddles and blankets and boots and hats.
The Amish just don't believe in using the internal combustion engine, or electricity, or any of the millions of other modern conveniences we take for granted.
Their dolls, by the way, have no facial features. I actually see a bit of a similarity between the Amish and Muslims we have met in Malaysia and Pakistan. You'll have a hard time finding a doll in a Muslim household because they do not believe in creating likenesses of people. They did make an exception for Barbie dolls, strangely, because they simply do not believe Barbie is representative of anything human. I like that.

Back at the campground, we met up with an RV-er who retired early after a career as a repo man. For those of you outside the U.S., a repo man is a person who is hired to repossess cars, trucks and other vehicles when their owners default on their payments.
Tim told us he used to earn a six-figure income as a repo man, generally getting about $650 per vehicle on average. I asked about the dangers involved and he said he had only been approached once by a man with a gun. He said he made a point of grabbing the vehicles in the dead of night. He said he had a tow truck with an extending wheel which would pop under the towed vehicle and he'd hoist and haul in a matter of seconds. If a vehicle was in a garage, he said he'd patiently wait until the owner drove it to work. Then he'd make his move.
One story he told was of the owner of a Jaguar, a woman. She drove it to the gas station, filled it and went into the station to pay for the gas. He decided to drive it away so he left his vehicle, tried to open the door - but it was locked. The woman had left the sunroof open, though, so he jumped into the car through the roof opening. She came out of the gas station, screaming at him to stop. He showed her the paperwork and offered to drive her home or to the office. She accepted.
And so life goes.

Learning about Lincoln

Jo meets with President Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln.

And so we came to New Salem, Illinois, where Abraham Lincoln was formed. We drove north through the flat farmlands of Illinois into the capital city of Springfield. We moved on north a bit and came to the New Salem National Historic site. This is where Lincoln spent a few years as a young man.
Luckily, we were able to secure a site for our motor home at the campground at the site. After we got settled in almost unbearable heat (96 degrees with a heat index of 106 because of the humidity), we ventured out to the village.
It is peopled by re-enactors from the 1830s. I particularly enjoyed a young woman who said she was working off a $2 debt at the local doctor's office. She told me she had suffered from severe headaches. The doctor, who tends to like bleeding his patients, she said, chose instead to make up a potion of herbs and provided her with four glass vials of the potions. Each vial was 50 cents apiece which in 1834 was equivalent of a day's pay. So she was taking care of the doc's office while he was off at a birthing of a horse in the village. He also pulls teeth, the young girl said. She very kindly offered to bleed me with leeches if I was not willing to await the arrival of the doctor. I said I'd prefer to wait.
We chatted with her for a while, then Jo asked her about her job as a presenter. She agreed to step out of character and told us she was a student. She and four other students work at New Salem for a small stipend and they get three credits. She returned to character as we left and made light of Abe Lincoln whom I asked about. "Oh, he's probably gone to Springfield. He's such a politician," she said with a laugh. I suggested that a fine young woman like her might think about a man with Lincoln's character as a suitor. "Oh, I think I'll look farther," she said with a chuckle. She had little faith that Abe would amount to much.
At the Rutledge Tavern, I suggested to the elderly woman who sat in the shade quilting that she would do a land office business were she to sell cold beers. She stayed in character and said beer was not available on the frontier in the 1830s. She said the men would drink rye whiskey or peach brandy. A sign on the wall indicated the cost of room and board for the night was 37 and a half cents. I said that seemed like a decent price and she said that price was set by law and was as high as the tavern could charge. She said it was pretty expensive because people could expect to earn about 50 cents a day so they would tend to negotiate down on that 37 and a half cents.
I made a major faux pax by asking her if the colorful corn hanging on the wall of the tavern would have been used for feeding the birds. “Oh, sir. No. No. No. The birds must take of themselves. This is the choice corn that has been set aside for the next planting season. This is the new seed corn.” When I thought about it, it did seem silly to think of feeding the birds when you are on the edge of the prairie and survival is paramount for the humans.
We spent time chatting with Mr. Berry, who owned a store with Lincoln. He regaled us with yarns about Abe and how, when he joined the local militia, he was voted captain of the regiment, perhaps the first time he had a leadership role. He told us of their struggle to repay the debt of buying the store. Abe eventually sold his share to Berry but then Berry died of the consumption about a year later. Abe took responsibility for Berry's debts, as was the tradition of the time.

Tuesday: We drove 18 miles to Springfield, the capital. Destination: the new Lincoln Museum. This is a first-rate place. Not only are there numerous displays of Lincoln memorabilia, but there are many stage shows. “Ghosts in the Library” was an astonishing high-tech mixture of holograms and a live actor. It was so captivating and mind boggling that we made a second visit to see if we could figure out where humans left off and where the technology took up the story. But it was seamless and left us astonished.
We also attended a two-man play set in Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., that struggled with the impact of the assassination of Lincoln in 1865. And the actors came on stage at the end to answer questions about the events.

One of the presentations in another theater took us through the life and events of the president. It was filled with outstanding effects, including vibrating seats that fairly lifted you up during the battles of the Civil War. Great production values that would capture people of every age.

Trail of Tears

The Mississippi Delta was shining
Like a National guitar
I am following the river
Down the highway
Through the cradle of the civil war
I'm going to Graceland
Graceland
In Memphis Tennessee
I'm going to Graceland
Poorboys and Pilgrims with families
And we are going to Graceland

Lyrics to Graceland, Paul Simon

We're on that ribbon of highway, coming north from Louisiana. After a layover in Jackson, Mississippi, at a spectacular campground on the edge of a lake, we were refreshed and ready to roll.

Our neighboring camper, in an eight-foot-square blue tent, had installed an air conditioner in the wall of his tent. That's roughing it in America, folks.

Before we left the camp we were visited by a red-tailed squirrel who knew no fear. He perched on our windshield wipers and nosily looked inside our rig. Then we heard him rummaging around in the engine compartment. Chai was quite perturbed. Pictures are to be found if you click on those.

The road out of the Louisiana lowlands, through the delta and the bayous, was like a washboard, pretty rough. Even though it is an interstate highway, it was desperately in need of repair because the concrete slabs seemed to have subsided just a hair. As a result, there was a constant thunking as we moved along over each of the discrepancies.

When we came to the northern edge of Mississippi, 585 miles after we filled up our gas tank in western Florida, we stopped and were shocked to find that we had not screwed the fuel filler cap back on after our last fill-up. So first thing after getting into our campground (Elvis Presley RV Park, in Memphis just down the road from Elvis' Graceland), we went off in search of a replacement filler cap. We found it at an auto store a few blocks up the road.

We lingered at sunset along the Mississippi, with the great steel pyramid of Memphis to our right, then it was on to Beale Street for a little blues before winding our way back to the campground where we found our electricity had shut off. After checking the box, I decided to move to another site which had juice. That kept us cool during the steaming night.

We threw ourselves into the maelstrom of Wednesday morning rush-hour traffic that is Interstate 55, heading for St. Louis. I chuckled when we came through numerous work sites along the highway where there are signs that warn if you hit a workman with your vehicle, there is an automatic fine of $11,000. This is much more expensive that my friend Oswald Shivute warned me would be my fate were I to hit a woman in the north of Namibia (three cattle) or even a man (six cattle).

We stopped for the night on the western shore of the Mississippi at the Trail of Tears State Park in Missouri. This marks the part of the great river that the Cherokee Indians crossed during the enforced march from their tribal homelands in Georgia after gold was discovered and the whites decided that they should have that land.

General Winfield Scott was given the task of moving the Indians. He was generally thoughtful and kind (“Every possible kindness...must be shown by the troops."). But one U.S. Army private, John G. Burnett, reported: “I saw he Cherokees...dragged from their homes and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades....I saw them loaded like cattle...into wagons.... Many of them had been driven from home barefooted.”

Quatie Ross, the Cherokee chief's wife, gave her only blanket to a child. She died of pneumonia. Some drank stagnant water and died from disease. One survivor told how his father got sick and died; then, his mother; then, one by one, his five brothers and sisters. “One each day. Then all are gone.”

The forced march resulted in the deaths of thousands of Cherokees. Two thirds of the ill-equipped Cherokees were trapped between the ice-bound Ohio and Mississippi Rivers during January of 1839. The Indians were resettled in Oklahoma, near Tahliquah. It remains the tribal headquarters of the Cherokee Nation today.

About 1,000 Cherokees in Tennessee and North Carolina escaped the roundup. They gained recognition in 1866, establishing their tribal government in 1868 in Cherokee, North Carolina. Today, they are known as the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

Picture at the top of Blog: We came upon these butterflies resting on the banks of the Mississippi at the Trail of Tears State Park. There were dozens of them resting and taking sustenances from the muddy banks of the river.

Reaching New Orleans

The tiny town of Foley, Alabama, takes you back to the early 1950s. The houses are brick, with loads of hydrangeas, roses and other flowers. The main street maintains the beveled glass on entrance doors and there, at the crossroads, is a Rexall's drug store. Inside, we found a genuine soda counter with wire-backed chairs and coffee for 10 cents a cup – if you pour it yourself!

A toy train endlessly circumnavigates the drugstore at the 10-foot high level and you can find all manner of early medical supplies. We particularly likes the “Anti-Monkey Butt Powder” that is advertized as a “sweat absorber and friction fighter”. There are airplaned made from Coke cans hanging from the ceiling.

Earlier in the day, we'd made out way to the edge of Mobile Bay where we watched the sailboats and fisherman casting their nets to catch bait fish at the town pier. It all is quite quaint and bucolic. The town of Fairhope has built waterfront birdhouses for purple martins that migrate from South America and who seem to be will to occupy these bird condos for breeding purposes and for raising their young before heading south in the fall. The martins do a prodigious job of vacuuming mosquitoes from the waterfront area so they are welcome guests.

We came to New Orleans, expecting the worst. It has been just shy of four years since Hurricane Katrina visited her wrath on this city and the entire northern Gulf of Mexico coast. We're watched the rebuilding – or lack – on TV and we were anxious to see it for ourselves.

Reports of the death of the city are premature, we're happy to report. Oh, there still remains devastation on portions of the 9^th ward. And down in St. Bernard Parish, where we are camping, there is massive destruction still visible in shopping centers that have been abandoned. But the city of New Orleans was hopping when we drove in on Saturday. There was a Zydeco music festival, along with a Creole Tomato festival in the French Quarter. The hanging ferns from the lacy wrought iron balconies are there, the tourists in the thousands are there. The rhythm of the city is evident. People actually walk with a sway and a swing of their hips, keeping time to the music of the trombone player or the banjo picker.

We had a great time visiting the cathedral in the heart of the city. We wandered in the back streets before driving through the Ninth Ward to view some of the dead houses. We were heartened to see so much renovation evident, though. As we drove back to our campground, we came upon a cemetery across from the Mississippi River (which is higher than the surrounding land). The cemeteries in this low-lying part of the world are above ground. Coffins are placed inside a concrete sarcophagus and those are even stacked up to three high to take care of families. But this cemetery was suffering from the sarcophagus being washed away and toppled. Many of the concrete boxes were empty. Quite biblical, of course (“And they came to the tomb and found it empty.”).

Our campground on the south side of the Big Muddy is quite spectacular. Very few people are here. But we are surrounded by dozens (maybe hundreds, perhaps even thousands) of rabbits who seem to enjoy coming out in the dusk to munch on the green grass. The cat is oblivious to these same-size creatures. We have a symphony each evening of cicadas...millions of them. Their song is astonishingly loud but they settle down with darkness.

The huge swimming pool at the park was occupied by nine people when we went for a swim this afternoon. It was quite moving, actually, to watch two 8-to-10-year-old white girls swim and interact with colorblind eyes with a pair of black twin boys. It gives hope that this generation is growing up oblivious to the color of people's skin.

Moving from North to "South"

Floridians need not read this. All others might find the horror story of the love bug to be bewildering and maybe even funny.

The love bug is a creature we only have found in Florida. It has the delightful habit of finding a mate and having a conjugal visit while flying through the air in thick clouds. Their life cycle climax (forgive me) seems to occur when they splat into the windshield and grilles of all the trucks, cars and RVs that head north and south on Florida's interstate highways.

As we rolled north on our first day of our trip, the bugs were out in force. We could see rainstorms of them splattering on our windshield. We picked up perhaps 2,000 of them. Helluva way to die: conjugalis in extremis is what I call it.

It's imperative that you scrape their bodies off the front of your vehicle as quickly as possible. They seem to leave a nasty acidic residue which burns into paint and leaves permanent scarring if not scrubbed off within a few hours of death.

We are moving desperately slowly as we roll north. And this suits us just fine. We are in no great rush. We drove for 90 miles on the first day. And that was enough. We stayed in the little town of Bushnell, FL, when the rolling green fields just begin to signal the beginning of Florida's horse country.
Then we moved across to the western side of the state and parked on the banks of the Suwanee River in a state park. We are cocooned in a canopy of oak and magnolia trees. We also have moved into a different kind of Florida. You see, half the state – the southern half, strangely – is much more like the northern states. That's probably because it is made up more of northerners.

There's an invisible line, though, just to the north of Tampa, where one moves into what is more generally considered to be The South. This is more Bible Belt. You come across billboard after billboard that preaches anti-abortion messages while, in that slightly mad way there are endless other billboards that let you know of cafes and restaurants where “We Bare All” and where you can find “X Markets of Adult Toys and Videos.”

A mighty strange juxtaposition.

I've just finished a stunning book, The Known World” by Edward P. Jones. It is set in Virginia in the 1850s from the point of view of slaves and slave owners. The principal characters, however, are black people who own slaves, something I had no idea occurred and still, after reading the book, have a hard, hard time understanding: How could a black man who has bought his own freedom and the freedom of his wife and child cope with the child growing up and then purchasing his own slaves. The brutality and inhumanity of the book, written by a black man, by the way, is tough to stomach. But it paints an unusually rich portrait of life in those not so good old days. Jones won the Pulitzer Prize for the novel.

The springs after which the Manatee Springs State Park are named ($8 per night for Florida seniors who camp here!) bubble up from the aquifer. The clear water maintains a steady temperature of 72 degrees F. Manatees make their way here in the cold winter months because they need the warm water for survival. In the heat of summer, though, we could see a school of mullet swimming in endless circles through the knots of cypress standing with wet feet in the spring waters.

William Bartram came upon these water in July 1774 and here is some of what he reported”

“Having borrowed a canoe from some Indians, I visited a very grat and most beautiful fountain which boils up from between the hills about 300 yards from the river.

“The basic of the fountain is about 100 yards in circumference. The fountain is very full of fish and alligators and at a great depth in the water appear as plain as if they were close at hand.”

We crossed into the Central Time Zone after crossing the Apalachicola River, west of the state capital of Tallahassee. We're in the rolling hills now: no more flat plains. Our campsite for a few days was down a potholed road, alongside a lake at Three Rivers State Park. On Saturday, we drove the car west to the next state park where we explored the only caverns in a Florida park.

In a nice piece of Americana, we found upturned white ceramic bowls in the roof of the caves. These has been cemented in place by the young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps who uncovered the caverns and made them usable in the late 1930s. The bowls were used to reflect the limited light produced by carbon lights while the young men carved out walkways. The caverns, filled with stalactites and stalagmites, dripping water and deliciously cool, showed little evidence of having been used by the early Indians. The preferred drier accommodations in other caves which have evidence of fairly ornate pottery shards and tools from 10,000 years ago.

On our way back into our campground, we were delayed a few minutes by the car ahead of us. It stopped and a young woman jumped out and disappeared ahead of the car. She reappeared holding a five-foot-long snake by the tail. She gently deposited it in the undergrowth and it slithered off. I had to admire the young woman's gutsy approach to snake maintenance.

Time to Roll

It's time to roll up our awning, check the tires for air pressure, unscrew the cat's leash and getting this baby on the road again.

We have been here in Palmetto, Florida,  too long. Our original plan was to arrive in October, stay until Jan. 1, then head out west. But the best laid plans, as Robbie Burns said, gang aft agley (don't go right). And so, after a broken back, a totaled car, and a wife who had shards of glass embedded in her right arm, we decided to stay parked while we worked out these annoyances.

But now we're ready to move on June 1. But the dream of Alaska will have to wait another year.

You know you're ready when you begin to hear details of the villagers' lives that are 'way too much information.  Jo learned at cards the other day, for example, that the mobile home in the park that was painted a brown ka-ka color, similar to dog excrement, was thought to be blue by the owner who turns out to be colorblind!

The raccoon that sneaks through our yard and makes Chai sit up with a look of "What the hell is this?" has been trapped by the park management for fear that he is rabid.

But we have met some pretty neat people, too. There's a pleasant woman we met while wallowing in the pool this past weekend. She told us her husband works 12 hours a day, seven days a week, as captain of a dredging barge out of Port Manatee, just up the road. And his 12 hours of work occur through the night. As a result, she has to leave their tiny trailer while he sleeps during the day: hence wallowing in the pool. The captain was just reassigned to another dredging project up the Florida coast. So they hauled out today for their new camp ground.

We walk around Terra Ceia RV Resort each night and we seem to be in a dead zone. There are about 240 mobile homes and slots for motor homes in the park. The mobile homes are mostly closed as their owners have headed back to Michigan and other points north. But we usually meet Bill and Donna, an elderly couple who always walk around the park in a counter-clockwise direction, while Jo and I walk in a clockwise direction. Bill invariably tells us we are headed the wrong way. They, too, head north in another week.

When we leave, our plans now are to drive up the west coast of Florida, staying in state parks along the way. They we head west to Mobile, Alabama, and over to New Orleans before hanging a right and driving up north along the Mississippi River. We'll head for Memphis, Tennesee, St. Louis, Missouri, and then move into Illinois to visit the capital, Springfield. We want to participate in this 200th birthday year of Abe Lincoln and Springfield is the place to do that. Then we plan to head through the depressed part of Indiana (unemployment of 26 per cent) and into Michigan to visit some of the friends we made while living down here in Florida. Then, inshalla, we cross the border into Canada to visit with my sister, Rose. 

We'll let you know how all this unfolds as we find unique people and interesting places. 

Mingling with wildlife

Who knew I'd be doing a little original reporting when we drove our rig to Highlands Hammock State Park in the middle of Florida. But here we are in a beautiful place, amid hundreds of oak trees, many, many alligators, and a crazy red cardinal that seems to spend inordinate amounts of time pecking at his reflection by using the side mirrors of our car.

The news? This place was built in the first stimulus package back in the 1930s. The Civilian Conservation Corps employed 3.4 million young men (no women) to work on projects such as developing recreational facilities. More than 49,000 men were enrolled from the state. The CCC was called “Roosevelt's Tree Army, “Colossal College of Calluses and the “Soil Soldiers”.

More than 228,000 days of labor were completed at this camp from June 1934 to December, 1941. The CCC boys built 30 structures including houses, bridges, workshops, restrooms, pavilions, water towers, water lines, a green house, creation hall and a mess hall. They also fought wildfires and cultivated 2,500 varieties of plants for the botanical garden project.

When the young men arrived at the camps (remember this was when there was 25 percent unemployment), the average enrollee weighed 147 pounds and was five foot eight inches tall. They gained, on average, between 20 and 30 pounds during their first year. They were paid $30 a month, $1 a day. $25 was sent home to the family and they kept $5.

Jo and I met an 88-year-old volunteer at the park and, while he had not been a CCC enrollee, he was of the right age. He told us his father had a job back then and he helped him digging ditches so he didn't need to apply for work.

Joe told us the CCC developed 800 state parks throughout the nation. Jo looked through a book of CCC projects because she said she remembers her dad telling her he worked on building a school in Maine during the time. Our volunteer guide said if the school was not listed as a project, it probably meant Jo's dad worked for the Works Project Administration. That was formed to provide work for married men during the Depression.

It must have been tough back then for 18-20 year old single guys to be housed together with little access to the ladies. Prohibition had just ended so you can pretty well bet the $5 they got to keep each week went to smokes and booze. The CCC was run by the military so the young men initially wore World War I surplus uniforms until they got their own green uniforms. They worked 40 hours a week but had to rise at 5:30 each morning for calisthenics. Then it was off to breakfast and everyone boarded buses to take them to the work projects. They were required to dress with tie and clean uniforms for dinner. Lights off flickered at 8:45 pm. And the lights were shut off at 9 pm.

The CCC was disbanded in 1942 and all these guys were then drafted into the military for World War II. Joe told us he was drafted in 1942 and was sent to the Pacific.

Earlier in the day, we went on a hike with Ranger Steve whose job it was to show us the spoor of the park's wildlife. We passed the footprints of deer, boar, snakes, centipedes and other creatures. The most enjoyable part of the two-miles hike was to listen to a city slicker who came with her husband and whom Ranger Steve took unusual delight in informing her of all the things lurking in the wild, waiting to kill you. He spoke about the possibilities of being bitten by a rattlesnake, a cottonmouth, a water moccasin. He described the hell of chigger bites, poison ivy, and other dangerous plants. The poor woman soon realized it was much safer to live in New York City than to stroll in the sun-drenched Florida outback.

Her husband, by the way, kept questioning the ranger about things to do in the park. “I'm willing to spend half a day in this park,” he said, “if there are things to do.” There is much to do in the 9,000 acre park if you are willing to slow down a little and just look.

The next day, Jo and I went on a tram ride which took us past countless alligators – dozens of moms and dads and so many hatchlings that they were just a slithering, crawly bundle.

We found unusual birds, including two owls, a red-backed hawk, a yellow-crested night heron (in the daytime), deer, gopher turtles, armadillo. We didn't see any wild boar which are not native to Florida but which came south with the white man more than 100 years back. They managed to escape and have gone feral. They leave their mark by destroying the underbrush.

After three nights in the park, we rolled south for 50 miles to Lake Okeechobee where we attended a Samboree. This is a get-together of members of the Good Sams RV club of which we are members. We met with the various clubs that make up the Florida Good Sams – 392 motor homes of various sizes and ages.

This group is a little too keen on wearing the multi-colored vests of their various clubs. The vests carry dozens of patches that designate the owner as having attended the various Samborees through the years. Some people seem to get off on collecting these tags. Not me.

We did meet up with a couple who are still RV-ing after being married for 67 years. He was 91 years old and it did make me wonder which road he was taking out of town at the end of the Samboree since I would want to be on a different road.

Birds and Beaches

If you know of anything that surpasses sitting on a quiet beach while birds wheel about, catching their lunch, please write me. 

We're just back from the causeway to Anna Maria Island, on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico,  where we spent three hours watching laughing gulls, a loon, pelicans, great blue herons, egrets, terns and and a lonely sandpiper do what they must do each day to stay alive.

The laughing gulls were the most active - and the louded, of course. One of their flock caught a spiny fish, maybe four inches long. It seemed too large for him to swallow but he spent a long time washing the debris off the fish and positioning it, head down, so it would slide down his throat. In the meantime, his buddies cackled and laughed and tried to separate him from his catch.

He dragged the fish well up on the land and continually flipped it back and forth, presumably trying to tear it into bitesize chunks. But it was a tough little fish. So the gull said, "Here goes" and swallowed it, spines and all. That seemed to settle the arguments among the other gulls so he was left alone for a bit. 

But that fish stuck in his throat and it didn't take long for him to regurgitate it. He worked again and chopping it up without success. His buddied returned to annoy and harrass him, so he chomped down on it and swallowed his catch one more time.

We watched the pelicans as they swooped and slid across the bay, eye down, on a glide path that they would alter in a millisecond if they caught sight of a fish. They immediately contorted and dived in that prehistoric pterodactyl-like way. Up they'd come with the fish in their bills and then they would flip it around so it would head down to their stomachs head first.

A silent loon lingered off-shore, diving and feeding but nevder making the loon sound that we love to hear when they are in the northern states. These birds fly south to Florida for the winter but they are mute while in the south. Their plaintive cry comes only when they are in the lakes of New Hampshire or Maine or Vermont.

If you click on the main picture at the top of the blog, you'll see a much enlarged version. If you click on the loon picture at the top left, that will take you to our photo album of the birds.

My particular friend

Whoomph! and a half second later, another Whoomph!

Our motor home wobbled as the blast hit us and then hit again. We went outside on Saturday afternoon and saw the contrail in the sky over our heads. Oh, that was the Discovery Shuttle going through the sound barrier - twice - as she returned to Cape Canaveral on the east coast of Florida after doing more than five million miles chasing around the earth at 17,500 miles an hour over the past 10 days.

It was a satisfactory conclusion to a visit we were enjoying with Richard Curtis, above right, the just-retired managing editor for graphics and design with USA Today. Richard and I worked together back in the mid-seventies at the St. Petersburg Times here in Florida. Actually, we both were fired from that newspaper on the same day back in 1975.

And, coincidentally, on Thursday evening of this week the guy who fired me was the honored guest of a Public Television business journal. So here we were, Richard and I, visiting together in the balmy Florida air.

Richard had just completed a week-long workshop to train journalism trainers at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg.

Both of us went on to bigger and better things after St. Pete. So neither of us harbor any resentment or angst about that awful day 34 years ago when he was called into the managing editor's office while I was summoned to the executive editor's office.

Without any warning, each of us was told it was over for us. We had been running the newsfeatures department at the St. Pete Times, doing some pretty amazing journalism for the time, particularly in writing about consumer affairs. The paper's coverage had recently been lauded by Time Magazine, being held up as an example of community journalism that looked out for the reader's interests.

But our reporting was so aggressive that we had exposed some local advertisers for their shady bait and switch selling techniques. As a result, the newspaper could point to lost revenue as a result of the stories.

Neither Richard nor I had received any warning that we were perhaps too aggressive. So each of us was rocked when we were told it was time for us to empty our desks and leave that very afternoon.

I returned to my desk, shaken, and saw Richard coming out of the managing editor's office. I assumed that he had been called in to be promoted to be the newsfeatures editor, as my replacement. I congratulated him on his promotion. He looked as me as if I were insane. "I was just fired as well," he said.

We had a party that night, with all the staff. And then we set about redesigning our lives.

Richard told me he had had dinner last Sunday with the then-managing editor of the newspaper, Robert Haiman. He actually had the good grace to apologize to Richard for the firing. He said it was one the great mistakes of his professional life. I'm still awaiting the apology to me.

As Richard said, though, it was the best thing that happened to him for it eventually took him to USA Today before it was even born. He was in at the founding of the paper and has left a substantial mark on American journalism.