Stepping Back in Time

We stepped through a looking glass and came out two hundred years ago. It was a wonderful journey.  And it all started because our motor home died.

Jo and I drove our RV motor home half-way across Florida to a rally in Wauchula. We arrived at the campground, went in to register, came out and when I cranked the engine, it died.

Fuel pump was dead. We eventually were towed to a repair shop (this process took five hours from start to finish) where the owner of the shop had to drop the full (80 gallons) fuel tank under the motor home. He did this after a few hours and retrieved the dead fuel pump which was built into the fuel tank. It took him another hour to locate a similar pump and Jo and I drove off to Tampa (185 miles round-trip) to retrieve the new (and expensive pump). By now, I was muttering about not having much fun.

But here's where lemons began to become possible lemonade. On our way back to Wauchula, we saw an encampment on an escarpment off to our right. There were hundreds of tents and tepees. And a sign indicated there was a pre-1840 re-enactment scheduled for the next day and Saturday.

We tracked down information about the event on the Internet when we got back to the repair shop. By now, the mechanic had jacked up the rear of our home and it was going to have to stay that way through the night. When we went to bed, we definitely had a tendency to want to slide off the bed. As we lay there, I felt a little bit like Lenin or Ho Chi Minh in their tombs, all propped up nicely so the visiting public could walk by and pay homage.

We made it through a nasty night of coldness. The temperature dropped to 23 degrees F. When we awoke there was a coating of frost on our car and on the hundreds of tires that we slept among in the yard.

Jo made coffee and cooked bacon and eggs (difficult to do when they want to slide forward in the pan). And then we headed off to the re-enactment in Alafia River.
We were among the first to arrive and we strolled among the more than 1,200 re-enactors as they were just getting up and setting their pots and pans on the open fires all through the campground.

They greeted us warmly. Each person was wearing the rough clothing of the period. Men were in their coonskin caps. One old timer looked splendid in his hat made from a timber wolf.

We made our way through the camp to the Indian section (dozens of tepees). A particularly colorful tepee caught my attention. I was admiring and photographing the structure when the owner and his wife stepped out and invited us in. He told me he was a Blackfoot, although he had some McGowan blood from Scotland in him. "The Blackfoot all were considered troublemakers among the other tribes," he said. "So that, along with being a McGowan made the other tribal people here question if they wanted to set their tepees near ours," he said with a laugh.

His name was "Smarter Than Horses" he said. But he said the white man had changed his name to just 'Smart'. He introduced his wife, a Shawnee woman, petite with light hair. She told us her Shawnee name is "Pegs of Wood" But it too had been abbreviated by the whites to "Pegs". They had come down from Ohio.

They shared with us how the tepee is built initially with four tent poles. Other tribes use three tent poles initially. But he was sure his four poles were superior. He explained how the vent at the top of the tepee can control the draught so they can have a fire going inside the tepee.

We strolled on and heard singing coming from a large tent. We ducked under the canvas flap and found ourselves inside a bonafide classroom. Youngsters sat at wooden desks with their rough-woven coats, while some of the young girls wore pretty pinafore dresses and long woolen stockings. A man and his wife were teaching them about the battle of Culloden (1745) in Scotland. These kids were being treated to a genuine "You Are There" moment in history. The man sang them a song he and his wife had written about the battle - the last battle in which the Scots fought for their freedom against the yoke of the English King.

He finished his lesson, sang a prayer, and certificates were handed out to each of the children, along with letters that could be given by the children to their various schools so they could be credited with attending a school program. I liked how the children were totally captured in the moment.

We walked around in the now-warming sun and enjoyed chatting with the enactors who seem completely into the moment. When I came upon a woman who was cooking a turkey over a spit on an open fire, her sister was photographing her with a digital camera. She begged me not to take a picture of her while she held the digital camera since that would not be authentic to the time period. I did note, however, that most of the people did carry a cellphone. No watches were visible, however.

We stopped into an eating place and I had a "Prairie Dog" while Jo had a piece of fried dough. My dog was a Polish sausage, dipped in dough and deep fat fried. The owner of the establishment said he had found the recipe for the dough in a young lady's journal from 1793. He adapted the recipe and Jo said her's was excellent. I had a rootbeer (all natural, of course). They are not allowed to sell modern drinks like Pepsi or Cokes.

A young musician took the stage to provide a demonstration of fiddling. He initially played a one-stringed Asian instrument and made it sound very much like an American fiddle. He did that, he said, to illustrate the point that, in music, we all are one. Then he picked up a borrowed fiddle from the 1800s and played it with gusto.

This adventure took our minds of the uncertainty of the sickly motor home. So it was a delight to drive back to it and find it restored to full health.

We then drove off to enjoy our rally... a little late. But better late than never.

If you are still with me, you might be interested in the photo album of the event. You'll even be able to click on a couple of movies I shot in the classroom and of the musician. If you click on the picture at the top left of the blog, that will actually take you to the photo albums. Enjoy.

End of Western Civilization

I'm struggling with my own culture war. I have seen the end of western civilization as we know it. It's not a pretty sight.

Jo and I drove north to Tampa, Florida, for the annual RV show. Not that we are interested in buying a new motor home. But - just like with sailboats - it never hurts to look. You always find interesting ideas.

After spending some times in the vendor booths - hundreds of them - which try to sell you everything you don't need, we stumbled into a pet store. Yes, there are specialists who do nothing else in this world but pander to the nuttiness of the American dog lover. They were selling pooch carts, with screened-in beds on wheels so you can take your dog for a "walk". Isn't this why dogs have four legs? Anyway, there are dozens of dog carriages to meet every size of pooch. And They don't leave it at that. There is a variety of dog clothing, with rhinestones and bling that a blind man could see.

Having seen this, my spirits were already on the downslope. Now we entered the aisles of motor homes. This is a big show - very big. There are maybe thousands of motor homes, trailers, fifth wheels, pop-up. These range from tiny i-trailers, as they are called. These are 12-feet long and have a pop-up tent over the kitchen which is at the end of the trailer.

We visited with a whole host of the iconic Airstream trailers. These are aluminum tubes and have a cool efficiency about them. They are highly priced but tend of be superior in terms of utilization of space. We have a couple of friends who are minimalists. They've been scouting Airstreams for that moment that is not too distant when they can slip the bonds of working life.

We came up upon a two-story 52-foot-long motor home that was hanging off the end of a mammoth Freightliner truck. It's second floor pops up when you reach your destination so the motor home is 19 feet high.
A bit excessive, I thought. But pretty incredible.

We made our way down the line of mobile homes and came to one with a $850,000 price tag on it. It had a porch that could actually be wound down from what was the side of the motor home. The porch was about eight feet deep by 12 feet long. A 32-inch LCD television popped out of a slot in the wall so you could have your TV out on the porch. I wondered why it isn't good enough to step outside your motor home and sit on a chair on the ground. Does life indeed get better when your porch is four feet off the ground.

We visited the top of the line Prevost line of motor homes. These are in the $2-million-plus range. You are asked to remove your shoes as you enter. What you discover, however, is the granite floor (can you imagine the weight of this 45-foot-long tile floor?) is heated so your feet are kept cozy on a cool day. Outside the motor home a 52-inch TV pivoted from the wall of the coach so you can watch your shows while sitting outside.

Perhaps all this hoopla demonstrates the eternal optimism of the American consumer - or manufacturer of consumer goods. But, to me, it all seemed just another example of American excess.

Meet Georgie

Georgie is a nice enough guy; a little short of a full load. But he's a decent kind of guy. He is our neighbor in the campground. He works hard at Walmart and at the local middle school where he's a janitor at both places.
Georgie (not his real name) likes to come out of his disintegrating trailer and sits with me while I rock on my chair outside our motor home. He stays too long – perhaps because of diminished mental ability or diminished social skills – and I have to retreat inside because Georgie just wants to hang around too long.
He was born in Indiana and has worked in Ohio. Then his mother and stepfather brought him to Florida. And here he is. He's 49 years old.
I did chuckle the other day when he asked where I have been in the world. I told him I've been to 35 countries and then named a few of my favorites. He considered this for a bit. Then he said, “my mom took me to a water park in Tampa when we came to Florida.”
So Georgie is my personal challenge while we live at the park. I have taken him under my wing with my job to help him understand a bit more of our world.
He generally wants to tell me about his work schedule. And he does work hard – or, at least, he works long. He says he doesn't get much respect for his work. And he thinks his jobs might be in jeopardy because of the collapsing economy. He says he doesn't understand this because he sees so many people coming into Walmart every time he's in there. When I try to explain low margin marketing, poor Georgie doesn't connect to the notion that Walmart works on volume and makes a tiny profit on every piece of merchandise. So I still have lots of work in this area.
Georgie does like the cat and the cat likes him. She climbed on his lap yesterday as we sat in the sun. The cat nuzzled into his armpit and then gave him a little love bite. She has a tendency to do this when she likes the body odor. He thought that was nice of her.

Jo and I have committed to remaining at our Florida park until the end of May because of the accident and the repair time necessary. So we are hunkering down. We find we miss the ocean and we have taken to loading our chairs into the car and driving to the Gulf of Mexico where we relax in the shade of a palm tree and listen to the waves lapping on the shore.
The joy of watching Egrets, Great Blue Herons, Ibis and Wood Storks, as well as Pelicans makes for entertainment. The other day we came upon 70 White Pelicans. These enormous birds have a wingspan between 8 and 10 feet. They collect food in a completely different way from the Brown Pelicans. Browns like to glide across the water at about 15 feet. You watch them point their beaks downward as they spot fish. Then they simply fall out of the sky like pterodactyls. They catch the fish easily and then sit on the water while the flip the fish around in their beak so they can slide the live fish down their throats. Whites, on the other hand, works as a group to surround the fish. They swoop in for the kill while the fish are in a ball in the water and they collectively scoop up the food while swimming on the top of the water.