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.