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17
Jun 13

Visiting London

We landed in Heathrow after a hard night in bad airplane seats. I think I slept about two hours. I fell asleep in the last Die Hard movie. Both the movie, and the flight, were that un-good.

Heathrow Airport was lovely, as it was on my first visit there. We boarded a train into the London city center. There were no garbage cans anywhere, but it was the cleanest public transportation you’ve ever experienced.

We got off at one train stop and hopped on the Underground. It felt like we’d walked into a Roma train station in the 1970s. If you remember the 70s or any Roman train station maybe that would make sense.

We left the Underground and walked just up the street to our hotel. We got checked in. This is our view:

The guy on the street corner pretending to catch cabs was dressed to the nines. It is so cute when the British try to be British:

As cabs go, this is a sweet paint job:

We made our way up toward Picadilly Circus, where they seem to be celebrating something about the queen. Hard to put your finger on it though. But that sure is a lot of banners. And while I like patterns, repetitious banners are a bit unsettling. Nevertheless.

We went here, for high tea:

Fortnum and Mason does tea the proper way, with leaves, not bags. That means you get a fancy strainer:

Here’s a part of our tea set:

And the food that comes with high tea. Pure carbs, but I was all about calories. Travelling around the world changes more than your sleep patterns.

Of course they sell stuff at Fortnum and Mason. Who doesn’t love a good tin?

I don’t know what Tawny Port is, but it makes a nice pattern. And I like patterns:

A friend told us to be tourists and take the double decker bus tour of downtown London, that it gives you a good lay of the land. He was right. If you find yourself in London, take the bus tour. Sit on top. And sit in the back.

One of the first things we saw on the bus tour was a giant horse. And it eats people!

London has all manner of architecture. There’s something for everyone:

There are three golden divers above Coventry Street. This site says they go mostly unnoticed. I don’t see how.

Columns? London has plenty of the Greek classical influence:

You want a weather vane topped by a ship? The British call this building Eclectic Baroque. There are domes, Greek elements, flying buttresses, Egyptian influences … so … yeah.

And then there’s terrible post-modern stuff in the financial district.

And here’s the tallest building in London, the Shard, topped out in 2012 at 1,016 feet and 72 stories. It is the tallest building in the European Union and the second-tallest free-standing structure in the United Kingdom. Qatari investors run the joint. No one talks about how the top doesn’t all join together. The view is a good one.

And then there’s this thing, which should return quietly to the 1960s:

How about the buildings you know? Sure, we saw those. Here’s a glimpse of Westminster Abbey:

The Marble Arch was designed in 1825 as ceremonial entrance to the courtyard of the new Buckingham Palace. It was moved a few years later. Now it sits in a traffic island.

And a V-2 rocket attached to the side of the building. Nearby is the German flag. I wonder how that goes over.

The London Eye is the tallest Ferris wheel in Europe, and was the tallest in the world when it was built in 1999. It is still third. More than 3.5 million people ride it each year:

Look kids, Big Ben!

Here’s a bit more detail of the tower, which was completed in 1858. That’s the largest four-faced chiming clock in the world.

And the Palace of Westminster, where the House of Commons and the House of Lords meet.

From a different angle:

And a closeup of some of the detail: Check out those animal sculptures:

Here are my three favorite signs we saw today. Robertsons is, and always has been, a pawn shop. It stayed in the family until the 1960s. Suddenly you’re a lot less interested. Me too.

Scottish paper, great message on Fleet Street. It has been around since 1877:

This is the best sign anywhere, and it should be sold to fans of ale and pie. It’d be a hit.

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27
May 13

“We’re just kin to everybody.”

Below are 1,500 self-indulgent words. But also a lot of interesting old photographs. If nothing else, scroll down for those.

Visiting with my grandmother, I asked her if she remembered the DVD that someone made her of all the old family portraits. She did. And would she mind going through them with me again, telling me the names of the people she knew. She said she would, but she didn’t know them all since that was a collection of her in-laws.

We never did get around to that DVD today, but we did trace her family back quite a way.

This is a cell phone picture of what is probably a Xerox transfer into a vanity publication. Two people in the family, one of whom I know and the other who doesn’t even sound familiar, spent countless hours putting together an amazing book. That tome probably proves my great-grandmother’s point, “We’re just kin to everybody.”

When we tried to make sense of it all, you could see the wisdom in her argument. But it also seems to go back to 1820 Tennessee for that branch of my family tree, and this wedding license:

Prior to that, the few traces of evidence only leave us with more questions. So we’ll just start with Samuel and his new wife Nancy. They raised a family, including this man, whom they named Pleasant, who was born in 1836.

He joined the Confederate Army in 1861, was mustered in as a private in Co. H of the 26th/50th Alabama Infantry, where he became the company musician. The book suggests that Pleasant was a fiddler and says all of his kids played instruments.

History tells us the 50th was a bad unit to be in:

Ordered to Tennessee the unit fought at Shiloh, saw light action in Kentucky, then was placed in Deas’, G.D. Johnston’s, and Brantley’s Brigade, Army of Tennessee, and was active in North Carolina. At Shiloh the regiment had 440 effectives, but because of casualties, sickness, and exhaustion, the number was less than 150 by the second day. It lost 4 killed and 76 wounded at Murfreesboro, 16 killed and 81 wounded at Chickamauga, and totalled 289 men and 180 arms in December, 1863. The unit sustained 33 casualties in the Battle of Atlanta and was badly cut up at Franklin. Few surrendered in April, 1865.

But Pleasant lived through it. He got married to Martha Ann in 1863 and after the war they raised a family of eight children. Six of those children, born during Reconstruction, lived until after World War II. Pleasant was a farmer, his wife a seamstress, a very typical lifestyle, which becomes common up this branch of the family.

Pleasant was my grandmother’s great-grandfather. He died at 52 and is buried in Tennessee.

One of Pleasant’s boys was Jim. He was born in the winter of 1871, a year when the crops didn’t come in and the cotton caterpillars ravaged what was there. Jim married Sarah in 1904 and and they lived on a farm that her grandfather bought in 1854. These are my grandmother’s grandparents. There’s a story in the book about a neighborly dispute. A dog killed some sheep. The neighbor was upset about his dog being killed and is said to have put his foot on the doorstep, and Sarah cleaned his clock with a liniment bottle. It says she was “Wild Tom’s” daughter and she had heard enough. So leave that lady alone. (Tom’s grave. Tom married Elizabeth. Her father, Jesse, Jr., was born in Lauderdale County in 1820, the year after Alabama gained statehood. His father, Jesse, Sr., was born in 1787 in Virginia, the year the Constitution was signed.) Sarah’s exclamation of surprise, the kind of detail that should last longer than dates and cemeteries, was “Well, Goodnight Isom!”

They were from the same community, as was often the case, and much of the family still lives within 20 miles of there. These were my grandmother’s grandparents, and she remembers them with a sweet smile.

Here’s Jim as a young man, and I’m going to blame my cowlick on him for a while:

And here he is a few years later, looking like he wants to ride with Jesse James (to whom I have some distant relation on the other side of my family):

On this side of the family that we’re discussing today they were just normal salt-of-the-earth types. The recorded history has a lot of farmers and working-folks. Here’s Jim’s wife, Sarah — my great-great-grandmother — as a young woman:

And as a much older couple, my grandmother’s grandparents, Jim and Sarah once more:

(I think my grandmother favors her grandmother a bit, myself.) This was recorded sometime before 1953, when Jim died. Sarah passed away in 1970, the mother of 11 children. And while it is hard to imagine people your mind only registers as “old” being young, here is a picture of four of those 11 kids. On the far right is my great-grandfather, who was playing in the mud or had a sunburn or something:

Horace, the little guy on the right, was born in May of 1909 and would grow up to be a dashing young man and a farmer. He’d meet and court and marry Lela Mae who was also born in 1909. My grandmother’s parents were married in 1928 in Giles County, Tenn., 10 months before Wall Street fell. This photo is undated:

They both lived into my lifetime, though I don’t have any memories of either of them. If I did, that would mark 12 grandparents or great-grandparents I knew. Horace and Lela Mae had seven children, including my grandmother.

Here are Horace and Lela Mae at their 50th anniversary party — an event I was apparently at but don’t recall:

So that is my paternal grandmother’s father’s side of the family. What about her mother’s side?

Lela Mae’s parents were Pink and Sarah. There are two poor photos:

Apparently, if you’ll notice Sarah’s long hands and fingers, you’ll see a distinguishing family trait. I did not receive this gene. All of Pink’s family moved to Texas, but Sarah’s father offered him a farm to stay in Alabama.

Pink was born on October 19, 1867. There was a lot of rain that spring, the rivers had been up, but the crops were bad. Sarah was born in 1872, a year when the crops were recorded as above average. Both were from Tennessee.

They were married in either 1889 or 1890 in the community of Prospect, Tenn. Google suggests the church isn’t there anymore. They’d eloped on horseback, though, and the rivers were up again that year. The story apparently went that Pink and Sarah were almost drowned, but they went on with their wet clothes to the church and said their vows. Pink and Sarah P. had three of their children in Tennessee before moving to Lauderdale County, Ala. in 1896 or 1897, where they would have seven more children. They were together for 40 years. Sarah died in 1930 and Pink died of typhoid in 1932.

So those were my grandmother’s other grandparents. They died a few years before she was born.

Pink’s parents were Thomas and Louiza. Thomas was born in 1849 in Tennessee, Louiza was from Alabama. They were married just days after the official end of the Civil War. They moved to Alabama and had 12 kids, all of which, except for Pink, moved to Texas. Pink stayed because his father-in-law offered him a farm to keep him in Alabama, a big moment in family history.

Sarah’s parents were Ben (who was born in 1827 in Alabama and buried at a family cemetery in 1899) and Sarah Ann (which confuses things) who was born about 1841. Sarah P., the younger, was born in Lawrence County, Tenn.

Ben, by the way, was a noted card shark. At one time he won a sawmill in a hand of cards. At another table he won a farm. He also served as a private, Company A, 53 Regiment Tennessee Infantry, which served at Fort Donelson over the Cumberland River to protect the approach to Nashville. Some 11,000 rebels were captured there, but I’ve no way of knowing if that happened to Ben. The unit would later fight in Louisiana, Jackson, Mississippi, Mobile and the fighting north of Atlanta, including the Battle of New Hope Church (We have a lot of family history there.) just north of Atlanta.

Ben’s dad, Burgess or Bergus, was born in South Carolina in 1800. His wife, Margaret, was born between 1800 and 1805 in Alabama. Burgess’ dad was Johnston and his mother was Rhoda, both thought to have been born around 1874 in Edgefield, S.C. There’s a mention of a paternal grandfather, Jeff (or John, depending on the document). He was born before the Revolutionary War. After that the haze turns to murk. We’re back to the 1700s, though, in South Carolina, with my grandmother’s great-great-great-great grandparents. Yet another side of the family tree that has been around for a while.

Since you’re still reading, three more pictures. This is Horace, my grandmother’s father, in his buggy, which is being pulled by Ader the mule:

This is Horace’s father, my great-great grandfather, Jim:

And finally, the last one, the one that’s worth it. This is my grandmother, in the foreground, as a baby:

The hand-written caption reads “Every time someone tried to take this picture her diaper feel down. So what? Let’s get the shot anyway!”

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20
May 13

Caledonia Soul Music

Today is the day for it.

Here is, perhaps, my favorite interpretation of it. The grail of Van Morrison collectibles — back when the physical media and other realities made it difficult to acquire — this is actually an outtake His Band and the Street Choir sessions in 1970. Amazing stuff.

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10
May 13

At least it wasn’t a sneeze

Do you believe in ghosts? That is the weirdest dateline I’ve seen for a story in a while, particularly since it isn’t specific, and the story is hardly comprehensive. Also it is … lacking. It refers to video and audio and all manner of things the ghost hunters — believers and skeptics alike — use to search for ghosts. But it doesn’t share any of them.

I suppose my first personal ghost story — that didn’t have to do with the great Kathryn Tucker Windam’s 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey which were amazing reads that haunted every child that cracked the spine of the text — were stories from some family member. It seems they had friends who lived in a civil war officer’s home. They’d go over to play cards and every so often the spirit, according to their story, wanted a little recognition. So he’d make noise upstairs somewhere. They’d acknowledge him aloud and all would be well.

We had a neighbor once who said her house was haunted, but that was the sort of thing that kids would tell to other kids. I probably said our house was haunted too. She said that her ghost would open doors and things. So one day we opened every cabinet and drawer in her kitchen. Before she went into the kitchen and noticed it her dad came home. He was not pleased.

My high school, which was a 1930s WPA project, had a restroom light that liked to be on. No one could explain that. The school doubled as something of a community center, so it never shut down promptly at 3 p.m., which meant someone had to always be on hand. This poor math teacher somehow managed to have that job and that light drove him crazy. (It was a short trip.) So we decided there was a ghost in the boys restroom in the junior high wing.

Every now and then we’d try to trick people into thinking there were floating orbs in an old cemetery in our neighborhood. This was before, as far as I know, we knew that people talked about floating orbs, so at least we had good details. I noticed years later there was a Revolutionary War veteran buried there, which is still one of my favorite things about the place:

A geneaology site says about John Lawley, who moved there in the 18-teens:

The land was productive and required but little labor to produce the necessaries of life. The woods were a hunters paradise a paradise abounding in deer, turkey, with some panther and bear. The winters were not so cold then as now. Cattle and horses were raised in the woods and afforded all the butter beef and milk that was needed. Not with- the glowing description given to prospective settlers, these early men and women and children knew the meaning of hard work and sacrifice, but knew, too, the delight of living in a new land.

He lived as a royal subject and then as an American under Washington through Andrew Jackson. He died an old man, in 1832. But he’s probably not a ghost.

We have a lot of those tales in the South, which is the foundation of the story initially linked above. There’s supposed to be a ghost of a soldier in the chapel at Auburn. The Roundhouse at the University of Alabama has a similar story. Here’s a Georgia one that landed in my inbox today, in fact, with supposed photographic proof. In Savannah the dead are an industry unto themselves, and the ghost tours are an important tourist activity:

I’ve never seen any ghosts. But I have been to a few battlefields.

Stuff from Twitter: because why not?

Week begins w/Obama scoffing at notion tyranny is a threat, ends with IRS admitting it intentionally targeted Obama’s opponents.

— Bill Hobbs (@billhobbs) May 10, 2013

And so here we are. RT @rshibley Fed Govt MANDATES speech codes on college campuses. bit.ly/13KX3ol

— kennysmith (@kennysmith) May 10, 2013

I have this feeling that it all get worse before it gets better.

I looked at the drought monitor today and saw something unusual:

That chart is updated weekly. Last week the two southernmost counties, Mobile and Baldwin, still had a good deal of yellow covering them. And then it rained about eight inches in one night down there. This is the first time since 2010 that no county in the state has not reported dry or drought conditions.

Pretty tough times in the plains states, though. James Lileks, last week on the drought breaking in Minnesota:

well, well, what do you know: the drought lifts. The dryness of the last few years is forgotten as the mean reasserts itself over the long run of the decade, which itself will be a wink, a blip, an inhalation to the next decades exhalation, just as the universe itself is a bang at the start and a great collapse at the end, like two flaps of a heart valve. Assuming there’s enough matter to cause the universe to contract, that is. I hope so. I hate the idea that it begins with a great gust of matter, spreads and cools and ends in silence. Because that would make the universe, in essence, a sneeze.

Swam 1,200 meters today. When I went down the pool to start that last lap The Yankee — who is a champion swimmer, mind you — said “If you do 16 it’ll be a mile.”

Don’t tell me that.

But I did get in three-quarters of a mile. And then I rode 15 miles on my bicycle, just because it was a longer way home.

I do not know what is happening.

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8
May 13

This day had doughnuts

Grading, reading, writing. Preparing for a class.

We held the last critique meeting of the school year for the newspaper. The newsroom closes down for the summer. Some people graduate, others take a deep breath. I thanked them for their hard work. I bragged on them, despite the huge error in the headline of the lead story.

Class was held. Things were discussed. Everyone’s mind is outside because the beautiful spring weather has shown up and it all feels very real and, finally, incontrovertibly here.

The newsroom folks gave me two doughnuts. That’s how you end a Wednesday:

Made it home in time to see the last half of the baseball game. Auburn hosted Samford. Everyone wanted to know who I would cheer for. Samford pays me so …

Auburn won 9-3, in yet another comeback. Both teams are in their respective conference post-season hunts. The two teams have almost identical conference records. Samford hits for power, Auburn has lately been looking for any hits that drive in runs. They’ve spent their conference schedule getting beaten up by the baseball teams in the country. Auburn has won both of the two mid-week games this season.

The last time Samford beat Auburn was March of last year, at Samford, and it was dramatic:

Here’s a mystery: After tonight’s game The Yankee, Adam and I caught dinner at Mellow Mushroom. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed this on the ground next to the door. I’ve boosted the contrast so we can see it a bit more clearly:

It says “Heard & Swope 1905.” A quick search of the genealogy sites tells me there was a Sylvester McDaniel Swope (1852-1923). He was a preacher in Talladega, which is about 90 minutes away today. It was a little different in his day. But Sylvester had a son in 1877, Arthur, who married Addie Lee Heard. Arthur is buried here in Auburn, so maybe these are the right people. (There were 31,000 people in the county and about 1,600 in the town at the time. How many different Heards and Swopes could there have been?)

The first gas pump was four years away and the year before there a total of 37 party line phones in town. Those tidbits, and this picture, come from Logue and Simms’ (1981) incomparable pictorial history.

That map is from 1903, when College Street was still Main. See that empty spot at lot 34? I think that’s where this Heard & Swope marker would go in in 1905. You can count the front doors today and it makes sense, for the most part. But I’m not sure what Heard and Swope were building. Yet.