Dad’s Weekly Report

Dear Family,

Sorry for the long absence in writing. I have been pretty busy on Sunday lately. Lyle and Emily have will be leaving us soon and so I have been spending Sundays with them playing games. Lyle’s internship ran out of money so he is out of work. They will be going to New York in a few weeks and we will be really sad to see them go. It will be lonesome without them here. It has been so great to get to know Emily better this past few months.

First let me write about the last couple of days of our trip to the southeast. We left Charleston, SC on Saturday morning and drove to Morrisville, NC. On the way we stopped at an old rice plantation near Charleston. It is really low swampy country, right near a river. Here is a picture of a mangrove swamp that was on the grounds.

There were lots of big live oaks with hanging moss. We picked this plantation to visit because they have a blacksmith shop on the grounds. I tried to ask the blacksmith some questions but he had a attitude and really didn’t want to talk which was disappointing.

Morrisville, NC was where some of John & Dee’s friends lived and we stayed the night with them and went to church with them on Sunday. Did you know that Morrisville is where the Nascar teams have their shops to build their cars. There was a race nearby that night.

Sunday and Monday nights we spent in Asheville, NC which is in the mountains. Monday we drove up the Blueridge Parkway. The Blueridge Parkway is a road that was built during the Depression by the WPA and follows the ridge of the Appalachian Mountains about 350 miles. I guess it is the longest and narrowest national park. The leaves were turning colors and it was really pretty up there. We went on a couple of short hikes. Here is a picture of John & Dee on one of the trails.

Monday night was just about my favorite part of the trip. We went to the Fiddlin Pig restaurant, ate a big plate of ribs and listened to Blue Grass music for 2 hours. Tuesday we drove back to Nashville and caught our flight home. All in all a great trip.

This past week was Thanksgiving. Allen and Brent came home and so there were six of us home for Thanksgiving dinner. We spent a lot of time playing games, eating, and just being together. We took some family pictures that we will use this year for our yearly Christmas picture. Here is one of the better ones. My plan is to add a picture of Wes & April and Curt & Ruth on either side.

Let’s see what else has happened in the past few weeks? I built a flower pot holder in the blacksmith shop. We have a plant on our fireplace hearth but since there is no light in that room I have mounted a grow light over it. This little stand holds the plant up closer to the light. I also have been working on replacing the shelves in the garage. I am almost done. I just need to make the doors over the shelves over the workbench. The new shelves are smaller but they are more efficient and hold more. It didn’t hurt that when I emptied the old ones lots got thrown away. Well that is all the news. I hope that all is well with you. .Take care

Love,

John

2 November 2008

Dear Family,

This is the second installment of our trip to the Southeast. But before that I should tell you about this week. I spent three days this week at the fort at a blacksmith class. A blacksmith from Colonial Williamsburg Anderson Forge came to teach us. The first two day he spent showing us how to make taps and dies. These are tools for making internal and external threads. In the olden days threads were not standard size. Taps were made tapered so that they could thread different size holes. He showed us a method that he had found to layout external threads on a tap. You first make a square tapered pin out of steel. The pattern is drawn on a piece of paper and glued to the pin then the threads are filed onto the pin with a triangular file. He also showed how to make a pair of pliers and an axe. It was great fun.

When we last left our trip we were in Chickamauga battlefield. After visiting the battlefield on Monday morning we drove to Atlanta. We went directly to the center of town and visited Coke World. It is at Coke’s corporate headquarters. There were displays about Coke history and memorabilia and advertising. Then there was a room where you could sample all the Coke products from around the world, there are hundreds of flavors. We only took sips but afterwards we all felt sick from too much.

Leaving there we went a little ways out of town to the home of some of John and Dee’s friends. We had a nice visit with them and went out to dinner with them. The next day we went to Stone Mountain. Stone Mountain is large granite hill that is mostly bare rock. In the side of the mountain is carved an image of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Robert (Stonewall) Jackson. The total carved area is about 3 acres. They are proud that it is larger than Mt. Rushmore. There is a tram that goes to the top of the hill and we took it to the top and hiked down. There are quite a few things to do around the hill. We went to a short 4-D movie. (Besides 3-D glasses, the chairs also shook and we got sprayed with water.) There was also a replica plantation with quite a few displays. We spent most of the day there. We left there and drove a couple of hours towards Savanah before we found a motel for the night.

Wednesday morning we drove to Savannah, Georgia. Savannah was not burned by Sherman during the Civil War and so there are a lot of beautiful old homes and buildings there. The city is laid out with a public squares or small parks. We took a bus tour where they drove us around the old part of town to show us the sights. Unfortunately it started raining and it wasn’t the best time to look around and I didn’t get very good pictures. We were planning on taking a ghost tour in the evening but when we left the restaurant after dinner it was pouring rain and so we called it off and went back to the motel and did laundry. We didn’t spend as much time there as I would have liked.

The next morning we drove directly to Charleston, SC. After finding a motel, we went visited Fort Sumter. This is where the Civil War started. It is an island in the mouth of the harbor. I was interested to learn that it was originally a sandbar ten feet underwater. Rocks and dirt were shipped in from New England to make the island. You would think that there would be rocks closer than New England. There were a lot of old cannons there including a pair of big ones. The sign said that these were the largest cannons used in the Civil War, see picture. On the way out and back from the island we sailed under the bow of the aircraft carrier Yorktown.

We went over a suspension bridge to get to the dock where we took the boat Ft. Sumter. It is pretty nice bridge. I took a picture of it and I think that it is one of the nicest ones that I took during our whole trip and so I am including it.

One of the most enjoyable thing about our trip was the food. Emily told us that we would find a lot of deep fried food. We did, including ocra, green beans, sweet potato, green tomatos, grits, onions, pickles, and some others that I can’t think of. This night we found a great restaurant call, The Hominy Grill

The next day we went to a visitor center and found a lady that gave us a walking tour of Charleston. She showed us a lot of old churches, and homes and explained a lot of the history of the city. One place that she took us into was the city hall. It was an old building, quite ornate inside, with lots of antique furniture and paintings. The photograph of George Washington is a painting that hangs in this building. It was painted by a famous painter, I forget who. It was commissioned and paid for before it was delivered. When it was delivered the people of Charleston had a surprise. The original sketches showed George with his horse, the front of his horse. However the final painting had a different view of George’s horse and you will notice that the horse is lifting his tail. I don’t think that the painter liked Charleston.

I told our tour guide lady that I was interested in the old wrought iron work. There was a lot of really nice iron rails and gates. She took us to see this old gate. She told us that it was made before the revolutionary war. I showed pictures of it too some of the guys at the fort this week and they said that they thought that the scrollwork was probably made in England, shipped over and assembled with the other parts of the gate.

Well that is all for today. Next week I will finish up about our trip. One other thing, a few days ago Sandy fell on some cement steps and hurt herself. She tore some skin on her hand and bumped her cheek and around her eye. She is healing up nicely but has quite a bad black eye. She refused to let me take a picture of her and post on the internet.

I hope that you are doing well. Take care.

Love,

John.