Out With The Camera

This has been another beautiful fall day in Nashville.  The leaves have not been especially pretty here this year.  It has been very dry.  I suppose that may have something to do with the lack of vibrant color.  But occasionally there will be the lone tree that is doing its own little fall color show.

After the rain ended this morning, we went for a short walk along the Greenway.  Today we parked at Two Rivers Park and walked the opposite direction from our trip last week.  We saw very few people so we were mostly alone.  It was a very enjoyable walk and I found a little color at which to point the camera. Otherwise, it has been a day to get a few things done around the Montana and just relax. Gene is sweeping the leaves off the roof as I write this.

I rarely go anywhere without the camera, so I am getting a collection of odd and in things.  I have included a few I especially like.

Florida?

This park is all but full tonight and if I didn’t know better, I’d think I was in Florida.  It seems like every RV here has either Quebec, Ontario, or Florida tags.  As I was doing laundry this afternoon I found out the reason for that.  There were a couple ladies in there with orange t-shirts on.  It’s not too unusual to see orange in Tennessee so I didn’t think much about it until they started talking football.  Now I’m not much of a football fan.  It’s not that I don’t like the game; it’s just that I never developed a great interest in team sports—football, baseball, or anything.  I’m not so far out of it that I don’t recognize such team paraphernalia as flags and mascots and such as that.  One day last week we were walking around the campground and passed a site with a green flag with a large “G” in the middle.  I commented to Gene they must be Georgia fans.  He is a little more with it than I am and pointed out that the flag would be red if that were the case.  Anyway, in the laundry room I soon learned that Florida is playing here this weekend.  Of course, it took the entire wash cycle and part of the drying for me to figure out they were playing Vanderbilt.

We get to mark one big chore off our “Nashville List”.  Today we both went to the dentist.  Before that, Gene went for his physical.  Now I feel like we are making some progress.  It was not a stress free morning, however.  We got up and out early for his 8 AM appointment.  In an effort to be more efficient with our fuel, we had scheduled our dental appointments for later this morning.  The plan was to go to Green Hills for his appointment, then have a leisurely breakfast somewhere before going to the dentist.  Of course, we had to add the grocery shopping afterwards since I didn’t get that done yesterday.  This plan unraveled when his doctor sent him for a bone density test.  We raced back downtown for the bone density which wasn’t previously scheduled. As we were making our way round and round in the parking garage with just 6 inches to spare from the roof of the truck to every support beam we vowed to get the smallest car made when we no longer have to have a truck to tow our home.  We really had no hopes of being worked in anytime soon.  However, we waited only a few minutes until they called him back.  From there we grabbed a bite at a McDonald’s drive thru on our way to the dentist in Bellevue.

Now, with those doctor’s appointments out of the way and the laundry and grocery shopping done, I am looking forward to a nice dinner of pan fried fish and a relaxing evening.  I might just put on an orange tee shirt and walk around the campground to visit with the Gator fans.  They seem to be in a festive mood.

I HAVE A REFRIGERATOR

One week and one day after my refrigerator went out, I finally have it repaired and cooling once again.  We dropped it off this morning at the service department at Cullum and Maxey and returned to our campsite to wait.  That worked out pretty well last week and it did again today.  However, today we had a much longer wait and we were all very tired of waiting by the time our Montana was ready to pick up.

We managed to occupy ourselves for the day—Gene on the phone much of the time with work and I read.  Peanut was happy to stay in his carrier, but he did get some outdoor time.  He was far too excited (or maybe he was nervous) to take a nap.  Tonight, after his dinner, he went on his own up to the bed where he could finally have some peace and quiet.  Bless his heart, he has put up with a lot the past couple weeks with the trailer in the shop on 3 different days plus the carpet cleaning day.  We are all pretty wore out by it and are hoping things will now settle down and we can get on with what we came here to do.  We do have a list of good stuff from all these repairs—the slides work, the refrigerator works, the carpets are pretty, and Gene has had so much practice backing into this site that today he did it the first time.  He allowed as how he would just back the trailer to Cullum and Maxey if we have another repair.

I stayed up late last night watching election coverage and have an early day tomorrow—so guess what, folks, I’m going to bed early.  My mama would call it going to bed with the chickens.

Planning for the Future

Oh, what a glorious fall day this has been.  It is just another near perfect day in a string of about 5.  Wonder how long it will last?  Yesterday was pretty stressful for us on several levels, so today I decided to treat myself to a relaxing day.  After putting our stuff back in place on our nice, clean carpet, I surrounded myself with cookbooks and recipes in anticipation of Thanksgiving and Christmas festivities and holiday baking.  I found so many good things to eat, it was hard to select just a few.

After cleaning up the lunch stuff, I drug out the road atlas and all the articles we had collected over the past year of “must see” places in Texas, Oregon, and Washington—our destinations for next year’s journey.  This trip has been in the planning stages for a couple years.  We originally were headed to Washington State when Gene got the call from his boss and we ended up spending nearly a year in Knoxville, TN.  Finally, it is next on our agenda.  I didn’t make much progress with actual planning, but I did get all the articles sorted out by state and a very rough outline of places where we anticipate spending some time.  We have a tendency to want to see and do everything in an area we visit.  We’ll have many opportunities to practice restraint, especially in Texas.  

Gene’s day was not quite as relaxing as mine.  He was on conference call after conference call all day, in fact starting last night.  He did find a few minutes for a bite of lunch and we worked in a much needed hair cut late this afternoon.  But he barely got out of the shower before the phone was ringing again.

With nothing left in the cooler except horseradish, cream cheese, and a few slivers of beef, we went to one of our favorite restaurants for dinner—Macaroni Grill.  Somehow we came up with the idea of having an election day party and our list of those we would invite were our good friends in Maryville and in Jonesborough.  We gave them a quick call to tell them we were thinking about them.  That was great fun.

We got good news this morning.  Our refrigerator part is in and we are scheduled at the service department tomorrow morning at 8 AM.  Oh, boy.

Clean Carpets

It was a bright, sunny day—a great day to leave the door and windows open to dry our carpet.  After three years of constant use, our carpets needed a good scrubbing.  We have from day one tried to keep as much of the outside dirt and grim as possible out of our Montana.  We have a welcome mat outside and a throw rug inside at the door to catch as much loose dirt as possible.  We usually take our shoes off, especially if we are in to stay.  But for those quick trips in and out we get lazy.  And like the owner’s manual recommends, I try to run the vacuum at least twice a week.  But as anyone who lives in an RV and in RV parks knows, the amount of dust is remarkable and the amount of dirt, gravel, and leaves that is tracked in is incredible.

From living on Music Valley Drive for several winters, we were familiar with a mobile RV cleaning service in this area.  In fact, Gene had used this same service a couple winters ago to wash and wax our rig and was very pleased with their work.  We contacted them to clean our carpets and today was the day.  They came this morning and it really didn’t take very long.  Of course, we had spent the early morning getting everything off the floor.  I was almost embarrassed at the amount of stuff I keep on the floor—everything from Peanut’s toy box to the computer printer, to my knitting.  Since there is not much place else in an RV, it was piled on the bed and sofa.  We took the dining chairs outside on the concrete patio.  Now they need to be vacuumed because they cut the grass while they were out there.  Oh well.

RV carpets are not known for their high quality so you don’t want to soak them too much and get the subflooring wet.  We were not surprised, therefore, when the cleaner said they would be dry in a couple hours.  As it turned out, that was only partially true.  The open areas are pretty dry, but in the corners, under the desk and table, and any area where the air doesn’t circulate well is still damp tonight.  Consequently, all that stuff I piled on the sofa and bed are still on the sofa and bed.  We did bring the dining chairs in.  We have 3 portable fans scattered about and they are doing the job.  I’m confident it will be fine by morning.

The carpets do look great; almost like new.  The refrigerator, on the other hand, is still not fixed and the part did not come in today.  We’ll see what tomorrow brings.  I hope it brings a Dometic cooling system.

A Birthday Bash

My family likes to get together to eat, but for some reason we like to have an excuse like we can’t get together just because we want to.  If there isn’t a reason handy like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Labor Day or even Decoration Day, we usually just say it’s someone’s birthday.  Today, we said it was Gene’s birthday.  He had his birthday in August, but that didn’t seem to matter.  We also said it was Jack’s birthday and my birthday.  Well, at least mine and Jack’s birthdays are in October.  So we celebrated with dinner at my parents.

Over the years, mother and I have done many, many parties together and this was no different.  I went over there about 4 hours before the guests were to arrive to do my part to get ready.  Gene went to REI to stay out from under foot.  We could do a party almost blindfolded it seemed.  Those days are gone, I’m afraid.  We are both less organized and all afternoon I felt like I was going in circles. Today’s almost disaster came when everything was ready to serve and folks were gathered round to offer thanks.  Vera remembered she hadn’t boiled the corn.  It’s not uncommon for us to have some disaster.  The first dinner party we had in the house they are living in now was in 1976.  She had invited about 45 people over and we had everything under control.  When we turned on both ovens and the stove top the whole kitchen circuit panel blew out.  In those days we were able to recover quickly—fire up the grills and bring out all the electric appliances.  That day we had the corn boiling on the hearth in an electric saucepan.  Today we just gave thanks for everything but the corn and we had plenty to eat.

We had a good time, laughed a lot, and ate too much.  It was perfect.

Another Cemetery Hunt

We finally got a day with no other pressing matters to spend in search of family burial grounds.  Knowing that Gene would not really appreciate curvy dirt roads, I studied the map and devised a route which accomplished my goal by staying mostly on primary country roads.  I lucked out and all the roads were paved, even the ones that had been dirt the last time I made this trek.  We got an early start, which was good because it took longer than I thought it would.

We drove down Hwy 100 to Centerville in Hickman County.  I had taken this same route hundreds of times over my lifetime.  When living in Nashville as a child, we visited my grandparents almost every weekend and my brother and I lived there during the summer months.  During these summer stays, my grandfather would drive me around showing me all his special places—where he went to school, where he lived, where my grandmother lived as a child.  I can very well remember going for those rides, but as a child I had no concept of direction or distance.  Today I can remember being in the car and seeing the building or house, but have no idea where those places are located.  I can also very well remember going for dinner on the ground on Decoration Day at the cemetery.

Today I wanted to visit Chessor Cemetery.  That wasn’t difficult to find.  I had been there often as a child, but also a few times as an adult.  Besides, it is on Chessor Cemetery Road which is very clearly marked on the map.  Luckily, HWY 438 was very near by.  We are related to several folks buried here, but the primary one I was interested in was my great grandfather John Dee Harper, my grandmother’s father.  We found the row of Harpers easily enough, but John Dee was not among the headstones in that row.  We found his brother Samuel and wife and we also found his sister Sally and her husband.  We even found his stepmother Helen Fain Harper, but not John Dee.  There are at least 3 other family members buried at this cemetery that I know of that we did not find.  There were, like in so many old cemeteries, many tombstones which were illegible.  They are, no doubt, among those that couldn’t be read.  I was disappointed.

Chessor Cemeetery

John Dee and Mary Etta Daily Harper, my great grandparents.

Back out on Hwy 438 we headed west to connect with Hwy 13 toward Lobelville in Perry County.  My grandmother was from Perry County.  Both her father, John Dee and his wife, Mary Etta Daily, lived there.  The Harpers came from Halifax, North Carolina in the early 1800s.  The first Harpers to settle in TN were Wiley V (John Dee’s grandfather) and his wife Sarah. They had several children born in Hickman County and then died in Perry Co.  I learned just this week in my research that Wiley V and his wife are buried in Perry Co on Lost Creek Road.  My goal today was to find that cemetery.

Carroll and Susan Daily,
my great great grandparents.

It just so happens that Lost Creek Road is intersected by Russell Creek Road.  It is on Russell Creek Road that the Daily’s are buried.  I know very little about the Daily’s.  I know that my grandmother’s grandparents were Carroll and Susan Daily.  Only this week did I learn from the 1850 US Census of Perry County that Carroll’s father was John Daily.  The Daily Cemetery on Russell Creek Road is a very small family plot with only 4 tombstones still standing and 2 field stones with no legible markings.  In searching the Perry Co Cemetery records I cannot find a John Daily or wife Sarah listed.  John died before the 1860 census, Sarah being listed as the head of household, and in the 1880 census Sarah was living in the household with her son Carroll and his family.  I would not surprise me if these two fieldstones were the grave markers for John and Sarah Daily.

Daily Cemetery

Down the street at Lost Creek Road we searched for the Dudley Cemetery where John Dee’s grandfather, Wiley V Harper, is said to be buried.  We made two trips down the road and found 2 other cemeteries, but not the one we were looking for.  Again, I was disappointed.  Finding this cemetery is a high priority for me so I will give it another shot another day.

Ice cream at McDonald’s on the way home and we called it a day.