Lunch at the Boarding House

Well, we got the rain that was predicted, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected.  We’ve had good weather for a week so I can’t complain about the rain today.

Gene and I met Mike and Eric at Owens Boarding House for lunch today.  I’ve heard Mike talk about this place for years and never had the opportunity to eat there.

The Boarding House is located just off 1st Street in Warner Robins.  1st Street is just like most 1st streets across America--in a run-down, neglected business/industrial section of town.  From the outside it doesn’t look like a place you’d even want to go into and it certainly doesn’t look like a restaurant.  At least not until you get to the parking lot and smell the fried chicken.

Inside, there are two large spaces--the kitchen and the dining room.  The dining room is set with four long tables each surrounded by about 24 old fashioned ladder-back chairs.  The tables are covered with red checkered vinyl tablecloths and there is a plate and fork at each chair.  Just sit down wherever there is an empty chair.

Ordering is easy.  You have a choice of water or sweet tea.  That’s it; everything else is on the table.  On the table today (and being replenished regularly) was fried chicken, ham, potato salad, green beans, boiled cabbage, macaroni and cheese, turnip greens, field peas, butter beans, cornbread, biscuits, and a big pan of banana pudding (the real kind with cooked pudding and meringue).  You just eat until you can’t hold any more, stay as long as you like, and visit with your table mates.  When you’re ready to leave, you take you plate, fork, and glass up to the small window at the kitchen, pay $8 at the door on you’re way out, and waddle to your car.  Incredible.

The Boarding House is only open for lunch Tuesday thru Friday, but they do a steady business during that short period of time.  And no wonder; it was some of the best down home, Southern country cookin’ I’ve had in a long time.  Thanks Mike or Eric or whoever it was that suggested we go there today.

To Columbus and Back

I got to do something today I haven’t done in I can’t remember when.  I got to spend the afternoon with my brother.

In December, he had back surgery and today he returned to his doctor for another check-up.  I volunteered to drive him to Columbus.  He has been driving for several weeks, but Columbus is almost a hundred miles from here and the return trip might seem like three hundred if he wasn’t feeling up to it.  As it turned out, he drove going and coming and I felt like I really didn’t help out all that much.  I did get to consult the GPS when we missed our turn.  We knew we had gone too far when we crossed the river and saw the big “Welcome to Alabama” sign.  Perhaps we should have gotten the GPS out sooner.

Now, you may not think it was too exciting to ride in the car for several hours just to wait in the doctor’s office for an hour, but I loved it.

You know how it is at holidays, or birthdays, or reunions when the whole family is there.  It is great seeing everybody, but you don’t get to spend any one-on-one time with anybody.  That’s how I’ve been seeing my brother for the past 30 or 40 years.  Always in a crowd of people.  Today, I got to spend about 5 hours with him, just the two of us.  It was great--the highlight of my week.

His back is healing nicely, by the way.  He can resume his golf game in April.  Hurray!

Days Like That

We have spent the past two days catching up on household chores and relaxing.  We have been so busy checking things off our list since we arrived in Georgia, that we were craving some down time.

Everyone pitched in to help with dinner

Yesterday, after a morning and early afternoon filled with the routine chores that go along with maintaining a home, I baked a couple chess pies to contribute to our evening meal at my nephew’s home.  Ben prepared a fantastic meal for us of grilled steaks, fresh broccoli, and risotto.  Since we had munched on my brother’s speciality, stuffed jalapeno peppers, along with clam dip and chips before the meal, by the time we left we were all full enough to pop.

Mike and Eric

Even though we stayed home most of Sunday, we were still very busy.  This morning when I got up, all I wanted to do was sit in my recliner.  I finally rousted myself into motion by mid-morning and went out for a short walk around the campground with my hubby.

Ben and Amber

Our afternoon has been almost as uneventful at the morning. We went shopping for a new phone, but after browsing through the Verizon store and chatting with the sales representative, we decided to put that purchase off for a little while.  We bought a few groceries (not at the Verizon store, but at Kroger next door) before coming home.

That’s pretty much it and I don’t anticipate the evening to be more than a quiet dinner followed by a little TV.  Sometimes, we just need days like this.

Tomorrow, I am taking my brother for his doctor’s appointment in Columbus.  The rest of the week is rapidly filling up with a variety of things.  Wednesday, we plan a visit to Warner Robins and more eating with my brother and his boys.  The weather doesn’t look to promising for Wednesday, so we may not get much sightseeing done.  Friday, we are driving over to Pine Mountain to meet RVing friends, Mike and Gerri, for lunch followed by a tour of FDR’s Little White House in Warm Springs.  Saturday is the first day of Georgia’s longest yard sale--Peaches to the Beaches.  It goes right through Perry.  The search will be on for wine glasses.  I hope I don’t have to walk all the way to the Atlantic Ocean before I find some I like.

Enough of this rambling.  I’ll get back to my relaxing.

Ocmulgee National Monument

Keeping with our theme of visiting National Park service units while in middle Georgia, today we drove to Macon to visit the Ocmulgee National Monument.  On our way, we stopped by my brother’s to drag him along for the outing.

Visitor Center and Museum

Earth Lodge as seen from the Visitor Center

It is estimated that native peoples have lived on the Macon Plateau for more than 9,000 years.  Eventually, the Woodland Indians began to establish villages in the area and plant their crops of squash, beans, and corn.  The Ocmulgee site really focuses on the Mississippian people who planted extensively and established large villages.   There are several mounds on this site, but the most notable are the greater and lesser temple mounds and the funeral mound.  Also reconstructed at this site is the earth lodge.  It also looks like a mound from a distance, but is a large meeting room completely covered by sod used as a ceremonial building.

Entrance to Earth Lodge

Great Temple Mound in the distance

We were also impressed with the fantastic art deco style visitor center.  This building was started in the 1930s, but due to funding issues was not finished until the 1950s.

Much of the southeast is dotted with mounds built by Mississippians.  Ocmulgee is typical of many such sites in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee.  We have visited several mounds over the years.  The best we’ve seen so far is Cahokia Mounds in Illinois.  It has the distinction of being an International Heritage site and is worthy of that honor.  If you’re ever near St. Louis, give it a visit.

We stopped for a late lunch of BBQ, then dropped my brother off at his home before returning to Perry.  I now have to concentrate of getting my home cleaned up and the laundry done.  That should occupy my time tomorrow.

Plains, Georgia, Home of Jimmy Carter

Today we took a drive over to Plains some 20 miles or so southwest of Andersonville.  Plains is the tiny rural community which is the home of the 39th President of the United States.  Mr. and Mrs. Carter still have their home in Plains and much of the community is designated a National Historical Site.

We began our tour of Plains at the local high school.  Mr. Carter graduated from Plains High School in 1941.  The National Park Service now occupies the building and has restored it to the way it looked when Jimmy was a student.  One classroom has been set up as it would have been, otherwise, the rest of the rooms now exhibit photos and artifacts of the Carters’ lives.

A mile or so from the high school is Maranatha Baptist Church where the Carters’ are still members.

The five or six stores on Main Street are really all there is to Plains.  We went in and browsed around each one.  In the Plain Peanut store we bought some fried peanuts and a small jar of peach preserves.  The Plain Peanut Store (under the Plains, Georgia Home of Jimmy Carter sign) is the business Billy Carter started in his service station across the street.  This building was the warehouse of President Carter’s father’s peanut business.  The rest of the stores along the block are antique dealers, but we failed to find anything we couldn’t live without.

Plains Depot and Campaign Headquarters

Across the street in the next block is the Plains train depot.  The depot building was used as Carter’s campaign headquarters during his presidential campaign.  The park service has restored the building to its 1976 appearance and it now exhibits memorabilia from that campaign.  The depot was chosen as the campaign headquarters because it was about the only building in town that had restroom facilities.

Boyhood Home of Jimmy Carter

A couple miles west of town is the family farm where President Carter spent his childhood years.  We had a ranger show us around the home, the small store which Earl Carter ran, the vegetable gardens and barn area, and the sharecroppers home of Jack and Rachel Clark.

Down on the family farm

I know you're surprised to see peacocks in Georgia

Along the road to the farm is the Lebanon Cemetery where the President’s mother and father are buried.  We did not stop there.

Between the farm and the downtown area, is where the Carter’s home is located.  It sits back from the main road in a large clump of trees.  It certainly creates a peaceful, secluded area for their modest home, but all those trees completely obstruct the view of the house from the street.  With all the security, there is no way to get close enough to get a clear view of the house.

We enjoyed our day and, as we always do at historical sites like this, we learned a great deal.

Perry, Georgia

This has been another fine day in Georgia.  The temperatures are cool, but the sun is shining.  Boy, does that make all the difference in the world.

This morning, Gene took the truck in for an oil change and I spent the time relaxing with a book in hand and the cat in my lap.  It was a fine morning.

After lunch, we drove the couple miles to downtown Perry to do the self-guided walking tour of the historical district.  Perry is a small town of about 11,000 in what all the Georgia tourism brochures call Georgia’s Historic Heartland.  The tour began at the New Perry Hotel which is so old now that it needs a facelift.  We walked up and down the streets looking and reading about the older homes in this area.  Most were in very good condition and looked well cared for and loved.  The same is true a couple blocks over in the business district.

Boyhood home of Sen. Sam Nunn

Confederate Monument

What finally caught our attention was the number of structures which had been used as funeral parlors.  It seemed like every other building had, at one time or another, been dedicated to the service of the dead.  On Carroll Street, the Toomer Building had been build in 1905 as a merchandise store with living quarters upstairs.  In 1915, it too was converted to a funeral home.  Pay particular attention to the photo.  Those two large, bay-type windows on either side of the double front doors were where the dearly departed were displayed for all to view.

Cooper-Evans home

You may be wondering why, since I claim to be from Nashville, that my brother and his family are living in middle Georgia.  My brother is younger than I and when he graduated from high school my father was stationed at Robins AFB in Warner Robins.  My brother married in Warner Robins and never left.  His boys were both born there and thus they all live in the area to this day.

Toomer Building

General Eli Warren Home

This evening we all gathered at Ben and Amber’s home for a great dinner together.  It was go good to see Eric and Leigh Ann and Ben and Amber.  Haven’t seen them in over a year.

That’s all for today.  We are without a plan for tomorrow.  We’ll pick something from our list in the morning.

Andersonville National Historic Site

Our visit to Andersonville National Historic Site today was a real education in American history and one which we seldom hear about.

National POW Museum

Andersonville, Georgia was the site of a Confederate prisoner of war camp.  This camp was constructed late in the war (1864) after Washington banned the practice of prisoner exchange.  Built for an occupancy of about 6,000, but during the short time it was open before the end of the war, the population quickly grew to more than 30,000 at one point.   More than 45,000 Union soldiers came through the camp, but due to overcrowding, shortage of food, lack of water, and unsanitary living conditions some 13,000 died.

North Gate. Every prisoner entered through here

Each prisoner was responsible for making his own shelter

Andersonville was selected because it was far from the fighting and was near a railroad line.  A more secure place than where most of the camps were located near Richmond. This particular area also had a stream running through what became the center of camp.  This small stream was woefully inadequate for the thousands who depended on it for their only water source.  The stream is still running through the middle of the camp and it is hard to imagine why anyone would have thought it adequate even for 6,000 men much less 30,000.

Today, the 26 acres which comprised the area of the camp is preserved by the park service.  We toured the area, stopping at the various points along the route to contemplate what the lives of these poor men would have been like.  It is impossible to imagine.

Statue at entrance to the cemetery

We also toured the cemetery.  When the camp was in operation, prisoners died so rapidly there was not enough manpower to keep up with individual graves.  The dead were buried in trenches and marked with a stick which identified the fallen by their number.  Later, the sticks were removed and small wooden crosses were put in their place.   Still later, the crosses were removed and stone markers were placed to honor the brave men who died imprisoned at Andersonville.  This is a National Cemetery and soldiers of other wars are also buried here.  In fact, we saw a fresh grave today.

We started our visit at the National Prisoner of War Museum.  We saw two very sobering and thought provoking films--one on Camp Sumter, the original name of the Andersonville camp, and one on prisoners of war in general and the ordeal they endure.  The museum is very well done and outlines the life of a POW from capture to release.

How can we adequately express our gratitude to those men and women who have and do serve their country?