FOXFIRE!

Today was FOXFIRE day in our calendar.

Wikipedia has this to say about the beginnings of this amazing 49 year old high school program:

Wild grapevines in the fall colored branches

The Foxfire magazine began in 1966, written and published as a quarterly American magazine by students at Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, a private secondary education school located in the U.S. state of Georgia. At the time Foxfire began, Rabun Gap Nacoochee School was also operating as a public secondary education school for students who were residents of northern Rabun County, Georgia. An example of experiential education, the magazine had articles based on the students' interviews with local people about aspects and practices in Appalachian culture. They captured oral history, craft traditions, and other material about the culture. When the articles were collected and published in book form in 1972, it became a bestseller nationally and gained attention for the Foxfire project.

The magazine was named for foxfire, a term for a naturally occurring bioluminescence in fungi in the forests of North Georgia. In 1977, the Foxfire project moved from the Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School to the newly built and consolidated public Rabun County High School. Additional books were published, and with profits from magazine and book sales, the students created a not-for-profit educational and literary organization and a museum. The Foxfire program has been shifted from the English to the business curriculum. Nationally, the Foxfire model has inspired numerous school systems to develop their own experiential education programs.

We visited the home of Foxfire today at the Foxfire Museum and Heritage Center just a couple of miles up US route 23 from Clayton, Georgia. Located west off of 23 and back a well graded gravel road almost two lanes wide, near the entrance to Black Rock State Park. The Center has grown much beyond its early impressive literary record in books and ongoing magazines. 

But the most impressive fact we learned, and kept trying to remember as we toured the almost two dozen authentic or authentically recreated 19^th century cabins and work buildings of Foxfire Village was this:  every magazine, every book, and every building, was written or constructed, with some adult editorial and supervisory assistance, by high school teenagers.

It was the kids back in 1966, when I was 16 and bored to tears with school, who challenged by their English teacher to get their grades in whatever way they could developed their own program of literary excellence by recording, and publishing, the stories of life in the mountains as told by their own grandpas and nans, neighbors and friends who lived, and still live, though its now two generations later, back up in hollows so deep in the Appalachian Mountains of Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and northward that 

                                                                                          often only rocky creek beds 

                                                                                          are their roads.

   Wisdom Discount = Senior Fee

The first person we met as we entered the visitor center was Pauline. Pauline says she began her journey with Foxfire near when it all began but her level of energy, and her wonderfully articulate way of telling the Foxfire story as she answers your most pressing questions (toilets around back dear. Most are out here) makes her much younger than her years.  She kept us asking and listening for almost an hour.  And we hadn’t even paid our ‘wisdom-discounted’ $5.00 fee yet to walk the grounds.

The walk up the woodland paths through glades of wide trunk deciduous and slender pine to and through the village could take an hour or two, Pauline had told us.  But that would have been without our retired person hiking pace, and our need to photograph and ponder much of everything we saw.  It also did not take into account the wonderful people we would meet along the way.

The first thing to realize about the Foxfire Village is that this is a REAL replica of an Appalachian village.  Its not in the flat land or the valley, its on, or rather IN, the mountain.  You often can’t see one house from the next and there are rarely fields, just gardens and patches of agriculture IN the mountains.

There are no town parks or central commons.  No public buildings either, except for the church. And every Appalachian Village has its church.  It was the very first building raised and by Foxfire records, is never donated or sold for some other purpose.  The chapel here is a very accurate teen-built reconstruction. It’s the only way this town would get a church.

Some of the things you will see at Foxfire are as amazing as the Foxfire project itself.  Like the oldest original cabin in Georgia.  Called the ‘Savannah’, it was built in about 1820 and was in continuous use by many families till removed to this site when sold by its last occupant.

In a small wagon shed there is a handsome newly built reconstruction of a farm wagon but the treasure to beat all treasures is a smallish, almost Conestoga-ish style wagon that is the ONLY verified wagon in existence used on the Cherokee Trail of Tears. 

The owner, an area Waggoner, brought it back after hauling his load of sad migrants to Oklahoma in 1838 on a US Army contract and next used it to haul a group of Mormons from western Georgia to the new promised land, Utah.  Pauline is Cherokee on both sides of her family and Scots-Irish mountaineer as well so she knows of what she speaks.

Mona ran into a cousin of her good friend Opie, the Sheepadoodle the O’Rourks love in the mountains of Colorado. This pup is Augie, a Labradoodle.  Brown, versus Opie’s white, Augie is a Labrador-Poodle mix. Smaller than Opie too, Augie was just as pleasant to be around. Good dogs Augie and Opie!

Along the way we met a neat young couple who had just gotten married at their small organic produce and flower farm in Southern Alabama. Fannie and Charlie were picking something off the ground and eating it when we first saw them. I had to ask (we hadn’t eaten lunch yet and it was nearing 2:30 pm) what it was.  Turned out they’d found a tree (bush?) of ripe and sweet persimmons. 

I had never heard of a sweet persimmon but Charlie assured us these were, since they were so very ripe.  GOOD!  They were good! And then Fannie and Charlie told us how to tell the weather for the next season by the appearance of the inside of the flat seeds of the persimmon when you split them open.  I’ll let you Google that one yourself but will tell you that North Georgia is getting heavy snows this winter if Mona’s seed is accurate!

As we drove out of the parking lot headed to a convenient Chick-Fil-A we’d seen on the way up from the church we passed the happy young couple’s motorized transport. If they can keep all of this on their vehicle days after the wedding as they travel among folks not yet known, their sense of humor will get them through a lot of ‘stuff’ that messes up some other newlyweds plans.

Back home we settled into our deck chairs, on our deck, in time to see a nice mountain sunset, head in to supper, and get some paperwork, photocopying and financial fol-d-rol done. Yes, retired and living on the road does not mean we don’t have ‘work’ to do once in a while.

See you tomorrow!

-Ken

Go to the Mountains to Tell it

Morning did not dawn bright today, nor early.  The non-early part is normal in our schedule, but the non-bright has been unusual these four months.  The three hour drive to Clayton, Georgia, was to be in misty, and a few times foggy, rain.  But before the drive, the DUMP.

Hey Tim Gibble! Thanks again for the nifty filter hookup
you made for us!

As we’ve noted before, we can go up to 7 days with full, though not long showers, and regular cooking, washing of dishes, etc, between dumping our black and grey water tanks and refilling our fresh water.  But we often don’t go quite that long.  It just depends when we are going to be on the move.

Today we drove about 5 miles to a very exceptionally clean RV park, Chattanooga Holiday Trav-L-Park, in East Ridge, where they let us use their dump station and water fill, and topped off our propane as well.  This has become an easy and rudimentary job by now, though as with all of the tasks associated with the RV I don’t want to be forgetting a part of any process.

Forgetting to hook up the sewer hose tightly to the RV drain before opening the valves on both tanks would mean a river of …. All over the parks drive, and all over me. Forgetting to lower the TV antenna could mean a new antenna for about $400.00. Mona and I remind each other regularly. This is a tag-team lifestyle.

When we arrived to dump we were surprised to find we would be clearing the tanks in a battlefield area.  We should not have been surprised.  All of Chattanooga, just like many other Southern cities, are built in battlefield areas.  Or they were the battlefield itself. 

Here in November, 1863, the 84^th Indiana waited to be deployed south several miles to the battlefield at Chickamauga.  They were some of the last troops to arrive so were immediately placed on Snodgrass Hill, the rear guards last hold out against Bragg’s Confederates, where they promptly lost almost half of their men in killed, wounded or missing.

Our drive took us through Ringold again, where Mona got to speak with Judd at his produce stand. He said he hadn’t had a chance to see our blog yet so she showed him his photo with her and my comments about him on her Droid.  MAN, was he thrilled!  He said, “I don’t do any computer stuff.  I leave that to my Mama.  Boy will she be surprised to see this!” That was cool.

We drove across Northern Georgia and up rte 76, called the Appalachian Foothills Highway.  And gradually those foothills became mountains.  Not the Rockies, you know, but considerably older than their younger cousins and very beautiful, even in fog and mist.

The rolling green hills rising around us as we climbed altitude; the leaves noticeably more colorful as we rode up and up. Then we turned left at Clayton and took the last mile north and up a VERY steep hill to the top where the lovely and very new Clayton FIRST United Methodist Church has welcomed us for a couple of days.  Thank you Mia (office administrator), trustees, and pastors!

We learned that this Saturday the town of Clayton hosts its annual FOXFIRE MOUNTAIN FESTIVAL.  We will be well on our way further east by then heading for Edisto Island, below Charleston, South Carolina.  But tomorrow we look forward to seeing the full Foxfire Community, just a couple of miles away from our camp.

And we are in the very middle of the Chattahoochee National Forest so we are surrounded by falls, trails, mountains and more.  Who knows what tomorrow brings?

-Ken

Go to Meetin' Time!

Sunday and 9:30 am brought the faithful out to Graysville UMC just as it does others who worship God on the first day of the week everywhere.

  

We were greeted warmly by all who met us, including, of course, Carolyn and husband Jack.  Carolyn is the Church Administrator and it was she who received our request to stay here for several nights first.  Today was the first time we’d met Jack, a retired schoolteacher who told us a little about Graysville in the Civil War (mostly burned by federals because the Gray family made wooden gun 

                                               stocks for the Confederate Army here).

Jack also told us a humorous story he had heard from a Park Ranger at Chickamauga Battlefield. I direct my telling especially to Jennifer Choudhry, teacher of all ages extraordinaire.

A few years ago a young special needs class teacher had her class at the park for a personal tour.  At the end of the time with the ranger the class was asked if there were any questions.  Only one hand went up; the teacher’s.

She asked, as the ranger related to Jack and he to me, “Why did they choose to fight the battle at a National Park?”  To which the ranger unblinkingly replied, “Well, there were already lots of cannons here so…” . Jack said he thinks the class got it too.

The music at Graysville UMC  is supported by an accomplished pianist who really put herself into her music.  After the service I had to tell her I thought so.  She smiled broadly and agreed that a band, or better yet, an orchestra, would suit her just fine. Till then, play as well as you can.

Pastor John serves Graysville and Rossville, UMC so he preached first to us and then drove the several miles up to the town we visited yesterday; the location of Chief John Ross’s home.  You cannot get far from historical tragedy in this part of the country.

Pastor John’s wife, Katie, is also a UMC pastor and serves Newman Springs UMC about 45 minutes away.  They live at the parsonage at the Rossville Church and maintain an apartment near the Newman Springs Church so they may be together when serving any of their three charges.

The service ended with communion by intinction (all come forward to dip a piece of bread into a cup of grape juice). Adult Sunday School followed in the Family Life Center where we had snacks and Bible study around the Hebrew testament character of Joshua. Carolyn was our teacher. I think Jack wanted to sing the old negro spiritual, “Joshua ‘fit the battle of Jericho…” but Carolyn kept us on track.

Don asked if we were going to be dumping tanks tomorrow and told us that if so beware of a particular road to a nearby campground which shrinks in width to the point that vehicles our FROG’s size get badly scraped by the trees.  Many thanks Don!  We are going to wait to dump till well on the road to Clayton, Ga.

Clayton is home to First UMC of Clayton, our overnight destination in northeast Georgia, and to the Foxfire Community.  In the mid sixties students of several grades in that area began collecting stories, movies and photos of mountain people and their crafts, workmanship, and cooking to preserve from extinction as the old ways of the Appalachians were dying out. The project just grew! 

It grew into newsletters, mailers, books, and movies. It grew into more than 60, mostly authentic buildings collected on the mountain hillsides of the community which showcase many of the original items those first students collected and wrote about.  And more importantly, it continues to grow a couple of generations later in the ongoing Foxfire Project.

But that’s for tomorrow.  Today we came home, had lunch, did laundry, relaxed around home and had a fine dinner.  But then, ALL of Mona’s dinners are FINE!

-Ken

Libraries, Trains and our TOAD

(Think yellow brick roads and Munchkins as you sing…) ‘We’re off to see the library, the wonderful library of East Chattanooga, Tennessee!’

But when we got there, there was no library to be seen! Instead, lo and behold, it was the Library of Railroad Historiana inside the Tennessee Historic Railroad Association building, located at their very own railroad yards and museum!  Fancy that.

So sorry Mona!  Just wait a minute or two while I run in and play amongst the trains! So 30 minutes later we were off once more, this time to the Rossville, GA, library (the TN & GA state border is right between Rossville and Chattanooga).  And this time we struck books.  And we struck (found, really) the original home of the Primary Chief of the Cherokee at the time of the Removal Act which forced all 18,000 of them to walk or ride the ‘Trail of Tears’ we have been following elsewhere.

The Ross home is not on the Trail of Tears.  It is however, the starting point for the Ross family on their own trail.  They were wealthy plantation owners, as their 1797 two story log home attests.  They had black slaves, a couple of which went west with them.  But this home and their land was forfeit when they were herded, like all the Cherokee, west. And Mrs. Ross would die, along with possibly 8,000 others of those 18,000, and is buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in 

                                                                                         Tennessee.

Later the home, which sat (till moved a couple of blocks off the now very busy highway), below the  Rossville Gap on the Chickamauga Road in Missionary Ridge. It was in both Confederate and Union hands as fights took place around that gap several times.  Finally, as the “Rock of Chickamauga”, Union General Thomas, guarded the withdrawal (run, actually) of Rosecrans Army of the Cumberland back from Chickamauga to Chattanooga he held off Rebel Cavalry under Nathan Bedford Forrest at this gap from his own headquarters in this home.

Another, less conspicuous, home of a ‘removed’ Cherokee family (this one nameless to history) was purchased by the Walker family in 1878 and in it the famous Chattanooga area author and naturalist, Robert S Walker was born.  At his death in the sixties he deeded it and all of his property around it, once owned by that nameless Cherokee family, to create an Audubon Society Nature Park.

Also on the site has been found the location of a 300 year old Creek Indian village along the banks of the South Chickamauga Creek.  The Creeks left this site and probably moved west into Alabama on their own before the Cherokee arrived.  They were hunter-gatherers, unlike the Americanized farming Cherokee.  In any case, they were herded west to Indian Territory well before the Cherokee were, out of Alabama and Mississippi.

We visited several other libraries and did a little grocery shopping but also visited the final Civil War site I wanted to see in the Chattanooga area:  Missionary Ridge.

Looking down from the center of Missionary Ridge

After Rosecrans came THIS close to losing his army he settled back into his former defenses in Chattanooga.  But now Confederate General Bragg had his Army of the Tennessee surrounding him, looking down from Missionary Ridge all along Rosecrans’ eastern and southern lines.  So Lincoln fired Rosecrans and hired US Grant to get the job done.

The Crest Road that is the only way to see the battle lines
with the entire ridge built up

Grant ordered a full frontal attack all along the miles of Missionary Ridge.  He believed that the heavily wooded sides of the ridge would allow his men to get right into the rebel lines with less than normal casualties. 

And he believed that the very steep sides of the ridge would keep the rebel cannon mounted on its crest from being effectively used on the climbing Federals. Their barrels could not be depressed enough to fire down into them. 

And such was the case in both instances as the Federals not only rolled up and over and around the Rebels, but caused them to fully leave the field and head not just back south to Ringold or Lafayette, whence they had come, but on their hard road all the way ultimately to Atlanta.

Tomorrow church at Graysville UMC is at 9:30 am so we’ll be awakened by an alarm for sure! Then… it’s OFF to the laundry!  Now there’s a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

-Ken

More pics on FACEBOOK

Generals and their Chickamaugas

I don’t know if you’ll need a map of the Chattanooga area to follow this post or not, but here is one, just in case.  Good luck!

We slept in late this morning.  But then, we always do, unless we have church or I wake up Mona with an arm slap across the face. 

After breakfast and packing our picnic out the door we went to Ringold, Georgia, about 10 miles south of Graysville. There was a Civil War skirmish at Graysville but I’d need a local historian to help me find it.  And there was supposed to be a library in Ringold.

There are small skirmish and battle sites all over this area of Tennessee and Georgia.  After all, Rosecrans Union and Braggs Confederate Armies fought one another here for half a year. Chattanooga was that important to both sides. Railroads and rivers.

Well, there was no library but there was Justin (Judd) who works in a local produce stand.  Judd is also a local Civil War amateur historian and Son of the Confederacy. Anyone with an ancestor who fought in the Civil War can apply to join the Sons or Daughters of either the Union or Confederate Veterans. They discuss history, fellowship around that history and often help maintain local Civil War sites.

Judd told us about the Ringold Gap battles that saved the Confederate Army when Bragg ultimately had to retreat toward Atlanta.

He told us of the Ringold Railroad station which received lots of battle damage, and the burning of Ringold when Sherman left it to head on to Atlanta, and the Sea.

Judd was proud of the fact that U S Grant, who became President just several years later, stayed at the Whitman House, one of the few buildings not burned.

But Judd was especially proud of the site just down the road from his produce stand ,where THE General, the steam engine stolen by the Union ‘Andrew’s Raiders’ ran out of fuel on its dash toward Chattanooga from behind enemy lines in 1862. A sabotage attack by American spies that failed to destroy the Western and Atlantic railroad line from Atlanta to Chattanooga.

Don't remember this story?  Think back. Disney made a movie about it that won some historic acclaim.

This is the same line that runs right beside our church parking lot about 10 miles farther north of the 1862 capture site. The same line that carries many trains a night, north and south, over a crossing about half a mile from our bed all night long.  Think ‘HORNS’. Not bells or whistles. HORNS. Thank God for double pane coach windows!

We left Ringold for the 20 minute ride to the Chickamauga Battlefield National Park.  We visited the visitor’s Center first and learned something really interesting.  I hadn’t seen signs in bathrooms that read, “No bodily washing allowed in our sinks. No nudity: change clothes in stalls with doors closed” since I’d visited the potties in Penn Station, Manhattan, or select library toilets in Philadelphia.

We just went outside to have lunch

We were told by a ranger that these are indeed serious problems here.  OK, we thought maybe re-enactors do this when they come to the park.  No, she said, re-enactors don’t change clothes that often.  The park problems were caused by the yuppie bikers and joggers who end a run/ride and then need to change before going to the office. But it all works out, she said.  Now they just carry rinse water and strip (totally sometimes)  in the parking lot.

So back in 1862…

Our last visit on this journey with Rosecrans and Bragg had been at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where I toured the battlefield while Mona visited with Cousin Myra. Stone’s River, at Murfreesboro, was where Bragg could not stop Rosecrans’ advance south from Nashville. Union General Rosecrans had taken Chattanooga from Confederate Bragg at the Battle of the Clouds, or Lookout Mountain in November 1862 and now Bragg was coming north to take Chattanooga back.

You will find a collection of pictures on my Facebook photo album collection of the battle of Lookout Mountain that we took when we motored down this way in January to pick up FROG in Mobile from the Hickman's. They are pretty accurate since the battle happened in November and it was a cold wet day for us on top of the mount as well.

So Rosecrans moved his army out of his defenses around the city and marched toward Lafayette and Ringold, Georgia to meet Bragg.  Bragg met him first in an unplanned series of skirmishes, along the Chickamauga Creek. The battle was on.

Three days of awful fighting, just like the worst seen at Shiloh, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, and on.  More astronomical tallies of American dead, wounded, missing.  More makeshift hospitals on both sides caring for maimed and dying men, some even a year after the battle.

The full collection of my photos from today are on Facebook.

The first days fight was a bit of a draw.  Many dead on both sides, armies pretty much in place planning and setting up defenses at sundown.

The second day started well for the Union as they repulsed several attacks on their flanks but stayed very much in their defensive positions.

The third day was also full of heavy fighting with small gains for the Confederates, but remember, the Union had many more human resources (men and boys) to recruit AND conscript (the Union draft began in July 1863) into the army than the rebels had. Then the worst that could have happened, did happen, for the Union.

Union General Rosecrans sent a message in error to one of his center line commanders to move out of position just as Confederate General Longstreet, famously called by Robert E Lee earlier in the war, ‘My Old Warhorse’, sent his 11,000 men into that very center, now empty of any union soldiers.

It was a rout.  The entire Union right fell apart and 2/3rds of Rosecrans army was now running, many with weapons and packs thrown down so they could run faster, all the way back the 20 miles or so to Chattanooga.

Only Wilder’s Brigade and some cavalry held a piece of high ground on the Union right long enough to allow the running soldiers to out run the Rebels.

The afternoon would have been entirely lost to the Union, and the army with it, had not General Thomas, a Virginian who decided in 1861 to fight for the Union and was shut off by his entire Virginia family as a result, organized a solid defense on a hill at the far left of the former Union line called ‘Snodgrass’ for the family who owned some of it.  Here he stopped the Rebel advance cold, with many close calls as Rebel charge after charge came up the hill only to be driven back at the last moment.

 Rosecrans Army, most of it, got away. Several thousand were captured and ended up being sent to Andersonville Prison in Southern Georgia where 8 out of 10 died in the next year.

Many key officers and very good men on both sides were dead on the field. Thomas was promoted. Rosecrans was sacked. Grant was given his army.

And that’s where we’ll pick up the story tomorrow as Mona and I visit Missionary Ridge, the hilly line to the east of Chattanooga that Bragg use to partly lay siege to the Union Army.

There will be some libraries tomorrow, too. And Cherokee Chief John Ross’s house south of Chattanooga, if we can find it. And, if Mona’s good, maybe another Steak and Shake like we enjoyed today?  YES! We are sharing those high fat/calorie meals and sometimes they are just salads!! With small shakes halved, of course.

-Ken