Freedom!

For history enthusiasts, this July has been a whirlwind of joy. I started to use the word "overload," but that may not be the case for people like me, people who absorb any fact or picture or emotion that comes with a look into the past.

Then again, my trip through the Freedom Truck yesterday might have set off so many emotions and realizations that I could define it in a positive way, a joyful overload. 

Who would have imagined two hundred fifty years of history packed into one semi's trailer! This display arrived here in town this past Monday and was open to the public through Wednesday. The public came, I'm pleased to report. Over three hundred went through the pouring rain to visit on the first day, and when my husband and I went through on Tuesday afternoon, there had already been over five hundred. Jokingly saying, we were in the midst of half of them at that one time, it was that crowded. 

Someone on Facebook commented that it was too crowded...and it was, but how wonderful. I saw children with their parents. I saw grandparents explaining history to little ones in their care. I saw summer daycare groups with older elementary students. These children were engaged. All of them, down to the preschoolers who saw the exhibits from a mere three-foot-high perspective. I had to get down low as well to sign the Declaration of Independence. Yes, my John Hancock was there, for a brief moment. But it was there!

Another complaint this same negative person wrote on Facebook was that all of this was AI created and had information they already knew. Who cares! It reminded us! It educated us! It showed us who we once were and, therefore, what we can become.

Sure, it was full of colorful gimmick displays, complete with an animated George Washington greeting us as we stepped inside. Of course, it left out a lot, but it gave a basic look into our nation's history. I could have spent hours there, but I would have taken up needed space for the flow of traffic behind me. 

I saw examples of bits and pieces of history connected to my writing career. On the Hero wall, I found a few to mention. My first venture into official authordom (not a word, but more my creation to clarify the kingdom of being a published author) was an article about Jackie Robinson, "Finding Forty-two" published in Highlights for Children. It has been picked up by other presses, like this one in CommonLit, with activities designed for fifth graders.

On the same wall under "Innovators" was Thomas Edison, a "character" in my memoir about the Great Donora Fog. And there he was, right next to Albert Einstein. 

One thing I've not talked about in my blog or on my webpage is the volume of material I have written that has not yet been published or was published under someone else's name, with me more as a ghost writer. I saw snippets of those on the walls, too. Like this saying that was in the book, Reflections, that I helped Senator Donald Kincaid independently publish. He quoted Benjamin Franklin and I even used it as a title in my blog about the book. Check it out, as it's super important to this blog. 

I've thought about that quote a lot in the past few years as the United States struggles to keep our republic. Freedom trucks like this going from town to town will certainly enlighten or engage citizens to work hard to keep it.

Another book I didn't write at all, but worked with the author, is not published as yet (coming soon, so I'll tell more then). There was only one paragraph about the Lewis and Clark Expedition in the entire book, but I had to research to make sure that one paragraph was correct. This display affirmed my findings. 

And finally, this story. When I first began taking my writing career to the serious stage, I was still teaching fourth grade. One afternoon, my students were sitting on the floor in the auditorium listening to a presentation by a folk musician. They had sung the first stanza to "She'll be coming 'round the mountain," when he stopped playing, leaned over his guitar, and asked them a question. "Who was she?" I knew by their responses when he told them who she was that I wanted to write that story. It's a wonderful story, but it just hasn't come together yet. His version of who she was included a character from history whose picture hung on the same wall as Thomas Edison and Jackie Robinson: P.T. Barnum. And what a story his is!

America250 is not yet over. The celebration has just begun because the Declaration of Independence set off the revolution that followed. We'll recognize each battle through the next few years leading up to the founding of our great nation. One thing to remember, though, as Benjamin Franklin in his wisdom and wit said, "It's a republic if you can keep it."  

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

 

God's Little Firecracker

 7-6-26. Sounds like a good passkey number for me to use, a date easy to remember, so significant in my life. I spoke it frequently for several years when I used the drive-thru at the drugstore, picking up medicines for a special lady I called my aunt, Lorraine Freese. "Birthdate," the clerk would say, and I'd respond quickly, without having to ask her, simply because I had said it so often. The only thing is that twenty-six isn't today, July 6, 2026. It's July 6, 1926 I'm referring to. 

She would be a hundred years old today, and she was sure looking forward to it. A hundred and five was her goal. She made it to ninety-five. She died alone, in a covid restricted facility where I could only visit and let her know I cared by knocking on the outside window of her room. So today I celebrate her century birthday alone, without her. How sad for such an energetic little lady who liked to call herself a firecracker.

She might have been two days late from being born on Independence Day, but she was certainly a firecracker of an independent sort. Her first five years were spent in an orphanage. She was taken in by her aunt's family (my grandmother's), and lived there until she graduated from high school and went out on her own. After a few years of trying to find herself, she joined the army. The Salvation Army.

She was assigned to a mission in western North Carolina and there she found herself and the purpose for which she was born. Because there was already a soldier stationed there named Lorraine, she went by the name Jean. Through years of hard study and commitment, she became known as Captain Jean and then Major Jean, but I knew her as Lorraine. She was full of energy and had no issue about being a woman on horseback going into the backwoods of the Appalachians to knock on doors and tell people about the love of Jesus. When she started driving a scrapped World War II jeep, she learned, in a hard-earned sort of way, to back into people's driveways to make a quick getaway. 

That's her, on the left, with Sib, her friend of many years, standing beside the mission's sign. If you have any inclination of celebrating the true meaning of the Declaration of Independence, might I make a suggestion? Send a check to support this mission that is hanging on through tough times and dwindling interest in mission work. This little firecracker named Major Jean would so appreciate it. Drop a card in the mail to the Shelton Laurel Mountain Mission, 35 Mountain Mission Road, Clyde, NC 28721. The firecracker in heaven would certainly be thrilled. So would the mission, because she was too precious to them, and to the Lord, to be through with her impact on the world. 

One day, years ago, she called me and asked me to write her story. We sat together, talking, her revealing to me a life that was so dedicated and inspiring that I couldn't say no. 

The title of the book, Called to the Mountains, was a no-brainer selection, because time after time she told me she was called by God to go to the mountains to spread the word of God to the people there. I guess a fairly accurate title could have been, God's Little Firecracker, because of her energy and her drive...and the fact she stood barely five feet tall, if that. 

Learn from Lorraine. Go. Do. We all should be firecrackers in our chosen plight in life. 

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Childhood Games

I belong to a writer's group called the Foothills Writers. We meet each Wednesday to share our work and learn from each other. The idea is to teach about some aspect of writing and have us to write to prompts, reading them aloud, and then discussing them. A different member moderates the weekly session. We've had some wonderful activities that strengthened my writing ability.

When my turn came up, I keyed in on childhood in the summer. We wrote for about ten minutes and then shared with each other. We are all from such divergent backgrounds that the fun of hearing the varied answers makes for some robust discussions. The prompt I proposed was to write about memories, or a specific memory, of summers as a child. 

After we read our responses to each other, I asked those who wanted to share on our corporate google page to be entered into ChatGPT. We did, and we learned quite a bit about our writing, about what it was getting across to a neutral party who didn't know us from Adam.

Here's my written answer to the prompt: "Summer as a Child." Has anybody ever played the game, Ain't no bears out tonight? There is such a thing. I found it on YouTube, although they politically corrected the word "killed" to "got."

Ain’t no bears out tonight, 

Daddy Killed them all last night

I can hear the sing-song now, playing in the backyard with my friends, summertime, fireflies blinking. Mama hadn’t turned the porch light on yet.

Brenda and Patricia. They lived across the road from me, and I couldn’t wait to finish my chores to run free outside. They were a patient two, sitting on the front stoop while my mother timed my piano practice for the day, saying Are you done yet over and over, Mama shouting, I don’t hear anything!!!

But the evenings were the best. Hot, muggy, dark, in a time before daylight savings was imposed on us, and darkness fell early enough for us to play well.

Our game of choice was a hillbilly version of tag, Aint no bears out tonight. Brenda always called “It,” and she became the bear, hiding behind whichever tree trunk she could find before we opened our eyes.

Patricia and I holding hands, walked together through the woods in the backyard with the moon and the fireflies our only source of light. We sang at the top of our lungs, knowing sometime soon, that bear would emerge, growling, and chasing us back to the side porch. 

Daytime it was Mother, may I, hot afternoons it was read a book. Mornings were chores

But evenings, the bears came out and frightened us.

I miss the freedom of being chased by a pretend bear, the wind blowing in my hair, the thrill. Life has been like that, bears coming out from behind all kinds of tree trunks. The innocence of backyard playing never returned. 

So that was my creation, the playing in the backyard. I inserted what you read above into ChatGPT and instructed it to create a picture that shows what I wrote. Here's what it came up with: 

It was a little dark, so my next instruction was to make it be at dusk before it was dark, and the first picture shows that. One by one I inserted other members' stories into the chat and slowly (the waiting is the pits), a picture emerged. By looking at it, we could tell if we got our messasge across. What do you think of mine, did the AI key in on what I wrote? Scary isn't it, to think that some machine gets it when maybe a human doesn't.

Recently, the use of AI has been a topic of discussion not only in our group but across the internet. We came to no conclusions, but had energetic opinions to give each other. As for me, I will not use AI to write. What I present to others is what I have done, sitting here in the summer doldrums, typing away. No AI for me...unless you count Grammarly!

So there you go.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Adding More to the History Books

One of my favorite parts of being a fourth-grade teacher was the social studies curriculum focusing on North Carolina. I loved learning along with my students. I was faithful to the teaching guides that introduced historical events such as the Lost Colony, the shipwrecks in the Outer Banks, and the Overmountain Men. Little did I know....

Come back, former students! There's more to North Carolina's story.

My new passion is hearing stories that uncover parts of America's past. I do it all the time when I visit with people to start their journey of writing a memoir. But this...this is another story to tell.

I never imagined there was a hidden history not twenty miles from my home. I walked back into that time this past week on a visit to a Spanish fort. Yes! Twenty miles! How far do I live from St. Augustine, Florida, where typical history books locate Spanish forts? A full day. But not here in the foothills of the Appalachians.

I dutifully taught about Governor John White and the colony he established on Roanoke Island in 1587. I enlarged this photo of the historical marker at Fort San Juan so you could read the date...1567. Twenty years earlier! So, the story...

It goes back to Conquistador Hernando de Soto, who explored from Florida, through what we now call Georgia and the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Alabama, to the Mississippi River, the first European to cross the Mississippi. He died there in 1542 of a fever, probably typhoid. Did I ever teach that? Yes, to the conquistadors but no to being in our area of North Carolina.

Spain was determined to establish a road to safely transport the gold they either plundered or received in trade. Spanish ships had been attacked by pirates too often while sailing through the Gulf of Mexico. They reasoned that overland would be safer. With this as his driving force, Juan Pardo later led an expedition setting up forts along the way to use as landing spots for those who traveled with the treasure.

One spot was here in western North Carolina, near Morganton, not all that far from me, between Morganton and my house. His men arrived at the Joara village and announced that they were in charge now, that they needed housing and safety. He didn't speak the Joaran language, and they didn't speak his, but trading and sheer awesomeness spoke for him. The natives erected four houses for them, and a fort. 

All was well for about a year and a half when the Joarans grew restless with these invaders taking over their lives. One night, when the Spanish were asleep, they burned the houses with the men inside, killing all but one. That one managed to escape to another of the Spanish forts along the route. His written testimony is the story that tells us what happened here. 

It didn't tell what happened to Joara after the revolt, however. They disappeared. Over the following four hundred years, the village disappeared, too. Years and years of piles upon piles of dirt, leaves, and dead trees covered it all. English settlers arrived and made homes and planted fields. 

And then, the current landowner asked the right person about his discovery of pottery shards and sherds, pieces of broken pottery, shards for glass or metal-based, sherds for clay-based. (I learned this on my tour.) A team came out and started exploring. The more they uncovered, the more they realized the enormity of what they had discovered. 

Fast forward to this past week, when I observed a team of archaeologists at work. 

So far, teams at the Joara site have uncovered the outline of burned buildings, obvious by the color of the dirt's layer. They've worked enough in the last three decades to determine the village's setting.

A drawn concept of Joara village

The first dig has been covered back. As has the second and third, for several reasons, mainly to deter curiosity seekers who would come and destroy what remained. Also, to preserve what is still to be found, saving that for later advancements in the science of archaeology.

You can read more about this fascinating bit of history by going to their website, exploringjoara.org/the-berry-site/.

But why am I so interested? Because I'm a writer. Because I have a story set not ten miles from there and I want to incorporate some of this into it. It's an historical fiction I started several years ago, and now, I'm at the right place in my writing journey to pick it back up and go with it.

Stay tuned.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

There's a Fire in the Church!

Last Sunday, the church I attend, Littlejohn United Methodist, caught on fire. The United Methodist symbol has a flame surrounding a cross, so fire is part of our DNA. It was also Pentecost Sunday, the day when God sent flames to quicken his people by bringing the Holy Spirit upon those believers who gathered together in prayer after Jesus left them to ascend into heaven. It is a special day of days in the liturgical calendar when we're supposed to catch afire, renewing ourselves in Christ's teachings.

But not really this way. 

Fast forward some two thousand years after that first Pentecost Sunday, and Littlejohn witnessed a fire of its own. Here's what happened. My husband and I were the "greeters" at the front door for the entire month of May, which means we arrived earlier than the nine o'clock time we usually start the service. Except this time, the pianist's husband greeted us, running down the front steps, with his own greeting. "Turn around, the church is on fire!" 

He and his wife had arrived early to set things in motion as usual. When they opened the front doors, thick black smoke gushed out. Instead of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, they were met with the stench and misery of the reality that our church was indeed on fire, and not in the Biblical sense. He had already called the fire departments and the pastor. We stood together, watching white smoke billow from behind the main sanctuary. 

Within minutes...no, make that within seconds...the first responders arrived, and then the fire trucks from our own Gamewell Fire Department, followed by nearby Collettsville Fire Department, the ladder truck from the city of Lenoir's fire department, emergency responders from all three entities, plus the county's disaster official. Our parking lots were overflowing by the time members of the congregation arrived. But we made room, and we stood in awe and prayer as we turned our church over to God...and to the men springing into action before their trucks came to a stop.

In the end, it turned out to be an electrical shortage in the wiring of the old section beneath the choir room. It was smouldering, ready to burst, and would have, had it not been on an early Sunday morning, just before church service was to begin, when we would be there at exactly the right time.

We can muse on the "What if's" all day, but I'm not going there. It could have been worse. Much worse. I firmly believe our church was saved by the hand of God and by the dedicated emergency personnel who responded to our call.

Last August, we at Littlejohn celebrated two hundred fifty years of being called by God. This Pentecost we got the call again. Amazing! Our church is on fire!!! 

We held hands in a circle, and the minister led us in a corporate prayer, echoing what we in our hearts were pleading, for the protection of those who rushed into danger and for the restoration of the meeting place of our congregation. 

Many in our group, and many of the emergency personnel who talked with us after all was well, asked about the history of the building. When I got home, I started going through the first book I ever wrote. It was back in 1978 and I had forgotten an awful lot.

I'm sharing with you below the email information I sent people about the buildings that housed the congregation we call Littlejohn. If you have anything to add, please do. We want as much information as possible. Most of all, we want this fire that was lit last Sunday to be the spark that starts a new greatness.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

The History of a Church Building

Our first structure was built in 1775 as a meeting house and was a log house with a “weight pole” roof, poles propped to hold up the roof. Dirt floor. It stood in what is now considered the “old” part of the graveyard. At that time the road between Lenoir and Morganton went directly beside the churchyard and the second structure was on the opposite side of the road, about fifty yards from the first. The third log structure was built in 1825 back across this road in the present location of the current building. The building itself was not destroyed during the Civil War, although the deed to the land where it is located was destroyed when the Burke County Courthouse was burned. A new deed that included three and three-fourths acres of land was created in 1868.

This 1825 structure was torn down to build a new frame church in 1868. The logs from the 1825 building were moved to the Andrew Hull Courtney home and used in the 2006 construction of Courtney Chapel at Lelia Tuttle Memorial Park.

 

Harriett Green drew this picture
of what we think the 1868 church looked like. 

This fourth building was dedicated in August of 1869. This building had two front doors one for the men to enter and one for the women to enter. The furnishing were simple with wooden pews. Men sat on one side, and women sat on the other.

A church conference was held March 20, 1914 to discuss opening a new congregation growing from Littlejohn in the community of Gamewell. Two separate building projects were accomplished, both framed with lumber, one at Gamewell and one at Littlejohn. Our 1914 structure was built on the same foundation as the one already in existence. The sills and sleepers as well as the beams that were hewed in 1868 were retained and are still a part of the current structure. The flooring and framing of the 1868 church were kept, but the exterior was torn off. Two windows replaced the two doors and a single front door was added along with a steeple. Two wings were added to each side of the main buildings with folding doors separating the sections. Two classrooms were added immediately behind the pulpit. (Where the couch is located today.) Heat for the church was supplied by two pot-bellied stoves, one on each side of the sanctuary. This new building was dedicated in 1919.

In the late 1940s the two classrooms were updated with sheetrock. A basement was dug by the men of the church using a team of horses to drag away pans of dirt. The wood stoves were replaced with a furnace that was in this basement.

Two back classrooms (choir room and flower room today) were built in the early 1950s. Johnny Waddell added the nursery and bathrooms shortly thereafter. In 1961 the Methodist Men started repair work on the basement by adding walls and a hallway, creating classrooms and a small kitchen and fellowship hall.

The current education building and the Clay Fellowship Hall were built in 1977. 

Clean Caldwell Day

No Mow May has gone well, at least from what I've seen as I've driven down the road. The weeds are indeed growing tall and their blossoms are plentiful for the pollinators. I see green. It's beautiful.

But these tall weeds are doing something else, something sinister. They are hiding the trash! What we think is beautiful has an underlying pollution of tossed metal cans that can be seen only when the sun reflects their evil. There's white fast food bags that crush the gentle stems as they land. Worst of all, there's styrofoam, the scourge along our roads that will never in our lifetimes disintegrate. 

Which is why Clean Caldwell Day is so important. 

With No Mow May ending, the mowers will resume their assigned jobs of cutting away the beautiful greenery and, unfortunately, laying bare once again, the plague of litter. UGH!

In response to this reality, wise county officials have organized a County-Wide Litter Sweep. It's a last-ditch effort to eliminate as much trash as possible before June 1, when the mowers will grind up the styrofoam and spit them out into fake snowflakes. Instead of dainty yellow flowers dotting the roadsides, there will be aluminum drink cans that the heavy wheels crushed as they did their deed. Please NO!!!

The solution to this situation is to eliminate the litter before the mowers attack. Come on, people, do your part (besides not tossing trash). I've included a link to signing up, so do it now. Choose a road that means a lot to you, one that you will protect by doing this service. By the way, the major highways going through the county (321, 18, 64 and the loop) are maintained by the state, and trash pick-up on those roads is done by paid personnel. 

Then on Saturday, May 30, go to CCC&TI between eight and ten in the morning to pick up the much-needed equipment they will have set aside for you: the safety vests, the grabbers, the trash bags, and rubber gloves. You leave the filled bags on the side of the road, and since you have notified them of which roads you will be cleaning, they will know where to send the truck to pick up the bags. Return the supplies to CCC&TI by one o'clock that same day, or to the Soil and Water Office on Monday. 

Devote a few hours to this project. Most of all, don't be a litter bug!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

No Mow May

It's here, North Carolina people! Have you noticed yet? The bees probably have, and that's the important thing. In fact, that's what No Mow May is all about. 

North Carolina Senate Bill 391 requires that the NC Department of Transportation not mow public roadsides during the entire month of May. What a concept! This fantastic rule will give the wildflower weeds time to prosper and bloom. In turn, they will provide food for bees and other pollinators. 

Here's a busy bee working at my delicious azaleas last month. 

This attempt by our state legislature is a step in the right direction. We must act now, before it's too late to save our beautiful world. 

Life is good. Just ask a bee.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen