Centuries Apart

Doing school visits is a true joy. This past week the joy multiplied when the school visit was at a reconstructed village called Whippoorwill Academy. I was there for Daniel Boone Day and the children were there to learn about living back in his time.

"Would you talk with the children about your books?" the director asked me last month.

Issue. None of my books are the least bit related to any mention of Daniel Boone.

"Sure, I'll do it."

And I did. Full costume and all. Log cabin and all.

Just how I pulled it off is a story in itself. I'm a former teacher and I knew I could make anything connect to ole' Dan'l Boone if I stretched it.

I just happened to have multiple copies of my Back on Earth book about Apollo Eleven. Before I passed them out to the children we compared Daniel Boone and Neil Armstrong, their character traits. Ding, ding, ding. And it worked!

We (mostly they) discussed how the two were similar and how they were different. These men might have made their footprints centuries apart, but they were both from a special breed of men who couldn't keep things as they were.

After one presentation, a parent chaperone came up to me and told he knew the man who opened the hatch when the capsule landed in the ocean, the first to greet the astronauts from their historic voyage. Because of restrictions and legal Naval agreements, this man could only say he was there and could give no details...ever. Would I ever love to sit at his feet and hear the real story! Imagine the courage to be the one who performed that small, but vital task.

Here's to explorers of the past who made our country what it is today. And to the children I met last week who one day might be the explorers who land on Mars!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Revisiting History

A summer Sunday drive a few weeks ago found my husband and me on a back, back, way back mountain road in Madison County, North Carolina. We weren't alone. Riding shotgun (literally, only it was a pistol) was the coauthor of one of my books, Jasper Reese. We had attended the yearly Spring Creek School reunion and were on the way home, or so I figured. "I sure would love to see my old homeplace one more time," this nearly ninety year old hinted. Off we went with his navigating, down an isolated road off state road NC #209 in western North Carolina.

Bluff Mountain Road. It's on the cover of our book, Back in the Time. Take a look at the picture of the road set back in the forties.

That's twelve year old Jasper in his homemade wagon
driving on the Bluff Mountain Road

Jasper described it as a major thoroughfare. Look at it nearly seventy years later:

Still a major thoroughfare, can't you tell! If you stay on it far enough, you'll intersect with the Appalachian Trail and then go on to the backwoods of eastern Tennessee. But to get to Jasper's homeplace, we had to turn off this road onto a much minor thoroughfare that had grass and foot high weeds growing between the ruts. That minor.

Jasper navigating

My thoughts as we inched along? "We could fall off the side of this mountain and no one would ever find us. They wouldn't even know where to begin looking!"

Best part of this side trip was his joy at seeing his old house (even better than my joy when we emerged from the wilderness back onto the major thoroughfare). The driveway was above the house, and he pointed out spots where he carried water from the spring, and where his family fled the night of the 1940 flood, and where he worked the fields that were now overgrown with tall pine trees. His memories were triggered and they flowed joyfully, like pent up children on the last day of school. Celebrating. Free. 

Sad, however, that in the front yard was a "For Sale" sign. Not the sign. His reaction. His mood turned to melancholy as we drove away. "If only I was twenty years younger. I'd buy that on the spot."

Catch of the day,

Gretchen

Corn Meal and Clogging

Just in case you think the life of an author is glamorous, let me send you a little reality check. My husband and I had a booth selling my books last weekend at the Happy Valley Fiddler's Convention here in western North Carolina, the setting, at least a chapter or two, in four of my nonfictions.

We've done it before, under a tent on the main drag. This year was different. We were assigned the cow barn. Sounds dreadful, right? Well, they did clear the mess enough to dump a layer of sawdust for us to stand in. And. Since we were on a hill overlooking the festival, we had a panoramic view accompanied by the most lively music ever created. And. We had electricity, which means we had a fan to stir the brutal sweltering August heat. And. We had visitors aplenty seeking a reprieve from their personal baking. We loved it!

My husband is in the center, next to me,
watching the action on the opposite side of the barn.

On the other long side of the barn, there was cement, scraped clean with no sawdust, a perfect location for the dance hall. Remember, this was a fiddler's convention, so the dance style matched the music. Clogging. First however, came the corn meal, which I'm sure the mice have enjoyed ever since we left. Soft shoe and tap dancing can get treacherous even on the wooden frames designed specifically for dancing. To lessen the dancers' slipping and sliding and landing on the bum, a layer of corn meal is sprinkled on the surface for traction.

The teacher stood on his own platform in front of the dancers, instructing them step by step, and slide by slide, and kick by kick.

When dancing wasn't happening, this was the staging area for performers. I felt like we had private shows! And on the knoll just above us was a grave. Not just any grave stuck out in the middle of the cow pasture. The grave of Laura Foster.

In case you can't read the words on the tombstone:
Laura Foster
Murdered in May 1865
Tom Dula hanged for crime

If you've ever sung the chorus to "Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley," then you have met Laura Foster, Tom's victim for which he was hanged. Yes. It's a true story, read the tombstone in case you wonder. My friend, award winning author, Charlotte Barnes, the one I'm talking to in the inside the barn picture above, first wrote a well researched nonfiction about the Tom Dooley scandal, and then the based-on-truth novel that just came out, told from the point of view of the reporter who covered the trial. I bought a copy from her and I've read the first two chapters. I'm hooked!

I'm also hooked on history and heritage. It's why I write what I do. And it's why I spent Labor Day weekend in a cow barn.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen