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