Zebulon Baird Vance

For nearly 40 years I have been a member of Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV). It is a heritage organization open to descendants of Confederate soldiers or members of the Confederate government. When I applied for membership in the 1980s I did so on the war record of my paternal great-great-grandfather, Ransom Batten, who lived a long post-war life, dying some 17 years before I was born. (Leroy Batten, my great grandfather, born in 1866, also lived a long life. I attended his funeral when I was 10 years old.) Over the years the organization has had members from all walks of life. If you look up “List of members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans” on Wikipedia, you will find a whole slew of politicians, state house members, members of Congress, members of the Senate, governors, at least one president (Harry S Truman), lawyers, writers, and even the odd actor (Clint Eastwood).

Two of the names on that list pop out at me. The first is Nelson Winbush, a fellow I met at a national reunion in Murfreesboro, TN, a few years back. He is a Real Grandson, meaning his grandfather served during the war. He is also black, as is H. K. Edgerton, the other name on the list that jumps out at me. H. K. happens to be a fellow member of our local group here in Asheville. He was at one time the president of the Asheville chapter of the NAACP.

The SCV works on heritage issues, and these days we end up spending a fair amount of time on the issue of the removal of Confederate memorials, statues, and the like. Those who never learned history seem to be intent on obliterating all the history they never learned. But every now and again a reporter will refer to us as The Sons of the Confederacy and imply that we are a racist or white supremacist organization.

Once I was contacted by a reporter from the Texas Tribune who asked me about my membership in the Sons of the Confederacy. Well, as it happens, I had done an internet search on this Sons of the Confederacy group and found nothing. Apparently that organization does not exist, or, if it does, it is a clandestine operation. It doesn’t have a website that I could find. So I informed the reporter that I was not a member of that organization, and that to the best of my knowledge that organization does not exist. Further, if he had been even a half-assed reporter, he would have known that, given that Google is available for reporters to use.

He had no further questions for me.

Every local chapter of the SCV, or camp, has a name and a number. The local Asheville camp is the Zebulon Baird Vance Camp 15. This essay is about Zeb Vance, a fellow H. K. refers to as the most renowned statesman that the state of North Carolina ever produced.

I have taken a good bit of the information that follows from the NCPedia article on Zebulon Baird Vance. The NCPedia article was, in turn, taken from a six-volume work, Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, edited by William S. Powell. The article on Vance was authored by John G. Barrett, in 1996.

He was born (1830) on the family homestead at Reems Creek in Buncombe County, NC. The log cabin, still standing, is approximately 12 miles north of Asheville and about five miles south of downtown Weaverville. He enrolled at age 13 in Washington College (near Davy Crockett’s birthplace), but left the school after a year due to the death of his father. After the family’s finances were placed on a better footing, he studied law in Asheville (by reading law under a practicing attorney), and at the University of North Carolina. He was not fond of the law as a profession, but saw it as a stepping stone to his real interest, politics. According to Barrett, “Success in the courtroom was usually the result of wit, humor, boisterous eloquence, and clever retorts, not knowledge of the law. He understood people better than he did judicial matters.”

It did not take Vance long to get involved in politics. He was admitted to the bar in Asheville in 1851, and was immediately elected solicitor for Buncombe County. He was elected to the North Carolina House of Commons in 1854, and to the Congress of the United States in 1858. He remained a member of Congress until the end of the 1859-1861 term. We all know what happened in 1861. Well, maybe the folks who pull down statues don’t know. There was a war.

He turned down the opportunity to become a member of the Confederate Congress. He was an interesting fellow: he owned slaves, but did not believe secession was in the best interest of the state. But when the state did secede from the Union, he became first a captain, and then a colonel, in the Confederate Army. But in 1862, the Conservative party nominated him as candidate for governor, and he won the election against a Whig candidate and a Confederate party candidate.

(Vance’s party affiliations are varied. He began his political career as a Whig, then affiliated with the Know-Nothing party, then the Conservative party, which eventually became the Democratic party. His postbellum offices were held as a Democrat.)

His work during these first two terms as governor (from 1862 until his imprisonment at the end of the war) focused on raising and arming soldiers, and seeing to their supplies, as well as minimizing the suffering of his citizens to the extent possible by supplying them with food, clothing, and other supplies. He was very often in conflict with Confederate president Jefferson Davis. According to Barrett, “Vance objected strenuously to the Confederate conscription and impressment of property laws, the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, discrimination against North Carolinians in the appointment and promotion of commissioned officers, and the use of Virginia officers in the state.” His devotion to the people of North Carolina made him the most popular politician in the history of the state.

After his release from prison in 1865 (a curious episode: he was never charged with a crime nor tried), he returned to North Carolina to practice law. He could not, however, stay away from politics. He was elected governor again in 1876, elected to the United State Senate in 1879, and reelected in 1885 and 1891. He did not finish that last term as senator, as he died in 1894.

He held no bitterness to the North, and worked as a senator to reunite the two nations that had recently been enemies. But he was in the opposition, and his list of legislative accomplishments as a senator is slim. Clearly, his greatest service to the state was as governor.

Herman Blumenthal, chairman of The Blumenthal Foundation, had this to say: “The memory of Vance would have faded wholly into oblivion were it not for Asheville, North Carolina, which had dedicated a towering monument in the center of the city to him and annually conducts a memorial ceremony on his birthday. A museum containing his memorabilia is located nearby.” He wrote that in 1995. As you can imagine, nothing in that statement is true today. He has been canceled by the modern Know-Nothing party. The obelisk that Blumenthal referred to has been disassembled and is stored somewhere. I believe the removal is the subject of ongoing litigation.

Every state in the country is allowed two statues in Statuary Hall of the Capitol building in DC. North Carolina has one for Charles B. Aycock, the “education governor” (1901-1905). My understanding is that his statue will be replaced with one of Billy Graham, as soon as the new work is fully funded and completed. The other is Zebulon Vance. I have not heard of any plans to replace this statue.

On a recent fall day we drove a portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway, enjoying the display of colors. We noticed an exit from the Parkway that led to the Zebulon B. Vance birthplace, and on a whim, we took the exit. The photos on this post are from that visit.

The cabin in which Vance was born.

A very old photo of the Vance birthplace.

This monument has now been removed.

The birthplace from the back, showing some of the outbuildings.

Slave quarters on the grounds.

Fuel for the smokehouse.

Like many North Carolina notables, Vance is buried in the Riverside Cemetery, in Asheville.

Helen's Bridge

Major William J. Brown and his wife Ann Marshall Evans, from Lewiston, PA, had three sons. The one that interests us is John Evans Brown. At the ripe old age of 22, John Evans Brown became a Forty-Niner and headed to California to seek his fortune. Gold mining did not work out, so he found work as a surveyor. After a few years of surveying, he decided to head to Australia, where he became a sheep and cattle farmer in New South Wales. The government asked him to serve as US Consul, and he agreed. In 1859, he married wife number one, Theresa. He managed to accomplish all these things in the ten years since he left Lewiston, PA.

A bit later he eyed greener pastures in New Zealand. He bought a farm near Christchurch, which he named Swannanoa, helped build a Methodist church there (also named Swannanoa), and then moved again. At this juncture, he began to move away from farming. He became the general manager of the Christchurch Tramway Board and began a career in politics. Unbelievably, at least to me, this American Yankee who moved to New Zealand by way of Australia somehow managed to be elected to the New Zealand parliament not once, not twice, but three times. Unfortunately, in 1880, his wife Theresa died at the age of 42.

Brown married wife number two, Jane Emily Martin, in late 1883, and in 1884 called it quits in New Zealand. That was the same year his father died, leaving him a large parcel of land, assumed to be worthless, in Asheville, NC. Brown discovered mica on the property and mined it. At the same time, he began to build his dream home, a castle, on the top of Beaucatcher Mountain. He named the castle Zealandia. The castle was completed in 1889, a bit before the Biltmore House, and Brown enjoyed it for a mere six years before passing away. Eventually, the house was acquired by Sir Philip S. Henry, an Australian, who doubled the size of the castle, work which was completed in 1908.

Sir Philip was apparently quite wealthy, as he owned another huge house but a short distance from Zealandia, named Beaumont. To facilitate travel between the two properties, he had the architect of the Biltmore House design and supervise the construction of a bridge between the two properties, which spanned the Beaucatcher Gap. (As you can see, there are quite a few “Beau” names in the area.) The bridge was constructed in 1909 and went by the official name of Zealandia Bridge.

Then something happened, and it became Helen’s bridge. And therein lies a tale.

What I am about to relate is all urban legend. There are several variations on the theme. None can be identified as the truth. There is a good bit of evidence that the name Helen was grafted onto this urban legend as the result of the death of a nineteen-year-old woman, named Helen Clevenger, who was murdered in room 224 of the Battery Park Hotel in Asheville, in 1936. Here is the first version of the story that I heard.

A young employee at Zealandia was going about her chores when she became aware that the library caught fire. Her child was in the library, but as the room was filled with all that flammable paper, she was unable to rescue her child. Despondent, she ran to the bridge and hanged herself from it.

The problems with this version are at least two-fold. The first problem is that there are no records of a fire at Zealandia. Once during a dinner party, a female guest moved too close to one of the fireplaces, and her dress caught fire. But the fire was quickly put out, and the young woman did not commit suicide. That event is the closest anyone can find of a fire at Zealandia. The second problem eliminates death by hanging, at least in my mind. I have walked across that bridge: there is nothing to which a rope can be attached.

Another version is similar, but it has the young lady brooding for weeks or months before throwing herself off the bridge. Death by falling from the bridge seems more likely. Unfortunately, nothing in the records of Zealandia backs this up.

Yet another version has the young lady pregnant, presumably by the master of the castle or one of his male relatives, unmarried, and unable to bear the shame.

Let’s just assume that someone did die, for whatever reason, on or near the bridge. We now get to the ghost tales.

Many people report seeing a wraith-like apparition on or near the bridge. Reports vary: there are reports that the apparition is crossing the bridge and other reports that the apparition is hanging from the bridge. Some even say the apparition waves them down and asks if they have seen her child. The part I find most interesting is the part that people claim happens during good weather or bad, during daytime or nighttime. I am talking about the wrath of Helen.

According to the stories, people who try to summon her to appear suffer from a variety of problems. They hear noises, of course, as one would expect from just about any ghost. But they also experience car troubles: cars that will not start, electronic door locks that cease to function, dead car batteries, and things of that nature. Some say their cell phone batteries drain almost instantly.

Kathy and I took the pictures on this post recently. Zealandia is privately owned, and very well marked with “no trespassing” signs, so the pictures of the mansion that you see were taken at a distance. The bridge has graffiti on it, a modern curse. You can see from the photos of the top that hanging oneself from this bridge would be problematic. The photos of the underside show that the bridge was well-designed and well-constructed.

We live on the southern slope of Beaucatcher Mountain, and Helen’s Bridge is less than two miles from our house. I asked Kathy if she would like to return to the bridge on Halloween night, to see what we could see. She mumbled something about being with granddaughter Emma that night, so, NO!

Oh, well. Maybe some other Halloween.

The bridge, viewed from the east, at a distance.

The underside of the north end of the bridge.

The bridge from the top.

The view from the top of the bridge to the east.

The view from the top of the bridge to the west.

Along this overgrown path, horse carts carried The Master of Beaumont and Zealandia back and forth between his mansions. I have been unable to locate any of the remains of Beaumont. There are some very pricey homes in the area where Beaumont must have stood. My guess is that Beaumont was torn down a very long time ago. I will continue the search to confirm this.

The Zealandia Castle. (Photograph reproduced on a post card of the day.)

Zealandia today.

Zealandia today.

We are fairly convinced that this path leads to the bridge, but to confirm that would require trespassing, and I am too young to go to prison.

The Battle of Bentonville

Back in the 1960s, I was a member of Boy Scouts of America Troop Number 24. At some point during my membership in that troop (and I am guessing that it was 1965), a bunch of troops from the Tuscarora Council ended up at a massive camp-out at the Bentonville Battleground, in North Carolina. I did not know much about that battle in the War for Southern Independence. I knew it took place in my home county, Johnston County, and I knew the house on the property, the Harper House, served as a hospital for injured Union soldiers (and was thus most likely haunted). I did not know who won that battle. I do know that it rained for nearly the entire weekend of the camp-out, and the remains of the breastworks were still visible. I considered the battle to be a minor, insignificant skirmish from late in the war.

I was wrong.

Recently I read Last Stand in the Carolinas: The Battle of Bentonville, by Mark L. Bradley. The book came out in the mid-1990s, but it took me a while to get around to reading it. I do not believe that there is any aspect of this battle that Bradley did not cover. It is a large book, documented with hundreds of footnotes, and sporting maps specially created for the book by cartographer Mark A. Moore.

After the fall of Atlanta, Sherman sliced through Georgia, then turned northward, wreaking havoc through South Carolina. General Robert E. Lee asked General Joseph E. Johnston to stop Sherman from reaching Goldsboro, NC. That attempt happened near the small town of Bentonville, NC. According to Bradley, this was the only significant opposition Sherman had faced since Atlanta. The battle lasted three days, from March 19 through March 21, 1865. A good bit of the fighting took place in the rain.

Johnston was not known for taking chances: he was a cautious and calculating man. At Bentonville, though, he broke from his past pattern and displayed a talent for flexibility and risk-taking. (Perhaps he should have done this earlier in the war.) It is because of this that he was able to hold off a superior force of Union men for three days. The Union army had about 60,000 men under arms for this battle, while the Confederate army clocked in at about 22,000 men. The fighting was intense. Veterans of the Gettysburg campaign found the fighting to be as fierce, if not more fierce, at Bentonville. My childhood notion that this was a skirmish has been disabused.

There were significant losses for both sides. The Union army suffered 1,527 casualties (194 dead, 1,112 wounded, 221 missing or captured), while the Confederate army suffered 2,606 casualties (239 dead, 1,694 wounded, 673 missing or captured).

Who won? That depends upon what you define as a win. In my opinion, it was at best a draw, and more realistically a loss for the Confederates, though that army could look upon the battle as a successful stalling tactic. In the end, Johnston staged a retreat towards Raleigh, and Sherman decided not to pursue him. He moved on to Goldsboro, as per his original plan. Johnston’s letter to R. E. Lee laid out a realistic assessment of the situation: “I can do no more than annoy [Sherman].”

Nineteen days after Johnston’s retreat, Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Seventeen days after Lee’s surrender, Johnston surrendered to Sherman at the James Bennett house, near Durham.

During my visit to Bentonville, all those years ago, the most prominent reminders that this had been a battlefield (aside from the markers, and the mass grave of Confederate soldiers) were the remains of the breastworks. The Union soldiers threw these up hastily to provide some protection from the Confederate fire. They chopped down trees, piled them one on top of the other, then covered them with dirt. According to Bradley, they dug dirt with anything they had on hand, which included cast iron frying pans. The trees had decayed, and the dirt was covered with green grass, but you could still see the ridges that marked the breastworks.

A portion of the battlefield is preserved as a National Historic Landmark. That includes 130 acres of land, but the total land owned by the Bentonville Battlefield Historic Association and the American Battlefield Trust runs to a total of 2,063 acres. When Bradley wrote the book some 28 years ago, most of the land that constituted the total battlefield was in private hands. Since then, some 50 or more purchases of private land have been added to the land owned by the two organizations. The (allegedly) haunted Harper House is still standing, though it is closed for renovation.

A little time ago I attended my high school reunion in Clayton, NC, which is on the westernmost edge of Johnston County. I planned to get to the battlefield before the reunion and walk the terrain with Bradley’s book in my hand. That did not happen: some people just can’t drive, and when they have accidents on an interstate highway, they tend to throw a lot of plans into a cocked hat. The time I should have spent at Bentonville I spent on the interstate, waiting for the police to move the accident a few miles in front of me. It would have been an appropriate time to visit the battlefield because it was raining that day. That would have made it a trifecta: rain during the battle, rain during the big camp-out, rain during my walking tour. As it is, I will have to wait for another rainy day to visit the battlefield that I last visited nearly 60 years ago.

The Harper House

Monument to the North Carolina soldiers at Bentonville.

Headstones in memory of unknown Confederate soldiers.

A re-enactment photo.

Fort Frederica

A wedding on Kathy’s side of the family gave me the opportunity to visit Fort Frederica on the finest of all of Georgia’s barrier islands, St. Simons Island. But before we get to the fort, an observation on this recently attended, modern wedding.

As best I can recall, I have attended five weddings in the last 20 years, two in the last 10. (This does not count my own wedding.) All have been the union of two young people, meaning people in their twenties and thirties, and most of the guests were young people. This last wedding was the union of two young people, and most of the guests were young people, but it had a different feel. The young ladies who were not the bride (maids of honor and fair maidens not in the wedding party) were dressed to the nines at both the rehearsal dinner and the ceremony itself. Barely dressed to the nines would be a more accurate description. I found myself marveling at the dresses slit up to the pelvis, the mini-mini dresses, the bare midriffs, the barely concealed breasts, and the stiletto heels. Kathy tells me that all these dresses were quite expensive. While several of these lovelies were single, even the accompanied ladies were dressed for the hunt. I throw this out as an observation and pass no judgment on their attire. I simply note that it is something different. It could be a good thing or a bad thing, or nothing at all. Given that I am male and not yet dead, I am inclined to think it a good thing. You are welcome to your own opinion. At any rate, I enjoyed the show immensely.

Where was I? Ah, yes, Fort Frederica.

Initially, I was confused by the name. There is a Fort Frederick, or the remains of a Fort Frederick, in Beaufort, SC. (A part of the fort is now under the Beaufort River, and what remains on land is fenced off, inaccessible to the general public. Presumably, when the archaeologists are finished with their work, this example of tabby construction will be open to the general public, if any of it remains.) The name sounds German, as indeed it is. Frederick, Prince of Wales, was the oldest son of King George II. He grew up in Hanover, now a part of Germany, and was removed to England in his early twenties, when his father became king. Unfortunately, he did not live long enough to become a British king. His brother became King George III, of American Revolution fame. Frederica is the feminine form of the name, but I was not aware of a daughter of King George II named Frederica. The name question was answered by an employee at the site. To avoid confusion with Fort Frederick, Oglethorpe gave the fort the feminized name.

The two forts are intertwined in my thinking, aside from being named for the same person. When he came to the New World to found the colony of Georgia, James Oglethorpe landed in Beaufort at Fort Frederick. After recovering from the trans-Atlantic ordeal, Oglethorpe left Beaufort, and established the city of Savannah. When Oglethorpe later built Fort Frederica on St. Simons Island, it became the southernmost British fort, taking the title from Fort Frederick. The fort was finished around 1742, some 11 years after the completion of Fort Frederick. While Fort Frederick guarded the city of Beaufort from the depredations of the Spanish in Florida, Fort Frederica guarded the town of (drum roll, please) Frederica, which grew up in the shadow of the fort. (By the way, the Fort is located on the Frederica River. Frederick, Prince of Wales, probably wins the award for having the most places named after a person who never really accomplished his life’s goal.)

The fort served its purpose well. Shortly after work on the fort was completed, Oglethorpe and his soldiers successfully defended the town twice from Spanish invaders. Unfortunately, his successes removed the threat from the Spanish, which made the fort expendable. The fort was no longer garrisoned after 1749; by 1755, the town of Frederica was almost a ghost town. By the time of the American Revolution, the town was in ruins.

The fort and town were designated a National Monument in 1936, which marked the beginning of salvage and restoration work. While the archaeologists have done a tremendous amount of work there, uncovering building foundations, artifacts, and the like, I saw tents covering excavation sites, so work there is not finished. Still, it was an interesting and informative visit. Best of all, it was free of charge.

I am posting some of the photos I took below. They do not do justice to the site, so the best thing for you to do is to go see it for yourself.

The view from the entrance to the site.

On Broad Street in Frederica, facing the river and the remains of the fort.

All that is left of the tabby fort is this structure.

The plaque on the fort.

Another view of the fort.

This is all that is left of the barracks.

The foundation of the candlemaker’s home and shop.

The tavern keeper and the doctor lived in an early version of a duplex.

This is what remains of the earthen wall that surrounded the town of Frederica.

The old burial ground was located outside the earthen walls surrounding the town. The names of those buried here are lost to time.

Rough Week

Last week was rough, I tell you. I know that sounds like the beginning of a Rodney Dangerfield joke. But last week was rough. Let me tell you how.

Several years ago, my dentist told me that I had two lower molars, one on each side, that I would eventually lose. He did what he could with them (he called it “heroic dentistry”) but gave me plenty of time to prepare mentally for their loss. Sure enough, on the Saturday before Labor Day, I lost the one on the left side. Note to self: stuffing a handful of Starburst Minis in your mouth is an effective way to lose a marginal tooth. The thing is, I only lost the crown of the tooth: the roots remained embedded in my jaw.

When I called my dentist on the day after Labor Day, she referred me to an oral surgeon. He could not see me for about three weeks. That was probably a good thing. A week later, I was eating a ripe pear. There is little on the face of the Earth softer than a ripe pear, but that was enough to pull out the molar on the right side. Again, the crown was lost but the roots remained. So it was that when I finally saw the oral surgeon, I gave him twin projects to work on, if I may be allowed to finish a sentence with a preposition.

The day of the double extraction was Wednesday of the last week of September. I was ecstatic that the day had finally arrived. I was very tired of covering the protruding roots with orthodontic wax, and my tongue was sore despite the wax. He worked quickly and the pain was minimal. I was able to handle the pain with ibuprofen. That was Wednesday of “The Week That Was.”

Saturday of “The Week That Was” contained two major events: a birthday celebration for Draden, my stepson, and a Glenn Miller legacy orchestra concert. I had been looking forward to the Miller concert ever since I purchased the tickets back in July. When I lived in Georgia, I saw the Miller orchestra when they played in Covington, and they were fantastic. They used the original charts, and if I closed my eyes, I could imagine my old Miller records coming to life. Kathy had never seen the orchestra, so I decided to go the whole hog on this concert: we had tickets just a few rows from the stage, in the center. They set me back nearly $200.

The party for Draden was nice, but we were the only old folks there, so after a decent interval of time, we made our excuses and left. After lunch, we returned home to prepare for the evening’s concert. For me, preparation for the concert meant a nap.

Around 5:15 that afternoon, we began to plot our strategy for the evening: when to have dinner, when to get to the concert hall, and other things of that nature. I decided that I should check the starting time for the concert, as that would dictate our timetable for the rest of the evening.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the concert began at 3:00 that afternoon.

Who starts a concert at 3:00 p.m.?

Yes, I do regret throwing away nearly $200, but I regret missing that wonderful music more. Thus ended the Saturday of “The Week That Was.”

I probably should not include the next day, Sunday, in “The Week That Was.” Traditionally, Sunday is the beginning of a new week, but Sunday must be included in “The Week That Was.” The reason for this will become apparent in a moment.

Draden is a fantastic gardener, and we have profited from his generosity all summer as he shared the bounty of his garden with us. We have not had a meal for most of the summer that did not include his cucumbers, tomatoes, and Kathy’s tomatoes. Not long ago he gave us a butternut squash. On Sunday, Kathy asked me to peel it and cut it up into cubes.

I think you know where this is headed.

Three years ago I bought a set of Cutco knives from a student. They are excellent knives. Cutco will sharpen them forever, at no charge. The problem is, I cannot bear to be without them. This summer we took a cruise to Alaska, and I decided that this would be the time to have Cutco put a really good edge on all those knives. After all, we would be away from home for ten days. Cutco could do the job while we were gone from home.

I have owned a Zwilling V-Edge sharpening appliance for a year or so now, and it works like a charm. So why did I send the blades off for sharpening? I cannot sharpen serrated blades. At any rate, my blades are nearly razor-sharp. And I use the Zwilling every time I use a non-serrated blade.

The butcher knife is my favorite, and I pulled it out to peel and cube the squash. It is not an easy task, but my blade was up to the job. I must have run the blade through the Zwilling four or five times while peeling and cubing. So when I placed my left hand in the exact wrong place at the exact wrong time, the blade gave me two nice clean incisions, one on my forefinger, and one on the middle, or driving, finger.

I knew I had screwed the pooch when I felt the cuts. A quick examination led me to believe that a visit to the ER was imminent. I grabbed a couple of paper towels, squeezed the life out of the two fingers, and hopped in Kathy’s car as she ferried me the few short blocks to the ER of Mission Hospital.

It was not as bad as I had expected. The forefinger, or index finger, required four stitches, the middle finger, none. It took a mere three hours, start to finish. Kathy was wondering what television show we should watch that evening. I suggested ER.

Thus ended “The Week That Was.” It was memorable. May it never happen again.

Useful Amendments

“In regard to the Constitution of the United States, it is confessedly a new experiment in the history of nations. Its framers were not bold or rash enough to believe, or to pronounce, it to be perfect.” Justice Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of The Constitution of the United States

The 55 delegates who attended the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were remarkable men. While Justice Story was correct when he stated that the Constitution was not perfect, it was as near to perfection as could have been achieved at the time. We should be thankful that these delegates gave us such a document.

Still, the demand for amendments began with the ratifying conventions. The states proposed 124 amendments in the first Congress. Madison whittled these down, sending a list to the floor of the House, which approved 17. The Senate narrowed the number to fifteen. At this point, some of the amendments were combined, and twelve were sent to the states for ratification. This took place less than five months after Washington’s inauguration.

The first amendment, which dealt with representation in the House of Representatives, was never approved. It would have modified Article I Section 2 Clause 3. The second amendment, which was not approved for nearly 203 years, dealt with the compensation of congressmen. It is now the 27th amendment to the Constitution. The remaining 10 amendments were ratified fairly quickly, and are known collectively as the Bill of Rights.

Not all of the amendments to the Constitution represent positive changes. The 16th Amendment, which gave us the income tax, is an easy target, as is the 18th Amendment, which gave us Prohibition. And although the 26th Amendment allowed me to vote in my first presidential election just days after my 20th birthday, I think it is a very bad amendment. Frontal lobe development is not complete until the age of 21 or 22, and I think we should demand frontal lobe development of our voting citizens, even if we cannot rightly expect it from our elected representatives.

Undoubtedly, the worst amendment is the 17th, which gave us the popular election of senators. Originally, the House was to represent the people, and the Senate was to represent the states. The direct election of senators removed the representation the states originally enjoyed. That amendment should be repealed immediately. Unfortunately, what should happen and what will happen are two different things.

In his book The Liberty Amendments, Mark Levin proposed 11 amendments to the Constitution that would help restore something of the framers’ original intents. His amendments included repeal of the 17th, plus ways of dealing with spendthrift Congresses and an out-of-control judiciary. One of his amendments, if in effect, would have prevented the recent massive continuing resolution that will eventually help to bankrupt the United States. One of the articles in his amendment on taxation reads as follows: “The deadline for filing federal income tax returns shall be the day before the date set for elections to federal office.” That is my favorite: file your taxes on Monday, vote the rascals out of office on Tuesday.

Unfortunately, these amendments are pipe dreams. I cannot see Congress voting voluntarily to limit its ability to tax and spend, and the Convention of States method of amending the Constitution is proving to be painfully slow.

But there are several provisions that, once upon a time, were parts of a Constitution that was the governing document for a portion of what is now the United States, that could be used quite conveniently to restore some balance to the Constitution. The fact that they were once the law of the land leads me to believe that they would have a better chance of being enacted today than amendments that have never been a part of the Constitution. These provisions can be found in the Constitution of the Confederate States of America.

The Confederate States of America was under a great deal of pressure at its birth. There was a government to form and a war to prosecute, so the Confederate government borrowed a considerable amount from the United States Constitution. Whole articles are lifted directly from the United States Constitution. The changes, such as they are, tend to emphasize the importance of States’ Rights to the Southerners. Consider, for example, the preamble, where the differences between the two documents are in bold:

“We, the people of the Confederate states, each state acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity – invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God – do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.”

There were, of course, changes. That first proposed amendment to the US Constitution, which would have modified Article I Section 2 Clause 3, was written into the CSA Constitution. The Confederates also tended to be a bit more direct in their language. The three-fifths compromise, in the original Constitution “. . . and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons” became “. . . and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all slaves”. Eight of the ten amendments known as the Bill of Rights were added to Article I Section 9 Clauses 12 through 19. Amendments IX and X, the States’ Rights Amendments, were inserted later in the body of the text, specifically in Article VI. Amendments XI and XII were also inserted later in the text of the document.

Here are the highlights from the Confederate Constitution that should be considered for the United States Constitution.

Article I Section 7 Clause 2 deals with how a bill becomes law, and is almost identical to the US Constitution until we reach the end. “The President may approve any appropriation and disapprove any other appropriation in the same bill. In such a case he shall, in signing the bill designate the appropriations disapproved; and shall return a copy of such appropriations, with his objections, to the House in which the bill shall have originated; and the same proceedings shall then be had as in the case of other bills disapproved by the President.” In other words, the Confederate president had the line-item veto.

Article I Section 9 Clause 9 states that any money appropriated (with some exceptions) must be approved by a two-thirds vote of each house. Article I Section 9 Clause 10 prohibits paying for cost overruns: “. . . and Congress shall grant no extra compensation to any public contractor, officer, agent, or servant, after such contract shall have been made or such service rendered.”

My favorite – and the one change I would pick if I had a choice of only one – is found in Article I Section 9 Clause 20. It reads, in total, “Every law, or resolution having the force of law, shall relate to but one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title.” Imagine that: no more massive thousand-pages-long bills with multiple subjects. If you want to build a bridge in New York named for a certain US Senator, then it must be introduced as a separate bill, not rolled into a monstrous bill that deals with the military, the interstate highway system, bailouts for pension systems, and the like. This would effectively end the earmark practice.

If I had the power, I would add a restriction on page length for new laws. Imagine if each bill before Congress clearly expressed the purpose of the bill in the title, dealt with only one issue, and had a maximum length of, say, four pages, single-spaced, in 12-point type. It might provide the opportunity for our elected representatives to do the job they were elected to do: to read and debate the details of legislation before them.

Many of the other changes seem at this remove to be relatively unimportant. The question of protective tariffs, which nearly disunited the country in the 1820s and 1830s, is settled in the Confederate Constitution: they are expressly prohibited. There was also a prohibition against public expenditures for “internal improvements”, another pre-war burning issue. Article II, which establishes the executive department, restricts the president to one term of six years. This may or may not be a good idea. On the plus side, the president would not be distracted by continually positioning himself for re-election. On the minus side, the president would be a lame duck the moment he took the oath of office.

Article IV Section 3 Clause 1 of the Confederate Constitution modified the US procedure for adding states to the Confederacy. In order for a new state to join the Confederacy, there had to be approval by two-thirds of the whole House of Representatives, plus a two-thirds approval by the Senate, voting by states. If this provision were in place today, we would not be worried about the addition of the District of Columbia or Puerto Rico as new states.

Finally, amendments to the Confederate Constitution could not be initiated by the Congress. It was left entirely to the states to initiate amendments by conventions. The Article V threshold requirement was minimal: “Upon the demand of any three States, legally assembled in their several conventions, the Congress shall summon a convention of all the States, to take into consideration such amendments to the Constitution as the said States shall concur in suggesting at the time when the said demand is made . . .” At the time the Confederate Constitution was adopted, there were only seven states in the confederation. A request by only 43% of the nation would then compel the government to call for a convention. And the number three was fixed in the Confederate Constitution. The Confederate States ultimately contained 11 states as members: at that point, a mere 27% of the states could trigger a constitutional convention.

The wording of this text also seems to provide protection against a runaway convention. The United States Constitution, Article V, contains the language “. . . shall call a Convention for proposing amendments”. Compare this with the Confederate Constitution, which restricts the focus of the convention: “. . . to take into consideration such amendments to the Constitution as the said States shall concur in suggesting at the time when the said demand is made . . .” (emphasis added).

I join a long line of people who propose changes to our governing document. We all have different ideas as to the root cause of our problems, and how to correct them. My analysis recommends the following three top priorities: (1) Repeal the 17th Amendment; (2) Adopt Article I Section 9 Clause 20 of the Confederate Constitution: “Every law, or resolution having the force of law, shall relate to but one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title”; and (3) Adopt a combination of Article I Section 9 Clauses 9 and 10 of the Confederate Constitution, which requires a two-thirds vote of each branch of the legislature for certain appropriations and ends the practice of paying for cost overruns.

If you want to stop the flooding, try turning off the spigot.

Bombs Away

The state that I have spent the least time in is Nebraska. Once upon a time, I was in Omaha for less than a day. I would like to go back one day, but not just to Omaha. I wouldn’t mind spending some time in Lincoln. Of course, a visit to Norfolk (hometown of Johnny Carson) is required. And if I do make it to Norfolk, you can bet that I will make the (relatively) short drive south to the village of Tarnov (population 48).

Until recently, I did not know that Tarnov existed. An editorial commentary in the Wall Street Journal brought the village to my attention. The historical event that put Tarnov on the map occurred on August 16, 1943. That was the day that Tarnov was bombed. The author of the article, Ward Parker, is not sure, but he believes that the state of Nebraska, thanks to the village of Tarnov and the city of Omaha, is the only American state that was bombed by both the US Army Air Corps and the Japanese military during World War II.

The bombing of Tarnov by the US Army Air Corps happened first. Two B-17 bombers left their base near Sioux City, Iowa, on a practice run. The target was a practice bombing range near Stanton, Nebraska, some 38 miles northeast of Tarnov. The B-17s were dropping practice bombs: bombs that weighed 100 pounds each, but not loaded with explosives. As Mr. Parker wrote in his article, “Something went wrong. Perhaps the B-17 crews . . got lost flying over endless cornfields and mistook Tarnov’s three streetlights for their Stanton target. For whatever reason, at 4 a.m., they fixed their bomb sights on Tarnov.”

Given that the practice bombs were not loaded with explosives, the danger was from being hit by 100 pounds of steel accelerated by the force of gravity. A total of seven bombs were dropped on the village. There were some close calls. The Ciecior family was grateful that the bomb that tore through their roof missed the bedroom where four young children lay sleeping. Another bomb landed across the street from the historic Catholic church which dominates the “skyline” of Tarnov. (The skyline of Tarnov is composed of St. Michael’s steeple and several grain silos at the railroad track.) One of the bombs did damage to a field of potatoes.

The government moved in rapidly, treating the area as if aliens had landed. They recovered six of the seven bombs and hauled them off for safekeeping. A few days later, a young ‘un found the seventh bomb in the aforementioned field of spuds. The Feds came back and hauled that one off, too. That seventh bomb splintered a good bit, so the locals were able to keep a few pieces from it. These are now on display in a museum in the church.

Tarnov was the first Nebraska village that was bombed during the war. The second bombing hit the city of Omaha, on April 18, 1945. The Japanese attached bombs to balloons, set them free in Japan, and then waited for the jet stream to carry the bombs to the United States. One such bomb landed on a street corner in Omaha, injuring no one.

The bombing was, I suspect, the most excitement that the village of Tarnov ever experienced. Perhaps it scared off some of its citizens: the 1940 census shows a population of 98, while the 1950 census recorded a population loss down to 74. The 2020 census lists the population at 52, which is quite a gain (13%) from the 2010 census (46, the lowest count in more than 100 years). Mr. Parker gives the 2023 count as 48. Easy come, easy go.

This is just the sort of history that tickles my fancy, so if I ever make it back to Nebraska, my motto will be “Tarnov or bust!”

"Born On A Mountaintop In Tennessee"

The first thing to note about the birthplace of David “Davy” Crockett is that it is NOT on a mountaintop, though it is in the mountains of Tennessee. The second is that there are no signs announcing the David Crockett Birthplace State Park until you are almost there. If you go there, it is because you have sought the place out, not because you saw a sign and thought “Hmm, let’s go see that while we are in the vicinity.” Located about two miles southwest of the unincorporated community of Limestone, Tennessee (population 6,071), on the Nolichucky River, it is a beautifully maintained state park with facilities for camping and picnicking. It just isn’t very well advertised. For example, the interstate exit I took to get to the Crockett birthplace park did not mention ole Davy at all. Instead, it touted the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site (which is something like 10 miles past the Crockett birthplace park). Recall that Johnson was the first President of the United States to be impeached (back when impeachment meant something) and avoided conviction and removal from office by only one vote in the Senate. On the other hand, Davy Crockett died a martyr’s death at the Alamo. Go figure.

The Nolichucky River.

Marker near the entrance of the park.

Nevertheless, we found the place, after a pleasant drive through a beautiful farming area. We saw fields of peas, beans, and some tobacco on our way to the park.

Upon entering the park, one finds the camping area to the right and a massive swimming pool to the left. A bit further down Davy Crockett Park Road is the picnic area. Past that, on the left, is the visitor’s center, which we visited on the way out. It is primarily a place to buy tee shirts, caps, and the like. I was sorely tempted to buy a coonskin cap but restrained myself.

The homestead is straight ahead on Davy Crockett Park Road. I should point out that the location is where Davy Crockett was born, but that all the buildings, animal pens, etc. are reconstructions. They are made as accurately as possible, but nothing at the park is original, save the limestone front step to the cabin. The step was engraved and placed at the location around 1896, to mark the 100th birthday of Davy Crockett. Weather has rendered most of the engraving unintelligible.

The limestone front step.

The Crocketts were tenant farmers. Most of the proceeds from the sale of the cash crops went to the landlord, Colonel Gillespie. The cash crops planted there today are varieties that would have been planted more than 200 years ago. I was able to recognize the tobacco plants, but they did not look like the bright-leaf tobacco with which I am familiar. I have no idea where they were able to find seeds for these strains of plants.

Cash crops

In addition to the cash crops, the Crocketts maintained a garden for themselves. They grew produce, herbs, and medicinal plants.

Subsistence garden

Cabin exterior

The cabin itself proved a mystery to me. You can see from the photos that it was a one-room affair, with one bed for the adults and infant children. The mystery is: given this sleeping arrangement, how did the Crocketts manage to sire nine children? The tour guide gave us a partial answer: the older children slept out in the lean-to when the weather was fair. Those cold winter months must have seemed longer than they were.

Cabin interior

Cabin interior

Cabin interior

The lean-to. I pity those older kids.

The cabin was not built to last. The tour guide said that the most valuable components of the cabin, the components that didn’t come from the forest, were the nails. When it was necessary to build a new, bigger cabin, the old cabin was simply burnt down to the ground. The settlers then sifted through the ashes for the nails.

There were two animal pens, one for the pigs, goats, sheep and chickens, and one for the beasts of burden. The only animals I saw, besides our traveling companion Lucy, were two donkeys, a mother and son pair.

Animal pen

Animal pen for beasts of burden.

It was a pleasant day trip. We were fortunate to have fine weather. We took a few photos of the mountains at an overlook. To be honest, it wasn’t the most impressive view of the day, but that couldn’t be helped.

My traveling companions.

I suppose we should have soldiered on to the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site, but Andrew just doesn’t do much for me. He was drunk at his inauguration as Vice-President. Six weeks later, he was the President. It is not clear to me that he had sobered up by then. On the plus side of the ledger, he did favor Lincoln’s approach to Reconstruction, which caused friction with the Radical Republicans who sought the bitter cup of vengeance for the former Confederacy.

Okay, maybe I will visit his Historic Site one of these days.

In the meantime, does anyone remember this tune, and is anything in this ballad accurate?

The Swannanoa Gap Tunnel

Back in the day, the bookstore on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill was a haven of mine. They dealt with the normal stuff – textbooks, merchandise imprinted with a ram, or a ram’s head, or a tarry heel, etc. - but they also carried specialty books, books that I love. Need a copy of Feynman’s book on quantum electrodynamics? They had several copies on hand. Don’t know how to solve a non-linear differential equation? There sits the 1962 book by Davis to help you out. A big part of my technical library was purchased there. In most cases, I didn’t know I needed a particular book until I saw it in the bookstore.

Kathy and I stopped by the bookstore in the summer of ‘22, and I was deeply disappointed. The specialty book section is no longer. In fact, apart from the textbook and merchandise portions of the store, it looks for all the world like a Barnes and Noble. Don’t get me wrong, I love Barnes and Noble. The problem is, if you want a specialty book, you have to order it. That means you need to know what you want first. Half the joy of the old bookstore was rummaging around, looking.

With no new math or science books to entertain me, I drifted over to the history section, and picked up a copy of The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: Western North Carolina in the Civil War, by John C. Inscoe and Gordon B. McKinney. I mentioned this in last year’s book review. I enjoyed the book, but it reminded me of a problem that our forefathers had that we generally do not have, and that is the problem of geography.

Today we can pop in an airplane and hours later disembark in the European city of our choice. We can see the summit of Mount Everest from above, looking out of the window of a jetliner. We know exactly where we are at any moment thanks to geostationary positioning satellites. Geography is not a problem for us.

It was for our forefathers. The slow development of the western part of North Carolina was due to geography. The mountains presented serious obstacles with respect to the building of roads and railroads. Gaps in the mountain became important, and two that were very important to the transportation needs of Asheville were the Hickory Nut Gap, to the southeast of the city, and the Swannanoa Gap, to the east of the city.

But even gaps in mountains sometimes presented problems. Steam locomotives of the period were not all that powerful, and at times it was necessary to tunnel under a hill rather than lay track over it. This was the case in the Swannanoa Gap.

In 1877 the Western North Carolina Railroad began construction of the Swannanoa Gap Tunnel. This tunnel was one of seven constructed between Old Fort and Asheville. It has the distinction of being the longest hand-dug tunnel in the state (1,832 feet, or about 0.35 miles). Digging took place on both sides of the hill, and in March of 1879, the breakthrough occurred. Miraculously, the two tunnels lined up perfectly. It was another year and a half before the first train passed through the tunnel. A brief description of this tunnel can be found in this NCPedia article.

Most articles on the tunnel focus on two things: the tunnel was dug with prison labor, primarily African-Americans; and the digging was hastened by the use of nitroglycerin. This was one of the early uses of nitroglycerin in a construction project. A report to the NC Bureau of Labor Statistics noted that “the state’s convict labor crews were overwhelmingly dominated by black men who in most cases had only been convicted of minor infractions of the law.” Based on the old photographs I have seen, it does appear that the Swannanoa Gap Tunnel construction crew was composed primarily of African Americans. The use of nitroglycerin caused many cave-ins during construction. At least 300 people were killed as a result.

The tunnel was not easy to find. The historical marker P-46, shown above, is not located anywhere near the tunnel. The marker notes that one entrance to the tunnel is 300 yards away. This is true, but only if you are a crow. It certainly isn’t helpful information, as no trails near the marker lead to the tunnel. In part because of that confusing marker, we ended up on a nice hike to Kitsuma Peak that delayed our finding the tunnel by at least 30 minutes.

I doubt we would have found the tunnel without the assistance of a hiker we encountered on our way back from Kitsuma Peak. He had visited the tunnel the day before and gave us very good instructions. If you are interested, go north on Yates Avenue until it turns into Mill Creek Road, then continue north on Mill Creek Road. At the point where Mill Creek Road veers off to the left as a gravel road, a paved but inaccessible road to the right appears. This is the Point Lookout Trail, into the Pisgah National Forest. After hiking a bit you will be able to see the railroad off to the right, and eventually, the tunnel will appear if you keep looking over your shoulder.

In a way, it was a disappointing trip. I wanted to walk through the tunnel, but the land between the trail and the tunnel is privately owned, with signs suggesting strongly that you stay on the trail. Besides, to get down the hill to the tunnel, I would have had to trespass on one of the largest patches of kudzu I’ve ever seen. I can only imagine the number of rattlers and copperheads hidden there. Others have posted pictures and videos of the tunnel, but I discovered after our visit that these were taken with drones. My drone was at home. So I did not walk through the tunnel. It is just as well. By the time we hiked the wrong way to Kitsuma Peak, hiked back, and then hiked to the tunnel, I was getting tired.

On the bright side, Lucy enjoyed the hike tremendously. Kathy and I were so fatigued that we had to recover with dinner at Tupelo Honey.

Enjoy the pictures below. The photos were taken with my old iPhone. I did the best I could with the zoom function.

Here we are returning from our unplanned hike to Kitsuma peak.

Trailhead for the Point Lookout trail.

The trail will lead you to Old Fort.

I am posting all four photos of the tunnel, as I cannot tell which one is the best.

W.J.B.

I am embarrassed to admit that the first time I heard of William Jennings Bryan was during my junior year of high school. It was not in history class. We were putting on the play “Inherit the Wind,” by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee (not the general), about the Scopes “monkey” trial in Dayton, TN, in 1925. The legislature of Tennessee passed a law prohibiting the teaching of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution as fact. A young biology teacher, John T. Scopes, violated the law deliberately, as a test of the constitutionality of the prohibition. William Jennings Bryan was called in to help the prosecution, while the ACLU arranged to have Clarence Darrow defend the teacher. Ultimately Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, but only after Darrow put Bryan on the stand as an expert witness on the Bible, and eviscerated him. The whole thing was gleefully reported by my favorite newspaperman, H. L. Mencken, who wrote the nastiest obituary on record when Bryan died some five days after the conclusion of the trial.

Why am I embarrassed about not knowing of W.J.B., as Mencken referred to him? After all, the Scopes trial was not the national highlight of 1925. There were other events that year that stand out: the publication of “The Great Gatsby”; the dedication of Mount Rushmore; the opening of the first Sears Roebuck store; the publication of the first issue of the New Yorker; the first Grand Ole Opry broadcast; the founding of the Chrysler Corporation. Consider this: three times (1896, 1900, 1908), W.J.B. was the Democratic Party’s nominee for President of the United States. (In 1896 and 1900, he was also the candidate of the Populist Party, which was considerably to the left of the Democratic Party at the time.) Later he was President Wilson’s Secretary of State. It seems almost anticlimactic to note that before all that he was a lowly Congressman from the first district of Nebraska. And all I knew about him was that he was a bigwig helping to prosecute Scopes.

When Bryan was nominated in 1896, he was, at 36, the youngest-ever presidential nominee of any party, a record he still holds. But what, pray tell, lifted this young member of the House Ways and Means Committee to the lofty height of presidential nominee? It was a speech, arguably one of the greatest political speeches ever given, the “Cross of Gold” speech.

The country was on the gold standard, in effect if not by law. The gold standard provided a very sound currency, as the amount of gold in possession by the government was limited. This well-defined money supply tended to keep inflation at bay and made trade with other countries (especially other countries also on the gold standard) easier. Bryan and others with his mindset favored bimetallism, which accepted silver as well as gold as the basis of our money supply. This would have the effect of expanding the money supply, which is inflationary. This meant that borrowers, such as farmers who depended upon credit, could borrow money and repay it later with inflated dollars. Bimetallism was a populist cause and was considered to be vital to the economic health of the nation. (I have really oversimplified this explanation.)

In 1896, Bryan was not on the radar screen as a potential presidential candidate until late in the Democratic nominating convention. He was on the platform committee and pushed very hard to include the “free coinage of silver” or bimetallism as a plank of the platform. He won that argument. His address to the convention, reporting on the platform, was stunning. His concluding statement is one of the all-time great rhetorical flourishes:

“Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”

The convention broke out in wild applause. It took 25 minutes to restore order. At that point, the convention stopped thinking of Bryan as a powerful voice in defense of silver and began thinking of him as a potent presidential candidate. The next day he secured the nomination, after several ballots.

Bryan never won the White House and his service to Wilson as Secretary of State was cut short when he resigned over a matter of principle. His death soon after the conclusion of the Scopes trial seemed a fitting end for the boy wonder who glowed brightly in the spring of his youth, only to flame out in the autumn of his years.

I have been reading “Look Homeward, Angel” by Thomas Wolfe. It is torture, mental flagellation. I will finish the book only because I have started it. Afterwards, I promise never to read another word Wolfe wrote. The book is fictional auto-biography set in the fictional town of Altamont, which is Asheville. (This is why half the businesses in Asheville have “Altamont” in their names.) About three-fifths of the way through the book, W.J.B appears under his own name. He greets the Altamont citizens who ask him about his plans to retire to Altamont with an evasive answer. At that point, I put the book down and asked the obvious question: did W.J.B actually retire here?

A quick search showed that he lived here between 1917 and 1920. (Remember that he died in 1925.) The house he lived in, built in 1917, is still here and is located near the Grove Park Inn, a very well-to-do section of the town. I had to go see it myself.

The plaque on the house notes that the dwelling (which is occupied by a private owner) is on the National Register of Historic Places. It is a very nice house, but it certainly is far from the most expensive house in the area. It is not an ostentatious house. I do not understand the purpose of the wall. It does not entirely enclose the property, so it must not be there for security reasons. Perhaps the Bryans wished to sunbathe in their front yard in privacy. It is on the corner of one sleepy street and one not-too-busy street. My guess is that more than half of the citizens of the town do not even know it exists. I suppose the home of W.J.B. just is not much of a tourist draw. “William Jennings Who?”

Because it is a private dwelling I had to be contented with taking pictures of the exterior of the house (shown below).

I continue to be amazed by the little historical nuggets I am finding in this city.

The William Jennings Bryan house, taken from the street at the corner where the wall ends.

The wall does not completely encircle the house.

There appear to be alcoves in the privacy wall.

The front of the house.

The Hospital

The word “Asheville” means something very different to the generation of 30 – 40-year-old folks than it does to my generation. The young folks hear “Asheville” and think of microbreweries, hiking, fine dining, and general weirdness. (One often sees the bumper sticker, “Keep Asheville Weird.” They are succeeding.) My generation hears the word and thinks of the Biltmore House, the largest privately owned house in the United States.

Wikipedia describes the house as “one of the most prominent examples of Gilded Age mansions.” It is that. Construction began on the house in 1889 and was sufficiently completed so that the house could be opened up to friends and family in 1895. Why did it take so long? Well, it takes a while to build a house that has 178,926 square feet of floor space. The estate is nestled on 8,000 acres of land, which is a good bit less than the original 125,000 acres of land. Apparently, the imposition of a federal income tax put a financial strain on the family, resulting in the sale of a good bit of the original acreage.

George Washington Vanderbilt, grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the shipping and railroad magnate, had the mansion built. Less than a year after its opening, George’s cousin, Clarence Barker, a talented musician, died at the mansion at the tender age of 31, from pneumonia. In addition to being relatives, the two were very close friends. In 1900, Vanderbilt and two of his cousins, sisters of the deceased, founded the Clarence Barker Memorial Hospital in Biltmore Village, the community that Vanderbilt established to house the 1,000 laborers and 60 stonemasons that built the Biltmore mansion.

A good bit of information about the hospital, and for that matter, about Biltmore Village, can be gleaned from the National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination Form. An additional form covers the new hospital built to replace the original.

George Vanderbilt donated the land for the hospital and endowed it with $20,000. He committed to cover its future expenses, according to an informative website I found. (The same author also covers the new, replacement hospital, known as Biltmore Hospital.)

The hospital was small – it could handle only ten patients. According to the Lavilo website, there were two private rooms and spaces for eight patients in wards. Later, the original hospital was extended by six rooms, which included an operating room. This was finished sometime in 1905.

The hospital experienced a name change in 1919, to Biltmore Hospital. That did not seem to be a fortuitous change, as two years later the hospital experienced two fires. The structure was severely damaged, but repairable. The fires prompted Edith Vanderbilt, George Vanderbilt’s widow, to donate 15 acres of land to build a larger hospital with fireproof brick. Fundraising and construction were slow: the new Biltmore Hospital opened in 1930 and still stands today as a magnificent building. At that time, the former hospital, rebuilt and still standing today, was renovated and used to house and train nurses.

I stumbled across these former hospitals one day after a pleasant lunch at a nearby cafe. The sign, pictured above, drew my attention. I had two surprises. The first surprise was that such a hospital once existed less than two miles from my house, known only to those interested in local history. The second surprise came when I started doing research into these buildings. I grew up in the sleepy little town of Clayton, NC. It was, primarily, a farming community. It provided me with a wonderful childhood, with good friends and first-rate citizens of the town as examples to emulate. But the thing is, Clayton was never famous. I couldn’t mention one famous person who came from Clayton, until now.

Douglas D. Ellington, the architect who designed the Art Deco, new Biltmore Hospital was born in Clayton, North Carolina, in 1886.

Today, the rebuilt (original) hospital houses Griffin Architects, PA. The new hospital operated until it was sold in 1952 to an insurance company. The insurance company continued there until 1970 when the building became an elder care facility. The building then went to another set of owners, who opened the building in 2013 as Posh, The Boutique Hotel.

When I visited the building, I had the impression that the building now housed either apartments or condos. I did find Posh on the internet, through booking websites. There is no Posh website. The booking websites gave me the distinct impression that the hotel was still active, but when I tried to book a room, the response was “There are no vacancies on the dates you selected.” After trying as far forward as November 2024, I gave up. I do not believe that the hotel is in business, and I do believe that it has been converted into apartments or condos. It looks like a great place to live.

So here is to the Vanderbilts who gave the village a hospital, and to the Clayton boy who made it look good.

Enjoy the pictures below.

The original hospital can be seen, barely, straight ahead. The new hospital is to the right, around the bend.

The original hospital today.

Frontal view of the original hospital today.

The new hospital is at the end of Village Lane.

Our Clayton boy did a very nice job on the new hospital.

The new hospital looks like a very nice place to live.

Unto This Casino

I am a native American: I am an American, and I was born here. What folks term “Native American” is really “aboriginal American”. I do, however, carry in my veins some aboriginal American, or to revert to a less ponderous term, Indian, blood. This comes from my paternal grandmother’s side of the family. According to research conducted by my second cousin, my grandmother’s father was, at least in part, a Coharie Indian, while my grandmother’s mother was a Lumbee Indian. What percentage Indian that makes me is something I cannot calculate, though I suspect my claim to Indian status is more robust than that of Elizabeth Warren.

My paternal grandparents frequently went with us on our family vacations, and because of my grandmother, we often ended up in the mountains of North Carolina, especially the town of Cherokee. She was fond of the area and seemed to take great joy in being there. I recall her delight in having her photo made with a Cherokee dressed in a chief’s regalia. (The photo was a black and white Polaroid, type 41 film, which had to be coated with a “print coater” that reeked of acetic acid. She put the photo in a book before the coating had dried, and my father later spent a great deal of time trying to steam the paper off the photo.)

One thing we did not do in Cherokee was see the outdoor drama “Unto These Hills”, the third-longest-running outdoor drama in the country (behind “The Lost Colony” in Manteo and “The Ramona Pageant” in southern California). I think I know why. The current mid-level price for one ticket is $45. Two tickets, with the associated fee for the use of a card, will set you back $96. I am pretty sure purchasing tickets for the five of us in the family, plus two more for grandparents, was much more than my father was either willing or able to pay.

This week, on a whim, Kathy and I decided to see the drama. The idea hit us on Tuesday. I checked the weather forecast for Cherokee, and Wednesday looked like the best day, weather-wise, to see an outdoor drama. I booked the tickets, reserved a room in a hotel near the theater, and packed a bag. By 3:00 Wednesday, we were on our way to Cherokee.

The website for the play does note that the weather is changeable and that the show goes on, rain or shine. We dutifully packed ponchos, which we left in the pickup. After all, the weather looked very nice. The drama started at 8:00 and was set to last two hours.

At some time near one hour into the production, the rain started. We cursed the fact that we left our ponchos in the truck. Kathy went up to the concession stand to buy two slightly over-priced, thin plastic ponchos. And there we sat, until intermission, at 9:00. The rain, which started as a light drizzle, had turned into a downpour.

After the designated intermission time period, a cast member came out on the stage to inform us that the intermission would continue a bit longer, in the hope that the rain would let up. It never did, and after a while, Kathy and I decided to call it quits. We had seen half of the show, and we both knew how the sad tale of the Trail of Tears ended. I would have liked to have seen the whole show (remember, $96.00), but I decided to buy the play in book form ($40.00) and read all about it.

One thing we promised ourselves we would do on this visit to Cherokee was to darken the door of Harrah’s Cherokee Casino, located on the reservation. So, Thursday morning, after a pancake breakfast at Peter’s Pancakes and Waffles, we found ourselves in the casino—the time: around 9:00 AM. The casino was not packed at that hour, but it was far from empty.

I do not gamble all that often, but when I do, it is roulette, and I bet on whether the ball will fall on a red slot or a black slot. That game is the one game in a casino that comes close to giving you an even chance of winning. (If casino games give you a completely even chance of winning, the casino would eventually go out of business.) There are 38 slots on a roulette wheel, 18 red, 18 black, and two green. If you bet red, you have a 47.4% chance of winning. The same holds true for betting black. Only a mathematical illiterate would bet on green (5.2% chance of winning).

Before plopping my chips down on a roulette table, I like to walk around and look at the various wheels. Does this one have a very slight wobble? Has that one hit on a green slot recently? When I find a table I like, I stick around to bet. But Thursday morning, there weren’t that many roulette wheels in operation. We decided instead to play the one-arm bandits. We both had the same limit: $20. Once each of us had blown $20, we would leave.

We picked machines beside each other and stuffed in our first $5 bills. After we both lost $5, we fed the machines again. Then something happened: both of us started winning. In a little while, I had a positive balance of about $40. Kathy did a little better than that. We decided not to play our entire $20 each, cashed out, and headed home.

I am pretty sure my grandmother would not be all that pleased to see how Indians are making the bulk of their income these days. For the record, I did not see a single Cherokee decked out in a chief’s headdress, carrying a Polaroid camera. But on the bright side, we were able to win back a portion of the cost of the tickets to “Unto These Hills”. There is some justice in that.

“Singing in the rain.”

When It Rains, It Pours

Monday, July 24 – Dear Diary,

As you know, our garage door opener stopped working in the spring. Was it late May? Early June? I can’t recall, because I didn’t write it down. Anyhow, I finally got around to buying a new garage door opener! The old one was so, well, OLD! This one can be opened from an app on my iPhone! It is so modern, which means, there are so many things that can go wrong with it! Maybe I will install it tomorrow.

Tuesday, August 1 – Dear Diary,

The new garage door opener has been sitting on the floor of the garage for more than a week, but at last, I have decided to install it. It looks like this is a three-part job: (1) take out the old opener, (2) assemble the new opener, and (3) install the new opener. I completed parts (1) and (2) today, but ran into a snag with part (3).

The old garage door opener had a skinny rail. The new one has a thicker rail. There is a piece of electrical conduit that is in the way of the new garage door opener. (The old opener just barely fit past the conduit.) I am going to have to re-route that conduit. That’s enough for today. As Scarlett O’Hara used to say, “Tomorrow is another day, Batman.”

Wednesday, August 2 – Dear Diary,

I started thinking about my conduit problem last night and came up with a brilliant idea. The garage has only one electrical outlet in it, and that outlet is completely taken up with the freezer and the garage door opener. In order to use any power tools in the garage, I would have to disconnect one or the other. And the previous owner used an extension cord zip-tied to the door rail to power the old garage door opener. What a mess! So, I made an executive decision: since I have to move the conduit anyway, I will rewire the garage, adding a couple of extra outlets, including one in the ceiling near where the new garage door opener will be located. I figured out which supplies I needed and popped off to Lowes. After shopping for electrical supplies, I was so fatigued that I took the afternoon off.

Thursday, August 3 – Dear Diary,

My plans to finish the wiring of the garage today have hit a snag. I knew the walls of the garage were made of cement blocks, but that shouldn’t be any trouble: I recently had my masonry bits sharpened, and they work pretty well on brick and block. I didn’t count, however, on encountering concrete in the ceiling. Apparently, the ceiling of the garage was finished with precast slabs of pre-stressed concrete. Why in the world did the builder choose that material? Was the garage designed to double as a fallout shelter? Even my recently sharpened masonry bits had trouble with the ceiling. Eventually, I was able to drill the holes I needed, but it was a struggle. I am not exactly Charles Atlas and pushing that drill overhead against 71-year-old concrete took its toll. I did finally install the ceiling outlet but decided to call it a day after that. I can do the rest of the wiring tomorrow, and then install the opener.

Friday, August 4 – Dear Diary,

One day, one of my grandchildren or great-grandchildren may find this diary, so I will refrain from venting here using the extensive vocabulary of profanity that I have collected over the years.

I started fresh in the morning, and by noon had completely wired the new outlets in the garage. The previous day’s struggles with the concrete ceiling faded from my memory as I approached the end of the wiring side job. Then I tested the outlets with my meter: they all showed 120 volts. Perfect. But then I plugged in the freezer.

It didn’t come on. With the freezer plugged in, my meter showed not 120 volts, but 5 volts.

Had the freezer suddenly gone bad? It was several decades old, after all. But I needed to confirm, so I found an old drill, one that is not battery-operated. I plugged it into the outlet and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened other than a noise that sounded like a drill struggling, in vain, to turn.

@#*&%^$#@!

I tested all three outlets, with the same result. Clearly, I had done something wrong, so now it was time to troubleshoot.

I began slowly and methodically, disconnecting the outlet farthest from the incoming power line. That did not restore power to the other two outlets, so I disconnected the ceiling outlet. Nothing. I disconnected the third outlet and connected the drill directly to the power line feeding the garage. Nothing.

The nasty realization of what had happened began to dawn on me. The problem was with the line feeding the garage. That meant that my wiring was fine and that I had essentially taken it all apart for no good reason. But it meant something even worse.

It meant that my old garage door opener stopped working, not because it was broken, but because of the power line feeding the garage. I had done all this work for nothing!

@#*&^$#@!

I needed to confirm this diagnosis. If my conclusion was accurate, then the freezer, though plugged in, hadn’t worked since the spring. We don’t keep anything in the freezer but bags of ice and ice packs. When I opened the freezer, I found about three inches of water in the bottom. My diagnosis was correct.

I had a problem similar to this before, in a house I owned decades ago, so I knew how to fix it. But in the course of troubleshooting the problem, I discovered something that worried me. The garage outlets are fed from the living room outlets. The new garage door opener pulls 6 amps, and the freezer, 5. That is a total of 11 amps, on a 15-amp circuit breaker. If Kathy has some of the living room lights on at the same time as the television, and the freezer compressor kicks in while I am opening the garage door, we will kick the circuit breaker.

We really need a new circuit just for the garage.

I am so disheartened! I need a day or two off. At any rate, I am through for the day.

Saturday, August 5 – Dear Diary,

I took the day off. We visited Mount Mitchell and had a nice lunch in Burnsville. I feel better about the garage job. I have made up my mind that tomorrow I will repair all the damage I did yesterday, and then start afresh Monday.

Sunday, August 6 – Dear Diary,

Today I completely repaired all the damage to my wiring I caused on Friday when I started troubleshooting the problem. I really hate doing the same job twice, but at least now it is done. Tomorrow I will run a new line to the garage.

Monday, August 7 – Dear Diary,

I ran a new power line to the garage. My first stop was Lowes, where I bought yet another hundred dollars of wiring supplies. Copper is so expensive now! Thanks a lot, you Tesla owners!

On the very few occasions when I thought about growing old, I imagined myself as a dignified older gentleman. I never once thought that I would be sweating and sore, pulling Romex as if I were an eighteen-year-old electrician’s apprentice. But the job had to be done, and I didn’t have an eighteen-year-old electrician’s apprentice to hand. I had to fish-tape the Romex through a portion of the ceiling in the basement, which is absolutely NOT my favorite part of wiring. But I completed the job, and everything worked on the first try.

So, after all this, I am back to where I was a week ago: I still have yet to install the garage door opener itself.

I really, really can’t wait for school to start again, because I need a break!

Mount Mitchell

Sadly, I must begin this post with a correction. In my last post, I wrote the following sentence: “We have Mount Mitchell (6,684 feet elevation), the highest mountain east of the Mississippi, and by logical extension, east of the Rocky Mountains.” While it is true that Mount Mitchell is the highest mountain east of the Mississippi, Black Elk Peak in the Black Hills (South Dakota) mountain range is both east of the Rockies, and taller (by 558 feet) than Mount Mitchell. To be fair, the graduate school at the University of North Carolina, the school that granted me a Ph.D. several decades ago, made the same mistake on its website. But that is no excuse. I should have been a bit more careful in my research. Mea culpa.

In other news, Kathy was shocked to learn that I am not always right.

The tale of Mount Mitchell begins with Elisha Mitchell. He was a Connecticut boy, and a Yale graduate. As best I can tell, his undergraduate degree was in chemistry, though he clearly had a great interest in geology. Back in the early nineteenth century, the scientific disciplines were not as separated as they are today. After graduation, he taught in preparatory schools in New York and Connecticut and took a brief time out to take a theological course in Andover, Massachusetts. He returned to Yale as a tutor, and the next year was recommended for a teaching position at the University of North Carolina. In January of 1818, he arrived in Chapel Hill as a new mathematics and natural philosophy professor. In 1825 he took on the responsibility of teaching chemistry, geology, and mineralogy, the subjects he taught for the next 32 years. During this time, he also completed the geological survey of North Carolina that his predecessor had initiated.

Mitchell is buried at the summit of Mount Mitchell, and the photo of the plaque on his grave is shown below. I note two things from the plaque: first, that the word “university” is misspelled; and second, that he possessed a Doctor of Divinity degree. Try as I might, I could find no record of Mitchell’s theological studies, aside from the one course he took in Andover. I discovered that the degree was honorary, conferred on him by the University of Alabama. He was, however, a real reverend. He was licensed to preach by the Congregationalist Western Association of New Haven County, Connecticut, and was ordained Presbyterian minister by the Presbytery of Orange in Hillsborough, North Carolina.

His geological research often brought him to the mountains, where he made his mark by measuring the height of Black Mountain, which was later renamed in his honor. At the time it was taken for granted that Mount Washington, in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, was the tallest peak east of the Mississippi River. Mitchell proved conclusively that Mount Mitchell was higher than Mount Washington.

Senator Thomas Clingman, of Clingmans Dome fame, challenged Mitchell’s result (that Mount Mitchell was the highest peak east of the Mississippi), so Mitchell returned to Mount Mitchell in 1857, to confirm his measurements. Regrettably, he died in an accident on the mountain, leaving confirmation of the accuracy of his work to another scientist.

At the summit of Mount Mitchell, we enjoyed the 64 degrees Fahrenheit temperature. After descending to the Blue Ridge Parkway below, the car’s thermometer registered 85 degrees. The view was excellent, as we did not have the overcast conditions we did when visiting Clingmans Dome, a peak we could see from the summit. Additionally, we had a very good view of Mount Craig, the second-highest peak east of the Mississippi. Mount Craig was only one mile away. Unfortunately, there is no road leading to the summit of Mount Craig. The park employee I spoke with told me that to reach the summit of Mount Craig, one had to hike on foot. I love history and the mountains, but not enough to do that hike, with its challenging grade, on foot. You may be surprised to learn that I did NOT build this body with exercise.

I hope you enjoy the pictures below. Kathy, Lucy, and I had a very nice time on this brief day trip.

Mount Craig

Clingmans Dome is in the distance, at the right of this photo.

The antennas are on Clingman’s Peak (not to be confused with Clingmans Dome). The building below it is a restaurant.

Clingmans Dome

From birth until about three weeks before my 26th birthday, I was a citizen of the state of North Carolina. Since last year, I am once again a citizen of North Carolina. Although I lived in Georgia for the longest period of my life (33 years), I have a soft spot for North Carolina, primarily because it was my home during my formative years. I know its history better than I know the history of any of the other three states in which I have lived, and that history, at least during my childhood, revealed one big inferiority complex.

My seventh-grade NC history textbook was unsparing. Compared with Virginia or South Carolina, we lagged behind in terms of shipping. We had only one major port. We did not have enough inlets into the sounds, and the sounds were shallow. We suffered periods of poor leadership. We were slow to adopt a system of public education, and during my youth, the teachers were woefully underpaid. (Compared with the state of Georgia, they still are.) We suffered from a lack of decent roads and railroads.

If you have ever seen the movie 1776, you get a hint of an inferiority complex in the North Carolina delegates to the Second Continental Congress. The North Carolina delegate who had a speaking part in the movie was Joseph Hewes. Votes were taken by colonies, each colony casting one vote only. The roll was called in alphabetical order, but every time the NC delegates were called upon, Hewes deferred to South Carolina, and ultimately voted exactly the same way as Edward Rutledge of SC.

And let us consider our presidents. The first North Carolinian elected to the White House was Andrew Jackson, born in North Carolina but recognized by Tennessee because he moved there as a young man. He gave us the Trail of Tears. Our second was James K. Polk, born in the Charlotte area and educated at UNC, but also recognized as a Tennessean because that is where he began his political career. He is the only president of the United States to have been a former Speaker of the House of Representatives. The third was Andrew Johnson, whose birthplace, a log cabin, was on the NC State University campus the last time I visited there (some 45 or 50 years ago). He, too, moved to Tennessee, and we are quite happy to let Tennessee have him, given that he was a drunk and the first president to be impeached. This was back when impeachment was a rare thing, and actually meant something.

Even our liquor laws are near-verbatim copies of Virginia liquor laws.

Because of this complex, North Carolinians of my childhood bragged about whatever we could. We were not a completely backward state. We had fine universities and an outstanding research park. Why, we even claimed the oldest public university in the land! The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was the first public university in the country to hold classes and produce graduates, but even that title is contended: the University of Georgia was chartered before UNC. We had the very first flight of a heavier-than-air craft that took off and landed under its own power! The fact that the inventors were from Ohio didn’t seem to matter. We rid the world of the pirate Blackbeard! The fact that we harbored him for years is hardly mentioned. We revered the few celebrities who came from North Carolina. This explains my fascination with Ava Gardner, who was born in the same county as yours truly, and now lies buried there. And, of course, Andy Griffith is proudly claimed by us.

But Mother Nature smiled on us and gave us solid reasons to brag. We have Mount Mitchell (6,684 feet elevation), the highest mountain east of the Mississippi, and by logical extension, east of the Rocky Mountains. Mount Craig is a close runner-up to stately Mount Mitchell (6,647 feet elevation), just about a mile down the road from Mount Mitchell, the second-highest peak east of the Rockies. And to rub salt in an open wound, we also have number three: Clingmans Dome, at 6,643 feet. To be sure, Clingmans Dome straddles the North Carolina/Tennessee state line, but the summit is in North Carolina, by just a few feet.

We have it on our calendars to visit all three. We began with Clingmans Dome. And, if any of my high school English teachers happen to read this, no, I did not leave out an apostrophe. This is the official name of the peak.

Thomas Lanier Clingman was a politician, a scientist, and an explorer who, along with UNC professor Elisha Mitchell, measure the elevation of various mountain peaks in western NC. The official guide published by the Great Smoky Mountains Association fails to mention Clingman’s later adventures, that of Confederate General in the Late Unpleasantness, which means that, sooner or later, the mountain will be renamed, as we continue to commit the sin of contemporaneity. But I digress.

We used to own a mountain home in Gatlinburg and to get to that home from Madison, GA, we took US 441 through Cherokee and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The road to Clingmans Dome intersects US 441 in the park and is about 7 miles long. As many times as we rode by that intersection, we never made the side trip to the Dome: we were always in a hurry to get to our destination. Now we live in Asheville, and Clingmans Dome is about 80 miles from home. It was an easy trip.

The only slight disappointment was the weather. Those of you suffering through the heat wave would appreciate the 65-degree Fahrenheit temperature we experienced at the summit, but that cool temperature was a result of the low-lying clouds that created visibility problems. Still, the visibility did not interfere with our enjoyment of the day.

The observation tower is the unique architectural landmark at Clingmans Dome. It is about 45 feet tall (which means that the observation tower is about four feet taller than the summit at Mount Mitchell), and you reach the tower by going up a spiral ramp that rises at about a 12% grade. To get to the ramp, you hike a good little way up a grade that is a good bit steeper than 12%. It is not the toughest hike I have ever undertaken, but it could be tough if you have physical ailments.

On a clear day you are supposed to be able to see 100 miles from the tower. We could not see anywhere near that distance. Twenty miles would have been a stretch.

The only downside to this little trip is that dogs are not allowed at the summit, on the path to the summit, or for that matter, on most trails in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We had to leave poor Lucy home this day.

I hope you enjoy the pictures below.

Every now and then the clouds lifted a little.

Kathy seems to be managing the hike to the summit very well.

The path to the summit was well paved, but, unfortunately, not level.

A view from the observation tower.

A look back at the spiral ramp.

Clingman’s grave is in the Riverside Cemetery, Asheville.

Sulphur Springs

First, let me address the spelling of “sulphur”. In American English, “sulfur” is the preferred spelling of element number 16. “Sulphur” is the spelling found most often in the non-scientific literature outside North America. Because the places I address in this essay use the spelling noted in the title, I will use “sulphur”.

For centuries, sulphur water has been considered healthful and restorative. Recent research seems to indicate that there is some scientific basis for believing this to be true. The American Medical Association does not yet recognize the benefits of bathing in sulphur water. European medical practitioners seem to be a little more broadminded, and balneotherapy (the treatment of disease by bathing in thermal mineral waters) is widely accepted there. Generally, bathing in sulphur water is supposed to be very good for skin diseases, allergies, inflammation, arthritis, and “detoxification”. I maintain a neutral position on the question, although I am convinced that my morning soak in the hot tub is good for my joints.

The ingredient that modern researchers credit with whatever wonders sulphur water might possess is hydrogen sulfide, or H2S. That is also the odorous compound in rotten eggs. If you have ever driven through White Sulphur Springs, WV, you know the smell well. The smell is not that onerous, as both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are alleged to have benefited from the waters of that town, as well as other presidents in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nearby, in Virginia, are the towns of Warm Springs and Hot Springs, also renowned for springs of sulphur water and visits by presidents, potentates, and lesser creatures, such as members of Congress.

Asheville, North Carolina, is in a geologically similar region to these three famous towns, so it did not surprise me completely to discover that Asheville once had a sulphur spring that, for a brief while, attracted tourists seeking the waters for rejuvenation. And thanks to Asheville Junction: A Blog by David E. Whisnant, I know more of the history of Sulphur Springs and where to find what is left of it. If you have any interest in this sort of history, I encourage you to read his blog. What follows is a very brief summary, including some pictures.

(Note: the picture at the beginning of this post was taken by Dr. Whisnant, and is about seven years old. The other pictures in this post were taken by me yesterday.)

The spring itself was discovered in 1827 by landowner Robert Henry, or by his slave, Sam. About seven years later, Henry’s son-in-law, Robert Deaver, constructed a wooden hotel near the spring and opened Deaver’s Sulphur Springs. It catered to the South Carolina plantation owners who visited Asheville in the summers to escape the heat of the low country. This successful health resort came to a fiery end just before the War Between the States.

Around 1887, Edwin Carrier bought the land and built a brick hotel on the ruins of the first hotel. Though constructed of brick, the Belmont (earlier known as Carrier’s Springs) also succumbed to fire in 1892. But the spring remained.

The neighborhood of Malvern Hills grew up around the spring, and during 1925 - 1926 the Malvern Hills Country Club was built over the spring. When the country club was demolished in 1980, the concrete pavilion over the spring was all that remained of Robert Henry’s discovery.

As you can see from Dr. Whisnant’s picture at the top of this post, and my photos below, the pavilion is in bad shape, covered with vines and tagged with graffiti. You can see that the spring yields very little if any water. The water you see may have been from recent rains. I could not detect the least bit of hydrogen sulfide in the air.

After our visit to the spring, Kathy and I lunched at a restaurant on Haywood Road, in West Asheville, where I happened across the small monument marking the end of the line for an electric railway that connected West Asheville to Sulphur Springs. According to the dates on the monument, it ran for only two years before Carrier’s hotel burned to the ground. The line continued to run for another 42 years after the fire. The fare was five cents.

Sulphur Springs is designated a Historical Landmark. If you wish to see it for yourself, enter 233 School Road, Asheville, NC, 28806 into your GPS. A little parking spot will hold one or two cars, maximum across the street from the spring.

Sulphur Springs may be just a small piece of Asheville’s history, but no part of history is insignificant.

Fifty By Seventy

I was not a child that dreamed of travel. When shown a picture of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, my first reaction was “flying buttresses . . . wow!” not “I must go see that in person sometime.” I was pretty well satisfied with life in the (then) small town of Clayton, NC. My family did a little bit of traveling, usually to see relatives or to go on camping vacations, but we limited our travels to the southeastern portion of the US. By the time I graduated high school, I had visited only eight states: North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida.

College and graduate school kept me too occupied to travel. When I married the first time, the honeymoon added Maryland and Pennsylvania to my list of states visited, but the vast majority of the country remained unexplored by me.

My first professional job was with a company headquartered in New York. Between visits to the corporate office and projects in New Jersey and Delaware, I added another three states to the list. But it wasn’t until 1980 that the travel bug bit me. That summer we pulled a pop-top camper to Yellowstone National Park. We took a different route going to and coming from the park, and, while in the vicinity, added a side trip to Idaho. By the time we returned from that trip, I had visited an additional 13 states. My total was now 26: I had visited more than half the states.

That is when the idea of 50 by 50 hit me: my goal was to visit all 50 states by the time I was 50 years old.

My work involved some travel. Thanks to job-related travel, I was able to add all of New England and California to my list. After changing jobs to one with a heavier travel schedule, I barreled through the States like crazy. By the time I was 47, I had visited 46 states.

I then became a high school teacher, a job involving almost no travel. That did not matter. I was missing only four states: Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Alaska. A vacation to Las Vegas could easily knock out three of the states, leaving me only an Alaskan cruise away from my goal. Surely I would fit these two vacations in before hitting the half-century mark.

But I didn’t.

Fifty came and went, and I still was at 46 states. In fact, when all the fifties were in the rear-view mirror, I was still at 46 states.

At age 60 I remarried, and the honeymoon destination was pre-ordained: Viva Las Vegas, baby! After several days in Las Vegas, we rented a car and spent a week or so in Arizona and New Mexico. Forty-nine by sixty!

My life as a married man became very busy. We started a hot sauce company. We became involved in the rental property business. We became grandparents. We buried parents. Somehow or another, 50 by the end of the 60s just didn’t happen.

I turned 70 late last year. When Kathy brought up the subject of our 2023 vacation a few months ago, we locked horns. She wanted Greece, and I wanted Alaska. We compromised on Alaska.

I write these lines while on the MS Westerdam. We are three hours from docking in Juneau. Kathy scheduled a couple of excursions in Juneau, while I have plans for the obligatory meal. (A state doesn’t count as having been visited until I’ve had a meal there.) Later we will visit Sitka, Ketchikan, and Victoria, BC. Kathy is especially excited about Victoria, as she has never been to Canada. I assume the trip will go well, so I end this discourse here. I will probably post a few pictures with the blog.

Fifty by Seventy, at long last!

Mendenhall Glacier, near Juneau

Sitka

Ketchikan - Note that Kathy is rubbing my belly.

Another Ketchikan photo in which Kathy is yet again rubbing my belly. She must think it brings good luck.

Victoria, BC

“Hey, Rocky, where is Victoria, BC?”

Seattle, Pike Place Market

The first Starbucks, at Pike Place Market, or “People standing in a long line to buy burnt coffee from the original.”

Da Bears

Kathy and I have been visiting the Asheville, NC, area since 2012, and in that span of time, we have seen many bears. That changed, at least for me, when we bought our retirement home here at the end of 2021. Kathy continued to see lots of bears, especially on or near our property, but I missed them.

It was a bit frustrating. I saw evidence that the bears existed: an overturned trashcan here, a collapsed chain link fence there, a destroyed bird feeder over yonder, but I didn’t see the bears. Consider this typical day from the summer of 2022. Like most couples, we paid movers to haul a bunch of stuff to our new home that we subsequently threw out or donated. My summer included near-daily trips to the dump or trips to the Habitat for Humanity Restore. One day, returning from the dump, Kathy rushed out to tell me that I had just missed a big old bear strolling down our street. “It couldn’t have been more than three minutes ago!” Three minutes late!

Or consider testimony from our next door neighbor, Justine: “Did you see that bear that just went down the street? That was absolutely the BIGGEST bear I have ever seen!” Kathy saw it, but I missed it.

I know there are lots of bears in the Asheville area. A biologist with the NC Wildlife Resources Commission was quoted earlier this year as placing the Asheville area bear population at around 8,000. This is up from fewer than 1,000 bears in the 1970s, thanks to a management plan that went into effect in 1981. Surely some of these bears must visit our home, but I never see them.

Last Christmas, my eldest gave us a Garde Pro animal camera. It took me awhile to mount it: the instruction book was quite thick, and to be honest, it intimidated me. But eventually I got around to reading the instructions and mounting the camera. The mounting strap that came with the camera was fairly short. The only tree small enough to accommodate the short strap was a dogwood in the side yard. We kept the camera there for a good bit, but unfortunately, we didn’t see any animals, other than bats. One night a bear came on our front porch and destroyed another bird feeder, but this was all out of range of the camera. That convinced me to buy a longer strap.

I relocated the camera to a massive tree in our front yard, with the camera pointed at the front steps and front porch of the house. For several days we checked the camera only to see the nocturnal antics of neighborhood cats and raccoons. Then, one day, there it was: a relatively young bear climbing onto our front porch, looking for the birdseed that we take in every evening. That video is here.

As you can see, the bear spends a bit longer than a minute on the porch. He goes to the railing at the end of the porch, and stands on his hind legs as he surveys his domain. Finding no birdseed, he eventually leaves, after taking a bite out of a leaf on our small key lime tree.

Well, that was most certainly exciting, but it didn’t qualify as “George sees a bear”. Still, I had a sense that my encounter with a bear could not be too far distant in the future.

I came to within eight minutes of seeing a bear stroll through our front yard. The video of that is here.

You can hear Lucy going absolutely nuts in the house as the bear intrudes on her property. I believe that someone must have been on the street when this occurred, as I can hear clapping, in an attempt (I think) to scare the bear off. The next video on the camera was of Kathy and me returning home from dinner, some eight minutes after the bear came through. On that video you can hear Lucy still barking at the long-gone bear.

So I was getting closer and closer to a real live bear encounter, but as the old saying goes, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. When would I see a bear on or near our property in real time?

The answer was “very soon”. Part of my morning procedure is to retrieve the SD card from the animal camera to see the animals that visited us the night before. I was doing that very recently when I heard a snort. I looked over to the vacant lot next to our house and saw two bears: a cub, and her mother. I called for Kathy, and she joined me. She said, “You know, mama bears are pretty protective of their cubs, and they can move very quickly over short distances. That mama bear isn’t very far away.” I replied, “I know, but I’m okay. I only have to outrun you, not the bear.”

Sometimes I worry about Kathy’s sense of humor.

So that is it. After nearly a year in the house, I have seen a real live bear up close and in person. I still check the animal camera daily, but the thrill and anticipation are now somehow different. I have seen da bears. It is all downhill from there.

I Thought I’d Made A Mistake, But I Was Wrong

I sincerely hope you are never cursed with the desire to collect handguns. Unfortunately, I have been struck with the curse. My first handgun was purchased purely for self-defense. So was the second, as the first proved to be a bit on the heavy side for everyday carry. But from the third firearm on, I have been collecting handguns that strike my fancy. Mind you, every handgun in my collection can be used for self-defense, but that is not really why I bought most of them.

Yes, I can read minds. You are asking a question: how many handguns do you own? The answer is: all that I need, but not all that I want.

Recently I bought a Bond Arms Rough and Rowdy derringer. Those of you who grew up on the westerns of the 1950s have seen the derringer in action, usually in the hands of a slick poker player, who, of course, invariably cheats at cards. The derringer is a very small pistol that typically holds only two shots, one in each of two barrels stacked one on top of the other. If the picture I am painting with words is not sufficiently clear, please refer to the photograph at the top of this article. I took that photo from the Bond Arms website. For reference, the barrel on the derringer is three inches long.

Bond Arms makes derringers in a variety of calibers. For some reason, I decided to buy a 0.45 caliber model. And, since the 0.45 and 0.410 bore shotgun shell have similar base dimensions, this derringer can also be loaded with 0.410 shells. I soon discovered I was much more accurate with a 0.45 load than a 0.410. But at the beginning, I was accurate with neither.

The derringer is a small gun, and the 0.45 is a big round, so this baby kicks like a mule. It took awhile to overcome the kick. At first, I could hit the paper target with a 0.45 round (nowhere near the center), but I completely missed with the 0.410 round. I laid the blame to the fact that I was using a 0.410 designed for self-defense: it contained only three plated discs, and a mere 12 plated BBs. I needed more BBs!

Practice did finally make perfect. (Actually, that should read “perfect practice makes perfect”, but my practice was far from perfect.) After a couple of weeks at the range, I was able to hit the target where I wanted to, with either a 0.45 or a 0.410. But it took concentration, and it occurred to me that if I really needed this gun for self-defense, I would most likely not be in a situation where I would have time to concentrate.

Then a plan slowly crystallized in my brain.

I decided to use the derringer as a defense against carjacking. Instead of loading it with standard or defensive shotgun shells, I went with number 7 ½ shot. Each one of these BBs weighs about ½ ounce. This is not a load you would normally use for self-defense. It is not even a load you would use for hunting. I doubt I could kill much of anything with this load. But the beauty of it is that there are 292 BBs in each shell. Two hundred ninety-two! So, if someone tries to carjack me, and I fire this at the miscreant’s face, with that many pellets, several dozen will find their mark. Because of the spread of the BBs, I will not even have to aim, just point and shoot. The carjacker will be wounded, probably not fatally, but that should be sufficient to put an end to the carjacking.

You may have read that Asheville has a crime problem. It does. Our mayor and most (if not all) of the city council are “progressives”. In the wake of the death of George Floyd, they decided that we were spending way too many tax dollars on the police. They cut police funding, and what you would expect to happen happened. I think the politicians in charge of the city are intellectuals. After all, George Orwell once noted, “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.” The long and short of it is that I no longer go downtown unarmed.

I thought I had made a big mistake with this purchase, but I was wrong. The derringer has its place, and that place is in the car.

Hugh Talmage Lefler

The April 26, 2023, issue of the Wall Street Journal contained a column by Danny Heitman, who regularly writes for the Baton Rouge Advocate. The article, entitled “I’m Revisiting the Books of My Youth”, explains why age and experience made him a better, more appreciative reader than when he was a student.

I have experienced something similar. During my college and graduate school years, I focused on math and science courses. I cared little for the traditional liberal arts courses and avoided all that I could. As a result, when I graduated from my liberal arts college, I did not possess a liberal arts education. For the past 48 years, I have been trying to rectify that defect in my education by reading extensively outside the disciplines of chemistry, physics, and mathematics.

It has not been easy. I am currently struggling with Plutarch’s masterwork, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans. Some of the chapters are excellent, even gripping, and some are not. It is the sheer length of this work that is killing me: my copy includes 876 pages, two columns per page, of small type. Amazon tells me that a copy printed normally comes in at nearly 1200 pages. By comparison, Amazon tells me that Tolstoy’s War and Peace (another book I’ve never read) clocks in at a bit over 1100 pages. Sheesh!

But some of my reading is really quite pleasurable. Consider, for example, my seventh-grade North Carolina history textbook written by UNC Kenan Professor of History Hugh T. Lefler (1901-1981).

In 1959 Lefler wrote North Carolina: History, Geography, Government, the text that we used during the 1965-1966 school year. I recently purchased a copy online and re-read it cover to cover. It was a joy to see history written plainly, free from the current ideological idiocies afflicting what is supposed to be our intellectual class.

The book was written for school children, but the writing is not boring for an adult. (A book written for seventh-graders in 1959 could pass for a book written for today’s twelfth-graders.) Lefler pulled no punches. He freely discussed the problems that North Carolina faced in its development. An absence of inlets, only one reasonably-navigable river, shallow sounds, and a general dependence on both the Virginia and South Carolina colonies hampered its growth. North Carolina also suffered from periods of poor leadership. The state was slow to adopt a system of public education, and suffered from a lack of decent roads, and later, railroads. All these defects Lefler reported factually.

But Lefler did not fail to mention the positives as well as the negatives. Unit 13 is entitled “How People are North Carolina’s Greatest Riches”. This struck a responsive chord in me. The economist Julian Simon once noted that our system of calculating GDP neglected the positive contributions made by humans: when a calf is born on a farm, the GDP goes up by a very, very small amount, but not so when a human is born.

The photographs in the book are simply great. The Zebulon B. Vance monument in Pack Square, Asheville, was removed before I moved here, as Vance was one of the wartime governors of North Carolina during the late unpleasantness and therefore one to be canceled. The color photo of the monument shows the impressive nature of the memorial, and reminds me of what we have lost to the politically-correct fascists.

This essay is running a bit long, but I must note a couple of items in closing. I turned to the index to look up “Civil War”. This is what I found:

“Civil War. See War for Southern Independence”

Indeed, throughout the book, one never sees the words “Civil War”. When he did not use the term “War for Southern Independence” he used “War Between the States”.

The chapter on the governance of the state beginning with the year 1868 is entitled “A Period of Bad Government”, which is undoubtedly true, and stated quite frankly. In the section entitled “Corruption by Lobbyists” I found the following:

“’General’ Milton S. Littlefield was much to blame for this. He was a carpetbagger from New York who had become a leading citizen of Raleigh. He knew how to get the members of the legislature to vote for the laws that he wanted.”

Note the absence of scare quotes around the word “carpetbagger”. There was no “alleged” about it. Littlefield was a carpetbagger, with all the negative connotations that term carried with it. I suspect that most students today do not know the meaning, much less the origin, of the term.

I believe that my pleasure in reading this book is due to the fact that Lefler really did love the state of North Carolina and the United States of America and that he was not afraid to allow his love to show in his writing.