Camp-o-rama

Its hard to believe September is almost gone. Our weather has been warm, even hot on some days, but you can tell summer is just about spent.

CAMPING. I think the highlight of life these last couple of weeks has been camping. This is the first time we’ve ever been camping as a family. A few weeks ago Vicki found a deal on a tent. At 10’ x 16’ it’s large enough for all of us to sleep comfortably. It has two rooms and a porch.

We went camping down at the river in Milldale weekend before last (Friday the 12th), and it turned out to be a really fun event. Lori, Andrew, and Wil camped out as well (Kenny came, but does not camp). As we talked about it at church the Sunday and Wednesday before, three other families decided to come too, which made for a fun time. All the kids had a lot of fun playing in the river, and when the adults weren’t playing in the river with them we had a great time just visiting around the campfire. Mom and Aunt Mar even came down for supper and sat around the fire with us for quite a while.

When Mom and Aunt Mar left I loaded all the kids in the back of the truck to take them up to the barn where they could use an actual bathroom if they wanted. What was so neat was that they just started spontaneously singing in the back of the truck. They serenaded me with songs like Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star; BINGO; Jesus Loves Me; etc. Kenny, of course, treated everyone to a scary story. His rendition of the Carr’s Creek Critter (a local story) had several of the kids sort of worried about sleeping in a tent by the river. His next story was Samson and Delilah which calmed everyone down and got them giggling. He chose Nate to play Delilah (a role Ben passed up) and one of the little girls to play Samson (hence all the giggling). Both kids really hammed up their parts.

I had to laugh at Nate who seems to be turning into our little comedian, or trying to at least. He had taken his bear to school Friday for Show and Tell, claiming it was his bear’s birthday. That night he tried to organize a birthday party for his bear around the campfire. Sadly, none of the other kids seemed to want to join in. Not to be deterred I saw him trying his hand at comic relief several other times. Once I noticed him walking holding his lawn chair up to his bottom and saying, “Help! My chair is pushing me. Help!”

We didn’t get to bed until midnight.

The next morning we got up with the birds (because Ben and Nate were awake and kept sitting on their sleeping bags saying, “I’m bored.”) When the rest of the camp woke up all the play seemed to resume where it left off the previous evening. After breakfast we began packing up to go home.

You know, the only bad thing about camping is the amount of stuff you have to haul with you. The back of my truck was full just to go three miles down the road and stay one night.

CAMPING, PART 2. Ben and I went camping Friday night (the 19th). This event was a Baptist Associational RA camp out. It was held at Coldstream Christian Camp in Adams. There were about 100 men and boys there from across Robertson County, with ten of us representing Mt. Carmel.

Coldstream Camp has eight primitive cabins along with a field where people can set up tents. There’s hiking, basketball, an obstacle course, and a 14 acre lake. We didn’t bring our fishing poles but several people did and caught quite a few large mouth bass. The boys enjoyed paddling a boat on the lake. When they got back to shore they discovered a chicken snake had been riding in the boat with them the whole time. It’s a good thing the snake didn’t slide out from under the seat while there were out on the lake.

There’s also a zip line across one end of the lake. Ben rode this twice. The first time he traveled a good 100 feet out the line before falling into the water. The second time he didn’t realize the handle was tethered to the tower and barely got away from the tower before dropping about ten feet to the water. He came up grinning from ear to ear.

GROWING UP FAST. To understand this you need to know that East Robertson Elementary puts out a weekly newsletter which we stick to the fridge. This paper includes the lunch menu for the upcoming week. Jenna came in the kitchen one morning wondering aloud what was for lunch. Ben, who was eating breakfast, told her. This must have surprised Jenna a bit because she asked, “How’d you know that?”

“Well, I read it,” came his reply.

Taken aback, Jenna said, “Man, he’s just growing up too fast. I forgot he can read now!”

Joe

Five Years and Counting!

Can you believe it? I’ve kept this up for five whole years! My computer says I’ve written over 183,000 words. I didn’t know I had it in me! For those of you who have not discovered it yet, you can go to our Swann Family News blog site and find all of the editions of this newsletter archived there.

OFFERING PRAISE. We should all offer praise to God in our prayers. Every morning the kids and I pray together as we drive to the bus stop, and I really liked how Nate began his prayer. He said, “God, You are the awesomest God in the whole earth...no, the planet...maybe the whole universe!”

AMANDA STUBBLEFIELD is a native of Cross Plains who now works for NASA. She was home on vacation this week and spoke about her career Thursday night at Springfield High School. Jenna, Mom, and I went. She was very interesting.

Amanda is an astronaut trainer for crews going up to the International Space Station (ISS). She lives in Houston, Texas, but gets to travel to training facilities in other nations contributing to the ISS project. She is currently winding up an assignment as lead trainer for Expedition 18. (Each crew rotation is an expedition. Two members of the 18th expedition will launch from Russia next month, and the third will leave from Florida in November. They serve a six month tour aboard the ISS.)

Of all the things Amanda talked about I think the most interesting was the spinoff technology. These are all the things that have been invented as a result of the space program that benefit our everyday lives which includes everything from GPS navigation to lasik eye surgery to potato chip bags.

By the way, Amanda was one of eight people inducted into the first class of the Space Camp Hall of Fame. One of the other people inducted in this class was rocketry pioneer Werner von Braum.

FREE RICE. I stumbled across a neat web site the other day at www.freerice.com. On this site you will find a multiple choice question giving you a word and four possible definitions of that word. Guess the correct definition and you donate 20 grains of rice to the World Food Programme (paid for through banner advertising). Once you answer, right or wrong, you get a new word (you also see the correct answer to the previous question). Each correct answer is worth 20 grains of rice. As you play the words get harder. You can also change subjects to things like world capitals, vocabulary in other languages, famous works of art, and multiplication tables. It’s addictive. I’m guessing Jenna and I have already donated over 10,000 grains of rice playing the game.

MORE HOUSE HISTORY. I want to clarify something I wrote last time. I wrote: “I’ve heard stories of farm animals being in the house as well as tobacco stripped in here.” We cannot verify these details. Personally, I think the tobacco stripping is more likely than the farm animals. (Stripping tobacco is the process of pulling the leaves from the cured tobacco plant in preparation for selling the leaves.) At any rate, Mr. Oley Simmons was a very unique person, and I’ve heard many things from many people. (And when Mom and I discussed this our conversation drifted to other old houses as well.)

The following story goes back to the time before Mr. Simmons ever lived on this place. There’s a second old house that stands in our yard about 40 feet from our back door. We call it the Red House even though there’s only a hint of red paint that hasn’t faded away. As far as I know, the Red House was the original house on this place. I have been told what is still standing is only half of what used to be a dog trot (where two buildings were connected by a breezeway rather than an enclosed hall). This might explain why the exterior door to the second floor opens out into nothing. You can also see evidence of a chimney that used to stand at the rear wall.

It was in the Red House that my great grandfather, Jim Hancock (Aunt Margarette’s father), spent part of his childhood. This would have been around 1880. His father was Mr. John Hancock, whom I have written about before (search “Mr. John” on our blog site). The story Aunt Mar used to tell me was that as a boy her father (whom she him Papa) wanted a pair of roller skates. Mr. John wasn’t too keen on getting skates for his son before the boy knew how to skate, but promised he would buy skates if young Jim could show that he could use them. This presented a problem as it is hard to learn how to skate if you don’t have any skates to learn on. Being resourceful as boys are, Jim borrowed a pair of skates, and learned how to skate by practicing in secret in an upstairs room of the house. I have never seen them, but I’m guessing there should still be marks in the floor to prove this. The ending of the story is that Mr. John kept his word and buy his son some skates, though he wasn’t too happy about it because his son learned how to skate behind his back.

Another story about this time that has been handed down through our family is about a really big snow (I don’t know what year). There is a log smoke house that stands between our house and the Red House. Mom remembers Aunt Scrap (one of Jim Hancock’s sisters) saying the snow came up to the eaves of the smoke house roof. This is about 10 feet high. I can’t see us getting that much snow here, though it is possible that snow did form in a deep drift right there next to the building. By the way, there’s still one ham left hanging in the smoke house. It’s been there as long as I remember. Any takers on a well cured ham?

Joe

Anniversaries and Awards

Remember that I mentioned how dry we’d been around here last time? Well, the very next day the remnants of Tropical Storm Fay came through and gave us some much needed rain!

CALLING DR. GOD! As the boys were playing the other day Nate’s foot got cut by one of Ben’s sharp toenails (Zachary, you can relate I’m sure). When Nate came to Vicki for a bandage she got out the Neosporin as well. Seeing the tube, Nate asked what it was.

“It’s Neosporin. It will help your foot heal,” Vicki explained.

Then Nate said, “I don’t want Neosporin to heal my foot. I want God to heal it!”

AUNT MAR AND THE CAT. I was able to get off work a little early Wednesday so I took advantage of the time to go up to church and help Vicki clean out a closet. On the way to church I thought I’d surprise the kids so I left Lilly over at Aunt Mar’s house. I knew Aunt Mar would enjoy the cat too. As I was leaving I asked Mom that loaded question, “Do you want the cat inside or out?”

“Of course, you know we want the cat outside,“ she replied.

What was so funny is right at that time Aunt Mar came into the den, saw Lilly, and started calling the cat to come to her. I put Lilly down, opened the door, and she marched in like she owned the place. Mom was at a loss for words.

Tonight we grilled out at Pauline’s for Labor Day. Aunt Mar began to inquire about Lilly’s well being and in her line of questioning asked, ”Does she ever meow?“

”Yes,“ someone said, ”she does meow sometimes.“

And in all seriousness Aunt Mar asked, ”Does she know what it means?“

We all enjoyed a good laugh at the thought of our cat who might not even understand her own ”words.“

WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS. We went to Vicki’s 20 year high school reunion Saturday night. It was in Paris, Tennessee. They hadn’t had a reunion since 1998, and since Pauline moved here five years ago Vicki hasn’t been able to see many of her classmates as much as she used to. We drove to Paris (about two hours) Saturday afternoon and returned home yesterday afternoon. And yes, we did see the Eiffel Tower before leaving town.

Vicki had a great time reconnecting with old friends. She was out until after midnight. I enjoyed the reunion too, but I only know Ginger and Angi and Keith (Angi’s husband) really well so I bailed out around 10:00. We heard enough funny stories to keep us entertained as we recounted the evening on our trip home.

SCHOLARSHIP AWARD. It was about this time last year that we celebrated Mom’s retirement as church secretary. At that time Bro. Bill announced that there would be a scholarship fund set up in her honor to benefit a high school graduate that chooses to further their education. Michael Johnson was the first recipient of this scholarship. He was awarded this yesterday (which we missed because we were in Paris). Michael has been playing piano at church all through his high school years and is an exceptional pianist. He has given a lot of himself to our music ministry these last four years. He is now a student at Union University.

HOUSE HISTORY. We think our house may be a few years older than this, but the records at the tax assessor’s office say our home was built in 1908. (I was told construction dates were not recorded before the 1950s and were recorded for older homes when they began to track this.) So, I thought it would be appropriate to tell what I know at this time. By the way, our house is pictured at the top of our blog site.

One hundred years ago this farm was owned by Mr. Oley Simmons. He was a bachelor. I had heard once that he was engaged, but his fiancée called it off. I cannot verify this. At any rate, we do know he remained a bachelor, and that he and his mother live here.

Mr. Oley wanted only the best materials for this house. Mr. Charles Dowell, a carpenter hired to help built the house, recalled to Mom once going through a pile of lumber to cull out bad pieces only to have Mr. Oley go through the pile again and cull out more. He laughed and told Mom the house was so well built that in a wind storm the house might roll off the foundation and tumble across the field, but never collapse. (I’m glad we’ve never had that tested.) We have hardwood floors (if you can call pine a hardwood), and I think the woodwork is walnut. There are four fireplaces.

Our back hall was actually the back porch at one time as evidenced by the sloping floor and clapboard siding on two of the hallway walls. The bathroom (our only bathroom) is the only brick part of the house. It was a smoke house for curing meat before the back porch was enclosed and it was converted to its current function.

Most people I’ve talked to recall Mr. Oley as a very peculiar man with odd habits. I think after his mother died he used the house for a barn as much as a home. I’ve heard stories of farm animals being in the house as well as tobacco stripped in here (talking about bringing your work home). When Mr. Oley passed away in the 1940s Mom and Aunt Mar both came here for the visitation. (At that time the custom was to hold a 24 hour vigil with the deceased in their home.) They both remember sacks of feed and even a sack of sugar stored in the dining room (the room we currently use as the boys’ bedroom). David Lee Thompson told me one that he helped embalm Mr. Oley’s body. This job was done in our study, the very room I am typing in right now.

When Mom and Dad later moved in here they were told the house was a bad buy. This was because the doors were too narrow for a casket to fit through. So far, this has never been a problem for us.

Joe