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
