Proof that I am more stubborn than I am smart

There are times when a body proves what a stubborn jackass he really is. 

Today was one such day.

First, a little background.

My father is guardian for one of his nephews (my cousin) since his father - my father's brother - passed away. He is an extreme case of  'special needs' and now lives at a care facility. My parents try to visit him weekly (yeah, Covid put THAT on hold for a while). As the parental units are not exactly Spring Chickens and I usually have the time I try to chauffeur them on these excursions. The facility is smack in the middle of their old stomping grounds and they take no small pleasure in sight-seeing (at what I cannot fathom) and telling tales from back in the day.

Both parents have a fair interest in visiting the old cemeteries in the area. Some have distant kinfolk in them, others family of people they knew, and some are just interesting. It is usually my task to locate new spots to visit.

Today was one such trip.

We arrived an hour early for the scheduled visit with the cousin so we looked into an old cemetery nearby. As with so many others, this one has been essentially abandoned. Everything is overgrown and a couple of markers have toppled. It would take specialized equipment to reset the stone and the site would have to be cleared first. Sadly we could only locate about 12 of the 15 listed memorials.

Efforts there concluded - for the moment - we were off to the scheduled visit after which there was more touring about the area.

During this portion of the day family history was discussed. This lead to mother wanting to see the house where my cousin's mother (my future aunt when she would marry my uncle, my father's brother) lived back decades ago. And where my uncle had written his name in the cement holding the chimney together.

Understand that this is a HOVEL. It is only slightly more upscale than the Clampett cabin from The Beverly Hillbillies. Slightly. And it is on what remains to this day a grave road.

We are out in the sticks, people.

That portion of the excursion done we head back to the nearest town to regroup and decide what to do next. I check Find A Grave and see a small family cemetery relatively nearby that has never had any of the graves photographed. So we decide to see if that can be rectified.

Usually when there are hinterland excursions planned I am prepared. Long pants, boots, long sleeves, tools, etc. As there was no such plan today I had left all that stuff at home and worn shorts.

Ok. You are now up to speed enough that the rest of the story will make a modicum of sense.

First off, I am already looking like a dolt. The cemetery is located further along the road we were already on earlier looking for the house and name on a chimney described above. This meant backtracking some 4 or 5 miles. Not the end of the world, but not great either. If I had only checked before we left THE FIRST TIME....

That aside, we pull up to the point where Google Maps indicates is the jumping off point to hike in to the cemetery. It is marked as some distance back off the road.

Now the area is NOT DEVELOPED. It is wild. Well, wildish. There has been timber harvesting in the past few years. This means few trees and a lot of scrub. At least that increases visibility.

I leave the Old Folks with the vehicle and set out cross country. Picture using a compass and a map, just electronic versions of both. Walk a distance in the indicated direction, pause, re-orient to insure travel is in the right direction, proceed. Repeat.

Sure wish I had worn long pants! The scrub and brush are ripping my shins to shreds.

A wise man would have abandoned the search for the day and returned another time.

I may be wise.

I may be intelligent.

But however wise and/or intelligent I may (or may not) be, I am far, FAR more stubborn. 

So I push on. And what do I find? An access road leading in my direction of travel as well as back to the road. 

Son of a .....!

If nothing else this makes progress easier.

A couple of hundred yards further along I spot a rock wall and the top of a monument peeking out above it.

Bingo!

Let the photos begin. There are only 5 graves in the cemetery and there is a Find A Grave photo request for every one. 

If I had the time, and had brought a set of pruning shears, I could have cleared the whole thing in about an hour. Alas, such was not to be. I settled for taking the photos, updating GPS locations, and getting the hell out of Dodge.

I did a good deed for the day, though. I doubt it did much to erase any of the evil I have gleefully committed over the years.

And I paid for my stupidly not being properly attired for the exercise later. A nice hot shower was waiting for me at home.

Want to guess what that felt like? Yeah. Literally salt in my wounds. I think the neighbors heard me screaming in pain. All for lack of long pants.....

Note to self: Put long pants in the bug-out bag! And always take the tool bag. Maybe then I will be less of a stubborn dumb-ass. Just a normal Stubborn Ass.

I Didn't Do it! I Swear!

Short tale today. For a change. 

Yeah. O'l Br'er can be a long-winded sumbitch at times. Most times. Virtually all the time. 

Well, maybe not this one time.

A cry came out from social media for local assistance locating a cemetery in the area. The request came from someone further afield who was concerned that a family cemetery was about to be destroyed by area construction. 

Never let it be said that Br'er never helps anyone. Seldom? Yes. Never? No. Besides I was looking for a plausible excuse to leave the warren for a while.

So I trekked a few short miles in search of the fabled graves. At least I had a decent starting point. Though it turned out to be off by about a hundred yards.

Arriving at the general site I see the feared construction. A couple of acres have been bulldozed already. But I first check out the initial location the cemetery is thought to be. 

Nothing. Not good. 

Before leaving I decide to go ahead and scout the area around the construction site. There is an acre or so of untouched "greenspace" (read: vines, ivy, briars, and ... stuff). There is a construction silt-fence erected around the perimeter. Having been forced to join Pappa Br'er on more than few job sites over the years, I am reasonably well versed with the key Dos and Don'ts of such places. I make damned certain to not enter the site.

As with all these excursions, I am prepared for, uh, snakes. Yeah. Snakes. That this is not exactly the best area to be in in the first place is not important. I was only ready for snakes. But not everyone is comfortable being around anyone ready for snakes. So I have my snake remedy covered by my shirt tail for a change. 

No reason to make a problem when none exists.

It doesn't take much time to do the scouting. The only thing I find is a campsite for an "Urban Outdoorsman". This puts me on alert for ... snakes. 

Just about the time I am ready to abandon the hunt and while I am still close to the campsite (which has clearly been disturbed by the construction), I am approached by a bigger-than-me guy. 

Crud. I mentally prepare myself to react accordingly should he present a snake problem. I explain that I am just a harmless lunatic looking for some old graves.

"Oh! You mean the graves over there?", he asked while pointing to a spot close to the main street fronting the site.

I relax a little and we introduce ourselves. Turns out he is the contractor and walks me straight to the graves. 

Or what is left of them. 

There clearly used to be at least one false tomb. Possibly two. He goes on to explain that the location was surveyed and is being protected, that it was in this condition before the work began. That is obvious just looking at things. 

I explain the details of what I am doing and why, and make it clear that he is NOT in the line of fire. And I thank him on behalf of the person who requested the visit for properly protecting things. He adds that there will be a retaining wall erected to further protect the two graves.

Getting back to the warren I am compelled to do more research (as well as submit a cemetery update to Find A Grave to set GPS coordinates and an updated description). Turns out the cemetery was surveyed by a local historian in 1932 and the graves were already disturbed. Indeed, the damage had been done between 1902 and 1910!

So, in the end I done a couple of good deeds. How much of my evil does that erase?

One Good Deed Done or Thanks For The Hernia

Many long years ago when Ol' Br'er was a strapping young rabbit, he was given a pin-on button that read "I'm Not Real Smart, But I Can Lift heavy Things". (Pithy and humorous buttons were right popular back in the Dark Ages) This was after he watch several people trying - unsuccessfully - to raise a side of a large object in order to get blocks under it to raise it a few inches. 

I will not describe their suggestions. Suffice it to say Rube Goldberg would be duly impressed and humbled.

After many minutes of this idiocy, Br'er walked up, lifted the side of the structure, and held it there while the blocks were put in place. He then repeated the same thing for the other side. Task done in less than a minute. Thus the button was awarded.

Well Ol' Br'er ain't a young bunny any longer.

There is a small family cemetery barely visible at the edge of some woods WAY off the road out in the country. We've passed it several times, but time restraints and weather have always conspired to prevent our investigating it. That changed recently. We were in the area, had the time, the weather was great (even if Pollen was as toxic levels), AND there was a Find A Grave photo request for it to boot. 

Ok. The 150 yard walk in and out through tall grass was not pleasant. But otherwise the conditions were excellent.

As always, viewing the cemetery merely ends up presenting me with unanswerable questions. To explain, I have to explain what we found. Looking at the image below (Hey! I spared no expense in creating my graphics!)

The blue-gray area in walled and the area covered in concrete. There are multiple inscribed headstones there.

The yellow area has a granite border almost covered by grass now. It has crushed marble covering the space that, too, is almost covered by grasses. The red are within it is an obvious grave site. It is an unmarked pebble impregnated concrete slab the exact dimensions of a grave. 

The green area is just like the yellow with the exception being no obvious graves in it.

The smaller tan items are individual stone markers.

The blue line marks the demarcation from grassy area (left of the line) and wooded/overgrown area (right of the line).

All the surnames in the blue-gray area are the same. Oddly the one tan marker closest to the blue-gray area (a husband and wife) is the same surname as those in the blue-gray area. All the other tan markers are different surnames.

So right off the bat I want to know why the one family member was delegated to a spot outside the family plot. Who did they piss off? What heinous sin did they commit? Did he marry someone of whom the family did not approve? Did she insult Grandmother Webb somehow? Surely there must be a good story there and nothing so mundane as "that is where they ended up and it did not fit in the existing grid plot".

It was from that spot that the markers in the trees became somewhat visible.

What makes people maintain only part of a family cemetery. We are not talking about a large area by any definition. It wouldn't be much additional work to cut back some grown from time to time. Honestly, it would not take a full day to clear back the growth around these markers and make them easily accessible. Why this is not done perplexes me.

If you look closely at the left edge of the top photo you will see a marker where the top section has fallen over. The fallen section is about 8 by 12 by 20 inches. "Why that is nothing!", I think to myself, "I'll just set it back on the base. The base is nice and level, and obviously this tree fell and knocked it over."

Recall the who thing about not being smart but lifting heavy things? How it inferred having a strong back and a weak mind?

Yeah. Things have reversed. As I have grown older and wiser the mind has gotten stronger and the back weaker.

And stone is fecking HEAVY!

I fight giving myself a hernia a couple of times before I rethink things. I did completely lift the stone a couple of times, so honor was served. But handling it was too unwieldy. Selah; Pause and consider. Pausing and considering the matter I reassessed and formulated a new plan. I lifted the bottom of the fallen part and rested it on the base. I then lifted the top part using the bottom as a pivot point until the block tilted over and came to rest back on its base. A couple of adjustment pushes and it was realigned and good as new. Well, new-ish. Interesting that it obviously never had a pin or adhesive of any kind to keep it in place. Inertia and Friction alone did the job nicely for a century. Should last a good long time again.

Not anticipating any effort like this being necessary I had not brought along any tools so the mud just had to remain. At least I had reset the stone. So one good deed done.

That should cover my quota for the year.

Now please pardon me while I go shop for a truss.

Some Things Are Eternal

I do a lot of genealogy research. Not just for my ancestry, but for TW's as well. And for the random individual's headstone I encounter in various cemeteries and graveyards.

As part of researching prior generations, one finds the occasional photo or, for really old people, paintings or sketches. Then there are work, tax, and other records and data. If you are fortunate you can put all the data together and paint an extensive mental picture of these people. Knowing they were in a specific unit in the military and in a certain battle, that they held public office or were involved in politics, or simply a farmer or sharecropper tells you much about the life he or she might have led.

Until the about the 1940s or so almost all photos were formal things. Or at least posed as they took longer exposures. Thus people appear very stoic. And the photos tend to be of older people. This was in part because as photography became available to the masses they wanted to preserve the images of their elder parents and grandparents, know well that these people would soon be gone.

So you can imagine that I see more than a few images of older, often dirt poor farmers and their wives, well into middle, late middle, or old age with the effects of a hard life etched on their faces. And they are NOT smiling.

And I often have the same thought. "How the hell did they every have children?" He looks like he could not and she looks like she would not.

Yet there is no question that they did. And it was seldom one or two children. Usually there were 6, 8, 12 or more children.

Obviously they 'got busy' as the modern trope goes.

Then there are the occasional images of a young couple just before or just after marriage. And in their faces - their eyes - you can see an entirely different story. You can see the eagerness with which they anticipate future 'marital relations'.

I did not experience knowing Grandparents. One grandfather died a few months prior to my being born and the other two months after. One grandmother died before I turned 4 years old. The other lived out of state and, frankly, was a Psycho Bitch From Hell so we had little contact with her. The great grandparents were much the same story. All save one were dead before I was born or in my very early years. The exception lived several states away and I only met her about twice.

So I did not get the tales, the time, or any of the other experiences most people get from knowing their more direct ancestors. As a side note, neither did my father. Our experiences in this respect are eerily identical.

But I did have a few great-aunts and a great-uncle (all siblings of my paternal grandparents, one side or the other) that I knew, though the great-aunts were rather standoffish so there was less interaction with them.

Through the great-uncle, though, I managed to glean some of what I missed from other channels. It was from him that I learned to see past the façade of old age and glimpse some of the person that was.

His name was Sidney Ransom (I will leave off the surname). I knew him as Uncle Buddy. He often remarked to me that In his youth he called himself "Handsome Ransom". A distant cousin shared some photos on Ancestry of Uncle Buddy and Aunt Nobie (Honest! That was her name.) in their late 20s or early 30s, early in their marriage, long before they even dreamed of the challenges they would soon face; The Great Depression, a son with MS would would predecease them, and other things.

I wish I had seen those images when Uncle Buddy was alive so I could have called him a liar to his face. He was anything but handsome. I honestly believe he would have howled in laughter and reveled in arguing just how handsome he really was.

He told many tales of his youth (though I was still too young and unaware to think to ask him important questions about his parents, grandparents, etc.), and imparted some of the alleged wisdom he learned over the decades. Some of this was his version of 'adult' stories. Remembering that he was born in 1907, some of his tales were Blue, Risqué, or otherwise Naughty. At least they were for his generation. And considering the glint in his eyes at such times it was clear that he intended them to be.

Today his stories might barely rate a PG-13 rating. To him they was downright scandalous!

Sometimes those Blue Tales come to mind when I see these old photos and the images transform from static two dimensional fictional things into living, breathing, and dare I say, passionate people. I am reminded of one quote from a young wife to her husband that was quoted in Ken Burns "The Civil War". Not the one from Sullivan Ballou to his wife promising to come back to her even after death if it is possible. No, as eloquent and heart rending at that letter was, I am thinking of another.

The letter I recall was from a wife. She longed for her love to return to her. She waxed, in a thinly veiled code, and reminded him of "when he laid her on the couch'. Then she begged for him to come home as she so wanted him to lay her on the couch again.

Her letter reminded me in some ways of Uncle Buddy's stories and tales.

Unlike me, TW knew one of her grandmothers well. They were very close. I only knew her as an elderly woman (she was in her 70s when I first met her). But I was convinced that I knew her better, or at least more clearly, than TW did. See, TW could only see her grandmother as someone in middle to old age. A twice widowed sedate and genteel lady. 

I looked past all that. I saw someone who came of age as a young woman in a larger city during the Roaring Twenties. I would regale TW with visions of her grandmother being something of a 'wild child' in her day. This was seldom well received. TW did not believe her grandmother ever danced! So you can imagine TW's reaction when I would get the old lady talking about 'the old days' and she would talk about dances and dating. 

She still has trouble believing that I am right in such matters.

Her grandmother's real past became undeniable recently. TW inherited boxes of photos and ephemera from her mother (and father to be honest, though he is still alive and kicking). I have been assigned the task of scanning and archiving all of it. A good part of the materials came from her grandmother.

And it included two love letters. And they were not from her grandfather!

TW was faced with irrefutable proof that her grandmother was not always the sweet little old lady she remembered. She had A PAST!

That Civil War letter, Uncle Buddy's tales, TW's grandmother's letters and stories, and other things best left unsaid - at least here - come to mind when I see tombstones, old photos, read wills and other records. They make people come alive. The years fade away. I hear the laughter, secrets, passions, fears, hopes, and dreams common to all couples. All of us.

We all think ours are unique. It is only after decades together and even more years of living on top of those do we begin to learn the opposite is true.