Relatives in Williamsburg

I was reading some diary entries from a Colonial Virginian, who may have been one of my ancestors. He apparently didn't get along well in London, so they sent him back home where he was given a minor magistrate position and set loose on the young women of Williamsburg. This particular entry talked about rising early, saying his prayers, dressing, walking into main part of town to check on things, then spending the rest of the afternoon chasing a wench around his quarters in town. In his defense, he did appear to feel some remorse for his actions, because he appealed to Heaven for forgiveness for his trespasses. However, this level of repentance didn' last very long for he seemed to be back at it later in the day.

The short biography stated that this particular gentleman and his spouse loved to dispute with one another. Apparently, their way of punishing their respective spouse was to beat the servant of the other. I can see it now, to colonial gentle-folk, yelling at each other, beating the servant of the other in retribution for the sins of their spouse. Nice system.

No wonder we fought a Civil War over that institution.

Ah, life in Colonial Virginia.

Laying words like a brick mason

I have been very profligate in my efforts to take on Samuel Pepys. I should do better and take the time to lay word to line like a good brickmason. Or word-mason. My father had Frank and me out laying brick in our back yard when we were in high school. That was a good profession. Jefferson, Washington and Churchill were all brick masons, I believe. Gardners. Tillers of the soil. I have done enough of that in the past few weekends.

I can't say we were very good brickmasons; however, the small walls and the walks are still there. More due to my father's efforts than ours. But I can say we laid trowel to brick and morter.

Lost images

This is Westover Plantation, which was restored and can be toured in Charles City County in Virginia, just south of Richmond. Westover is the ancestral home of the Byrd family, one of those first families of Virginia. Very distantly, I seem to be related to the Byrd family through my momma's family. About four generations back the name of Stubblefield crops up and if you follow that bunny trail back a couple of generations you find the Beverlys, who are related to a Robert Beverly, who was an early colonial historian, apparently, and who was related by marriage to the Byrds. This puts my momma in some high cotton, beyond her predominate Ulster Irish roots. As Kate says, we must have known how to 'marry up'. I suppose that is true. For every Byrd and Beverly, you've got some other family name re-leveling the playing field.

That's the melting pot of America. You can only hold your head so high.

The trials

There is a clear sky today, with some light fleecey clouds on the edge and it is quite warm today. Earlier, I picked Cindy up at Griffin Tech and tried to make my gasoline dollar stretch a little further, which was clearly impossible. Once upon a time, I could fill the tank of her 1998 Ford Explorer with about $25.00 worth of gas. Today I placed twenty dollars worth of gas in her tank and it came a little bit over 1/4 of a tank. We are still getting screwed by the major oil companies.

I spent about $40.00 on Tuesday in my Toyota driving around North Georgia. I drove up to Cumming, then over to Canton, up to Calhoun, over to Blairsville, down to Gainesville and Monroe, then finally back home to Griffin. The last forty or so miles between Monroe and Griffin, through McDonough, were the real pain. It wasn't until after I had passed through McDonough and past the congestion on Ga 155, just past I-75, when I could finally relax and enjoy the road into Griffin. It was past 5:30, almost to 6:00 before I made it home and I didn't feel like going in to the office for one more time to check messages.

That night, I talked Cindy out of take out from our favorite Mexican restaurant, and headed over to Buffalo's where I purchased the roughest, toughest chicken breast sandwich. I could have lost a tooth trying to masticate that bird. Fortunately, the following day saw me in the drive through at Chik-Filet, where I was served the polar opposite chicken breast sandwich. Thank God for Mr. Cathey.

Last night we were going to eat Mexican, but the parking lot at El Toro Loco was completely filled with May 5th celebrators. Nothing like the Battle of Pueblo to bring out the tequila and cerveza crowd. It is the South of the Border version of ST. Patrick's Day.

I am now tired and am looking forward to a pleasant supper out with Cindy, Momma, Frank and Maggie before the southern Baynhams head back to South Florida. I hope I hear from them soon.

Muffin-top, redux

Just in case anybody wondered, I think I fit into the muffin-top class of writers. I am not sure I fit into either the Eastern snob or Pugilist-Writer class. Perhaps somewhere in between.

Muffin tops and other things

Someone mentioned "muffin-tops" in something I was reading this morning and I really didn't remember the meaning of the term. It made me think of a few other such terms which I won't go into right now, but it did cause me to run to my normal source of information about all things cultural, Wikipedia. I thought I would cast the curse off the desire to define "muffin-tops" by reading about Norman Mailer, of whom I had been thinking when I saw a broadcast of a fight between Gore Vidal and himself on the Dick Cavett Show back in the late 60's. Both writers kind of represented two types of American Writer Archetypes: the effete Eastern snob and the overly-masculine pugilist-writer. Kind of like Fitzgerald v. Hemingway. That is not quite as good an analogy, since Fitzgerald was from Minnesota and Hemingway from Illinois; however, Fitgerald did attend Princeton and married a debutante and was a bit pretentious, when he wasn't drunk. Hemingway, on the other hand, seemed to be looking for some task to prove his manhood, whether boxing or hunting or fishing. And drinking.

But, anyway, after reading about Mailer and then Updike and then John Kennedy O'Toole, who each won the Pulitzer prize for fiction in consecutive years, I settled down to read about "muffin-tops" and even look at a picture of some young lady walking down the street, with her muffin tops hanging out over her pants, not too far, but enough to illustrate the term.

I guess neither Fitzgerald nor Updike had muffin-tops. They were both fairly slender. But the rest of these writers seemed to hang out over their belts. So perhaps I now have a new way to differentiate between American writers: muffin-top writers and non-muffin-top writers.

I am sure that is a helpful designation between the archetypes.

The voice of the turtle

For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.

This is several verses from Song of Solomon. Oddly, Ernie Harwell, the late, great announcer for the Detroit Tigers used this as his opening lines for Spring Training every year. Everything about it seems tailor-made for the opening of baseball. The only part that is odd is the last line, "And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land."

Of course, when you think of what a home plate umpire looks like, with his chest protector and mask, perhaps, he does look a little like a turtle.

So, I can see that "turtle" taking off his mask and yelling to the assembled, "Play Ball!"

Perhaps that is the voice of the turtle that is heard in the land as Spring arrives. Otherwise, I am confused.