Huntsville, AL 22 Apr 2014

We had originally came to Decatur, Alabama to search for genealogical records. Unfortunately, we discovered that the courthouse that would have contained those records burned in 1892 and all of the pertinent records were destroyed.  That left us with a bit of time on our hands, so we explored the area.  Nearby Huntsville was one of our destinations.

We had stayed in Twickenham for a week when they were in England, so were interested in why the name appeared so frequently around town.  It turns out, that the city was originally named Twickenham after the city in England.  Anti-British sentiment was, however, high at the time, so it was renamed Huntsville in honor of John Hunt, an early resident. 

Many wealthy plantation owners and merchants moved into the area and it grew quickly becoming Alabama's first capitol.  This building once housed the Huntsville Inn.  President James Monroe stayed here during a visit in 1819. 

This gorgeous woman was, perhaps, the most famous person ever to come from Huntsville.  Classic film fans will recognize her as Tallulah Bankhead.

This is the Schiffman Building where she was born here on January 31, 1902.  Her father, then city attorney, had a brilliant political career, but Tallulah's career on stage and screen was the stuff  of legends.

Perhaps, Huntsville's greatest claim to fame started here at the Redstone Army Arsenal.  After both the Navy and Air Force failed in their attempts to launch the first U.S. Satellite, the Army program, then under the direction of Dr. Werner Von Braun, succeeded in launching Explorers I and II before the space program was shifted to NASA.

The Nike-Hercules system, in which Ted worked during much of his time in the Army, was also developed here.

 Spectacularly visible, as we approached town, was the Huntsville Aerospace museum, adjacent to the Redstone Arsenal and the George C. Marshall Space
Flight Center.

 You would expect a town which housed a lot of highly intelligent people to have a vibrant arts community.  Of course, Huntsville is full of, well, rocket scientists, so this magnificent arts museum in a town of fewer than 200,000 is no great surprise.

 Sculptures such as his were common along the downtown streets.

Huntsville was a neat, clean town with many beautiful old homes.  It was a very pleasurable excursion.

Tupelo to Decatur 20 April 2014

 We enjoyed our time at Tupelo.  The RV park was quiet and pleasant.

 Bird feeders were placed throughout the park and we enjoyed watching the activity at them.  This finch was a frequent flyer.

 This was one of two male cardinals that were vying for the attention of a female.

 The park was less than a mile away from the beautiful and historic Natchez Trace.

 This rather plain looking spot was the site of the Chickasaw village of Pontotock.  A nearby county and its seat continue to bear the name.  When the Chickasaws were forced off the land, they carried the name with them to Oklahoma where Pontotoc County lies in what was once Chickasaw Tribal land.

The food we enjoyed while we were here was also outstanding.  These catfish were delicious, 

 as were these hush puppies, 

 which we enjoyed at the historic Catfish Hotel on the banks of the Tennessee River near Shiloh.  Note the barge passing outside.

But, all good things must come to an end, so it was on to a considerably less esthetic setting in Decatur, Alabama, near Winston County where Ted's great-great-grandfather had received a land grant.



Shiloh and Corinth

One of the pivotal battles of the Civil War was Shiloh. 

This quiet, peaceful place, which provided an alternative name for this battle, is Pittsburg Landing. 

This, courtesy of  www.civilwar.org is what it looked like a little over 152 years ago when General Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Tennessee disembarked from a flotilla of riverboats.

 This reproduction of the Shiloh Meeting House gave the battle its better known name.

There is still an active United Methodist church and an active cemetery on this site.

The Hornet's Nest, so called because the constant whizzing of bullets sounded like an angry nest of hornets, was the site of the fiercest fighting on April 6, 1862, the opening day of the battle.  Each foot of ground changed hands several times. The dense woods and the rolling terrain, made both attack and defense difficult.  How frightening it must have been to the very green troops who fought here, often, not knowing the location of friend or foe.

Union forces fought stubbornly, but yielded ground.  This artillery emplacement marks the site of Grant's last line at the conclusion of fighting that first day.

Perhaps the greatest Confederate loss was the death of General Albert Sidney Johnston who was killed on this spot in the early afternoon of April sixth.  He was the highest ranking general of either side killed in action during the Civil War.  Jefferson Davis considered him the South's most capable general and often called his death the turning point of the war.

Despite their gains, the Confederates failure to turn Grant's left flank, which ran from this area down to the Tennessee River, sealed their fate.  The evening, of April sixth, General Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio arrived to reinforce Grant.  On April seventh, Confederate forces, now commanded by General P.G.T. Beauregard, expecting to finish the battle and capture Grant's army, charged, but found the Union Army in countercharge.  The Confederates were routed.  The battle claimed 23,746 casualties, slightly more than one fifth of the soldiers who fought here.  It was the bloodiest battle ever fought on American soil.  Unfortunately, scarcely more than a year later, it would be eclipsed by the Battle of Gettysburg which would be marred by nearly twice as many casualties.

It is very difficult to find positives coming out of such a tragic event, but perhaps there was one here.  This was the site of one of the first field tent hospitals.  Established much closer to the front than previous practice, it saved many lives that might have been lost had a longer trip to a hospital in the rear been required.  In the present day, the same principal has also been applied to reduce casualties resulting from a number of natural disasters.

Dogwoods, redbuds, and sand plums were in bloom throughout the park as if in commemoration of those who died here.  We had to wonder how many of these beautiful trees marked the exact spot where a soldier fell. 

This interpretive center in Corinth, Mississippi marks the real objective of this campaign. It was a crossroads of two railroads vital to the Confederacy. The Mobile and Ohio railroad ran north and south from here while the Memphis and Charleston ran east and west.  Less than a month after the battle of Shiloh, Grant, understanding that a direct attack was a pointless waste of resources, laid siege to the town.  The confederates suffered almost as many losses here as they did at Shiloh, but only a few to battle wounds.  The water was bad, and most of the losses were due to typhoid and other camp diseases.  After a month, the Confederates abandoned this position.    

Bronze reproductions of soldiers' items were imbedded on and beside the walk to the interpretive center as if they had remained there for 150 years.

This depiction of the union battery stood at the top of the hill above Corinth.  Six months after its fall, Confederate forces, under the inept leadership of General Sterling Price, attempted to retake Corinth.  Despite the equally inept leadership of General William S. Rosecrans, the Union repulsed the attack.  Casualties were high, but nowhere near the same magnitude of those suffered at Shiloh.   

Almost on cue, this Norfolk Southern, train passed.  The Southern railroad, which later became the the Norfolk Southern obtained the assets of the Memphis and Charleston, in 1894.

A few miles northeast of here, a camp of liberated and runaway slaves was established.  This sculpture depicts a union soldier teaching a female slave to read.

 

 

While the central issue of the Civil War was the egregious institution of slavery, it was far from the only factor leading to this conflict.  It was the result of decades, indeed centuries, of inability of our leaders to right a horrible wrong.  Even such great minds as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson admitted defeat in their attempts find a solution.  It remained for brave men on both sides to suffer and die here in order to resolve this conflict.  We come here to honor their memory.     . 

West Memphis to Tupelo 14 Apr 2014

 Home is where we park it.  For the last few days, that has been on the banks of the Mississippi.

 We've watched the river traffic.  The Queen of the Mississippi, was the only excursion boat we saw. 

 Most of the traffic was freight of some type of cargo or another, such as this, (If you're a member of Greenpeace you may wish to look away), load of coal.

 We screwed up our courage and drove across the bridge into Memphis, one of our least favorite places to drive.

 As we drove southeast, we passed this yard with several of these intermodal cranes transferring containers and semi-trailers between rail cars and trucks.

 The drive between Memphis and Tupelo was green and pleasant.  Beautiful redbuds like these lined much of the road.

 We were starving, so as soon as we got set up we headed into Tupelo to find something to eat.  We always try to experience as much of the local color as possible.  Johnnie's Drive-In certainly fit that bill.  It has been in operation since 1942.  We wondered, going in, if Elvis had ever eaten there.

 Our questions were quickly answered.  A photo of Elvis sitting at this booth was on the wall.

 Painted guitars, such as this one in front of Johnnie's, each uniquely decorated, lined the streets. 

Johnnie's was right across the street from Presley Heights. 

 Not far away was Elvis birthplace, shown here.  Obviously, something was being taped here today.

Tupelo Hardware, in downtown Tupelo, is an old fashioned hardware of the type with which we grew up.

It stocked all kinds of items, ranging from butter churns to nuts and bolts, to chainsaws, and much more.

Legend has it that in 1946,eleven-year-old Elvis came into Tupelo Hardware with his mother, Gladys, to buy a bicycle.  A .22 rifle, however, caught his eye.  Gladys, wasn't too happy about buying a gun, so they compromised on a guitar.  They still sell guitars.

On to Memphis TN 8 April 2014

 It's a relatively short drive from Little Rock, so we expected this to be an easy day.  Not!!  Traffic, particularly truck traffic, was heavy, and construction had constricted traffic to a single lane.  It is a form of punishment to have to follow an ice cream truck through 0-20 mph traffic while staring at depictions of butter pecan and almond fudge.  A trip that should have taken about an hour and a half wound up taking nearly four hours.

 We finally made it to our destination: Tom Sawyer's Mississippi River RV Park.  It advertises that it is "so close to the Mississippi River that sometimes we're in it".  That was the case six years ago when we tried to stay here and we received a call a few miles out telling us that they were flooded.     

T

Even the office is on wheels so it can be easily towed out when necessary.

 This photo of a barge headed up the Mississippi was taken from our door.

Some of these consists are real monsters.  This one was four barges wide and seven deep.  The tug had three engines, each directly connected to a propeller.  Each engine is equivalent to the engine on a railroad locomotive. 

 We had not been here long before there was a knock at the door.  We were surprised, and pleased to find our Illinois friends, Bob and Charlene.  They had stopped by on their way back home.  They had no idea we were here, but wound up parked behind us.  A really fun coincidence.

The next day, it was on to attempt a little genealogical research into Ted's family.  We were pleasantly surprised at the quality of the roads. 

 

 Our first stop was at the Cross County Historical Society.  There were some cute displays, such as this one of the turn of the century country store, but not much help for out family history.

 The next stop was the Poinsett County Courthouse.  It was cool looking, but the original courthouse had burned in 1872, twelve years after we had our last account of Ted's Great-Great Grandfather.  The few records that survived were not relevant.  Bummer.

 At least Ted got to see the countryside of Breshelake Township where his ancestors lived during the mid-19th century.

 On the way back, we stopped by a cemetery where some of Penny'sbeloved ex-mother-in-law's family is buried. 

 It was rather a sad little place.  There had been no recent burials, and many of the headstones were broken or had fallen over.  Too bad that many of these little pioneer cemeteries have fallen into such disrepair.

 We discovered that many of the trucks that were trying to avoid the construction on I-40 had taken this little side road.  Too bad we hadn't known about it a couple of days earlier.

Seeing the moon-shine on the river, we couldn't help thinking of Ike and Tina Turner's Proud Mary.  "Mississippi Moon keep on shinin' on me"