Catastrophic Events

The sermon today was about taking the path less traveled.  

Our minister quoted the last line in the Robert Frost poem 

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel to both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;	5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted to wear it;
As for the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,	10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves, no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.	15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

It got me to thinking about the places we had visited the last few weeks and the strange events that have happened and are about to happen.
We ran across such things as the Black Patch Tobacco War, of West Kentucky & Tennessee, Edgar Casey's "The Sleeping Prophet", The Sinkhole @ Corvette Museum Bowling Green, Earthquakes that created Reelfoot Lake Union City, Ky., Total Eclipse Hopkinsville, Ky & Sighting of Little Green Men Kelly, Ky IMPACT CRATER Cape Charles, Va

http://www.lrc.ky.gov/record/Moments13RS/web/legislative%20moment%2016.pdf
Black Patch Tobacco War 1904-1909
Before the Civil War Kentucky was one of the richest states in the union after the war it was one of the poorest. Big business came to Kentucky, eliminating competition, manipulating prices, and undermining control. The price for dark tobacco was instigated by extremely depressed prices for tobacco crops.

Night Riders, destroyed tobacco plant beds, barns, and equipment as well as whipped and sometimes murdered the opposition farmers. 
Night Riders also attacked agents and destroyed the property of the ATC, setting fire to tobacco warehouses in Trenton, Princeton, and Hopkinsville. 
Not even a dispatch of troops by Gov. A.E. Willson was able to subdue the acts of violent intimidation.

https://www.edgarcayce.org/edgar-cayce/his-life/
Edgar Casey "The Sleeping Prophet" 1877-1945 
Born 1877 in Christian County Hopkinsville, Ky
Died 1945 Virginia Beach, Va
The majority of Casey's readings deal with holistic health and the treatment of illness. 
Casey dealt with these five categories: Health-related information, Philosophy, and reincarnation, dreams and dream interpretation, ESP and psychic Phenomena and Spiritual Growth, Meditation, and prayer.
Casey was a very spiritual man and Casey vowed to read the Bible every year of his life when he died in 1945 he had accomplished this task.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sinkhole-swallow-eight-cars-in-national-corvette-museum-in-kentucky/
The Sinkhole at Corvette Museum Bowling Green, Ky
February 10, 2016
Eight vintage Corvettes dropped into the abyss, Six owned by the Museum.
Two on loan(1993 ZR-1 Spyder and a 2009 ZR1 Blue Devil)
The other cars damaged were a 1962 black Corvette, a 1984 PPG Pace Car, a 1992 White 1 Millionth Corvette, a 1993 Ruby Red 40th Anniversary Corvette, a 2001 Mallett Hammer Z06 Corvette, and a 2009 white 1.5 Millionth Corvette.

Bowling Green sits amid the state's largest karst region - the Western Pennyroyal area, where many of Kentucky's longest and deepest caves run underground. Karst displays distinctive surface features, including sinkholes.

https://rootsrated.com/stories/the-fascinating-story-behind-reelfoot-lake
Earthquakes that created Reelfoot Lake Union City, Ky. 1811-1812
When earthquakes shot across the American Southeast in late 1811 and the spring of 1812, the landscape along the New Madrid Fault (which runs parallel to the Mississippi River Valley) changed dramatically. These tremors could be felt as far away as Washington, D.C., and even, according to some reports, Quebec City—nearly 1,400 miles away. This area of western Tennessee was still the frontier, so few settlers lived there to serve as eyewitnesses to the change of scenery.
What we do know, though, is that huge swaths of land slid, and rivers literally changed course as a result of the seismic activity. Fallen trees formed massive logjams, sandbars shifted, and islands were created and subsequently demolished. Among the more significant changes, the quakes opened a great hole in the ground that would be the basin of Reelfoot Lake. After the earthquakes, the Mississippi River backed up on itself, filling in Reelfoot Lake and flooding the once-dense stands of bald cypress trees.

https://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/kentucky/

Total solar eclipse over Kentucky 

August 21, 2017

Kentucky experiences about the longest eclipse duration, just over 2 minutes and 41 seconds. The civic boosters in the Hopkinsville area are advertising this spot as the very best place in America to see the eclipse. On this very day of August 21st, the town of Hopkinsville whimsically celebrates a purported alien encounter with a Little Green Men festival, so the world of solar eclipses and alien encounters will conflate in Hopkinsville on this day.

THE POINT WHERE THE SUN, MOON, AND EARTH LINE UP MOST PERFECTLY DURING THE ECLIPSE IS NEAR HOPKINSVILLE. THIS IS CALLED "THE POINT OF GREATEST ECLIPSE" AND THE ECLIPSE DURATION HERE IS WITHIN 0.2 SECONDS OF THE MAXIMUM IN ILLINOIS.

Siege of ‘Little Green Men: The 1955 Kelly, Kentucky, Incident

August 21, 1955

The Sutton farmhouse family encountered humanoid-like creatures. 

At about seven PM Bill Ray Taylor(visiting the Sutton family) was drawing water from the well when he saw a bright streak in the sky that disappeared beyond the tree line. About an hour later Taylor reported seeing a flying saucer. 

The family spotted a creature and ran inside got the shotgun and started firing the shotgun at the creature. They shot one creature that was on the roof and one in a tree both floated to the ground. 

Either the creatures were impervious to gun blasts or the men's aim was poor since no creature was killed. The family piled into the car and drove to town but no sign of the creatures or spaceship was found. 

The next day the US Air Force was involved and the case was listed as unidentified (Clark 1998)

This being said We are safe in no place on this earth. The path less taken will be the path I take.

The path of least resistance is generally the one taken.

Chesapeake Bay impact crater

The Chesapeake Bay impact crater was formed by a bolide that impacted the eastern shore of North America about 35.5 ± 0.3 million years ago, in the late Eocene epoch. It is one of the best-preserved "wet-target" or marine impact craters, and the largest known impact crater in the U.S.

Continued slumping of sediments over the rubble of the crater has helped shape the Chesapeake Bay.

Until 1983, no one suspected the existence of a large impact crater buried beneath the lower part of the Chesapeake Bay and its surrounding peninsulas. The first hint was a 20 cm (8 in)-thick layer of ejecta that turned up in a drilling core taken off Atlantic City, New Jersey, far to the north. The layer contained fused glass beads called tektites and shocked quartz grains that are unmistakable signs of a bolide impact.

In 1993, data from oil exploration revealed the extent of the crater.

2016 June 19, Sunday, Singing River Statue of Muscle Shoals 🎶🎶🎶🎶

Legend of the Singing River
The Yuchi and other early inhabitants living along the banks of the mighty Tennessee River held the legend of a Spirit Woman who lived in the river. She protected and sang to them. When the river was angry, she sang loudly. When the river was peaceful, she sang softly and sweetly, sometimes humming a comforting lullaby. Some say that all they heard was the high waters' mighty rush and roar over the mussel shoals, or at other times, the calm low waters babbling through the river rocks. Others say she is real and can still be seen in the early morning mist, hovering over the waters, just as she did those many years ago. In her honor, they called it the Singing River and in her honor, we named these sculptures the Singing River Sculptures.

Singing River Statue of Muscle Shoals

Singing River Statue of Muscle Shoals 

The World-changing Muscle Shoals Music
From throughout the 20th century to the present, Muscle Shoals area artists, musicians, songwriters, and music-industry professionals have helped shape the world’s expansive music heritage. Few styles of music were untouched by Muscle Shoals, and local contributions have been made in all other areas of the complex industry: producers, recording engineers, songwriters, music publishers, and other positions in the music business.

Many of the world’s greatest performers began their ascent to stardom in Muscle Shoals, and artists, such as Percy Sledge, Aretha Franklin, the Staple Singers, and Bob Seger, along with many others, quickly created a legacy that earned the area the title, “Hit Recording Capitol of the World.”

The area grew as a music center by drawing together people of all races and religions. In the 1960s, despite the segregation of the races enforced outside the studios, great soul classics were being created in the studios with each musician contributing his innate musical talent. The collaborations created some of the most widely loved music of the 20th century, including Steal Away, Mustang Sally, Tell Mama, Patches, Respect Yourself, and many others.

The warning issued in Arthur Alexander’s You Better Move On got the attention of the Rolling Stones. The Beatles heard Alexander’s song, Anna and each band acknowledged their respect for Alexander and his writing by recording their version of his songs on their first albums.

The songwriting tradition continues as one of the strongest facets of Muscle Shoals music, with area songwriters penning songs such as I Loved Her First, I Swear, 

The heart and soul of Muscle Shoals' music have always been the players and singers. Four members of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section were immortalized in the Lynyrd Skynyrd song, Sweet Home Alabama. The lyric, “Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers, and they’ve been known to pick a song or two,” honors Jimmy Johnson, Barry Beckett, David Hood, and Roger Hawkins, studio musicians who produced and played on hundreds of hits recorded at area studios from the late 1960s until the mid-1980s.

Muscle Shoals and Its Contribution to this Golden Era
Muscle Shoals bestowed much more than its name on the world-famous “Muscle Shoals sound.”

The city served as the birthplace for early breakthroughs in the local music industry and later provided a home base for some of the area’s top studios. The first commercial recording to emerge from Muscle Shoals — the Bobby Denton single, A Fallen Star — was produced by James Joiner in the Second Street studios of WLAY Radio in 1957. Four years later in an old candy-and-tobacco warehouse on Wilson Dam Road, aspiring producer Rick Hall joined forces with bellhop-turned-singer Arthur Alexander to cut Muscle Shoals’ first national hit, the Southern Soul anthem, You Better Move On. In the wake of that success, Hall built FAME Recording Studios on Avalon Avenue in 1962. Artists ranging from Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, and Etta James to Duane Allman, the Osmonds, and Bobby Gentry later recorded there. From 1970 to 1985, Muscle Shoals became known as “The Hit Recording Capital of the World” as FAME and Al Cartee’s Music Mill, Steve Moore’s East Avalon, and Terry Woodford and Clayton Ivey’s Wishbone Studios generated hits by Clarence Carter, Hank Williams Jr., the group Hot, George Jones, the Forester Sisters, Mac McAnally, Shenandoah, and many others. In 2011 Hall received the American Music Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2014 he was awarded the Grammy Trustees Award for his significant contribution to the recording industry.

The City of Muscle Shoals, Alabama
David Bradford, Mayor
Audwin Pierre McGee, Sculptor
Historical commentary by Terry Pace, Dick Cooper, David Anderson, and Bill Matthews.

Rick Hall and Duane Allman

FAME Studio at 601 E. Avalon Avenue (Photo furnished by FAME)

James Joiner and Bobby Denton at WLAY Radio 

Muscle Shoals City sign proclaiming it the Hit Recording Capital of the World (Photo furnished by FAME)

Wishbone Studios (Photo furnished by Terry Woodford)

East Avalon Studios (Photo furnished by Dick Cooper)

FAME Studio at old Candy and Tobacco Warehouse (Photo furnished by FAME)

🍀🍀🍀We were lucky growing up!!!

We were very lucky growing up when it came to visiting grandparents because both our grandparent's maternal & paternal lived within blocks of each other. 

Neither were rich in material things but both were loaded in love. 

Our maternal grandmother was a great cook and one of my favorite sweets was her Sweet Potato Kisses.

Years later, when I had a home of my own, I ask her for the Sweet Potato receipt.

You take a small potato boil it with the jacket on and cook until done.

Peel the potato mash it up and roll it out. 

Add powder sugar and peanut butter to the center. 

Take all ingredients and roll them into a ball and slice them into pieces.

Our maternal grandmother was also handy with a needle and thread.

Money was always tight at my maternal grandparents so, she made do with what she had.

She made everything she gave us for Christmas and birthdays. I remember one Christmas she made us sock monkeys and rag dolls.  

My memories of the tree she decorated at Christmas still bring a smile to my face. 

Her Christmas tree would light up any room with her bubbling lights, angel hair, icicles, stringed popcorn, and tiny trinkets.

Our maternal grandfather loved to smoke Prince Albert Tobacco.

We would watch as he took out those white papers and pour Prince Albert Tobacco inside and then he would roll them tightly, licking to seal the tobacco inside.

We would gladly walk to the store to buy him a can of  Prince Albert Tobacco because he always gave us a nickel for candy. 

On a hot day, we might use that nickel to buy a coke, a popsicle, or even a candy bar. 

Our maternal grandparent's yard was covered with white clover, weeds, and buttercups(in the spring).

We very seldom wore shoes when we were out of school. 

I remember one summer stomping around in the grass and having a good time when I stomped right onto a bee. 

I started to cry holding my foot when my grandfather came outside to see what was wrong.

He went back inside grabbed his tobacco, and a glass of water, and came back outside.

He placed me in his lap and began to make a cake with his Prince Albert tobacco which he placed on my foot. 

One of our maternal grandfather's pet peeves was the grandkids climbing up in his trees. 

He kept the limbs trimmed so, we could not reach them. 

Our maternal grandfather loves to tell scary stories about Bloody Bones. 

He would have you set on the edge of your seat, and all of a sudden he would say, "GOT YOU"!!

Our maternal grandfather grew a variety of fruit trees which we enjoyed eating. 

He would say, if you swallow any seeds, you would grow into a tree. 

We spit out every seed. 

Our maternal grandparents never had any indoor plumbing. There was an outhouse and the water came from an outside faucet. 
They never owned an automobile so they never learned to drive. 

My Maternal Grandmother rode to church with Mr. Ulman and I attended church with her many times. 

At Church, we sang old hymns while someone played the piano and someone else played an accord.

In our Sunday School Class we learned about Daniel being put in the Lion's Den for praying, Noah’s Ark, Jonah, the whale, and Jonah's disobedience to God. 

One Sunday night after services as we were riding home, the passenger door flew open, and out onto the pavement flew my cousin. 

We both had fallen asleep on the ride home and were leaning on the door. 

Our Aunt Willie lived on Penny Lane in Huntsville. 

She worked at Red Stone Arsenal.

Our dad would take the entire family to spend the day at Willies. 

Our maternal great-grandparents lived in Town Creek. 

Our maternal grandparents would take the train from Sheffield to Town Creek to visit her family.

Our dad took them several times.

Our great grandparents lived in an Old Military Dining Car.

On one end of the trailer was a large round table, encircled with bench seating. Many soldiers had dined at this table. 

A sofa, fold-out bed, a chair, and a coal heater stood in the middle of the trailer. 

Food was cooked in the kitchen area which was located at the opposite end of the trailer. 
They got their water from a well and they use an outhouse.

Since their home was so small we were sent outside to play, sometime grand-paw would come outside to play with us.

He said I can show you how to catch a worm that he called a Chicken Choker. 

He said, get a straw, poke the straw into a small hole, and wiggle the straw into a worm the worm will catch hold and you can pull him out of the ground.

It Worked!!!

I looked up the meaning of Chicken Choker. 

It is a long yellowish color worm with humps on it back 6 legs a hard head, brown with two-inch pinchers that would catch hold of the straw.

Chicken Chokers are larvae of tiger beetles that ambush predators of other insects, lying in wait in their burrows with their heads flush with the surface of the soil.  

It is said that chickens do more harm to the larvae(Chicken Chokers) than the grubs.

2012 Monday, October 8, Traveling North on Natchez Trace to Nashville, Tennessee

2012 Monday, October 8, Traveling North on Natchez Trace to Nashville, Tennessee

Monday, October 8, 2012

We left the house about 10:30 A.M. it had rained the night before, so everything was still damp and gloomy. 

We traveled north on highway 43 through Lawrenceburg, stopping at CVS for restroom break; diet drinks and twenty dollars in folding money.

Driving on the Natchez Trace

We took highway 64 west to the Natchez Trace Parkway where we travel all the way to Nashville.  

We stopped at Meriwether Lewis National Park to use the restroom.

We did not stop again until after we passed the detour, where they were repairing the overpass bridge.

The fall leaves were just beginning to turn, around every corner was a new color.

We stopped to see the waterfall at Fall Hollow. 

There was still a chill in the air and my new pink vest felt great. 

It was a short, and slippery walk across two bridges to the overlook. 

It turned out to be a gorgeous day with lots of puffy clouds in the sky. (Cumulus clouds.)

We stopped in Hampshire Tennessee along the trace to visit a barn full of drying tobacco.

Drying tobacco

Drying tobacco

Inside the Tobacco Barn

Tobacco Barn 

Marker described the Tobacco process.

On this model farm, Burley tobacco is grown and air-cured. It is a hard crop to rise; acre requires about 250 hours of labor. (Wheat is only three hours!) William Coleman has been growing tobacco her for over 40 years. 

Listen as he describes how it is done.

Marker described the Tobacco process

Tobacco Farm - Old Trace Marker 

This barn was built for Mr. Leland Greenfield in 1959 from timber grown on this farm. Mr. Greenfield first grew tobacco here in 1932. 

The Greenfield family had owned the land for over 100 years before the state of Tennessee purchased and deeded it to the Natchez Trace Parkway in 1977.

Tobacco Farm 

Inside the barn was a marker about The Tennessee Tobacco Barn, which said:

Burleys Tobacco must be air-cured for four to six weeks in the barn before it is ready for the marker. Listen. Burley is a light brown, aromatic tobacco used chiefly in cigarettes. A small percentage is used for pipe and chewing tobacco. Fall is the tobacco-curing season. However, a little tobacco is left in this barn all year for you to see.

Just a few miles away there was a marker telling about the family farm? 

Working in Harmony with the Environment

As we looked past, the marker to the land below we could a farmer harvesting hay for the winter. 

Working in Harmony with the Environment

Around every curve was a new site of orange, yellow, red, and green leaves.

We stopped at Natchez Trace’s Scenic Trail Highland Rim Section and as we looked below we could see fields of trees with multicolor leaves, farmhouses, a pond, barns and many other pictorial sites.

Traveling on the Natchez Trace 

In Williamsport was stopped to visit the Home of the Gordon Family. 

The house is still standing:

Home of the Gordon Family

The marker read:

One of the few remaining buildings associated with the Old Natchez Trace is the house of ferry operator John Gordon. Built in 1817-18, the Gordon House was one of the first brick homes in this area. In the early 1800s, Gordon settled here as ferry operator, trader, farmer, and Indian fighter. Because military expeditions kept him away from home, his wife Dorothea supervised the building of the house. Gordon died shortly after it was completed, but Mrs. Gordon lived here until her death 1859. In 1978, the National Park Service restored the house to its original appearance. A ten-minute walk beginning here leads to a section of the original Natchez Trace and the Duck River ferry site. The 450-mile (725 km) Natchez Trace Parkway roughly follows the route of the old frontier road.

Old Natchez Trace is the house of ferry operator John Gordon

There were also plaques telling about other sites along the Natchez Trace and a restroom.

Tennessee Valley Divide

marker honoring the soldiers of the War of 1812 

Our next stop was at the Tennessee Valley Divide it was near James TN. 

The marker read:

The high ground you are on is part of a long ridge that divides central Tennessee. Streams south of the divide flow to the Duck and Tennessee Rivers, while streams to the North empty into the Cumberland River. Travelers in the early days of the Natchez Trace were more conscious of the divide. Moving on foot or on horseback, they noticed changes in elevation and stream direction. Going north toward Nashville, Tennessee, the Valley Divide marked the edge of the frontier — the end of Chickasaw Indian Country.

Just a few feet away there was a marker honoring the soldiers of the War of 1812 that were buried along the Old Natchez Trace.

Nashville Tn

Eating at Joe's Crab Shack 

Eating at Joe's Crab Shack

 Joe's Crab Shack

Joe Knows Nashville Music City the USA

We finally arrived at Joe’s Crab Shack where we enjoyed a bucket of Dungeness Crabs.

(The Bucket of Dungeness Crabs was 1 1/4 lbs) 

The crabs are mild, tender, and easy to eat. 

All crab is served with new potatoes and a fresh ear of corn.

Today is Hubby's birthday and Joe’s Crab Shack had sent Hubby a birthday gift for an appetizer.

We ordered Crab Stuffed Mushrooms as the appetizer.

We snapped a few pictures inside and outside Joe’s Crab Shack.

Tennessee Titans Football Stadium

Hard Rock Cafe 

After leaving Joe’s we rode to Opry Mills to see if any of the stores had opened since the flood.

Opry Mills had been closed because the Cumberland River had flooded all the stores and the mall was shut down.

The mall had reopened we walked inside.

At the Ghost Armor booth, I had purple Ghost armor wrapped around my iPhone.

We walked over to the Opryland Gaylord Hotel and strolled through the gardens.  

Opry Mills 

Opryland Hotel 

Rainforest Cafe 

Rainforest Cafe 

For supper, we stopped at Taco Bell in Springhill Tennessee

We arrived home about 10:00 P.M.

We had a wonderful day!