Photos from  Natchez

Mammy's since the turn of the previous century.

Mammy's

Mammy's

Mammy's Menu plus Al

 A beautiful vase.

 Second Floor of Longwood House

 Back yard in Natchez

Back yard in Natchez

 Third floor of Longwood House

Second Floor briefing

 Second Floor veranda through insect screening

 Mason's archway form still in place.

 Looking straight up through all levels of the rotunda.

 Third floor disrepair.

Margaret on the Veranda with the wood carved columns.

Big live oak off the veranda.

 Hand carved filigree on columns

 Pieces of cedar cut to the same size of the bricks is laid with bricks but is used to screw the hinges for the very tall doors.

Structural support for window arches.

Beautiful bench among Spanish Moss on the oaks.

 More flora.

 obstructed stairs to third floor of rotunda.

 The grounds of Longwood House.

Al, Doug and Margaret waiting for me to finish my picture taking.

 Natchez cemetery is well stocked with Confederate dead.

 Confederate Cross of Honor.

 Confederate Cross of Honor.

 Elaborate tomb of Confederate dead.

 The big muddy from the bluff.

 Note shear cliff to left of fence.

Barge traffic upstream.

Al and Doug's favorite source for home decor.

Roman Catholic Basilica of Natchez.

 Roman Catholic Basilica of Natchez.

Ramos Gin Fiz recipe.

Stars in Heaven

There are, on this planet, those to whom a creator has endowed with special gifts.

You may be thinking of gifts like super intellect, the skills of critical thinking, the ability to create the beauty of sight and sound through the arts of music, painting, sculpturing and the like.

But there are many other gifts that one can receive at birth.  Gifts, that a person may enhance or waste depending on the infrastructure of their character.

Until this morning, while brushing my teeth, it had never occurred to me that the gift of giving, self sacrifice and concern for others was a blessing as valuable to mankind as the ceiling in a chapel, the invention of a drug that cures polio or the philanthropy of a Bill Gates.

I am blessed to know such a gifted person.  Her name is Margaret Clarkson Fitch; she is my beloved sister in law.  For over a decade, Margaret has been the source of income and the singular caregiver to my brother, Babcock, after he suffered a major stroke that left him paralyzed on his right side.   Unable to create sentences, yet capable of understanding conversations around him, Babcock has most of those daily task you and I take for granted, accomplished for him by Margaret.

If we pause and think of every thing we do each day just to get dressed and perform our daily ablutions, it is a major effort.  Now picture doing all that for yourself and for grown man who has the ability to physically do for himself about the same as a child in kindergarten.  However, Babcock is not a child.  He is a man with intellect, memories, ideas, loves, hates and all the good and bad that he was before he was trapped in a body where frustration with his condition must be crushing.  Yet, he does not allow that frustration to dominate his life.

Although tragic for Babcock, his physical and mental limitations are also his needs that Margaret must see to every hour of every day for the rest of Babcock’s or her days.

There is no respite.  No holiday from the routine of seeing to the needs of Babcock and herself.  I have no idea what it must be like to see this as your destiny and face it cheerfully as Margaret does.  Nor can I see, in myself, the strength to perform these tasks for posterity.  For me, my weakness is a function of my inability to gracefully give up my time and dreams for a singularly more important reason to be on this earth.

Not so for Margaret Clarkson Fitch.

How I admire and envy this giant of a woman.  Her seemingly endless supply of goodwill, effervescent good humor, positive attitude for the future and boundless love and affection for her husband, children and grand children defy suitable description.   Yet, these traits shine through as we talk and share the contents of our days.

Margaret is like us in many ways.  Her responsibilities weigh on her with a heavy load and challenge her ability to keep up with this physical and emotional roller coaster.  She has found, however, some solace in her faith and in a group of women who, unlike her family, can engage her inner feelings without the complications of bloodlines and marriage.  Margaret calls her friends a support group and perhaps this is what they are, but I view her support group as a surrogate sister providing emotional sustenance and protection for one of their own.

Last night, I was provided the singular opportunity to join Margaret and Babcock in a Monday night ritual that they share with three “sisters”.  Each has an appreciation for beer, shrimp and a Greek salad.  These women, whose ages range from seventy one to ninety, are swift of thought, imbued with the pride of their separate histories and possessive of a “Don’t tread on me” attitude that simply stands out as a beacon of their individual and combined strengths of character.  This beacon shines as a star in the heavens.  A star, whose light, illuminates and warms the heart, of their friend, Margaret.  This, I now see, is the stuff of real love for a fellow traveler on our planet.

For good or bad, I am not one who dwells on the hereafter.  Yet, I am completely at home with those who do and I connect the power of their beliefs to an uncluttered and familiar faith.  A faith, that has the power to provide spiritual sustenance in the face of worldly travails.  There is no blasphemy when I say that Margaret Clarkson Fitch has, without promise of reward, built a legacy of good deeds, “Stars”, if you will, that will serve her well in her place of eternal peace.  Few hold the selfless and committed dedication to a fellow human.

I can only wish her well with the hope that she and Babcock continue to keep us in good company for many years to come.  I offer a once treasured line of prose from the English translation of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as representative of the beauty that can come from faith well placed.  “Almighty God, to whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Taken at Frank Taylor’s house in N. Virginia 1968

2012 Sebring Trip

 Not much to say about Sebring other than we had a great ride down and back and enjoyed terrific weather on both ends and during the two days we were at the race track.  Blind luck allowed me to graciously take $10 from Jim Bloomquist because I picked the overall winner ( a no brainer since the Audi’s beat up all comers on the field) and I also picked the Beemer that won the GT.  This race was exciting for me because something has changed with the Corvettes.  They seem to be taking the turns a lot faster than I recall on my previous three visits.  They had the power from the Detroit V-8s to drive down the straights and they held the lead for most of the race in the GT Class, but gave it up in the last hour.  Well, perhaps next year.

Just a bunch of pictures of cars and pieces of cars.

So that you do not miss it, there is also the most sexy picture of three of the most well built females you will ever see. All packaged in skin tight metallic maroon jump suits.

Wow!

There is a very short film clip from our trip and you can find it on YouTube at  http://youtu.be/nzTTd4wiPMM

Big Waters

Big Waters
By Gus Fitch

It’s four in the morning two days before Christmas.  The sound of the surf at low tide is making its way into the great room through the slightly open sliding glass door here in Topsail Beach, NC.  The repetitive sounds of the surf pounding the sand is a narcotic and suppresses almost all my efforts to concentrate. 
Our rented house is right next door to a solitary pier that stretches its aging timbers into the black Atlantic Ocean.  The empty pier, lighted for fishermen who embrace this kind of solitude, looks unbelievably lonely and foreboding.

Were it not for the roiling surf making its signature sound combined with the reflections of the pier’s lights off of the water, you might as well be looking into the heart of a Black Hole.  The ocean and the sky, absent all forms of visible light, merge into a oneness that disorients and depresses.  Perhaps human vertigo feeds on the anachronism of unknown shapes.

I know when the sun begins it repetitious rise from below the now invisible horizon, I will be perplexed again with my failure to be able to draw a word picture of the countless images of light reflecting from the ocean’s irregular and ever changing surface.  This irregular surface, brought about by the winds that buffet its once passive face, are the children of Poseidon and are universal to the entire planet. 

The thought of a universal anything pokes me to continue. 

If I stare at these mysterious waters just below the horizon, then allow my eyes to relax so that my field of view becomes unfocused, the scene morphs into a completely different vision, but one that still defies my descriptive skills.

The shadows move. 

These moving water prisms are reflections of gray and black shadows garnered from the sky and surrounding ocean.  Momentary shadows, whose half-life is less than the lazy blink of an eye, seem so inconsequential, yet, are essential to the whole.  The shadows make their one and only descent into the void and are immediately replaced by siblings born to repeat a single line in a never-ending play with an infinite number of acts.

There is a narration from the last scene in the movie, “A River Runs Through It”, from the Noman Maclean book of the same name.  Robert Redford speaks the narration. This scene is at once a look into the skills of a talented writer as well as a vivid word picture of my thoughts and feelings on big waters.  I can only envy the author and wish the words in italics were mine.

"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. 


I am haunted by waters."

Once Upon a Midnight Dreary

Once Upon a Midnight Dreary…

My thanks to Edgar Allen Poe

It comes to me as clear as a Tiffany’s diamond. The scene was my very good friend Dick Ward and I on the highway between Banff and Jasper Alberta, Canada. The sky was a see through blue with a few friendly puffy clouds. All in all, good omens for motorcycle riding.

It was not to be. We had been on the road for less than an hour when it began to rain and the temperature dropped to a low of 39. We rode in these conditions for more than six hours. It was, quite candidly, not a fun ride.
In motorcycling, just when you think you have experienced it all, you rediscover the obvious that the cosmos has an infinite number of scenarios for you as long as you are out there pressing the options.
In general, I have little fear, much respect, however, for riding a motorcycle in the rain. It can be done in reasonable safety as long as you abide by the tenets of good common sense.

During my trip from Aiken, SC to Pittsford, NY, I stopped for the night at an unscheduled place called Sutton, West Virginia. I stayed in a five room motel called the Wolf Valley Motel. I discovered after I departed the next morning that there was a Day’s Inn one mile down the road.
The motel owners and mangers lived in the same set of rooms that doubled as the motel office. They were pleasant. The price was right and I got to stay in room number 1. The room was located at the bottom of a minor incline that was unpaved and wet from three days of rain. I was pretty sure there would be no place that would accept a kick stand. I asked for and received permission to park the bike on the concrete breezeway just in front of my room door.

Let me admit from the outset that I am very comfortable with staying in motels that lack the amenities of other economical motels. Nonetheless, I was struck by this Spartan Army’s idea of sleeping cheap. In fact, I am sure that every stick of furniture in the room I had seen earlier in some unnamed BOQ during my career.

I unpacked and proceeded, via motel contributed directions, to an “Italian” restaurant. Worst meal I have ever paid for. Choked down as much as was doable, paid and went out side to return to the motel. It had started raining and it looked serious.

I was showered and in the rack by 8PM. I had an early get up!

2:30AM rolls around and I have had enough sleep. I am shaved, packed and inspected the room by 3AM. It is raining the zoo much less cats and dogs. I take pride in my riding gear for occasions just like this one. I will be warm and dry. I mount, put the steed in reverse and back out of the breezeway into total darkness. Several star filled galaxies could have passed me and I would not have been surprised. I mean black! I am now pointed up hill to exit the hotel as I gently ease out the clutch. Nothing happens. I have ear plugs in, so I look at my instruments to make sure the bike is still running. I make sure I am in first gear and try again. Still nothing. Well not quite nothing. I start to feel the back end of the bike moving from side to side. My rear wheel is spinning in the wet grass and mud and the bike is not making the slightest motion forward. I back up several feet and try again. Nothing! I repeat these steps a half a dozen times with the same results. Meets the definition of insanity. I know, I know. I pause and reflect. I am screwed. I can only go rearward into the black that I know contains demons and Murphies that go bump in the night. I can not go and get help because of the early hour and because I can not put the weight of the bike on the kick stand because it will most certainly fall on its side. I get another idea from my beginning days as a teenage driver provided by my dad. I shift up into third gear and dry again. Because there is less torque on the rear wheel now, the tire starts to bite and we begin a slow and fish tailing trek toward the paved road. Just as we arrive at the gravel entrance to the motel and I am letting out sigh of relief and I roll into a pot hole the size of a trash can and almost lose the bike in the hole. Since there was standing water everywhere, the hole was not visible to my headlight illumination.

I find a place with no standing water, put down the kick stand, shut down the bike and just sit in the quiet dark of the morning and feel and listen to the rain doing it’s asynchronous tap dance on my helmet and shoulders. It’s actual quite calming which is what I needed.

I would like to sound glib and say “Balls O’ Fire”, “Times A’ Wasting” or we are “Burning Daylight”. Regrettable, neither of these is true, but I want to get rolling.

It is so dark that I almost miss the turn to enter I-79 north from Sutton. It gets worse when I am actually on the Freeway because there are no town lights to illuminate the cloud layer from below. It’s raining hard but not like a thunderstorm. There is standing water in the depressions of the asphalt made by the weight of 18 wheelers. These depressions are almost invisible in dry and daylight conditions. So, I am trying to ride the ridges and see around me and I am doing 45mph max on a road that has a 70mph speed limit. So…every time a vehicle is approaching from the rear, I turn on my flashing caution lights so they will not run up my backside. I would like to keep the flashers on, but the added glare and distraction forces me to shut them down when there is no one behind me. This precaution seems to work pretty well. For me, personally, its instructive to consider all of the things that reduce visibility on an early morning like this. The obvious, its dark and the falling rain all reduce visibility. This would be true if you were in a house looking out of an open window. To this add water on both sides of windshield, the inside of the windshield fogged up if the temperature is right, water on the outside of the face shield, fog on the inside of face shield if you are breathing hard and finally fog on my glasses coming from my breath sneaking up the bandanna that have over my nose and mouth for warmth. Additionally, the is the glare from every light on the instrument panel, oncoming traffic, passing traffic and strangely a glare from the reflective signs along the side of the road that are vivid bright with the bounce of my headlights off of their surfaces. All of this can be set into a routine, but that routine is kicked in the butt when you are passed by an 18 wheeler and get hit with the water and mist generated by all of his 18 wheels plus the hard turbulence that his truck generates as it passes through the same block of air I am currently using. The kicker on this night is wind gusting to 35 knots from left to right.

After being on the road for over an hour, I have settled in to the routine and begin to get blood flow back into the white knuckles, restoring them to their natural rosey pink. While I am thinking such thoughts, oncoming traffic with the halogen glare illuminate a single drop on water on my Plexiglas. This drop moving up the windscreen joins another and then another and now it glows with its own internal rainbow. As the traffic passes, all is lost to the darkness of the Pennsylvania country side. More oncoming traffic and the original bender of light has stuttered its way to the lip of the Plexiglas where it hesitates before the laws of physics breaks its meniscus tension and launches it into the wet that is its ultimate home. A thing of beauty, but all of its siblings make for lost visibility caused by the light bending properties that unfocus and distort the view I need to guide the bike precisely. To make it all worse, if I change my view by just shifting my eyes and not my entire head, I will get a double or sometimes triple view as one eye looks through one lense of the trifocal and the other eye looks through another lense of my trifocal glasses. Many a time on this morning, I cut my eyes to look at a rear view mirror and see two trucks coming up behind me. It’s only when I turn my head that I see a true picture of what’s happening behind me.

Needless to say, all of this is very demanding and I take at least one extra break during each half of the day to rest from the demands of the road. I think I can honestly say this was not a fun ride.

I meet an entire group of really nice people in a King’s restaurant just outside of Pittsburg, PA on I-79. They include a waitress that has an army of customers that she addresses by their first names and ask if they want the usual for breakfast. Without exception they say they will have the usual and the waitress gets into an altercation with the cook because he will not put a toast order through the toaster twice so that her customer get his toast like he wants it. Burnt! All these people are grist for my mill and I start the conversation off by asking, to no one in particular, “Where can I buy some dry ice”?

At first, there is the customary silence followed by everyone talking at once trying to help me find dry ice. What a hoot! People are just terrific. I don’t find a place to buy dry ice, but waitress puts about five pounds in a double plastic bag and then the bag of ice goes into a box she has behind the counter.

I leave a tip for the waitress and smartly walk out of the restaurant without paying my bill. I did not remember that until just now while writing this. I will start a search now to get payment to these very nice folks.