Island Trucking

 Here on the island there are many things for which we must take individual responsibility.  One of those things is hauling our own trash and recycling to the dump along with whatever limbs we trim and miscellaneous other things that need to be discarded.  Then, from the dump, all of our trash is hauled off the island.  (That is why, when we sweep up sand, we put it on the ground rather than in the trash.  Otherwise we will gradually haul the island away!)

In order to accomplish these tasks, we must have a vehicle for hauling rough and dirty things.  To save our cars, we have a Japanese Suzuki mini-truck named TRUKBABY.

TRUKBABY is a 1991 Suzuki Carry, but, even at 31 years old, it only has 27,000 miles in it.  We fill the gas tank about two times each year.  Yes, the steering wheel is in the right and the five-speed gearshift is in the left. It is about ten feet long and four wheel drive.

Our regular route each afternoon is to go to the dump, then to the Post Office, then to the Variety Store, and then home. That entire trip is less than a mile. The blue container in the back is what we carry groceries in so they stay clean.  In a year we will drive TRUKBABY about 700 miles including all our riding around.

It is part of our island lives.

At the Farmer’s Market

 On our way home we always try to work in enough time to stop at the big NC State Farmer’s Market in Raleigh.  On this trip we made the stop and loaded the car since we will be home for a few weeks and can enjoy fresh produce for a while.

We happened to be driving two cars in this trip and so we had plenty of room to carry things.  We got blueberries, peaches, tomatoes, corn, cantaloupes okra, and flowers.

The tomatoes are in their glory right now and we got many varieties for our favorite caprese salads at home. Our prize purchases, however, were cantaloupes that weighed almost ten pounds each.  They were two for ten dollars.

If you are ever near Raleigh, check out the Farmer’s Market off Lake Wheeler Drive from I-40.  They also have a great restaurant, especially for breakfast.

LaGrange, Georgia

 Last week Trish and I were in LaGrange where I conducted the seventh week-long storytelling workshop to be held there in the historic Hills and Dales (Callaway) Estate.

On Saturday we had a field trip to the southwest side of town to visit the Mulberry Street Cemeteries.

The original part of the cemeteries is the Stonewall Jackson Confederate Cemetery, shown with markers behind the iron fence.  In 1863 LaGrange was chosen as a cemetery town by the Confederate military.  For two years those veterans who died in the local military hospitals were buried here.

Just beyond the west end of the fence, enslaved orderlies who worked in these hospitals were also buried. As time passed the large grassy lawn continued to be used as an African-American cemetery into the 1930’s.  Ground radar studies have located more than five hundred graves in this area, most of them not marked.

In this cemetery are buried Horace King and his son, Marshal Ney.  King was a skilled and well-known wooden bridge builder whose bridges were all over west Georgia and Alabama.  One of his surviving bridges is being restored to this site, adjacent to the Horace King Memorial markers, and will be incorporated into the Thread, LaGrange’s thirty-mile-long greenway in development.

After our visit to the cemeteries, we walked up town to visit the Troup County Archives Museum’s historic Georgia auto exhibit.

Hurricane Dorian’s Last Stand!

 It has been nearly three years since Hurricane Dorian devistated the island and flooded our house.  Everything looks back to normal here but there are still invisible lingering results.  We had just put on new storm doors before the storm, and they seemed not to be damaged. But, two years later they began to swell and finally the internal salt water damage came to light.  This past month another invisible result made its way to the surface.

We were just finishing our second Storytelling Week with a cookout at our house on Saturday night.  People were departing when, all of a sudden, the front porch of the house collapsed!  Standing on the porch I at first thought I was fainting and then that there was an earthquake as the floor dropped beneath my feet.  Luckily no one was hurt.

When our construction worker, Armando, got things torn apart, he discovered that salty flood water had invisibly forced its way into the structure and remained trapped there softening and rotting the wood and rusting away at the nails.

Everything had to be torn out and replaced.  Once Armando and Woody finished the repair, they had done it so well that it will never do this again.  The porch may now be the strongest part of the house!

This showed us once again how very insidious hurricane damage is.  It goes beyond the surface and lasts long after things look repaired.  We hope that we do not have do deal with such a storm again.

All fixed!  Ready for me to paint.