The Henry Ford Museum

 From Dayton, Trish and I drove up to Lake Orion, Michigan, where we spent four nights with her ninety-five year old mother.  We got to see other family members while we were there. 

Leaving Lake Orion, we drove down to Dearborn, Michigan, where we spent most of the day at the amazing Henry Ford Museum there.

The museum, which opened in Ford’s lifetime, is a remarkable collection of Americana, not just automobiles, though they are there in plenty.

We first visited the Buckminster Fuller model house.  Designed to meet the post WW II housing crunch, the aluminum and glass house was to be factory manufactured and installed for what today would be just over $100,000.  It would not, however, have been on the market until 1952, and the need was for housing in 1946.  This is the only existing model.

Among the fun things was the original 1952 Oscar Meyer wienermobile!

Among the more important things was the actual bus on which Rosa Parka refused to give up her seat.  We got to sit on the bus and hear the recording of Parks herself telling about that day. (Near the bus is also displayed the chair in which Lincoln was shot.)

Among the most interesting cars in the museum collection are four presidential limousines.  These include the car in which John Kennedy was shot, which was later totally rebuilt and returned to White House service as a totally enclosed bulletproof vehicle.  It served until the Nixon era.

My favorite was the Lincoln used by both Truman and Eisenhower known as the “Bubbletop.”

You could spend days in this place and still never see everything from trains to airplanes to machinery to furniture.  A very worthy way to spend a day!

America’s Packard Museum

 Before leaving Dayton, Trish and I spent a couple of hours at America’s Packard Museum, located right downtown in a beautiful old art deco Packard dealership building.  Even without any cars, the building is fascinating.  Everything there is intact from the showroom to the service department.

The museum claims to have the largest collection of Packards in one place of any museum anywhere and they certainly have enough to fill your eyes and imagination for a day.

The showroom, with its original tile floor, is set up to display cars just as they would have in the 1930’s when it was new.  Here, a beautiful 1934 touring convertible is on display.  It looks brand new.

As you proceed through the museum, you move forward through time.  From the great vehicles of the 1930’s, we go to the more practical but luxurious examples of the ‘40s.

In a second whole connected building we arrive at the beautiful 1950’s vehicles. These are long, low, and colorful.  This particular red convertible was Perry Como’s personal daily driver.

Finally we see the end of the line for Packard. The company just did not have the resources to compete with Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler after WW II.  As sales slumped they merged with Studebaker, which had similar financial weaknesses, and the last Packards were actually rebranded Studebakers.  This 1957 is, but for the slightly modified grille, a Studebaker Golden Hawk. It is a real contrast from the yellow 1933 twin-cowl convertible that sits beside it.  These two cars represent the highest and lowest moments in the life of this great car maker.

We had a great visit! 

Air Force Museum

 After we finished in Jonesborough, Trish and I drove up to Dayton, Ohio, to visit her son, Greg, and his family for a few days.

Greg and his wife, Annette, are both career Air Force (he retired three years ago, she is still active), and they were stationed at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton.  She has now been transferred on to Texas, but Greg and the kids and staying in Dayton for now for school.

One of those days, Trish and I went to visit the US Air Force Museum, located on the air base there.

Located in these four huge hanger type buildings, the museum has more than twenty acres of indoor space.

We started at the Presidential Plane Gallery where we saw the planes used as Air Force One by Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and the 707 that was in service from Kennedy to Clinton.

The museum is in chronological galleries from the beginnings of flight to the present.  We walked several hours through all of them.

Being from North Carolina it was interesting to see Ohio try to take all the credit for the Wright Brothers who actually did much of their research plus their first flight and many follow-ups in North Carolina!  We claim them too!

Of the military planes, I loved the WW II gallery the most.  These were the planes I first remember seeing and learning about when I was growing up.  This B-29 was an impressive example.

The Memphis Belle has quite a record in the Pacific.

This museum is 100 years old this year and it keeps interpreting history and looking to the future.

Jackson Theatre

 Every year for forty-four years I have been in Jonesborough, Tennessee, each October for the National Storytelling Festival.  Trish and I even made the trips to town during the two years when COVID shut down the live festival so we could support businesses and be where we always belong in October. For well over twenty years I return to Jonesborough in the springtime for a performance at the Visitors Center.

Through all those years, one building on Main Street has stood out as it was empty and unchanged through all those years though curiously present.  It was the old and closed Jackson Theatre.

Opened originally in 1922 as the Lyric Theatre, the theatre played to full houses not only with movies but with a myriad of live shows through the 1920’s.  Then the Depression came and the theatre was one of its economic victims.

After several closed years, when WW II ended, people once again had money nd a need for entertainment. In 1945, the building was remodeled and reopened now as the Jackson Theatre, named for Andrew Jackson who, more than a century earlier, had practiced law just across the street.

But…once again, after several decades, the old theatre closed.  It has been standing for several more decades…just waiting!

Now, rebirth is on the near horizon!  After a multi-year and mult-million dollar restoration, the Jackson is about to open its doors again to new life!

Though the official reopening is to be in November, the Jackson may have some use during the October Storytelling Festival.  It is a perfect size, seating about three hundred, just between the large tents and the small Storytelling Center theatre.

So…what’s happening now?  Two documentary films, one short and one longer, are being produced telling about the history interlaced with stories of theatre memories through the years.  It is my honor and privilege to be asked to narrate those videos.

Here Ren Allen takes off the shine so we can begin filming.

A lot of the work is voice-over, but sometimes I do actually show up on camera.  

When they are all edited and put together the films can be used for both publicity and interpretation. One will likely be shown at the beginning of each new theatre event.

I am honored to be the first person seen on stage at the new 102-year-old Jackson Theatre, Main Street, Jonesborough, Tennessee!

Cataloochee Homecoming

 This year the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is ninety years old.  A good sized part of the Park is the Cataloochee valley located on the North Carolina side of the park.  Prior to the establishment of the park as many as two thousand people lived there having arrived as homesteaders in the 1830’s. They were all bought out and removed leading up to the establishment of the Park in 1934.

On the second Sunday of each July a great homecoming day is held at Palmer Chapel Methodist Church, no longer active, but an important landmark in the valley.  Trish and I go each year as my Uncle Gudger and Aunt Mary met when she went to teach school there in 1930.  He was from a very old mainline Cataloochee family.  Aunt Mary died in 1985 and Uncle Gudger lived to be 103 and left us in 2011. We go in their memory.

The crowd begins to arrive on Sunday morning, setting up picnic tables on the grounds.  Then at 11:00 am the bell rings and the church service starts. Each year there is a different guest preacher.  This year the preacher was Rev. Keith Turman, the senior pastor at First United Methodist Church in Waynesville, my home church.  It has been my privilege to deliver the sermon on three different years.

When the bell rings, the church fills to overflowing with people outside listening at the windows.  This year Harley Caldwell was the only attendee left who was actually born in the valley.  Those who have died in the past year are always read out and remembered.

Then it is time to head outside to eat and visit for a good long time.

When eating winds down, many people head out to visit their relatives graves. Some even get jugs of water from their family’s old spring to take home with them.  Then it is goodbye until next August.

WAYNESVILLE

 Since we got off the island ahead of Hurricane Debby and were on our way to WAYNESVILLE anyway, we ended up there for a few extra days.

We love to stay at the old Oak Park Motor Inn at the head of Main Street.  Right from our motel we look down Main Street and can easily walk for food and shopping.

We rode around a lot while we were there.  One ride took us up Plott Creek Road to see the house where we lived from the time my parents got married until I was thirteen years old.  Whoever lives there now has done a lot of restoration work on the old house and it looks very nice.  There were toys on the porch indicating family life there.  No one at home, though.

Another day we rode out to Crabtree to visit the Parker’s Chapel Methodist Cemetery.  The little church of my grandparents and great grandparents (on my mother’s side) is no longer there, but the cemetery runs down the hill below where it once stood.

Buried there and many relatives.  In one extended plot lie both sets of  my mother’s grandparents, Williams and Walker, and along with them my own maternal grandparents.  It was nice to see the cemetery being taken care of so well after so many years.

Trish and I realized that these few extra days were a gift we did not plan or anticipate.  They were a connection to love and memory.

Time to go!

 We have just had our longest time of the year at home on the island.                         

It has been a lovely summer with lots of fun and beauty.

We have had several fires on the beach, one of which came with a full moon.

The flowers in the yard have hit their peak and it has been great fun sharing them around.

We have gone down in our little convertible to watch the sunset and to watch the tourists watching the sunset.  We look at the tags on their cars and note how far they have driven just to come to the place where we live!

Now it is time for us to get back to work.

Our plan was to leave tomorrow on our way to our first event, the Cataloochee Homecoming in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, but, with Tropical Storm Debby on the way, and the likelihood of ferry interruptions, we left yesterday.  Good thing too.  No ferries today!

Now we will have travels to report on for about seven weeks.  Stay in touch!