Can't never did anything!

It was a mantra from my childhood. I heard it at home; I heard it at school. "Can't never did anything!" It became ingrained; it became me. And it has produced both success and frustration. "We can't do that" is never an acceptable response. What is acceptable? "I don't know how to do that." OK, we can learn or we can figure it out. "We don't have the money to do that." OK, we can defer it until we raise the money. "We don't have the necessary skills mix to do that." OK, let's go recruit who we need. But if it's worth doing, never let me hear, "We can't do that."

Sunday Morning - Mothers' Day

Grandmothers are mothers, too.

  

Silent Saturday

The Oak Ridge Story

I'm currently re-reading a book I first read more than 40 years ago. The Oak Ridge Story, by George O. (Gus) Robinson, Jr., was first published in 1950. Robinson had been the Public Information Officer for the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge. It was he who had been tasked with writing the first news releases following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that introduced atomic energy to the world. Published just five years later, this telling communicates much of the newness of the technology. Written at the onset of the Atoms for Peace program, and long before Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, the tone sometimes tends toward awe, and Gee-Whiz. But it remains an important source, written by someone who was there throughout the war.

When we first went to Oak Ridge in 1968, The Oak Ridge Story was eagerly being read by all newcomers to the town. One could check out a copy from the public library. Soon the book was out of print and the library could no longer bear the constant loss of copies, so it was put on permanent reserve. One could read it in the library, but it no longer circulated. Fortunately, the book has been reprinted by the Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association. It can be ordered on-line from The American Museum of Science and Energy. Go to their Gift Shop page and click on Science & History Books. They also offer a great selection of books on the Manhattan Project. And if you're ever near Oak Ridge, the museum is well worth a visit. During the summer, they also offer a limited tour of the nuclear facilities, including a visit to the historic Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Bluff Mountain Outfitters, Again!

Although age and infirmity have put an end to my backpacking days, I still can't resist the lure of a good outdoor store. I look longingly at the new equipment, knowing full well buying it would be a waste of money since it wouldn't/couldn't ever be used. Yet on each of our frequent trips through western North Carolina we have to detour through Hot Springs for a visit to Bluff Mountain Outfitters. And we almost always make a purchase. But now most frequently it's books.

Bluff Mountain has a small, but excellent, offering of books by regional authors. These are the books you almost never find in the big box national chains. Frequent readers will recall that we've discovered several new favorite authors there. Our last visit was no exception.

Cataloochee, is a first novel by Wayne Caldwell, an Asheville native. It is set in a high mountain valley of that name that now is part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Cataloochee, which is in North Carolina, is similar to the more familiar Cades Cove on the Tennessee side of the park. This novel deals with settlement of the valley and the coming of the National Park. A second novel, Requiem by Fire, picks up the story where the first novel leaves off. We haven't read it yet; maybe we'll find it next stop in Hot Springs.

One-room School

The one-room school once was commonplace in the United States, with some 190,000 of them early in the 20th century. They also were, and are, fixtures in rural places around the world. This one, in the nearby village of Allardt, survives as overnight lodging. The schools typically housed students in grades one through eight, all in the same room and all taught by a single teacher. Sometimes the teacher was a graduate of the same school, and early on, may have had no education beyond eighth grade. There are stories of teachers who faced students older than themselves. It's not easy to find a definitive number of one-room schools still in operation in the U.S., but as recently as 2005 there was estimated to be nearly 400. Most, however, have fallen victim to better transportation that has allowed consolidation into larger schools.

In a sense, I am a product of this one-room school. No, I never went to school there, but my mother did. In fact, the eight grades she completed there was all the formal education she ever had. At one time my father's older brother was the teacher there, and he boarded with my mother's family, on whose farm the school was located. The family stories relate how my father went to visit his brother there for the first time and, at age 18, met the 13-year-old girl who would someday become my mother. The stories tell how when he returned home he told his parents "I met my wife, but I have to wait until she grows up." Six years later they were married.

This school also served the community as church on Sundays, and as social hall on Saturday night. "Pie suppers" apparently were popular sources of social entertainment, where young girls would bake a pie to be auctioned to the young men. It was said to be great fun to bid against the young man who sought to buy the pie baked by the girl he was sweet on. The late Kentucky writer Jesse Stuart, in Taps for Private Tussey, wrote of a family of never-do-wells who would break into the local one-room school and live there between terms. During school terms they would be evicted and return to life in a rockhouse (shallow cave).

The school in the black and white photograph no longer exists. It, along with my grandparents' farm, now lie beneath the waters of Cave Run Lake. The community of Cogswell, Kentucky, no longer appears on maps, and the Scot's Creek boat dock now occupies the space that once was the cemetery on the hill behind this church. All of the graves, including my grandfather's, have been moved to other cemeteries in the area.

Spring Festival

It's May, and that means the annual festival season has begun again. So this coming weekend, Historic Rugby is hosting its annual Festival of British and Appalachian Culture. There will be food, entertainment, demonstrators, crafts vendors, children's activities, and more. I can't promise you'll have as much fun as these ladies did, but you're certainly welcome to try. So if you're in the area, come on by. May 12 & 13, 2012.