Goler Gulch, March 2005

Ralph at Sam's Cabin in the Majovie, near Randsburg, CA

An early morning drive in the desert

Last week, I told a story about an adventure with Ralph into Central Nevada. This week, I rewrote a piece I wrote in 2010, shortly after Ralph’s death. This trip I spent more time jotting down in my journal some of Ralph’s unique bits of wisdom. Hopefully, you’ll get a better view of my friend who died 15 years ago.

Ralph and I stayed the night in Ridgecrest. Before heading out for the desert early in the morning, we stopped at a grocery store to pick up fruit and pastries along with coffee and juice. Dawn broke as we drove along the highway toward Goler Gulch. In the soft morning light, the carpeting of highway shoulder with flowers amazed me. The wet winter had given growth to white and yellow asters, daisies and bluish heliotropes. Even beyond the road, the flowers grew under clumps of greasewood.

It was March 2005. I had flown out west the day before so I could officiate at a wedding. I picked up a rental car in Las Vegas. As I had a few extra days before the celebration, Ralph took a bus down from Cedar City and met me in Vegas. We then headed over into the Southern California desert, to see where he grew up. We’d talked about doing this trip several times while I lived in Utah, but had never gotten around to it.

Our next stop this morning was Sam’s Cabin, located just off the highway. Arriving, we sit outside on a picnic table and ate our breakfast while watching the changes in the morning light across the El Paso Mountains to our north. “You can find any kind of mineral up there in those mountains,” Ralph noted. “Just don’t start a mine, because whatever your digging will quickly disappear.” It was the words of one who knew a bit about the folly of mining.

Sam’s Cabin

I’d heard a lot about Sam, who’d built this cabin seventy-some years ago. Once, I met his daughter, who’d recently died in her mid-nineties. Sam was an old-time miner. He’d worked in Nevada and as a young man headed up to the Klondike in 1898. He supposedly made enough money up north that he didn’t have to do much work the rest of his life. In the 1930s, he showed up in the Mojave, working as a caretaker for a mining firm. It didn’t take much to live like he did. He had a wife, who lived over on the coast. Sam would go visit her a couple times a year and occasionally she’d come out to the desert, that being the extent of their marriage.

Sam's homestead in the Mojave Desert — Sam’s homestead

My favorite story of Ralph and Sam was their trip to Death Valley in Ralph’s family Model T truck, taking it across China Lake early in the World War II, before the government converted the dry lakebed to a Naval Aviation bombing site. Ralph had fond memories of the trip, including meeting Scotty of Scotty’s Castle in Death Valley. Today, this trip would be impossible because the bombing range is still in use.

We discovered Sam’s cabin in a state of “arrested decay.” The BLM keeps it from blowing down and one can rent it for up to two nights. Sam died in 1965, in his early 90s.

After breakfast, we looked around the old cabin while waiting for Bill, a friend of Ralph’s from Southern California to arrive. Rocks and boulders of all shapes, colors and sizes dot the yard. Ralph pointed to many of them and told me which gulch from which they’d been taken. Most of the rocks had been hauled in by Sam with the help of Ralph and his brother Charlie.

Sam's place in the Mojave — Another view of Sam’s homestead

Ralph’s family homestead in Goler Gulch

Bill arrive a few minutes later, driving a huge Suburban SUV. We decide to take his Suburban and leave my rental car at Sam’s Cabin. We climbed in and Ralph began the tour of Goler Gulch. The gulch has always been a placer mining district, meaning the ore is found in sediment washed down from the mountains. Attempts have been made to find the ore body from up in the mountains, but no one has ever identified the source. When Ralph was a kid, old miners held to the belief the gold had been pushed down during the last ice age, by glaciers. Of course, there is no evidence of glacier activity this far south. Another popular theory, according to Ralph, who reported this with a straight face, is that the gold came from Alaska.

Old Behren homestead in the Mojave — Ralph showing us around the old Behren homstead

Ralph’s family’s Model T

Ralph was born in Kansas. When he was an infant, his parents moved to California. They added a bed to their Model T coupe, making it into a truck in which the family made the journey. After a short stint in Los Angeles, they headed into the desert, where his dad worked as a miner and a cook. Interestingly, the Model T still runs. Ralph has driven me around in it and even let me drive it.

Ralph told about his brother Charlie and him taking the Model T on trips through the desert. In the spring or after rains, when the water would be raging in the gulch, they’d stop the car on one side of the stream, take off the fan belt and drive through the water, hooking the fan belt back up on the other side. The car seemed to go anywhere; you just had to know the tricks. If the fan was spinning, it would kick water over the distributor cap and short out the electrical system. The engine could take a little more heat than the electrical system could take water.

Behren homestead around 1930 — The homestead around 1930 with Ralph, his father and his brother and pet dog. They often slept outdoors, especially in the summer.

Ralph’s family homestead includes a collection of buildings. Ralph pointed to a building he and Sam had built at the beginning of the war for some women from Pasadena who wanted a place to flee when the Japanese invaded. “They were sure the Japanese were coming to rape them,” Ralph said sarcastically. They hired him and Sam to build them a home in the desert. Another building Ralph rescued from the Navy, who’d set up operations at China Lake during the war. Abandon as surplus, he brought it and hauled it home so he could have his own room when he returned from the Pacific.

The Old One-Room School House

We made another stop at the site of the old one room school. Ralph and his brother attended school here with eight or ten other kids from 1932, when the schooled opened, to 1936 when they were bused into Randsburg. He told us about his first-grade teacher who’d just celebrated her 100th birthday. Ralph pointed up stream and said that the girl’s outhouse was up there, and the guys were downstream. “Why didn’t they just have a unisex bathroom with a lock,” I asked, “since there were never more than a dozen students.” Ralph, in all seriousness, responded. “I assume the school board had concerns about mixing urine.”

We saw the shaft for the Yellow Aster mine, one of the larger mines in the district. As we explored, Ralph picked a leaf of Indian Tobacco and talked about as a kid he’d harvest it and sell it to an old miner. The other miners forbid the old miner from smoking it underground because it stank. He also found an “Indian pickle,” a plant with a long stem and an open chamber on the end where you could place your tobacco as you drew the smoke up the stem. The “Indian pickle” made a perfect bong. He also showed how the new growth on a greasewood (also known as Creosote bush) could be crushed and smoked for a “natural high.” “This also stinks, which is what you’d expect from such a plant,” Ralph informed us. None of us wanted to try it out for ourselves.

Heading up the gulch

We next headed into the gulch itself, a canyon where much of the mining took place. There were five shafts dug down into the dirt, named Fine Gold Number 1 though 5. Only Fine Gold #1 had a traditional gallows frame, the others being pick and shovel operations with a windlass. In time, the miners discovered that the gold was mostly deposited in the sand within a few feet of bedrock, some eighty feet down. They’d sink a shaft then work out following the bedrock as they made their way up and down the gulch.

Old miners Ralph knew

As we drove up the gulch, Ralph told us about miners he’d known growing up the desert. One was a kid, just 18, who discovered enough gold to buy himself a brand new ’36 Ford with an 85 horsepower V8 engine. Another was a guy named Happy, who was the first pot-head Ralph knew. This was before the Second World War. Happy came looking for work and the miners wanted him to work with them. So, he asked where he might find a place to prospect. One of the old-timers, to be done with him, sent him to the most unlikely place around. Happy discovered a 14-ounce nugget. He remained happy for some time thereafter.

Some of the miners were more adapt at mining outsiders, an ancient trick of the mining trade. Curly would pull out his pan anytime he saw a tourist driving by. They’d get to see him work out some nuggets from his washings. He’d tell him he dug the ore at his mine, Eagle’s Roost,” up in the mountains. It they seemed interested, he’d ask if they’d like to buy a few inches or feet of the mine from him. During the war, Curly talked to a man from Kansas. Ralph’s father, who was from Kansas, warned the man not to trust Curly. Curly moaned to the man about how everyone talked bad him and were always saying that he was dishonest because they were jealous. So, the man brought from Curly a bunch of land that wasn’t worth much and most of it, Curly didn’t even own. Afterwards, Ralph said, “Curly went into Randsburg and brought war bonds and became a hero.”

Turning around and heading for lunch

The creek ran strong, and the ground softened before we reached the end of the gulch. Bill said he had a shovel in the back if we wanted to keep going, but none of us were excited about using it. We turned around and headed back to Randsburg for lunch. That’s a story I’ll have to share at another time.

Postlude

Ralph lived in the Gulch until he graduated from High School in 1944, at which time he joined the Army Air Corp. He was hoping to become a pilot, but they had enough so he became a crew member of a B-24. He made it to the South Pacific in time for the war to end. Ralph received a combat citation, and just so no one thought of him as a hero, he loved telling the story about how some General thought he should have another medal, so the General sent several hundred airplanes into the sky to blow the hell out of some island a few Japanese soldiers had the misfortune of being marooned on as their island had been leaped over in our drive toward the Japanese homeland. “We blew the hell out of them,” Ralph said. His second mission was to drop supplies, mostly boots, into POW camps after the surrender. After the war, Ralph attended school on the GI bill and became a chemist. He spent the rest of his life in the Southwest. Ralph died in 2010. Two weeks ago, on his birthday, he would have been 99 years old.

A Great Basin Mining Adventure

Photo of Ralph's truck around Hamilton, Nevada

This was a trip I made with a friend from Cedar City in the late 1990s. I wrote this piece for another blog about 15 years ago, around the time of Ralph’s death. I bring it back out because in last Sunday’s sermon, I mentioned this trip. I have updated the writing a bit. I should go back through my slides and pick out more to feature (or maybe add a map of our travels).

Camping on Main Street, Treasure City

“This street used to be bustling with noise,” I think, as I stroll down Main Street, Treasure City. The sounds of wagons and the clicking hooves from horses, added to the cussing of teamsters, the pounding of stamp mills and the music from saloons would have too much. But I swear I can still hear voices in the brisk wind, bringing a chill the summer air. My belly is full. Ralph and I had just eaten a steak and a baked potato, along with a salad. We’d drown it with a beer. Before hitting the sack, I decide to walk the length of the road. Ralph stays behind to tend the fire. The distant mountains are turning purple. This street had once a thriving business district with forty stores and a dozen saloons, but today just the shells of collapsing rock structures remain.

By the time I get back to the truck, Ralph has let the fire die down and is already in his sleeping bag. I blow up my mattress and rolled my bag out on the other side of the truck. Plopping down, I watch the summer stars and listen to the wind and Ralph’s snoring. Soon, I too am asleep. I wake at first light. The wind has died and silence seems eerie. While the coffee perks, I explore some nearby ruins. The evening before, I stayed on the gravel road for the mountain is pitted with mine shafts. A wrong step could send you several hundred feet down and into oblivion.

History of the mining region

In the later part of the 1860s, miners from Austin and the Reese River Mining District in search of another mother lode discovered rich in what became the White Pine Mining District. One of the first discoveries, in 1865, was named Monte Christo. It’s just a few miles west of here. From there, miners set out in all directions and in 1867, discovered what became known as Treasure Hill, the mountain upon which we’d camped. The land was unforgiving. There was little shade in the summer and an altitude above 8,000 feet created brutal winters. But with some of the ore as pure silver chloride and assayed as high as $15,000 a ton, people were willing to put up with the hardships.

ruins of an old mill — Ruins of an old mill

By 1869, Treasure City with a population of 6,000 had been established on top of the mountain. There were nearly 200 mines along with ten mills to crush the ore into powder, in preparation to leaching out the silver and gold. A water company laid pipe and had the ability to pump 60,000 gallons a day to the top of the thirsty mountain. But it was all short lived. Most mines played out after a few hundred feet and the rock proved a formable challenge. Early in 1870, the excitement began to wane. By the end of 1870, only 500 people remained. In 1880, when the Post Office closed, there were only 24 people left living on the mountain.

Economic lessons for the region

A look at Treasure Hill’s rise and fall provides an economic lesson in the danger of speculation and bubbles and international finance. Western Historian W. Turrentine Jackson, in his classic study on the region, Treasure Hill, goes into great detail of the financing of the district. In the late 1860s, so much money was poured into the region, more than was ever needed to develop the mines. Much of this capital was wasted; some of it spent on bogus mining operations that existed only to mine the pockets of capitalists who hoped to make a fortune and were willing to take great risks. Then, as the availability of high grade ore begin to wane, money begin to be withdrawn from the region. John Muir visited the area after the rush and wrote in Steep Trails:

“Many of [the mines] do not represent any good accomplishment and have no right to be. They are monuments of fraud and ignorance—sin against science. The drifts and tunnels in the rocks may be regarded as the prayers of the prospectors offered for the wealth he so earnestly craves; but like prayers of any kind not in harmony with nature, they are unanswered.” (Elliott, 105)

Leaving Cedar City

Ralph and I got an early start for this remote spot in the Nevada desert. Leaving Cedar City, we drive north to Minersville and then on to Milford, where we cross the Union Pacific tracks and set out across the desert on Utah 130. Our travels take us just south of the ghost town of Frisco and north of the Wah Wah Mountains. We enter Nevada at Baker. Shortly after meeting up with Highway 50, we leave the pavement for a rough road that skirts the north boundary of Great Basin National Park.

Osceola

Our first stop is at the site of Osceola. Here, In 1872, a unique mining community for Nevada existed. Hard rock mining is the norm in Nevada. This was industrial mining. Miners dig shafts and drifts as they blast into rock for ore. The ore was then crushed and chemically treated to extract the metals. However, in Osceola, free ore existed in sediment. Placer mining, as was done in the California gold fields, was possible. All one needed were shovels and pans, some water, and perhaps a sluice box. The difficulty with placer mining here was the lack of water. Early in the town’s history, they dug a ditch up Wheeler Peak to divert water to the town. This mining district boasts the largest gold nugget ever found in Nevada. There is not much left of the town that existed here for nearly fifty years. Fires, the bane of mining camps, sent most of the town up into smoke. Modern mining operations destroyed the rest. Only the graveyard and some mining equipment used more recently remains.Interestingly, even with gold near historic lows (this was in the late-90s), there’s still a few people mining in this district.

Ely

Leaving the cemetery behind, we drive out of the canyon and head west, across an alluvial fan and toward the highway. Reconnecting to US 50, we continue on to Ely where we stop and have lunch at the historic Hotel Nevada. I suggest we eat on the road to make better time, but Ralph cringes. “If I can’t sit down and enjoy my meal, I’m not living right,” he insists. After lunch, we continue west on US 50, passing the huge open pit copper mine at Ruth and thirty minutes later, the Illipah Ranch. Somewhere between Ely and Eureka, we abandon the pavement and head south on a gravel road.

Ralph inspecting som kind of left-over equipment

Hamilton

Hamilton is our first stop, nine miles south of US 50. It sits on the north side of Treasure Hill and served as a logistical point for the various mining communities south of here. The town was first called Cave City as so many miners from the mountains sought refuge there in caves during the harsh winters. As mining flourished, they laid out a town. By the spring of 1869, more than 10,000 people lived here. It became the county seat for the newly established White Pine County. They built a courthouse. Stage coaches connected the town to Austin and Pioche and the railroad at Elko.

But the town’s life was short. The excitement lasted on a few years and by the time of the 1870 census, less than 4,000 people remained. The town struggled on. In 1873, a shopkeeper by the name of Cohen, seeing his investment falter, set his store on fire in the hopes of collecting on his insurance. The fire spread and much of the town burned. Another fire destroyed the courthouse in 1885. In 1887, the town’s future died as the county seat moved to Ely. Today, only a few ruins and a cemetery remain. There’s plenty of mining junk left out, along with the leftovers of a cyanide leaching operation and a few junked house trailers used in the last attempt to mine in the area. We see no one as we poke around.

Treasure City

After Hamilton, we head south to Treasure City, located just a mile and a half from Hamilton, but on top of the mountain. We take the wrong road and I find myself out in front of the truck with a shovel, clearing rocks as we make our way up a switchback road to the top. Had we known, another road to the west would have taken us to the top without any trouble. It’s getting time for dinner and we find a place along Main Street where we stop for the evening.

I build a charcoal fire behind the truck. As soon as we have coals, I put in two foil wrapped potatoes and, in a wire basket, begin to grill the steaks we had socked away in the cooler. As the sun drops toward the horizon, the wind picks up and soon we’re both pulling on jackets. We eat dinner, washing it down with a beer. I throw a few pieces of pinion onto the coals and the fire blazes. After chatting for a bit, I take off on my walk.

Shermantown, Eberhardt, and Charcoal Kilns

The next morning, we head south off the mountain and stop by the sites for Shermantown and Eberhardt. We link up to the Hamilton-Pioche stagecoach trail and follow it to US 6. Turning left, he head back into Ely in time for lunch and to gas up the truck. Then we head south, stopping at the Ward Charcoal Kilns, a state historic site. It’s interesting that there was a large charcoal operation in this desert region. They harvested all the pinion and juniper for miles around to feed these massive kilns. The charcoal was mostly used to roast the ore in the milling process. Leaving the kilns behind, we head down US 93, stopping at Pioche, another mining town.

Pioche and Home

Pioche is still alive and holding on now as an out-of-the-way tourist town. The community received a new lease on life in World War Two, at a time when the government was forcing the closure of gold mines as non-essential industries. But the ground around Pioche included large deposits of zinc,. Considered an essential mineral for the war effort, zinc mining lead to a revival of Pioche. They continued mining zinc around Pioche till the 1980s. We stop long enough to have dinner at the Overland Saloon, and then headed on home. At Panaca, a Mormon farming community, we leave US 93 and head east, toward Cedar City. An hour later, as we approach the city with the sun setting to our back, the red hills glow in the evening light.

A photos were slides which I digitally copied.

Camp Bangladesh: another adventure with Ralph

Sources:
Shawn Hall: Romancing Nevada’s Past: Ghost Towns and Historical Sites of Eureka, Lander and White Pine Counties(University of Nevada Press, 1994)

W. Turrentine Jackson, Treasure Hill, (University of Arizona Press, 1962)

Russell R. Elliott, History of Nevada, revised edition. (University of Nebraska Press, 1987).

_________., Nevada’s Twentieth-Century Mining Boom: Tonopah, Goldfield, Ely (University of Nevada Press, 1966).

February 4, 2025February 4, 2025

Puzzles this winter

Kelly, a regular reader, often posts photos of puzzles she completed, along with great book reviews. When I commented about a puzzle I was enjoying, she challenged me to post photos! Generally, at my house, the puzzle table comes out around Thanksgiving. We put away by Easter. These are the puzzles completed so far this season, all of them are 1000 pieces.

I have been on vacation, taking my last week of time off from 2024 this week. That’s why there were no sermons on Sunday.

This puzzle was done over Thanksgiving weekend. I love the Northwoods and this cabin on a lake with a full moon and what seems to be northern lights feels like a place I could hang around for a while.

I love trains and especially like the beauty of these Shay locomotives. But this puzzle was the most difficult one this season. A 1000 pieces with about 800 of them being black!

This puzzle was perhaps the easiest of the puzzles. Colorful and cheerful, it almost makes you want to camp out for the holidays in a travel trailer. However, in reality life, it’d probably be a good way to freeze yourself. This December, two friends and I helped close in the underpinnings of a travel trailer in which a handicap woman is living. She refused to go to another setting and I can’t image living there when we had temperatures well below freezing with high winds.

This was a Christmas gift from my daughter. I always love National Park puzzles. I counted and have visited 30 of these parks. Several I’ve hiked through including the Great Smoky Mountains, the Shenandoah Mountains, Isle Royale, Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon. I should write more about those hikes. I did publish a blog post of an incredible trip with my father and sister to the Dry Tortuga’s in 2018.

A neighbor lent us this Monet puzzle and it was most enjoyable to put together his masterpieces. In 1990, I was able to see a large Monet exhibit of his serial waterlily paintings as the Chicago Museum of Art. In 2020, I had planned on seeing another large Monet exhibit in Boston (along with a game at Fenway Park), but COVID caused us to cancel that trip. I love his use of light in his paintings.

January 29, 2025February 20, 2025

Readings in January 2025

Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

(New York: G. P. Putman and Sons, 2018), 372 pages.

Kya Clark, “the Marsh Girl” lives in the salt marsh of Eastern North Carolina. As a child, her mother abandons the family. Then one by one, her siblings’ leaves. Finally, her father, the one who has run everyone else off, leaves. Abandoned by everyone who should have cared for her, she learns how to survive. She digs shellfish and sells them to Jumpin, an old African American who sells gas and bait along the marsh. Jumpin and his wife Mabel, in a way, become surrogate parents for Kaya. She gets by, eating what she collects along with making enough money to buy cornmeal and oil in town.

Kya only spent one day in the school. Picked on by other children, she never went back, always staying one step ahead of the truancy officer. She befriends Tate, a former friend of one of her brothers. Over time, Tate teaches her to read and begins to lend her books which allows her to learn more about the marsh. But he, too, leaves as he heads to Chapel Hill for college. He fails to come back as promised. Only later, does he come back and try to re-establish contact as he establishes a nearby research lab on the marsh. Kya, who had taken up painting, becomes a self-taught an expert in marsh ecology. She even publishing books based on her paintings.

While feeling abandoned by Tate, Chase, another town boy seeks out Kya. Primarily interested in sex, Chase promises to marry her and build her a house. Then Kya learns through the newspaper of his engagement to another woman. Later, in 1969, Chase ends up dead, having fallen from a fire tower. It’s not clear if foul play is involved, but Chase’s mother points the finger at Kya. Eventually, the sheriff on sketchy evidence, arrests Kya. Tried for murder, she’s found not guilty.

After this ordeal, Kya and Tate get back together, living in the marsh until Kya dies from a heart attack in her 60s. Afterwards, Tate discovers Kya’s secret, which he had not suspected.

Owen captures the beauty and diversity of the marsh. The reader also feels empathy for Kya, someone who has fallen through the cracks. While alone, she develops resilience but is unable to trust anyone else. Only later, at her trial, do we learn there were those in the town who tried to help her, such as the woman at the grocery story who would give her back more change than was due, taking the money out of her own pocket.

This an enjoyable read. I recommend this book. Having grown up near the marsh in North Carolina, this book helped take me back to a time the marsh wasn’t overgrown with housing.

Bernard DeVoto, The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto

(1948, Portland OR, Tin House Books, 2010), 127 pages.

For the past few years, I have avoided alcohol during most of January, at least when I been at home. But I break my fast on the 25^th, to celebrate the birth of the Scottish bard, Robert Burns, with a shot of “Balvenie” and the reading of a few poems. So, why I chose to read a book about the cocktail hour during January is beyond me. But so far, I managed to keep the fast. Instead of placing this book in a bookcase, I have stored it in my liquor cabinet. For like a good Scotch whisky, one should savor this book..

Bernard DeVoto died two years before my birth. But as a some-times 19^th Century Western American historian myself, I have been familiar with his work for nearly forty years. Decades ago, I read a couple of his classics: Year of Decision, and Mark Twain’s America. Both were serious works, although one can’t deal with Twain without enjoying a good joke. Last year I read This America of Ours, a biography of DeVoto and his wife Avis. From that biography, I learned of this little book. Much of the book had me laughing out loud. DeVoto precision details about the making of a good martini ranks up there with George Orwell’s essay on how to make a proper cup of tea. I wonder if perhaps Orwell might have inspired DeVoto as his essay appeared two years before DeVoto copyrighted his work.

DeVoto and his wife were known for their cocktail parties. Much of what makes this short book so funny is DeVoto’s seriousness. It’s his way or the highway. Those who disagree with him, from his perspective, deserve some terrible fate.

In the opening essay, DeVoto praises America’s greatness for we have “enriched civilization with rye, bourbon, and the martini cocktail.” He also praises Scotch and Irish whiskeys alongside of bourbon and rye, insist they consumed straight. He had no use for rum and was willing to damn to hell those who abided in the nasty drink. However, as a historian, he knew rum’s role in American’s history and acknowledges how rum played a role in our freedom and in the institution of slavery. Had the sailor’s “primordial capitalist bosses not given them rum, [they] would have done something to get their wages raised.”

The second chapter begins with an assault on recipes for various cocktails found in cookbooks and women’s magazines. In DeVoto’s world, these are all unnecessary, for one either drank whiskey or a martini. Pity the poor man who would allow vermouth and whiskey to meet for “the Manhattan is an offense against piety.” Of course, vermouth is used with gin to make a martini. In DeVoto’s world, it better be dry vermouth. And don’t get cute with your drinks. He bemoaned a bar in Chicago which offered “Whiskey on the Barney Stone.” They used green colored ice. DeVoto suggested the proprietor be “put to the torture.” In a later chapter, he goes after the couple who has all kinds of fancy drinking kitsch such as stoppers featuring women’s legs, fancy stirring rods, and signs about drinking. DeVoto had no patience with such foolishness, but then they were probably making daiquiris.

Long before James Bond, DeVoto suggested it didn’t matter if one shook or stirred the martini. What mattered, however, was avoiding splinters of ice in the drink. Each round of martinis is to be made fresh. There can be no salvation for the man who makes pitchers of martinis and stores them in the refrigerator. Those who desire an olive in their drink were probably denied a pickle in their childhood which sent them on a lifelong quest for brine. As for those who want an onion, “strangulation seems best.”

The only thing one might mix in with whiskey are bitters, but then only Angostura bitters. And no fruit salads. The fruit from orchards do not belong in cocktails. Drinks should be served cold. I’m not sure what DeVoto thought about Japanese sake, which is usually served warm. Writing in the aftermath of the war, he probably thought it justified the use of the bomb.

In the third chapter, DeVoto attacks the enemy of drinks—sugar. He believes the reason too many people want sugary drinks is that we give our children too much sugar. “An ice cream soda can set a child’s feet in the path that ends in grenadine…” While such drinkers are to be pitied, they should also be treated as “a carrier of typhoid.” DeVoto even prophesizes the demise of our Republic will most likely come for “this lust for sweet drinks.” And sugar comes from other sources, not just crystals. Fruit has no place during the cocktail hour. DeVoto suggests “orange bitters make a good astringent for the face,” but they don’t belong in drinks.

I did take a bit of offense at DeVoto’s attack on winter drinks. He has no use for eggnog or a Tom and Jerry. I assume If he hears I occasionally like a hot butter rum after spending time outdoors on a cold snowy day, he’d roll in his grave. But then, that’s a ski drink, and DeVoto didn’t care for the sport.

I wish I had read this book 25 years ago. Two friends of mine from Utah, both now deceased, would have enjoyed it. Or maybe just one of them. Ralph insisted on making his and his wife’s martini, one at a time. Thankfully, he always had some good peaty Scotch to offer me. Myron, however, might have taken offense. Myron was one of those martini drinkers who made the drink by the pitcher and stored it in the fridge. DeVoto would have had a cow had he witnessed Myron pouring himself a martini from a pitcher he mixed three days earlier. But I never blamed Myron, for he always offered me a pour from a bottle of Glenmorangie

Obviously, while I have never cared for martinis, I enjoyed this book. If you want a martini, that’s fine. Just offer me some converted rye, corn, or barley, aged in a white oak barrel. Ice would be nice, as long as it’s not green.

Sarah Frey, The Growing Season: How I Built a New Life-and Saved an American Farm

(Audible, 2020), 8 hours and 41 minutes.

In a way, this book reminded me of Stephanie Stuckey’s book which I read last year. Both are women executives leading major companies. But that’s where the comparison stops. Stuckey came from a well-to-do family. She took over her family’s business as it was about to completely go under and lead back to thriving. However, Frey came from a very modest background and built a major business.

In this book, Frey describes her childhood on “the hill,” a small farm in southern Illinois. Her dad, who had ties to horse racing, always wanted to have a winning horse and sunk all the money the family was able to provide into his beloved horses. While he doted on his daughter, he could be mean. This was especially true tohis sons and wife. He also had another family before setting out with Sarah’s mother, which gave Sarah and her brothers a huge family of stepbrothers and sisters. Yet, for all his faults, he instilled in his daughter a belief she could do anything.

As Sarah grew older, and her older brothers began to move out on their own, the family began to collapse. Still in high school, Sarah moved out on her own and continued to work and attend school. Having watched her mother buy watermelons for local farmers and sell them to supermarkets, she tries it on her own. Soon, she was borrowing money from a bank for a larger truck. Her business thrived and after two months was able to pay off the truck. She would continue expanding, adding pumpkins to extend her season. Soon, she realized that she should also start raising some of the produce to provide better returns. When the bank took over her father’s farm, she went back to the banker who’d lent the money for the truck. He. helped arrange the purchase of the property from the bank which held the title.

Then, as a nearby Walmart distribution center opens, she talks the produce buyer to let her provide watermelons and pumpkins. She readily agreed she could supply them the four loads a week, thinking of her normal load and not four loaded tractor trailers. Realizing she was about to get in over her head, she gave a call to her brother. Soon, she has all her brothers working with her.

In time her business expanded and included not just Walmart, but most major grocery stores. She also began producing drinks made of vegetable and fruit juices. In telling the story, lots of things seem to be left out (such as financing and attorneys). Throughout the book, but especially at the end, she continued to hit several key points. These include giving people a chancl, treating employees and customers right, hiring those with potential whom others over look, and being creative such as using that usually left in the field for other products. While a lot of the book focuses on herself, she always offers thanks to those who helped her along the way.

Frey is also frank about her husband. And while the marriage didn’t work out, it gave her two boys whom she now tries to spend more time with.

While I felt a lot of details were missing, I enjoyed this book. It’s a fast read/listen.

John Musgrave, The Education of Corporal John Musgrave

2021, Random House Audio, 9 hours and 38 minutes

He always wanted to be a Marine. At the age of 17, John Musgrave signed up with the Corp, having his parents sign for permission. The summer after graduation, he left the Midwest with a couple of friends for the Marine Corp training facility in Southern California. The experience nearly killed him, metaphorically. He describes the experience the rude awakening once they arrived by train to graduation. But he endured and became a proud Marine. This was 1966 and, after advance training, he headed to Vietnam.

At first, Musgrave was excited about the war. They sailed from California to Vietnam on a troop ship. He was first assigned to an MP group in the southern part of the country, but wanting more action, volunteered for a transfer. The transfer landed him just south of the DMZ, a unit known as the Walking Dead, as they were taking so many casualties. He complained when military took away his M14 and gave them all M16, with just one cleaning kit per squad and how they gun so often jammed, which lead to many dead Marines.

Musgrave writes with honesty, as he had done with his boot camp experiences. He tells about his first enemy kill. He discusses the hardship of slipping through the wire to conduct night patrols. He’s honest about how scared they were, in the dark jungle where one not only had to deal with the enemy but mosquitoes and leeches.

Twice wounded, the second time he took a bullet in the chest. No one thought he would make it, even some of the doctors who treated him. But one surgeon didn’t give up. Eventually, he is stabilized and moved out of the country to better facilities in Japan before moving back to the States. He’d spent 11 months in country.

Throughout the first half of the book, Musgrave shares personal struggles. Although his father served in World War 2, he and his mother continued to worry about him being in the Corp. He was in love with a girl from his high school and wanted to get married, but she broke off their relationship. He is also very honest about his religious feelings. As a Methodist, a Catholic neighbor had given him a St. Christopher’s medallion which he carried wore on his dog tags. The medallion causes him to be superstitious, thinking that if he keeps it, it will protect him. However, the day he was wounded a second time, he had a premonition he would die that day. While he lived, it was a close call.

Arriving back in the states, Musgrave discovered things were different. The anti-war movement was just beginning. At first, Musgrave didn’t want anything to do with it as he began college. But soon agreed that the war was a mistake and began to speak out. He became a leader in the Vietnam Vets Against the War movement and even helped led the protests in Miami during the Republican National Convention in 1972.

While Musgrave eventually became a leader of the movement, he continued to work to bring Vietnam Veterans together. He is critical of how Vietnam Veterans were not welcome in American Legion and Veterans of Foreign War posts. Through this, he struggles with his pride at having been a Marine and the guilt of having fought an unjust war. As our nation experienced other wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he worked with veterans, helping them cope as they returned home.

I enjoyed the book. Growing up watching the news every night at the dinner table, the Vietnam War was always very real. I knew lots of veterans and wondered if it was in my future. Thankfully, we pulled out of the war when I was a sophomore in high school. As I was preparing for graduation, Saigon fell and the war was over.

January 22, 2025January 21, 2025

Two By Ivan Doig

Cover photo with the two books reviewed in the post

Ivan Doig, English Creek

(Atheneum Books, 1984), 343 pages

The first book in Doig’s trilogy about the McCaskill’s of Montana is English Creek (although it’s the second book in the series I read.) Each book stands on its own. Set in the summer of 1939, the story centers on Jick McCaskill. Jick served as the narrative in the final book of the trilogy, Ride with Me Mariah Montana , which I read in 2023. In that book, Jick is at the end of his career, as he ferries his daughter, a newspaper photographer, around Montana for the state’s centennial.

Jick comes of age in English Creek. His older brother, Alec, learns about love and living on his own while Jick learns about the land as he travels with his father, the district ranger. He helps haul supplies to remote camps and fire lookouts. He meets Stanley, a man with a drinking problem and a secret, who introduces Jick to alcohol. And at the end of the summer, he and Stanley run the camp kitchen for the fire crew fighting a dangerous blaze. Then war begins in Europe. In the epilogue, it’s after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Alec joins the military, only to die in North Africa.

Doig does a wonderful job of drawing the reader into the magical country of the American West. I highly recommend this book (and this trilogy).

Ivan Doig, Dancing at the Rascal Fair

(Antheneum Books, 1987), 405 pages

While this is the second novel in Doig’s trilogy of life in the fictious Montana’s “Two Medicine County,” it should have been the first. The novel sketches two young Scottish men, Rob Barclay and Angus McCaskill, who leave their homeland for Montana in 1889. They are looking for Lucas, Rob’s uncle, who has done well in this new country, as evident by his sending back a $100 check every Christmas for the family.

Reaching Montana, it takes a while for them to find Lucas. Finally, they get a lead that he has brought a saloon in Gros Ventre. Catching a ride with a freighter, as there are no stagecoaches or trains running into this part of the state, they find Lucas. They also discover a surprise. Through mining, he has blown off his hands. But he makes do and runs a saloon and has enough money to even help stake the two boys in the sheep business.

Starting from nothing, they stake a claim and build cabins, spending the first winter together. The area in which they homestead becomes known as Scotch Heaven. Rob marries and Angus meets Anna, whom he hopes to marry, but is heartbroken when he marries another man, who raises horses. Before Angus is shunned by Anna, Rob’s sister Adair visits from Scotland for the summer. Angus becomes upset. He realizes Rob has set him up to marry his sister. But after Anna shuns him, Rob marries Adair. It’s not the best marriage, as Rob is still in love with Anna.

Rob and Angus friendship finally breaks over Angus’ ongoing desire for Anna while married to his sister. Interestingly, Adair accepts her status as Angus’ second choice, but the two remain faithful and still have love for each other. Their son, who will eventually become a ranger for the new National Forests and marry Anna’s daughter, goes into the army as the nation enters World War ii. He never made it to Europe and the fighting but remained at a base in Washington State where he served on burial detail for soldiers dying of influenza. As the flu spreads, taking with them many of those who have settled in the Two Medicine Country, Agus and Adair wonder which is worse, for him to be in Europe fighting or in the states with the flu danger. Angus has the flu and almost dies. After he regains his health, he learns that Anna died as the pandemic swept through Montana.

The story involves with Rob and Angus, now enemies, forced to work together due to a stipulation in Lucas’ will. A bitter winter about wipes them out. Only a heroic effort to haul hay from the railroad, a day’s distance away, saves their flocks. By the end of the book, Angus and Rob are the two successful herders left of those who had settled “Scotch Heaven.”

“Dancing at the Rascal Fair” is a Scottish dance tune and Agnus, who often quoting poetry, brings this song repeatedly into the story with different lyrics. I especially liked his one about the Scottish church on page 71: “Orthodox, orthodox/who believe in John Knox.’Their sighing canting grace-proud faces/their three-mile prayers and half-mile graces…”

I enjoyed this book and recommend it. Not only is Doig a wonderful storyteller who can also capture the grandeur of the land, he forces the reader to deal with issues of relationships. He reminds me of Roy and Eddie, who were in my Cedar City congregation, who were sheepherders. In a way, one can feel for the heartbreak both Angus and Adair felt in their marriage.

###

While these books, along with Ride with Me Mariah Montana complete Doig’s trilogy, he continued to write about the Two-Medicine Country. Another book by Doig, set in the fictional town of Gros Ventre in the early 1960s, is The Bartender’s Tale..

January 15, 2025January 15, 2025

An American Ramble

title slide with a photo of the book cover

**Neil King, Jr. American Ramble: A Walk of Memory and Renewal**

Illustrations by George Hamilton (New York: Mariner Books, 2023), 354 pages including notes on writing and reading.

A friend lent me this book. When I heard what it was about, I was skeptical. King, an editor for the Wall Street Journal, walks from his home in Washington, DC, to New York City. I thought, “that’s not that long of a walk, certainly nothing like the Appalachian or Pacific Crest Trail.” Then I began to read and quickly fell in love with the story.

King, after battling cancer and Lyne disease (which resulted in paralyzed left vocal cords), and as the nation is coming out of the COVID epidemic, leaves his D.C. home. He heads out of town and toward New York City. He carries an 18-pound pack; his one luxury being a Japanese style fly rod. It was a Monday in April, the month Chaucer set off in the Canterbury Tales. But this wasn’t a quick escape. King spent months lining out a path, contacting people along the way, and learning the vast amount of history of the region.

Unlike Appalachian Trail hikers, King spends his nights in bed and breakfasts, boutique hotels, and a few traditional chain hotels. The B&Bs allows him to meet more people and, as a journalist by trade, that’s what King does best. He meets people and learns their story, while sharing parts of his own. Most people are incredibility gracious, but a few, such as the young man in an upscale neighborhood who refused to let him fill his water bottle, are not.

King’s choice for lodging also keeps him from encountering ticks which might happen if he sleeps on the ground. Having had Lyme Disease, he wants to avoid ticks which spread it, if possible.

Throughout the book, King draws on literary references. From Chaucer, the Bible, Homer, Bruce Chatwin. Edgar Allen Poe (who few suspect was also a walker), John Muir, and Henry David Thoreau.

War along the route

King’s route allows him to explore war. Battles against Native Americans (which turned William Penn’s “City of Brotherly Love” into a hotbed against the native population), to the Revolutionary and Civil Wars all occurred along his walk. He crosses the Mason Dixon Line, but even in York, Pennsylvania he finds a city who welcomed the Confederates in the days leading to up to Gettysburg. At another place, he walks the old railbed to a Y in the line at Hanover Junction. Here, Lincoln’s train took the left track for Gettysburg where he gave his address. Two years later, his train took the other Y, as his body was taken on a tour through the northeast before his burial in Springfield, Illinois.

In conversations about no trespassing signs, King reflects on how they became popular only after the end of the Civil War with millions of freed slaves trying to find their way in the world. He also finds it ironic that the middle ground in the colonies, between the north and south, were settled by pacifist (Quakers, Pietists, Dunkers, Amish, and Mennonites).

At Valley Forge and along the Delaware River, King explores the struggles of George Washington’s Continental Army during the dark days of the Revolutionary War. He even crosses the river by boat (as opposed to a bridge) to sense what Washington may have experienced. King will cross other rivers by boats as he makes his way north to Manhattan.

Learning about religion and race

Wandering through Lancaster County, King meets Amish farmers and has an opportunity to explore the role religion plays in our nation… Lancaster is the home for both James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens—men so similar (both lifelong bachelors) and so different as they played major roles leading up to and during the Civil War. King refers to them as America’s yin and yang. He talks with members of the African American community who has helped keep Steven’s memory alive. Steven fierce hatred of slavery came from his Vermont upbringing by Baptist parents and being born with a disability that helped him have empathy for others. Steven even decided to be buried in a small mixed-race cemetery.

While with the Amish, he reads an old book published in 1660, the Martyrs Mirror which spoke of persecution of anabaptist (Amish) in Europe and provides a glimpse for what some sought in America.

While much of King’s walk is relatively flat, his one “hill” is a garbage mountain in New Jersey. On the top, he catches his first glimpse of New York City while pondering our throw-away culture.

Recommendation

I really enjoyed this book. Particularly impressing was how King wove in so many themes (race, the land, our heritage) into his journey. I was also impressed how he didn’t shy away from unflattering pieces of our history but dealt with it all. In the end, King provides us an example of ending the division in America by humility, acknowledging that which we don’t know, while being neighborly and talking to one another.

January 8, 2025January 22, 2025

2024 Reading Recap

title slide with photos of 4 books read during 2024

Reading in 2024

I read 45 books in 2024, which is down from recent years. I’ve been reading over 50 books, but this year my 45 includes Augustine’s City of God. He broke his magus opus into 22 books, so maybe I exceeded my goal as I only counted it as one! I’m not sure my favorite book of the year, but it’s probably one of the four I have highlighted in the title slide.

Reading Recap

Summary:

	2021	2022	2023	2024
Total books read	54	53	53	45
Fiction	8	4	8	6
Poetry (and about poetry)	5	6	1	3
History/ Biographies	13	17	13	12
Theology and ministry^[1]	16	22	19	11
Essays/Short Stories	8	3	6	1
Humor	4	1	3	2
Nature	6	9	13	10
Politics	3	3	5	10
Memoirs	10	11	4	14
Writing (how to)	2	2	1	1
Titles by women	14	7	16	14
Read via Audible	20	20	26	19
Books reviewed	30	34	39	32

The numbers do not add up as some of the books fit into multiple categories. I will add probably 3 more reviews in early 2025, some of which are already written. I generally don’t read “how-to” books, but this year read two (both related to Amateur Radio). Also, three books were re-read. Four were by foreign (non-English) authors.

Below are the books with a photo of my favorite book for the month. Also included to links to my reviews. I will update this list to include reviews posted in 2025.

What’s your favorite book of 2024?

January

Rachel Carlson, Silent Spring

Timm Oyer, Dinner with Jesus

Harrison Scott Key, How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told

77 Days of February: Living and Dying in Ukraine, told by the Nation’s Own Journalist

February

Cecile Hulse Matschat, The Suwannee: Strange Green Land

Edward Chancellor, Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation

The ARRL Ham Radio License Manual

Russell D. Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

March

Erik Larson, In the Garden of the Beast: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Germany

Chimamade Ngozi Adichie, Half a Yellow Sun

It was hard to pick between these two excellent reads.

April

Jonathan Haley, The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689

John Lane, Gullies of My People: An Excavation of Landscape and Family

Steve Galloway, The Cellist of Sarajevo

Fleming Rutledge, Help My Unbelief

May

Reuven Fenton, Goyhood

Danielle Chapman, Holler: A Poet Among Patriots

The ARRL General Class License Manual

June

Tracy K. Smith, To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

July

Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

Pat Conroy, A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life

Aaron Bobrow-Strain, White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf

August

Saint Augustine, City of God (Started in April, this is really 22 books/1100 pages)

Tim Kaine, Walk, Ride, Paddle: A Life Outside

Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism

Daniel Silliman, One Lost Soul: Richard Nixon’s Search for Salvation

September

Beth Moore, All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir

Tony Horwitz, One for the Road: An Outback Adventure

Holly Haworth, The Way, The Moon: Poems

Stephanie Stuckey, Unstuck: Rebirth of an American Icon

October

Clare Frank, Brunt: A Memoir of Fighting Fire

Nate Schweber, This America of Ours: Bernard and Avis DeVoto and the Forgotten Fight to Save the Wild

Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

November

Ivan Doig, English Creek

John P. Burgess, Holy Rus’: The Rebirth of Orthodoxy in the New Russia

Peter Wohlleben, Forest Walking: Discovering the Trees and Woodlands of North America

Thomas Seeley, The Lives of Bees: The Untold Story of the Honey Bee in the Wild

Douglas R. A. Hare, Mark: Westminster Bible Companion

December

Nadivka Gerbish and Yaroslav Hrytsak, A Ukrainian Christmas

Ivan Doig, Dancing at the Rascal Fair

Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power

Christian Winman, Hammer is the Prayer (Selected Poems)

Neil King, Jr., American Ramble: A Walk of Memory and Renewal

Wayne Caldwell, Woodsmoke: poems

Year in books by blogging friends:

January 2, 2025January 2, 2025

Three Poetry Books

Cover photo with photos of the book's reviewed

In the last few months of this past year, I read three books of poetry of which I’m providing brief reviews. To those who enjoy poetry or to play with words, I recommend each collection. They’re all delightful and very different.

Holly Haworth, The Way The Moon, poems

(Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2004), 71 pages.

Drawing on the 13^th moon cycles a year (every 28 days), Haworth has written 13 poems, each in four parts representing the four stages of the moon. In each section, she explores the natural world around the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southern Virginia. Haworth captures not only the cycles of life, but also how fleeting it can be. She writes with a naturalist eye, capturing and recording sightings in nature. I enjoyed her collection and reread it, but my one criticism is that at times her poetry seemed more of a list without a perceivable narrative other than the changes of the moon’s phase.

Among the wildflowers which Haworth is enchanted with are chicory and Queen Anne’s Lace, two plants in which I have written a few poems about. (To read one of my poems titled “Chicory and Lace,” click here.) I read this book in late summer/early fall, as the last of the chicory appeared and the Queen Anne’s Lace was balling up tight, as stockings stored in a drawer for another year.

Wayne Caldwell, Woodsmoke, poems

(Durham, NC, Blair, 2021), 81 pages.

Caldwell employs two voices in these poems which are all set around Mt. Pisgah in Western North Carolina. The main voice is Posey, a widower who misses his late-wife, Birdie. Posey lives alone and shuns most things modern. He still heats his home with wood, has a mule name Maud and a dog named Tomcat. According to his poems, he has learned to slow down with age. He doesn’t go to church, but his poetry is filled with Biblical allusions. While he burns most trees in his woodstove, the one exception is dogwood, because of the myth that Jesus’ cross was a dogwood. Posey shares the history of the area as well as his family and his interest in his new neighbor, Susan McFall.

There are a few poems written by Susan McFall, whose husband had run off with a younger woman. She builds a house above Posey’s, where she explores nature and looks out for Posey.

These are wonderful poems whose narrative captures the heart of Southern Appalachia.

Christian Wiman, Hammer is the Prayer: Selected Poems

(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), 207 pages.

I heard Wiman speak last years at Calvin University’s Festival of Faith and Writing. While I had heard of him before and had read a few of his poems in journals, I found myself wanting to read more of his work. Unlike the other two books of poetry above, which have a unifying theme, this collection of selected poetry is more complex. The pieces are drawn from several Wiman’s works. If there is a unifying theme, it would be around illness and death, as many of the poems deal with Wiman’s battle with cancer.

While many of these poems stand alone, some build upon each other. The longest poem, “Being Serious,” contains 20 parts and an epilogue, 35 pages, that captures the life of “Serious,” from his birth to death and to God. While this collection is not at all “preachy,” God is another theme that reoccurs frequently. In addition to his own poetry, there is a section of poetry by Osip Mandelstam which Wiman translated. Mandelstam was a Polish/Russian who died during Stalin’s purges in the late 1930s.

This is a deep collection of poetry that will be worthy to be read many times.

December 31, 2024January 2, 2025

Jimmy Carter’s Sunday School

title slide with photo of Main Street, Plains, GA and Jimmy Carter

The article below was published in The Skinnie, a magazine for Skidaway Island, Georgia, for the November 17, 2017 (vol. 15, issue 23). The title the editor gave the article was “Plains Speaking.” With Jimmy Carter’s death on Sunday, I thought it time to pull it out and make it available again. Carter, who was appreciated more after his presidency than before will be missed. I was moved to see that even Buckingham Palace in London had lowered the Union Jack to half mast in honor of his life.

“I don’t often attend Baptist Churches but when I do, it’s under the cover of darkness,” I quip as we turn into the driveway of Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia. Everyone is quiet. It’s a little before 6 AM, on the first of October. The stars are still out. Yet, in the driveway is a man with a warm Southern accent welcoming us. He tells us where to park, that the church building will open at 8 AM, and that if we need to use the bathroom before then, there are some porta-johns in the back. He gives us an index card numbered 17. That’s our number when it is time to line up and enter church and it means there are 16 cars here before us.

This is the earliest I’ve ever arrived at church, but Jimmy Carter’s Sunday School class starts at 10 AM and we don’t want to miss it. I park and we all fall asleep. An hour later, as dawn breaks, I wake to a Marine leading a dog sniffing all the cars in the parking lot. I’ve never had a vehicle sniffed for bombs while attending church. I doze off again.

By 7:30 AM, it is light enough to see. People are gathering in the front of the church. We join them. Cars still drive in. But the parking lot is full. Those who arrive now park in the overflow out back under a grove of pecans. A woman lines everyone up according to their number. At 8 AM, we’re ushered forward, one group at a time. They have us take everything out of our pockets while a secret service agent scans our bodies with a wand. Only then are we are allowed to enter the church. There’s more waiting.

As the sanctuary fills, a woman from the church welcomes us and informs us of the rules for a Sunday School class led by the former “Leader of the Free World.” We’re to refer to him as President Carter, not Mr. President (the latter is only appropriate for the current President). The woman reminds us the former First Lady’s name is Rosalynn, not Roselyn. We’re also reminded that while it is President Carter’s birthday, we’re not to sing happy birthday or make a big deal out of it. President Carter wants our focus to be on the lesson and not him. I had not known it was his birthday before arriving in Plains and didn’t think about bringing a card. Others had. The woman collects the cards. We’re told not to hand the Carters anything. However, she assures the Carters will receive the cards, but only after the Secret Service examines them. We’re told the Carters will be happy to allow us to have a photograph taken with them and are informed this will be conducted after the 11 AM worship service. If you skip worship, there will be no photographs.

A few minutes before 10 AM, a number of Secret Service agents enter the room and take up their positions. Then Rosalynn Carter enters with a group of friends and family members. I recognize Maureen Dowd, a columnist for The New York Times. They are all seated in a reserved section of pews. The room is nearly full.

A moment later Jimmy Carter enters with his ever present grin. He begins by asking where we’re from. There are people here from at least twenty states. He acknowledges each state. When someone says Washington, the former nuclear submariner informs us that it’s the home to the world’s finest submarine. He pauses a second for effect, then says, “the USS Jimmy Carter.” Another is from D.C. and Carter quickly quips, “I used to live there.” Everyone laughs.

When a woman identifies herself as Puerto Rican. Carter pauses to ask if she knows how her family and friends are doing after Hurricane Maria, which had struck the island ten days earlier. She sobs, saying her family is fine, but the island is devastated. President Carter acknowledges her pain and tells us to keep them in prayer and to help out anyway we can.

There are people in the sanctuary from at least twenty states and seven foreign countries: China, Korea, Germany, Peru, Canada, Russia and Cuba.

Next, President Carter asks a woman missionary to open us in prayer. After a few remarks about the state of the world, especially the danger posed by North Korea, Jimmy moves into his morning lesson. He first notes he’d been teaching on giving for the last four weeks. It troubled him that the collections were down. We all chuckle.

This morning, Carter begins a new series on the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians and its theme of freedom.

“We are raised with the concept that you get what you earn,” Carter says, “but Christianity teaches that we are all saved, loved and forgiven in Jesus Christ. We only need to have faith.” Drawing from Jesus’ parables of the “Prodigal Son” and “Workers in the Vineyard,” he speaks of grace and notes how we’re all the same in God’s eye.

His Sunday School message avoids politics, and he never mentions the current President. But at one point, he lets his politics slip in as he emphasizes freedom in Christ, saying, “Jesus is the number one wall tear-downer.”

Carter insists that freedom doesn’t mean we can do whatever we want, but that freedom comes with responsibilities. He ends, inviting us to ask ourselves what kind of person we want to be. He suggests that if we are not satisfied with who we are, we should go to God in prayer and ask for help as we strive to be a better person.

At the end of his class, Carter says we have a real treat waiting in worship and introduces his favorite musician, pianist David Osborne. During the transition between Sunday School and worship, the former President takes a seat next to his wife in a pew that’s just across the aisle and a row up from me. Osborne sits down at the Steinway grand piano that had been brought into the sanctuary for this occasion, and plays a melody of tunes, beginning with, “Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God.” Later in the service, Osborne is joined by a Las Vegas singer, as they perform a selection of gospel hymns with “Happy Birthday” and “Georgia on My Mind” mixed in.

The pastor, Brandon Patterson, is a young man just finishing up seminary. His sermon is from the book of Ruth and he mentions how Ruth observed the Jewish custom and sought the protection of Boaz, her deceased husband’s kinsman, instead of running off with a younger man. To make the point, he emphasizes Boaz’s age. Rosalynn puts her elbow into her husband side. After all, it’s his 93^rd birthday. Carter laughs. The preacher notices and turns red and immediately attempts to crawl out of the hole he’s dug, saying that he didn’t mean that old. Everyone erupts into laughter.

When the service is over, a very efficient line is set up and each group is allowed to have their photo taken with Jimmy and Rosalynn. Afterwards, we leave Plains and drive back to Skidaway Island.

Billy Carter's Gas Station — Billy Carter’s Gas Station

To be in place for President Carter’s Sunday School class, we had made a weekend of it. We spent our nights in Americus, Georgia as there are no major hotels in Plains. On Saturday, we explored Plains. The old school where Jimmy and Rosalynn attended high school is now a museum and visitors center. The depot, which was Carter’s campaign headquarters and served as a backdrop for many photos, is also a museum that focuses on the 1976 Presidential Campaign. It was chosen as a headquarters as it was the only available space in town with a functioning bathroom. Ironically, the bathroom is no longer open.

The park between Main Street and the railroad tracks is a butterfly garden named for Rosalynn. Across the tracks and highway is the gas station, which was owned by Carter’s brother, Billy. This station became a favorite hangout of reporters who listened to Billy tell stories while guzzling beer. Today, it’s a museum dedicated to Billy Carter. There are two peanut processing plants in town and on this first weekend of October, the smell of peanuts is in the air as tractors pulled wagons of nuts into these facilities. There are also a few shops in town, mostly selling Carter memorabilia, and the Buffalo Café, which is where we enjoyed lunch.

Jimmy Carter's homestead (where he grew up) — The homestead where Carter grew up.

After lunch, we drove a few miles west of Plains to the Carter’s homestead. This was where Jimmy grew up. Seventeen acres, which includes their home, farm buildings and barns, and a country store, are preserved by the National Park Service. Park service employees, some dressed as farm hands, described life on the farm in the 1930s.

After touring the homestead, we drove back through Americus, to Andersonville, the site of the Confederate Prisoner of War camp along with the National POW Museum. Today, Andersonville is mostly a large field circled by a drive. Only the bunkers in which Confederate cannons where placed remain from the Civil War era. The gateway and part of the wall around the entry into which Union POWs were marched have been rebuilt, but around the drive are a number of signs and monuments describing the horrific conditions of the prisoners. In the National POW Museum, the stories of those captured are told, with major exhibits on POWs in World War Two, Korea and Vietnam. The exhibits reminds us of the price many paid for our political freedom.

Plains is roughly 230 miles west of Skidaway Island, depending on which route one drives. Before making the trip, one should check with the Maranatha Baptist Church to make sure that President Carter is planning on being there. This December, President Carter is scheduled to teach Sunday School on the 10^th, 17^th and 24^th.

Jeff Garrison is pastor of Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church

December 28, 2024January 6, 2025

2024 Christmas Letter

Christmas 2024

Dear Friends, Family, and Country-folks,

It’s been years since I have gotten a Christmas letter in the mail in time for Christmas. At least, this year, I’ll have it on line before the end of the Christmas season on January 6!

On Christmas Day, when I took the dogs out for the final time before bed, Cyrus the Swan, appeared to have planted the “northern cross” on the western horizon. The cross-like shape of the constellation reminds me of the truth of Christmas. Looking in the other direction, Orion rises on his side in the east. A bit higher in the sky is Taurus, the bull. On his forehead sits Jupiter, like a Bindi (the Hundi dot on the forehead), To the north along the are the Gemini twins with the red Mars on the same ecliptic, but closer to the horizon. My punched tin Moravian star burns over the front porch. The rest of the lights are off, as the strong winds a few days ago destroyed about half the strands which outlined the railing.

Laurel Fork was blessed with two wonderful Aurora Borealis shows this year, and I was at the beach for both (Kure Beach in Spring showing, which was cloudy, and on Hilton Head in October, where I could barely make it out). But I did see the comet several times his October, but it was best seen through binoculars. All seems to be in order in the heaven, but on earth, we’re like the stands of lights…

My Dad with a catch of flounder in the 1970s — My father with a catch of flounder in the 1970s

I’m glad that 2024 will soon be behind us. That doesn’t mean exactly looking forward to what 2025 might. From the chaos of our world and country to personal griefs, this past year has been crazy. The biggest shock was the death of my father in May. I was in DeTour Michigan when he went in for surgery for a blockage in his intestines. Things looked good. They spoke of releasing him from the hospital. I planned to head to Wilmington to see him a few weeks after I got back, but then things went south.

I rushed to Wilmington as he was undergoing another surgery and arrived as the surgeon stopped in to talk with my siblings and me. Again, for a day, things looked good, but the bleeding started again. The medical staff felt he couldn’t endure another surgery. Dad understood what was happening and was ready to die. They moved him to hospice care, where he spent his final days. For a couple of days, he was alert and saw lots of friends. All his children and most of his grandchildren and great grandchildren were there. Donna and Caroline came down and we rented a house on Kure Beach. While it was a nice place, it wasn’t the beach vacation I desired.

Grief has come over me many times this year with not being able to pick up the phone and call Dad to share something with him. At the same time, I realize I am blessed to still have a father at 67 years of age. With him gone, I’m now the oldest. In addition, I lost several friends, parishioners, and former parishioners this year.

Yet, a lot of good stuff that happened in 2024. In January, I met up with Bill Cheek, and old roommate from my Hickory days, to paddle in the Okefenokee Swamp. After that paddling, I began to study and for the first time since high school, became a licensed amateur radio operator. My call is KQ4PVG, but I’m thinking of applying for a noviety call sign and getting back my old call. I have been mostly active on 40 and 2 meters and beginning to regain an ear for morse code (which is no longer required for licenses).

In April, on my way to the Festival of Faith and Writing, I aimed toward the path of the eclipse and caught my second total solar eclipse in Springfield, Ohio. The eclipse was amazing for a couple of minutes. I feel blessed to have experienced two eclipses in totality (2017 and 2024). I’d never heard of Springfield, Ohio, but found it a pleasant town. Sadly, before the year was out, the town became well-known for rumors spread by a certain vice presidential candidate that illegal immigrants there enjoyed snacking on their neighbors’ pets. It turned out to be a lie, but truth doesn’t seem to matter anymore.

Freighter heading out of the St. Mary's River at DeTour MI and on toward Lake Huron.

After the Festival of Faith and Writing, I met up with Bob, a good friend from my Hastings days. We spent 8 days in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan reading and hiking. I always enjoyed hiking with Bob because of his knowledge of botany. We had a great time reading, writing, hiking, and watching freighters on the lake.

In May, we were able to move into our addition to our home. We enjoyed the additional space, all the windows and the cork floors. Our new back deck with views of the Buffalo was well used in summer and early fall. I thought we were about done with construction, but in November, we broke ground on a new 3 car garage to the southwest of our house. It should be done in January but as this is construction, it’ll probably be more like March or June.

My garden wasn’t much to write home about this year. Because of my father’s passing, I got everything in late, just in time for a six-week drought. When the rains finally came, it was too late. Besides, something ate my cucumber plants so I had nothing to pickle. The tomatoes did so-so. I had enough to eat a daily tomato sandwich for six weeks, but only ended up making 7 quarts of soup and 6 pints of salsa (a fraction of what I did in 2023). But because of not working in the garden, I spent many mornings walking on backroads with Brad and even got in a canoe trip on the New River with Mike.

My brother and I on the Greenbrier trail

In September, my brother Warren and I headed to West Virginia, where we spent a few days riding the Greenbrier Trail. We had a good time. I thought about borrowing my wife’s new e-bike, but my brother would have made fun of me doing that the rest of my life and would probably tell the story of it at my grave.

In September, a planned trip to Pittsburgh was cancelled as we braced for a brush of Helene. We were without power for 36 hours and lost a lot of limbs, but with a whole-house generator, it wasn’t exactly suffering like those in the North Carolina Mountains. In October, I attended the Theology Matter’s Conference on Hilton Head and then headed to Wilmington to preach at the 80^th anniversary service at Cape Fear Presbyterian Church.

In early December, I headed down to Harker’s Island to fish with two of my siblings, Warren and Sharon, along with Uncle Larry and his brother-in-law. We picked a frigid week, with some gale-forced winds, and only caught enough fish to one evening fish fry.

Donna continues to work the communication director for the Presbytery of the Peaks. Caroline still works for a cork company (and got us a great deal on cork flooring for the addition). Mia, our oldest dog, is slowing down but still in good health. Apple, Caroline’s Havanese, is as mischievous as any three-year-old. I continue to feel blessed to serve the two historic rock churches along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Preaching continues to be enlightening. This year I enjoyed working my way through Mark’s gospel. I have warned the churches of my intention to retire by the time I’m 70, but that still gives me a couple more years.

I continue to do a lot of walking and reading (look for my reading summary next week). Another treat is waking up in time to watch the morning light sweep across the Buffalo.

Looking toward the Buffalo at daybreak on December 24, 2024 — Panoranic view of the Buffalo from my study upstairs.

Blessings as we move into 2025.

Jeff Garrison