On Sunday morning we rolled out of Mattoon Illinois and headed South toward our destination for that day, a small town outside Nashville, Tennessee.
Not far into the day's drive, we spotted these strange white lookout towers in a field.....
Anybody know what that is all about?
Then we passed through this little town....
I snapped the photo too late to get the other sign to the right of the town sign that claims to be the birthplace of this guy......
Hey! That's a lot with old oil drilling/pumping equipment in Newton Illinois.....
And outside of town there were oil derricks pumping away in the corn fields.....
We passed from Illinois, into Indiana, crossing the Wabash River.....
And while at the Tourist Information Center I saw this.......
Is there any state around here not infected with "Lincoln-itis"?!
Back in the car and shortly we crossed the Ohio River.....
And then we were in Kentucky....
.....where we stopped for lunch at a place called Grandy's in the town of Owensboro.
After a quick fast food-y lunch we hit the road again, going through Bowling Green, where I got another photo for my Water Tower Collection, only I still had the camera on movie mode from our lunch stop so you get to hear me swear on this quick clip.....
Here's the lame still photo I did end up getting......
After Bowling Green another water tower for my collection in Franklin KY.....
Then we passed by Kentucky Downs.....
We hit the open road for a bit once we crossed the border into Tennessee.....
Just so you know, we were here in Tennessee to visit my first friend in life, Marsha.
Our parents lived next door to each other when we were just babies so I consider her my first friend.
Here we are many years ago at my 2nd Birthday party.....
Marsha is in the middle with the "deer in the headlights" look and I am the hambone on the right mugging for the camera....
Anyway, Marsha now lives in Tennessee with her DH Parker and we reconnected in 2013 via Facebook, which led to an offer "to come visit if you ever get by this way", so when we knew we were going to be in the general vicinity in August we made plans to come visit.
I don't think I had seen Marsha since my mother's funeral in 2000.
After arriving in Tennessee, we crossed the Cumberland River on a fairly rickety bridge.....
We made a wrong turn, somewhere after driving by Reba McEntire's old Tennessee estate.....
Of course, we weren't up in the air, so the view was more like this....
We did see a neat jet while we were somewhere circling Nashville lost on a back road.....
About 20 minutes after passing this jet TWICE, we got straightened out and found Marsha's house.
We had a yummy dinner she fixed us, then talked and drank and made up for lost time that night, and I didn't even think to take one photo or movie that evening.
Silly me.
But aren't you secretly glad I didn't? ;-)
I did think to haul out my computer to download this mess of photos and empty my camera and check emails.
While I had it out, I checked my Ancestry account and one thing let to another(as they will do)and we got to talking about ancestors and family stuff. Marsha then pulled out a big manila envelope that her DH had with some research someone in his family had done on Parker's ancestors. I pawed through it a bit and soon discovered that......are you ready for this?.....I am related to Marsha's husband!
Does this shit happen to anybody else besides me?!?! lolz
He has an interesting family tree as I've done a bit more research on it since August.
He is related to Earl Hamner, who wrote the book "Spencer's Mountain" which was made into a movie, that became the basis for the TV series "The Waltons". Parker was aware of this family connection though I haven't been able to find the direct link yet, though his Hamners are from the same area as the Earl Hamner line.
But I have since found that Parker is related to Patrick Henry's wife(Dorothea Dandridge) and his 7 x Great Grandfather was the Uncle of Martha Dandridge Custis who later married George Washington.
So he is a 1st cousin 7x removed of the 1st First Lady of the USA.
Unfortunately I am not related to Parker through any of these lines.
I am related to him through Captain Samuel Snead and Alice Gallimore though I haven't done any work on his particulars of this ascent to verify the claim yet.
This happens to be the same line that Sonya Ann and I are related through.
So if you are reading this SA, my childhood friend's Hubs is related to us both. 8-))
The hours passed quickly with some more drinks and chatter and it was time to hit the bed all too quickly.
I did remember to take a shot or two with Marsha on her back porch before we left the next morning.....
Then we packed ourselves back into the car for what was going to be a very long day of driving with a couple of stops along the way.
We waved goodbye to Marsha.....
And we were off again!
Another day another adventure......
Sluggy
