Happy Thanksgiving - Pollo y Papas

Pollo y Papas 

Thanksgiving is nearing. Today we are already preparing some of the foods that can be made early. 

Thinking of Thanksgiving we usually forego thinking of the detailed historical aspects it, like was the first one in the new world in 1621 in Massachusetts with the Pilgrims or was it in 1619 in Virginia when John Woodleefe landed with thirty-five settlers in Berkeley, VA.  Maybe you go further back to 1565 when Pedro Menedez de Aviles participated in a thanksgiving celebration at Saint Augustine, FL.  It is highly unlikely that you even think about Rene Goulaine de Laudonniere's thanksgiving near Jacksonville, FL in 1564 or Tristan de Luna's initiation of a thanksgiving mass upon landing near Pensacola, FL in 1559.

Instead, what we usually think about is food.  Thinking of food recently, I was having a conversation about some unusual foods that I have eaten, for someone from the US anyway. (For the curious some of those include: Alligator, iguana, squirrel, rabbit, guinea pig, turtle and insects.) That conversation led to the most interesting meals that I've enjoyed.

Thinking about that I realized the most interesting meals have nothing to do with the quality of the food. Those interesting meals are interesting because of where I am or who I am with. Let me share some of them with you.

The first was in Chattanooga at a place called the Chattanooga Choo-Choo. I was about 10 years old. It was special because, at the time, we never went out to eat at anything resembling a fancy place - because of affordability and because we were children. I remember the food came out on something called a "Lazy Susan" - which seemed such a strange name to me.

The next highly memorable meal was in Trinidad, West Indies. I had gone there with a group from church on a mission trip.  One of the local families invited me to their home.  The mangos weren't ripe yet, but we peeled one in the yard and ate it with a little salt on it.  When we were invited inside, we ate a communal dish where we would dip the pita-like bread into the thick curry chicken.  We used no forks or knives - just our fingers.

A third memorable meal was in England.  I was visiting in the home of some friends my wife and her parents had made while they were living there.  The hostess brought out several courses as we laughed and shared subtle and humorous differences between Americans and the British.

The final and most cherished memory is the one pictured in this blog. I was, again on a mission trip, this time visiting Machachi, Ecuador. My one-on-one Spanish is and was good enough to facilitate necessary communication.  However, it was not and is not good enough to keep up with the conversations of multiple Spanish speakers in their conversations. I knew we were going to visit Laguna Limpiopungo, on Cotopaxi but other than that, I didn't know our plans precisely.

We had visited several families there. At one of them, the young man was just finishing cleaning a chicken. He was spraying the feathers out of the walkway near his house. I had no idea that I would soon be eating that same chicken.

Later that afternoon after driving to the lake and walking about portions of the nature walk there - we got back in our cars and trucks and made our way to a plateau behind some large boulders to shield us from the fierce cold winds.  There we sat down to handfuls (or in my case the pot lid for a plate) of boiled chicken and potatoes.  One of my hostesses broke off pieces of the chicken and passed it to each person there.

After eating we sat around enjoying the moments and watched the children as they played among the boulders. "King of the Hill" was the game to play.

I didn't understand all the conversation, but I relished in the moment, in the place, and in the welcoming hospitality. Though it wasn't Thanksgiving - it was a moment I am thankful to have experienced.

Happy Thanksgiving! Pass the relish and relish the moments!

 

American Revolution - Long Ago?

Tennessee Flag

I haven't blogged in a while about the American Revolution in my year-long celebration of the semiquincentennial. That is a word you don't see very often (except maybe this year) meaning half of five hundred years (250th anniversary). Today, though, seemed like a good day to revisit the topic.  This evening the Public Broadcasting Station (PBS) will begin showing Ken Burns' The American Revolution. He promises to highlight the story in a similar vein as I have been presenting the subject - through the eyes of the populace. He has been working on the project for around 10 years with a team of historians - so the revelations it will highlight should be truly educational.  No doubt it will provide nuanced narratives and provocative perspectives that we never saw in our school aged history classes.

Today, I'm looking at one of my wife's ancestors through her adoptive line.  This ancestor is NOT an unsung hero. The lineage runs like this:  Tammy daughter of Jim, son of Zora Lancaster, daughter of Will Bob, son of James, son of Roxalina Cowan, daughter of Ira, son of Catherine Trousdale, daughter of James Trousdale.

James Trousdale was a Captain under the command of General Francis Marion (a.k.a The Swamp Fox). As such, James marched to Charleston, SC to defend the town and port from the British. He was wounded by a saber to the face at the Battle of Guilford Court House in March of 1781 and captured at the Battle of Hillsborough that September. However, he was able to witness the surrender of Cornwallis following the Siege of Yorktown in October.

Because of his service to the Revolutionary Army and its cause, he was granted 640 acres in North Carolina.  That part of North Carolina became part of Davidson County, TN.  Specifically, his farm is the town of Gallatin. His son, William, went on to become the thirteenth Governor of Tennessee from 1849 to 1851.

William died at the age of 81 in 1872.  We like to think of ourselves as far removed from those days 250 years ago.  But, I met my great grandmother, Wilma Moore Rose, who was born only 10 short years after William, the son of James Trousdale, died in 1872.  In the early 1970s, I sat on the lap of a celebrated American Indian, Chief Red Fox, who was born two years before William died.  Yes, I know, I'm getting up there - but our country's founding wasn't that long ago.

 

 

 

Crepe Myrtle???

 

Fifty Foot Crepe Myrtle

This Doug's Diversion strays from my normal genealogy and revolutionary war topic to a random diversion...woodworking.

Last winter, I decided it was time.  We had a crepe myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica) that had been planted too close to the house some forty years ago. (I counted 43 rings.) The house was built 45 years ago, so it may have been part of the original subdivision plantings.

In any case, this tree was dropping buds and flowers on the roof that were difficult to blow off if I didn't get to it before a rain. Normally, crepe myrtles are somewhat short bushy trees topping out around 25 feet tall or so.  But this one was a giant! After I cut it down, I measured it at 50 to 55 feet tall.

I contacted a friend that owns a mill to ask if he wanted any of the lumber.  His reaction - "Crepe Myrtle! You can't get lumber out of that!"  I said, "It has a four-foot trunk section that is almost two feet across." He said, "huh!" and agreed to take it, mill it, and see if it would sell. To date he has had few takers.

Milling the Myrtle

Now I am far from an accomplished woodworker. Dad did some home repairs, electronic, and mechanical work when I was growing up - but no woodworking.  My granddad and his father had been carpenters; but I had never had any hands-on instruction from them.  And...I never took woodworking in school. My first attempt at any woodworking was refinishing a crib for my daughter before she was born. (It doesn't meet current safety standards or the emerging standards of the time --- oops! She survived anyway.) I designed and built some bookshelves for children's books. I designed and built a couple functional, but ugly, corner desks.  I've refinished some chairs and a chest of drawer. I built an end table, a military coin rack, and a few other small projects. 

You add to minimum experience and lack of training to my propensity for not putting out cash for the latest gadgetry (In other words, I have a circular saw, a drill, a sander, a chop saw, sponge brushes made from foam packing egg crates, and some hand tools.) and a bit of impatience and you can get some rough end products. 

This crepe myrtle, though, captured my attention.  It is a medium hard and medium dense wood, but it easily sands to a very fine smooth and uniformly even surface. While little talked about, it is a highly versatile wood. What I found most interesting about crepe myrtle is its tiger striping pattern that shows up throughout the wood. 

Since the tree had been part of the house since its earliest days - I decided it needed to have a piece of furniture in the house that was made out of the wood. I had built two end tables out of sinker cypress some years before. One of them, however, I was never satisfied with. I decided to make a second end table out of the crepe myrtle wood. I got the mill owner to help me by running some of the rough-cut boards through a surface planer.  I then joined three boards to make the top and with a circular saw (not a table saw or a band saw) cut some veneer strips to cover up some "carpentry cheating" I had done to attach the unmilled legs more easily. 

I finished the whole project off with some simple polyurethane finish. 

End Table made of Crepe Myrtle Boards and Logs

I have some more boards left. One, from the main trunk and several 3x3 post-like pieces from the trunk.  I may use them to do another end table - but if I do one of them will have to be sold or given away, because I'm out of room for end tables.