Driving all over the World

Trinidad Driver's License (1986)

I just returned from a trip to Ecuador.  I was there on a mission trip related to church work. I've been going there off and on since 2001.  It all started for me when a brother from the congregation I was attending was looking for people to accompany him to put on a youth camp there.  I had a passport. I had been on a mission trip once before, to Trinidad. I was active in church activities locally. I didn't speak Spanish and I had somehow gotten through High School and college without a foreign language. Anyway, the mission kept going and so did I - now traveling to a different part of the country.

Thinking about that reminded me of my trip to Trinidad in the 1980s. We had several go to do some follow up work on some correspondence style evangelism. It was my first exposure to a foreign country and frankly one of my first airplane rides. 

What I discovered as a young man is that not everyone thinks like me. I'm highly flexible - but when in charge, I'm rather detailed.  Well, the leader of this event decided to rent a bunch of cars so we could do the follow up. He hadn't done his homewor, so after two days of driving he discovered that the rental car company didn't care if we had valid driver's license or not.  That was between us and the law. So, we spent one morning at their equivalent of a DMV.

The leader decided to send us all through the lines to take the test since the test made no distinction between automobile drivers and commercial vehicle drivers. He figured if he kept paying for tests, he would eventually get enough drivers.  His bet paid off. I became one of the drivers.

That was my first experience driving in a place other than the Southern or Midwestern United States.

Since then, I have driven in cities all across the US including some of the larger and denser ones like, Miami, Orlando, New York, Boston, Atlanta, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Minneapolis, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Seatle, Los Angles, and San Francisco.  In Los Angles, one time, it was in a U-Haul (or Penske) pulling a trailer of High School Band equipment for their participation in the Tournament of Roses Parade.

I have also driven in other foreign countries since Trinidad. I've driven on the Autobahn in Germany. I've driven alone in Scotland - before GPS. I have driven in Ecuador and England - though not London.

In England, they must have seen Americans coming, because when my traveling companion requested an upgrade to handle the extra luggage we wound up with a fifteen-passenger van.  That is not the best choice for some of the back roads we had to travel on. This insured that I was the designated driver for everyone.

Thinking about driving I have noticed some cultural differences in driving in various places. In the US, except for large central city areas it is pedestrian beware! In Ecuador it is driver beware!  (See video starting at about 1:50). 

In the US we think in terms of Right of Way! In Scotland and England and to some extent in Ecuador they seem to think more often in terms of Give Way!  It is probably why Traffic Circles (or Roundabouts) seem to work better there. 

In Trinidad, at every traffic light where there are two lanes there would be four or five cars side by side waiting for the light.  

In the US a yellow light means to speed up so you don't get caught by the red light and a green light means (if you are first in line) proceed cautiously in case someone runs the red light.  In Ecuador there are countdowns letting you know the light is about to turn green and drivers often start moving on one or two - so don't you dare run a yellow light.

In the US we have bumper stickers that say, "BACK OFF!" or "If you can read this, you're too close!" In Ecuador, if you still have six centimeters you haven't hit anyone.

In the US passing on a two-lane road requires a mile of visibility and a prayer that the driver you pass doesn't speed up. In Ecuador, they pass on winding turns and if somebody comes from the other direction the vehicle being passed and the oncoming vehicle keep moving but slide to the outside edge and you drive between them.

Being anywhere it is important to know the culture. Driving anywhere is about knowing the driving culture. Next time you think someone is driving crazy - remember they may have just got back from driving in a whole nuther world.

Be careful out there!

 

Genealogical Treasures

1933 Seth Thomas Mantel Clock

I'm the oldest child and I married an oldest child.  My dad and my mom were oldest children. My wife was the daughter of an only boy (who had sisters) and an only child.  My dad's father was the last surviving child of two parents who "stayed home." As a result we have slowly become the curators of old family things.  Neither of us started out this way - but as time has passed the treasures filtered in. This is a story about some of those treasures and their original owners.

Back in December, I had a blog titled: Genealogy - Antebellum Ambrotypes. In that blog I talked about one of the treasures, an ambrotype, that may have been an ancestor of my wife. That one was a mystery.  Some of the others are also mysteries that are largely solved. 

Starting with one we know confidently is the 1933 Seth Thomas Mantel clock.  This clock belonged to my wife's grandparents, John and Mary Robinson.  They received or purchased it as they set up house in Nashville after they were married in August of 1933. It's an eight-day clock but now does require winding about every five or six days.

Keeping on the timekeeping theme we became the curators of several watches. Among them four pocket watches and two wristwatches which still operate. I usually wear the 1961 Elgin Sportsman that belonged to my father-in-law.  I occasionally wear the 1934 Hamilton Dixon that belonged to my grandfather, Ira Huckaby.

He had received the watch from a regular passenger, Anna Martz, while he was a taxi driver in Pensacola, FL.  She had helped him secure employment at Pensacola Naval Air Station and wanted him to have a nice watch to wear on the job. Sentimentally, he gifted to me when I started work after college. 

Of the four pocket watches two of them still keep great time and ironically, they are the oldest of the four. One is a 1911 Lady's Elgin time piece.  This one had belonged to my great-grandmother, Mary Ellen Wylie McCown. There is no special occasion that lines up with that date; however, her husband and my great-grandfather, Sylvester McCown, was spending a lot of time away from home in Louisiana working some logging operations between 1910 and 1915 (based upon 1910 Census data and Family Letters).

We don't have any correspondence that accompanied the gift, if indeed it was a gift from Sylvester to Mary Ellen, but an Appalachian style log cabin was engraved on the front surface of the watch case. Maybe this was to indicate a longing to be home with her.

The other fully functioning pocket watch is an 1879 American Watch Company (pre-cursor to Waltham) time piece.  The provenance on this one is not perfectly known but can be reasonably deduced. My dad gave the watch to me one Christmas about eight years ago. It was one of two "family heirlooms" that he was parting with.  (The other was an 1880's 38 caliber pistol that my brother received.) 

What dad knew about the watch was that his dad, Herbert, had only reported that it was his dad's (Sylvester) watch. However, this was a lady's watch! That meant the watch must have been his mother's or one of his grandmother's.

Sylvester's mother, Henrietta, is the most likely original owner of the watch. The 1879 manufacture date is closely aligned with her and her husband's (Monroe), 20th Wedding Anniversary in 1880. The watch didn't belong to his mother, because she had died in 1842 and his stepmother had living biological children. Similarly, Henrietta's mother died in the early 1840s and her stepmother also had living biological children. However, it is clear that Monroe and Henrietta took care of Henrietta's father's estate and her mother remained there until her death in 1888.  It is possible the watch belonged to her, but she would have received it at the age of 73 on no particular occasion. 

Among the other treasures are dishes, flatware (some silverplated but not Sterling), cameras (still and 8mm movie), nicknacks, coins (foreign and domestic), photos, letters, books, furniture and a jug. The last two have an interesting enough story to expand on in this blog.

Nashville Pottery Jug and our Farmhouse Chairs

We have a jug on our fireplace that was in the home of Tammy's mother.  I made a comment about how cool it was and suddenly it showed up at our house well over a decade ago. According to my mother-in-law it was her great-grandfather, Balum Robinson's, whiskey jug. That may be true, but it smells like it was used for several years as either a spittoon or as a used pipe tobacco receptacle. 

Then there are the six farmhouse chairs.  My wife's parents brought them to us when they downsized.  They couldn't get rid of them, but they didn't need or have room for them either. These had belonged to her dad's great aunt (Alma) and her husband (Jack). However, Jack was an only child and had obtained the furniture from his parents, Charles and Eugenia Gordon who had gotten them when they set up housekeeping after they married in 1901.

Here is something ironic. My father-in-law is the grandnephew of the original owner's daughter-in-law.  That makes me two in-law connections away coming into possession of these.  Except, because of Wikitree, and some genealogical sleuthing, I discovered the chairs belonged to second cousin I never knew I had. Eugenia and I share a great-grandfather (my fifth great-grandfather), Joseph Matthews, whose father, James, was a Revolutionary War soldier who participated in the Battle of Alamance.  

(You knew I was going to bring the topic back to the Revolutionary War didn't you!)

In the end, these objects remind me that family history isn’t just names and dates; it’s the quiet trail of things people loved, used, repaired, and passed down. I'll tell the stories. I'll be a steward of these treasures for a time. Perhaps these treasures will survive yet another generation or two with their stories intact. But at some point, if they survive, someone else will be the steward for a time.

AFTERWARDS:  A little more research is still required to fully support all the connections of the Matthew's family line, though the connection seems probable.