Featured

Granny White Pike

August 27, 2021September 14, 2021 / Chris White / 2 Comments

Street names have always been a curious thing to me. Having worked in several different professional roles where street names are pretty important (police officer, real estate developer, private investigator, county planner, board member for an emergency communications district), I could fill a bushel basket with all of the strange intricacies that are considered and the enormous gravity that is commonly placed on the street name selection process along with a surprising list of corollary weights and outcomes associated with casually naming a new road.

For the most recent 11 years, I’ve been a County Planner, so I write and enforce policy and standards for lot and road development as well as providing comprehensive land use studies and recommendations for future growth. So pretty much everyday, I’m witness to and have a stake in the perpetual development and redevelopment of the county where I call home.

Even though I spend my down-time thinking and frolicking about much simpler ideas and activities, trying my best to explore this nasty habit of mine – writing interesting tidbits about seemingly uninteresting things – my professional life occasionally weaves and lattices its way onto my private/personal writing slate. Even my hobbies creep into this thing with street names.

One such hobby of mine is that I collect old maps. I love to cross reference old street names with new one’s. It gives me a broader perspective on how an area developed and evolved over time.

Apparently, my writer persona is just not as cool as the me in real life…

The most difficult thing for me as a writer of nonsense, is to keep from sounding too professional, technical, and boring. If I’m ever going to lure my wife to read more than the first couple of paragraphs of anything I write, I’m definitely going to have to find some stylistic method in which to arouse the same amusing thoughts about street signs as a typical reader would feel about someone passing gas in a car. Apparently, my writer persona is just not as cool as the me in real life…

But, alas, I’m a technical and serious kinda guy, concealing a goofball in my gut. You know what that means; I’m not really overweight, I just have a dual personality that needs to eat too. I’m working on it; you get what you get – steer your way back onto the subject Chris.

Back in the day, we didn’t place much of an emphasis on street names. There were only a dozen or so anyway, no real way to mess that up. We just named our streets after prominent citizens or important topographical features like River Street, Mill Street, Church Street, or Washington Avenue.

I’m sure there’s some popular historic figure out there with the not-so-common last name of “Main”, but alas, I haven’t found the guy yet. I know he’s out there ready to be discovered, I’m confident of it.

Today, its more common to name new streets after our dogs and grandchildren. Another popular thing to do is to find people who weren’t famous when a street was first named, but who are famous now, and rename our old streets.

There’s hope for Kim Kardashian yet. The boring way to do it is, of course, to just let our engineers name them from pre-approved lists of street names that don’t sound similar nor repeat existing street names with different suffixes (e.g., Kardashian Ave., Kardashian St., Kardashian Blvd.).

Why is all this stuff about street names so important you ask? Well, when you’re 75 years old and living in your brand-new assisted living apartment on James Avenue, tight-fistedly clutching your hokey plastic life-alert device strung from your neck, and have reason to push the button and repeat those celebrated words, “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!”, you’re going to pray to your maker that there’s not another assisted living facility on a road called James Street on the opposite side of town.

Lots of your own accumulated bad karma from 40 years of dedicated service as a meter reader just may guarantee that the 911 operator, Candy; we’ll call her, who’s taking your call, erroneously sends the ambulance intended for you to the other assisted living instead. Because Candy lives just down the road a piece from the other assisted living facility and mistakenly assumes you are there instead of here. That would suck; but weirder things have happened. And that’s why communities take that sort of thing so seriously.

Growing up in Nashville and having the name “White” as my surname, meant every time my parents drove through the intersection of Granny White Pike and Harding Place, meant I’d be in the back seat of the car wondering to myself, “Who was this Granny White; is she my Granny White? And, if she’s not my Granny, what made this particular Granny White so famous as to have a street named after her? Eventually, I did ask my grandfather (Frank White), about this mysterious Granny of mine.

You know, grandfather’s are famous for telling tall tales. I could write an entire blog about my Papaw White and some of his hilarious stories. He was quite the character for sure. Mammaw White (Blanche) – my own Granny White, was his equal in every way – only much shorter and without the chewing tobacco in her mouth.

My grandfather, however, was a certified, genuine, expert on THE Granny White. Once he knew he had my undivided attention, he carefully removed the stinky cheap cigar from his mouth, blew out a bellowing stench of white smoke, then put on a quasi conspiratorial expression before commencing to tell an intriguing story about Granny White’s famous boarding house, the best in the land.

Papaw told me, in his own metered style, that Granny White, as she came to be known, was a poor widow and most definitely an ancestor or ours, who came to Tennessee in its early years, scant of supplies or anything else with the obvious exception of freedom. He said she had fallen victim to countless native “Indian” attacks at the fort in Nashville, the result of which took her husband and one of her poor children from her.

He told me her husband had been a Revolutionary War hero and was given many acres of land in Tennessee by George Washington himself, in payment for his gallant service in the War of Independence. The poor widow used her inheritance, sold part of the land, and decided to build a fine boarding house on the remainder. The funny part of his story, and there always was a funny part, Papaw explained to me how the widow ended up marrying an old Indian Chief nicknamed “Chief She-She”.

Papaw repeated his story to me as if I were carrying down an important piece of family history. My grandfather continued; Cherokee Chief She-She, without good command of the English language, was accustomed to sitting on the elaborate front porch of her boarding house, smoking a corn cob pipe, and would always reply “She, She” to any arriving guests, accentuated by his pointing toward the front door of the house. This apparently, as if to say to the guest(s), “I don’t know shit, Granny is just inside that door, go right on in.”

Great stuff, right? But, as an amateur genealogist and the Technical and Serious guy I told you about earlier in the blog, I eventually had little choice but to try and trek down a more historically accurate version of my grandfather’s colorful summary. And, as in any story handed down from a family member that comes from a generation people without computers, instant access to the library of congress, or DNA analysis, some of what you have heard about a great many things relating to your family may be complete bullshit and some may bear a ring of truth. Example: this very same grandfather used to tell me that I was named after Captain John White of Mayflower fame.

I actually knew that wasn’t true when he said it because of two reasons: First, my first name is Jon, not John, and second because my mother told me she loved the spelling of the name Jon because it looked exotic and maybe even French (Jean). So, since it was my fancy-bourgeoisie mother who actually named me, and since she’d so exquisitely explained her rationale in choosing my name, I think she will have to stand as the expert witness on the subject. So, it wasn’t like I hadn’t become accustomed to getting a heaping of bullshit with my corn flakes. But as a child, you just learn to accept the stories for what they are – indelible memories and experiences worthy of honorable mention in a grandson’s blog, 40 years down the road.

Anyway, as I started to do my research on Granny White, it seemed to me as though fact and fiction have become so thoroughly mixed in her story that we may always have some doubt as to our ability to determine who she really was and what actual circumstances surrounded her moving to middle Tennessee. But, she was definitely real, and there are not only records of her success, recorded deeds and a will, but there were also stories told and articles written about her from notable people.

Aside from those stories and records, it seems the whole story of Granny White and the pike that bears her name has never been fully recorded. But in 1934-35, the General Francis Nash chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Nashville, commissioned its historian, Mrs. Edythe Rucker Whitley, to “collect any available information that could be found, including anecdotal stories, for eventual publication”. When the project was completed, the chapter distributed typewritten copies of Reminiscences of Granny White Pike and Its Neighbors, a work from Mrs. Whitely which contains the most detailed information on the Pike, now available in the Tennessee Library of Archives.

Fortunately for us and my little blog, the DAR was able to assemble a great deal of information about Granny White, but the report’s principal area of concentration was centered on the history of the road itself along with the people who lived along it in the 1930’s. About the only information on the legend of Granny White herself is to be found in newspaper clippings from the Nashville Tennessean and Banner.

A more popular and more often repeated story, was that Granny White was a poor widow who left her home in North Carolina with two small, orphaned, grandchildren (aged eight and ten), and an old slave named Zachery came to the settlement at Fort Nashboro to start a new life for herself and the children. Her later success was indicated by her eventual acquisition of land, horses, and cattle. In addition, she became hostess of an extremely fine tavern.

This version of the story appears to have taken much of its color from the circumstances surrounding its origin. Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, by way of Tennessee, presented it in one of his speeches to the United States Senate, and thus the account went into the Congressional Record. The Senator appears to have added considerable gloss to his story in an effort to win support for legislation advocating provisions of land for settlers in new parts of the country – the first Wild West if you will. So, the story told isn’t fully reliable.

To illustrate how these settlers could make successful lives for themselves in the wild western frontier, Benton dramatically related the story of the sixty-year-old woman who left her North Carolina home with two small boys for the Cumberland settlement, a distance of six or seven hundred miles. This trip was made necessary, he said, because local courts and religious authorities refused to grant Mrs. White possession of her grandchildren because she lacked the means to support them.

The Benton story was repeated as follows:

When Granny White arrived in the Cumberland settlement after some time in East Tennessee where she earned a living by selling her own baked goods, a kind Irishman, Thomas McCrory, sold her some land at a nominal price. He granted her an indefinite period of time in which to pay. The property consisted of faces of two adjoining hills. Because the hills were so steep, so the story goes, Granny White had to support her pumpkins with stakes to keep them from rolling down the hillside and bursting.
Thomas Hart Benton

A search of land records in the State Archives office reveals several inaccuracies in Senator Benton’s account, as well as my own papaw White’s story. Granny White ( or, more properly, Mrs. Lucinda White) arrived in Middle Tennessee sometime before 1803 near the state’s 8^th birthday. Her first home was located in what is now Williamson County. She lived there with several children, not grandchildren.

It is true, however, that she later purchased land in Nashville, but from Wolsey Warrington not Thomas McCrory. The deed transaction was recorded on January 2, 1803, was listed as fifty acres and for a purchase price of three hundred dollars. The property was located on an old spring and beside an old buffalo trail known at that time as the Middle Franklin Turnpike.

There are yet other slight distortions from the Benton story. North Carolina records suggest that Lucy or Lucinda may have been the wife of a Revolutionary soldier, Zachariah White. Such a man was listed as a local militia soldier of the Pasquotank County, North Carolina, regiment in 1755. It seems that sometime between 1760 and 1766, White married Lucy, most likely the daughter of William Wilson of Chowan County, North Carolina. Aside from being a militia volunteer, Zachariah was a pioneer schoolteacher.

A soldier named Zachariah White was listed as being killed during an attack by Chickamauga Indians when they attacked the French Lick establishment in the Battle of the Bluff, in the defense of what is now Davidson County (Nashville) during the Revolutionary War, and for that loss his family was given a certain 640 acres of land in the county. If “Granny” White was Zechariah’s widow, she owned land in what was then Davidson County when she left North Carolina and was perhaps not wandering aimlessly as Senator Benton had suggested. Williamson County was formed out of Davidson County in 1799, land grants would have been awarded in 1784.

Military land grants were awarded to persons for military service in the Revolutionary War, the amount of acreage determined by rank. Pre-emption land grants were awarded to various qualifying families and heirs of deceased soldiers who died in battle, during, or after the war. The State of Tennessee was a part of North Carolina until 1796. Davidson County, including much of northern middle Tennessee, was originally carved off as a military reservation intended to be divvied up as a part of the Act.

From these North Carolina records,

“Monday, 10 May 1784, the following persons satisfied the requirements of pre-emption and had made the necessary petitions: (Long list of names to follow). And the committee are further of opinion that the heirs or devisees of Zachariah White (and others), who were killed in the settlement and defense of the said County of Davidson, receive grants for the same number of acres in the same manner, and on the same terms and conditions as the former.”

What stood out in that original record is that Zachariah White was the very first soldier mentioned by name from the pre-emption Act intended to award land to fallen soldiers. Why? It certainly had nothing to do with alphabetical order. He was awarded 640 acres, which was the amount given to all soldiers holding the rank of Private. NCO’s were said to be awarded 1,000 acres, Captain’s 3,840 acres, Major’s 4,800, and so on with General’s being given 12,000 acres.

Despite the purchase of a book of surveys for military land grants to Tennessee, I cannot find the actual survey for Zachariah despite his name mentioned in the first 10 pages of the book as having been granted the 640 acres. I did, however, find a survey plat for a Benjamin White, which could have been his son, but I can’t verify the record. If so, the grant would have been along the Harpeth River near the present day Leapers Fork – in what is Williamson County today.

When Zachariah was killed, Lucy was thirty eight years old, a widow, and penniless. Lucy White, no doubt, struggled to raise two orphaned grandchildren by herself. And for the next eighteen years, she endured a life of virtual poverty in North Carolina. She may have inherited land in Nashville, but getting to it might prove to be a daunting task for someone without the means to pay for a trip. Although short in stature, Lucy was long on willpower. She is said to have possessed a larger-than-life personality, was an accomplished cook, and combined a gentle nature with a terrific wit.

Records, however, show few connections between Lucy and Zachariah White except the practice, common among eighteenth-century families, to continue family names with their children. In the will of Mrs. Lucinda White, recorded on August 24, 1816, certain bequests are left to her sons John and Benjamin. There are earlier records which link Zachariah White also to two sons, John and Benjamin. These facts caused Mrs. Whitley in her research for the DAR to conclude, “Now we have proof that John was a son of Lucy, and that John was an heir of Zachariah and John was a brother of Benjamin; therefore, if John was Lucy’s son, brother of Benjamin and etc. then Lucy’s husband was Zachariah White.”

In 1800, dirt poor, and with nothing to lose and the promise of land in Nashville, the sixty year old white haired grandmother, along with Uncle Zachary (an old slave) loaded up the children, Willis and Thomas, into an ox cart and began an eight hundred mile journey over the Appalachian Mountains toward the Cumberland Territory. It was recorded that twice along the way, Lucy stopped to setup bakery stands to make ends meet, selling bread and ginger cakes. Each time, packing up and moving on when she’d made enough money to continue.

It gradually occurred to her that with all of the wagons headed westward, there just might be a long-term opportunity in all this. Finally, after three years of traveling, Lucy arrived in Nashville, Tennessee. In a time when women were taught to “keep silent,” Lucinda White would manage to operate a flourishing business where I’m confident she did lots and lots of talking. She built her famous house near the bottom of one of her two hills where a road passed southward from Nashville. Lucy, it is said, quickly established gardens and orchards.

With the proceeds, she obtained bed linens and fabricated other textiles by hand using her old spinning wheel. She decided that her home would be an excellent location for an inn. With the help of her sons, she built a fine house with lots of extra space for passers-by. The tavern was opened in about 1812 and soon became, according to historian John Trotwood Moore, the most noted inn, and and essential stagecoach stop, between Louisville and New Orleans. If Granny White had kept a guest book and if it were still available, Mr. Moore wrote,

“We would perhaps be able to read the names of many extremely well-known people who stopped to enjoy her hospitality and good food. Just a few of the noted people known to have stayed there were Sam Houston, John Bell, Edmund Dillahunty, James K. Polk, Andrew Jackson, and Thomas Hart Benton. “
John Trotwood Moore

The only known surviving photograph of Granny White’s Inn. (Tennessee State Archives)

One famous anecdotal story concern’s one such notable guest who decided to ruffle Granny White’s composure by putting a frog in one of her butter-milk crocks. He informed several members of his traveling party of what he had done, and they watched all evening long to see what would happen when the servers and their hostess discovered the unwelcome guest. As the evening grew longer after the guests had enjoyed their fine supper, they realized that bedtime was nearing, and no one had heard any excitement concerning the frog. The notably mischievous guest could restrain himself no longer and went to investigate. Finding the crock empty, he asked Granny White what happened to the buttermilk. He was somewhat taken aback when she told him it had all been served him that evening.

The fame of Granny White was to outlive her by many generations. Her life as an innkeeper was not long-lived, however, for she died in 1816 at the ripe old age of 73. From a hardscrabble beginning, Lucy White had achieved a her destiny and lived a life more notable than any woman of the era. Why the leaders and shepherds of the modern feminist movement haven’t recognized Granny White with a monument escapes all reason, for she was certainly a commercial force with which to be reckoned at at time when women were socially handcuffed.

Granny White is buried in a small cemetery on what was her land on Granny White Pike about six miles from Nashville. Near her grave are the graves of three others – one of a child, the other two of adults. It is possible that the child’s grave belongs to Thomas, one of the grandsons mentioned in the traditional story. Lucy White did have one child who died after reaching maturity, and she left some orphaned children.

One of the adult graves may be that of Lucy’s daughter Kesiah who was mentioned in the will, but who apparently never married. The other adult grave remains a mystery.

The will of Granny White provides some interesting reading, if for nothing else its thoroughness. She left the following provisions: to son John $15; to son Benjamin $15; to daughter Kesiah $15; to grandson Willis White – a slave boy named Lewis, four cows, five one-year-old calves, one sorrel horse, six hogs, two sheep, one bureau, two boxes, three beds, a bedstead and bed furniture, three pots, one chest, one skillet and lid, one skillet and frying pan, one pot rack, three tables, “all my pork that is salted for this present year,” four trays, one set of knives and forks, one set of cups and saucers, six pewter plates, six earthen ones, one pewter dish, one and one half dozen spoons, one pair of dog irons, one looking glass, all household and kitchen furniture, all corn, one fodder stack, ten gallons of whiskey, twenty gallons of vinegar, one tub of “laird,” all poultry, and “all my wearing appearrel (sic).”

Ironically, $15 dollars in 1816 would be the equivalent of $290 dollars today in 2021. Not all that much money. It makes one wonder what she may have thought about John, Benjie, and Kesiah? Willis pretty much got everything she owned, including her “wearing appearrel”. I hate to assign my 21st Century views to a 19th Century custom, but doesn’t this sound as if Lucinda was protecting Willis from what she viewed might be a difficult life ahead? I don’t know, but this is why I’m often spellbound by digging deep in historical records. It sometimes sheds light on how people were experiencing the same sorts of things we deal with today.

The family of Zechariah and Lucinda White apparently were: (1) Joshua, who died in Davidson County in 1817 – there is no positive connection between him and Granny White, but names of children listed in his will (Wilson, Dempsey, Jacob, Jabez, etc.) tally with those of Lucy’s family in North Carolina; (2) a son, possibly named Robert; (3) Wilson, said to have died unmarried and to have been buried in Franklin in a plot with Benjamin; (4) John, named in the will; (5) Kesiah, named in the will; and (6) Benjamin, named in the will, who was born on June 23, 1771, in North Carolina. There may have been other children, but no proof has been found.

Aside from the high probability that my paternal ancestors may have been related to Zachariah, I’m very confident my family did not directly derive from this particular Granny White. My paternal roots do come from North Carolina during the colonial period and from the same general vicinity as did Zachariah. At most, we’re distant cousins. That will be yet another tidbit of information I will have to dig for at a later date.

In the years that followed this courageous woman’s ordeal, efforts have obviously been made to maintain the memory of Granny White. She was officially honored when the Granny White Turnpike Company was incorporated on January 25, 1850. And even though there’s no real effort in modern times to celebrate her now, she was clearly a prominent person of her day – a rare figure of strength for women of that era.

In the 1930’s, the Everett Beasley family acquired rights to her land and decided to set aside the area around the site of the old inn. Of course, the original structure had long ago fallen down, but the Beasley’s found a log structure similar to it. They made arrangements for the house, purchased in North Carolina, to be moved to Nashville and reassembled on the site of Granny White’s inn. For a number of years, the Beasley’s maintained the building and allowed it to be used for various meetings. Eventually it became unsafe, and the property was closed to the public. Now, of course, nothing remains of the original inn and the entire area has been sold and resold, carved up, divided, and developed. All that remains is the tiny little cemetery.

What about my grandfathers account of Chief She-She. Was he real, made up, or some other person that existed in a different place that my grandfather mistakenly attached to Granny White. I decided at first that She-She was just an invented person of interest during a burst of creativity to make his story sound more interesting?

It makes sense that my grandfather would have become acquainted (somewhat) with her story at that time. My father was born in 1935, so my grandfather would have been a curious 40 year old adult living near the area when this renewed interest and efforts were made by the Beasley family to memorialize the site of the Inn.

But alas, I discovered yet another mixed couple running an Inn about 40 miles further down the Natchez Trace around the same time as Granny White was in business. Only, this Native American was called She-Boss and the Inn nicknamed the SheBoss Place. Prior to the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the Chickasaw’s had signed a treaty stating white settlers could operate businesses along the Natchez Trace so long as an Indian was the proprietor. A widow is said to have operated an inn there with her Indian second husband who spoke little English. He was not a chief. According to legend when travelers approached with questions about accommodations, he would only point to his wife and say, “she boss.”

It seems the stories my grandfather learned as a young man, stayed with him quite a long time, but were perhaps mixed up a little or attached to other stories along his adventurous 81 year path of life. He wasn’t such a creative type after all. I think I will continue to use the Chief She-She story, it’s just too good to forget. Out with She-Boss, in with She-She.

As one of Nashville’s pioneers, Granny White’s two-hundred year old story is one of ingenuity, perseverance, and entrepreneurial spirit. I’m delighted I took this path to get to know her and my grandfather just a little bit better. I hope you enjoyed the journey as much as I did. Perhaps Granny White is largely a legend in the history of Nashville, but those of us who believe in southern hospitality, good food, and good humor, will never be convinced.

Best Lil’ Ho House in Nashville

August 6, 2021September 3, 2021 / Chris White / 10 Comments

It was none other than the esteemed Thomas Jefferson, a founding father and Secretary of State (at the time), whom first directed that the United States should conduct a decennial census. His rationale need not be questioned, but for the conspiracy theorist friends of mine, it was, well, uhm, it was for reasons I can’t really disclose. Just kidding; I think we all know why.

That very first census happened in 1790 and we’ve conducted a census in every year ending in a zero digit since that date. Our most recent census, the second one we’ve conducted in the 21^st century, marks 230 years of this kind of detailed record keeping. Now you know who started the whole thing.

As a person who’s been utterly transfixed in genealogy research for at least a couple decades now, I’ve often used old census records to either discover new distant relatives or establish birth years or even learn about occupations, birth states, and the countries or origin for a great many of my very distant relatives. For the most part, pretty much any census record you’ll find, of the same year, will look similar and hold the same types of information.

Although considerable care has been used from location to location and from decade to decade to promise some level of uniformity in the collection of these records, the vast number of people involved in the task has made complete consistency all but impossible. That said, sometimes you get lucky and find the good stuff; you know, the things you’d never expect to discover.

So fortunate for us were those rare individuals who took their census taker roles more serious, and undertook the collection of information no modern millennial would ever dream of going the extra mile to collect. Because of those wonderful mavericks and mustangs, we get to know some not-so-common knowledge about some pretty interesting ancestors. In rare instances, some census takers took it upon themselves to ask a few more questions than they were instructed to ask.

Some early census-takers, for example, took it upon themselves to completely alphabetize their local census. In at least one case, that of Wilkes County, North Carolina in 1820, the alphabetizing was done by first name! On other occasions certain record takers had recorded not only the state in which an individual was born but also the county. With such peculiarities and inconsistency in various censuses, the practices of individual census marshals have, on occasion, given us some incredible insights. Or, perhaps better said – highlights and unusual observations, which would have otherwise been denied to us had strict uniformity in census-taking been required.

Most interesting to me, a Nashville native, are the highlights recorded by Nashville census-takers in 1860, and a prime example of what I’ve been attempting to describe. In 1860, the city of Nashville was right-smack-dab in the opening crosshairs for what would soon become known to southerners as the War of Northern Aggression. War not yet begun, nor the city yet occupied by union soldiers, Nashville was brimming with its gentrified grey-uniformed military men, strategically positioning themselves for the inevitable, who had peculiar needs that couldn’t be properly dealt with while they were away from their more genteel homes. Those “needs” evolved into a thriving practice of the oldest profession indeed. Nashville, it seems, became a hotbed (pun intended) for prostitution.

Although I cannot imagine that the instructions given to census-takers that year, or as in previous years, ever referred to prostitutes at all. The Nashville marshals, for some strange reason no longer discernable, took it upon themselves in 1860 to count and catalog every soiled-dove and lady-of-the-evening it could possibly label, accuse, or identify.

Thus, the 1860 Nashville census included data gathered on the extent of prostitution in this city. In fact, venereal disease became such an issue in Nashville that in 1863 the city began issuing professional licenses for prostitutes and their respective bordello’s in order to help keep the soldiers – and ladies – healthy. Such a careful count of these ladies does not appear to have been made before nor since, nor does my research reveal any similar practices to have ever been attempted in other cities.

Little historical attention has been devoted to the world’s oldest profession. Almost nothing, aside from the obvious, is known of its operations, nor of the circumstances under which it flourished. My mind circles back to an Italian getaway where Emily and I visited the ancient ruined city of Pompeii.

There in Italy too, early houses of prostitution have actually been identified an excavated. Caricatures of erect penis’ carved into the basalt stones that line the ancient stone roadways, just as hard as in historical times, were and still are ever-erect and pointed directly toward the doorways of these historical ho-houses. It’s quite a humorous thing to actually witness but these archeologically important graffities tell us emphatically that it really is the oldest profession as these ancient houses of ill repute were already two thousand years old when they were covered with volcanic ash in 79 AD.

It is, of course, impossible to know exactly how many prostitutes there were in my beloved Nashville in 1860, or at any other time for that matter. But, this otherwise beclouded chapter of Nashville’s past has in some ways been exposed by these census-takers/quasi-journalists whose unorthodox methods have managed to entertain the rest of us over 150 years later.

There were no doubt many ladies who, in describing their work activities to the “Gladys Kravitz” type census-takers, resorted to such euphemisms as “Seamstress,” “Tippling House Operator,” “Bagnio Keeper,” etc., or who just left the designation blank. It is also impossible to define some of these terms too specifically. There were undoubtedly then, as now, ladies of easy virtue whose income from legitimate sources was supplemented by funds received in return for services rendered, for favors bestowed, or in some other sense as a quid pro quo.

Nonetheless and despite all those shy types, there were still quite a few – I’ll say “professionals,” who were not at all reluctant to call themselves exactly what they really were – which totaled 207 out of the 13,762 free Nashville residents who reported in the 1860 census. Virtually all of them were white, although nine of them were listed as mulatto. Nearly half were illiterate; eighty-seven listed themselves as totally illiterate, and eight others arrogantly said that they could read but could not write. Twenty reported that they’d been widowed.

These otherwise virtuous women of Nashville ranged in age from fifteen to fifty-nine, although the majority were in their teens and twenties. Three were fifteen, 9 were sixteen, 15 were seventeen, 14 were eighteen, 12 were nineteen, and 10 were twenty. The mean age for these girls, however, was twenty-three, and most of which were home grown.

One hundred thirteen were Tennessee born. Kentucky and Alabama were tied for the dubious honor of second place, each furnishing 12 girls to the Nashville trade. In lesser numbers were women who hailed from Indiana, Massachusetts, Georgia, Virginia, Missouri, North & South Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Foreign born ladies were also represented; one woman hailed from Canada, and three came from Ireland where the potato famine was very recent history. Who ever said Canadians haven’t accomplished much doesn’t know their history.

Emaline Cameron was among the thousands of refugees who poured into Nashville during the civil war. Born in Smithville, 50 miles to the East, the strains of war must have caused her to cross through dangerous territory to Nashville from an imploded marriage back home.

Her husband Toy Hayes divorced her on the grounds that he was not the father of their eldest child. She admitted as much in court: working as a chambermaid in the Smithville Hotel, which was run by her parents, a hotel border inconveniently left the 15 year old Emaline pregnant. Her parents swiftly married her off to the naïve Toy Hayes before she began to show signs of her ill-fated condition.

Emaline was not only one of those statistics of those uncertain times in Nashville, she was also one of the first such women to get a professional license for the much vilified vocation when licenses became mandatory in 1863. Pretty Lula Suares, born in Pennsylvania, may have been of Spanish ancestry, and Jinnie Tante may have been French, but the other 205 had such names as Richardson, Scott, Johnson, Fox, Armstrong, Graves, Thomas, Harris, Patterson, Walker, Wilson, Webb, and Martin. The Browns were by far the most prolific, furnishing eight girls to the immodest trade.

In some cases it is very tempting to assume relationships such as Sarah Morgan, age 38, with whom worked Rachel Morgan, 21, Mary Morgan, 18, and Nancy Morgan, 16, all in the same household. Given names run the full gamut of nineteenth-century respectability, and there were Anns, Nellys, Mollys, Pollys, Sarahs, Sallys, Alices, Rachels, Harriets, and Carolines. There were ten Elizas, thirteen Marthas, fourteen Nancys, seventeen Elizabeths, and twenty-nine Marys.

Some of Nashville’s brothel’s reflected significant affluence, while others showed signs of abject poverty. The largest house was operated by Rebecca and Eliza Higgins at 101-103 North Front Street. Rebecca owned real property valued at $24,000 and personal property amounting to some $1,500, which were very large sums in those days. Twenty-eight people lived in the house, of whom seventeen were prostitutes, one was a carpenter, one was a brick mason, six were children in school, two were pre-school age, and one was twenty-two year old black guy named Tom Trimble.

Eleven prostitutes worked at Mag Seat’s place, address unknown. Mag was a twenty-five year old Tennessean who seemed to be able to keep a more youthfully staffed workshop than some of her other Nashville competitors. Six of her eleven girls were in their teens, and the oldest was twenty-four. At 72 North Front Street was Martha Reeder’s house, where ten ladies of the night and two pre-school children lived. This thirty-one year old Tennessee-born madam reported owning personal property totalling $15,000.

Large houses, however, were the exception rather than the rule. Most of the houses were either one-woman cribs, or at most, two or three-woman operations. Nineteen of the sixty-nine houses in the city were operated by one woman, twenty-five had two women, and twelve had three women working in them. The smallest houses appear to have been the most pathetic – often sheltering one prostitute, widowed, in her late twenties or early thirties, with two or three children under ten years of age. Its times such as these most certainly were, where I could almost pick any house and write a story of tragedy and hardship that would depict with fair accuracy many situations in Nashville during that contemptuous time period in American history.

Another useful tool used in genealogy research are the old city directories. Old census records don’t often list addresses but you can determine many of them, as is occasionally done here, by researching those city directories. Twenty-four of Nashville’s sixty-nine houses of ill repute may thus be located upon an old city map, and they constitute a very definite sector of the city.

Eighteen were located in a quarter only two blocks wide and four blocks long, being the first block north and the first block south of Spring (now Church) Street, on Front, Market, College, and Cherry (now First, Second, Third, and Fourth Avenues) Streets. The location was no doubt excellent for the river trade of the day, of which there was a great deal and it is said that the four by two block red light district enjoyed a famed nickname of “Smokey Row.” Five of the houses, including those of the Higgins sisters, were practically adjacent to the upper steamboat landing on Front Street. Other houses were clustered in the same general vicinity.

The profile, therefore, of the average Nashville prostitute in 1860 would show that she was a white, Tennessee-born, twenty-three year old. There’s a very good chance that she was illiterate, and that she worked in a house with two or three colleagues.

Her name was something like Mary Brown, and, since the law of supply and demand no doubt controlled her market as it does everyone else’s, the number of her competitors in the city would seem to indicate that business was humping…ughm, maybe brisk is a better word. Her impact upon the community was probably considerable as were her activities deserving of closer examination than historical research has thus far devoted to them or than these brief paragraphs have been able to render for you.

But, by 1862, after the Union Army occupied Nashville in February then moved thousands of troops here, the number of prostitutes exploded, that number believed to be as high as 1500 – more than 10% of the entire population of Nashville. Major General William Rosecrans (Old Rosy), a Roman Catholic from Ohio, had a real problem on his hands.

At least 8.2% of his Union soldiers were infected with either syphilis or gonorrhea and the mercury treatments of the day could sideline a soldier for weeks. These mostly unprincipled Union soldiers from dreadful sounding places like Pittsburg and Chicago were responsible for a sexual plague in Nashville like nothing that had ever been seen anywhere. In fact, there were local shortages of mercury wherever the union army occupied…well, I just made that part up.

At first Rosecrans ordered George Spalding, provost marshal of Nashville, to “without loss of time seize and transport to Louisville all prostitutes found in the city known to be here.” The obedient Spalding did exactly that. Finding them was easy but how he would carry out the order is quite amusing.

Spalding soon met John Newcomb, owner of a brand-spanking-new steamboat christened the Idahoe (can you see the irony?) Much to Newcomb’s dismay, Spalding ordered Newcomb to take the Idahoe on its maiden voyage northward with its soiled maiden passenger list.

All 111 women aboard the Idahoe had three things in common, their profession, they’re unfortunate collective cases of syphilis, and that they were all white. Almost immediately upon their departure, their black counterparts took their places in Nashville’s brothels. The local press delighted in the story. The Nashville Daily Union:

“The sudden expatriation of hundreds of vicious white women will only make room for an equal number of negro strumpets. Unless the aggravated curse of lechery as it exists among the negresses of the town is destroyed by rigid military or civil mandates, or the indiscriminate expulsion of the guilty sex, the ejectment of the white class will turn out to have been productive of the sin it was intended to eradicate…. We dare say no city in the country has been more shamefully abused by the conduct of its unchaste females, white and Negro, than has Nashville for the past fifteen or eighteen months.”
Nashville Daily Union – cir. 1862

It took a week for the Idahoe to reach Louisville, but word of the unusual manifest list had already reached the city’s law enforcement. Newcomb was forbidden from docking there and ordered on to Cincinnati instead. Ohio, too, was uneager to accept Nashville’s prostitutes, and the ship was forced to dock across the river in Kentucky – with all inmates required to stay on board, reported the Cincinnati Gazette:

There does not seem to be much desire on the part of our authorities to welcome such a large addition to the already overflowing numbers engaged in their peculiar profession, and the remonstrances were so urgent against their being permitted to land that that boat has taken over to the Kentucky shore; but the authorities of Newport and Covington have no greater desire for their company, and the consequence is that the poor girls are still kept on board the boat. It is said (on what authority we are unable to discover) that the military order issued in Nashville has been revoked in Washington, and that they will all be returned to Nashville again.
Cincinnati Gazette – cir. 1862

It was reported that by the time the Idahoe made it back to Nashville, the ship’s stateroom had been badly damaged and the beds were badly soiled leading to a request for $1,000 in compensation for damages. It’s not known whether Newcomb ever got his money or not but what we do know is that Spalding’s ultimate solution was to legalize prostitution in Nashville so that licenses could be issued and medical supervision required. Girls paid $5.00 for a license and fifty cents to physicians to sign off on the licenses.

Thus making Nashville, Tennessee the first city in the United States to have legalized prostitution – not Las Vegas. Of course, in 1865 when the war was over and the unprincipled Northern occupiers gone, Nashville quickly left it’s restraints of martial law and did away with legalized prostitution.

While this early experiment in legalized prostitution may not have had lasting social repercussions for Nashville, it is possible that improved medical conditions in the dangerous profession delivered women like Emaline through the hardships of a horrible war. Emaline survived her time in Nashville to ultimately return to Smithville, where she lived out her days in the home of her son and there are generations of her family living today that have no earthly idea how or with whom they came to be born into this crazy world. But you know because of my crazy addiction to genealogical research.

RhineFahrt’n Is My Super Power

December 6, 2018August 15, 2021 / Chris White / 1 Comment

What exactly is a RhineFahrt anyway? Well, Rhine refers to the name of a river in Europe and the German word/conjunction Fahrt is used in that language predominantly to refer to travel or traveling. If you’ve ever driven the autobahn then you’ve surely noticed the signage at the exit ramps – Ausfahrt. Emily and I recently visited Europe once again for a Rhine River cruise and my juvenile mind couldn’t resist but to pay more attention to the silly-looking signage than to the abundance of castles littering the picturesque landscapes along the river.

Despite all of the translation incompatibilities, it’s still lots of fun to make up humorous new phrases using the most vulnerable German words. This one was lowing-hanging-fruit as they say, and it’s healthy to keep people snickering just a lil’ bit. I can’t help it; new languages always bring out the 9th grader in me.

I have to throw out a few kudos to Gate One Travel who arranged and guided us to safely fahrt along the Rhine from Amsterdam to Boppar then by coach to Lucerne. I’m always surprised and delighted to trust them with our travel itinerary as their attention to detail, accommodations, and problem solving efforts have repeatedly convinced me that they’re absolutely the best deal in international travel.

We had a rather surprising event on our trip this year. Mother Nature and her annoying friend Murphy called upon us and suddenly our wet fahrt up the Rhine suddenly turned to shit. The Rhine had record low water levels due to a summer drought and we were eventually forced to abandon our comfortable river barge in exchange for a series of motor coach rides and hotel stays. Thankfully, we were at least able to fahrt more than half-way up river before holding our noses and abandoning our comfortable ship.

I must say, however, that although this wasn’t necessarily the vacation we were hoping for, Gate One Travel did an amazing job of catering to our every whim and desire. They worked very hard to help turn a bad situation into a positive experience. Now, if we could only talk them into booking future vacations without Chinese guests, life while abroad would be especially nice.

“There are only two things I hate in this world: People who are intolerant of other people’s cultures and the Dutch.” – GoldMember

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no bigoted, belittling, bastard traveler. It’s just that my experiences with foreign travel and the accompaniment of Chinese tourists has made me realize the Chinese people have no real sense of personal space – at least not like the typical rural residing American. It could be likely due to many of them living in extremely densely populated cities. Pushing and shoving their way through crowds and jockeying to always be first in line. It could be that their seemingly general disregard for group decorum may be a sort of Nuevo-Confucianism – it gets the job done in a very efficient way. Heck, what do I know – I’m just a dumb redneck.

I guess I’m probably being way too judgmental; Big city folks in every country are probably just like that…uhhh, nope I take that back. My New York and Boston traveling companions are nothing like that. That cements it, it’s just the Chinese.

To the guy like me who has a two-hundred acre back yard – the pushing and posturing just seems plain ole rude. If I happen to make it to a door first, all I’m going to do is to hold it open for a lady or two anyway. Trust me, I’m no threat to you going in the door first. Other than their fahrting style, Chinese people are great in every other way. We’ve met some terrific Chinese people in our travels and on an individual level they’ve been especially great conversationalists and overall decent people; I just think their way of fahrting really stinks.

Now, who fahrted anyway? Oh yea, it was me. And boy did I! Actually, Emily and I were fahrting together but who cares about the semantics of a blog? No one reads blogs anyway and I just lost all 5 of my Chinese subscribers. Now I’m down to my mom, my two sisters, and the 3 Dutch bicyclists who are planning my death after the last blog I wrote.

Who’s counting anyway? Despite the travel challenges we sometimes face, Emily and I have grown to really love all this tag-team fahrting we’ve been doing lately. To be honest, her profession has made her quite the expert on the subject. No one fahrts quite like my wife and I’m so fortunate to be able to relax and trust that her frequent fahrting will always put us miles ahead. Hmm, maybe that’s why the Chinese don’t like being behind us … haven’t thought of it that way before.

Oh well, our vacation actually began in Amsterdam which was beautiful in its own unique way but quite different than I expected. If you love 17th century architecture and the odor of people smoking weed in public then it’s a must see. The feel of this city is very much enhanced by all the canals and arch bridges in a quasi-Venice sort of way. Don’t be mistaken, however, it’s not Venice. Think about it, they did invent the Dutch Oven here. Other than that, you get really hungry walking around in Amsterdam.

I think what makes the city fun is the overall feeling of acceptable debauchery. The red-light district contributes to that “anything goes” expectation. But in reality, people suck down their mini-bong fumes all about town like it’s the newest bestest oxygen out there. No one ever quite feels like they’re not in some sort of red light district anyway – which is fun in its own way I guess. It’s a bit like a college panty-raid. It ain’t exactly illegal but it makes you feel dirty and excited all at the same time. The biggest difference being, you can’t take the bong home as a souvenir.

I can’t help but to mention, because I’ve seen this time after time, the McDonalds restaurants in Europe are nothing like we know in America. They are actually extremely nice, well-appointed with beautiful Chandelier lighting, super clean restrooms, and warm, friendly, professional employees. I don’t know what they pay McDonalds employees in Europe but it must be pretty good. Sometimes you pay to use the super awesome restrooms and sometimes you just get a code on your receipt and use the code to enter the vault like bathroom door. Either way, when you’re fahrting like crazy, and need a good place to rest your legs, you can never go wrong with a European McDonalds.

The first leg of the Rhine River from Amsterdam, Holland to Cologne, Germany is quite industrial, flat and featureless. It leaves you ample opportunity to unwind a while to enjoy a good long relaxing fahrt. You’ll need to blow off some steam for Cologne as it is a busy place indeed.

As Emily and I fahrted along the quaint and ancient streets, hand-in-hand, experiencing the quaint old town of Cologne, we noticed several decent antique shops – a passion we both share. Maybe even equal to that of a great fahrt. As with most other European cities which were originally Roman outposts, there are unique sites both old and new to discover around every corner.

Cologne has a fantastic museum in the center of their old town. The story told to us was that Hitler was building a museum there and discovered a fantastic Roman villa about 30 feet below ground during the excavation. He decided to construct the museum entirely around the ancient site. Gee, and here I was thinking Hitler was an asshole.

The museum is located adjacent to the cathedral, a magnificent Gothic styled cathedral having as its architectural triumph, some of the tallest spires of any other Gothic cathedral in the world. The inside of the magnificent building is perhaps not as elaborate as many we’ve visited but it is said to hold the remains of the Three Wise Men inside its sequestered catacombs.

We were not able to access or figure out where the Wise Men may have been located as none of the signage offered an English translation, a rare thing in Europe and also ironic due to having the most famous wise men in the history of our world being cloistered in a place that denies its wisdom to non-German speakers.

Afterward, I noticed that Germany is pretty much like that everywhere. Few English translations anywhere. They have English signage in Slovenia and Croatia and Hungary and Czechia and Slovakia and Montenegro and Austria and Italy and France and Turkey and Ecuador and Spain and Greece and Bosnia and Japan, China, Egypt, and Colombia but not in Germany. This particular fahrt doesn’t pass the smell test.

Enough of my rant; aside from all that stuff, Cologne is amazingly home to what Emily and I would describe as some of the best pizza in the entire world. Forget Naples Italy, visit Cologne. Rob and Rachel would also agree. In fact, the four of us fahrted happily all the way back to the ship afterward – talking about the fantastic German pizza we enjoyed together.

Leaving Cologne, we sailed to Koblenz. The Rhine was becoming more scenic after leaving the big city of Cologne so the fahrting was much more intensified. Koblenz is a small city which was once a very important place. It has both Roman and later royal German ancestry with an amazing Romanesque cathedral. It is also an important wine region of Alsace so if you are a wine connoisseur, Koblenz is a great place to visit for their annual wine festival. It’s also important to mention that the drought was very serious in this region (2018) so the wine produced here (Alsatian Riesling’s) are expected to be fantastic for this year.

Next, we traveled to the village cities of Spay and Boppar, then took a tour of the 12th century castle called Marksburg. It is the only hilltop castle along the Rhine that is completely original, never damaged by war or time. All of the other 40’ish or so hilltop castles along the Rhine have been destroyed and rebuilt over time. The castle is an amazing time-capsule of the medieval life of sovereigns.

Boppar was as far as our ship could travel before being forced to dock. As a result, the travel company decided to book a smaller boat to take us a couple hours further upstream to see another dozen or so hilltop castles along the Rhine – knowing we’d entirely miss them otherwise. Later we dined in the town and slept aboard our ship for the last time then in the morning boarded our new coach – the SMY Zardine Kan, and took a lengthy fahrt to the city of Koblenz, Germany.

The most memorable thing that happened in Boppar was our dinner conversation at a fine Italian restaurant. The tables were topped with fine white linens, the flatware was decent and the ambiance was sophisticated German/Italian with its dozen or so sophisticated patrons conversing quietly among themselves. Suddenly, when our group conversation inadvertently steered in the direction of Adolph Hitler, albeit humorous (to us), Rachel blurted out in an absurdly loud manner, “Did ya’ll know that Hitler is a very common name…blah, blah, blah……” (Rob silenced Rachel just quick enough that it triggered one of those “it would be really rude to laugh out loud right now so I can’t help but to laugh out loud for ten minutes” kind of situation).

The otherwise quiet room turned cold and sterile almost immediately. Then, after a long laugh, we had to gently explain to Rachel that German people don’t really like for people to talk openly about that terribly convincing and manipulative Austrian. It really makes them Fuhrer-ious (sorry).

On to the city of Darmstadt, Germany and our hotel the Maritim – not the greatest in the world but very good considering they had to find a decent place for 150 guests on extremely short notice. Oh well, what’s to complain about – I’m in Germany touring castles and wineries instead of reviewing subdivision plats and writing zoning ordinances.

We left Darmstadt in the morning enroute to the city of Speyer which is one of the oldest cities in Germany with a Roman military camp established in 10 BC. In 150 AD the town first appears on the world map by Greek geographer Ptolemy as the city of Noviomagus. In the 7^th century AD, a Frankish tribe called the Nemetes settled here and named it Spira. The impressive Speyer Cathedral, drenched in history itself, holds the tombs of eight (8) Holy Roman Emperors and German Kings. Leaving Speyer, we fahrted the entire way to Strasbourg, France.

Strasbourg is an absolutely gorgeous city. The combination of French and German culture/language/architecture/cuisine is a very fun thing to experience. We took a long group-fahrt through the old town until reaching the impressive Notre Dame cathedral. She is absolutely fantastic – the most impressive thing inside (to me) being the 16th century astronomical clock – reminiscent of the Prague astronomical clock (Prague Orloj). Also of note, the American monument men (see movie) were able to discover and rescue the original medieval stained glass windows of this cathedral after WWII, returning them back to their original positions. It’s definitely a must-see city along the Rhine.

While there, we enjoyed this typical Alsatian pizza thingee (not really a pizza) called “tarte flambée” or flammekueche in Alsatian. It’s an Alsatian flatbread topped with a layer of cheese (fromage blanc), onions and bacon and maybe some sour crème, baked in a brick oven. It looks like pizza so we were all jonesing for another Cologne type pizza experience and just ordered it like pros. We all ate it, and…liked it for the most part. But, it is definitely an unusual taste for our redneck palates. Oh well.

We crossed back over into Germany to the beautiful city of Baden-Baden to spend the night at the Radison Blue hotel. Baden-Baden is a quaint but elegant, albeit redundant ( I crack myself up), German village with a very ritzy casino. The name basically translates to Spa-town, named by the Roman’s, but it really must have been a crazy terrific spa town because someone named it twice. I theorized that perhaps the Roman Governor spoke with a stutter and his subordinates were too afraid to correct him. It’s a good story anyway. We were pretty tired so fortunately there was no fahrting in the spa. Just some sushi for dinner and on to bed.

It was at this point of our trip where everyone was beginning to show signs of exhaustion. Two-week trips are great because you’re not turning around and flying home a few days after arrival but it can also be stressful if you load your itinerary up with excursions and side trips like we’re accustomed to do. The theory being, “I’m only here once in my life – maybe, so why not see as much as I can in one trip?”

First by ship, then by bus, we continued on our course by parting whatever waves and breaking glorious wind to take us to lands we’d scarcely, if at all, heard about. And just like that, we were in just such a place, Colmar, France by way of Brisach, Germany. Brisach is a 4000 year old city that is pronounced in English as Brysa. It’s very quaint, only having a couple thousand people. The ancient part of the once walled city sits atop a tall round hill with a large cathedral sitting atop – reminiscent of our visit to the Croatian city of Rovinj.

It was lunch time and we were not going to stop again until 3 PM so it was important that we grabbed some lunch in Brisach. We found a cutsie café on the old town called the Café Conditorei Bachtel and ordered some sandwiches. We discovered that the place is run by people who hate life, hurt babies and horde food. I say this because a few minutes after we sat and ordered sandwiches, Rachel returns red-faced from the inside of the café, mad as a wet hen, claiming the café staff were extremely rude to her. She had to walk it off while we awaited our orders – food that never arrived.

We think the staff were ticked off at Rachel so they stitched us on having lunch that day. Certainly not wanting to be impolite to the French, we left enough money on our table to pay for our full lunch, demonstrating to them a real example of sophistication and class, and just left hungry. The waitress confronted me for leaving, saying “you should have told us you were in a hurry”. My response, 45 minutes after having ordered a sandwich, “if you had ever returned to our table, even once, perhaps I could have.” I think we all just needed a good fahrt, not wanting to make a stink of things – so on we went.

Crossing back into France to the picturesque city of Colmar was a pleasant retreat from the stench of tour-bus fahrting. It is a mostly medieval city with cobblestone streets lined by half-timbered early Renaissance homes and buildings with a Gothic 13^th century church. Great shopping was to be had in this place, along with lots of interesting little food vendors and shops. Emily loaded up on her favorite French cooking salt Flour de Sel at the local grocer and I found a hot dog stand. After a quick snack, we loaded up the bus and fahrted all the way to Switzerland.

Basel, Switzerland is yet another medieval city on the borders of Swizerland, France and Germany. In fact, the International airport there, although extremely poorly rated by its frequent flyers, offers the ability to exit the airport facility in either France or Switzerland. We again stayed at the Radisson Blu hotel, great in every one we’ve stayed in thus far, which was just around the corner from the 12^th century Gothic cathedral that dominates the marketplatz and old town.

We didn’t really have an opportunity to spend any real time in Basel as we arrived late and left early the next morning headed for Lucerne, Switzerland. The hotel, however, was terrific. I may add that the fahrting toward Lucerne was extraordinary, in that it was beautiful. As one can imagine, the alpine vista’s and mostly agricultural scenery was quite picturesque.

Lucerne itself is amazing. The crown jewel, my opinion, of this entire flatulent affair. I asked Emily to pull-my-finger just to see if I might be dreaming. The significant old town is mostly intact with 16^th century half-timbered homes and buildings and the Chapel Bridge, built in 1333, still spans the Reuss River as it flows from the gorgeous Lucerne Lake.

The Rosengart Art Museum was located across the street from our fantastic hotel, the Astoria Hotel, which boasts the largest private collection of Picasso artwork in the world. Emily and I were stunned by Mrs. Rosengart’s art collection which consisted of dozens of the famous Masters we all know as well as more than 150 pieces from Picasso. Our hotel boasted a Michelin Star Italian restaurant on premises, in which we indulged ourselves quite wonderfully.

To completely sum up two weeks’ worth of fahrting in one paragraph, I would say that we spent considerably more money on this trip than any other European trip we’d thus far taken yet we enjoyed it less. The places were cool and quaint and charming but by-and-large not worthy of entire days of travel. The Danube River was our favorite river cruise so far and second to the Danube would be the Rhone, both of which were picturesque the entire way and took us to far more interesting cities and villages. Switzerland was the most amazing place we visited on this trip by far.

Overall, France rarely disappoints, when it comes to clean, well-planned and preserved old towns but during this trip France fell short in Brisach with the not-so-nice waitress. Germany, however, disappointed me from a town planner’s point of view. Historic sections of old villages are latticed with patchwork railway infrastructure and hilltop vistas are absolutely littered by gigantic steel windmills that ironically were designed to preserve nature. I guess if one gigantic mass of metal that captures clean, renewable wind-energy is good then 500 more must be great! Maybe we should put a few on the lawn of the Eifel Tower to help us light up all those flashing lights?

Aside from all my juvenile remarks, I love visiting Europe but I’m ready to go back home; all this fahrting is numbing my legs anyway.

Featured

Killer Bikes in Amsterdam

October 16, 2018August 31, 2021 / Chris White / 16 Comments

As Emily and I continue our life stories, pursuing adventures and widening our perspectives through the blessings of travel, it becomes inevitable that we will occasionally experience the “down-side” of otherwise great experiences. It’s kinda like having a great big bowl of Southern pinto-beans with some good ole chow-chow and some hot buttered cornbread – Newton’s third law (every action has an equal-opposite reaction) will forever be relevant.

When you think of Amsterdam, your mind can’t help but to conjure up certain well-known images. Usually, it’s the canals lined by 17th century row houses or perhaps it’s the colorful tulip fields, big chunky windmills, unruly Vikings with tangled hair, or maybe its of famous artists such as Van Gogh and Rembrandt. Of late, we might be more interested in what they do or smoke in the “red light district”.

What about your first instincts of Amsterdam? Have warm and fuzzy thoughts of millions and millions of bicycles ever been your first instinct? If so, you’re an asshole and you really need to grow the hell up and buy a car. Uhm, just kidding…ok, well, no I’m not.

Do you remember being a kid and laughing your guts out when your best friend wrecked his bicycle in the most insane way? I’m no longer ashamed to admit it because I now know that I’m not the only insensitive bastard out there who laughs out loud at other people’s crashes. The Germans, imagine this, actually invented a special word for the act of deriving pleasure from the misfortune of others – schadenfreude! The gal or guy who invented that word probably spent time vacationing in Amsterdam.

Pretty much everyone in the whole world hates bicyclists. If, however, you’re reading this blog from a distant planet who’s government already sterilized all of your fellow beings who were into bicycle riding a millennia ago, and you cannot comprehend the emotions shared by beings on your sister planet, just imagine on Christmas Day giving your precocious 6 year old son a real police badge, an assault rifle, three loaded magazines, a police car and a full tank of gasoline. The child you once thought you loved would do some pretty awful things right? Well that same child, after leaving prison, now has exactly what it takes to be a great cyclist. Just sayin.

A typical daily conversation in Amsterdam:

Tourist in Amsterdam: “Jesus freakin Christ! This 25 foot wide sidewalk is super nice but these asshole cycling sadists run me down every time I try to walk on it!“

Cyclist in Amsterdam: “Euupid Tseuurist! Stey uun yor tinee 2 feet svidevalk you dum dum, dis red painted zuper highvay is only for uun cyclists!”

Tourist in Amsterdam: “Screw you, Dutch asshole, I’m a f***ing American. We invented oxygen and you’re using way more of it than I’m comfortable with at the moment; plus, the word is actually TOURIST, not TSEUURIST! We probably invented that too.

Cyclist in Amsterdam: CRASH, OWW, OH F**K! “Euupid American, oh vell, more red paints for uun bicycle zuper highvay. Um de hur de hur de hur”.

It all makes complete sense when you factor in the enormous amount of marijuana being smoked in this city. Hell, even if you don’t smoke weed, you can get completely stoned out of your mind just by walking around town…any part of the city, not just the red light district. And if you’re riding a bike at 15 mph, it’s much like a continuous “shotgun”. But, trust me, those evil-doers on two wheels are definitely doing some shady stuff.

No shit, bicycles in Amsterdam are killing people and the world is asleep! Where’s Pol Pot when you really need him? Dutch sources report that in 2017, fatalities from bicycles exceeded those from cars. Yet the Dutch government seems to be doing everything they can to make things worse. They’ve built more than 500 kilometers of bike paths in the city – the most in the world.

What else? The city charges cars 5 Euros per hour to park a car while bikes litter up every bridge, canal bank, tree row, and front porch at no cost. They’re not using fuel so who’s paying for those miles and miles of red colored bicycle super highways – yeup, you guessed it. The car drivers are paying almost $7 bucks a gallon for gas, I’m guessing the sole source of funding for yet more and more miles of those fancy paved red carpets for this entitled group of serial killers on wheels.

Who do they think is gonna keep up those systems when they finally exterminate the last car driver and frighten off the last pedestrian? Seriously, this place literally has these things called “parking flats” which are essentially parking garages for bicycles which can hold between 2500 and 6000 bicycles. Used by commuters who might take the train into the city for work then grab their two-wheeled death machine from the “bike flat” then ride the extra distance to work. Bikes are a big deal in this place.

If you run a traffic signal, by car, in Amsterdam, the ticket cost is $240 euros. That’s a lotta jack. Are there traffic signals for the dreaded bicycles? Nope! How much sense does it make to replace hundreds of thousands of law-abiding car owners with an equal number of outlaw bicycle villains whom, as a group, have no intention to share those fancy red carpets with anyone else and who’re not contributing a single red cent financially to the machine that makes the whole damn thing work?

This place is so crazy over bicycles, they actually created a “bicycle Mayor” specifically to liaise with cycle groups. Yes, they actually have professional “bicycling” groups. The Nazis were looking for something to do after the big war so it seemed a natural fit. They just changed their names to fit in – Hans Hess could instantly become known as Venom Dingersloot and suddenly he can rule the entire world – only this time people are taking him seriously.

The “Mayor of Mayhem”, I’ll call her, decided that Amsterdam needed even more bike lanes and paths and that they should all be covered with roofs so riders outfits don’t get wet while cycling in the rain. Blood is fine; it’s the rain that sucks. Yeup!

Also reported was the fact that cars get 44% of available public parking space while bikes, used for more than 60% of local journeys, get only 11% of the available parking space. Seems horrific doesn’t it? I wonder how much larger in size, percentage wise, a car is over a bicycle? Would it matter?

We’re told that bicycles outnumber people in Amsterdam by 1.2 million. Literally, you stand at the edge of the red bike-lane for 10 minutes waiting for a quick opportunity to cross; the bikes number in the dozens coming from both directions – never stopping, seamlessly never ending, and certainly never slowing down or attempting anything mimicking courteousness.

Last year the city of Amsterdam recovered over 5000 bicycles from just one canal they were dredging. After cleaning them up and reconditioning them, the city of Amsterdam donated them to a 3rd world country. I’m trying hard to find out which country got them so I can avoid it in our future travels.

Amsterdam is often held up by public transport advocates as a modern, progressive city that accommodates cars, trams, canal boats, cyclists and pedestrians with ease but the image is at odds with reality. What is obvious from all this? When you allow one particular public interest group to dominate anything…anything at all, it will feed and grow itself at the expense of every other group. Schadenfreude…I’m really liking this word!

You Say Baath; I Say Bath.

April 2, 2018August 7, 2021 / Chris White / 32 Comments

ex·pec·ta·tion: a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future; a belief that someone will or should achieve something.

A persons expectations can be the key to enjoyment or the riposte to disappointment. If you project your ideas too low then no one gets interested; if you tout too high, no one ever feels quite appeased. It could be said then that managing people’s expectations is one of the principle secrets to success.

You might surmise then that McDonalds has done a great job of it. They’ve demonstrated expertise at branding their burger chain as being the best deal in town, not necessarily the best burger. This despite the fact that their entire identity is built around hamburgers.

What does all this have to do with traveling to Bath, England you say? For starters, I’m writing to you about my personal observations of Bath; Bath through the eyes of Chris. I’m hoping to help you discover things about Bath that go well beyond the scope of what you might expect to find in Bath. So, while others may focus on its most obvious attributes such as the Roman Baths, I wanted to better illuminate Bath’s more obscure but interesting facts, history and architectural features.

The Roman baths are indeed amazingly well-preserved and definitely worthy of explanation; so, I will do my best to describe them for you in as descriptively visual terms as I’m capable. But, when I drove away from that uniquely singular place, my first thoughts were of how challenging it may be, given my limited writing skills, to convince vacationing travelers to look more deeply at Bath, to peel back the layers, and to venture outside the city center to discover its other gems.

A gem in and of itself is the scenic drive into Bath. Bath sits at the southern edge of the Cotswolds, a range of limestone hills and valleys designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The limestone quarried from there is particularly unique and has this creamy honey golden color.

The stone is known world-wide as Bath Stone. Every house, cottage, mansion or castle in the vicinity is constructed from this beautifully rich and distinctive stone. While there, I learned that one of the zoning restrictions for all new construction inside the city of Bath requires builders to use this same stone on the façade to ensure that modern buildings pay homage to the city’s 18^th century heritage.

Bath has long been an ancient borough with high status. First, with its close proximity to Stonehenge and its Neolithic/early Celtic Briton inhabitants. Afterwards, its Roman occupants constructed spa’s and baths around the first century AD where it became a well-known Roman vacation destination.

After the fall of the Roman Empire it remained as a rare gem for the Kingdom of Mercia until the year 878 when it became a royal borough of Alfred the Great when it was then ceded to the Kingdom of Wessex. If you’re a King Arthur fan, it is believed that Bath may have been the site of the Battle of Badon (c 500 AD) in which King Arthur is said to have defeated the Anglo-Saxons.

Despite the city name and its historical changing of landlords, Bath continued to be an important place. The Roman baths and impressive stone infrastructures continued to serve whomever claimed it. By the 18^th century, Bath evolved into a posh village for Britain’s elite. Its hot mineral baths were advertised as having curative properties so people migrated from far away to find respite for whatever ailments they suffered.

If you had any sort of illness from leprosy to acne, and also had money, you were definitely moving to Bath. It all sounds great until you find yourself in a hot bath tub with a leper. But despite my negative thinking, Bath is now one of the best preserved 18^th century cities in the world; designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

In fact, the famous 18^th century author/novelist Jane Austen lived in Bath for many years. You might have read a few of her famous novels such as Pride and Prejudice, or Sense and Sensibility. If you read them deeply, you will find traces of Bath scattered throughout her writings.

An example would be Bath’s Holburne Museum of Art – The impressive creamy gold Bath Stone façade mansion housing today’s museum. The manor and its grounds were a favorite walk for Jane Austen while she lived in Bath, she thus set part of her novel “Northanger Abbey” across from the Holburne Mansion.

Today, the impressive manor home houses the late Sir William Holburne’s collection of fine and decorative arts. Some of the artists represented inside will include Gainsborough, Guardi, Stubbs, Ramsay and Zoffany.

The manor home has also been used for filming numerous movies such as Persuasion (1994), The Duchess (2008) staring Keira Knightley, Vanity Fair (2004) with Reese Witherspoon, as well as numerous other foreign films.

By far, one of the most impressive things I visited in Bath was the Royal Crescent. The Crescent is a 500-foot-long row of Georgian styled terraced houses laid out in a sweeping crescent.

Designed by the famed architect John Wood-the Younger and built between 1767 and 1774, the Royal Crescent is among the finest examples of Georgian architecture to be found in the United Kingdom. It boasts over one hundred Ionic columns on its first floors with an entablature in a Palladian style above.

Architect John Wood-the Elder, father of the Crescent’s architect, had earlier designed the Bath Circus in 1754 which is also regarded as a preeminent example of Georgian architecture. The name comes from the Latin word ‘circus’ which means a ring, oval or circle.

The Circus is essentially an incredibly fancy roundabout divided into three segments of equal length with a lawn in the center and Georgian styled buildings at its perimeters. Each of the three building segments faces one of the three entrances to the roundabout, ensuring a classical façade is always presented straight ahead. After my left-handed, standard shift, two-day drive in Wales, I decided that I don’t particularly like roundabouts anymore, but this one is very special.

The senior Wood, as its architect, was convinced that Bath was historically the principle center of Druid activity in Britain so he studied nearby Stonehenge to ensure that his Circus design would pay homage to what most people believed to be an ancient Druid ceremonial ground (There are some different ideas about Stonehenge today). Three classical orders (Doric, Roman/Composite, and Corinthian) are used, one above the other, in the elegant curved facades.

The frieze of the Doric entablature is decorated with altering triglyphs and pictorial emblems. One very interesting fact is that when viewed from the air, the Circus, along with Queens Square and the adjoining Gay Street, form a key shape, which is a masonic symbol found frequently in many of Wood’s other building designs.

My wife and I particularly enjoy visiting impressive cathedrals and abbey’s when traveling and Bath Abbey was one of those sites on my bucket list. Particularly because of its unique vaulted ceiling. Founded in the 7^th century, reorganized in the 10^th century and rebuilt in the 12^th and 16^th centuries, Bath Abbey is one of the largest examples of Perpendicular Gothic architecture in the West.

It’s most unique feature, in my opinion, is its notable fan vaulting. We actually know that brothers Robert and William Vertue, architects and stone masons for King Henry VII, were the designers and builders of this particular fan vault. They not only built Bath Abbey’s fan vault, they also built the vaulted ceilings inside the Tower of London, King’s College Chapel in Cambridge and Henry VII’s chapel at Westminster.

Our hotel in Bath, the Hilton Bath City, was located just a block from the extraordinary Pulteney Bridge. This interesting bridge crossing the river Avon, is reminiscent of the Ponte Vecchio Bridge we saw while traveling in Florence, Italy. I say this essentially because it is a bridge with shops built across its full span on both sides.

The bridge was built in 1774 in the Palladian style by Robert Adam. My wife, my sister and I not only walked along the bridge visiting the shops but we also found a stone path and stairway that led us to the river’s edge so that we could snap a few glamor shots of the bridge from below.

Something I hadn’t mentioned before is that I had accidently forgotten my razor when packing for the trip. That led to the obvious annoyances to both Emily and I, but alas, my stroll to the Pulteney Bridge allowed me to discover a cool little barber shop along the way called New Saville Row.

I made the proper arrangements with the gentleman who told me that although they were about to close, that I could return in 30 minutes and he’d give me a shave. Thirty minutes later I was comfortably laid back in an old style barber chair with a hot towel on my face about to embark on my very first professional straight razor shave.

I had no idea what I’d been missing all these years. These guys were unbelievably courteous to stay open for me and it was an experience I won’t soon forget.

Jane Austen wrote, in her 1811 novel Sense and Sensibility, “I come here with no expectations, only to profess, now that I am at liberty to do so, that my heart is and always will be yours.” Bath is certainly much more than it was when Jane Austen lived there.

Although it is now a very modern city with both a professional Rugby team and Football club, two universities and nearly one hundred-thousand people, it is still very much still trapped in the wrinkled skin of its 18^th century past. In my book, its a hard act to follow, even for a very cool and mostly intact two-thousand year old Roman bath.

I can’t say for sure what my expectations actually were when I arrived in Bath but what I can say without any pause is that Bath exceeded, no a better word might be trounced, any notion of what I had first imagined it to be. The name is Bath and of course there are Roman baths there so I guess that was where my mind was initially.

But Bath is far more than just its namesake. If you decide to be one of the three million annual visitors of Bath in the near future, and I hope you are, don’t just tour the baths and the abbey and leave. Bath is far more than that. If you stay long enough, you might even start pronouncing it Baath.

Penny Lane On A Budget

March 16, 2018August 25, 2021 / Chris White / 5 Comments

For some curious reason, of which I am completely ignorant, I have always thought of Liverpool, England as being this quaint little working-class English village. As you will soon learn, it is anything but quaint.

If you’re like me and over fifty, you’ll instantly recognize the name Liverpool and with whom the city-name is most famously associated. That would of course be an obscure little four piece British ensemble called the Beatles.

I personally found Liverpool to be an amazingly vibrant city with an incredible night life where people speak, straight face, with an incomprehensible pirate-like, half English/half Irish brogue. I, of course, say this in full self-realization that my own southern (a la redneck) accent is likely as equally incomprehensible to the typical Liverpudlian/Scouse as their’s may be to me.

But without any exaggeration whatsoever, and despite the fact that you cannot understand what people are saying (except of course the occasional “Arrhh”), I say that Liverpool is an architectural gem, worthy of your vacation dollars, completely independent of any Beatles connection.

In Liverpool’s core are fantastic 19th century Greek and Romanesque public buildings that tell all who first arrive of an important and strategic historical presence. Its outer perimeter boasts a number of quaint and quiet villages; exactly reminiscent of the sort of place I’d almost imagined. It was one of these working-class villages where the well known fab-four incubated and forged what was to become as legendary an influence to modern music as any other.

Driving into the outskirts of Liverpool from its southeastern side through a quiet little borough called Woolton, the very first thing we consciously encountered was the famous Penny Lane. This literally happened like twenty-seconds after I mentally penned the cutesy title of this blog.

Yes, the street name is real along with the bank (no-mac banker now missing), the barber shop (photographs still ever present on its walls), and the curious bus transfer station in the center of the roundabout – all mentioned in the famous lyrics to which we’ve all sang along.

Now, as fate and a love for travel would have it, Penny Lane has become equally real to me. It is indelibly imprinted “in my ears and in my eyes”, just as vividly as it was for young Paul as he reminisced about taking the bus to the Penny Lane roundabout to attend St. Barnabas Church as a young choir altar boy.

While in discovery mode, we drove up Menlove Street passing John Lennon’s boyhood home along the way to Beaconsfield Road where the gates to “Strawberry Fields” still lie in a state of hopelessness. Meanwhile,
I’m looking up at Liverpool’s “blue suburban skies” not yet knowing what other treasures await me and my traveling companions.

To my surprise and delight, Liverpool is infinitely more. A person can learn a great deal about a population by observing its churches. In that light, Liverpool has one of the largest Protestant churches in the entire world – too large in fact to fit the entire thing in my camera lens from 2500 feet away. Liverpool also has one of the most unique Catholic Churches in the world. The striking architecture and multi-spire tower was designed in-the-round so that the congregation can completely surround the pulpit.

What might also be of anecdotal interest to my American friends living in the South, is that when the war of Northern Aggression broke out, Liverpool became a genuine hotbed of international political intrigue.

Cotton was an enormous import to Liverpool, its shipping industry was entirely propped up on the African slave trade, and the shipbuilding industry (prevalent in Liverpool) was mutually important to all parties. In the words of the famous historian Sven Beckert, Liverpool was “the most pro-Confederate place in the world outside the Confederacy itself.”

In fact, the Confederate Navy ship, CSS Alabama, was built at Birkenhead (across the river) on the Mersey River in Liverpool. And in an odd twist I’d never before heard about, the CSS Shenandoah actually surrendered at the Liverpool Salt House Docks (being the final surrender and official end of the Civil War) a full three months after the whole Appomattox affair – being the last holdout of the American war of northern aggression.

In a related and controversial side-note, you may find it interesting that Penny Lane itself has been under attack by local social re-constructionists who’d very much like to change its iconic name. It seems that the famous roadway took its name from George Penny who made his fortune in the sugar and slave trade back during the height of that awful period.

The sugar industry was quite dependent upon slave labor. As a result, and fully reminiscent of similar movements back home in America, there’s a powerfully convincing movement in Liverpool to eliminate all remnants of bigotry and racism brought about by humming the street names of people known to have contributed to that horrible past. I can’t say that I agree with whitewashing any history, good or bad, but I can fully empathize with their motives. I’m just thankful that Lennon and McCartney didn’t write ditties about Jefferson or Washington.

Did you know that both companies Cunard and White Star, ship builders of insignificant little boats such as the Titanic and Queen Elizabeth II, once had their corporate headquarters located in Liverpool? The docks area along the Mersey is conspicuously littered with impressive Victorian skyscrapers including the buildings that once served these two famous companies. Liverpool has done a fabulous job of re-purposing some of these older buildings and the area around those docks is quite impressive for dining or shopping and for just walking around snapping interesting architectural photographs.

This port suburban city of nearly one half-million people is not only known for its architecture but also for its abundant green space. There are loads of parks throughout the city. One interesting thing I’ve noticed in Liverpool, as well as in other places scattered throughout Greater Britain, are the public green spaces used as free gardening spots.

While some of our more urban cities in the United States have been starting similar projects, I found that these in particular all suffer from the same sort of conundrum – acceptable blight. I do like the idea as a whole but what I don’t like is the thought that we should be promoting irresponsibility of the environment at the expense of simultaneous generosity to our less fortunate. Not when we penalize others for the same thing. It’s kind of like a prosecutor trying a case against Joe Schmo for gambling after he stops at a convenient store to buy his weekly budgeted lotto ticket.

What I’m referring to are green spaces that are no longer green; loaded up with hundreds of miniature home-made shanties for gardening tools with tiny plots of gardens inside little squares – collectively inside bigger squares. The little crude shelters are built by people with no tools, no skill, and no otherwise acceptable building materials. Each square of dirt is fenced uniquely using whatever can be found in someone else’s trash. They’re designed using the theory that “necessity breeds ingenuity” except that “ingenuity” generally means desperation and “desperation” generally translates to “old shower curtain”.

Enough about blighted gardens or inappropriate comic relief as I’m so famous for perfecting. I think I’ve made my case that Liverpool is much more interesting than my rants about greenspaces gone wrong. I do sincerely hope that you find the right opportunity to explore this amazing city for yourself. Perhaps you can walk the dark-steps downward into the famous Cavern Club where the Beatles played their first big gigs and buy a tee shirt like I did or explore the narrow streets of the city proper looking for the perfect “four of fish” or even a “finger pie” if you’re single and adventurous.

What happened to the CSS Shenandoah you ask? Well, its battle flag eventually made its way back home and now rests peacefully in a museum in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The ship itself was sold to the Sultan of Zanzibar where it later sunk off the East African coast during a Hurricane. How can you not believe in Karma when a former confederate states ship ends up being owned by an African country (Tanzania) where so many of its people lost their entire and future identities in the lands represented by the ships namesake?

What happened to poor Eleanor Rigby? Well, her bronze twin sits quietly on a bench on Stanley Street in Liverpool, not far from her burial place, where it was appropriately dedicated to “all the lonely people”.

What will happen to our beloved Penny Lane, I don’t exactly know. Maybe you should weigh in on the matter electronically if you feel a powerful urge to voice your support for either side.

What about Strawberry Field? If you’re at all curious as to what Lennon was writing about it, or how you can be a part of his story too, visit the website http://www.strawberryfieldliverpool.com. Maybe you could even start a GoFundMe campaign to support it. McCartney and Lennon have brought pieces of Liverpool to your ears, now it’s up to you to hop on a plane and let your own eyes share in the experience.

Featured

An Enigma, Wrapped in a Mystery, All Inside a Tasty Little Cookie

January 11, 2018September 15, 2021 / Chris White / Leave a comment

I was dining last week with Emily at a Japanese steak house nearby and discovered a fairly evocative fortune inside my cookie that I just had to write something about. It’s not often that I feel inspiration from a fortune cookie but this one immediately aroused a common theme in which I’m always a sucker for writing about – advice. Probably 75% of my blogs are related to life-advice.

People close to me, pretty much my whole life, have told me that I’m a decent giver of advice. As a result, I’ve become sort of a reluctant incompetently competent supplier of advice. It’s important to note, in case you wanna stop reading here, I have absolutely no paying customers.

Although I’m comfortable to offer advice on some subjects, I’m also keenly aware that giving advice can be a dangerous thing to do. To presume that I should be telling people what to do with their own lives implies something very close to egomania, a condition in which I pray never takes me over.

That said, I think that my inclination to write forces me to place what little intellect I do have on-the-line, whether I like it or not. Otherwise, what would I write about, ugh, maybe fortune cookies?

It’s actually kind of funny to me; while you can obtain all these advice-wrapped fortune cookies pretty much anywhere in the developed world, you won’t find them at all in China or Japan – the places you’d most expect to see them. What does that say about America – or East Asia?

Is the Chinese Buffet some sort of hidden metaphor – perhaps that we all should be ‘getting our fair share in life’? The Chinese have discovered that Americans love getting unsolicited advice so much that they created a plain Jane cookie that draws us in like flies to their restaurants.

Regardless of any of that, we ‘Mericans’ love things to be simple, including our life paths. Just give me my high school diploma, a $50,000 a year job, and a cool house then leave me alone. Simple! But simple rarely gets us where we’d really like to be and life generally sucks a little while before you finally bite into to the big ole piece of chocolate with the hazelnut on the inside.

In the likely event that all four of you readers are wondering… my fortune cookie says, “Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.” I don’t know who to attribute that quote to because the cookie didn’t provide a bibliography, so I hope the blog police aren’t paying any attention. All jokes aside, just let that statement percolate for a minute or two. What statement could be truer than this one?

I say this because no matter how great a job we have or how much money we’re able to bring home, nothing in my life thus far has ever trumped the joy I’ve experienced in meeting an important goal or achieving an important victory. That joy only amplified when my own creativity contributed to the success of the overall project.

A good example is this blog. No one is paying me to spend my free time writing down my thoughts; my pay comes from the personal satisfaction I experience at completing an endeavor I feel passionate about or where someone I love might benefit one day from my insanity. It’s just something I like doing – made sweeter with the idea that someone else may find it entertaining or insightful.

In the scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter if anyone else finds that same value, although I love it when they do, it only matters that I entered into a personal creative process from which there derived something tangible and meaningful. When folks are solving big problems, the last thing they’re thinking about at the moment is how much they’re getting paid.

If all of the above is true, then our goal in life might be to play, play, play, work, work, work at something – anything, until such time as we are better able to figure out just what it may be that we most enjoy doing, and what we’re naturally good at doing. Hopefully, a few years of toiling away at crappy jobs while making new acquaintances and conversing about life, one begins to start assessing where he/she is and where he/she may like to go or what job or career may better fit their personality or push certain peculiar buttons that absolutely need to be pushed.

Obviously, not everyone throws caution into the wind to see where things land before picking a career path. Some of us plan out our professional aspirations at dreadfully young ages. Some people are just natural born planners and organizers.

I’m not really writing about those people because those kinds of people don’t really notice people like us, people who start off adulthood without plans. Those other smarter and more organized people suck.

Organizer types don’t have time to worry about us because they, still, are too busy organizing their calendars for what’s happening this afternoon, tomorrow morning and next week. This particular blog/rant is really speaking to the folks out there who may be struggling emotionally because they’re stuck in a rut not knowing what they should do with the rest of their lives or even the right direction their ship should thus be oriented.

Obviously, we are not all alike. While some of us have no problem fixating on a goal then working to achieve it, others of us find it difficult to even pick a goal. I personally think it is an unspoken tragedy of life that we most often seek to understand the goal and not the self. We try to adjust ourselves to the demands of a theory when we might be better off adjusting ourselves to a congruence with our own personal identity. We should never strive necessarily to be a banker, a teacher, a pilot or a policeman. We should strive first to be ourselves.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be a banker, pilot or policeman – what I am saying is that I think we are better off making our goals conform to our identity rather than mold our identity to conform to a goal. In each of us, DNA, environment, socio-economic forces, family values, etc., have all combined to produce a person with certain desires and aptitude, including a profound and deeply ingrained desire to have a life that is meaningful. We all find meaning and purpose in different ways. For some it’s children, or a great career. For others it may be shiny aluminum wheels on their Honda or a mink coat.

So, as I see it, we need not dedicate our entire lives to achieving any pre-defined goal, but instead choose a life we know we will enjoy. Goals are absolutely secondary: it is our functioning toward the goal which is perhaps most important. Allowing another person to define your own goals is to give up one of the most meaningful aspects of life – the definitive act of will which makes us all individuals.

In short, the formula is as follows: we must choose a path which will let us use our natural abilities, which lets us function at maximum efficiency toward the gratification of our personal desires, and in so doing we fulfill a need for expressing our identity and avoid frustrating our potentiality and the fear of watching our goals disappear or gradually lose the charm they once held.

Because, after all, every single day we view those original goals from an entirely different angle. As we evolve, those once powerfully attractive goals may lose some of their glitter. If we’ve dedicated our entire lives to achieving a goal which no longer seems appropriate for us; then what? Once I thought about becoming an attorney. Then I met attorneys and realized that they work all day and do homework every night. My perspective changed by means of experience and insight.

Our perspective on life and goals will change. It is not the pilot or the banker that changes, it is us. Each of us are the sum total of our reactions to different experiences. As those experiences multiply, we change – we’re evolving into different men and women. Because we’re different, our perspective changes. Alternatively, if we wait long enough – if procrastination becomes the goal, then it will be circumstance that makes our decisions for us.

So, in essence, we shouldn’t just throw caution into the wind as I was saying earlier. Metamorphoses shouldn’t necessarily be completely organic. You can and should read and listen and expose yourself to as many different ideas as possible. Every nowhere job you’ll ever have will expose you to new ideas and new situations and new people, all of which provide lots of life-lessons. Those absurd and gross people you despise may offer you one little gem of genius that completely transforms the way you think about something unrelated but nonetheless important to you. Wisdom is everywhere, even in assholes. Your greatest inspirations for obtaining the perfect ‘you-job’ will come from having lots of crappy jobs and knowing lots of assholes.

But, all the wisdom you’re accumulating while you are “doing” will give you the tools you need to eventually make big life decisions. Regardless of everything I’ve said about honoring the soul inside the worker, you still always have the goal of creating and achieving because that is something instinctive that must be nourished. We continually do that with information and knowledge that our experiences turn into wisdom. Wisdom of things and life and self.

Today, unlike the many generations before you, we live in a world overflowing with superfluous information. And yet, with such an abundance of information and data at our fingertips, what we seem to be experiencing is a growing scarcity of wisdom. I think it is very easy to confuse the two (very different) things.

Many of us think that by having access to more information we can produce more knowledge, which automatically results in more wisdom. The reality is that the opposite is true. The reason I say this is because when a person inundates themselves with more and more data without the proper context, it only jumbles our understanding of the world rather than elevating it.

I see real life examples of this all the time at work. Someone is assigned to lead a task; the leader is naturally a person who lives and breathes those types of issues and thus is highly knowledgeable about the subject matter. Bureaucrats who are intelligent but not experienced in the subject matter quickly digest information from the task leader, along with information found by way of Google, as well as a few phone calls and all of the sudden they become experts themselves, regurgitating lines back to the leader that they learned from him/her not 10 days prior, no longer needing and many times rejecting the wisdom of the task leader because that wisdom and experience doesn’t align with Google’s version nor their own political agenda.

It happens all the time. What is lost is the deeper understanding of experience which can predict and help you avoid pitfalls that 40 hour experts will rarely ever see. Our society has become overly dependent and unconsciously confident because we all have a smart phone and Google to answer every question one could possibly present. Oh, if I had just had access to Google when I was a teenager, instead of the 1964 Encyclopedia Britannica, I could have been overwhelmingly smarter than my parents (just kidding mom).

There is a stepladder of understanding that takes a logical path from gaining information to achieving wisdom. At the bottom is a piece of information which basically tells us some small fact about the world. Just above that step is knowledge. Knowledge is the understanding of how different little morsels of information all fit together to disclose some particular certainty about the world. Knowledge hinges on an act of association and clarification – it puts the information into its proper perspective.

At the very top of this stepladder is finally wisdom. Wisdom is not just a deep knowledge (i.e., I read those crib assembly instructions ten freakin times and called two buddies about it), wisdom combines a moral component to knowledge. It is the application of information that is worth remembering and knowledge that matters to the understanding of not just how our world works, but also how it should work. Trump haters know all about this concept.

To have true wisdom, one requires a moral structure of what should and shouldn’t matter, as well as an idyllic vision of the world at its highest potentiality. And once you’ve achieved some wisdom, you must convince your ego that whatever wisdom you may have acquired, is only wisdom about that one subject under that one set of circumstances. Throughout your life, there will be lots more work to do and many more subjects and circumstances to tackle.

So while the fortune cookie, in its most basic form, can provide us with all the spiritual and motivational insights as our tummies and our appetite for Moo Goo Gai Pan can endure; the magical tickertape stuffed inside those cookies cannot by themselves offer us the true wisdom we all seek or need. It takes a lot of effort, a good heart, and the shedding of our narcissistic tendencies in order to recognize the depth of all that lie before us.

And sometimes, what we have before us are just ordinary people – people with unique experiences and information and failures and successes which are all different from our own. Yes, sometimes we are not allowed to have wisdom in certain areas because we can’t have experience in every area. In those cases, our wisdom comes from recognizing the value of other human beings around us.

Wisdom allows us the capacity to understand that mastery over any subject is outdated the very moment one achieves it. True wisdom is completely void of any independent identity. It is never about any one person or one group. It only exists in the collective because each of us contributes to the evolution of it every single day. Wisdom follows the doctrine of universal responsibility. It is akin to saying that every part of our body longs for our eyes, our lungs, our legs to be healthy; if one part suffers, we all suffer.

Work and living and parenting and every other important aspect of our lives are most positively affected by just being real. Being true to yourself in your profession, in your relationships, etc., allows you to function at your highest possible levels. Your wisdom will come from expending your energies and experiencing your world with a clear mind and an unambiguous path not littered by obstacles and chaos created by unrealistic expectations or less than honest intentions.

Lastly, I am no expert. I’m just a 53 year old husband and a hopelessly paternal dad, a placeholder of my job and a life-long old guy who loves to write about advice that I wish I could have ignored when I was young. My greatest achievement in life is the recognition that as my son gets older and more experienced, he is finally coming to realize that I may not have been as ignorant as I may have once seemed. Which mainly means I’m now entitled to be as crappy as I want and still exceed all expectations.

Traveling Ecuador

November 4, 2015September 13, 2021 / Chris White / 14 Comments

Lying in bed, in a state of anxiety over a lack of restful sleep, and realizing that I’m about to spend a second sweaty night in little more than a screened-in porch without air conditioning, I’m thinking – this is vacation? Sweltering humidity and intense sun-exposure has caused me to be a slightly less-fun-self, and a lot more damp than normal.

I begin to reflect on our day at Anaconda Island, the balsa wood raft ride through the white-capping Napo river, and the hairy saucer-sized Tarantula that attempted to take a swim in the pool with me just before dinner. The details of my health-coverage being sketchy, I’m thinking yeah, Ecuador is to die for – literally. If it weren’t for the wild pack of jungle chickens moving through the hacienda eating ticks every evening, I’d think this might all be a dream.

Of course I’m just kidding, although there are probably many ways to die in this place, of which might possibly be the river Cayman, Piranha, Anaconda, the mysterious Tatura flower’s “sweet dreams” tea, and possibly choking on the fried “Iron Palm” pork served at this hokey little restaurant at the Center of the Earth Lat’ 000 marker. Truthfully, all I’ve accomplished thus far is to prove to everyone just how entitled I may be. I say this because mostly, the Ecuador I’ve been traveling through has been immensely beautiful. Yet, I’m still here whining about two, out of fourteen, uncomfortably hot nights.

The temperatures throughout much of Ecuador are actually surprisingly perfect. I’d venture to say, mostly due to its high elevations. Unfortunately for you, you’ve royally screwed up and found the blog of a spoiled rotten and highly sarcastic traveler. Please forgive me.

Honestly, if bucket lists are something you often think about checking off, traversing through the Amazon jungle has to be somewhere on most everyone’s list. It was for me. And now I have the wounds and bug bites to prove it.

I’m kinda hoping I end up with at least a few permanent scars from all of the bug bites so I end up with some great conversation starters for my unborn grandchildren. The jungle, while it can be quite dangerous, it can also be uniquely entertaining.

On one outing, a grey-winged trumpeter sort of maternally imprinted on Emily while touring a jungle animal rescue center. This was located deep in the jungle, seemingly unserved by public roads. The personable big-bird proceeded to follow her everywhere she went, in the way a puppy follows it’s new mother. It was kinda like having a great big chicken for a buddy. Emily especially liked having it around cuz she was told that they kill snakes.

Rita, our new friend from Hong Kong, was wearing some sort of bug patch she purchased back home in China. She never got a single bug bite. I, on the other hand, took a sponge-bath in a mosquito and tick repellent.

This was a repellent advertised to be so strong, the warning label warned against applying it directly to the skin. The resilient Amazonian jungle vermin simply laughed at me and my silly Yankee bug potion.

Who says the Chinese are always borrowing American technology – I say “bug-bite mitigation technology” is clearly an area where we need to start stealing secrets from the Chinese. Who gives a shit about 3 stage rockets and advanced cell-phone technology when you can repel every annoying bug known to mankind?

I’ll admit that Ecuador surprised even me; half of a globe-trotting duo, hell-bent on visiting less-traveled vacation destinations. To answer everyone who intimated that we might be crazy for traveling here; I’ve herein provided you with a list of great reasons to travel lovely Ecuador.

Y’all know that “facetious is as facetious does” so please be patient and try to humor my Southern redneck sarcasm, because there really are a few valuable lessons strewn all about this blog. The real trick is to find them, so sit back, nibble on some barbecue guinea pig, and I’ll do my best to educate. While you’re doing that, I’ll hang out in the pool until bedtime, to lower my core body temperature.

One of my very first observations was that traveling Ecuador just may be the polar opposite of traveling around Europe. In Europe, you travel over mostly uninteresting landscapes – forgeries of which you could find somewhere in the vastness of the U.S. – in order to find magnificent “old towns” and walk along 2000 year old cobblestone streets built by Roman armies, among fantastic examples of ancient art and architecture. Many of these places are so inundated with the tourist trade that much of the intrinsic beauty of the culture, language, and the natural state of the site is lost.

In Ecuador, the traveling between the destination places is through and among a continuity of spectacular landscapes and ecological masterpieces. What you find at the end are cities and villages that will mostly underwhelm the typical European traveler but are instead wrapped in an endearing naïveté. The tourist trade is so new that the destinations are mostly unspoiled and the people are unwitting subjects of all our curiosities.

Of course there are architectural masterpieces to be found in Ecuador such as the Jesuit built Church of the Society of Jesus in Quito, but for the most part the masterpieces of interest for travelers to Ecuador are going to be the natural-wonders created by God. There are 84 volcanos in this tiny country, 24 of which are active. It seems that everywhere you travel is within a telephoto lens distance of one of these magnificent geological features.

There are also a number of fantastic Haciendas scattered throughout the country. One of which we visited was built in 1680 and included its own beautifully appointed chapel of the same age. Another fantastic hacienda we stayed in was sitting atop a steep mountain in full view of an active snow-capped volcano. It was 200 years old and once boasted 200,000 acres of land.

Driving through the country of Ecuador can, at one moment mesmerize you with its deep river canyons, cascading waterfalls, or the patchwork-quilt of agricultural art that canvas’ the mountainsides in unpredictable patterns at unexplainable elevations. At other times, it can be dizzying by an uninterrupted sea of unfinished or collapsing concrete homes, storefronts and brick walls that secure the perimeter of every palace and pig pen.

It’s not what we’re used to but it is the utter simplicity of life that draws us in and says, without words, that these are hard-working and decent people with a unique story to tell, worth every moment of our allotted fourteen days to better discover and explore.

Regardless of whether you’re visiting tribal villages and sitting cross-leg in straw and bamboo homes on stilts or in a modern concrete structure accented by clay tile roofs, the homes and villages of Ecuador are almost always resting in the shadows of magnificent volcanoes or foreboding mountain vistas. There’s never a dull moment. Except for the occasional road-side pee-pee bandito – which, it seems, is fairly common.

The city of Baños, for instance, sits at the base of an active volcano with a lovely cascading waterfall in full view of its public square, completely nestled inside a circumference of steep mountainous terrain.

Every city seems to have its own specialties of locally-produced products; theres a city for roses, and another one for jeans. A town for leather products, a place to buy alpaca wool products. There’s a chocolate city, a tobacco town, a Panama hat (see explanation below) village, you name it.

Ecuador also boasts several fruits, vegetables, plants and flowers that one can only find here. Whether you’re in the high elevations where the sweet tree-tomato grows or in the jungles of the Amazon eating lemon flavored ants, you’re always surprised by something new to try.

Ecuadorians are a complex homogeneous tribe of haves and have-nots, just like the snobs we love at home. They’re a tall, short, skinny, chubby & lovable, dark or light skinned group of hard-working and honorable people who want all the same things we want. They just ask for them in a completely unintelligible language called Spanish. In case you’ve never heard of it, I can report that when spoken by a local it has a romantic sounding cadence (pun intended).

One thing I couldn’t help but notice along our way is that there is seemingly an endless strand of aluminum clothesline wire stretching all the way from Quito to the Amazon Jungle. These clotheslines are always dressed in the most intimate of feminine Ecuadorian couture – framed between every porch post and elaborate perimeter wall. The walls, yet another interesting feature, are embellished atop by shards of colorful broken glass and broken Dr. Pepper bottles.

Rainbow’s of cotton and alpaca fabric are like a woven fanfare that welcomes visitors to every village and community. I’ve begun to believe that the common Ecuadorian architecture doesn’t include clothes storage and that everyone just uses these perpetual clotheslines as permanent open-air storage for their entire wardrobe. The Spanish totally got it wrong, El-Dorado lies at the end of the clothesline rainbow, not on the shores of Lake Parime.

I promise, it doesn’t take long to grow a real appreciation for some of the local rituals as the people here are so genuinely kind and accepting of tourists. Especially our own little tourist proclivities such as taking photographs of them in the marketplace like they’re circus animals.

You soon grow to love the Ecuadorian people and all of their quirky roadside displays. One trip through the backroads of West Virginia will remind us that the “other” America isn’t all that shiny on all its surfaces.

Be prepared, however, many of the public restrooms require a “tipping fee” in order to partake of the convenience of a porcelain solution to your biological travel-needs…but the “fee” only provides for three or four tiny little squares of toilet tissue, perhaps enough to remove only the coarsest of organics made from unfamiliar diets.

Perhaps an unintentional consequence of hoarding all that precious paper is that many locals can be found with their “plantains” in-hand urinating in public places or on the side of roadways as a way of national protest. It’s OK though, it helps you to feel like part of the family.

If ornamental iron is your thing, Ecuadorians have lots and lots of it. That said, most of it is carefully shaped and sculpted from rebar. If you have lots of leftover rebar from a building project and have absolutely no idea of what you’re going to do with it, come to Ecuador for inspiration. You won’t be disappointed.

The Panama hat? You’ve heard of it? It’s really from Ecuador only there was a mix-up at the hospital and it went home with the wrong parents. It’s a very old story that ends in the collaboration of an indigenous Ecuadorian hat and a Spanish hat which resulted in the famous head cover known the world over by its alias because the hat was exported to Europe and North America through the port of Panama before the canal was built. Now, you know, the rest – of the story.

I cannot fail to mention that Ecuador is very travel-friendly for Americans. In fact, the U.S. Dollar is their official currency. They have a representative democracy, national healthcare and education, good roads, and all the colada morada you can drink.

If exotic birds and animals get your blood boiling, they have way too many to mention individually. Individually speaking though, just for reference purposes – the Ecuadorian camel-toe can be found in vivid abundance – just sayin.

If you’ve dreamed of visiting an indigenous Quichua village; trading for shrunken heads; climbing an active volcano; eating BBQ Guinea Pig; floating on a balsa raft down an Amazon basin river; seeing the Galápagos Islands; or watching a monkey ride a chicken through a town square, Ecuador is definitely your next top destination.

When you make up your mind and decide to book your trip, there’s no doubt that some of your friends might say, “Why Ecuador”! There are many reasons for you to visit here, no doubt, but seriously…a monkey riding a chicken? Where else can you see that?

I have to give kudos to our travel partner, Gate One Travel. This was our 4th Gate One trip and each one continues to surpass the former – as well as our expectations. Its just so easy. Also, our wonderful 13 fellow travel companions. We loved our entire gang and I know we will stay in touch with many of them. FYI, Duncan, someone found some damp underwear in your room, they’re waiting for you at the reception desk at Casa del Suizo.

Last but not least, our local tour guide Javier Estrella was fantastic. He’s a wealth of knowledge, kind, with a mother-hen commitment to his flock of inquisitive, sensitive, and spoiled-rotten followers. You’ll never find a better person to spend 14 days without air conditioning. He also free-lances as a private guide, so if anyone is convinced that Ecuador might be perfect for their next adventure, his contact information is as follows: 59-398-007-5760.

	Chris White on Revolvers vs. Auto-Loaders…
	Chris White on Traveling Ecuador
	Chris White on Revolvers vs. Auto-Loaders…
	Fashion Styles on The Psychology Of Police Misco…
	Hairstyles on The Psychology Of Police Misco…