Frances Hunter

blog of the author To the Ends of the Earth

 

Frances Hunter's Journal
June 2006

June 28, 2006: Old Kentucky Home

Surely the name still meant something. George Rogers Clark, the conqueror of the Northwest Territory. The man who had added Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and the lands all the way to the Great Lakes to the map of the United States. But it was all so long ago, and so much had happened since then. Nobody cared about the ways in which George had been betrayed by others, and even less about the ways in which he’d betrayed himself.

We were tired today after so many big exciting days retracing Lewis & Clark's last journey. Fortunately, the next few days should be less hectic than the earlier part of the trip. Having left Lewis behind in his final resting place in Tennessee, we now left Nashville behind and traveled on to visit Clark's old stomping grounds.

Our agenda was light today, with the main event being a visit to the pretty and quaint town of Bardstown, Kentucky. In Bardstown's historic downtown, 19th-century red brick buildings center around a neat old courthouse.

Mary at the Old Talbott Tavern. GR Clark slept here -- and left without paying.

We had a great lunch at the Old Talbott Tavern, an inn that has been operating since 1797. Everyone stayed here, from Daniel Boone to Abraham Lincoln to Jesse James. The guests included George Rogers Clark, who reportedly left without paying the bill. Great local specialities in a relaxed and cozy atmosphere. I finally got a chance to try burgoo, a yummy tomato-based stew.

After lunch we poked around the shops and then putted over to My Old Kentucky Home State Park, an estate once owned by the Rowan family and known as Federal Hill. This historic home is famous as the place where Stephen Foster, the great songwriter, was inspired to write the state song of Kentucky.

The tours here are given by teenagers in mock antebellum dresses and impart virtually no information about the family that lived here, Stephen Foster, or life in old Kentucky. Given the impressive level of interpretation we'd encountered elsewhere, I think My Old Kentucky Home can do better. [Note: This blog entry recounts a 2004 visit. Your mileage may vary.] But the home and grounds are beautiful and well worth a stop anyway. I especially enjoyed seeing the log cabin outside where Judge Rowan hid out from his ten children.

We took scenic Bardstown Road all the way into Louisville. Our home for the next few nights is a nice downtown hotel, the Galt House. I'm glad to be back in Louisville, which we last visited in 2001.

Still a bit pooped, we had supper at Bearno's, a pizza place downtown that serves enormously filling pizza! The two of us barely made a dent in a "medium." But it was really tasty.

We capped off the day with a sunset stroll along the Ohio River.

June 21, 2006: Lord Almighty, What a Wonder -- Andrew Jackson, Hell and Thunder

Neelly peeled his eyes open and moaned. He wasn’t on the Trace at all. He was in a run-down tavern on Water Street. Water Street was just far enough off Nashville’s main square to be disrespectable; this part of town was known as Cheapside. Only it wasn’t as cheap as he’d hoped. How long had he been here? Two, three days? Governor Lewis wasn’t with him any more.

If Meriwether Lewis had ever made it to Nashville, he might well have stayed with General Andrew Jackson, then head of the Tennessee militia. Jackson was only a few years older than Lewis & Clark -- like them he was part of an emerging generation of leadership that would take America beyond the Revolutionary generation.

The Hermitage

After a great breakfast at Bob Evans, our destination too was Jackson's home, the Hermitage. Visiting this presidential home turned out to be an educational and highly enjoyable experience, comparable to that at Mount Vernon or Monticello. As I've written before on this site, Jackson was controversial in his time and remains so today. Love or hate him, Jackson was one of the most important of all U.S. presidents. And his personal story was compelling and iconic; this rough man of humble beginnings was the first president to embody the American dream of rags to riches.

At a very nice visitor center, we saw a short film about Jackson and viewed some exhibits about him and his wife, the long-suffering Rachel. Theirs was one of the great love stories of American history. I especially enjoyed the mannequins dressed in the clothes they would have worn at the reception after Jackson's victory at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, which accurately depicted their less-than-perfect physiques. In each other's eyes, they were beautiful.

A short walk takes you to the house, which Jackson began as a log cabin in 1804 and gradually added to and improved. It is now restored to the period of Jackson's retirement in the 1840s. I was interested to learn that the massive stone columns that support the plantation portico are actually wood, finished with a sand-textured paint.

Inside, the house is furnished almost entirely with Jackson's actual possessions; he had exquisite taste. While he knew how and when to project the image of a savage frontiersman, it was clear that Jackson, the first self-made man to become president, was determined to prove to the world that he was also the finest of Southern gentlemen. Beautiful wallpaper in the entrance hall depicts an entire scene from Greek mythology. The parlor and dining room are outfitted for gracious entertaining, and Jackson's study is a place of refuge and retreat, complete with books, newspapers, and a comfortable recliner.

Rachel died after Jackson's election and before he was sworn in as president, so he spent his presidency and retirement years as a widower. The bedrooms upstairs included Jackson's own, with a large portrait of Rachel, and those of his son, daughter-in-law, and many grandchildren, who lived with him throughout his retirement. It was nice to know that the aging Jackson was surrounded by a young and loving family.

Alfred's cabin

All of this genteel living was made possible by over 100 slaves. We saw the kitchen and pantry, the smokehouse, the springhouse, and some of the slave quarters, which are currently being excavated and restored. One touching story was that of Alfred, a slave born at the Hermitage in 1812. Highly capable, Alfred often ran the plantation in Jackson's absence. He once quietly asked a guest who complimented him on his situation, "How would you like to be a slave?"

After the Civil War, the plantation passed out of the hands of Jackson's family, but Alfred stayed on, eventually becoming the caretaker and the first tour guide at the Hermitage. He endured until his death in 1910 and is buried in the Jackson family cemetery onsite. His reconstructed cabin can now be seen, providing quite a contrast to the finery of the Hermitage itself.

The beautiful Hermitage gardens, beloved by Rachel, surround the cemetery and tomb of the Jacksons. In his old age, Jackson visited Rachel's grave every evening at sundown. He never ceased to grieve for her or to be bitter against his enemies for the vicious personal attacks and stress that caused her fatal heart attack.

Mary in the Hermitage gardens

We left the lovely (though very hot and humid) gardens and had a wonderful lunch in the onsite restaurant, highlighted by bread pudding with caramel sauce. Afterwards, we took in an exhibit of antique quilts, hit the gift shop (great book selection), and stopped by Tulip Grove, the nearby mansion of Jackson's adopted son, and the Hermitage Church (Rachel made him build it).

Dinner tonight at Cock of the Walk -- yummy catfish and exceptional hushpuppies. Topped it all off with a relaxing swim at the Red Roof pool.

June 16, 2006: Don't Mess With Hohenwald, Tennesee

A few days ago, in one of our blog entries about our 2004 Natchez Trace trip retracing the journey portrayed in our book, we posted some teasing comments about Hohenwald, Tennessee, the closest little town to Meriwether Lewis's gravesite.

I was amazed: within 24 hours we had an e-mail from Crystal Smith of Hohenwald, taking us to task for giving Hohenwald such short shrift. Ms. Smith is the secretary of the Lewis County Historical Society and of the Meriwether Lewis Chapter of the Lewis & Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, so she knows what she's talking about.

It turns out that Hohenwald has much more of a Lewis connection than its proximity to the gravesite. Ms. Smith writes:

I was looking through the internet when I came across your blog and very recent visit to Hohenwald [It was actually in 2004 - Frances]. I am sorry to have read that you find our town a funny little place. It is actually quite a nice place. I do hope you were able to visit the Lewis County Museum of Natural and Local History during your stay... they have a very nice pictorial history on the Meriwether Lewis Monument, in addition to, other interesting exhibits. The J.H. Warf/Lewis County Public Library would have been another invaluable location during your stay--you might have appreciated the local history room adorned with a larger than life portrait of M. Lewis and information about the Monument that is only available locally...

Lewis has always been an honored, loved, and important part of our community. Hwy 20 towards Summertown is the Meriwether Lewis Memorial Highway, and the old high school cornerstone reads 'Meriwether Lewis High School 1927'. It was the love of the local community that formed the Meriwether Lewis Association in the 1920s to lobby Washington to make his monument a National Monument. In fact, our county was created by the State of TN for the specific purpose of creating and a county around his gravesite in his name to honor him. The people of Lewis County
like to think of Lewis as our very own--he has rested in our soil for 196 years.

Ms. Smith and I went on to correspond about what she proudly calls her "colorful and good-hearted community." Hohenwald is growing and changing, and now boasts two Mexican restaurants and a new improved Wal-Mart under construction. And like William Clark, Hohenwald remains loyal to the memory of Meriwether Lewis. Just last month, the local American Legion Post 127
made Lewis a posthumous member.

Thank you, Ms. Smith, for writing and letting us know much more about Hohenwald!

June 13, 2006: Music City

He shouldered his way into the dank interior of the smoke and stink-filled cabin. People seemed to scuttle out of the way as he passed. It was a tavern, all right, but God, what a place! Clark had been in many a low roadside grog shop in his day, but this was the most abandoned and debauched scene he’d ever witnessed. In the corner nearest him, a cadaverous-looking wraith sawed on a gourd fiddle, scratching out a tinny tune while ragged men jigged and capered around him. Pox-ridden prostitutes prowled the crowd. Every soul in the place was clutching a tankard, tin cup, or gourd full of vile-smelling whiskey.

Hohenwald, Tennessee is a funny place. After our big pilgrimage on the Trace yesterday, we slept in a little this morning and woke up to a local talk radio program discussing whale bones and sea worms.

We breakfasted at Mickey D's, where we had another funny experience. The fellow behind the counter had such a heavy Tennessee accent that Mary came back to the table with our burritos saying, "They have something different here called hundred-mile sauce." After a while, it dawned on us that the man had asked her if she wanted "hot or mild sauce." Now we always called hot sauce "hundred mile sauce."

Hit a local laundromat. It was sure nice to drive away with a trunkful of clean clothes. Drove back to the motel and checked out. The person behind the desk seemed totally befuddled by my attempts to check out of the room. Is it customary in rural Tennessee to simply bug out without so much as a by-your-leave?

Anyway, we soon left Hohenwald in the rear view mirror and returned to explore the remaining portion of the Trace, which ends just south of Nashville.

Our Natchez Trace photo gallery

It was much hotter and more humid than yesterday, but we made a few more stops and got to walk some more sections of the Old Trace, see a beautiful waterfall, and take in a brick home built by one of the early ferry operators (this in a time and place where most people lived in log cabins). The most fun stop was the Sheboss Place. There's nothing to see here, but once it was the site of a stand, or inn, in which the husband of the owner answered every question by jerking his head towards his wife and muttering, "She boss."

Once you leave the Trace, you almost immediately find yourself sling-shotted forward in time into 21st-century Nashville. We careened into town and found a sub shop where we enjoyed some air conditioning and a good lunch. Then we navigated to the Opryland area where we crashed for a while at our home base for the next couple of night, the Red Roof Inn. Nice pool here!

We had tickets to the Grand Ole Opry, so we had an early supper at the Cracker Barrel and then hiked off in search of the theater. I'm told that "Opryland" was once a country music theme park where you could go on rides and hang out with the likes of Grandpa Jones. But no more. It's now an opulent resort and overblown mall. It seems to exist in some alternate reality completely detached from country music, Nashville, or Tennessee; instead it's a monument to brazen and orgiastic spending that could be plopped down anywhere there are people with money to spend.

It was quite clear to us that the Opry itself is now considered an embarrassing sideshow to the conspicuous consumption that surrounds it. We had a devil of a time even finding an employee who could direct us to the theater, and he seemed puzzled as to why anyone would want to go there.

Once we found the place, however, everything changed. The show was fantastic! None other than Porter Wagoner, 80 years old if he's a day and dressed in a sparkling magenta suit, kicked things off in splendid voice. His performance set the tone for what was to come. Over the next 2 1/2 hours, over a dozen acts, a mix of oldtimers and up-and-comers, put heart and soul into country, bluegrass, and Cajun music. Among the acts were the Whites, old favorite T.G. Sheppard, and Mel McDaniel, who blew the roof off with "Louisiana Saturday Night" and "Testify."

It was all excellent. We hiked back through the bizarre bacchanalia of the Opryland Resort feeling that we'd seen a great show. I wonder why the Powers That Be in the music industry consistently ignore the thrilling heritage and vitality that is country music.

June 8, 2006: To the Ends of the Earth

When exploring the Natchez Trace, you've got to have the right headgear

The wild jasmine and bitterapple vines tangled around the tree trunks, climbed the branches, and leapt from one tree to the next. Together they wove a canopy so tight it was as if York and the Captain were riding under a green roof—that is, if a roof could support the weight of thousands of cooing pigeons. York was already bored with the sight, sound, and smell of those birds.

They splashed the horses across several creeks before they came to one that forced them to dismount. It wasn’t much of a stream really, narrow and shallow but with steep banks coated with slick cane roots. He and Captain Clark both lost their footing on the way down and fell into the creek, slicking their clothes with mud.

“Looks like that wash at Fort Pickering was a big waste a’ time.” Clark swatted around his head with his hat. “Damn muskeeters!”

“Ain’t bitin’ me none,” York said. “You the best skeeter bait there is, Cap’n. ’Long as they got you around, they leave this old black hide alone.”

As the trail entered into the swamp, mosquitoes and gnats rose in clouds around them. Huge cypress trees towered over stands of cane and scrubby pawpaws. York picked some pawpaws as they passed, the ripe fruit yielding easily to his gentle tug. Tucked inside his shirt, the fruit gave off a strong but pleasant scent.

An incredible day. We rose early and got a good breakfast at Shoney's, then bagged the fixings for a picnic lunch, gassed up, and bugged out of Tupelo for the Natchez Trace!

Our first stop near Tupelo was the site of a Chickasaw village. The foundations of several homes were still visible. It was interesting to learn about how this small but mighty tribe dominated the area for so long, fiercely repelling the French explorers when they ventured into Mississippi and Tennessee.

The Natchez Trace Parkway is an magnificent scenic drive, beautifully maintained and marked. But it is the stops that give you the idea of what once was a natural highway through the wilderness. For us, it was a chance to see a time and place come to life that had hitherto existed only in our imaginations.

Took lots of pictures along the way -- I've placed them on a separate page for those who are interested:

Our Natchez Trace photo gallery

At the various stops, we applied liberal amounts of Cutters™ and walked into the woods. Overhead, vines intertwine in the tree canopy to make a dense green roof. Along the path, fallen trees lie with generations of old leaves and sticks. At one stop we saw the graves of unknown Confederate soldiers; at another, stands of dogwood that evoked the memory of Meriwether Lewis and his companions riding this wild, lonely road in the final days of his life.

At the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway (called Tenn-Tom), we were interested to see a modern inland sea passage -- later learned that this project, though beautiful and technologically amazing, is considered one of the great federal boondoggles of all time. After viewing an incredible swamp, we fled from a giant bumblebee. We stopped to let a family of turkeys cross the road before enjoying a lovely creek at Buzzard Roost Spring, where Levi Colbert of the Chickasaw nation once had a "stand" (stands were stops that offered conveniences to travelers, including food, a place to camp, and sometimes lodging). We found an adorable but frantic black puppy here who had obviously been abandoned (a big pile of dog food had been dumped nearby).

Our next stop was Colbert's Ferry, where we stopped by the ranger station to report the puppy and then partook of our picnic. It was fun to relax here and gaze upon the wide and beautiful Tennessee River. And instead of the exorbitant ferry rides that made George Colbert notorious, we crossed in style on a nice bridge.

In the afternoon, we walked several sections of the Old Trace and drove an amazing portion into the deep woods. It was a strange and wonderful feeling to go back in time and experience something so historically significant and personally meaningful.

Finally we arrived at the stop called simply, "Meriwether Lewis," the final resting place of the great explorer. Here you can view a recreation of Grinder's Stand, where Meriwether Lewis lost his life on October 11, 1809, and visit the broken shaft monument that marks his grave. Near Lewis's grave lies a small pioneer cemetery, but Lewis remains alone. We left a flag in remembrance of this great American who has come to mean so much to us.

We stayed and refreshed ourselves for a while, then made our way to Hohenwald, Tennessee, a dinky burg with a modest motel catering to Trace visitors. We found a surprising good little Mexican restaurant for dinner, then retired early, sated with the emotion of the day's sights.

June 1, 2006: Going Away to Shiloh

Mary at Shiloh

[Continued from last month -- a series of blog entries about our research/ vacation trip retracing the journey depicted in our novel, with excerpts from the novel]

After making sure there was no officer in sight, one of the soldiers who’d been watching them from the barracks sauntered over. “You boys all right?” he asked. “That was some gittin’ upstairs right then.”

Lewis glared; he might not be at his best, but he wouldn’t let it be forgotten he was the governor of a territory and a former captain in the army. “Private,” he said, “Help this man up, and take him to my quarters. And watch your smart mouth.”

The area surrounding the Natchez Trace is rich in Civil War history, and you could easily spend a week or more simply touring Civil War sites. One thing we've learned on trips is that running yourself ragged trying to squeeze in multiple sites is no fun. Instead, we decided to spend one entire day visiting the Shiloh battlefield, site of one of the war's greatest battles.

Got up early and bagged a great breakfast at Shoney's and some fixin's for a picnic lunch at a nearby convenience store. The drive from Tupelo to Shiloh, just over the Tennessee border, was very scenic, leading mostly through a beautiful and prosperous residential area.

At Shiloh, the visitor's center contains some modest exhibits and an old but still enlightening film about what happened here April 6-7, 1862. While Mary has visited many Civil War battlefields, this was my first. I soon learned that the National Park Service does an excellent job providing maps and interpretations to guide you to various points of significance around the battlefield. Unless you are unusually hardy, you need a car to make your way around and then get out and walk around at each stop; these battles involved thousands of men and took places over a very large area involving all kinds of rugged terrain.

We began our tour of the battlefield proper at Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River. Here, Union gunboats played a pivotal role during the battle. More infamously, it was here that fleeing Union soldiers huddled on the banks and refused to fight any more. Many lessons were learned in this early battle about the need to train both men and leaders to face the onslaught of battle.

Another stop that made an impression on me was the Hornet's Nest, a spot where stouter-hearted Union troops withstood eleven Confederate charges over a period of seven hours before being forced to surrender by heavy artillery. The Confederates swept the field, but the sacrifice of the Union troops bought precious time for General Ulysses S. Grant to receive reinforcements that turned the tide of the battle on the second day.

We found a shady picnic area for lunch. The afternoon found us at Shiloh Church, where Union General William T. Sherman and Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard both had their headquarters at various points in the conflict. It was this meeting house that gives the battle its name.

One of the most riveting sites was the spot where the Union field hospital stood. It may have been the first of its kind anywhere. It was hard to imagine the doctors coping with the massive casualties of the battle (over 10,000 on each side).

We concluded our tour of Shiloh at Bloody Pond, a low mossy pond where man crawled to get water or tend to their wounds during the battle. Many men died here, and the site still has a sober, lonely feeling.

Shiloh set the stage for eventual Union victory in the west, but the national cemetery there gives silent evidence of the cost of that victory.

Overnight back in Tupelo again tonight. Supper was at Vanelli's, a yummy Italian restaurant and local Tupelo success story.

Back to the top

Older journal entries

Copyright © Frances Hunter | Design by brampamp