Greg's In Town & We're Hitting The Bricks

His First Time In The South

My long time "Cop Buddy", Greg Stewart, has come to visit from California, and we're trying to see some of the south.  I had asked Greg to come East and help bring the boat up the last two weeks of the trip.  However conflicts in his schedule kept him from doing it.  If the truth were known his wife was probably telling him to go for it.  But you have to know Greg to know that he is a planner.  He doesn't rush into anything.  Well, there might have been a few things over the years, but we made a pact never to tell.

The last time Greg and I went on a trip together, it involved horses.  I'm not sure if I have mentioned in my blog that for the thirty years I was a policeman, I was also a farrier (horseshoer).  That's another story.  And the last six years I was with the police department, I was in the mounted unit.  So I was pretty "horsed up" in those days.

Now this horse trip was the brainstorm of a friend of mine, Mike Tryon, and myself.  We lived in the California Gold Country.  This is the region were gold was first discovered at Coloma, (Sutter's Mill....come on, it's in the cob webs of your high school history brain).   We thought it would be a hoot to ride from our favorite watering hole (Poor Reds) south on Highway 49.  Along the way, we stayed in all the old hotels, like the National Hotel in Jackson, the Black Bart and the Utica (Angels Camp, Mark Twain, frog jumping, come on you remember this stuff) .  We covered about seventy miles in four days and it is rumored that none of the humans involved drew a sober breath the entire time. Even Bo-Jangles, our pack mule, was suspect as well.  However, I stray... let me get back to the recent visit by Greg.

So Greg took a pass on the boat trip, but then along comes a trip to Nashville to help a friend/neighbor move from Sacramento, California.  This will work, because he will drive across the country with Dave. Then, after getting that part of the trip under his belt, he will head my way which is just a little further east.  I live in Kingsport, Tennessee, a location that a lot of people can't get their geographical mind around until you tell them that it is right next door to the Bristol Motor Speedway. And if you turn left on a Sunday morning, you're in Virginia and can purchase liquor.  Yes, we have "Blue Laws" in Tennessee and that is a whole 'nuther story.

A quick note about Greg's time with Dave.  While there, they headed over to the Civil War battlefield at Chickamauga.  Greg's great grandfather apparently fought in that battle on the side of the CSA. This was the site of the last significant Confederate victory.   So that was an historical feather in his cap part of the trip for Greg.

You always worry, at least I do, about seeing someone after a few years apart.  However, in this case, the reunion was just like an old shoe.   We fit perfectly together, even though we can both be un-even tempered, together we seem to get along just fine.  I can't put my finger on it but ours is a good chemistry. And to make our reunion even better, we stayed at the Lake House and that way had our own quarters and were able to talk for hours uninterrupted.

There was only one "fly in the ointment".  A day or so before Greg arrived, Marci had taken a swing at me with a shovel because I had pruned her roses back at the wrong time of year.  She missed and the momentum caused  her to fall off the front porch and she broke her ankle in three places.  Violence begets violence, I always say.  Well, that caused a little bit of a furor and she had to be hospitalized for a night and then had to go back in for a surgery once the swelling subsided.  These trips caused a little speed bump in the visiting for Greg and me, however we worked around it.  And, if she gives me any grief these days, I just tap on her ankle with my walking stick and she backs right off.  And while I'm thinking about it I cut the handle of that shovel into little pieces of kindling wood.

Greg and I took a spin down to the boat docked west of Knoxville and spent a night there although it was pretty darn hot.  I don't yet have a covered berth for the Sea Me Smile.  It's coming, I hope.  We sat on board right across from the bar and restaurant, had a couple of cocktails and listened to the music. Cheap date.

We spent one afternoon visiting the Davey Crockett birth site and horsing around the country side.  Visited the old Washington College campus.  This school was founded when Tennessee was still part of North Carolina.  It has been a headquarters and hospital for both the North and the South during the War of Northern Aggression and has since been a high school and a multitude of other things.  There is a grave yard next to the school that has some pretty impressive names in it.  Former alumni that have returned forever.

 

Crockett birth place

Here's an aerial view of Washington College Academy

Next we headed down to Savannah, Georgia for a day of travel and sight seeing.  We checked out the water front, of course, and a few of the famous squares of Savannah.    

The view from our balcony

The waterfront is old world

Green Square

All in all we had a pretty good time and great visits. I hope that I enticed him to return and take in a few more sights on the eastern side of the country.  While using the Lake House as a base of operations.