Heading South
October 2, 2005
We have been moving south, very slowly, for about three weeks. We are in Salisbury, NC for the next three weeks. While we do not want to stay north long enough to get caught by cold weather or heavy snow, we don’t want to move south so fast we miss much of the color. Several people have told us that because the summer was dry the autumn colors are dull. I have been surprised at the amount of green that remains in the trees interspaced with the trees that have changed color. It has also been interesting to see how much the latitude and of course the altitude is effecting the amount of color change. When we left Rochester the news reporters were saying that the color had reached its peak, and I figured fifty percent of the trees had changed. Here in North Carolina there is just a good start toward the change. We are definitely enjoying the change of the change.
While we were in the Rochester area we stayed about four miles from Leroy, New York. Leroy is the place that JELL-O was developed. As odd as it sounds a carpenter developed the product. During the winters he worked out of his kitchen at making Patent Medicines to bottle and sell to make extra money. At the time, pre Civil War, the process of making gelatin was a long hard task, taking as much as two days. Only the VERY rich could afford to make it. It required lots of labor and expensive ingredients. Scrapings from the antler of a deer, or the air sack of a sturgeon, or the split hooves of cattle would be boiled to extract the collagen. Any of these items were expensive. The boiled extract would be filtered and then heated numerous times with crushed eggshells and filtered each time. The eggshells would absorb the undesirable odor and taste of the solution and be thrown away. This is why the gelatin or jelly as it was usually called took so long to obtain. Finally the oil extracts of citrus was used to flavor the jelly. Again citrus was expensive to obtain. There was even a correlation between an individual’s wealth and the number of gelatin molds they owned. The carpenter’s wife came up with the name of JELL-O. JELL-O is marketed under the old name of “jelly” in most countries around the world. JELL-O is pretty much an American name. It is believed that the name came of course from jelly and at the time adding an “O” at the end was trendy. Two other products that we use today that were developed at about the same time are BRILLO and DRAINO. After two years of no success in creating a viable company the ownership was sold to a man that was more of a salesman for $750.00, which was a large amount of money. Since there was no such thing as radio or TV in which to advertise, the new owner sent out men with the instruction to go to the back of houses and find the cook and give them a package of JELL-O. After a few years the company was worth several million dollars. The original product was not like we know today. It was more like the stuff that today is made to cut with cookie cutters and is known as Jigglers. When refrigerators became common in the household, the JELL-O formula was changed to be made in the new appliances rather than just in a cool part of the house.
I am sure that you have all heard of the brain of someone turning to jelly. When the electro-encephalograph was first invented one of the main uses of it was to tell if a person was alive or dead. The owner of the JELL-O company was skeptical and said that a bowl of JELL-O would give as much waves as a human brain. He must have thought that the EEG was just a joke. At any rate he took a mold of green JELL-O and had an EEG run on it. It created a graph very similar to the normal human brain. Prior to 1977 the JELL-O factory was closed in Leroy and moved to another location. Around 1977 the historical society of Leroy developed the JELL-O museum. One of the things they did was take a bowl of green JELL-O to the local hospital and have an EEG run on it. I think that it was partly to debunk an old wives tale. However, the EEG again created a graph very similar to a normal human brain. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. One last bit of information about JELL-O. It has never been made from horse hooves. That bit of misinformation probably came from the fact that a factory in Leroy that produced hide glue from horse hooves also produced collagen from the hides and bones of cattle, which DOES go into JELL-O. That does not sound appetizing, but just realize that every time you cook a turkey or chicken or make a roast you extract and eat collagen. When you get a chance, go the JELL-O museum in Leroy. You will enjoy it.
THE HILLSIDES AND PASTURES OF THE GETTYSBURG BATTLEFIELD
We stayed in Gettysburg, PA at a camp that was within the area of the Gettysburg Battlefields. As we toured the battlefield park area we tried to imagine how it must have been during the three-day battle that took place here. There was no way for me to imagine the beautiful tree covered hill, the pastoral fields, and croplands being the location of the bloodiest battle in American history. They look like areas that I would desire to hike and explore and hunt, and sit to watch deer and squirrel frolicking. There are so many hills to sit on and watch the sunset or sunrise. There are ten roads that lead into Gettysburg. Those roads brought a meeting of the Union and Confederate armies so that on July 1st, 2nd, and 3rd 1863 the bloodiest battle of the Civil War took place. About 70,000 Confederate and 93,000 Union Solders met in battle here. At the end of the three-day battle there were 28,000 Confederate and 21,000 Union deaths, wounded, missing and captured. That three-day battle is still the greatest loss of Americans in any battle to the current day, due in part of course to the fact that they were ALL Americans. During a one-hour period on the last day of the battle, in an attack by the Confederates that is known as Pickett’s Charge, more than 5,000 soldiers became casualties. The charge reached a point on the field that became known later as the “High Water Mark Of The Confederacy.” It was the beginning of the end for the Confederate army. In the area that Pickett’s Charge took place one ten-foot rail of a rail fence had damage from over eighty bullets. It is amazing that there was only one civilian death during the battle, and that was Mary Virginia “Jennie” Wade, who was baking bread for the Union troops in her sisters kitchen, when a bullet went through two doors and struck her.
A BARN WITH A HOLE FROM A CANNON SHELL
There are hundreds of monuments that line every road there is in the area. I am sure there is a monument of some sort at least every hundred yards and a lot even closer. There is something like four hundred cannon scattered along the roads also. There are as many cannon there now as there was July 1-3, 1863.
We drove to a town that everybody has heard of, but does not actually exist. That town is Hershey, PA. There really is no town by that name. While I don’t remember what the actual name of the town is, it is only a mistake that allowed the town to be called Hershey. Since the H. A. Hershey Chocolate plant was there is became known as Hershey. When the post office was built the name Hershey was mistakenly put on the building. While it was a mistake it was not changed. But even with the mistake a letter that is addressed to Hershey will be delivered to its destination. They do not have a tour of the actual factory. Instead they have a tour of a simulated factory. It is realistic enough that at times it seems like the real thing. Hershey started out making caramel candy. He failed in business four times before he was able to make a success of candy making. It was after he had success at making caramel he decided to switch to making chocolate. His decision to make chocolate has lead to the company becoming the largest candy company in America. Hershey and his wife were not able to have children, so they decided to start a school for disadvantaged children. He set up a trust for the children. When he died he had no relatives so the trust inherited the Hershey manufacturing. The trust has continued educating and caring for many children ever since. The streetlights downtown are made to look like Hershey Kisses. Half of the lights are made like wrapped kisses and the other half are made to look like unwrapped kisses.
HERSHEY STREET LIGHTS BOTH WRAPPED AND UNWRAPPED KISSES
The area around Gettysburg and Hershey and Lancaster is likely one of the nicest areas we have been in. It is rolling farm country with lots of forested area. There are many huge apple and pear orchards along the roads. It is an area that is pleasing to the boy that grew up on a Kansas farm and moved to the foothills and mountains of Colorado.
We stopped at a neat gristmill near Intercourse, PA. It is always amazing to me, but it should not be, that so much of the equipment that is used for grinding wheat or corn to make flour is almost exactly like I have used to grind mineral ores. The process is very similar to the processes I have used in pilot plants for mineral processing. I go into a mill like this one and have a desire to mill some wheat or corn and produce a product that I can then use to bake a loaf of bread or to bake a pan of corn bread to eat with pot of freshly cooked beans. I have enjoyed doing the work of my career but I have never made anything that I could consume myself. To me this is simply a reflection of the roots of my youth on the farm.
CHUTES, ROLLERS, DRIVE MECHANISM IN THE GRIST MILL
The Blue Ridge Parkway and The Skyline Drive National Park are both a short distance from Staunton, VA. They both go along the ridge above the Shenandoah Valley and are great drives. There are numerous points of interest and overlooks with views that are hard to surpass. The Appalachian Trail crosses them at many points. Erma and I both walked some on the trail, even if it was only fifty foot or so. At some time it would be fun to hike a distance worth talking about, but not this trip. Unless I can get it done before we reach Georgia. Skyline Drive was closed one day because of snow while we were there. We heard that there were a lot of trees that lost branches directly onto the road. We were up in the area and saw snow along the side of the road, none on the road itself. As far as I am concerned that is all the snow I want to see this year.
The Maury River Road is one of the scenic Virginia byways in the Staunton area. It too is a very pretty drive. I think that it would be pretty in any season, but I was glad that we could drive it in autumn. The color and reflections were great along the river.
REFLECTION OF AUTUMN COLORS IN THE MAURY RIVER
THE McCORMICK BLACKSMITH SHOP AND GRIST MILL
There is always a surprise around the next corner. Sometimes it is easy to see and sometimes it would be easy to just drive by and miss the place of interest. One of those places that could be easily driven past was the home of Cyrus McCormick, the inventor of the first practical reaper. His father, Robert McCormick had a working model of the reaper as early as 1809, the year Cyrus was born. Cyrus perfected the reaper working in the blacksmith shop next to the gristmill that was owned by his father, undoubtedly with the help of a slave owned by the family. His first demonstration of the reaper, in 1931, was in an oat field of one of the neighbors, John Steele, while being watched by skeptical friends and farmers. His reaper was able, with two men, to reap six acres in half a day. The average farmers required five men to do as much in a full day, thus he was able to do about ten times as much acreage with his reaper. He offered to sell his reaper for fifty dollars, but he had no takers. Thereafter he improved the design of the reaper so that it was even more efficient. At some time he determined that the production of grain would be moving to the great open plains of the Midwest. He moved his operation to Chicago and started producing other farm equipment under his name of McCormick.
We have only been here in North Carolina long enough to know that the camp we are in is nice. We have been into town to the grocery store and that is all. I will let you know more about the area later.
Till Later This Is Doug Of
PEACE ON THE ROAD
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