POTR #55 It's A Good Life

PEACE ON THE ROAD
It's A Good Life
October 22, 2009

Back in the late 1950's like a lot of people I became a fan of Charles M. Schultz, the creator of the comic strip Peanuts. I bought some of his books which cost me half a days wages, but I had and read them until I decided that I would not take them on the road. In one of the strips Charlie Brown told a friend that Snoopy was his dog. In the panels that followed Snoopy looked to the right and said, "I am a dog?" He looked to the left and said, "I was a dog yesterday!" He looked straight forward and said, "I'll be a dog tomorrow." As Snoopy trotted off in the last panel he said, "It's a good life."

Being on the road like I am is something that I have thought (or dreamed) about since the late 1950's. I don't know when I first thought about it but I suppose it actually was when I was eight or ten. Don't most kids think of living an adventure? About that age I remember swapping lies with another farmers son about the things we had done. Each one of us was trying to out lie the other and we both knew it. As it turned out I married a good girl that was willing to share that dream even till she became old enough to retire. To have a good life is not just something that happens by accident but rather by an attitude of the mind. I have read of people that never went more than twenty miles from their place of birth and claimed to have the best possible life. I have been a lot farther than that away from my birth place and while I may not have the best possible life, like Snoopy I have to say, "It is a good life!'


THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION MOCK UP AT THE JOHNSON SPACE CENTER

The closest that I will ever be to outer space is either flying high in a commercial aircraft or with my imagination on television. I have been to several museums of space or space facilities. The Johnson Space Center is in Houston, Texas. It is the home of Mission Control Center that coordinates and monitors all human spaceflight for the United States, including the activities of the astronauts aboard the International Space Station, and the activities at the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico. Much of the training of the US Astronauts and International partners is done there. They have a mock up of the ISS (International Space Station) that is used for training purposes and can be viewed. Unfortunately the viewing is behind a glass window. Even through the glass the size was amazing both from the viewpoint of how small it was to work with and live in for the length of time that men do and also how big it was to have been put into space. The tour that they have is very informational and would be even more at a time of an actual space operation. When we were there even the astronauts on board the ISS were sleeping so it was rather quiet. In one of the buildings it is possible to view and touch a Saturn V rocket. While it is not possible to see a great deal of the workings of the rocket, they are inside the coverings, the extreme complexity of the wiring and piping is amazing. I was also struck by thoughts that I would not want to ride a bicycle that was built with some of the parts and the way it was put together. Some of it was so very delicate. It is no wonder that there have been problems in space flights. There are a lot of control computers and all computers are delicate pieces of equipment.


TERRA COTTA SOLDIERS OF THE TOMB OF QIN SHI HUANG

In 1974 a farmer in China started to dig a water well. He uncovered the first of nearly 9000 funerary statues at the burial site of Qin Shi Huang who had declared himself the first emperor of China in 221 BC. In 1997 a Chinese businessman named Ira Poon wanted to share this heritage of his country by building a scale model of the tomb in Katy, Texas. He had 6000 strong warriors, chariots, horses, officials, acrobats, strongmen and musicians built in China at a 1:3 scale and shipped to the US. They were put on display in an open air museum near Houston, which has the third largest Chinese community in the USA. In addition to the statues an area displays a scale model of the Forbidden City of Beijing China. It was the location of the central government of China for around 500 years.


DORSAL FIN OF A DOLPHIN ABOUT FIFTEEN FROM WHERE I WAS STANDING

We are currently in Rockport, Texas but will leave at the end of the week to return to Bentsen Grove for the winter. We have been in this camp in Rockport more times than we have stayed anywhere else. We enjoy the area and the closeness to the bay. Each time that we have been here there has been a difference in the type of birds to see and sights that we have seen. The fishing activities vary and we have seen a lot of different boats unloading their catch. There is an auto ferry that crosses the bay that we take once in a while. While crossing we have often seen dolphin, usually just the dorsal fin for a couple seconds. We never expected to see dolphins in a shallow area where the fishermen wade out to fish. The water seems to be less than waist deep from shore to shore and ideal for fishing, personal and small watercraft and kite boarding. A few days ago we were driving close to the water and saw a fin out a distance so we stopped and walked near the water. In a short time I heard a sound not fifteen foot from me and saw dolphin that had come up for a breath of air. To get any kind of picture took both fast response with the camera and a good deal of luck. I was very surprised that the dolphins came into the confined area but apparently the water was sufficient in depth for them to fish. The short glimpses of them are so very impressive. I could spend a lot of time watching them.

As I go from old places to new places and see new sights and meet new people I am impressed with the great variations of things in this United States and I am impressed with the people that call it home. As Snoopy said, "It's a good life." So here is hoping that you also find that you can say "It's a good life."

Till Later This Is Doug Of
Peace On the Road

POTR #54 Mississippi

PEACE ON THE ROAD
Mississippi
September 17, 2009

You may be surprised to see another POTR so soon after the last one came out. But as I somewhat indicated in the last POTR I have seen so much lately that I am having a hard time keeping up. I am behind in the writing that I do and taking care of filing the pictures that I have been taking. One of my main objectives is to keep this POTR up to date. I have made that promise to several people.

Vicksburg National Military Park lays claim to being the most monumented battlefield in the world. I read one place that there are over 1,500 monuments and markers scattered across the area which would surpass Gettysburg's 1,400 monuments and markers. The siege of Vicksburg lasted for three months ending on July 4th, 1863, one day after the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg. There were only 7,782 deaths during the siege, which is a small number for that length of battle. Abraham Lincoln considered the control of the Mississippi River essential to the success of the Union cause. Vicksburg was the final obstacle to Union control of the river which split the Confederate armies in half and cut off supplies to the soldiers. When Vicksburg was taken Lincoln was quoted as saying, "The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea." At the end of the siege 50,000 rifles and 172 cannon were surrendered with the nearly 30,000 Confederate soldiers who were sent home on parole after they pledged not to return to battle. Paroling soldiers was not an uncommon practice during the Civil war in spite of the fact that many of the soldiers did return to battle. Tradition has it that the people of Vicksburg did not celebrate the American Independence Holiday for 81 years or until WWII because it was a Union holiday.


ONE OF THE LARGEST MONUMENT IS TO THE ILLINOIS SOLDIERS OF THE UNION

The ironclad gun boats of the Union and the Confederates were huge. I always figured that they were fairly large but until I stood next to the USS Cairo I did not realize just how large they were. The most famous of the ironclads were the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia, which is commonly called the Merrimack. The USS Merrimack was a Union ship being repaired in the naval yards in Norfolk Virginia when Virginia seceded from the Union. To prevent Confederates usage it was burned and sunk by the retreating Union troops. It was salvaged by the Confederates and used as the base for an ironclad ship called the CSS Virginia. USS Cairo was the first of seven city class ironclads, named for cities along the Mississippi, that were built for the Union. The ship was 175 feet long, 51 feet wide, weighting 512 tons, with a draft of 6 feet. It's armor was either 2.5" or 3.5" thick depending on location backed by a two foot thickness of white oak timber to absorb the shock of impacting shells. It had 13 modern guns plus small arms. Its total crew was 274 men. It would burn almost a ton of coal an hour in two steam engines with five boilers. Because it was considered vulnerable without power the boilers were fired 24 hours a day. During the siege of Vicksburg the Cairo was sunk by the Confederates. It has the distinction of being the first armored warship ever sunk with an electrically detonated mine, called a torpedo at the time. Many of the torpedoes failed to detonate, so were not considered a serious threat. The torpedo was a five gallon glass demijohn filled with forty pounds of gunpowder, attached to a wooden float and anchored to the bottom of the river. It was connected by copper wires to a telegraph battery on the shore, and detonated by hidden soldiers on shore. The Cairo was rocked by two explosions in quick order and sunk in eight to fifteen minutes (estimates varied according to witness accounts) with no loss of life of any person on board. The location of the Cairo was discovered in 1956 and raised from the silt of the Yazoo River in 1977 to become a part of the Vicksburg Military Park. Its cannon are the only actual period pieces found in the entire park. Its steam plant is also considered the best preserved of its type in the world. "Ghost parts" show how the original looked.


THE SALVAGED "CITY CLASS" IRONCLAD GUNBOAT USS CAIRO

Did you know that there is a petrified forest east of the Rocky Mountains? If you said "No" you would be in the same category as most people, including me until about a year ago. Until a week ago I did not realize how close to Vicksburg and Jackson Mississippi it is located. The petrified forests of Colorado and Arizona were created when living forests were covered by silt mudflows or buried by volcanic dust. In Mississippi thirty six million years ago there was an event which felled a large number of trees. The trees were caught in a massive flood and carried miles downstream to a point that a logjam was formed. The trees were covered by sand and silt which excluded oxygen thus preventing rot and started the process of replacing the cellular construction of the logs with mineral content. After hundred of thousands of years the conversion of the logs was complete. As the geologic strata moved the logs were broken into sections that are five to ten foot in length. The sections stayed aligned in a fashion to show that at one time the trees were as tall as a hundred foot and had a diameter of twelve to fifteen foot. They may have been over a thousand years old while they were still living. These trees were bigger than anything that is growing in the State of Mississippi in modern time. This is the only location of a petrified forest that is east of the Rocky Mountains. This area has also been called the Grand Canyon of Mississippi. While there are many logs that are exposed there is a large amount of undisturbed land which will reveal more logs as nature removes the soil which hides them, unless as it is doing in some cases covers them back up.


A SECTION OF PETRIFIED LOG IN THE MISSISSIPPI PETRIFIED FOREST

We are now in Willis, Texas. We have been in this area two times before but there is much to see nearby. I also think it is time to relax a bit and do some of the things that I am behind in doing.

Till Later This Is Doug Of
Peace On The Road