CLAY AND WATTLES

OFF AGAIN!

I'm going to Iuka again tomorrow, leaving early. While there I'll visit family and friends and do some more genealogy work. There is a Thorne cemetery at Riverton, a sort of ghost town on the Alabama side of Pickwick, the backwater. It's a beautiful lake and you can drive for miles along the shore with the water fully in view or through the trees. Riverton is a small town that was flooded when the Pickwick Dam was built. It was an old trade town south of Waterloo, Alabama. There are still some older homes, some habitable, some not. One of the Thorne cousins says there is a Thorne cemetery there, as is also noted on a Gooble search. This site also says the "climate is underwater..." It feels like a ghost town when you drive through there. Mama used to like to take that long ride around the shore, called Rose Trail. There is also an interesting farm along the way with life-size models of horses and cows. They've been standing, grazing or looking out over fences for years, in the same positions, of course. Makes it feel even more eerie.

I have a few stops to make along the way - Lifeway Bookstore, JoAnn's Fabrics (Sher gave me an idea for another apron - for her! - so I'll try to find the appropriate fabric.

Mama Nick's (and Paul's) birthdays are in October when I'll be gone, so I'm taking her birthday gift to her this time.

I also would like to plant a cutting of the Oldham Rose (my name for it) in a little flat garden spot at Mama Nick's house. My cutting just took off and grew so well, I thought it'd be neat to get one started there. I'll also be getting cuttings for Sher - the ones she got in May didn't get planted right away and so they perished.

My truck is practically packed, as well as my bags and all I have to do is get up and get dressed and leave. I remember when Amy was little, coming home from work, getting all our things packed, including her litlte girl things - bottles, clothes, diapers, toys, potty chair! (there was just about one place to stop and you had to buy something to use the bathroom) and drive to Iuka on Friday night, come back on Sunday afternoon. This was when Highway 72 was two-lane and you could never get around the big trucks. There were no shoulders and no passing lanes and just no place to pass once we got on the roller coaster stretch between Collierville and Corinth. Some trips took four hours. When it rained it was even worse. Now, with even a couple of short stops, I can drive it in three.

I had another weird headache today - at Bible study. I opted to stick it out, though, and after about thirty minutes, the wavy prism lights passed. This is four in the last week, whereas I've had maybe two a year for the last three or four years. Probably something I'll have to investigate further, although I've read that some people have them all the time. Once it was gone, though, I didn't seem to have as bad a headache as I have had.

I got my hair trimmed this afternoon. It'll grow. What was I thinking. The cut is fine, it just doesn't look right on me now.