Road Report, Part 8 (Presidential Visit)

The 17th president (left), and his bedroom with hat and chamber pot. (Photos by Bonnie Schupp)

Turns out that Andrew Johnson
wasn’t as bad as they say

The nation was in a deepening crisis, and the leading candidate for the presidency was an Illinois legislator with just a few years of experience on Capitol Hill.

Nope, his name wasn’t Barack. We’re talking about Abraham Lincoln, a former Whig who won the Republican Party nomination and went on to become, many say, the best president in history.

That’s the easy part. Now shout out the name of his running mate.

It took a three-hour visit on Tuesday to the Andrew Johnson home and historical site in Greeneville, Tennessee, to return to those thrilling days of nasty yester-year politics. And no, his running mate was not Andrew Johnson – not in 1860.

It was Lincoln’s run for reelection in 1864 when Vice President Hannibal Hamlin was dumped in favor of southern Democrat Johnson, a U.S. senator and appointed federal military governor of Tennessee who was one of the most admired men in the still-divided nation.

He was ill and nervous, and had a few too many drinks (ostensibly served to him by Hamlin) before taking the oath in the Senate chamber and giving a rambling, incoherent speech. Then Lincoln took his oath outside, delivered his famed “With malice toward none...” speech – and five weeks later, mere days after the Civil War had ended, was dead from an assassin’s bullet.

So the “drunken tailor” from Tennessee, as some called him, took another oath and became the nation’s 17th president.

History should have been that interesting back in junior high and high school – or maybe it was, and I just wasn’t paying attention.

Any similarities between then and now, well – history tends to be repetitious, and has its ironies.

Andrew Johnson grew up poorer than Barack Obama, and had a lot in common with slaves after his widowed mother apprenticed him to a tailor as a young teen-ager in his native Raleigh, N.C. Forget about child labor laws – Johnson was indentured for seven years, and became a fugitive when he ran away to Tennessee without completing his servitude.

Yet he became a slave-owner himself, even buying two half-sibling black children, after becoming a successful tailor in Greeneville. Self-educated with help from his wife, Johnson became deeply involved in local politics and won election to a succession of offices including the U.S. Senate.

After Lincoln sent him back to Tennessee as military governor following the union army’s capture of Nashville, Johnson decided to declare an end to slavery there – but first set an example by emancipating his own longtime household slaves.

He was a man of principle, and in the end that was what sullied his reputation because of unyielding defense of the U.S. Constitution in the face of post-war disputes with Congress and eventual impeachment for refusing to recognize a law enacted over his veto. He survived the Senate trial by a margin of a single vote of not guilty – and was the only president to be impeached until Bill Clinton “didn’t have sex with that woman.”

How complicated could a nation’s politics get? The strict-constructionist Johnson fought moves by the post-war Congress to help the freed slaves and deal harshly with those who had joined the Rebellion – not that he did not want to help the nation’s large black population, but he felt strongly about state rights and healing the wounds of war.

Unable or unwilling to seek compromise, Johnson became a failed president – likely in the lower 20 percent of all who have held the nation’s highest office.

During our memorable tour of Johnson’s two surviving homes and tailor shop in downtown Greeneville, our National Park Service guide Daniel Luther allowed as how Johnson would have been looked on with far greater admiration in history had he not become president. “But then, we wouldn’t be here on this tour,” he added. “People don’t generally visit the homes of the vice presidents.”

Our guide also noted that Johnson’s first speech after being succeeded as president by Ulysses S. Grant was made in Baltimore, where he declared: “My deliverance from office is the greatest case of emancipation since the Rebellion.”

Much of Johnson’s history and possessions in Greeneville are preserved. On the tour of his post-presidency home, you touch and hold the same banister as he did going up the stairs. The side-by-side portraits of Lincoln and himself that he treasured still hang above the mantel. His nightshirt lays across his bed. On the floor sits his empty chamber pot, and on the dresser rests his black top hat.

You can buy a replica of the hat in the Visitor Center gift shop for 12 bucks. The label says “Made in China.”

In the film there, the words of Andrew Johnson are spoken by an eerily familiar voice – that of Fred Thompson, the Tennessee actor-turned-U.S. senator and wannabe Republican president. Fortunately, playing stand-in for Andrew Johnson was as close as he would come.

King of the Wild Frontier

Driving north out of Greeneville along Route 11E, we are detoured by a roadside sign indicating that just 1.9 miles away is Davy Crockett Birthplace State Park.

Growing up as an adoring fan of the Disney-made Fess Parker-portrayed life of the early 1800s Tennessee frontiersman, congressman and eventual Alamo martyr, I just had to check it out.

I started whistling the theme song, ‘Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee, the greenest state in the land of the free, raised in the woods so’s he knew ev’ry tree, killt him a b’ar when he was only three, Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier.”

At the visitor center, a TV was showing a biographical video interspersed with scenes from Fess Parker’s series and John Wayne’s movie “Alamo.” You could buy a tacky Davy Crockett park T-shirt for $10, but the only coonskin cap (as worn by the Fess Parker version of Davy) was part of a display and not for sale.

For one thing, Crockett probably didn’t wear one himself.

And the park literature readily acknowledges the obvious when you look around the topography: He wasn’t born on no mountaintop.

So what did we gain by the little roadside diversion? We met a Georgia cracker – a crazed 81-year-old Republican veteran of World War II whose attitudes seemed straight out of the Ku Klux Klan.

Well, I didn’t know he was crazed right away. He seemed normal enough visiting the re-created Davy Crockett log cabin with his wife, daughter, and two sweet young grandchildren, and told me how he was from Georgia, he’d been there once before, 40 years ago, when the way in was a dirt road, the original cabin was still stood there, and the only amenity was a small refreshment stand.

I was curious about his politics, asking what he thought about the presidential election, and in an inspirational act to see how he’d react, opened up my Orioles jacket to reveal my Obama button.

Talk about an explosion of mouth. The short version is that he is less than happy about that black Muslim trying to become president. It got rougher, but I won’t go there. And he was gone a minute later, heading back to the car with his otherwise idyllic family.

There was an amused witness: A retired New York social worker and Vietnam vet, like us on a meandering drive in search of America. He winked and flashed his own Obama button.

Can’t help but wonder what Disney will make of Obama someday. Hope there’ll be a nice song to whistle, and a happier ending.

Tomorrow: A visit to the storytelling capital

Road Report, Part 7 (Adult Swimming)

David and Bonnie take a campus ‘Swim’
and all they get are these lousy T-shirts

We checked out of our luxury room at the Virginia Tech campus hotel in late morning Monday and headed back to the Drillfield for Bonnie to take more photos of the massacre memorial and attempt a 360-degree panarama with multiple images while rotating her camera kept level on a tripod.

Interesting to me? Not really. That’s way too technical for this word manipulator, so I wandered across the grassy expanse to investigate what appeared to be a small carnival.

Talk about juxtaposition: On one side of the Drillfield is the memorial to the 32 victims of last year’s mass killings here, on the other a one-day carnival promoting the Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim.”

Of course I hauled Bonnie over there to enjoy the human circus as it was opening at noon. We got in line early and only had to wait half an hour for the Adult Swim T-shirt giveaway – you pick the shirt and any of several designs to be imprinted on the fabric while you wait. So we picked these messages: “Free Shirt Limit 1” and “I Will Rock Your Face.”

I’ll leave it to my blog fans to guess who got which shirt.
The 20-something gal handing out the newly-minted shirts eyed the latter design, and smiled at this 60-something.

“You’re never too old to rock,” I said.

She laughed.

So nice to help folks laugh – although having a job on the road setting up one-day campus carnivals for Adult Swim must have its moments.

We tried out the Peep Show, in a row of booths equipped with flat-screen video monitors showing mundane video clips of a bunny, baby chicks, an underwater swimmer, interspersed with quick-hit images of some weird-professor dude. But as a grouping, it elicited smiles. If it had anything to do with the Cartoon Network show, I haven’t a clue. I’ll confess to never having watched more than five minutes of it. (And that purely the result of late-night channel surfing.)

Not that I am totally unhip. Just that there’s only so much time in a day of time-wasting to choose your mental poisons. My current addictions include the AMC network’s sophisticated soap opera “Mad Men” and HBO’s vampish “True Blood.” Plus baseball and football, and entirely too much CNN.

Before we left, we checked out the Sleeping Clairvoyant Cat (remember the fortune telling machine in the movie "Big" -- substitute a curled-up kitty, and fortune cards that all say the same thing: "Many years ago today, something grew inside your mother."

I also cajoled Bonnie into yet another couple of silly photos of me – one sticking my head into a cutout cartoon character (and I took a similar shot of Bonnie), the other with my arm around a gal in a bunny suit in front of the Heavy Petting Zoo.

So very collegiate.

Then we hit the road, out of Blacksburg, Va., and onto some blue highways to enjoy fall foliage, lush countryside, and the snaking-for-miles Wolf Creek. At one point a huge wild turkey ran across the road, prompting me to stop briefly (until two vehicles speeding up behind us nearly rammed our Toyota – mea culpa!).

We ended up for the night on the outskirts of Kingsport, Tennessee, in a $65-a-night (AAA/AARP rate) Comfort Inn. We walked to the chain Perkins Restaurant & Bakery on the opposite side of the parking area, and pigged out on the 55-Plus seniors menu, which was unexpectedly very good.

And for some reason, I ordered the turkey.

Tomorrow: Maybe we’ll search for President Johnson (Andrew, not Lyndon)

Road Trip Report, Part 6 (Healing after Horror)

A semicircle of 'Hokie Stones' is heart of memorial at Virginia Tech. Other image shows Barbara Lockee (left) of VT and Rhonda Robinson of Northern Illinois University. (photos by Bonnie Schupp)

Project in healing, hope

unites schools hit by shootings

You can’t visit Virginia Tech without noting what happened here on the leafy Blacksburg, Va., campus some 18 months ago.

Virginia Tech was host school to this weekend’s annual conference of the International Visual Literacy Association, which included an exhibit Saturday on a project in its early stages of development aimed at bringing together VT and Northern Illinois University in their common bond of grief and recovery from mass killings.

On April 16, 2007, a deranged student killed 32 people and wounded a reported 17 others on the Blacksburg campus in two separate attacks before taking his own life. It was the deadliest mass murder in United States history.

It was followed on Feb. 14 of this year by a mass shooting by a former student at Northern Illinois University who killed five and wounded 18 others in a large lecture hall on the DeKalb campus and then committed suicide.

I guess you can’t define two such incidents, coming 10 months apart, as a pattern. Yet they are part of a troubling history in a nation where violence is a daily reality, and multiple killings are not uncommon. We are inundated with violence, in both the news and what is termed entertainment.

How to cope, how to assuage the grief, to embark on a path toward healing are at the root of the project shown in a formative stage Saturday by faculty members Rhonda Robinson of Northern Illinois and Barbara Lockee of Virginia Tech. They titled the presentation – photos of the grieving, memorial displays and expressions of caring – “Symbols of Hope: Huskie and Hokie Visions of Recovery.”

With photographs taken on both campuses in the days and weeks after the killings, the effort builds a bridge of empathy between schools 700 miles apart but drawn close in spirit by the horrors they suffered.

Robinson and Lockee said they plan to seek contributions of images from their university communities that will enlarge the scope of the project, whose final form is yet undetermined.

Lockee led a walking tour from the conference center to Virginia Tech’s eloquent April 16 Memorial – a semicircle of 32 “Hokie Stones” (the type of stone incorporated in buildings across the sprawling campus), each engraved with the name of a victim of the massacre. It is modeled on an impromptu memorial of stones assembled by a student volunteer group hours after the shootings.

As we arrived, other visitors were placing fresh flowers across the name on each stone.

There’s a brochure explaining the memorial, with photos and short biographies of the 32 victims in the same order they appear, from left to right, in the procession of stones.

Walking along the path, you inevitably take a deep breath at the stunning reality: “There’s so many of them.”

But there were 33 dead, and one remains missing: The killer.

Perhaps that’s because he may be the hardest to forget.

Nearby, tucked around the corner of the administration building, is Norris Hall, where the bulk of the killings occurred in second-floor classrooms. While there was some thought to demolishing it, Lockee said much work would have been lost because of equipment installed in first-floor laboratories that could not be moved.

Instead, walls are coming down on the second floor to create space for a new Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies. It is to be directed, Lockee said, by Jerzy Nowak, the horticulture professor and department chair whose wife, French professor Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, was killed in Room 211 along with 11 of her students.

Stitches across time

The ‘Visions of Recovery’ exhibit was paired with a display by Lucinda Willis of “healing quilts” – family heirlooms and her own, each laced with deep meaning.

In a summary of her exhibit, “Healing Quilts: A Visual Display of Emotions and Strength,” Willis explained: “Healing quilts have, for generations, been a way for women to express themselves when recovering from a devastating episode in life. Various forms of healing quilts have been created over the centuries, and even today, quilts are made which gently show strength and determination in the face of adversity.”

Many have seen quilts memorializing victims of disease, war or violence. The display of five quilts brought to the conference by Willis, of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, included one that, according to the story handed down with it across generations, was hastily made with available scrap fabric by a mother to keep her son safe and warm as he went off to war as a Confederate soldier. It and he survived.

Of the designs that emerge, Willis wrote on a display card, “Healing quilts don’t get planned, they evolve, and with each stitch, some comfort is gained.”

Road Trip Report, Part 5 (The Poster Boys)

Reinventing wheels
in political postering

Who's on First?
Of course, it's America!

“Country First” – nothing new about John McCain’s slogan.

Warren Harding used a similar one in 1920: “America First.”

Who would have guessed? Well, if you’re keeping up with the work of Steve Seidman, you’d see the poster politics of 2008 in a whole new (or old) light. Seidman – Dr. Steven A. Seidman – is associate professor and chair of the Department of Strategic Communication at Ithaca College.

And in a bit of wonderful timing, his four years of research produced just a month ago his book: “Posters, Propaganda, and Persuasion in Election Campaigns Around the World and Through History.”

While the book doesn’t quite make it to 2008, Seidman looked at the current campaign in a presentation this weekend on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va., at the annual conference of the International Visual Literacy Association (http://www.ivla.org/).

There really isn’t much new when it comes to the art of political postering – for example, the use of “gazing into the future” poses by both the McCain and Barack Obama camps.

Seidman compared an Obama “gazing” pose, powerfully angled from below in front of a flag background of red, white and blue, to the pose of President Gerald Ford on a black/dark background for his (doomed) 1976 campaign. Ford’s face was the only color in his poster; Obama’s face, though not brought up by Seidman, was in shades of black and white against a U.S. flag background.

At the bottom of the poster was the colorful Obama campaign logo, built on circles with a blue ‘O’ for Obama and a rising ‘O’ sun at its center – suggestive, Seidman says, of “a better tomorrow” and a symbol similarly used in election posters in many nations.

There is also an array of “guerilla marketing” posters springing up, sometimes illegally plastered atop others’ posters, around the nation – and being marketed by their creators. Among them is the popular “Abraham Obama” design by painter Ron English, combining the features of Abe and Barack and easily found online.

“The last time artists became so enthusiastic for a candidate was 36 years ago for [George] McGovern,” Seidman observed.

Among the images Seidman displayed in his PowerPoint presentation was a side-by-side comparison of an Obama poster for his July appearance in Berlin and a 1933 poster supporting the Social Democratic Party of Holland – both in what the professor said was the Bauhaus style.

“These styles always reemerge,” he said.

Seidman noted a recent story in the New York Times on campaign typography, and showed the McCAIN/PALIN poster design you see on lawn signs, bumper stickers, T-shirts and buttons. Its font, he said, is Optima bold – and described in the NYT article as “classic, elite and old-fashioned.”

The font is also used in the national Vietnam Memorial in Washington, Seidman said, “a strong, tough typeface.” And he pointed out the “very military” presence in of a gold star and braiding in the campaign design.

As for “America First,” the Warren Harding poster showed the 55-year old Republican in front of a billowing Old Glory with his right hand in a powerfully tight fist, and his left hand with thumb and two forefingers outstretched in what has become a recognized peace symbol (this campaign coming soon after the Great War). The slogan appears to the lower left.

Harding won, but died of a heart attack two and a half years after taking office and was succeeded by another, to put it gently, lightly-regarded president, Calvin Coolidge.

I noticed in checking out Warren G. Harding online that he seems not to have made much use of his middle name – Gamaliel. That’s a tough one. Hussein is a lot easier on the tongue.

For more on the art and design of political posters and propaganda, check out Steve Seidman’s blog at: http://www.ithaca.edu/rhp/depts/stratcomm/blogs/posters_and_election_propaganda/

His book is available in paperback ($33.95) and hardcover ($109.95) from Peter Lang Publishing USA (phone 212-647-7706), or through Amazon where the paperback can be had a few bucks cheaper.

Tomorrow: Healing after campus tragedies

Road Trip, The Bizarre Part 4

Virginia is
for wackos

Elephants, dinosaurs and Bibles, oh my!

The craziness and wonder are unmistakable along Virginia Route 11, approaching tourism-rich Natural Bridge.

On the west side of the road, there’s a menacing green dinosaur standing on a broken-open shipping crate atop an old red pickup truck. It’s a promotion for the Dinosaur Kingdom attraction a few miles further south.

But strangely, it’s sitting on the small gravel parking lot for what seems another sort of kingdom, hinted at by the Ten Commandments posted on one door of the padlocked double-gate entrance. The other door has an ironically similar message: “No Trespassing.”

Well, forgive us this little trespass – we peeked through a hole and saw a sight that would positively enrage a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Fake Animals: Life-size replica denizens of Noah’s Ark littering the ground of the enclosed yard like so much junk. There’s a damaged elephant, a giraffe, animals as far as the eye could peek, all doubtless in need of a flood outta there.

Glancing at the giant plastic pharaohs lining the outside of the fence in this ersatz Valley of Kings, we headed off the parking lot and saw a billboard looming over the east side of Route 11 proclaiming the Dinosaur Kingdom and yet another wonder ahead – FOAMHENGE.

Little more than a mile south, there it was on a plateau up a small hill, looking very much like another “henge” we’d visited years ago in England. Not stone, but foam – a life-size rendering of Stonehenge, free for the visiting but with signs warning against vandalism.

Unlike the real thing in England, which is surrounded by a fence to keep people outside the great circle, Foamhenge (shown in wife Bonnie Schupp's photo, top, as is the roadside dinosaur in silhouette) is fully accessible. You can stand under it and pose for photos, but please don’t chip the paint or team the foam material. It’s already chipping away.

The creator of Foamhenge (and Dinosaur Kingdom, which we hadn’t the time to seek out) is Mark Cline. And after encountering Foamhenge by the chance of getting off Interstate 81 for the “blue highway” joys of Route 11, I did a Google search and found plenty about him – including a marvelous 2006 Washington Post story on his creations headlined “Jurassic Lark.”

Check it out at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/23/AR2006042301192.html.

From the story, I gather that the fenced enclosure that so Biblically mystified us is the Enchanted Castle headquarters of the artist, who had crafted critters for all manner of theme parks. So it was a shame he wasn’t around since, as fans and members of the American Visionary Art Museum, Cline is our kind of artist.

A sign at the foot of the path leading up to Foamhenge (which the Post story says was unveiled on April Fool’s Day 2004) offers comparisons between it and the English inspiration:

“Stonehenge took 1500 years to complete... using stones weighing as much as 50 tons. An estimated 600-1000 men dragged the stones from Marlborough Downs 20 miles north. Perhaps used as a temple, observatory, or tomb.

“Foamhenge was completed in six weeks using beaded Styrofoam blocks weighing up to 420 pounds. Delivered on 4 tractor trailer trips from Winchester, Va. 100 miles north. It took 4-5 Mexicans and one crazy white man to construct. It’s main purpose is to educate & entertain.”

Bless you, M. Cline – it did just that! (Though I thought Stonehenge was completed a few centuries quicker.)

Joe the Plumber’s Helper

As it turns out, the story keeps growing – Barack Obama knocked on the guy’s door, John McCain made that encounter a big deal in the debate, the media surrounded Joe, and all the suggestions and assumptions that had arisen took on the wispy quality of smoke in a variable breeze.

So the media finds he doesn’t have a plumber’s license, isn’t about to buy the company from his boss, has a lien on his house for state tax delinquency in Ohio, and is just the kind of not-poor, not-rich white guy who would be better off with Obama as president but will vote for McCain.

Just another meaningless distraction along America’s Road to Ruin.

Coming tomorrow: The art of political postering

Road Trip Report, Part 3

"I don’t know

if Jesus

could straighten

this mess out."

--Barry Strong,

retired educator

Searching for the

reel America:

pay dirt at the drive-in

Not every day do you meet an educator who can laugh about slapping handcuffs on his students.

That’s Barry Strong, a retired teacher and principal we found Thursday in about the unlikeliest place – a drive-in movie theater, in broad daylight.

We’d been driving south on Interstate 81 from Harrisonburg, Va., and turned off on what you might call a blue highway in search of some real America. We found it a bit past noon along Route 11, on the outskirts of the town of Lexington.

The marquee said it was closed, the season ended, but there was a pickup truck parked inside the fence and no barricade at the entrance lane, so we rode in hoping for my wife Bonnie to get some pictures of the empty place that might be symbolic of a dying but of Americana.

The truck belonged to the 61-year-old Strong, who was methodically waving a fancy metal detector over the dirt and grass in a back parking row searching for stray coins. Not that he needed the money for gasoline or anything; it was just a little pastime that sometimes turns up an old silver dime or half-dollar, but more often worthless debris.

“It’s been metal-detected before, but nobody gets it all,” he noted. “The trouble with metal detecting in a place like this is there’s so much junk in the ground, like pop tops. But it’s like fishing – you never know what you’re going to catch.”

Strong said he’s a Hull’s Angel – a member of a group of supporters and helpers at the drive-in, which remains a popular place around Lexington on warm summer nights. “They bring their blankets and get out on the grass. It’s a family-oriented place.”

The conversation quickly turned to politics, as I asked his views on the campaign. He says he expects to vote for John McCain, despite -- not because of -- his selection of Sarah Palin as his running-mate. For Strong, the choice is because he sees McCain as the most experienced candidate for president.

“I watched most of the debate last night,” he said. “I think McCain did a little better.”

But he acknowledged that “I got tired of hearing Joe’s name,” a reference to now-politically ubiquitous Ohioan Joe the Plumber, and lamented of that profession that “they won’t come out to see you for less than a hundred.”

“I read the Roanoke Times – I read the editorials every morning. They said they ought to vote all the incumbents out and start over. They couldn’t do worse than that. I don’t know if Jesus could straighten this mess out.”

Now about those handcuffs:

Strong said he started his career in 1970 as a sixth-grade teacher at Hartman Elementary School in Clarksburg, W.Va., at a salary of $6,000 and a classroom of 46 children. (Bonnie noted she had started her career in Baltimore in 1967, at then-Ben Franklin Junior High, making all of $5,800.)

Strong had some wonderful tales of those early days, like teaching the twin brothers Neil and Don, and the hot day in the un-air-conditioned school when Neil fell asleep at his desk and was directed out into the hall for the then-customary punishment: a paddling.

“He was crying and said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Strong. It was hot, and we just ate....’ And he was right. So we went back in the classroom and I apologized to him in front of all the other children. And I handed him the paddle and told him to paddle me.”

Did he? You betcha.

“He reddened my ass,” Strong chuckled.

Later in his career, Strong said he became a teacher and administrator in juvenile detention facilities, including an assignment as assistant principal at the juvenile correctional prison in Beaumont, Va., where some of the students “were murderers.”

And that part of his career pretty much explains why “you could handcuff the students.”

Coming tomorrow: Outrageous roadside attractions

Road Trip Report, Part 2

Cemetery dust-off

trumps debate for this blogger

Something you didn’t know: There’s folks who travel around the country spending their valuable free time cleaning up old tombstones.

We met two of them Wednesday in the bury patch high above historic Harpers Ferry, W.Va. – women ignoring a late run of biting flying insects to get down on their knees, gently brush dirt off and rub a length of chalk across time-weathered names and inscriptions.

Their T-shirts bore the name of their organization, Cemetery Surveys Inc., which is endeavoring to document online the names and histories gleaned from this painstaking work. The chalk makes the names and at least some of the old inscriptions a little more visible, enabling the women to record them with a digital photograph.

The Harper Cemetery had plenty of work for them, with burials dating back two centuries.

Nema Mobley (shown in Bonnie’s photo above) was one of the volunteers, a retired middle school teacher from Cherokee County, Georgia, who probably got no more appreciation from most of her students than she received from those long dust in the ground beneath her aging knees.

You can check out the organization’s Web site at http://cemeterysurveysinc.org. It has information on thousands of the documented departed, but talk about an uphill struggle – they’ve probably got millions to go before they sleep.

Other sights along the way

As I noted, the cemetery is high above the town – and climbing the many steps up the hillside was the biggest ordeal of the day aside from swatting away the gnats and biting bugs awakened by a warm October.

I hadn’t been in the streets of Harpers Ferry for 40 years, and was impressed by restoration work that has kept the nucleus of the waterfront town alive and the friendly and informative National Park Service staff.

I asked, in the old general store, about one of the items in a display case labeled as a piece of the rope used to hang John Brown – the leader of an anti-slavery band that staged the ill-fated raid for which Harpers Ferry draws its most lasting fame.

A young Park Service guide on duty there noted an old history of the event written by a resident from that era, which pointed out that if all the purported pieces of the rope sold as souvenirs were authentic, it would have been long enough to hang John Brown from the moon. (The author, it was also said, was also a bit of an Irish drunk whose accounts may have been... well, embellished is a kind word.)

After nearly four hours in Harpers Ferry, we headed south through Front Royal and along about 75 miles of Skyline Drive – which on weekends is packed with visitors gawking at views of fall foliage. There was little traffic on a Wednesday, however, but foliage at the lower elevations had not yet peaked.

Still, it was a nice drive that got us within a 150-haul of our next destination in Blacksburg, Va., and to a decent Comfort Inn at Harrisonburg well in time for the Great (Last) Debate of the presidential campaign. So, it’s on to....

McCain v. Obama, Opus Three

Cut the crap, you Republicans. McCain got clobbered again.

For one thing, maybe I missed it somewhere, but I thought Palin had an infant with Down syndrome, and McCain kept talking about her expertise with autism. A little forgetful? I'd hope that Palin is expert in all manner of developmental disablities, particularly Down syndrome, and that she and her family do a great job in raising their newborn to achieve all that is possible.

And I hope she does it without ever having to leave Alaska.

Obama, meanwhile, missed a great opportunity when McCain told him if he were running against George Bush, Obama should have run against the president four years ago.

McCain’s comment was facetious. And Obama should have retorted: “Why didn’t you run, John?”

Speaking of John, let’s talk about Joe – the poor plumber guy from Ohio.

I don’t feel a whit sorry for Joe if he can’t get a loan to expand the business where he puts in 12-hour days of labor. Plumbers bill 100 to 200 bucks an hour, and I’m sure Old Joe is making a tidy sum off hapless homeowners like me. He's doing just fine compared to many Americans, and will get all the money he needs once the Bush administration's banking meltdown ends.

He’s Joe the Plumber in my book, not Average Joe Sixpack.

(I know, I shouldn’t have said that. Next time the toilet goes blooooey, I’m gonna pay bigtime.)

Which reminds me, it’s time to get the septic tank pumped out.

Politics has filled it to overflowing.