Tennessee has a lot of Civil War sites. On the way here from Memphis we stopped at Shiloh, the site of the war's first major battle. Almost 24,000 men died there, in two days. Now it is a national park and well preserved. There was a very 1950s-era documentary (someday maybe Ken Burns will redo it for them), but the grounds were beautiful and sobering. Here are a few pictures.
We have come to Lawrenceburg to see the Amish country here. We're staying at David Crockett State Park, which looks to be quite nice. Tomorrow we'll explore.
Tuesday
Here is our site:
Once again we are adjacent to a nice playground for Katie. But it is pretty chilly out (I'd say in the 40s) so it's hard to play outside for long. The countryside here is rolling hills of cattle and farms, with oak forests naked of trees; it's quite pretty, even in the winter. Where folks let the cattle roam, there is no underbrush and you can see right through the thick forest.
One of the park rangers here is from Rocklin. He said he moved his family here a couple months ago, they wanted to raise their kids in a small town and he chose Lawrenceburg. He bought four acres with a two bedroom home on it for $50,000. My jaw dropped, but after exploring the area, I can see how it could be that cheap. This area is still agricultural, and not a boomtown. There is a strip of highway with McDonalds and WalMart and some small businesses, but that's about it. The historic downtown has a few antique stores (none were even open today; maybe they close for the winter) but no cafes or bookstores. I'm not sure I would have chosen to move here, unless I felt I had to.
But one thing you can experience here that makes it special is to drive the country roads outside town and truly feel that you have gone back in time a hundred years or more, in the Amish community. I followed the horse poops along the highway to find the farms...
They put hand-painted signs at the end of their driveways, advertising whatever they sell, sorghum mollasses, eggs, cedar chests, quilts, to make extra money during the winter until they can sell their crops next summer. I was tentative to drive onto their farms, but we did, riding up to the white wooden farmhouses, with their blue and brown laundry on the lines (maybe Tuesday is laundry day here--everyone had laundry out), men working in the fields, and dogs in the yard. But the yards were perfectly clean otherwise: no broken down junk or pieces and parts of things like many of the non-Amish folks had. You could see ancient farm equipment in the barns. I'd stand outside the farmhouse until a woman wearing a handmade farmdress and bonnet would answer the door. The first one had such light blue, strange, broadset eyes that I was sort of transfixed. She had a very protruding forehead too, and wasn't pretty but very hard to look away from. She had an accent that sounded German, and there was a pair of blue, homemade toddler's overalls with lots of patches on them hanging from her laundry line. I wish I could have gotten the guts to ask for her picture, she was so unusual looking. Her eyes were almost electric baby blue with an electric dark circle around the outside. She seemed shy and I was embarrassed too. I bought a pint of sorghum mollasses from her for $2.50. I'm looking forward to tasting it.
At the second farm I went to, I waved to a man who seemed to be teaching two toddler boys how to do something with wood in the yard. He had the Amish beard around his whole chin, overalls, etc. He ignored me, so I waited patiently, and sure enough, a woman came out of the house and told me to come to the door around the side. It was a tacked-on bedroom with an antique wooden bed in the center, a table, and shelves filled with homemade candles, jam and a few bags of peanut brittle. I bought some very runny blackberry jam and a bag of yummy brittle from her. She had a baby on her hip (dressed in a beautiful little Amish onesie) and a four-year-old girl in a sweet sweet dress with blond braids over her head. This lady seemed a little friendlier, with a Southern accent instead of a German one. Maybe she'd been more socialized than the other gal. She seemed about my age, and apparently lived there with her sister too (the sister sells eggs out of a different house on the property). I surreptitously took a picture of their laundry; it was very pretty with so many shades of blue (and other colors too, at the other end).
Many of the farms had birdhouses made from gourds, on tall poles. Here is one at an abandoned farmhouse:
This last picture is of a farm where cedar chests were sold. I didn't drive up, because I knew I couldn't buy one, but I sort of wish I had gone to look. Their laundry line went all the way to the top of their barn.
I found a country store or two selling Amish things, and bought a set of blue handmade potholders, and chatted with a local woman who repairs jewelry, and who told me a little about the Amish here. They won't grow flowers in their yard because flowers "are of no use," but if you bring them flowers, that's fine with them. Her Amish friend even let her bring a WalMart birthday cake over for her daughter. And although they sew their clothes themselves, they don't make the fabric (I was hoping to buy some). If I want Amish fabric, I'm told I just go to Walmart and buy any cotton in blue, brown or black.
This has been so interesting, because these folks truly do live so differently from me, and I wish I could sit down and chat with them, but I'm afraid to offend them with my curiosity. Anyway, I'm glad we came, even if I ventured so little.
Tomorrow we leave, to follow the Natchez Trace north. I'm not sure of our destination yet, but we might try to drive all the way to Kentucky and go see Mammoth Cave.