FDR's winter retreat

Warm Springs Georgia

May 15 2018

Tuesday is our first full day here in FDR state park. We drove to Warm Springs to tour President Roosevelt’s Little White house. First we browsed in some of the antique stores in the village and ate lunch at a local eatery. They had an unusual condiment, which we tried and really liked, candied jalapeños.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Warm Springs home

FDR’s Georgia home is preserved in the condition it was the day President Roosevelt died on April 12 1945. He was sitting for a portrait at the Little White House when he suffered a stroke. Roosevelt died two hours later of cerebral hemorrhage.

I couldn’t help but think of the contradiction this place represented. Roosevelt was at the time, one of the most powerful men in the world. He had led the nation through the great depression and was now commander in chief of the greatest military and strongest economy in the world. His retreat could have been anywhere, but he came here to this simple cabin in the Georgia.

Next we went down the road to the Warm Springs rehabilitation Facility. We toured the original Warm Springs pools Roosevelt used to exercise his polio stricken legs. No longer in use for therapy, they are part of the park service exhibit.

FDR in the Warm Springs Rehabilitation pool

We stopped in the town of Pine Mountain on the way back to the campground. A slightly larger version of Warm Springs, it also hosted antique stores in the old main street. That means I got to “shop” in several more antique stores, oh joy! Neither of us bought any old stuff.

RE: "shopping". I am a man shopper who operates with military precision, Formulate a plan,  (make a list) attack the store, (go directly to your list items) secure your purchase, ( check out in the shortest line) Mission a success! Millie on the other hand, enters the store, goes directly to the bargain racks, browses for eternity, doesn't buy anything, mission a success?

I did buy a case of local Calloway Springs water. It is bottled in really cool blue bottles and tastes like water should taste. It reminded me of a time about fifty years ago when after months of drinking really foul water I was given a 16 oz can of “Emergency Water” It was the best thing I ever tasted.

RE: Emergency Drinking water. Yes there really was such a thing; I have no idea what kind of emergency it was to be used for.

Atlanta to Warm Springs

Monday May 14, 2018

Our trip today is only a little over 100 miles so we waited until ten am to leave Stone Mountain. That gave the commuters of Atlanta time to scamper around the beltways and clear the road for us.

Once we passed the concrete spaghetti of roadways near the airport we stopped for fuel and groceries. Fuel was from a local station and grub from Aldi’s. 

After our re-provisioning stop we took local roads the rest of the way to F. D. Roosevelt State Park. Located southwest of Atlanta a little over halfway to Columbia, I’m going to say this area is pretty much the same as when FDR spent winters nearby in Warm Springs. 

The park was built by the CCC’s (Civilian Conservation Corp) back in the thirties and what we’ve seen of it so far is typical rustic CCC trademark work. The campground is sparsely occupied and very quiet. We have a level shaded site with water and electric hookups.

Atlanta Georgia

May 12 2018

After a day of scurrying around repacking we left home for the 2^nd time this week. Our destination is Fort Rucker Alabama, but we will make a couple stops along the way.

Our first day is our longest travel day; we traveled just shy of 400 miles from Myrtle Beach to Atlanta Georgia. It was a boring all day interstate highway trip. We passed the time listening to an audio book called “The girl on the train” by Paula Hawkins. By the time we got to Atlanta we were about half way through it. It’s a strange story.

Our campground is on the east side of the city in Stone Mountain Park. The temperature was in the 90’s on Saturday afternoon so we decided to wait until morning for our planned visit to the carvings of the Confederate generals. 

The centerpiece of the park is Stone Mountain, a dome of exposed granite. It rises sharply over 600 feet above the surrounding terrain and is known for its barren sides. On its northern face is a large carving.  It depicts three Confederate leaders of the Civil War: President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson.

It is known as the Confederate Memorial, but there are no public displays of any kind mentioning the Civil War. Stone mountain Park has been transformed into a kind of amusement park and it is blatantly obvious they are downplaying the carving.

We rode the cable car to the summit of the mountain and walked among the other tourists on the barren rock. We took the obligatory picture of ourselves with the Atlanta skyline in the background. You may notice the crude editing on the right side, we got photo bombed by a giant woman caught pulling spandex out of her butt crack. I erased her from the picture but the image will be with me for some time, lol.

In the afternoon we drove into the city and took a 90 minute bus tour of the major attractions. It was just as obvious on the tour that Atlanta is attempting to forget about the Civil War. There was no reference to any militarily historic sites, or any prominent people from that era. 

Our tour guides, one black the other white were painting such a rosy picture of contemporary Atlanta that we never asked them about the erasing of history, specifically Civil War history. I am of the assumption that the citizens, many who have ancestors who were slaves or confederates coexist here by not mentioning it. Maybe that’s the best way for them to move forward.

Martinsville Virginia

May 8 2018

We took a short trip up to Virginia to visit Millie’s brother. We took our regular route up thru the North Carolina cities of Rockingham, Asheboro and Greensboro. 

Our campground of choice in Martinsville was full, which took us by surprise. Unless there is a race at the NASCAR track, there's not a lot to attract visitors to Martinsville. I think most of the campers are pipe line construction workers. Luckily, I had phoned ahead and learned of the no vacancy, so we secured a site nearby in Reidsville North Carolina just below the NC/VA border.

Millie’s brother was just home from the hospital, his very first ever admittance to a hospital! I won’t go into details but it was age related. He’s home and doing pretty well, in spirit anyhow. Millie’s sister and husband drove over from the western tip of Virginia, so we had a family gathering of sorts.

The Bray siblings, L-R Lucille, Millie, Betty, Front-Earnest

Earnest said he enjoyed his hospital stay and all the people he had to talk to. He is a happy and easy going country boy and I’m sure the nurses and attendants all enjoyed his humor and pleasant personality.

On Thursday we drove back home to Myrtle Beach. It will be a short stay; we are leaving this weekend for a road trip to Georgia and Alabama.

The blog is back

Once again I stopped writing to the blog without explanation, it's a good thing this is not a real job! It seems to be a habitual lapse every time we near the end of a trip. My only excuse is we seem to be busy all the time when we get home. I’m going to go with that one, because it’s true, we have many things going on with the new to us old house. We've also been on the road twice since returning from Delaware. I have a few posts in the can and will put them up one every couple days.

The whole time we were in Delaware for my mother’s funeral we had a heater running in the compartment where all the water tanks are located. The temperatures were going down into the 20’s every night and we were concerned about freezing pipes. Inside the motorhome we were warm with both the gas furnace and electric heater running, but we were watching the weather closely. Few Recreational Vehicles are made for winter climates, ours certainly isn’t.

We stayed a few days after the burial to help my brother Dave and his wife Lois with anything we could. My parents stayed in their home right up until their deaths, which is remarkable but they couldn’t have done it without Dave and Lois. They did everything for my parents in their final years and went well beyond what any children would be expected to do, we owe them a debt of gratitude.

Classic Nor'easter

With another nor’easter bearing down on the coast and snow and ice predicted, we decided we better get out while we could. We secured the bus for travel and at 0 dark thirty on the morning of March 19^th we pulled out of Lums Pond state park.

Our normal leisurely route down the Delmarva Peninsula didn’t seem like the prudent way to go, so we planned on the dreaded I-95 route. I don’t know why everyone hates 95 so much, probably because of the heavy traffic from Delaware to south of DC. 

Blue is I-95, Orange is 301 route to Carmel Church

We used the 301 connecter to avoid all the big city traffic. Through the eastern shore 301 is a down right pleasure. Traffic picks up some approaching the Bay Bridge where route 50 joins 301 at Kent Island, but it’s all going in the same direction! We are now south the Baltimore traffic and before we reached the DC congestion 301 splits off and travels thru rural Maryland and Virginia.

We intersected I-95 at Carmel Church Virginia, stopped for fuel at the flying J and then joined the south bound traffic on the nations first interstate highway (I think it was the first anyhow) I know we stopped again somewhere because we had a half tank of fuel when we got home, but I don’t remember where it was. FYI, it’s 550 miles from Lums Pond state park in Delaware to Myrtle Beach. We burn about 85 gallons of gasoline to make the journey. We weigh just shy of 26,000 lbs pulling the truck, are 57 feet long, have 10 wheels on the ground and get 6.5 mpg.

Our modified I-95 route from Delaware to Myrtle Beach.

We arrived home in Myrtle Beach at about 5pm; our total travel time was 10.5 hours. That’s not bad at all, considering we made two stops and I never consciously exceed the speed limit. Actually my preferred top speed for our flying circus is 65mph. Things can happen too fast above that speed and then there’s the sometimes thrilling feat of bringing the whole contraption to a stop when a traffic signal changes unexpectedly!

It sure did take me a long time to thaw out. Besides leaving Florida early this year and driving north to Delaware, winter just would not let go. It was unseasonably cool down here in March and April. I was wearing long pants in Myrtle Beach for gosh sakes! 

We toughed it out and worked on some our home projects, spring finally came, it lasted for two days and now its summer…..I’m not complaining!  Not even when the $80 worth of southern grass seed dried up and burst like miniature kernels of popcorn! I could write a play about my education with southern grass, it would be a landscaper’s Greek tragedy!

The greatest couple from the greatest generation.

The country has lost one of the greatest couples from the greatest generation. My parents came of age during ww2, my dad served in the Air Force and my mother worked in a factory during the war. They were married for 69 years. We lost our father last winter and now our mother has joined him. 

My brother Dave wrote a moving eulogy for our mother and he has given me permission to post it here.

 Mom was always the backbone of our family.  She raised four boys and worked part time to help with the family finances.  She was able to keep the family running amid the chaos of the four boys and our Dad.  She made all of our friends feel welcome and always treated them like family.  We always had half a dozen friends hanging around and she would feed them all.

Mom loved to cook and one of my favorite memories was watching her bake and flour being all over the kitchen table.  She also liked to sew and I think she made curtains for all our houses and her relatives. 

I don't think her childhood was the best - she was orphaned at a very young age. I can't even imagine that because she was such a presence in our lives - always there for us!

She moved to New York for a brief time and always spoke fondly of her adventures there, but then came back to McAdoo and married our Dad. 

I hated that she had to be sick and tethered to oxygen, just as much as she did, but near the end she would always say, "No Regrets", assuring us that she would be ok.

I will only have good memories of Mom. 

Love you Mom.  Rest in Peace. 

Here is Mom’s Obituary;

Mary Midash

Newark - Mary Midash, age 93, of Newark, DE, passed away peacefully on Friday, March 9, 2018 at Heartland Hospice House.

Born in McAdoo, PA on August 8, 1924, she was a daughter of the late John and Mary (Zurek) Matuskevich. She married John B. Midash on July 5, 1947, moved to Delaware and together they raised four sons.

Mary was a gifted seamstress, making custom draperies for J.C. Penney and her family. She also enjoyed making friends and meeting people in her role as a banquet server for several country clubs in Delaware. Mary enjoyed going to Delaware Park and shopping, but her favorite role was wife, mother, grandmother, great grandmother and homemaker. She was also a member of Holy Family R.C. Church.

In addition to her parents, Mary was preceded in death by her husband of 69 years, John, who died on December 9, 2016; youngest son, Randy; granddaughter, Melissa; daughter-in-law, Deborah; sisters, Helen, Julia and Sophia; brothers Paul, Pete, Michael and Edward. She is survived by her sons, John (Sandy), Larry (Millie) and David (Lois); her caregivers; three grandsons, Larry (Kristie), John (Heather) and David; three great grandchildren; sister, Stephanie Mackin; brother Stanley (Patsy) Matuskevich; brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Joseph and Dorothy Midash; numerous nieces and nephews; and good friends, Sallie Midash and Chris and Tom Kelley.

The family extends their deepest appreciation to Shannon and Amy from Heartland Hospice and the nurses and staff at Heartland Hospice House.

Graveside services and burial will be held at 11 am on Friday, March 16, 2018 at All Saints Cemetery, 6001 Kirkwood Highway, Wilmington, DE 19808.

To sign guest book, visit: spicermullikin.com

SPICER-MULLIKIN FUNERAL

HOMES & CREMATORY

Unexpected trip north

We’ve driven a lot of miles since the last post from Florida and we are now camped in Newark Delaware. Yes we’ve gone from 80 and sunny to frigid and overcast!

1200 miles, Clermont Florida to Newark Delaware

We departed Wauchula Florida on March 5^th and returned to Clermont. The Orlando Thousand Trails Campground here was our first stop back in December and is usually our last stop on the way home. We had originally made reservations for 14 days, but we were getting anxious to return to our “new to us” house and get back to work on our current projects. We had tickets to see Jimmie Fortune at the Strawberry Festival on Monday and had to go to the IKEA store in Orlando to pick up a purchase. Then if the weather looked good in Myrtle Beach we would head home by the end of the week.

On Monday morning a call from my brother changed those plans, my mother who is 94 with a failing heart was not doing too well. We quickly decided to miss the Jimmie Fortune show, pick up our purchase at IKEA on Monday and head home early Tuesday.

We departed Clermont at 8am and drove north for 550 miles, arriving home in Myrtle Beach in the afternoon. By now it was clear that my mother’s death was eminent. The new plan was for me to fly or drive to Delaware while Millie stayed home with our dog, Maggie. Sadly my mother died before we could implement the plan.

Mary A Midash in fall of 2017

As soon as funeral arrangements had been made, we reloaded the motorhome and made the trip north. We traveled up RT 17 because of the Nor’easter that was depositing snow on the I-95 corridor. Winds from the storm were very strong all day and when we got to Norfolk we decided to wait unit morning to cross the Bay Bridge and Tunnel.

The following morning we drove up the peninsula to Lums Pond state Park near Newark, adding another 550 miles to our travels.

March this year has been colder than February in the Mid-Atlantic, temperatures are forecast to be well below freezing each night for the next week. Inside the motorhome is comfortable, outside is another matter altogether!