M*A*S*H

M*A*S*H
The reunion that everybody has been waiting for Radar and Hot Lips together again, or at least Gary Burghoff and Cathy. Since Gary (Radar) lives in Citrus County they gave him an honorary day at a little park near where he lives so we decided to go say hi. We got there about an hour early and were sitting in the car listening to the Michigan – Ohio game; there were about 30 people already in line when he came walking up. He walked up and got in the end of the line behind a 75 year old lady, after a few seconds he asked her “what time is that guy suppose to get her” she turned around and said at 1:00 o’clock then she turned her back on him. After about 3 seconds it must of dawned on her because she let out a little scream and said “you’re him”, it was a great way to make an entrance. We were probably 40th in line and it took us about an hour and a half before we got up to him, he didn’t rush anybody, he posed for pictures signed whatever you brought with you and answered any questions that you had. He told a few stories about being on the set of M*A*S*H, and was really very funny. When we left there were probably another 80 to 100 more people in line.
Oh, by the way Michigan lost it in the 4th quarter.
more later

A Day with the Mighty Eigth

We spent the better part of the day walking through the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum. If you ever saw the movie “12 O’clock High” and who hasn’t, then you’ll know what this museum is all about. The movie was filmed on location with the Mighty Eighth and just about all the film footage in the movie is actual footage of the air battles. Probably 75% of the movie was taken from the experiences of the crewmembers of the Mighty Eighth. They have tons of exhibits and five different movies, the best part is a big room that is designed like the airfield in England that they flew out of. You start by entering the Nissen Hut (now called a Quonset hut) here you get a pre-flight briefing for your bombing mission in a B-17. They will also teach you the difference between a B-17 & a B-24. Then you go out with the maintance crew to make sure the aircraft is ready for flight, then it’s off you go into the wild blue yonder. They have what they call the “immersion theater” which has about 6 different screens and you’re right in the middle of them, flying a bombing mission to destroy the oil refiners in Germany. Other then a flight simulator this is as close as you’ll ever come to being Gregory Peck on his 25th mission. In another part of the building the have it set you where you’re a waist gunner with a 50 caliber trying to shot a bunch of MIG’s out of the sky. The guide we had was 8 years old when the war started, but his big brother was old enough to join up and he did. He was one of the original pilots and flew his plane and crew from the USA to England; he was also one of the first to fly 25 missions just to have them raise the number to 30 for rotation home. He flew his 30 missions and only lost two aircraft but also a few crew men, After his 30 missions (which he flew in 52 days) they told him if he flew 5 more missions they would promote him to Captain, which would have made him the youngest Captain in history, he had just turned 19. He declined their offer and rotated home to enjoy life until he died in 1989.


The other thing that we found fascinating was the Memorial Garden, It’s kind of set up like an old English garden with some broken gates and small brick walls, each plane had it’s own name and logo painted on it, pretty much whatever the Pilot wanted. In the garden the have carved stone, granite or marble plaques with the name & logo of the aircraft and names of the crew members for most of the planes, also listed behind the name is whether they were, KIA, MIA or POW. During WW II the Mighty Eighth had over 24,000 killed in action & over 28,000 taken as prisoners of war.
When the museum opened in 1996, General Jimmy Dolittle’s son had his tombstone moved from Arlington to a place in the garden here, he said it’s what his dad would have wanted.
They have a nice little English pub style restaurant in the corner of the museum for lunch.
Admission is $10.00 a head but well worth it, we’ve already decided that we’re going to stop again next year.

Halloween in Savannah

As most of you know Cathy and I have a hobby called Geocaching, it involves using a GPS and finding things that have been hidden by other cachers around the world. Sometimes it's little pill bottles or large ammo or Tupperware boxes. Some of them contain Travel Bugs, which is an item that you take from one cache and put it in another farther down the road. Well that's what we were doing today, we had picked up a Travel Bug that was named Mr. Bones and it is a small skeleton that likes scary places. Lets see it's Halloween Eve, we have Mr. Bones and there's a scary cache in the Bonaventure Cemetery in downtown Savannah, so here's our story.

We had spent most of the day walking around downtown Savannah and the Riverfront and had just enjoyed a great meal at a little café when we decided to walk over to the Bonaventure Cemetery and drop off Mr. Bones at the 'Legend of John Daly Cache".

Legend has it the John Daly passed away on a cold wet autumn day just before Halloween and that he was laid to rest on Halloween Eve, 1899 at Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia, the one made famous by the movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, this is a large, eerie cemetery at the bank of the river. But it doesn't say how he died.

One year after his death, his wife, Hazel, decided to visit his grave on the anniversary of his death. She went there after dinner, even though it was late and getting dark, she told a neighbor that she would just be there for a minute and would be home in about 30 minutes. The neighbor forgot all about it until the next day when she went to Hazel's house and found the doors open and no one there. The neighbor got her husband and they went to John Daly's grave, where they found some fresh turned dirt, lying on top of the dirt was Hazel's gold wedding ring. She was never seen or heard from again.

Fifty years later Hazel's granddaughter, Janet, who had heard tales of her grandmothers disappearance wanted to try and figure out what happened so she decided to re-enact what her grandmother had done. She went to her grandmother's old house on Halloween Eve, and walked the same streets to the cemetery. When she didn't return home by 8 o'clock that night her husband called the police and told them the entire story. The police and her husband drove over to the cemetery and walked up to John Daly's grave where they found some fresh turned dirt, and lying right on top of it was a gold bracelet that had belonged to Hazel, and Janet had worn everyday since her mother, Hazel's daughter, gave it to her. Janet was never seen or heard from again.

Some storm clouds have moved in while we were eating dinner, it's starting to get dark and the wind is really picking up and blowing in off the river. You can feel the rain in the air, there's a huge flash of lightning and a loud crash of thunder so we were moving pretty fast now. After placing Mr. Bones in the cache container, which was hidden right behind the headstone, I stood up and noticed some fresh turned dirt on the grave, and right there on top of the dirt was my gold watch………………… and I was never seen or heard from again.

So sleep well tonight all our friends out there in blog land…Oh! And have a Happy Halloween.

Charleston's hidden gems

The first two days here in Charleston were sunny and in the 80's so we sat around watching baseball & Football. Monday we decided to do a little grave hunting and of course it had dropped down into the 60's and was raining, good weather for cemeteries. The tomb to the right is that of Francis Marion "the Swamp Fox". Ever since the movie The Patriot came out we've been bumping it to this guy, either a historical marker about his exploits or a location where they filmed part of the movie. We did a little Internet research and found where his grave was, gee it's only a 125 miles round trip from where we're camped so we figured why not. He's buried in a little family cemetery off of a very small side road, once through the gates you drive back on a very narrow one lane road for a mile to the tomb which is very well maintained. Surprize, surprize, in the middle of no where in the rain, back in the woods of the old Belle Isle Plantaions, there were already two people back there. A couple of construction workers who got rained out of work today. One of their daughters was doing a book report on the General and he decided to come back here and check things out for her, we bs'ed for about 45 minutes and he told us about some neat things at a hidden cemetery in Charleston.

Magnolia Cemetery.
This is a photo of the first crew of the Civil War submarine the HUNLEY they drowned when the ship was just pulling away from the dock and the wash from a passing ship went into an open hatch. Their graves were just discovered a few years ago and moved to this location, with full military ceremonies. They were doing some work on the football stadium at the Citidel Military Academy and dug up the bodies. It turns out that the stadium is built on top of an old Mariners cemetery. When the bodies were recovered from the sinking of the ship they were quietly moved to the cemertey for burial, much like today we don't need the bad press. especially when one of them was a 13 year old boy.

This is the monument for the second crew of the Hunley, that drowned about 10 days after the first crew did. This time they made it away from the dock but apparently not to much futher then that. If you notice the designer of the sub Horace Hunley waited until the second sailing before he got on board. Of course the third crew of the Hunley drowned the first time the ship went into battle and it along with their bodies were not recovered until a few years ago.
This cemetery is really hidden and took us awhile to find, even with directions, but any cemetery that has a sign just in side the gate that sez "Five hundred dollar fine for feeding the alligators" well you just have to love it. We ended up spending about 2 hours walking and driving around looking at some of the great tombstones, there are a lot of famous people buried here.

The Greatest Free Show in Charleston. That's how they bill it.
The Citadel Cadets.
3:45 every Friday at the Citadel parade grounds the entire student body of cadets, 1900 strong put on a one hour show that you don't want to miss. They start with the bagpipers then the fife and drums and then the full assembly. This week happened to be the home coming so there were a lot of past graduates there. This included three federal Judges, a few General Officers and a whole bunch of guys with big gold class rings. It was kind of neat, at the end when they march by the stands for review, the alumni in the stands wait until the platoon that they served in is passing then they stand and salute.

This is the schools mascot, When one of the graduates (and later an instructor at the school) was killed in Viet Nam (1965), every cadet in the school donated their brass belt buckles, buttons and head dress. They then had them melted down to cast the statue. A few yeas later this Officer's son ( a citadel grad) was also killed in Viet Nam, the statue is dedicated to both of them.


We leave Charleton tomorrow and are heading to Savannah for another week of adventure.

Macon's Grave

When you travel a bunch of back roads and stop at just about anything that looks interesting you come across some very strange things. The picture about is one of those things, but more on that later.

We were going to stay in Richmond for a week but we had trouble finding a campground in the area, we did find one but we decided that I didn't have enough guns in the rig to make it a safe stay. We were going to spend the weekend at the National Folk Festival, which was being held in Richmond this year except Tropical Storm Tammy decided that she was going to make it the wettest weekend of the year so we just kept heading south. After a very long drive in a very heavy rain we got off the freeway at Roanoke Rapids for dinner and found nice little campground, since it was going to rain non-stop for the entire weekend we decided that this was home and we would spend the weekend watching football and the baseball playoffs.

It's Monday morning, and sometime during the night the rains have stopped so we jumped in the car and decided to check out the area, the town has an old canal with a couple of mills and an aqueduct that went around the rapids. Today it's a seven mile walking path which takes you from one side of town to the other following the old canal, actually the canal is dry and you walk in the middle of what was the canal and across the old aqueduct. After the walk we took a drive out around the lakes and came across what the historical marker said was Macon's Grave 2 miles north, now how can you not make a right turn to find out what this is all about.

Macon's Grave is a small family cemetery across from where the family farm was located. Nathaniel Macon was a soldier in the Revolutionary war, serving at the surrender of Fort Moultrie, the fall of Charleston, the rout at Camden, and with General Nathaniel Greene in his retreat across Carolina. When he left the military he refused a pension and all pay for his military service, he went on to serve as a congressman and US Senator for the next 37 years, Macon, Georgia and Fort Macon are both named in his honor. Now after all this you have to wonder why some thugs would dump a truckload of stones on top of his grave, well they didn't. He requested that at his death no grief be expressed and that dinner and a grog be served and that all his friends cast a stone on his grave, which they did. Over the years the tradition has continued and anyone visiting his grave brings a stone to throw onto the pile, which now covers the graves of his wife, son and grandson. Really it's true, you could look it up.

Jim n Cathy