My late father was not an imaginative man, which is why I took his story of a strange day at Fort McClellan, Alabama, in the summer of 1963 seriously.

Dad had come home from the army in 1960, but was on reserve and therefore sent for training to Fort McClellan for two weeks that summer. On one particular day they were out on manuevers when they came up on a little cove surrounded by three hills--I am not familiar with Fort McClellan's geography; I'm just recalling the way Dad described it--and he said he got that odd feeling the French call deja vu--literally already seen; that feeling you've been in a place you KNOW you've never been before.

He told his fellow soldiers, "If we go back into that cove a little ways, we're gonna come up on a little ol' deserted log cabin."

They carried him high about that one, about how hillbillies are like that--but finally some of them accompanied him back into the cove. There, in a tangle of underbrush and tall trees, they found the log cabin--doorless, windowless, obviously long deserted.

But then, he said, he told them this: "If we go a few more yards into the woods, there's a grave back here too."

You guessed it. They walked back behind the cabin, into the woods, and there, in a tiny cleared place, they found a grave. Dad said it had a name and dates still legible on it; it was, if I remember right, a little girl's grave.

Dad had never been to Fort McClellan before, and never went back after those two weeks.

He had a few other stories like that: one about riding a train through Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, about five o'clock one morning, with mist rising off the river. He said, "That was the spookiest little town I ever saw. I wouldn't have been surprised in the least to look up and see old John Brown walk out of that fog."

John Brown, of course, was the radical abolitionist hanged in 1859 for his raid on the Federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry. He is, in fact, the most famous of Harper's Ferry's ghosts. I sort of think Dad always regretted not seeing him.

And one final story that he told about his time overseas:

Dad was stationed, during his European tour, at a base between Augsburg and Munich, in what was then West Germany. He wasn't very far from the dreadful concentration camp at Dachau; he often talked about how there was still an indescribable smell of death in the air on days of rain and fog and low clouds that came from there--fifteen years after it was liberated.

Just before he came home in 1960, they went on what he called a hundred mile road march that took them all the way to the border of Austria. He talked about how beautiful and clean the little towns they went through were--and about one little churchyard they passed.

The way I understood it, the church itself had been damaged during the Second World War; German troops, possibly SS, had been holed up in the sanctuary and Allied troops had used a tank gun to blow a hole into the side of the building to dig them out. There was a graveyard behind the church; it was walled in, with the back wall of the church being the fourth. The graves were all old ones, he said, surrounding a tall stone cross. There had been a murderous firefight among the graves, and every one of the tombstones was pocked and chipped by flying bullets.

There was not one single mark on the stone cross, though.

That always stayed with Dad, a not-especially-religious hillbilly boy, more than anything else he saw in Germany.

And on that solemn note, fair thee well.

Out of the blue this afternoon, I found myself singing an old song that has become a folk song, despite the fact that we know its composer's name: "My Grandfather's Clock," written in 1876 by Henry Clay Work. Work is also known for composing "The Ship that Never Returned" which was, if I remember right, recorded by The Kingston Trio, and the rousing "Marching Through Georgia," a tribute to General W.T. Sherman's March to the Sea of 1864--and, though I shouldn't admit it, southern girl that I am, my alltime favorite march tune.



"My Grandfather's Clock" was based on a story from England that was told to Henry Clay Work in 1875. The story told of two brothers who jointly owned a "longcase" clock, one of those gorgeous old timepieces that stand six feet or more tall. The clock began to lose time when one brother died, and stopped completely when the second brother died at the age of ninety. In Work's song, the clock belonged to his grandfather, and is described as a member of the family, "bought on the morn of the day that he was born/And. . .always his treasure and pride/But it stopped short, never to go again when the old man died." Work includes one spooky element: in the third verse, when the old man lies dying, the clock "rang an alarm in the dead of the night/An alarm that for years had been dumb."

Stories of clocks being connected in some way to a death are not that uncommon, come to find out. Here are two of my favorites:

One is about a cuckoo clock owned by the actor John Barrymore, who died on May 29, 1942.



According to Dennis William Hauck in THE NATIONAL DIRECTORY OF HAUNTED PLACES (1994), the clock had not worked in years. A friend of Barrymore's decided to set the hands at 10:20, the exact time of Barrymore's death, as a tribute to the great actor's memory--only to find the clock's hands already set to 10:20--although they had been set at a different time for many years.

The other story was told by our Monroe County, Tennessee historian, the late Sarah Sands, in one of her volumes. The clock involved, yet another longcase, was owned by three sisters, older women who had never married and who shared a home across what was then the main channel of the Little Tennessee River (since obliterated by the Tellico Dam) in Blount County. The clock had been inoperable for many years. The sisters died within a three year time span, and each time one of them died, the broken clock chimed. After the death of the third sister, it never made another sound.



And on that timely note, fair thee well.

My mom grew up in a household headed by a fiddlefooted dreamer. Papaw was always positive that there was a better life waiting on the far side of yonder hill, and the end result was that the family moved thirteen times before Mom turned eighteen. Life was never better, of course, but Papaw never lost hope.

The longest they ever stayed in one place was five years, on a dairy farm behind what is now our local sports complex/duck pond/walking trails.

The house on the farm was, when they moved there (Mom was about nine then), over a century old. It consisted of a log portion, two large rooms, one over the other, and two smaller rooms and a front porch built on to the front. The walls were papered with newsprint, and the oldest layers dated back to the eighteen forties. The walls were pocked with bullet holes, and in certain parts of the house there were holes drilled out, exactly the size to stick a rifle barrel through. These, I figure, dated to the Civil War; we had a few skirmishes hereabout. The outbuildings were about what you'd expect on a dairy farm: the barn, a corncrib, a shed for equipment, and a box built over one of several artesian springs for cold storage; the house had electricity, but it was a few years before they got a refrigerator.

You would think that my gruff but gentle papaw, the fiddlefooted dreamer, would have been the one to be aware the house was haunted, but he wasn't. It was in fact Mamaw, highstrung but practical--who had as a young girl seen the ghost light in the cemetery--who realized it first.

Papaw and the kids got up early in the morning and did the milking; he would then go to the fields, the kids would go to school, and Mamaw would spend the day with her housework. She was almost obsessively clean, and one day a week she did laundry in a wringer washer on the front porch. Her clothesline was at the back of the house, just outside the back door.

They had not been there very long before Mamaw noticed that there were voices coming from INSIDE the house, behind her, when she was at the clothesline. One might dismiss them as the products of voices carried on the wind or as a result of other atmospheric conditions, except that they came from the upper story in the log portion of the house. That room was used only to store potatoes and canned goods that Mamaw put up from her garden. She didn't hear them regularly--not every time she was at the clothesline--and she was never able to distinguish whether they were male or female.

There were other peculiar phenomena that involved that upstairs room: the footsteps of a large man wearing heavy shoes, for one. Mom and her sister both heard those, on occasions when they happened to be the only ones in the house. My aunt insists to this day they were not footsteps, they were rats rolling the potatoes around; Mom just as adamantly says they were footsteps, and nothing like the sound of potatoes rolling. Bear in mind, Papaw was in those days a big man, six feet one and two hundred pounds of muscle and bone, and wore brogans, but he was never in the house when they heard the footsteps. My uncles were, respectively, a painfully skinny teenager and a small child--and in any case were never there when the footsteps strode across that upper floor.

There were also sounds of something being dragged across the floor of that upper room at different times, but not at the same time as the sounds of footsteps. Mom never heard the dragging sounds, but other members of the family did--and nobody had the nerve to investigate.

They stayed on the farm five years. After her marriage, Mom moved four times--the fourth to our current home, where we've lived for nearly forty years. This house is haunted too, but it doesn't bother either of us--and is a story for another blog anyway.



Sweet dreams, and until next time, fair thee well.

In case you don't know what Sadie Hawkins Day is it is the one day every four years that the girls can ask guys out without seeming forward. At least that's what it used to be. It got the name from the old cartoon strip LIL ABNER.
Fairweather and I were stunned the other day when Madame Sadie told us she was going to the local VFW’s Sadie Hawkins Dance. Not so much that she was going, which really is surprising, but the fact she was going to ask a certain British Psychic to come across the pond and go with her. Now it really wouldn’t have been as shocking if it was Stephen Colbert or even Ol’ Capn’ Morgan (her favorite ghost) but D. A. I guess one fraud might pick up on another one. She was batting her eyes, sighing, and smirking about what dances they could do together.
Now I don't even want to think of Madame "dancing" with the man. She's not been called an old bat for nothing. The last living man I know for sure she went out with raced out into the night shrieking and never came back to town. Word was he got a job in Siberia and had to leave suddenly.
We had to argue her out of wearing that old red dress that had seen better days. We took her off to Belks and Goody’s before she found a dress that was at least not motheaten. Next we had to take her down to a little specialty shop called "Intimate Treasures".
Fairweather and I were scandalized at some of the little items she tried on and the toys she eventually chose to take home with us. I suppose we would have visited Victoria’s Secret if our little neck of the world had one which fortunately for my nerves we don’t.
Madame even had the nerve to hint that my boyfriend and I needed a little excitement in our lives which I tried to tell her were fine the way they are.
Madame was on Cloud Nine when the psychic agreed to be her date for the evening. I couldn’t resist asking "Will his wife be coming with him?"
"She most certainly will not." Madame said in a huff. "They are currently separated and may be getting a divorce."
"Really?" Fairweather asked.
Madame ignored that question so I’m thinking she made up the separated comment.
They had the Sadie Hawkins dance a little early due to the fact some of the leaders of the VFW were going to be out of town on the 29th. My gentleman and I hadn’t planned on going but as Fairweather said someone needed to make sure Madame Sadie stayed out of trouble. And of course, since Fairweather isn’t involved with anyone, the sad lot fell to me.
I picked a nondescript outfit because frankly I didn’t want anyone paying attention to the fact I was there. I’m not known for being a party girl around town. And these old geezers, and a few young ones too, think any female at the VFW dances are fair game.
Personally I didn’t want to get in the middle of a fight nor did I want my boyfriend getting hurt either.
Madame and her psychic friend were as giggly as a couple of schoolgirls. Flirting and "dancing" on the bar. I believe it was suppose to be a version of "dirty dancing".Finally they decided to sit one of the songs out over in a corner. Their cooing was decidedly sickening. I was trying to think of a way to leave early. I had better things to do with my time. If my boyfriend wasn’t there I could always wash my hair. That was really more fun than watching Madame…….
I turned away for a split second and turned back as someone nearby gasped.
The psychic DA had a strange look on his face. One I had witnessed on his tv shows many times before. He was being taken over by a ghost. And from the look in his eyes not just any ghost. Captain Morgan was making his displeasure at being denied Madame Sadie’s company be known to everyone in this little East Tennessee town.
DA caught two swords that dropped out of thin air. One fell in each hand and crossed just below his elegant nose. It reminded me for all the world of a giant pair of scissors.
Oh well, could have been worse could have crossed near another part of his body-one Madame liked even better than his nose.
"Knave. Stealing my woman the minute my back is turned."
"Get gone ghost. You are long dead."
"Ask Sadie if I was dead on Christmas."
My poor mind couldn’t take this. And I’m a little more open than most of the people at the party.
"That man is crazy. He’s talking to himself." People muttered all around me. "They should take him and lock him up before he hurts himself or the old bat."
Well that meant I had to do something. Madame sure wasn’t. She looked excited at the thought of the duel about to take place.
"Cap’n. Mr. A. Madame don’t you think a duel for the lady’s honor needs to take place in private? After all we wouldn’t want the law becoming involved would we?"
With growls of "this isn’t over" The unlikely trio went out to My boyfriends van and I went to collect him.
All the way back to Madame Sadie’s the trio in the back seat took turns at billing, cooing, and growling. The billing and cooing to Madame and the growling at each other. A very difficult thing to do when the trio were actually only two bodies.
Forgive me if I say I didn’t stay to see how the duel ended. All I know for sure is Madame looked as satisfied as the cat who ate the canary the next morning.
And someone of my acquaintance said they saw DA heading toward the Knoxville Airport looking like a scalded cat.
At a guess I’d say he was surprised at an actual ghostly takeover and maybe Madame was a little more than he could handle. Go Capn Morgan!

Last night I watched a special on Ovation TV about efforts to restore artwork in the Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi, Italy. The basilica, the mother church of the Order of Saint Francis, was badly damaged by an earthquake on September 26, 1997. Among the artworks that were all but destroyed were some by the last great Italian Byzantine painter, Cimabue.

It got me thinking about how we have, over the course of Europe's wars and natural disasters, lost so much great artwork. Cathedrals full of glorious medieval stained glass, museums, lost to bombs, to fires, to sheer wanton malicious destruction in religious conflicts. Cimabue is that rarity, though; very few of his works survive, but more than one has been badly damaged or destroyed by Mother Nature rather than human intervention. And the frescoes in the Basilica of Saint Francis were not the first such.

Exhibit No. 1:



This is most usually known as Cimabue's Crucifix. It is a panel painting, commissioned by and executed for the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence in 1287-88. It seems to us rather flat and one-dimensional, in the tradition of Orthodox icons, especially compared to the work done by Cimabue's pupil Giotto, who bridged the gap between medieval and Renaissance painting. We aren't seeing it as it was, though. It was almost totally destroyed in a flood on November 4, 1966, when the River Arno burst its banks and the basilica was filled with water and mud. Art students, many of them American, spent endless hours on hands and knees in the mud that remained once the waters receded, picking bits of paint out of the mire, running it through sieves to find just one more piece. This is how much they were able to restore; the river took the rest.

The frescoes in the Basilica of St. Francis were already in poor condition before the earthquake of 1997. They depicted a Crucifixion and a Deposition (the removal of Christ's body from the Cross). They were somewhat flawed from the beginning. Cimabue painted them on surfaces which were not freshly prepared; we do not know why he didn't demand fresh fresco. Medieval artists used paints that contained lead oxide; the whites in these paintings, in particular, darkened almost to black once the lead began to oxidize. There was also smoke damage to the paintings, from centuries of smoke from candles and incense (the basilica was built between 1228 and 1253), and from fires set in the nave by French troops during one of the many wars fought by France and the Italian provinces. During the earthquake part of the vault--those glorious high "cathedral" ceilings--collapsed, taking the frescoes with them. The paintings were not a top priority during the restoration of the basilica; a long fight for funding for their preservation bore some fruit, and the work is ongoing.

A few of Cimabue's works have survived relatively intact. This Madonna and Child Enthroned with Two Angels and Sts. Francis and Dominic (circa 1300) is preserved in Florence's Pitti Palace:



It seems to me to have a charm not quite of this world, nor quite of heaven to it, and the colors are lovely.

Hope I haven't bored you too much. Till next time, fair thee well.