Project Renovation

 Will and I just moved to Tyler, TX a month and a half ago. While I should have been blogging the whole time about the process, there are snippets on Facebook that show progress. I have way more before pictures right now than after pictures because nothing is fully completed. But it's getting there. Slowly!

This room is the 'man cave.'  

3! Count 'em, 3! Different types of vinyl tiles!  

It is much more finished now, but it is a mess since Will has started claiming it. Thats why there is not a picture of a fully finished room yet. But with furniture and stuff on the walls it definitely looks like a room that is functional. 

The half bath off of the man cave. 

There was only one layer of wallpaper on these walls but it was really glued on. But now it looks like this. 

The laundry room didn't need a whole lot of work, just paint, floors and organization. And a washer and dryer, but that's not a whole lot of elbow grease. 

It definitely has become a whole lot more functional and lived in in the last week. And there's plenty more to do. Add baskets for organization and some pretties on the wall to soften the blankness. 

The kitchen is by far my most favorite transformation. We decided to keep the existing cabinets but update them with a coat or two or four of paint. We changed out the laminate countertops and backsplash for granite and tile. Luckily, the three layers of wall paper up top can off without any effort at all. We literally just tugged and the whole thing came down. 

See what I mean!?!?!?  It looks a thousand times better. It's not quite finished yet. Needs trim and quarter round to finish it off properly but I love it!

The den or family room whatever you want to call it also had a drastic makeover.  It took elbow grease that's for sure and time. We even had to hunt down an AC vent that got covered with drywall and cut it out after the fact, but it was surprisingly easier than expected. 

With all the wood paneling gone, the brass fireplace insert doesn't bother me as much. Still want to do something about it but its not an eyesore any longer. And the red brick balances all the blue instead of having overpowering reddish browns in a main living space. 

The formal living room and dining room didn't have too many before pictures, because well they didn't require a lot of work. Carpets, up and paint on the walls.  But my what a difference it makes. 

These will probably be the last two rooms to be completed because they are the least used. Well right now they are used for storage of items yet to go in rooms that are being worked on. But as you can see I did add some homey touches. 

The hallway to the bedrooms doesn't require much, but pulling up carpet, paint and flooring.  Only two of which are done. But we did change out the light fixture which changed the look and we figured out how to work the switches. Old houses are wired so weird. 

The guest bathroom has been the headache from hell!!!  Plumbing problems, half assed jobs before us and some of our free labor. But look, a dark, dingy bathroom that should be complete one week from today. This room wasn't demo'd properly, so the reno was patching a half assed job in the first place. We put the tile up ourselves in the bathroom and it looked horrible. We did all the other tile in the house and it looked great, but in this tub, we would've had trouble reselling the house later down the road. 

After all the trouble and headaches this room caused we broke down and hired a guy to redo the bathrooms completely. It is definitely more than I want to pay, but then I always only ever want to pay $50 for anything. But what we are paying is an extremely good price for what we are getting. 

Things are progressing and like I said, in one week we will have a fully functional bathroom while the master bath is being done. That one I can't wait for. 

The office is not close at all to being done but is getting there. First person to label that color correctly will win a high five!!

Like I said, still needs a lot of work. 

This the before of our bedroom but all three bedrooms are the same. So when we get to the guest room imagine the same boring as below. 

Now we just need floors and I need to refinish the nightstands and then DONE!

Guest bedroom:

The master bath looks basically the same just in a bit of disarray. But it is definitely being changed by the end of the month. 

Social Justice Retreat

A few weeks ago my mother asked me if I wanted to attend this church retreat with her. It was only one night at a camping ground I knew well. I broke my arm there once as a kid. I said yes because it looked kinda interesting, but I was still skeptical about it. Adult retreats always scare me because they are either structured like corporate retreats and you really need to be a joiner, or they are coming to Jesus meetings. Neither of these options work for me. But as I'm listening to the Bishop of the Oklahoma UMC Conference, my attitude began to change a little bit. I've heard the Bishop speak before and knew he was a powerful orator, but maybe because I've been working on my thesis a lot, his words touched something that made me soften my skepticism and open up to the possibility of finding something that's been missing in my life.

Then the key note speaker for the weekend rose to give the welcome plenary. I've never heard him speak before, but I had read one of his books so I knew I liked his perspective of things. He started in on a passage of Acts that I've always struggled with. In Acts 16 starting with verse 11, we read the story of Paul and Silas when they meet Lydia and save her slave girl, and then get sent to prison for it. Now here in the South, we know all about being saved. We know that one has to be saved in order to be a good and proper Christian. Otherwise, no one will eat your dessert at the potluck. I've always had problems with that notion. I never understood how that was the golden ticket or how so many came to believe salvation was the golden ticket. Then the speaker said something that made the passage so clear to me. The word used in the Greek for be saved is the same word in the Hebrew Scriptures for liberation. So when Paul saved this slave girl, he wasn't saving her soul from damnation, but rather he was freeing her from the burdens that weighed her down. This notion of salvation that has been bastardized is the same salvation given to the slaves in Egypt when they flee from pharaoh. Freedom!

What a world we would live in if the church concentrated on freeing people, human beings from the oppressive states surrounding their being, instead of seeking empty baptisms. Could you imagine it? I want to.

Go West Young Man!

We left Phenix City, AL to start our journey back today. We started down the road to go back to Fort Mitchell to see if there was a phone number we could call to find out anymore information. We called the number and it connects to the Chattahoochee River Historical Society in Eufaula, AL. The lady there gave us a couple more phone numbers to try and get some more information. So we called one of the guys, who incidentally is a Professor at Columbia State University in GA and teaches on Creek culture He's even written a book or two. We got a hold of him but he couldn't talk right then.

So we went on our way to Eufaula, AL to the historical society to see if they had anything there. They did! Not a lot and nothing definitive, but it was enough for us to get a good idea. We are convinced that our family would've gone from Tallassee to Montgomery down to Mobile over to New Orleans and then up the Mississippi River to the Arkansas River and over to Oklahoma. We are now in Mobile, AL for the night and will head out on this same route for the next two days.

We did get back in touch with the professor who gave us information about the 1832 census to help find our family as far back as we can. We were very happy with how today went. This guy also gave us the name and number of the head of the history department at Auburn University which apparently holds a lot of the documents we would want to use. All we really wanted was a map, but today has gone above and beyond our expectations.

Monday, February 25, 2013

We started out today driving around Auburn's campus, just getting a good look. It's a beautiful campus; even now in winter and drizzly and overcast, it was gorgeous. We walked around their campus corner area, right where the guy poisoned the trees, and stopped in an old drug store to grab a couple shirts. You're welcome Jarrett. I might try to convince Will that we can pay for our kids to go here and not just OSU. It's all orange.

We left town and started back north to Horseshoe Bend National Military Park. It was here that Gen. Andrew Jackson massacred every last warrior of the Red Stick faction of the Upper Creeks in 1814 during the Creek Wars of 1813-14. This war was fought between the Upper Creeks and US government with the Lower Creeks aligning themselves with the US Army. The Lower Creeks fared better in general than the Upper Creeks because of their willingness to look for peaceful solutions. My family is Upper Creek. We were rebel rousers. Go figure.

From here, we headed back south to Tallasee, AL where my 4 great-grandfather, Pahosa Harjo "Phillips", was born and raised. It was here that his family served as mico, or town chief, for many generations. Pop said we should drive around town, knocking on doors telling the residents, You're Welcome, and then leave. We attempted to locate their historical society and found ourselves on another wild goose chase. When we finally found the Talasi Historical Society, they were closed. Of course. You can read a bit of Tallasee's history in the photos below so I won't bore you here. It's a picturesque, run down, small town that has seen better days. But hey, they got a McDonalds, man.

We continued on to Tuskegee, AL since that is where my 4 great-grandmother is from. It was rather disappointing. Dead or dying, beaten down and just sad. We didn't stay long before moving along to Phenix City, AL to stay and check out Fort Mitchell which is the origination point for the 19000 Creeks who were forced to move to Oklahoma. We went on to Fort Mitchell today and it was closed! Closed, I tell ya! They aren't open until Thursday! Their website says Mon-Fri. All this way for them to be closed! Gah! So we'll just continue on our way to Mobile tomorrow and make up the trail as we go, again. This time we're going to come back up the Mississippi River, and depending on the snow we will see when we turn west.

But tonight wasn't a total loss. We went over to Columbus, GA for dinner at The Cannon Brew Pub. It was just a local brewery, but it was decent food and really good beer. I didn't like the IPA or Double IPA but then I don't like those brews from any brewery, so they could've been very good. If you're ever in the area, go by and check them out.

Hope those at home are staying safe and warm.

Siri, You Are Drunk!

I swear between Siri's navigating or the Ford navigational system, it's better to just put the electronics away and travel old school by using the placement of the sun. Today Siri, while trying to take us to a diner for breakfast, instead sent us to on a wild goose chase through backwoods Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama this morning. I swear I heard banjos.

When we left the hotel this morning, we wanted to find a diner for breakfast instead of having hotel food. Ford's system kept taking us to diners that didn't exist, or if they did every one of them were closed. We finally found one that was open before noon, but didn't get there til noon. Apparently, you can't get anything to eat around here until after church let's out.

Once we got back on the road, we followed more twisty, curvy, hilly, squirrelly roads that made my stomach drop and my heart stop on occasion. It was absolutely beautiful country, but it is not for the impatient or hurried. If the terrain didn't do it, the signage and ads let us know we aren't in Kansas anymore. One place, a gun club, had a sign that read "pistols? We got em! Come on y'all!" And that's just one example of the snorts that came out of Pop.

At this point, we have finished what we could of the Cherokee Trail. So we headed South and have stopped in Auburn, AL to stay with family before we explore our family's origin spot in Tallassee and Tuskegee. The family we are staying with tonight are both professors at Auburn and have friends who our quest is their field, so we'll try to meet up and learn something. From there, we expect to head to to Horseshoe Bend and then Fort Mitchell where the Creek Trail started or so we think. Hopefully, tomorrow will be our most educational.

So until next time...

Squirrelly Roads and Hippie Towns

We headed out this morning a whole lot earlier than we thought we would this morning. Our plan was just head out whenever we woke up and got around, no alarms or rush. Well, Pops old and I'm a light sleeper. We woke up around 7 AM and were on the road by 8:30. Im making it my goal to make my dad snort on his tea in every small town we go through. If you haven't been to northern Arkansas, let me tell you, it is small town after small town. I mean populations of 84, 167, 236, etc, and the roads are really curvy. Hill after hill, forest, and small towns and then we come across this small town that is so beautifully hippie. It had an old time downtown and almost every shop was occupied, and occupied with The Rainbow Cafe, MooMoo's Organic Creamery, Mother Earth's Healing, etc... It was fantastically bright and surprising.

There were very few markers saying we were on the right route according to our purpose, but then again, when our family came to Oklahoma 170 years ago there weren't roads to travel on then. But every once in awhile we would come across a sign telling us we were on the right track. And we were only on the interstate highway for about 5 miles heading in to Memphis, TN.

I've been to Memphis only once before and we didn't spend much time there then either, but after a plea for food options for lunch on Facebook we were directed towards Charles Vergo's Rendezvous. It was DELICIOUS! Dry rub ribs, brisket, slaw and a beer makes this one happy girl. Neither pop or I were hungry when it came time to dinner. But to avoid the food baby coma we took a walk around Beale St.

After, we got back on the road on a state highway we thought would be very well marked by the Trail Markers. We didn't see a one of them. But we know we're on the right track since we are right now only miles away from one of the museums on the NPS website. As we move further east the history just keeps piling up. There's a cemetery near the hotel we're staying at so we went to look around since it looked like old headstones. They were. People who were born when our family was traveling through this area and passing away at the turn of the century. The tombstones were remarkable and beautiful, displaying craftsmanship that doesn't exist today. Tomorrow we are hoping to get over to Fort Payne, Alabama, one of the starting points for the Cherokee Trail.

Stay tuned for more.

The Start of a Journey

Cole and Pop take father son trips all the time. I think it's their goal to visit every major league ball field in the US. It's good for them. It's a common interest and they bond over it. Mom and I spend a lot of time together just us even if we don't travel just us together, and if we did it would be a drunk road trip hitting wineries all along the way. But Pop and I don't travel much just he and I. So todayPop and I started out our journey to trace our family's heritage backwards on the Trail of Tears to Tuskegee, AL.

We started in Okmulgee, OK, one to update our citizenship roll cards and two to see if their archives would have anymore information for us regarding our family's movement westward. The citizenship cards were easy and painless. But when we got to the library, there wasn't a lot to search through. While the ladies there were helpful, there wasn't much for them to help on beyond finding my great great grandmother and her parents and siblings on the role sheets. So it's back to our drawing board.

The National Park Service has declared the Cherokee Trail of Tears route a national park. This is well and good, however, the family we can trace is Creek(Muscogee) not Cherokee. We know we had family on this route that is well marked, but it is not the particular branch of our tree we want to follow. But we'll take it on our way there allowing for interest spots along the way. I will finally put my history degree to good use while on this trip. We figured out we want to end up in Fort Mitchell, AL to start our way back, since it looks like that's were the government kept its "concentration camp" for tribes right before removal. There is a museum located there dedicated to the Creek Trail of Tears that hopefully can give us more information than what we have come across thus far.

Keep following us as we travel and discover. You never know what we might find.