What To Do Now?

   Some years ago, Alan Lerner and Frederick Loewe wrote the lyrics and music for the production of Camelot. Included in the score was a song King Arthur and Queen Guenevere sang entitled "What Do The Simple Folk Do?"

   Last Saturday in Chattanooga brought us off and on again rain throughout the morning hours, gradually changing into bright sunshine after lunch. After a season of wet weather, we needed to get out and do something. But what to do or where to go? What do "the simple folk" do?

   Carolyn had been talking on the phone to a neighbor, and, in the course of the conversation, the name Callaway had been mentioned. Remembering that name from my past, I realized the connection to an incident in a long ago time. Mike Callaway was the man I bought some cattle from down on Cherokee Valley Rd, south of our place in Apison.

   It seemed that a driving trip on that Saturday afternoon might be in order, just to look at the countryside, relive some memories, and perhaps even taking a shot or two on the Canon.

   Since both my wife and I grew up in the Chattanooga area, most any part of the landscape of the area, especially the eastern part, can evoke a memory or two (or more). So we took off.

   Cherokee Valley, a north to south route between two ranges of hills, was an area I had ridden my bike through many times when we lived out there in Apison. Then it was all farmland with scattered houses all the way from the Tennessee-Georgia line to Ringgold. Today it is subdivisions along both sides of the road, set in an area that saw the passing of a tornado a few years back that left all the trees broken and downed. The broken woodlands are still visible on the hillsides overlooking the road.

   But, alas, the farm where I had purchased the cattle was little more than weeds, the buildings gone and no sign of a cattle farm. Nothing to even take a picture of.

   We stopped to read an historical marker along the road just south of where the Callaway place had been. It told of a Confederate hospital built there during the Civil War on the site of what had been a summer retreat for folks, seeking a respite from the hot weather at the cool springs located in that area. There was history in the area, always a draw for us.

   Carolyn told me of an old church just a little ways down the Highway 41 where some of her kinfolk had attended.

   Old Stone Presbyterian Church, founded in 1836, built in 1850, also used as a Confederate hospital after the Battle of Chickamauga, and later by the Union army as a stable for calvary horses after they took over that area.

   The church, now a Catoosa County museum, contained several items of interest from the period. The man in charge gave us information about the history and showed us several records that contained the names of her ancestors, the McClures.

   Carolyn had been there before and also the cemetery up the hill behind the church. There she found the gravesite of her Great Grandmother Romie Hunter McClure, who had died in 1908.

   Several graves sprouted Rebel flags, a reminder of that conflict in the 1860s.

   If I had been a soldier, this was the tree I would have chosen to be behind when the shooting began. No scrawny pine for this boy.

   There was also a historical marker a couple of miles east of the church, stating that from that point General Sherman had begun his Georgia Campaign in the March to the Sea.

   Deciding to return home by a different valley, we turned north on Salem Valley Rd. No more historical sites, but several interesting farmsteads and another church, this one still in use for that community.

   After two or three hours, these "simple folk" had done History, Genealogy, and Photography, plus they did it together, the best part.

   And we know that there are a lot more of these roads out there to explore and enjoy.

   The World awaits.