Yesterday, we spent most of the day touring the Biltmore estate again. K has wanted to see it in its Christmas splendor for some time, so we made use of our season tickets to see what it looks like for Christmas.
Of course, there were Christmas trees everywhere. Sixty-some trees, according to docents.
But the real charm came at night.
In some ways, Biltmore Village was even more lovely.
It has been a very long time since we were last in Biltmore. We went with my folks in 2006 with my parents (before the Girl was born)
Biltmore
and again in 2007 when Babcia was here from Poland.
Biltmore II
Of course, the Girl was too young to remember anything and the Boy wasn’t even a thought when we last went there, so today being a teacher workday that I took as a personal day, we took the kids for a day at the largest house in America.
The house has looked like this for over a hundred years now,
but there was one significant change this time around, though. It was nothing in the gardens: they looked just like they did 14 years ago.
(Click on images for larger view, as always.)
The exterior really wasn’t any different — the limestone facade is just stunning and overwhelming.
What was different was that photos are now allowed on the interior. I guess in the 14 years since we last went there, the administrators realized with the advent of the smartphone that keeping people from taking photos was going to be impossible. Plus, why not get the free publicity that comes with social media posts.
As we strolled through the house, I kept thinking how “house” is such a poor word for what this is. It’s more like a palace. I believe it’s officially called a chateau. It’s hard to imagine anyone building a structure like that for himself. Vanderbilt was still single when he began building the 170,000 square-foot home, and he and his wife only had the one daughter Cornelia. They took up three of the thirty-five bedrooms. What’s the point of something like that other than to do it?
It’s all so foreign and almost obscene to modern sensibilities. It would take 65 of our homes to equal the area of that house. What does anyone need with that? Nothing — that’s the honest answer. But why would they want something like that?
Yet it’s a piece of art in and of itself.
Since we got year passes, we’re planning on heading back in December for the Christmas decorations (which are already going up).
M and I were the most unlikely of friends. In many ways, we were as opposite as anyone could imagine. He was raised by his grandparents in the country, and throughout his schooling, I’m sure he was considered “at-risk.” He smoked (cigarettes and more), drank, and was, by his own admission, a hellion. When, at a church youth function, the minister gathered all the boys together and asked who’d brought the flask, it was M. If anyone ever got in trouble for making a smartass remark in youth group, it was always M. He was rebellious and sometimes disrespectful, and academic concerns were of little importance in his thinking. He finished high school, but just barely.
Yet on a church youth trip to Disneyworld, he and I ended up spending an afternoon together. We’d been in separate groups during the morning, but the kids in my group had wanted to break up into small groups. “Mr. K said not to do that,” I protested. But they did it anyway, and the result was the Mr. K, the minister, followed through with his threat: they had to spend the rest of the day with him and his group of adults. I protested my innocence, and the kids in my group admitted that I’d tried to keep the group together, so I was pardoned. M and I ended up spending the rest of the day together. It was the first time we’d really spent any time together, and from that afternoon, we became close friends.
While we had little in common, what we did have in common was enough, I guess. We both loved hot food, for example, and we’d often get the spiciest salsa we could find with a bag of chips to see if we could handle it, washing it all down with Mountain Dew. We loved music, and we spent a lot of time with his grandparents playing bluegrass, Paw (as I came to call his grandfather just as he did) and I on guitar, M on banjo, and Maw singing. We both enjoyed shooting .22s at anything that would sit still long enough, and though we shot at a lot of squirrels and birds, we never hit them. Old cans and cola bottles filled with water were our favored targets. How many times can you hit that two-liter bottle before all the water drains out? The strategy is, of course, simple: start aiming at the top and work your way down. During the summer, if we needed money, we’d spend an afternoon helping this neighbor or that put up hay, and we’d earn enough for dinner, gas, and a couple of movies.
When he graduated high school the year before me, my parents asked him about his plans. “I’ll just get a job in construction, I guess.” They encouraged him to at least take a few courses at the local community college. “Then, you could start your own construction firm and you’d have the paperwork skills to run it,” my mom explained. “Nah,” he laughed, “school’s not for me.”
One July day that summer, Paw gave us a job: “There’s some raccoons that are just giving our garden hell,” he said. “I’d appreciate it if you boys’d take care of it.” We sat at the edge of a small clump of trees that summer evening, a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew sitting between us, .22s by our sides waiting. Soon enough, three raccoons trundled into the garden. We waited until the were situated so that we could shoot away from any houses then let loose.
Maw and Paw’s farm was in a valley that seemed to echo with the sounds of neighbors’ activities, and as we fired away, we heard their nearest neighbors, who were sitting on their front porch, cheer us on: “Somebody’s gettin’ some coons!” they whooped.
Afterward, we put them in a trash bag and Maw took a commemorative picture.
Eight years after his picture, I came home for the summer after spending two years in Poland and having already committed to a third year. I went to track down M, heading to his grandparents’ farm. I didn’t know if M was still living with them or if he’d moved out. In point of fact, he’d been moved out.
“He’s locked up in the Washington County jail,” his grandmother explained. “Breaking and entering.”
I went to visit him that same afternoon. After the deputy filled out all the paperwork, I waited in the visiting room. It wasn’t a room with a row of chairs and little telephones like you see in the movies. This was no prison, just a county facility: there was a chair on the other side of the bars and the rest of the office with a single chair next to the bars on the visitors’ side. Glancing around, I saw a sign that visitors were not allowed to bring anything to inmates. I looked down at the two packs of cigarettes I’d bought him, wondering what I’d do with them, when I heard the deputy call his name: “You’ve got a visitor.” M’s face was a mixture of pleased shock and utter embarrassment. We talked for a while — I’m not sure because we never really talked about anything important. I had friends that I could sit around and talk about the existence of gods, the current political situation, the ironies of life, but with M, it was seldom more than friendly banter.
As the visit ended, I turned to the deputy. “Here’s some cigarettes. I guess you can give them to any officers who smoke since I can’t give them to my friend.” The deputy smiled: “Go ahead. It’s no big deal.”
When I returned a year later, he was incarcerated again, this time in prison; I was in Boston, starting what I thought would be a long slog to a Ph.D. in the philosophy of religion. We corresponded for about nine months, and then it just stopped just about the time I dropped out of grad school with the realization that while the philosophy of religion is an utterly fascinating topic, it has little practical value. I can’t remember who sent the last letter.
Shortly after K and I moved to America in 2005, I got word that M’s younger brother, who was in his mid-thirties like I was, had died from an aneurysm in his brain. Paw had died just a few years before that, and I hadn’t gone to the funeral because I was still living in Poland, but I was determined to go to C’s funeral.
The day before the funeral, though, a horrible storm swept through Ashville, covering the mountain I’d have to drive over with icy snow. K asked me not to take the chance; Nana begged me not to take the chance. I didn’t go.
A few years after that, Maw passed away. She’d moved in with her older daughter, and we’d moved to Greenville. For whatever reason, I didn’t go.
Some years ago, Nana got a contact number for M from his aunt, who was more like a sister — or was it the opposite, an sister so much older that she was more like an aunt? I can’t remember. I sent a text to that number, but I never got a response.
I find myself sometimes thinking about people from the past, wondering where they ended up. Social media has answered that question for so many of the people I grew up with. Others disappear. But it occurred to me that I might simply Google him.
I did, and I wish I didn’t: I find an article from the local paper where we grew up — “Bristol, Va. man arrested after agents find meth lab.” The link is to a Facebook post, so I click through, but the link to the article itself is broken. I go directly to the site and search. I find two hits.
“Please let this be a different man.”
It’s not.
A Bristol, Virginia man is charged after a tip given to police leads to the discovery of a methamphetamine lab.
Washington County, Virginia Sheriff Fred Newman said a search warrant was secured to examine a home located in the 22000 block of Benhams Road on Monday.
Deputies then arrested Michael Lee Braswell, 44, who is charged with possession with intent to manufacture 28 grams or more of methamphetamine, possess precursors to manufacture methamphetamine, allow a minor under the age of 15 to be present while manufacturing methamphetamine, and possession of meth.
Newman said Braswell is being held without bond in the Southwest Virginia Regional Jail in Abingdon. (Source 1 || Source 2)
The article is from Tuesday, September 20, 2016. I guess had I been in the area then, I could have visited him in the same jail in which I’d visited him almost twenty years earlier.
I head back to the Facebook source and read the comments:
A dear friend from my youth is being called a dopehead (I guess that’s true) and scum.
I guess I could have seen it coming when we were kids. I did see it coming. I was with him on two occasions when he bought pot. He didn’t admit. He didn’t show it to me. He certainly didn’t offer it to me, but there was no doubt. When you pull into a convenience store parking lot, and your friend gets out, goes over to another car, and sits in that car for a few minutes, coming back stuffing something in his pocket, it’s obvious. When you and your friend pull into a driveway, and a scruffy young man walks out to the car, makes small talk, then asks, “How much of that stuff did you want,” it’s obvious.
I clean up his photo in Lightroom to make him look a little less — what?
It doesn’t work. He still looks too much like a — what? A thug? An exhausted and frustrated man? I try again, trying to soften the hardness of his skin.
A little better, but there’s nothing I can do with those eyes, those forlorn eyes that seem completely lacking in surprise, completely resigned to his reality, completely fatalistic.
Every year, there’s a kid or two on the hall that I find myself wondering about, thinking that he or she might end up like this. There’s the same resignation about them, the same air of fatalism. Every year I try to help them, to show them that they do have some control over their fate, to show them that more is in their hands than they probably realize (though the cards are often stacked against them). To try to prevent them from being a photo someone looks at thirty years later, wonders whatever happens to them, then loads a search engine and beings looking…
It’s been four years since we last did this. It’s actually been more like six — four years ago, we all went to Poland together. It was the 2015 trip that was split up. I wasn’t even planning on going that summer, in fact. This year, just K and E are going, and that long long journey began this morning with a departure from the house at 2:15 to arrive before 4:00 to make it for the 6:00 flight from Charlotte to JFK. We usually go Charlotte-Munich-Krakow, but with covid restrictions and such, K wanted to fly directly to Poland, which meant leaving from JFK. She reasoned she stood less of a chance of having problems getting into Poland with an American passport and an expired Polish passport than into an EU state. When we did all this planning, Americans were still not admitted into Europe, I think. So we left ridiculously early to arrive the requisite 2 hours before departure.
You can see in K’s expression just how excited she was. Even though the drive home would normally only be about an hour and twenty minutes, Google routed me a different way: 85 south was closed at some point for construction. We’d seen the backup forming (at 3:00 am), but I’d hoped it would have cleared up by the time I was heading back that way.
It was not, turning an hour-and-twenty-minute drive into a two-hour-twenty-minute drive. (I stopped just before getting on I77 to double-check, hence the two-hour-six-minute time.)
I got home to find Papa awake and needing assistance. By the time everything was squared away, it was 6:35. I set the alarm for 7:35 so I could get up to take L to volleyball conditioning, but of course I never really went to sleep. I was just dozing off as the alarm sounded. Back home at 8:00, I started Papa’s morning routine, then left the rest to our wonderful CNA and headed out to the store to buy a few things. No point in lying down for an hour again, I figured.
In the meantime, K and E were having their own adventure, collecting their bags (not checked all the way through because the original plan had been to drive to NYC), finding their way to the terminal from which LOT departs — all of which absolutely thrilled the Boy. In Munich the last time we were there, he was thrilled by all the moving walkways, all the planes visible from the terminal, and even the self-enclosed smoking pods. I’m sure it was just as thrilling in JFK.
“An airport is a paradise for a nine-year-old boy,” I texted K. I always loved going to the airport for Papa’s business trips: the hustle and bustle, the equipment, the planes.
But even then, a little one can get tired and frustrated when the layover is hours long. K had a secret weapon, though:
And of course, he knew what was waiting for him on the plane — he’d been talking about it for the last two weeks:
The final text from K: we’re on board but take-off is delayed thirty minutes. For once, that’s not a problem: there’s no connection to worry about. Waiting at the other end of the flight will be her brother, ready to bundle them off to Babcia’s place.
I can only imagine Babcia’s excitement after four years.
Back at home, I finally got a chance to download images from the X100. I used my phone for most pictures (even though I always insisted I would never do that), but a few times I pulled out the little digital rangefinder.
When we woke up this morning, it was raining. It’s bad enough that it’s raining when you’re at the beach; it’s even worse when you’re at the beach saying in what the children have come to call a “crusty hotel.”I suppose that’s What you get when you try to save a little money. Because even if you save money one way you’re going to pay for another. Still there is a right side to staying in this crusty hotel: it makes us stay away from it.
So in the morning we head to an aquarium.
In the afternoon when it clears up, we go to the beach.
And in the evening, the SkyWheel.
WiFi not working at the hotel; cell service not allowing image upload very willingly. At not for want of trying.
In the end, I guess the streak still technically continues.
K and the kids headed to Jacksonville today for a beach volleyball tournament in which L will be playing tomorrow. They arrived, checked in, and headed straight to the beach.
Then had ice cream for dinner. Sounds like vacation…
We made it to Knoxville for the next tournament. Two weekends in a row — that would be exhausting if K and I didn’t split the duty.
On the way here, L and I played music for each other: she selected one song, then I selected the next. I think we were both trying to find something the other liked. I liked a few of her songs; she “mehed” most of mine.
“I’m into alternative and indie stuff,” she said. And then very little of what she played sounded like what I would have considered “alternative and indie.” That was one of my staple genres growing up, so I played some R.E.M. for her. They are the godfathers of alternative. “Meh.”
At one point, she claimed I didn’t choose my song quickly enough and so that meant she got two songs in a row.
“That’s fine,” I said.
My next song: Genesis’s “The Musical Box,” which clocks in at just over ten minutes.
She was shocked and aghast.
“Next I’ll go with Pink Floyd’s ‘Dogs,'” I suggested, “which is 17 minutes long. After that perhaps Genesis’s ‘Supper’s Reader,’ which is 24 minutes long, and then maybe ‘Echoes’ by the Floyd again, which is 23 minutes long. We’ll end it with Jethro Tull’s ‘Thick as a Brick,’ which is a full album — one song, 44 minutes.” She was horrified.
A few more pics from K’s iPhone.
The Boy finally found his shark teeth. We went back to the beach famed for its shark teeth and within seconds, he’d found his first. It wasn’t his last.
“Once I found one, I was in my prime!” he declared shortly before asking, “Daddy, what does it mean to be ‘in my prime’?”
“I love when you use words you don’t really know!” I laughed.
“What?! It was on Cupcake and Dino. I’m just not sure what it means.”
I explained. It pleased him that he’d used it correctly.
Our last full day in the area was not in the area. We went to Savannah because, well, it’s Savannah. You can’t come within 40 miles of Savannah and not spend at least some time there.
Of course, with a bunch of Poles in the group, we had to go to Pulaski monument in Monterey Square as we headed to Forsyth Park and its famous fountain.
Afterward, we headed to the water front where we visited a saltwater taffy shop, watched ships come up the river into the harbor, and wandered in and out of shops.
And of course the Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist.
We finished off the day — and, in essence, the trip — at Tybee Island.
Today we headed back to Hunting Island State Park. It was in part because of something K wanted to do: there is a long trail through a coastal forest by a lagoon that leads to a bridge to a small island, and K, always the hiker, wanted to make the journey there and back. It wasn’t that long — about two and a half miles one way, but it’s enough to get some folks fussing if they don’t really want to participate. However, the potential fussers were sold on the simple idea that it would lead to more beach time.
It also led to something that someone had asked about before we set out on the hike (“Is that the way to the boneyard?” Boneyard? What are you talking about?) but we’d never heard of. A virtual forest of driftwood — whole trees half-sunken in the sand, bleached by the sun, surrounded by rippled, hard-packed sand.
It was the perfect place for a series of portraits.
“Daddy, I have one dream for this trip,” the Boy has been saying since we arrived. “I want to go shark tooth hunting.” We watched a couple of videos on how to do it, and it seemed entirely possible that the Boy could find a number of them during an hour or so of searching.
After a little hunting, we asked someone who seemed to know what he’s doing. “You just have to look for black triangles,” he explained, shaking out of a small bottle the small black fossilized teeth he’d found during the morning. “Like that one,” he continued, reaching down and plucking up a small tooth that he’d just discovered.
If it was that easy to find, we all thought it would be a simple enough matter for the Boy to discover one.
“It’s my dream to find a shark tooth,” E reiterated. Multiple times.
Soon enough, L found one. Then K found one. Then L found another. But E found nothing.
“Maybe we can come back later today and look again,” E suggested. It was, after all, not quite low tide yet.
We headed off to the historic district of Beaufort for a little lunch and exploring. We found a charming church with an old cemetery that had a few graves from Revolutionary War soldiers. E was impressed with the age of the graves, impressed with the size of the church, but still thinking about that shark tooth he still hadn’t found.
We finished up our time in Beaufort with a walk along the waterfront where marveled at the homes of the rich, large mansions that spoke of fortunes beyond our own considerations and imagination. (We got echoes of that in the evening when we watched Pride and Prejudice.)
Finally, we found a good spot for a few portraits.
Then we headed back to the beach where we’d started the morning searching for shark teeth.
The tide had risen, and the search was all the more difficult for it. Everyone searched for teeth; everyone found shark teeth. Everyone except the Boy.
It crushed him.
The whole way back to the car, he was on the verge of tears. “Everyone found a tooth! Everyone! Even L found a tooth, and she was not even interested in it until this morning!”
When we got back to the place we’re renting through AirBnB, he threw himself into the corner of the couch and fought back the tears. “It was my dream to find a shark tooth!” he whimpered. “My dream!”
Earlier in the day, in a gift shop, we’d bought a small bag of shark teeth. He bought them because they were cool; I encouraged him because I knew after that morning that finding a tooth is not a guaranteed adventure. I used this to try to reason with him: “Look, you wanted to look for shark teeth. You wanted to find a shark tooth. And you wanted to go back home with a shark tooth. You’re accomplishing two of your three desires.”
I knew it was a long shot, and he saw right through it. “But I wanted to find a tooth!” If he’d managed that one simple feat, the other two would have automatically been fulfilled. My cleverness might have soothed a younger boy, but not an eight-year-old E.
These are the silly things that happen in the course of parenting that seem both highly significant and completely trivial. His pain and frustration were highly significant: I recall wanting something so badly at that age, how I used to get my heart so set on it that if it didn’t come to fruition, I might as well have died, so bleak seemed my prospects afterward. Yet it was at the same time so trivial: he’s going home with thirty to forty shark teeth in his bag. In a few weeks or a few months at most, this will be an almost-disappeared memory. It will be a foggy memory he recalls as his own son deals with similar frustration.