A true story from the South...
We live in the middle of Louisiana, the uppermost French speaking parish (county) in the state on Bluetown Road. Bluetown was named that because during the Civil War, the Union Army camped on farm land located on the road.
The hubby decided we needed a pond. It's been some years and I can't remember the reasoning behind that decision, but before long, we had a hole that was approximately fifty feet by one hundred feet and eight feet deep.
I trekked back to the hole and while looking around, noticed something in the ground approximately three feet down. Luckily it was on the side that was slanted so I could easily retrieve it. At first I thought it might be a weight. Heavy, it was about fourteen inches long with a cone-like head, round body and slightly round bottom.
At Rosalie Plantation in Natchez, MS, the front gate has a weight attached, so that when you pass through the gate, it will automatically close. I've also seen a weight attached to a door at a General Store in Arkansas that would automatically close the door. I'm wondering why I don't have one on my back door!
But as I looked at my 'find' there wasn't an 'eye' to pull a cord or rope through. So, then I figured it might be a farm implement. The hubby's grandfather owned the land for decades and farmed where the pond was located. Only, I didn't know what its purpose was, so I washed up the black encrusted item and waited for the hubby to come home.
He was intrigued with it. He soon had it in his workshop, beating on it with a hammer to remove some of the rough scale that was attached to it. Then he took a file and tried to scrape off some of the scale. He worked on it until he managed to find a copper nose with a date of 1863. That's when he decided it must be a Civil War cannon shell.
He kept it in the bathroom for awhile, then moved it outside and put it on a crossbeam on the patio, then when he heard that a Civil War expert was going to give a presentation at Fort DeRussy, located a few miles down Bluetown Road. This is a fort that was made out of dirt that overlooked the Red River, it was to defend the lower Red River Valley in Louisiana.
The expert was delighted to see the shell and informed the hubby that it was most likely 'live'...
Live! And the hubby was beating on it with a hammer!!!
It's a wonder I'm not a widow...
We still have the shell. It's in the workshop that's a good piece from the house. It's amazing to know that at one time the Union Army camped on our property. That might explain why my son believes there is a ghost in the house that walks down the hallway at times.
Pepper Phillips wrote her first play in the seventh grade. But before that she read every book in her age group at the small local library. An only child, she entertained herself in the worlds she created in her mind. She's still pretty mindless in some respects, but her writing world is where she is the happiest. She ventured into self-publishing in 2011.
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1 comments:
Ha this cracks me up!
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