Nashville To Chattanooga And Beyond

  Today was opening day in Spring Hill for the Tennessee Vintage Baseball Association. Imagine you were alive in the 1860s and attending a new American game called baseball. Things would be a bit different from the game we know today. The only equipment were balls, which are slightly larger, have different stitching, and are slightly softer than modern baseballs, bats, and bags for bases. Pitching was underhand and there was no strike zone, so strikes were only swinging strikes and there were no balls. Once a batter hit the ball he was out if a fielder caught the ball in one hop or if he was thrown out at first. Runners could not overrun first base. If he did and was tagged, he was out. Left handed batters were called wrong siders. Outs were called hands, not outs so players saying "two hands" were saying "two outs". The teams were the Franklin Ferriers vs the Spring Hill Quicksteps and the rosters were made up of men mostly middle aged and above and some (most?) pa...

  Today we went to Franklin (I was mistaken in the first post when I said the street fair was going to be in Spring Hill) and attended the street fair. There were many booths selling artwork, jewelry, food items, clothing, and other items. The crowd was large, orderly, and friendly. There was a real positive vibe to the whole day. We lucked out for lunch and found a table that had just been vacated outside in the shade so not only could we eat, but we were also able to people watch. The food was good and reasonably priced. After we had ice cream and we started making our way back to the shuttle one of those moments of pure serendipity occurred. I spotted someone I knew. First, a little background. In the late 1990s Dianne and I were in the adult chorus at Carondelet High School. A neighbor of ours, Shawn Johnson, who had a daughter who attended Carondelet was in the chorus with us. Shawn moved to Franklin, Tennessee in the mid 2000s and Dianne and I actually spent a night at her ho...

 The river cruise from Nashville to Chattanooga begins next week but we flew to Nashville today so we can visit my nieces, my nephew, and grandnephews who live in Spring Hill. I have not seen them for over five years, and that was not for a happy occasion. I came with Dianne and my kids Peter and Gina to my sister Sue’s funeral. Today is my niece’s birthday, so we got to have a really good full of laughs family dinner tonight to celebrate Jenny’s birthday.    It is now Saturday morning. Patti and I spent Thursday night in San Francisco with our friend Barbara who not only hosted us but also prepared a delicious dinner for us and drove us to SFO yesterday morning. Thank you Barbara. You are a jewel. I think we learned one advantage of having advanced years and a look of befuddlement on our faces as we approached the self baggage check to print out our baggage tags. One of the United employees asked us if we were checking our bags and steered us through the process and then...