Airports: It ain't great to get there late

          If you travel for a living you have to make certain decisions and then you have to commit to your decisions. It isn’t always fun, this screwball lifestyle. But the decisions you make will at least allow you to be comfortable with the way you live on the road.

          Take airports, as an example. Do yourself a favor and get there early. You should get to the rental car return lot three hours before your flight is due to leave. Some of us like to get to the ticket counter three hours ahead, which means returning the car even earlier.

          You hear this all the time: “I don’t like sitting in airports that long,” Well, I’d rather sit in an airport than sit on the highway in unexpected traffic, wondering whether I’ll be on time for my flight. I’d rather sit at the gate than circle the parking lot for endless eons.

          When lots of your fellow fliers are pushing hard to get their boarding passes and then getting frantic during the security process, you’ll be calm and comfortable because you have lots of time to spare.

          Make a mistake? Get off the bus at the wrong terminal? Leave something in your car or at the rental lot? You have time to deal with the problem.

          Sometimes you have to make a flight reservation before you know the full schedule of your trip and it’s really hard to get to the airport on time, let alone early. Planning ahead helps: Have your boarding pass printed before you go to the airport or have one on your phone (not all airports allow that, so be sure in advance about your intended airport).

          Have your ID and boarding pass ready to hand to the TSA agent. Untie your shoes when waiting in the security line, have your computer bag open so you can pull out the laptop quickly when you get to the conveyor belt to send everything through the X-Ray machine.

          I’d recommend using one specific airline as often as possible so as to earn points and, more importantly, boarding status. You generally will board earlier than most of the herd and thus will be able to put a bag in the overhead near your row. Having your bag near at hand when disembarking can save you some very important minutes if you have a tight connection.

          Try to allow yourself a minimum of 75 minutes between the expected arrival time and the boarding time for the connection. Running through an airport is no fun, believe me. Lately airlines have been pushing the idea of short layovers for some reason. Nuts to that. Give yourself some buffer time in case your flight is late leaving or late getting to the gate. Remember, the boarding time is half an hour earlier than the departure time.

          When possible, wear comfortable clothing. You’ll be sitting a lot, so you may as well be comfortable. Bring a book you are unlikely to finish before the flight ends.

          Do some stretching before you board your first flight, particularly the hamstrings and calves. That will help your back stay loose. Don’t feel silly stretching in front of a large crowd; if they aren’t stretching they are too lazy or too dumb. Who cares what they think?

          One more idea: Be aware of the time of year when you plan a trip. If there are no direct flights between you and your destination and you have to connect somewhere, don’t connect in Chicago, Minneapolis or Detroit during the heavy winter months. Try Atlanta or Dallas/Fort Worth or someplace else in the southern US. Do not fly into or out of Denver after 12 noon, regardless of the time of year.

          So be aware, be early and be limber.

         
          Thanks for reading.

The Hall family at Chickamauga

         

          When he positioned the 20^th Maine to defend its portion of Little Round Top

The Federal view of the fighting at Horseshoe Ridge.

during the Battle of Gettysburg, Joshua Chamberlain sent his brother to the far end of the regiment’s placement so that the brothers would be separate. If the same bullet killed both men, Chamberlain felt, it would be a bad day for their mother. But many mothers had bad days during the war, regardless of how close their sons stood while battle raged.

Both armies in the American Civil War raised regiments in cities and towns with the idea that the neighbors and families would serve together. Part of the thinking was that these soldiers would be less likely to shirk their duty with witnesses from their home towns on hand to see.

          Letters home, the thinking went, were real threats to a soldier’s reputation.

          It was a good theory, you’d suppose, but it did not work too well. There were deserters and stragglers in both armies. The effective fighting strength of a given combat unit might be twenty or thirty percent below its listed number on a given day due those reasons, along with the impact of diseases and illness.

          There were no deserters or stragglers in the Alabama family of Bolling Hall Sr. Sons Bolling Jr., Crenshaw, James, John E. and Tom all saw battle during the war.

          Bolling Jr. served in Hilliard’s Legion in 1862 and 1863 as a Lt. Colonel, having

The South Carolina monument at
Chickamauga. Bolling Hall Jr. was
among the Confederates that charged
up this hill into the woods behind it.

served the previous year in another regiment. After the Legion was split into three different commands, Hall Jr. served in the 59^th Alabama Infantry Regiment in 1864.

          Crenshaw Hall was the adjutant in the Second Battalion of Hilliard’s Legion.

James Hall served as a Captain in Company K of the 24^th Alabama Infantry Regiment.

John E. Hall also served in the Legion, as a Lieutenant.

Bolling Hall Jr. was wounded during the Battle of Chickamauga. According to reports, he seems to have reached the enemy works on the berm of Horseshoe Ridge at the time he was wounded. His battalion was the first Confederate unit to push the Federals away from the front of the Ridge, one of the costliest accomplishments of the war for either side. Hall recovered from his Chickamauga wound and rejoined his men, only to lose a leg during the 1864 battle of Drewry’s Bluff. He died of complications from the Drewry’s Bluff wound in 1866.

Crenshaw Hall had the difficult task of writing the battle report in place of his brother after the Chickamauga fight. It was a hard job, knowing that not one but two of his brothers were dangerously wounded during that two-day event.

The second wounded brother was Tom Hall. Tom was not a soldier at the time the fighting broke out at Chickamauga. He was a University student. While he wrote letters about wanting to join the Confederate arms with his brothers, Tom Hall had not officially enlisted.

There is a letter from brother Bolling Jr. to Bolling Sr. recommending that Tom contact James Hall, a Captain remember, of the 24^th Regiment. If Tom wanted to join Bolling Jr. in the Legion, he’d have to do so as a private, since there were already three Hall brothers among the officers in Hilliard’s Legion.

James Hall might have had a better opportunity for his younger brother and Tom may have been seeking an appointment while visiting James that September.

Tom Hall’s wound was very serious. Bolling Jr., although wounded himself, telegraphed his father to warn of Tom’s condition and recommended that Bolling Sr. bring a good surgeon if the father came to see his sons.

Bolling Sr. was a man with connections. He was able to secure rail transportation to north Georgia and seems to have arrived within a few days of the battle. Whether Bolling Sr. brought a surgeon or not (the evidence indicates that he did not), Tom Hall died of his wounds.

Thomas Brown Hall, university student, was buried on the battlefield with members of the 24^th Regiment.

 

         Thanks for reading.

 

Have you ever squeezed a watermelon seed?

Janet Guthrie likened it to squeezing a watermelon seed.

Guthrie, the first woman to qualify and race in the Indianapolis 500, did not make the field in her first attempt at the big race. Driving a car fielded by a veteran but under-funded team, Guthrie struggled to find enough speed in her first Month of May at Indy. Qualifying was spread over two weekends in those days and on the final day it was fairly clear that her car was not fast enough to be one of the 33 starters.

A.J. Foyt, Indy’s Grand Master, gave Guthrie the chance to run a few laps in one of his backup cars in the final hours of the final day. Guthrie was immediately fast enough to make the show but Foyt eventually decided not to put her in one of his cars that year. He was still chasing his fourth Indy win at the time and he probably wanted to avoid any distractions that might come his way by fielding a car for the first woman ever to race in the 500.

Your loyal blogger interviewed Guthrie several months later and she likened driving Foyt’s car, which was faster than hers, to the watermelon seed. It was a simply marvelous description, simple and illustrative.

So imagine what former NASCAR champ Kurt Busch experienced when he drove a Michael Andretti car at Indy last week. Busch has extraordinary driving talent and he has driven open-wheeled cars before. Still, jumping into an Indianapolis racecar with no real world preparation and then zipping around the famed oval at competitive speed is a tremendous feat.

Busch’s best lap in the Andretti car was a few ticks better than 218 mph.

Most of Busch’s career has been spent in heavy stock cars. The stockers behave differently than do the lighter and lower, winged dragons that flit around the Indianapolis oval at enormous speeds. The adjustment a driver must make before switching between the two types of racing cars is significant.

It is the kind of adjustment that Indy drivers made more frequently in Foyt’s era than they do today. When the United States Auto Club sanctioned the 500 and ran all of Indy racing, they used to stage companion races wherein there would be a 200-mile Indy car race followed by a 200-mile USAC stock car race. Most of the drivers would compete in both events. They’d spend the weekend jumping between the different types of cars, squeezing that watermelon seed.

It was the kind of thing that Foyt could do. So could greats like Mario Andretti and Johnny Rutherford. So could Janet Guthrie.

And so can Kurt Busch. His kind of seed-squeezing talent is a rare thing. Let’s appreciate it.

 

           Thanks for seeding…uh…reading.

Sports quiz: Do you get the connection?

Here’s a quiz:

What do Eli Manning, Mark Sanchez, Joe Namath and Sammy Baugh all have in common? Think about that as you read on down.

          What do Rex Ryan, Weeb Eubank and Sammy Baugh have in common?

          What do the New York Jets, Los Angeles Rams, Los Angeles Raiders, Los Angeles Express, Los Angeles Wildcats, Los Angeles Dons, Southern California Sun and Denver Broncos all have in common?

          What do John Elway, Craig Morton and Tim Tebow all have in common?

          What do Peyton Manning, Eli Manning and Archie Manning all have in common?

          What does every team in the NFL have in common as of this writing?

          Want some answers? Here we go…

          None of the quarterbacks listed (Manning, Sanchez, Namath and Baugh) have won an NFL playoff game more recently than Tim Tebow.

          Head coaches Ryan, Eubank and Baugh all once coached the Jets franchise. None have won more recently in the post-season than Tim Tebow.

          None of the Jets, Rams, Raiders, Express, Wildcats, Dons, Sun or Broncos have won an NFL playoff game with Peyton Manning as a starting quarterback.

          Elway, Morton and Tebow have all won NFL playoff games as starting quarterbacks for the Denver Broncos.

          None of the Mannings have won an NFL playoff game with the Denver Broncos.

          And what does the entire NFL have in common? No team is interested in hiring Tim Tebow.

          Huh? Thanks for reading.

Confederate Memorial Park in Alabama

Historic research takes you a lot of new places. Sometimes you draw an information blank but sometimes you find something you can use. Frequently you find really neat people and that’s the case at the Confederate Memorial Park near Montgomery, Alabama.

          Established as the Alabama Confederate Soldiers’ Home in 1901, the Home

housed Confederate veterans no longer able to physically or financially care for themselves. The campus eventually grew to include 22 buildings, among them a 25-bed hospital, and a water and sewage system. The facility was limited to 100 patients, including wives or widows of veterans. The population peaked at 104 inmates (the patients were termed inmates in those days) between 1914 and 1918.

          The last patients (today’s term), five Confederate widows, were moved from the Park in 1939, five years after the final Civil War veteran residing at the Home passed away. The Home was shuttered in ’39. The Park was created in the 1960s.

          The sprawling Park is now home to a museum, a research library, two cemeteries and plenty of picnic areas. There are markers that denote what was in each location when the former Confederate soldiers resided there.

The two cemeteries are the final resting place for 313 Confederate veterans and widows.

          Headstones make excellent research tools. They are a great way to confirm an individual’s year of death, which can help confirm identification, and Confederate markers also provide the name of the military unit the deceased served in. You have to cross-check to be sure you have the right soldier, but grave markers are generally solid clues.



Covered picnic areas dot the landscape.



The Park’s grounds are wonderfully lush. They are immaculate. It is peaceful there and it is easy to imagine the Civil War veterans spending their time in solitude. You can still feel their presence.

When you imagine the former Confeds spending their final years at the home, there is a tendency to visualize them in black and white because the images we have of those men were produced before color film was used.

          There are photographs on the Park’s museum walls (and in the Park’s literature) of the patients with their children and grandchildren during visits. In that regard, the Park was similar to hospitals and senior care facilities we have today.

          The staff at the Park is friendly and helpful. There is a lot of knowledge available. It is a great opportunity for a researcher.

          Even if you just like walking in pretty surroundings the park is a great place to visit.

 

          Thanks for reading.

Bugs, bugs, go away, come again another day

          When our kids were little we had a rule about certain words. The rule was that even if they heard adults using a few, selected, specific words, the kids were not allowed to use them.

          There were words our kids heard while repair work was performed on one of the family cars and many of those words were not acceptable for use by the kids. Sometimes they heard words used regarding my work that were absolutely unacceptable for repetition.

          Once I was very careful to be sure I was out of the hearing range of our kids while changing the oil on a car with a stubborn oil pan plug. Every attempt to unscrew the bolt that plugged the pan rocked the car back and forth and elicited a string of those unacceptable words. Our kids didn’t hear any of the car language, but the sweet, young children next door heard a lot of it until their parents moved them inside. Days later, after hearing the story, I felt like an idiot.

 

           Eventually we adopted the term, 'car language,' for stuff the kids might hear but could never repeat. Car language or no, we were pretty good about training our kids to avoid bad language. They were both good kids to begin with, so they learned well.

          One of the four-letter words we had to train the kids not to use was rain. Because their father, your loyal blogger, was working in the racing business, the R word was never heard in our house. Even I didn’t use it. Nobody used it.

          Sometimes a heavy mist was observed. Sometimes we remarked about the low clouds or heavy humidity in the air. But mostly we discussed all the clear bugs we could see, as in, “Crank up the wipers, the clear bugs are out again.”

          All through the years they were growing up, our kids knew better than to describe weather as wet. There was no rain and, obviously, there was no snow or sleet. They had plain coats and boots, not rain coats or rain boots.

          By the time we were done, even I bought into it. Even when working at a race now, if the clouds produce something that stops the proceedings I harken back to the wonder years when our kids were growing up and all I see are clear bugs. Clear bugs, enough of them, can cut a racing weekend short.

          Once we had a heavy infestation of clear bugs at a race in Colorado. The promoter called the local airport, whose operator said the infestation was heavy there, too. The race was beyond halfway, so the race was called. Ten minutes later the bugs went away, but the race had been called.

          You just have to understand the power of these bugs. Clearly, they are amazing.

          

          Thanks for reading.

 

Really neat Foote work

                It took a while, but your loyal blogger today finished the first book in historian Shelby Foote’s exhaustive three-book series about the Civil War. The first book, The Civil War, Volume One, Fort Sumter to Perryville, leaves the reader wondering how one researcher could possibly know so much about anything.

          It also forced this blogger to go buy the second book in the series.

          For the last five years, this blogger has researched and chased after information related to the battle of Chickamauga, specifically the last three hours of that terrible fight. That’s five years of searching for microfilm, attempting to read said microfilm, combing through old files in far-flung archives buildings, searching the internet for old muster rolls and then authenticating anything found on the internet.

          That’s five years of getting lost on old battlefield pathways and lugging photographic equipment down the wrong trail for hours at a time. Never should have told the story to my kids; they’ll never let me hear the end of it.

          Fairly said, it is also five years of meeting some very helpful folks in places all over the country. Librarians, state and national archives department heads and the great folks at the National Parks Service have all been very nice and extraordinarily helpful.

          Those five years of research include moving from California to Ohio. Someday, all the notebooks which were packed will be found. Maybe the research will be complete one day.

          Maybe.

          Five years of researching the last three hours of the second day of a two-day battle. That’s half a decade looking into 180 minutes out of the four-year war, which was a part of the 40-plus year war era. In other words, five years researching a blip in time.

          You compare those five years of research with Foote’s work. He probably knew more about the Civil War than some people know about their own lives.

If you’ve seen Ken Burns’ series on the Civil War, then you are familiar with Foote’s ability to tell a story. And then you know why this blogger bought a new highlighter along with volume two of Foote’s series: A good story is too important to lose.

         Thanks for reading.