Richard Orander

A most kindly man, I have faded memory, as he died when I was six on March 30, 1961. He was born November 12, 1887. He married my grandmother Carrie Ethel Dodson on  Dec 26, 1909. She was born March 14, 1893 and died April 19, 1969.

Dick Orander Comes

 

My grandfather Richard Martin "Dick" Orander with his buses. In the bottom photograph to the left was my Uncle Kermit, Richard's oldest son of two, the younger being Don. My mother Clara Jean was the only daughter, the apple of Richard's eye.

Dick Orander and the four mule team

My grandfather Richard Martin Orander of Bluefield, West Virginia in his early years in Virginia with his four mule team wagon. I assume the man to the right is one of his brothers.
My grandfather worked in the coal mines early on, but was injured. This led to his life work as an independent bus driver, owning his own small bus line from Crumpler to Northfork and Bluefield.

Cracker Part 3

Teas and brews from native plants and herbs supply remedies for most of the cracker's ills, although few households are complete without a drugstore malaria medicine, usually a volatile draught of cathartic and quinine to cure 'break-bone' fever. Panther-oil, when it can be obtained, is prized for easing stiff joints and rheumatism.
Superstition rules the life of the cracker; hunting or fishing or planting--almost everything he undertakes--is done according to accepted formula. He would no more set fence posts in the light of the moon than he would plant potatoes or other crops that mature underground.
Any windfall, or a considerable profit from crops, goes for an automobile, preferably a Ford, since the old Model T proved to be the most trustworthy on woods trails. His economic status therefore is known by his transportation, which falls into four categories: mule, Model T, Model A, and V-8; but the garage is the same, an open shed or lean-to.

Cooper Hawk

Today the Officer from the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service came by. He said Landon's license was several years old and he asked if he was still doing falconry. I had to tell him that he no longer had a hawk, that he was in the Air Force. It was a sad time knowing Landon is not communicating with us and the hawk pen is empty.

Cracker part 2

The cracker's wants are simple...his garden plot, pigpen, chicken coop, and the surrounding woods and near-by streams supply him and his family with nearly all the living necessities. Fish is an important item of diet, and when the cracker is satiated with it he has been heard to say: 'I done et so free o' fish, my stommick rises and falls with the tide.'
Any small income from his place is spent at the general store, and Saturday is the day to go to town and stock up with 'bought vittles'. His one luxury is tobacco. Snuff-dipping is still prevalent among the older womenfolk, though they scorn cigarettes as immoral.
from the 1939 Florida, American Guide Series.

Before Sixty-One

There is an old sharpening wheel I have from my father's place. I think I tried to count the rings recently in the large,heavy sandstone wheel and it was over seventy. At the rate it wears down with the sharpening of hoes and farm implements, it should last well into the next century, long after its metal stand has rusted away and we too, are long gone.
This very stone could very well have sharpened swords from the late,great war of Northern Aggression. We can only imagine at this point.

Gone the Fronds

I enjoy musing upon old Dixie and the South. Much of my reading material stems from this era and I am drawn to the old ways, always in search of some remnant from old Dixie. This is a fictional account of a soldier returning to Florida after a long journey home from the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia in April of 1865.

"It  was Palm Sunday and our long journey home was not lined with palms and shouts of joy, but littered with the charred stubble of cotton fields, the rubble of a lost cause strewn before us, not the Kingdom of Jubilee we had fought for, the old home place on her last breath of an iron-lunged re-construction. Not even old Gabriel the family mule to lift the joist to level the sunken porch, taken to bear the strain for the rogues now in control. In the overgrown grass out back, I bent and picked some of the wild hurricane lilies growing under the pecan canopy. I found one of the few unbroken jars and made an arrangement. It stood in stark contrast. But I knew the rubble called the South would some day, like these white lilies, rise despite the hurricane that came upon us, and bring again a beauty to the land of Dixie.

Water and the Word

Between the water and the word
There stood a mile of wood
Brother Eubanks would wax long
Long after our thoughts had turned
to water

This photograph is from the last visit Melanie and I made up to Hopewell
to visit with the Shining Congregation. We took Rocky along our old Golden Retriever to swim in the Suwannee at Cone Bridge. He enjoyed that.
We took the oil lanterns with us in hopes of capturing the inside of the church in a golden glow.
I could never get enough glow from them, so in the end resorted to an orange diffuser over the flash.
I told Melanie, if everytime we got it right, we would have no excuse to return.
So before long, perhaps in the fall when things cool and the myriads of biting varments are dormant, we will return and give it another shot.

Buck Moon of July

In the yard due to the many trees, the moon does not get high enough before after ten PM. Per my usual custom, I was out around midnight, waiting patiently for the airplanes to instersect the moon. To my chagrin, the jets passed in their flight path to the North of the moon. Had I waited until 3 or 4 in the morning, the moon would have aligned with the path, but I am not certain how many would be flying that time of morning. Giving in to the thought of not be successful, I snapped a few portraits with the moon in the background with the Canon S95. Set it on Shutter priority 8 seconds self-timer, flash minus two, cloudy sky WB,manual focus, 400 ISO....
This is the only straight flash shot. The others were taken without flash, but I used a strong flashlight to light the bushes, camera and myself in a blur.

The Cracker

The cracker, a pioneer backwoods settler of Georgia and Florida, has come to be known as a gaunt, shiftless person, but originally the term meant simply a native, regardless of his circumstances. Belief that the name may have been shortened from 'corn cracker' is given credence in Georgia, but in Florida it derives from the cracking of a whip. It is a name honorably earned by those who made bold talk with their lengthy, rawhide bullwhips in the days when timber and turpentine were the State's chief industries. Those enterprises involved heavy-haul jobs, with oxen the motive power, bullwhips to keep them moving, and the pistol-shot crack of these whips to signal the wearisome progress of the haul through the woods.  Cracking the whip became, in fact, an art and a means of communication-an art of making a noise without permitting the whip to touch the animals, and a signal system by which conversations were held across miles of timber barrens. Today the whip crack echoes through the pines only when cowboys are rounding up their herds, and at rodeos and barbecues when the crackers demonstrate their skill.
To be continued....from the 1939  Florida, The American Guide Series.

The Light Line

The Light Line
by john clare

Evening time
God hangs His light out
Upon the tree line
Wrings His clouds
In the lake
Places them back
For rain to make
Drying upon the tree line
He quickly gathers in His light
before night fall.