On the Road US

The Mummy of Carlisle, PA and other Scary Halloween Stories

/ Curt Mekemson / 2 Comments

Carlisle Mummy Cradles Bone

A well-preserved Mummy is parading around outside the van. Bone is excited. He wants his photo taken with the fearsome creature. After all, what is a mummy but gauze, skin and bone.

It’s not quite Halloween but I wouldn’t tell that to the folks at the Western RV Village. The campground is packed with people here to celebrate. And it is filled with ghosts and goblins and ghouls, not to mention the mummy, witches and innumerable graveyards.

Halloween is serious business in central Pennsylvania. People decorate for the event like they do for Christmas in other places.

I whined to the campground manager that Peggy and I were missing our annual pumpkin carving contest in Sacramento with my sister Nancy and her husband, Jim. It’s been going on for 20 years. “Why don’t you join the children in their contest,” she suggested. I gracefully declined.

Old Graveyards are key to Halloween stories and Genealogical research. This grave is located in Newville/Big Springs PA. John Brown fought in the Revolutionary War and was the Uncle of my Great, Great, Great Grandmother Mary Brown Mekemson.

We are engaged in a Halloween like activity, however, searching through old graveyards looking for long dead people. My Great, Great, Great Grandmother Mary Brown Mekemson was born near here in the town of Big Springs (now Newville). Her Grandfather, James, arrived in the area in 1750, back when the US was still part of England.

The Browns trace their lineage back to John Brown, the Scottish Martyr. He was shot down in front of his wife and children in the late 1600s for insisting that Christ, not the King of England, was his Ruler.  His epitaph notes he was “butchered by Clavers and his bloody band, raging most ravenously o’re all the land.”

The early Scottish Presbyterians didn’t think much of Bloody Clavers but they liked their alliteration and poetry.

Legend tells that the Ghost of John Brown visited Clavers to predict his doom the night before he was killed in battle. Revenge and justice.

Ghosts have become big business in modern-day America, in case you haven’t noticed. They are no longer limited to their once a year appearance on Halloween. Having one or more on the premise can mean big bucks. Historic communities that depend on tourist revenue are required to have several.

Next week, in honor of the season, Peggy and I will visit one of the most famous ghost haunts in America, Fort Mifflin, located just outside of Philadelphia. It was the sight of an important battle of the Revolutionary War where 400 men held off the might of the British Navy while George Washington escaped to Valley Forge. Lots of patriots died. It is also the sight of all sorts of spooky business and has been featured on the popular SyFy channel TV show, Ghost Hunters.

More to the point, from my perspective, four Mekemson boys, brothers of my fourth Great Grandpa, Joseph, were involved in the battle. Two were killed saving the flag according to family stories and a flyer distributed by the Fort. One was cut in half by a cannon ball, which anyone would agree is a rather gory end that should justify ghost status. Maybe Uncle Andrew will make an appearance on our visit. I’ll let you know in next week’s blog, “The Mekemson Ghosts of Fort Mifflin.”

Bone whispers in skeleton's ear about upcoming visit to Fort Mifflin.

Un-cool in Paducah Kentucky

/ Curt Mekemson / 6 Comments

I once spent time here in the late 60s when I was working out of Atlanta as a college Peace Corps Recruiter. It was a slow week. None of the young people, it seemed, wanted to leave the area.  And they certainly didn’t want to traipse off to West Africa where I had served as a Volunteer. We were on the edge of the Old South.

It felt like the edge of nowhere. I hung out at the motel and read Faulkner.

One of the Paducah murals on its Ohio River frontage. Flatboats like these are how my ancestors arrived in Kentucky during the 1790s.

Times change. The historic waterfront on the Ohio River has been filled with murals depicting the town’s colorful history and many of the old buildings have been reclaimed to their former glory.  A previous slum in Lower Town has morphed into a thriving arts community. There is an excellent museum on quilting.

As for the isolation, the good folks of Paducah are now only a mouse-click away from anywhere in the world.  Cell phones are ubiquitous and young people in town can whip out a text message faster than a male dog can mark his territory.

Peggy was complaining the other day about how technology dominates our lives. I think she meant my need to be on the Internet since I have never heard a squeak from her about our Verizon connection to mom, kids, grandkids and various other family members.

Actually, Peggy is as addicted to the Internet as I am. It’s just that her computer didn’t crash like mine did in Kona, Hawaii three weeks ago. I was not happy. My plan of blogging regularly disappeared like the Gecko climbing up our screen door.

I felt a tang of guilt about the blog but watching sunsets, drinking beer, swimming with sea turtles, avoiding fiery lava, and pursuing ancient Hawaiians took precedence over replacing the computer. As did being lost in dust storms at Burning Man in the remote Nevada desert the following week.

“You need to buy an Apple,” Tom Lovering admonished me at Burning Man. He took me over to Center Camp to demonstrate how wonderful his computer was while scantily clad women strolled by. “You need to buy an Apple,” my son Tony had admonished me weeks earlier in San Diego as the two-year-old Connor pounded on my leg with a truck that sang Old McDonald.

How could I resist?

I made the leap as Peggy and I dashed through Salt Lake City on our way east to celebrate Peggy’s Mom’s 90th birthday. I had been a PC man since I had purchased one 30 years earlier in Anchorage, Alaska.

“You are finally cool,” Tom Emailed me. If only I had known what it takes.

I decided to do a blog from Estes Park, Colorado because, well, a cool person would probably blog from there.

I fired up my shiny new Apple MacBook Pro. And got a zero with a line through it. Apparently I was not meant to be cool. The technician at the Apple Store in Boulder hooked up a diagnostic tool to my computer and then disappeared into his back room. He came out 30 minutes later with a new laptop.

“You’ve broken a record for our store,” he told me. “We have never seen an Apple crash its hard drive in three days.”

Native American sculpture on the lawn of the quilt museum... checking out Bone.

Thus you are hearing from the slightly un-cool Curt in Paducah, Kentucky. While I have temporarily left our trip down the Colorado River, I shall return to the subject. There are raft-eating rapids to face, oh my. But next I will blog about looking for dead people.