I may be turning up some gems on the research trail, but not all is rosy in paradise.
Take the weather. On Wednesday, I wasn’t checking the news, so blithely expected Tuesday’s 78 degree weather to hold. But by Wednesday afternoon on the central North Carolina coast, a cold front was delivering gale force winds. I felt them buffeting the car, but didn’t really grasp their strength until I’d bought and paid for my camp site.
It was a pretty site, but setting up the tent was problematic until I figured out I could reposition the car to block the worst of the wind. Then, as I began untangling poles and nylon, I noticed the tent stakes were missing. Somehow, this crucial item hadn’t made it into the bag. Now set up, my tent was bucking and rocking like a ship on high seas. I dove into the car to empty it of shoes, duffels, daypack, groceries, throwing everything inside the tent as ballast at the corners.
Problem solved? Nope. All the flapping and tossing of nylon made such a racket sleep wouldn’t come. After several hours, I packed up and retired to the car. Those front seats in the rental car recline quite comfortably.
In Beaufort and Morehead City, I enjoyed my time at the Maritime Museum and at the Carteret County Historical Society. (The graphic at the start of this post is from Laing’s Seafaring America found in the extensive library of the Maritime Museum.)
Later that afternoon, browsing the manuscript collection at the NC State Library in Raleigh, I found a precious “Gaelic charm” from the late 1700s — something to ward off ill fortune. Included in the file was a letter by a Scottish scholar crying foul on a fellow historian.
Mackechnie was a notoriously bad scholar who got where he did by having a [clerical] collar and talking the hind leg off every donkey in sight. He has read the charm as if it were in the classical Gaelic of a medieval medical manuscript, which it certainly isn’t.
Ronald Black, penner of the above, added that Mackechnie was now deceased. His diatribe gave me the grin of the day.
Also, at the NC State Family History library, I found three(!) books about the Scots Highlander “Barbecue Church,” an immigrant congregation cut from the same cloth as the Ohio Scots Settlement church. Speaking of barbecue — a travel tip. If you ever pass through Roanoke Rapids, NC, do not miss Ralph’s Buffet Barbecue. Mmm mmm.
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