Some photos from Flickr…

I periodically forget about a bunch of photos I’ve posted to Flickr. Not even sure I could login to mass download them.

KRYSTALS RESTAURANT (PORT WENTWORTH, GEORGIA)

I would stop here to get a sack of Krystal’s hamburgers. They were small and square and juicy and had chopped onions on them, and they were a delicious comfort food. White Castle in the north and Krystal’s in the south. I think the first and the last White Castle’s that I visited was probably in Louisville, Kentucky.

PUBLIC ART IN MAIN POST OFFICE (COCHRAN, GEORGIA)

I was passing through Cochran, Georgia one time and stopped in the Main Post Office to mail something. The above art work was hanging up on a wall. I later found that it was a Government funded art work, Like the work programs that the Government funded during the Depression to give people work.

I take it to be of a little barefoot colored farm boy that is carrying a pig under each arm, and is standing between corn stalks on his left and perhaps cotton on his right.

SWEET GRASS DAIRY & THOMASVILLE, GEORGIA

This was my first visit to Thomasville, Georgia and Sweet Grass Dairy. They still produced both goat and cow cheeses, but later they stopped making goat cheese. At the time, they allowed the public to visit the actual dairy where the goats were located and were fed. I had brought a couple of ice chests, and bought quite a bit of cheese. I see from another photo that I was driving my blue & silver Dodge RAM 1500.

On a second visit they had built a new store, a short distance away from the actual dairy farm. At that time I bought several bottles of Pecan Oil. I think they were on special, and I made presents of them to Mary Ann and family.

It may have been the second visit that they had opened a restaurant in downtown Thomasville, and now I don’t think the shop near the dairy is still open. They’ve focused on the restaurant and the cheese seems to have taken a back seat. The boy’s parents were still involved in running the dairy on my first visit, but they may be dead or retired by now.

I ate at Liam’s in downtown Thomasville on my first visit, but on a later visit it wasn’t open and I ate at a seafood restaurant, Jonah’s, next door and enjoyed that much better. I think I had a lobster bisque, and I also liked their heavy silverware so much that on returning home I bought a similar set at the Oneida Store in Smithfield and have continued to use it daily ever since.

BILTMORE SUMMER FLOWERS (2004)

My first visit, a few days late. c Spring 2004

I think these are from my summer visit to Biltmore in 2004. My first visit was in the late spring of 2004 and I missed out on the spring garden plantings by a few days. Where you see the beautifully laid out flowers, there was just tilled earth. I decided to convert my day’s ticket into a year long pass, and returned four times that year, visiting also in the summer, fall and winter & taking the Christmas tour also.

I didn’t know that a large number of tall trees in front of the mansion had been diseased and removed before my first visit. It was only years later that I was watching a movie that was filmed on the grounds and saw the beautiful old trees, which totally changed and blocked a good deal of the view of the mansion’s entrance.

I’ve also visited the State Arboretum in Asheville, just off the Blueridge Parkway, a few times and they also have a great number of beautiful flowers, foliage and even Bonsai. I also like to stop by the WNC State Farmers’ Market. That’s where I got my bright yellow Cara’s Corner bag and Cara’s Corner is where I bought several “new to me” types of dry beans, all of which weren’t as good as, or better than the favorites that have worked their way to the top.

Ramps have an interesting, strong, distinctive flavor, which is as different from onion as garlic is. In fact if you were blindfolded and given a taste & smell of an onion, garlic and ramps, you would easily be able to tell all three apart. Ramps are odd in that they have a narrow white tuberous (like a spring or wild onion) root, but their tops have a broad green leaf. You can cook & eat both the root (after removing the dirt) and the green tops. I’ve cleaned and then frozen both the roots and tops for later use, and once I actually mixed new potatoes, goat cheese and ramps as a side dish. It was delicious.

Ramps only grow above a certain elevation in the mountains, and are only harvested in early spring.

AMTRAK TRIP TO GEORGIA & BACK (ONLY TRIP ON A TRAIN)

This is the Amtrak Train I took from Fayetteville, North Carolina down to Savannah, Georgia. I picked up the yellow rental car there, because it was cheaper there than if I had picked it up in Charleston, South Carolina. Seems like there was a holiday during this jaunt as I think schools were closed. The car is parked in Spivey and Yvonne’s driveway at St. Simons Island. I returned the rental car in Charleston and then took the Amtrak back to Fayetteville to finish my trip. *Not sure if I ate at the Water’s Edge on this trip. This is where I originally tried the “curry remoulade” sauce on a Shrimp Po’ Boy and then came back home to replicate it for many more, and different sandwiches.

Spivey has been dead for several years and Yvonne eventually moved back to Florida and I think is living with Vivian Sue, her youngest… but even Vivian Sue would be an old woman now.

I took the photo of the ship when I had walked to the waterfront of the village on St. Simons Island. I believe this is a large ocean going car carrier, a RORO. I’m not sure if it is the one that eventually sunk, but it was one like it that did sink. Someone had left an exterior door open and when the ship began to list, the water came in the open hold door and the vessel fell on it’s side.

I like this picture of the sea gulls in front of a Target store in Jacksonville, North Carolina. I took it on a cold winter day and had noticed that all the gulls were pointed in the same direction. Not sure if they were facing that way because of how the wind was blowing, or for some other reason. But later as I looked at the picture, it just made sense to label this picture as “Missing the Target.”

I loved the oriental motif that I created for my patio table. Not too long ago I donated the lamps to the church thrift store. They had been packed away for several years.

I think I bought the striped tea pot and the gold rimmed Turkish Glass glass on the same visit to a New Bern antiques store. I enjoyed visiting this store and roaming around it, but a few years ago I started to drive up into the parking lot and noted that the entire building had burned and been totally removed. Just a small portion of the parking lot was still recognizable.

As I walked in the front door, I looked over and saw the beautiful gold rimmed glasses (there were two) and I immediately took them to the checkout counter so they could keep them while I roamed about the store.

Why would I buy the old striped tea pot, that had a broken ceramic loop that had been poorly repaired? Well, and it is the reason that I still have this tea pot when I have recently given most of the other tea pots away… it has a wonderful sound, when you put the tea pot lid on the pot. It is what I note as a quality sound, like what I would think a Cadillac automobile would sound like, when you closed a car door. Not the sound that a cheap car door sounds like when you slam it shut. *I’ve recently donated several tea pots and quite a few coffee/tea mugs/cups.

And finally, the mobile kitchen cart, and it hasn’t looked this good in several years. I now have it in one corner of the small kitchen, in fact the only corner it could actually fit in, and there is a bunch of stuff on top of it. I think the mug on the cart top is one that I’ve still kept. It is a blue, large mug and probably holds two cups of drink. That’s the Oneida Stafford Stainless cutlery that I use daily, and the one that was inspired by my visit to Jonah’s Restaurant in Thomasville, Georgia.

It is amazing that I actually drove all the way down to Thomasville just to visit and buy various cheeses at the “Sweet Grass Dairy.” And perhaps more surprising that I would make a couple of more trips to Thomasville, Georgia. Nice town but a long way from home for me to drive, and I probably wouldn’t do it at my age, but then it was a wonderful adventure.