The night they drove old dixie down

[ScottA]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMHyovwX7JM&feature=related

Here's another classic rock masterpiece.

[sparks]

Listen closely,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjA_RtsBfAo&playnext_from=PL&feature=PlayList&p=FC01744A41DEEE39&index=5



'we don't get fooled again'   

sparks

[ScottA]

The more things change the more they stay the same. Nice pick sparks.

[sparks]

I screwed up. It's ....We won't get fooled again....


Not ...We don't fooled again.....


dammit




sparks

[ScottA]

Too late. Everyones already been fooled...again.

[Don_P]

I think and type slow.

"The Night" is one of those songs that resonates. Robertson with the help of Helm had the perspective to do it real justice. It's not a history lesson but it sure speaks to the sentiments. The time he remembers oh so well is also the time of a couple of old family stories. One of my ancestors was defending the line so that Lee and the rest of the army could break out of the seige. He had not eaten in over a week, they were indeed starving, just barely alive. "The Night" in our family stories was "the night of the blood red sunset" back home in NC. The red sunset was caused by the approach of Sherman's forces, terrorists that swept across the farms waging war on the civilian population under orders from the president of another country. At the same time their son was lying in the field outside Fort Stedman very badly wounded by canister and grape. On my mothers side another grandaddy was heading towards a small town called Appomatox with General Lee's army. The night before it fell, knowing in his mind they were marching into an unwinnable battle, he wrapped the company flag around a rock and with tears in his eyes lowered it beneath the river's waters, vowing that it would never be taken. The version you may have heard says he uttered those words in defiance and threw the flag in, the family version and that of his commanding officer is this one, uttered humbly, in sadness, a lost cause. This was a flag that in one battle scarcely a year before he had been the eighth man to see that it did not fall. It rests, as it should, somewhere in the mud below my feet. The Band got the tone right.

Generations before my parents met their ancestors were both in the same POW camp. I've wondered if they met.
Lest you think ill, these were poor simple men who, just as General Lee, did not believe in much of what was whirling around them, they did grab their musket and their bag when called to rally round their flag. Happily, one granddaddy was never administered the oath. He walked all the way home and tried to pick up the pieces of the life they all once knew.


I wish we could learn how to put those ways behind us but I fear Cain and Abel will always be with us.

[harry51]

I don't think ill of them. I can respect some of the reasons men fought on the Confederate side. Foremost among those are economic abuse of the less populous Southern states in Congress, state's rights, and self determination. Abhorrent as slavery is, I believe Eli Whitney and mechanization wrote its epitaph long before the war started. It was just a matter of time before it would no longer be a viable business model. The Civil War is a disastrous episode in our history, and we're suffering from it to this day.

[Don_P]

Rather than derail another thread with stuff that has crossed my mind in the last few days I thought I'd put it here.

I'm not sure if most folks know where the first consumer packaging came from, as opposed to going down to the country store and buying what one needed from a bulk container... it was tobacco. Yankees stationed in the Durham developed a taste for our bright leaf and when they returned home began sending letters trying to purchase some. If you've ever seen a little pouch of Bull Durham, that was the first consumer sized packaging, it was only a matter of time before the cracker barrel, butter tubs and flour bins disappeared. since this is a construction site, it was Lowes that initiated unit pricing on lumber. When I was growing up you figured out how many board feet were in the house, called the building supply and asked the price per thousand and you had the price of the framing. Lowes started selling 2x4's for less per BF than 2x12's and it has been heck to do a takeoff ever since.

Tobacco also helped get my father through college. If you look at the real estate transactions over the  decade following the above it is pretty clear that many folks were wiped out and had to sell.  The work system that evolved was tough. It was not uncommon for a tenant to find himself so deeply in arrears after making draws through the year that after the crops sold that there was nothing to do but leave by night and try to find somewhere else to start over the next year. My grandaddy worked as a dairyman for a good farmer, his boss provided seed and land and shared in the proceeds from several crops of tobacco to see that my dad had an opportunity to go to school. After the boll weevil destroyed cotton, tobacco became THE cash crop. I grew up outside of Durham, back in the day the smell of 7 miles of warehouses full of curing tobacco filled the air with a wonderful aroma. Working in woodshops we would sometimes get a menthol drum for one of our scrap barrels. Taking the lid off of one of those would clear your sinuses right down to your toes.

Going back to The Band's song. "Virgil Kane is my name and I served on the Danville train, till Stoneman's cavalry came and tore up the tracks again" Union general George Stoneman actually raided from east TN into western VA where I live now, (Cripple Creek is just on the other side of the mountain behind me, I'm on the last mountain of the Blue Ridge here, this is burley tobacco country, it raised horses during the late unpleasantness). Stoneman was raiding along that valley taking out the rails, saltworks, iron works and the leadmines. The railbed is still obvious in many places. The rails and leadmine were back in service in pretty short order as he could not hold them, the supply line would have been untenable through the hills. Had he known that this weeks lead was next weeks shot in Richmond and Petersburg he may have tried harder.

Stoneman then raided into NC where he took out a foundry and freed yankee prisoners at Salisbury (incidentally the first painting of a baseball game is from that prison camp) As he approached Greensboro he learned that Jeff Davis, evacuating Richmond, had taken the Danville to Greensboro train. Pretending to be confederates, Stoneman telegraphed ahead asking if the president was there and the condition of his escort. The telegraph operator at the end was luckily pretty sharp, he responded that Davis was not there but Joe Johnston and his army of TN were there. Stoneman never raided Greensboro. Davis' train cut it fine enough leaving Danville that the guards at one trestle were overwhelmed and the bridge was blown moments after they passed. Davis quipped "a miss is as good as a mile".

One other interesting note, many of the officers from each side knew each other quite well. Stoneman had been Stonewall Jackson's roomate at West Point.

Stoneman was also looting western NC a good 10 days after the surrender. He went on to serve as the governor of CA some time after the war.

[glenn kangiser]

Thanks for all of the interesting history, Don_P.

"Up on Cripple Creek she sends me, if I spring a leak, she mends me..." or something like that.

[ScottA]

Great story Don_P! Thanks for sharing. 

[Sassy]

Really enjoyed the history story!  Thanks 

[gandalfthegrey]

"Up on Cripple Creek she sends me, if I spring a leak, she mends me..." or something like that.
[/quote]

Buffy St. Marie

Hey, I got a girl at the head of the creek
Goin up to see her about 2 times a week
Kiss her on the mouth, sweet as any wine
Wrap herself around me like a sweet potato vine

Goin up Cripple Creek, goin on a run
Goin up Cripple Creek to have a little fun
Goin up Cripple Creek, goin in a whirl
Goin up Cripple Creek to see my little girl

Now the girls up Cripple Creek about half-grown
Jump on a boy like a dog on a bone
Roll my britches up to my knees
Wade ol Cripple Creek whenever I please

Goin up Cripple Creek, goin on a run
Goin up Cripple Creek to have a little fun
Goin up Cripple Creek, goin in a whirl
Goin up Cripple Creek to see my little girl

Now, Cripple Creek's wide and Cripple Creek's deep
Wade old Cripple Creek before I sleep
Hills are steep and the roads are muddy
and I'm so dizzy that I can't stand steady I'm

Goin up Cripple Creek, goin on a run
Goin up Cripple Creek to have a little fun
Goin up Cripple Creek, goin in a whirl
Goin up Cripple Creek to see my little girl.

[glenn kangiser]

That's a cool one, Gandalf.

I didn't know it but the one I was thinking of is a Bob Dylan song.


Up On Cripple Creek

When I get off of this mountain
You know where I want to go
Straight down the Mississippi river
To the Gulf of Mexico

To Lake Charles, Louisiana
Little Bessie, a girl that I once knew
And she told me just to come on by
If there's anything she could do

Up on Cripple Creek she sends me
If I spring a leak she mends me
I don't have to speak she defends me
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one

Good luck had just stung me
To the race track I did go
She bet on one horse to win
And I bet on another to show

Odds were in my favor
I had him five to one
When that nag to win came around the track
Sure enough he had won

Up on Cripple Creek she sends me
If I spring a leak she mends me
I don't have to speak she defends me
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one

I took up all of my winnings
And I gave my little Bessie half
And she tore it up and blew it in my face
Just for a laugh

Now there's one thing in the whole wide world
I sure would like to see
That's when that little love of mine
Dips her doughnut in my tea

Up on Cripple Creek she sends me
If I spring a leak she mends me
I don't have to speak she defends me
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one

Now me and my mate were back at the shack
We had Spike Jones on the box
She said, "I can't take the way he sings
But I love to hear him talk"

Now that just gave my heart a fall
To the bottom of my feet
And I swore as I took another pull
My Bessie can't be beat

Up on Cripple Creek she sends me
If I spring a leak she mends me
I don't have to speak she defends me
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one

Now, it's hot in California
And up north it's freezing cold
And this living off the road
Is getting pretty old

So I guess I'll call up my big mama
Tell her I'll be rolling in
Bet you know, deep down, I'm kinda tempted
To go and see my Bessie again

Up on Cripple Creek she sends me
If I spring a leak she mends me
I don't have to speak she defends me
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one

Copyright ©

[Don_P]

Thanks for the kind words.
"Cripple Creek" was written by Robbie Robertson, it was on the A side of the original 45, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" was on the B side.

Gandalf's bluegrass version is probably about my Cripple Creek and is the version played at the annual old time fiddler's convention here. It has other names, "Goin up Brushy Fork", Brush Fork road is one way over to Cripple Creek.  I like to think The Band's version was inspired by it and is a geographical continuation from A side to B side and they are playing a little game with us, got no way of knowing.

Cripple Creek flows into the New River and finally ends up down in New Orleans. It's the only waterway that cuts through the eastern continental divide, the New predates the mountains and so cut its channel as they rose. The New is the oldest river on the continent. Our section is a pretty tame float but if you want a wild ride hop on in the gorge in West Virginia and hold on tight.

I dug up a few pictures of some of the places I mentioned last night.
This is a shot from the Cripple Creek side looking back over our way. I said I was in the Blue Ridge,it's igneous precambrian rock, granite. This side is the valley and ridge country, younger limestone, ancient seabed (and caves). If I keep travelling northwest I'll hit the Allegheny Plateau, coalfields that formed after the sea drained and a forest grew, and was then buried.

There is an iron mine up on that hill, there are coalings in several areas, places where wood was stacked, covered and burned into charcoal. The virgin forest here was turned to charcoal to feed the furnaces, "I don't mind chopping wood". A coaling, or charcoal hearth as some of the old timers call it was tended by a collier who chopped the wood and stacked it on an area he had levelled, he then tended the fire carefully till it had become charcoal, he then gathered it and delivered it to the furnace. A coaling in the right place makes an excellent cannon platform. If you ever read about Stonewall's Shenandoah campaign you'll come across "The Battle of the Coalings", now you know what he was up to.

By the 1920's this area was denuded and eroding badly. Men like Gifford Pinchot, John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt really didn't expect the eastern forest to ever recover, that was part of the reason for their conservation efforts out west.

This is one of the furnaces where iron ore was cast into useable items or pig iron. The casting shed had a sand floor and a trench was dug from the tapping arch down the center of the floor. Various subcontractors had their molds carved for things like pots and pans, stove plate, sad irons, etc and they pressed their molds into the sand and cut a trench from the main stream to their castings. When the whistle blew they would come in and man their castings as the plug was knocked out and the furnace was tapped. They paid for the iron they used and then marketed their products. The furnace would cast pig iron out of excess or on order to be sent to forges for further work into wrought iron or steel. The pigs lined up along the trench looked like suckling pigs on a nursing sow, thus "pig iron". This is Noble Furnace, I can think of 5 that I know of along that valley beneath Iron Mountain, some being slowly reclaimed by the forest.


Do not try this at home, I slid in under the tapping arch and am standing on the hearth inside of Ravens Cliff Furnace. You are looking at why this furnace and most of them shut down. After running at heat under blast for several years the interior collapsed. The firebrick here is caving in. It is fused with glass from the sand in the ore. Another one of the furnaces has a huge lump of fused ore,lime and charcoal beside it. I assume they lost air blast while in melt and ended up with a frozen mess inside that they then had to disassemble part of the furnace to extract.


These are salt pots, cast at Raven's Cliff and used in Saltville, the salt capitol of the Confederacy, to boil down brine extracted from underground salt domes to produce salt. In the days before refrigeration, salt was a crucial preservative. When the coastlines fell this site became strategically of great importance.

[glenn kangiser]

Cool info, Don - thanks again.  I have done some metal casting but after building a metal furnace for cast iron I never did complete it - as coke is hard to get here.  I have been told since that I can make an oil furnace that will melt cast iron.  Maybe I can convert the coke one some day.

The old foundry/furnace pix are great.  There is one old one up the 49 Highway at Sutter Creek.  Knight Foundry - not exactly a iron production furnace but still an ancient foundry.  Restoration has been attempted a time or two but hasn't lasted long.

I was casting replacement parts for antique one lunger engines.