A Literary Dabbler

He was ordinary. That is the kindest thing we can say about him. Nondescript. No one knew where he came from, so being a man of no importance was to say quite a lot.

His eyes were such a pale blue it was difficult to discern where the pool of his irises merged with the surrounding whites, whites that were closer to off-white so that the tone leaned into a mysterious dull grey mist similar to an overcast mid-summer dawn. Like his other features it gave his face a washed out feel. 

When he spoke, which was seldom, the words mingled with a wheezing breathiness that made him hard to understand. People often asked him to repeat himself, but even then he was hard to follow and people would walk away instead of making an effort to capture whatever meaning he was trying to convey.

I used to be that way. His indistinct diction left me muttering to myself so that others sometimes asked that I repeat what I'd said. I now find this funny. I was only talking to myself.

His name was Carlton Pennington. Carlton used to refer to a place before making the leap from geography to personhood. Carl descends from the root ceorl, meaning "a free man" or non-servant peasant. The latter syllable comes from the root tun, meaning town, farm or enclosure.

Pennington is an old Anglo-Saxon name that may have meant Penny Farm. The Penningtons are listed in census records from a thousand years ago. Carlton, it would then seem, had a good pedigree.

We met at a writers group in the Poconos in Eastern Pennsylvania. I was a newby to the group, having recently moved to Lehigh Valley to escape the suffocating expansion taking place in Harrison, New Jersey. Townhouses and condos were metastasizing like malignant tumors. 

Pennington had been a regular with the group, which had been active more than 40 years, I was told. After attending awhile, I noticed that he had yet to share anything he'd written. When I privately commented on this after one of the  meetings, our host shrugged. "He's actually quite perceptive and when he brings something to share it's always good."

Pennington sat in the same chair every Thursday evening, third from the end, next to a window that looked out upon the parking lot and, beyond that, a stand of white pine. In winter the window became a black mirror. During the warmer months Pennington occasionally watched the birds.

He brought a notebook with him, one of those black-and-white composition books schoolchildren use, and kept it on his lap. I never saw him write in it.

For the first several meetings I assumed he was simply shy. Writers groups attract shy people for reasons that should be obvious. We spend months alone arranging words and then discover, to our horror, that someone expects us to read them aloud.

There were eleven of us then. Martha wrote murder mysteries. Tom was working on a Civil War novel he had been revising since the Clinton administration. Ellen wrote poems about her mother. Two others were writing memoirs, though neither appeared to have done anything yet worth remembering.

Pennington listened. Whenever someone finished reading he would nod. That was about it. Then one Thursday in October, Martha turned to him and said, "Carlton, you've been coming here longer than any of us. When are you going to read something?"

Pennington looked toward the window.

It had been raining most of the afternoon. Water wandered down the glass in crooked little rivers. "I can read something," he said.

Everyone became quiet. It was the longest sentence I'd heard him speak. He opened his composition book.

The first thing I noticed was that his hands were trembling. "The man had recently moved to the Lehigh Valley," he began.

I lifted my eyes. There was nothing remarkable in that. Half the people in the room lived somewhere in the Lehigh Valley, but it made me perk up anyways.

"He had come from Harrison, New Jersey."

It seemed a strange beginning and I stopped breathing for a moment.

Pennington continued. "He told people he had moved because he wanted more room. This was partly true. The town where he had lived was disappearing beneath townhouses and condominiums. They seemed to him less like homes than tumors."

Someone chuckled.

I didn't. That was the word I had indeed used, but not at the writers group. I had written it in an email to my brother two months earlier.

Pennington turned the page.

"The man sometimes talked to himself. He had done so since childhood, though in recent years he had begun pretending that he was merely thinking aloud."

Now everyone turned to glance at me.

"That's enough," I said.

Pennington stopped. His pale eyes rose from the notebook.

For the first time I noticed something I hadn't noticed before. They weren't expressionless. They were sad. "I haven't reached the interesting part," he said.

No one laughed.

I asked him where he had gotten what he had written.

Pennington seemed puzzled by the question. "Where does anyone get anything they write?"

"That's not what I mean."

"I know."

He closed the notebook.

The rain tapped softly against the window as Pennington leaned toward me and said something in that breathy, indistinct voice of his.

"What?" I said.

When he repeated it I still couldn't make it out.

He leaned closer. This time I heard him.

"I wouldn't go home by Route 309 tonight," he said.

I stared at him. "Why?"

Pennington slipped the composition book into his satchel.

"That's where the next page begins."

 

We're Going Wrong: New Twist on an Old Cream Classic

Sons of Cream, Newton Theater, August 16, 2024

Cream was one of the distinctive supergroups of the 60s. "We're Going Wrong" is a song that appeared on Disraeli Gears, their second album. From the time I first heard it I'd always interpreted it as a breakup song, about a person in a relationship that was going bad. The song's chorus is easily interpreted this way. "I found out today we're going wrong, we're going wrong."

* 

This past Friday evening my brother and I went to see Sons of Cream in Newton, New Jersey. It was an upbeat energetic concert featuring the sons of Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, along with a nephew of  Eric Clapton performing music from the Cream catalog, one of these being "We're Going Wrong."

The song is a departure from the more blues-rock driven sound that characterized much of Cream's work. The lyrics are sparse, and the instrumentation captures a sense of introspective despair that resonates on a deeper emotional level with those who engage it. Here are the lyrics, followed by the new insight I gained in Newton.

We're Going Wrong

Please open your eyes.
Try to realize.

I found out today we're going wrong,
We're going wrong.

Please open your mind.
See what you can find.

I found out today we're going wrong,
We're going wrong.

We're going wrong.
We're going wrong.
We're going wrong.

* * * 

Newton NJ, August 16

Let's start with the music.

Musically, the song is built around a slow, brooding rhythm that complements the somber tone of the lyrics with a minimalist arrangement. Ginger Baker's drumming has the vibe of a swirling tidewater undercurrent, shifting from subtle haunting rhythms to intense crescendos that rise and recede again, mirroring the atmospheric emotions. Juxtaposed against the restrained guitar and basswork, the music generates tension which is followed by release like a receding tide. At various moments Clapton's guitar embellishes the interplay of the three artists so as to produce a sense of melancholy and unease, a perfect accompaniment for the lyrics.

 

The Lyrics  

Until this weekend I'd always interpreted "We're Going Wrong" as a break-up song, one in which one person in the relationship has had a realization which he or she is attempting to convey to the other person, a disturbing recognition of an unsettling truth.  

But what if it's something different, something internal, a flash of understanding about oneself?

If we separate the verses from the chorus, you get this message: "Please open your eyes," and "Please open your mind."

Who is talking to whom? From this angle, it could easily be a self-talk script. When wedded to the music we feel a sense of urgency and desperation, as if the speaker is pleading with oneself to wake up to an unsettling truth. The repeated phrase "We're going wrong" suggests a recognition that something has happened, though the specifics are left ambiguous. It's a vagueness that allows the song to take on multiple interpretations.

The simplicity of the lyrics emphasizes the emotional weight of the message. The use of direct appeals—"Please open your eyes" and "Please open your mind"—suggests that there is denial taking place.  

Philosophically there's a sense in which we're witnessing--hearing, seeing, feeling--an existential crisis. It may be an impending individual crack-up, a crumbling relationship, or even a societal collapse. As we engage the song all these possibilities open up to us.

 

* * *

Additional Details*
Pete Brown was the lyricist for all the songs on Disraeli Gears except this one, which was penned by Jack Bruce. Bruce's falsetto vocals and crooning-like singing were accompanied with a slow bass line and Eric Clapton's bluesy/psychedelic guitar melody. Ginger Baker used Timpani drum mallets rather than standard drumsticks on this song (as does Kofi Baker in his Sons of Cream shows). The 6/8 time signature also gave the song a distinct and irregular sound. however Baker’s drumming is often frenetic and fast paced, making it completely at odds with the rest of the instruments.

Here is the song.

Here's an alternate version from the BBC:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSjQ8aUWCrc

* Wikipedia

Things People Don't Realize About Wind Energy and Why We Can't Shut Down Oil Production

Creative Commons. © Hans Hillewaert

When the Biden administration recently approved the proposed Atlantic Shores offshore wind farm in New Jersey, the Sierra Club rejoiced. While many who long for the elimination of fossil fuels are celebrating, it might be useful to learn more about the role oil plays with regard to the ever expanding wind turbine push.

Few people realize how much fossil fuels are required to get electricity from wind. When we look at wind turbines, those towering giants you see on wind farms, we're looking into the face of green energy. But here's the twist: while they capture wind, a totally free and eco-friendly resource, the turbines themselves are actually built and maintained using fossil fuels.

Until I read Vaclav Smil's Numbers Don't Lie, I had no idea of the degree to which fossil fuels are needed to manufacture a single wind tower, even though I was involved in the wind business to a certain extent. (AMSOIL makes gear lubes for these wind-driven power plants.)

Here's an excerpt from Smil's book.

 

Large trucks bring steel, and other raw materials to the site, earth-moving equipment beats the path to otherwise inaccessible high ground, large cranes erect the structures – and all these machines burn diesel fuel. So do the freight trains and cargo ships that convey the materials needed for the production of cement, steel, and plastics. For a 5 MW turbine, the steel alone averages 150 tons for the reinforced concrete foundations, 250 tons for the rotor hubs and nacelles (which house the gearbox and generator) and 500 tons for the towers.

If wind generated electricity were to supply 25% of global demand by 2030, then even with a high average capacity factor of 35% the aggregate installed wind power of about 2.5 terawatts would require roughly 450,000,000 tons of steel. And that’s without counting the metal for towers, wires, and transformers for the new high voltage transmission lines that would be needed to connect it all to the grid.

Making steel also takes a ton of energy, Smil writes. It starts with sintered or pelletized iron ore that gets smelted in blast furnaces filled with coke made from coal. They also add powdered coal and natural gas to the mix. The pig iron produced in these blast furnaces is then decarbonized in basic oxygen furnaces. After that, the steel goes through continuous casting, which shapes the molten steel into rough forms of the final product. For turbine construction, the steel used typically contains about 35 gigajoules of energy per ton.

 

To make the steel required for the wind turbines we want by 2030, Smil writes, you need fossil fuels equivalent to more than 600 million tons of coal. 

This is before we consider the 60-meter long airfoils, each of which weighs 15 tons. Making these giant blades also requires hydrocarbons--liquefied petroleum, gas or natural gas.

That's not all. Smil adds still more including the cost of fiber-reinforced composite material, water-proofing with resins, rotors and the gearbox itself. Then you have the lubricants for those gearboxes, which must be changed from time to time like the oil change on your typical car or truck, albeit not as often but on a very large scale.

Undoubtedly, and lastly, Smil suggests that a new wind turbine will generate as much energy as it took to produce it, but it will be in the form of intermittent energy production. (i.e. the turbines turn only when the wind blows.)

Generating electricity – installation, production and maintenance -- remain critically dependent on specific fossil energies. Moreover, most of these energies -- coke for iron ore smelting; coal and petroleum coke to fuel cement kilns; naphtha and natural gas as feedstock and fuel for synthesis of plastics and the making of fiberglass; diesel fuel for ships, trucks, and construction machinery; lubricant for gearboxes – we have no non-fossil substitutes readily available on the requisite large commercial scale.

Smil sums up his chapter thus: For a long time to come – until all energy that is used to produce wind turbines and photovoltaic cells comes from renewable energy sources – modern civilization will be fundamentally dependent on fossil fuels.

* * *

See: Made in the USA: The Rise and Retreat of American Manufacturing Is A Humbling Warning

The Collision of Cultures during the Times of Rob Roy MacGregor

Statue of Rob Roy 

It wasn’t until I moved to Minnesota that I came to understand my ancestral history as a descendant of Rob Roy MacGregor, the legendary hero/outlaw--a hero to the people, but a thorn in the side of the corrupt British overlords.

Growing up in Central New Jersey, I saw little evidence of the native peoples who originally populated that land. The Raritan River rolled through our area, but I never grasped that the Raritan took its name from the Native American tribe that once occupied this region 300 years earlier.

In coming to Minnesota in the 1970s, the past was quite near at hand. The Battle of the Little Big Horn, that ended Custer’s ambitious and wreckless life, took place only 100 years earlier. Reservations and Native peoples are still all around us here, with tribal communities that continue to carry on many of the practices of their forebears. 

What I eventually came to understand was that the Scottish clan system was very similar to the tribes that lived on the land and organized their lives in a manner utterly different, with lawyers and title deeds to property and all the associated red tape. Scotland in earlier times was much like the West before the intrusion of “civilization.” 

 

During the era of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and the Ghost Dancers there was a collision of cultures, with much misunderstanding and many unfortunate outcomes. I learned these things here in Minnesota, and recognized that this is what had happened in Scotland during the time of the Highland MacGregors. For nearly a century it was legal to shoot a MacGregor on sight.

In 1827 Sir Walter Scott wrote a novel titled Rob Roy, which showcased the stark contrasts between English urban society and the rugged Highland landscape. This contrast served as a central theme that highlighted the cultural, social, and value differences between these two worlds. These differences played a significant role in shaping the characters' perspectives, motivations, and decisions throughout the novel.

Engraving of Rob Roy

Last night I decided to go back in time and ask Rob Roy himself about the difference between English urban society and life amongst the Highland clans. Here was Rob Roy's reply.

"Ah'll tell ye, th' rugged Highland landscape is a stark shift awa' frae th' English urban scene. Th' Highlands are wild, untamed, an' marked wi' th' independent clan system. Th' Highland clans hae their ain complex social structures, an' loyalty tae yin's clan chief is o' utmost importance. We Highlanders cherish notions like honor, loyalty, an' rugged individualism. Oor way o' life is closely bound tae th' land, an' oor traditions are deeply rooted in a strong link tae oor environment."

"On th' ither haun, English urban society is bound tae commercial an' financial pursuits, social hierarchy, an' a mair centralized form o' governance. Th' English value stability, convention, an' a sense o' propriety. It's aw aboot a sense o' order, decorum, an' adherin' tae social norms." 

"As ye can ken, me heart bides in th' Highlands." 

Remembering Tom Browne: A Motorhead Anecdote

Over the past half century suburban living has gotten a bad rap. For me personally, growing up in a suburban development in the 1960s was a very good experience. The 54-home development we lived in during my teen years offered three styles of houses: ranch, split-level and bi-level, all with either three or four bedrooms. Home buyers had four options for colors, and three or four options for color of roof shingles. All lots were three-quarters of an acre, half lawn, half woods. That, however, was not what made it memorable.

The only feature of the new neighborhood that really mattered to me was that nearly every home had kids. Newlyweds don't buy large first houses like that. They were all three and four bedroom homes. So it was easy to find kids to play with, to organize football, baseball or basketball games after school or through the summer. Since every family there had come from somewhere else -- my brothers and I had been transplanted from Ohio -- anyone wanting to make new friends had a wealth of opportunities to encounter similar situations. 

The Brownes, who lived in a ranch on the upper side of us, were transplanted to Bridgewater (New Jersey) from the Oranges, I believe. East Orange in Essex County was the 20th most tightly packed city in New Jersey, a state with a lot of tightly packed communities. Bridgewater gave families some breathing room. 

Tom was the oldest of three kids, a year younger than I. He had a much younger sister, Donna, with curly red hair and freckles who was a cutie. I used to sing to their mom, "Mrs. Browne you've got a lovely daughter." There was also a young son named Bobby.

I turned 12 the year we moved to Jersey, and Tom (his parents called him Tommy) was 11. My brother Ron was a year younger than Tom so that when we wanted to do something we at least had a starting core. This played out in a lot of ways in which I had ideas that would evolve into bigger things. I'll share examples another time. Summers we played endless hours of billiards, ping pong, slot car racing, Monopoly and other time-filling activities. 

My brother Ron (right) and I with Tom at his home
a little south of Easton.

Mr. Browne had two lawn mowers, one of them a push mower and the other a ride-around. When Tom was 13 or 14, he completely disassembled and re-assembled that push mower. The following year, he decided to tackle the ride-around mower. (I will assume he had permission from his dad.)

These experiences served to strengthen his confidence so that one year before he got his driver's license he bought a dark blue 2-door sports car, an MGB, and proceeded to completely dismantle. He took apart everything you can take apart on a car, and spent the year re-assembling it so that on his 17th birthday, when he got his license he had his car as well. 

Considering that these were the days before YouTube, which makes all manner of knowledge accessible, it was an impressive achievement.

Tom wasn't motivated by school, nor sports and the other distractions of pop culture. He seemed comfortable in his own skin, riding his bicycle on long excursions for hours on end, thinking his own thoughts and transitioning to what he would later become, a biker and independent thinker. He was always responsible, not afraid of work--or probably anything else--and though our lives took different paths, we remained friends, always happy to see one another when I went east to visit my family.

The photos here of Tom were taken in 2016. He would be gone within the year.

Mrs. Browne's lovely little daughter is all growed up now. Donna: this one's for you. More stories still to come.

Emptiness, a poem by Charlene Groves

"Emptiness." Illustration by the author.

I met Charlene Groves at a coffeehouse sometime in late 1974, a blind writer and poet from Martinsville, New Jersey. Though I had written some stories in college--which to this day I regret having lost--I had not yet determined to pursue a career as a writer.

Charlene was roughly 30 at that time. In addition to fixing music boxes, she was a prolific writer, having produced numerous short stories and countless poems. She also had a couple novel manuscripts under her belt, in the sci-fi genre.

The first story I'd read of hers was called A New Toy. It was a heartbreaking story about an alien who had come to earth and was put in a cage by scientists to be studied, treated like an object and not a person. (EdNote: In re-reading today, the story brings to mind the story of Ota Benga, a pygmy from the African bush country who was caged in the primates wing of the Bronx Zoo early in the last century.)

In 2013 I here shared her poem The Hermit, which I later read at a poetry reading the following Spring. What I like about her writing is the authenticity of her imagery, and the manner in which her words weld themselves to deep places in our hearts.

Today Charlene lives in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Emptiness

Emptiness is rain beating a tin can.
It's having words leap forth with quick and ready flame,
While the important things go unsaid.
It's standing on a street corner somewhere,
Waiting for someone who never comes.
Emptiness is not found in being alone.
It's being lonely.
It's your thoughts growing old with rejection.
It's people not understanding when you need them most.
It's hate and indifference.
It's always being just a little short of your goal.
But mostly it's people passing each other,
Not even trying any more to be together.

* * * *

Charlene Groves isn't the first blind poet who has been influential in my life. My grandmother's great uncle was John S. Hall, the Blind Poet of Ritchie County. Her Uncle John lost his eyesight during the Civil War where he'd run away to be a teamster in Sherman's army. Five months in a Nashville hospital left him blind for life. After attending the Ohio School for the Blind he became a lawyer for a bit before founding publisher/editor of two West Virginia newspapers. His influence on my grandmother during her formative years resulted in her becoming a poet, and influencing myself in poetic appreciation.

You can read my imaginary interview with John Hall here on Medium.

The Chicago Race Riots of July 1919

One of the best ways to find good books cheap is at spring garage sales near college. Graduating students are oft in a hurry to discard some of the belongings they accumulated. If you're lucky, and it happens, you'll find some real gems for pennies on the dollar.

Last night I started re-reading a short volume called The Chicago Race Riots, July 1919 by Carl Sandburg. It was one of a dozen books I picked up for a dime each from a Hamline grad when we were living in the Midway in St. Paul.

If the Sandburg name sounds familiar, it may be because of the two Pulitzer Prizes he won as a poet. Or it may be because of the Pulitzer he won for his renowned biography of Lincoln. I had not realized at the time I picked up this volume that he was initially a journalist. This printing includes a preface by Ralph McGill and an intro by the legendary Walter Lippmann.

I fetched the book off my shelf after reading a section of Don't Know Much About History pertaining to the post-WWI South. It's painfully depressing to read about the raw treatment blacks have received at the hands of whites.

* * * *

In the Deep South cotton was king, until the boll weevil came along. Few of us today realize how devastating the boll weevil infestation was. If you're like me, you may have thought boll weevils were a problem cotton growers had always had to contend with.

The weevil had been a plaque in South America but over time came north through Latin America and Mexico to become a major problem after the First World War. The way this critter works is that it lays its egg in a cotton boll. The newly hatched baby weevil then chews up the inside a bit and thereby kills the boll. Farms that produced thousands of bales of cotton were soon producing hundreds of bales. While the Roaring Twenties roared up North, the Southern economy was in a tailspin.

This, combined with Jim Crow laws, now set in stone, led to an exodus of workers seeking employment in Northern Rust Belt cities.

This led to another problem. Racism in the North wore a different face. If you were black, you couldn't live just anywhere you wanted. The Chicago black population had been 50,000 at the beginning of the century, but with this influx of families thru the decade there were 125,000 blacks in the Windy City by 1919. (It took more than four decades to place laws on the books that would permit a black family to choose where they could live.*) The lack of housing, Chicago politics and post-war psychology all contributed to the events that happened in July 1919.

There were also riots in other cities. (Photo: East St. Louis)

For blacks who stayed in the South at this time, prospects weren't exactly comforting. Ralph McGill, in his preface to this book, cites three incidents. In Blakely, Georgia, April 5, 1919, A Private William Little returned to his hometown after the war via train. He was "met by a band of whites who ordered him to remove his uniform and walk home in his underwear." When he continued to wear his uniform (because he had no other clothes), he was found dead, "his body badly beaten, on the outskirts of town. He was wearing his uniform."

A few weeks later, in Shreveport, Louisiana, a train was held up by an armed mob in order to lynch a black man who had written a note to a white woman. Only after he was shot did anyone seek to find out whether he could read or write. He could not.

Another example from two weeks after that was cited in McGill's preface but it was so horrible I'm not even going to share it. The account begins, "Lloyd Clay, Negro laborer, was roasted to death last night." A mob of 800 to a thousand men and women removed him from a jail...

McGill's preface was to the re-issued 1969 publication of Sandberg's account, 50 years after its original publication. He laments that race relations, in spite of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, were not wholly better. This (1969) was only a year after the  assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the race riots that shook more than 100 cities.

* * * *

The event that triggered the Chicago race riot of July 1919
A black youth accidentally floated on a raft across an invisible line at a segregated public beach shared by whites and blacks. The boy was stoned for his mistake by whites, knocked off the raft and drowned. Blacks rushed to get help from a policeman to address what had happened. The policeman refused to do anything. Fighting broke out  that spread throughout the overcrowded black neighborhoods which Sandburg called the Black Belt. After three days 20 blacks were dead and 14 whites, plus hundreds of injured.  (The Encyclopedia of Chicago states 23 African Americans and 15 whites.)

* * * *

Sandburg's book is more about the conditions that set off the riot so that it went viral through the black community. This is why the book discusses lynchings in the south. Chicago was a receiving station connected to every southern region. After every lynching somewhere in the south, Secretary Arnold Hill of the Urban League said, about two weeks later there would be more "colored people from that community" arriving. "You can depend on it."

It was this feature of Sandburg's story struck especially close to home when I read it. In my New Jersey hometown of Bridgewater we had a small section that was known as Hobbstown which consisted of two parallel streets about four blocks long. Bridgewater was a mid-to-upscale developing suburb when our family moved there in 1964. As I understood it Hobbstown started somewhere around 1920 or so.

As it turns out, this spring I discover a book about the community called Hobbstown: A Forgotten Legacy of a Unique African-American Community. As it turns out, Sandburg's description of how more blacks came north each time there was a lynching down south is precisely what triggered the birth of Hobbstown. The Hobbs brothers lived in Georgia (if I recall correctly) and worked as sharecroppers. One of the brothers was a reverend. At year's end their pay, minus expenses, came to nothing. After a lynching, and this ridiculous financial arrangement, one of the Hobbs brothers decided to go north to New York.

The New York situation was as overcrowded as Chicago, but as luck should have it, a woman showed up who said there was land in New Jersey. Hobbs sprang for it. He and his brothers were soon building a future in Bridgewater.

* * * *

It's been a hundred years since the Chicago race riots of 1919 and the book it spawned. Next summer Duluth will be having a remembrance event of its own with regard to the lynching which took place here in 2020. Much has changed over the past century, yet much has not. There is still a lot of pain and anger, frustration and fear.

The promise of social media was that it would bring us all together, but it seems to have done more to drive us apart. It was a false hope.

What is needed is imagination and love, and a willingness to step outside our comfort zones. And a decision to become our better selves.

Related Links
Tamara Tabel, Historical Novelist, on the Race Riots of 1919
The Lynchings in Duluth by Michael Fedo


*Even with the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, racist attitudes made it difficult for black families to buy homes in many areas of the country. When I was in college at Ohio U (1970-74) a black family bought a home in the county adjacent to Athens County. They were the first black family in the county, and their welcoming went something like this. Windows broken with rocks. More windows broken and vandalism. I do not know the end of the matter, only that to hear of it was pretty darn sad.