Hello, my name is John Brownlee and I come from Hamilton. Just not you’re Hamilton. I am from Scotland, the old country. Some of you may have met me or heard me talking in Wal-Mart or one of your Taco Bell shops. Opening for Taco Bell in Scotland by the way. None there and I for one would be there.
I have to say we do have some good food. Empire may be long gone in the old colonial terms but there are many people in Scotland from India, Pakistan Turkey Greece and China. So we have a good selection of food from elsewhere. An Indian curry is almost better described as a Scottish curry nowadays. Anyone who has been to Scotland will know what I mean. Hot and spicy is what they are known for but of course they do the creamy ones as well. Now oddly you guys do not seem to have that type of food. No fish and chips either. Nothing like a pizza deep fried in chip fat or a Mars Bar for that matter. Scotland has one of the highest rates of heart disease in the world by the way. If you can avoid the deep fried pizza you are probably wise.
Having covered food, where you probably come of fairly well, I have to turn to your roads. I keep telling people. It is all Napoleon’s fault. We all drove on the same side before he decided to stamp his mark. Every country he took over. Ok well you drive on the right now ok!! So that left us and Norway and Sweden. Well they weakened but we still have the stiff upper lip. Of course most countries are still with us. Japan of course and a whole bunch of Far East places.
I have to say though, your roads are better than hours. But we do not have these dirt roads up country. It may not be continuous from one side to the other but all our roads are at least supposed to be made up and tarmac on top. It is just that some of them have a kind of lived in quality. Full of pot holes. If you ever come here and head north you will find that other quaint detail of our road system. Single track with passing places. I mean 12 foot with the odd 50 foot stretch at 20 feet wide. Meet a caravan on one of these and see if he knows what a passing place is supposed to be used for. Just sit back and appreciate the scenery.
Well I am going to pass this to Wayne to see if it is any good. So if you read this blame him.
Oh and of course the reason I am in Hamilton is to sell Scottish stuff. Visit the Buzz Coffee shop opposite Hamilton Courthouse and ask if you’re interested in Scottish arts and crafts. Sue has a small selection of what I have available through my American distributor.
I have a house in a place called Strathaven. It is 7 miles south of Hamilton in
Scotland . I have a few photos of it that I am sure 49 can put up here.
I moved there in 1992 when I bought a small newsagent shop that was part of the
house. The guy who had it before us had gone bust and we basically paid his debt
to get the house. The shop had been closed for six months by the time we
reopened it. 10th of January 1992. I remember we did a bit of renovation and had
a shop fitting firm do the shelving. Something I could recommend. I never had to
worry about those shelves and sold them last year almost as good as new. I had
been painting and adding the interminable finishing touches on the Sunday night
before we opened. I had time off my job with BT, the telephone company, on the
Monday we were to open. About midnight I realized there was no grill or anything
on the shop window. Well I was going for the papers at the wholesalers at 4 a.m.
so I just kept on at it till I had to go for them.
It was only a 10 mile drive from the shop to the wholesale place. I had the trip
down to an hour all in. picking up and counting and setting them out. Then I
went to work an hour away in Edinburgh . The wholesale warehouse was a hive of
industry at 430 in the morning. Trucks were bringing supplies of today’s paper
from the printers. Mostly Glasgow and Edinburgh but some were from Manchester a
couple of hundred miles away. This is a long way to us. There were around a
dozen titles when I had my shop. First there were the tabloids; The Daily Record
was the most popular. The Sun and the slower titles, Express and The Mail were
next. In those days we had the broadsheets, big papers at the other end of our
plinth. We had The Glasgow Herald and the Scotsman and a couple of Times in the
middle the Star and The Daily Sport. It amounted to around 300 individual
newspapers from our small shop alone. I had an arrangement with the big place in
the middle of Strathaven later on, we had 3 paper boys and he had 13. I carried
his bales of papers long enough to know he had about 6 times our volume. There
were a couple of small shops like mine in Strathaven at that time. I reckon for
our village of 3500 we must have been selling at least 3000 papers every day. As
you can see some of the titles were local papers and some national. Saturday and
Sunday were a nightmare. I think it is the same here. Supplements ruled.
My real job was BT. I was a telephone engineer. My first year I worked outside
with some experienced older guys. I am sure a lot of you have been there. They
sat in the morning and had their cup of tea and a chat for the first 40 minutes.
Then they got the relevant stores and we headed off for the site we were to work
at. They called us the “two man party”. We usually worked as 4 though. They did
not say too much these guys. They were almost 60 and had heard each others
stories many times before. Myself and Allan the other youth sat and waited for
their words of wisdom. John Martin and Willie Sommerville. They had worked
together a long time. John did tell us about the time Willie quite recently had
been sawing a tree branch that was rubbing some of our wires. Willie looked kind
of uncomfortable but was laughing. He had sat at the outer end of the branch.
Oops!! Bump.
They were nice blokes. We would arrive at the job and they would issue a couple
of simple instructions. The four of us usually took about an hour or two on
site. I would have been there all day. Experience quietly understated. Apart
from tree branches.
We climbed poles all the time. Aluminium (aluminum to you) ladders and shoogley
poles. I never froze but I had white knuckles a lot to start with. We removed
the arms from old pole routes as one of our duties. We had some to remove in
Wishaw one day. There was a cross in the centre of Wishaw. It had 4 storey
tenements all around. These poles had to be high enough to take the wires over
the roves of these buildings when they were first put up. These things were
oval. About 4 feet by 2 and reached the clouds. All four of us were up the pole
at the same time. It was a straight forward job. Loosen the bolts holding the
arms at the top of the pole and lower them to the ground. Well it was a glorious
view, I can tell you that. Beautiful day and dry with little breeze. One to
remember though. Then I moved and started working in the exchanges.
Hi Judy and TK and Johnny,
http://www.seat61.com/
It is a European Rail and Ferry website that someone over her has put together.
It would be very useful for Travelers to the old country. I came across this
recently and thought you could add it to your
http://www.49countynews.net website under my name. It does seem to be fairly
easy to use.
Johnny Spann (Spann real estate Winfield ) and TK I added you cos I thought you
might be in the position to use it yourself or pass it on to friends and
colleagues. I am hoping to be back in around a month, still uncertain. Hoping to
visit your cafe opposite the locomotive in Amory TK. Sorry I missed it last
trip.
John Brownlee
P.S. I hope you do not mind me putting you all together in the one email.
Cozy Cushions Move
By John Brownlee
Some of you may have
noticed that the furniture shop, in 1st St NW opposite the flowers shop,
is no longer there. I had purchased a couple of items from them and
wondered what had happened. I found a notice telling me that they are
now 12.2 miles straight out Bexar. So I drove West out towards Tupelo
across the Interstate and through Bexar very nearly to the county line.
(Apparently 300 feet further on) I found the factory unit where Cleat
and his family now make the cushions that are such a big success for
them.
Cleat told me that he is hoping to double the size of the premises
there and also to use his nearby house to display the cushions and
keenly priced furniture that had been in the Hamilton store.
As well as telling me of these plans Cleat also told me that they
have a need for workers to fill orders on an intermittent basis. The
nature of the business means that there are peaks and troughs in the
business.
You can see the products at
www.cozycushions.com
Locals may remember the brick building in front of the factory. It
apparently had been a roadhouse in the past and also had other less
salubrious uses.
John Brownlee sometime visitor to Hamilton.
Hi Judy,
2 weeks till I come back again. I am flying over on the 3rd September
for 11 weeks. Hope we manage to meet up for a few blethers during that
time. How are things anyway.
Kelly and I just spent a week in Orkney at my friends house. She had
never been before so it was all new to her. She has had a full and
exciting summer. I am hoping she settles down ok now.
John
P.S. I have asked her to send you a story.
Hi Judy,
Thinking about stories to send you now.
Orkney here was nice and the west coast was just spectacular. The ferry
back from Stromness (Orkney) arrives at a place called Scrabster just
next to Thurso. The sign there says 150 miles to Ullapool. It took us
from 830 till 2pm to get to Ullapool and we were doing roadspeed with a
couple or so photostops that maybe added to an hour. Half of the road is
single track with passing places. I was quite impressed though a few
people let us pass them as they saw they were moving slower. The scenery
up there is quite spectacular with glaciated features in the top left
(NW) corner particularly. Every corner revealed another cragy mountain
or a vista along a sea loch. The weather the day we came back was not so
good. I think the rain and wind added to the awe. How anyone could have
lived up there is beyond me.
We passed a place called Bettyhill on the Northern coast. It was just
mentioned on a program called COAST here. A young historian described
how the valley that leads up to Bettyhill had once supported 50
communities totaling 3000 people but between 1814 and 1821 they were all
put out of there homes of 500 years to make way for the sheep. The land
owners had calculated the sheep should make them more money and also
that the locals had too easy a life only making enough food to feed
themselves, not working harder to produce a surplus. They were partly
encouraged to make a life beside the sea and maybe become fishermen.
They were only allowed plots of 2 acres, that was too small to support a
family. The point was to make them increase their earnings by doing more
work. A lot of them left Scotland forever. Over 400,000 left in those
times. The sheep that replaced them however could not compete with cheap
imports from Australia and New Zealand where a lot of the displaced had
ended up.
John Brownlee sometime visitor to Hamilton.
John and Kelly’s trip to USA 2007
Arriva…..l
Well it was an
inauspicious start. One leg of our flight here was completely missing.
We arrived from Paris into Atlanta and after clearing customs and
immigration we ascended the stairs to seek our connection to Tupelo .
Well there was nothing to see. You know how you approach one of these
service desks and they always know what the problem is. Even though they
tell you something you may not want to hear they say it with a practiced
air of one who knows. It makes it seem ok somehow. Well that part was
missing. The general assistance desk said. “No Sir, there just is not
anything on the system about a flight to Tupelo this evening” i.e. it
does not say cancelled moved or otherwise hidden. Just, NOT THERE. “The
Delta desk, sir, they should know”. Out of the corner of my eye I had
been viewing that desk. There was a set of poles and straps forming one
of those serpentine queues. It was full. The desk was staffed. I could
see her. It took us an hour. I kept sending Kelly over to view the
monitors. I was still hoping the flight would suddenly appear. An hour
later and we were first in line. It was exactly flight time according to
my e-ticket paperwork.
Now this lady will know. Nope, same puzzled look. Then, “Ah!, you booked
through Air France Sir.” There desk is over there she said. We walked to
the Air France desk.
It was about to close for the evening but another Air France person at a
boarding gate we passed phoned over and said she would wait for us. We
got to the desk. Again no sign of the flight but she did issue us
tickets for the Sunday flight. “Back over to the Delta Desk for a hotel
sir. It is their flight that was cancelled”
Kelly turned and said. “I am getting a bit upset now Dad”. Pretty good, I
thought, considering we had been wandering Atlanta for 4 hours by then.
Delta gave us a voucher for the hotel.
We walked to the bus and the heavens opened. Soaked!
“I wonder how far we are from the airport Kelly?”
For those of you who
know Atlanta airport we were in the building that is tiered back and
faces onto the runways. Renaissance Concourse Hotel. So not far was the
answer to my question. We flew to Tupelo and got 3 of our 4 suitcases.
AAAAARGH!
We were supposed to be driving to Michigan on Sunday early. We set off
from Tupelo Airport on Monday about 3 pm with the case that had been late.
The one that had Kelly’s clothes in it….. I have done this before. Kelly
had a change of clothes in her carry on luggage. Something black I
think.
Michigan
We had a nice black roof box. It can hold 2 full size suitcases and a
large duffle bag. Two we needed and the one Kelly’s back pack was in.
The rest of the case was full of my stuff that could easily have stayed
in Alabama but it all got a trip to Michigan anyway. Still better late
than sent to Scottsboro. (Where all of the really lost luggage ends up
from all over the world.)
The journey was pretty nice but took a day extra. Two days of airport
lounge take it out of you. I had to stop to rest my eyes a few times and
we ended up having an unplanned overnight. We had three Chihuahuas with
us. Our two adults and Julie had just got us a new puppy. They are all
good travelers and sat in various laps along the way. This turned out to
be a good method of lowering the testosterone level of three young kids
in a van for two days. 8, 10 and 14. Oh and Julie. Hmmm, I guess that
was why I was so grouchy, being the poor driver unable to get quality
puppy time.
It is around 800 miles from Hamilton to Julie’s Dad’s place in Michigan
. You travel through 5 states, Alabama , Tennessee , Kentucky , Indiana
and Michigan . We just go straight up I 65 and then 31. It is a pretty
direct road with lots of cornfields. I would love to travel some other
route where there are mountains and valleys like in Scotland .
Yes I know you have places like that. Just not where I have driven. The
nice thing about our geography is we get the whole gamut of scenic types
within a hundred miles or so.
I took some photos when I was away. I include them but they do not do
justice to what we saw.
1 Kelly on the cliff top of Pamona, Mainland Orkney
2 Skara Brae, plaque on the Common building. it had tools and stuff.
3 The sideboard, all the houses had one
4 a bed, again each house had a couple
5 this was a pub. Orkney was the last fresh water available for those
sailing for Canada and Hudsons bay
6 Pictures of Ardvreck Castle and the House that replaced it
7 The owner supported bonnie Prince Charlie and this effectively ruined
him
8 The house was being robbed for stones by 1745
9 and the last one.
John Brownlee
Athelstaneford (locals say this as elshanford)
In 832 AD the combined forces of the Scots and Picts led by King Angus
of Dalriada fought and defeated the Angles from Northumbria under king
Athelstan.
See various sites that shed more, or perhaps less, light on the
subject by searching on "Athelstaneford"
ATHELSTANEFORD IS IMPORTANT NATIONALLY: Important for all
Scotsmen the world over. For near this place in 832AD Pictish and
Scottish Warriors about to fight a much larger army of Northumbrians,
saw against a blue sky a great white Cross like Saint Andrew's, and in
its image made a banner which became the Flag of Scotland. Thus the
Scottish Flag had its origin in 832.
St Andrew had appeared as a vision to their leader the previous
evening. St Andrew had been crucified on a diagonal cross.
John
Story by John Brownlee - HE'S BACK! With a story about a Pearl Harbor Survivor...
When I arrived
back into Tupelo on 3rd September this year (2007) I was accompanied on
the plane by a Pearl Harbor survivor. He is an elderly gentleman of 95
now and was in a wheelchair through the airport although able to
negotiate the aisle on the aircraft. The stewardess, Deedee, was good
enough to announce his presence to us all.
He was met at the airport by a young man (about my age, 50ish, sorry I
did not get his name) who said Clarence had adopted him. I gather from
my fairly short conversation that we had a nice chap who had done his
duty for his country during the war but also after it, the stewardess
said he served for 40 years. Judy who picked me up at the airport was
given permission to take a photograph of Mr. Sasse before he headed off.
Clarence Sasse Chief petty officer at the time of the Pearl Harbor
attack and I believe he described his duty then as " leading turret
captain" he was on board USS Phelps DD360. See citation below:
http://www.news.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=21325