Back in Charlottesville

One of my favorite places, Monticello, Jefferson's home outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. The guy was a genius, but was a fairly poor businessman. When he died, he left tons of debt. They had to sell everything, including the home. Beautiful but sad story of one man's obsession with the quest for beauty.


One of the great things he did was oversee the building of University of Virginia. This is the backyard of one of the dorms. Pretty nice place.


Of course, every green campus lawn requires a few good dogs. One is a black lab, the other, the combo platter, I think she told us.


The Rotunda, which sounds like a great name for a group of really phat hip-hop artists, used to be the library when I was a grad student back in the '70s, is now a museum. This is a great looking desk, but we couldn't fit it in the trunk of the Benz, and had to leave it there.


Another shot of the Rotunda. Not sure the what "Z" thing is all about. Probably the boys from "Eata Buncha Fritas" painted it. Hard to say.


Another view from Monticello, looking across the valley. Gotta love it.

Heading Back South

Well, not everyone in the family tree actually made it to the Pearson Fest this year. My Dad, Robert Whiton Pearson, didn't make it, nor did the more distant relatives here in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum make it, either.

Maybe next year, let's all hope. Always nice to talk to your relatives before they're dead. Makes the conversation a lot less stiff, so to speak.


This is the Pearson Diamond, also at the Natural History Museum. Nice rock, eh? You might have to double click the image to read the title down below on the right side of the picture. I tried to tell them at the museum it was mine, I showed ID and everything. But, for now, the Smithsonian still has their grubby, greedy little hands wrapped around it.


And, speaking of grubby, greedy little hands, here's the where the guys who spend your tax dollars hang out, when they come to work at all, that is.


Nice kitty. Snow leopard, I think. Can't keep it off the dern furniture, as you can see.


Some wild, wacky art structure near the Art Museum. Kind of a cool, structure. All held up by tension and gravity.


This is the Kudzu Memorial, at National Airport, that John was kind enough to show Bob and I. Cool place.


And, of course, John and Bob, looking at the Big Picture of National. I really like this shot.

The Gathering of the Tribes

On the day of the big gathering, a got a call from Jewel. She and her husband Gary, along with Rob and Pat, went off to the Hingham Bay Club, which we had reserved ahead of time, to make sure they could find the place. Well, a tiny detail arose -- that being, the place was shut, as the sign posted on the door said, "As of Oct 30, Until Further Notice".

Yikes!

About 32 people were headed to this place in all of 45 minutes, the place I pulled out of a hat (okay, yanked off the web), and asked everyone I knew in the entire clan to meet at was shut down.

"How about we, uhm, ah, yeah,... we could meet at the Clarion and do brunch there. I think they're open till two o'clock."

And so, as Dicky Pearson was later to describe it, the family gathering started out as a restaurant treasure hunt. Jewel put a sign on the door directing folks to the Clarion, and I ran down to the front desk to find out if they could accommodate us. Note, this was after I suggested to Jewel that we send people there.

I got down stairs, told the guy at the desk the situation, and the manager said, "Yes, I can set you up a table area in about five minutes."

And then, they came!!!

Day Five - The Final Push Into Yankee Land

We left New Jersey kind of late, had a good time roaming around the old stomping grounds and shore, and then headed North to New York City. Used to be a disgusting place, or so it seemed, with a very high crime rate. Well, the city is cleaned up, as they say. Now, well, I love going there. Though, the traffic still is way over the top. We actually drove in at one in the morning initially, when there was little, but still some, trafffic, and drove around Manhattan a little bit.

We stopped at a place to eat right next to Central Park on 73rd Ave. We pretty much were the only customers. Bob's description as an Armenian Mafia headquarters may be pretty close, though I'm not sure they're Armenian. The food was great, and nobody was shot while we were there, so I have no complaints.


Whachya gonna do, eh?

Hopped back in the Benzo, pointed it at Hingham, Mass, and let it take us there. We got up to the hotel at about 11:30 at night. The funniest thing was that we were a little bit lost, called Jewel, so we could get Kath's number. (Kathy and hers were also staying at the Clarion in Hull.) We called Kath, who told us they were lost too, looking for the same hotel. Turned out we found it okay, with a combination of Bob's quick thinking (he called the hotel and asked for directions) and my cool, calm negotiating skills (I stopped at a liquor store to ask for directions) we discovered we were actually on the right road heading in the right direction all of two miles away.

Who knew?

Day Four - New Jersey

This is the house we lived at from 1985 to 1989, at 146 Brookside Drive in Belford, New Jersey, the place we lived when Bob was born. Funny, don't remember the second story or the two car garage. Obviously, the owners have fixed it up since we lived there.




Belford is close to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, which is right across the Bay from New York. Those buidlings on the horizon are in Manhattan.

Day Three - Uniontown

We got to Uniontown, PA, on the third day. Again, more beautiful countryside on the way North. And, we stopped in to visit Bob's Mom's Mom, Dody Smiley. One of the nicest people I've met. She lives in an apartment now, but she still lives on Union Street. She seems to be doing well.


Went out to dinner at a place called Eatn'Park. Dody seemed to know about 80% of the folks that worked and ate there. It was great.

Day Three

Our third day on the trip from Austin, Texas to Hingham, Mass. was a trip through the leaves and trees of the Fall countryside of Missouri, Ill., Indiana and Kentucky. It was a beautiful day, that's for sure. Texas is a beautiful place, too. But, it doesn't take long for a traveler to realize that the rolling green hilly farmland of the East is something special.

The trip is a long one. One of the ways we keep ourselves from listening to the same set of rock and roll tunes on the radio (yes, different stations across the country pretty much play the same thing) is to listen to a books on tape version of "The Bourne Legacy". It's an action packed adventure, filled with intrigue and shoot-outs about one every three minutes. Not exactly a great expose of the everyday world of Intelligence. But, probably a good way to get one's book turned into a movie script, again.

The story is interesting enough, but for a change of pace, I grabbed Bob's book, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance" and read it aloud for a chapter or two. In his book, the author describes a journey through the Northwest he and his son took on a motorcycle he rebuilt. Also, he talks about the split between technophobes and technophiles. Having seen this in academia, spening five years in Liberal Arts studying sociology and another twelve years or so in Engineering, I can definitely see the split between those who embrace and those who abhor technology. The two different colleges, Liberal Arts and Engineering, at each of the schools I studied at, pretty much looked upon each other as some kind of weird, alien life form.

We can to Lexington, Kentucky around the dinner hour, and started looking around the University of Kentucky and it's surrounding area for a place to munch. Actually, we got off the road looking for Transylvania University, seeing a sign for said school (yes, the department of Goths and Vampires is what we envisioned). We never did get to find Dean Dracula, but did find a nice pub on the outskirts of the University of Kentucky. The place actually had heffewessin, which is a beer made by leaving the vats open to the air inside a sort of barn like brewery, and opening up the doors and windows somewhere along the process, allowing the "secret sauce" to remain secret, since no one really knows what kind of stuff floats into the brew. Best beer in the world, I guarantee.

Gave Bob a quick run down of how the Pearsons, and our ilk, were deeply involved in the building of the early Unitarian church in America, the Old Ship Church of Hingham, Mass being one of the early meeting houses of American Unitarians. I told him how Ebenezer Gay brought the idea of the Liberal Church to the fore, how Harvard was founded as an Unitarian Divinity School, and how Liberal back then meant free thought, not just always agreeing with the head of the Democratic Party.

In fact, the partisanship of today is the antithesis of Liberal thought. More like Socialist Democratic Centralism, in which the leaders of the Democratic Party state their agenda, and the rest of the party members are supposed to fall in line.

I explained that it would be as if you were the driver of a bus, and if you were a Democrat, you always turned Left, no matter what. Compared to if you were a Republican, you always turned Right, no matter what.

A real Liberal, or free thinker, is supposed to know that the only way to get anywhere is to take left turns when it is appropriate, right turns when that makes sense, and for a good bit of the time, keep the wheel pretty much in the middle.

Day Two

We spent a little more time around Stillwater today. First, we went back to the house we rented from Jack Bailey on East Will Rogers Road. (Now, admit it, you can't get much more Oklahoma than that -- Will Rogers Road.) Anyway, sure enough, there was Jack out front with his blue truck. Bob and I couldn't believe it -- the same truck he had back in the early 90s when we lived next door was still operational.


Turns out, Jack is retired now. Spends his time working on projects for the missions he supports in Zambia. One of the projects is a trailer for a bicycle. The new trick he came up with is that because the trailer for the bike has only one wheel, it can travel down dirt paths, unlike two-wheeled trailers.


He also came up with a hand pump that will fit easily down a hole.


But his newest toy he showed us was strictly for Jack -- last week he got a 1935 Chevrolet. Looks great. Should keep him busy, keeping that thing running.


After hanging out with Jack, we headed down the road and found the Tree of Pain -- the tree Bob fell out of and broke his arm so many years ago.


Bob and I headed to campus looking for some of the faculty I used to work with. Not too many folks around, since it was lunch time. Found Professor Roa Yaragalda. He said he will probably retire the end of next semester. Jerzy Krasinski wasn't around, nor was Keith Teague. Keith is now the department head. Less hair, more responsibility.


Then headed off towards Tulsa and even took a side trip to Owasso, where we lived for a year when I worked for WilTel. We found Owasso, no problem. Never did find the house.

And then, off again, heading North to Rolla, MO, where we quit for the night.

Day One

First day was a breeze. We left Cedar Park and headed North a little after Noon. The first place we stopped was the Texas Ranger Museum in Waco, Texas. Not a planned thing. We just saw a sign along the highway. Bob had read a book about the early history of the Rangers, and by the time he finished telling me about the book, I was pscyched to see the place.





















Turned out to be pretty interesting. One thing I didn't know was that a lot of them made money on the side by surveying. Seems that while out on the frontier, they could pick up a few extra greenbacks by marking off property boundries and such.


















After Waco, we headed North again to Dallas. Went up the Reunion Tower, which has a revolving top. Grabbed a quick snack there and watched Dallas slowly circle us.