We toured the rest of Michie Tavern, which included a mill and general store. A stream ran over the mill wheel, turning it. There were also a well and a springhouse- this was like a colonial refrigerator. It was built over a stream, and as the cold water flowed through the spring house, it cooled the air inside. Milk and other perishable items were kept in the water to keep them from spoiling as fast. The waitresses and waiters all wore colonial-style outfits, the dishes were pewter, and the dining hall was "candle-lit" (with electric lights made to look like candles, complete with a flicker). We had pulled pork, cornbread, fried chicken, stewed tomatoes, green beans, and black-eyed peas. 
  Recently, I and my sister went back to Virginia and revisited the tavern. All the buildings are built on the same mountain that Monticello is located on, just on the other side. It's a bit hilly. The guide told us that the original innkeeper, William Michie, was stingy. If a traveler drank too much and found himself passed out on the floor of the tavern, when he woke up, he would be billed for lodging. One room we saw had two beds crammed into what would be a tiny bedroom for one by today's standards. The guide said that it would normally be crammed with four or five beds, with two or even three people crammed into each bed! These were smaller than twin beds. No idea how these people sandwiches went to sleep each night! Talk about strange bedfellows-- you never knew who you would end up with. Cozy. 
 If a traveler wanted a private room, he could rent one upstairs, but that was still no guarantee he could get some sleep-- the ballroom was right next door, where people would sometimes dance until the wee hours.
Michie Tavern was a good ending to a very good visit, but finally, it was time to say goodbye to Mohammed and go home.
 

One way you can tell you're in the South is if you go out to eat and there's a choice of grits or home fries on the menu for breakfast. (Up north, we call those hash browns.)  I don't mind grits, but if I have a choice, I'll take potatoes every time. 
Another way you can (usually) tell is by the way no one seems to be in a hurry. Everyone is a lot nicer when driving, for instance. Washington D.C. is different. It's more like a northern city, where everyone has to get somewhere ASAP. Maybe times two. Way back when, Maryland and Virginia decided to give up some of their land out of the goodness of their hearts, and that land became the U.S. capital. Well, it was swampy back then, and skeeters were everywhere. Maybe that's why they wanted to get rid of it. Malaria, anyone? 
    Virginia is where we were staying. After visiting the homes of two U.S. presidents, we did some exploring with Mohammed. We visited Michie (pronounced "mickey") Tavern, located close to Monticello. It opened in 1784, reopening in the 1920's as a museum. All the people who worked there wore colonial outfits, and everything was designed to replicate the original place. There was one main building and several smaller ones. The main building was a big white house with a wrap-around porch. There was a guide to show us the different rooms of the house, and buttons in every room that played recordings explaining the history of parts of the tavern. There was a store, a dining room, kitchen, clothier, (clothing store), and parlor. In one room, there were colonial coats and hats that you could try on. We looked funny in them. I don't remember if Mohammed tried them on or not; maybe one of the hats. We tried to write with a quill pen, but my dad and I ended up with rather sloppy signatures. Mohammed had a magnificent signature. I don't know where he learned to sign his name so fancily with a quill pen, but the colonists would have been proud of him! Next time I'll tell more about Michie Tavern.

After we finished sightseeing in Washington, D.C., we visited George Washington's home, Mount Vernon, in nearby Virginia. Well, first, we had to find it. We didn't have GPS back then, so it took a while to figure out how to get there. After driving on a long, winding road through some woods, we finally made it. We saw the drawing room, indoor kitchen, library, and bedrooms. I think one of the bedrooms had Washington's original bed in it. I don't remember much of the inside of the house, but I do know there were lots of other buildings near it, like the outdoor kitchen where the servants cooked in the summer, the smokehouse, and storage buildings. 
   After Mount Vernon, we looked for Monticello, which was further away. When we stopped to look around, the crickets were singing so loud, it was hard to hear anything else. It sounded like a deafening high-pitched choir. It was dark when we found Monticello's sign. (Both Washington and Jefferson apparently liked living in remote locations.)  We stopped at a gas station, where my dad asked the man who worked there if any hotels were nearby. He turned out to be the owner, named Mohammed, and he very kindly invited us to his house to spend the night. The next day, he looked through a jar of coupons at the gas station and found three free passes to Monticello. It was nice having him along; he was nice and he knew where to go. Monticello was an interesting place; it had many of Thomas Jefferson's numerous inventions in it, like a giant clock that told the second, minute, hour, day, week, month, and year!
There were cases full of Thomas Jefferson's fossil collection and rooms full of books. No wonder he was so smart! We couldn't go upstairs, because the stairs were too narrow, but I enjoyed the part of the house that we could see. My dad took a picture of me, a tiny speck standing next to the giant pillars on the porch. Mohammed stood closer to the camera; my dad joked that he wanted to make sure his good-looking face was in the photo. As good as Monticello was though, the best part for me that day was driving up the mountain that Monticello was built on. Monticello looked little compared to the mountain.

When I was 11, my dad took me to Washington D.C. It was an exciting trip. We had a tan van at the time which my dad drove all the way there. We had a suitcase each in the back of the van, lots of food, and a refrigerator plugged into the cigarette lighter filled with all the things that needed to be refrigerated, like hard-boiled eggs and milk. My mom packed me two big duffel bags full of activity books and games, etc., so I had plenty of things to do. I had the whole back seat to myself, so I was pretty comfortable getting there. We drove about 13 hours through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, and finally Maryland, where we spent the night. We had to go to a conference the next morning at the Washington Hilton so we somehow found our way through all the traffic. As I recall, the conference lasted about a week, with a variety of interesting speakers like J. C. Watts, who was a U.S. representative at the time, Bob Dole and Jack Kemp, who were running for president and vice president that year, and Ross Perot, whom we missed. I was disappointed; I wanted to hear him because I had heard he was a little eccentric.
   I was wearing a nice outfit, but the elastic in my skirt wasn't doing its job. I had to make sure my skirt didn't slip down too far while I was listening to the speakers. My dad solved the problem; he found a stretchy rubber band that matched my skirt and put it around the waist, that was just enough to keep it in place. The funny thing was, I had another dress packed that we had bought specifically for this trip, but I never ended up wearing it.
   After the conference was over, we did some sight-seeing. We tried to see the White House and the Lincoln Memorial, but we couldn't figure out how to get to the Memorial. All we did was drive around and around on a circular road. We caught a tiny glimpse of the White House behind some trees and traffic. My dad took a picture of it, but if no one told you what it was a picture of, you would never know. The next blog will be about more of our trip.

Did you ever have a stubborn tooth that just wouldn't come out no matter how much you wiggled it? When I was five, my adult side teeth started coming in  right behind my baby teeth. I had two sets of teeth for a while. Finally most of the loose teeth fell out, but one remained. I think it was almost a year that it was loose, but still in my mouth. My dad joked that I should tie a string to it, tie the other end to a doorknob, and walk away fast. Short of doing that, I didn't know if it would ever come out. Then one day, I was playing at a playground with Rebekah and Ruth. Sliding down a slide, somehow I got switched around and started going down headfirst on my stomach. I bumped my jaw on the slide and got the wind knocked out of me. My dad was waiting to catch me, and I tried to say that I thought my tooth had come out, but I couldn't talk very well with no breath! As soon as I caught my breath I excitedly told him. My mom was there, holding baby Beth, and she searched for the tooth, but the mystery tooth was nowhere to be found. Oh, well. The main thing was, my tooth was finally out!
   Because I was the first baby, my teeth were a big deal. My mom saved them in a bottle. One time, I knocked it over somehow. Teeth flew all over the floor. We had company at the time, and one of the guests started helping me pick up my teeth. He was on his hands and knees picking up all these teeny teeth. Poor guy! My two front teeth were among the last to come out. They came out at the exact same time. That made it pretty hard to talk or eat for a while. One of my molars came out in four pieces, one piece at a time. If you get a quarter for one tooth, do you get a dollar for a tooth that comes out one piece at a time? Haha.  Anyway, that's the end of my toothy story.

Growing up, it was fun having so many babies in the house. I was eight when Kath was born. She was born in the middle of the night, and I remember waking up shortly after. I saw my dad cut the umbilical cord. The midwife was supposed to be there, but she didn't get there in time. So Kath was the first baby my dad delivered. Our babies average about nine pounds, and Kath was about average. We had a little drama the night Kath was born. We were caring for a 95-year-old man at the time, who lived upstairs from us. That night, a few hours after the birth, my dad heard a thump on the ceiling. He went to investigate and found that the man had slipped and fallen in his bedroom. He ended up having to go to the hospital with a broken hip, which he didn't like one bit!
  Judah was our first boy. That was exciting! My dad asked if I wanted to see him be born, but I was too chicken. When I heard it was a boy, I was so happy that I cried. Judah was a very happy baby. It seemed like he always had a smile on his face. And he was full of energy. When he was old enough, he would pull himself up in his crib and start bouncing up and down. Kerthump! Kerthump! That's how we knew he was awake. Before he could crawl, he would crouch on the bed on all fours and bounce forward and backward. It looked like he was trying to start his motor! After he could walk, he experimented with his mountain-climbing skills. One time, we caught him on top of our 2-foot-high toy refrigerator. Another time, he tried climbing the toy stove. We stopped him just in time.

A few of the many pets we had were quite crabby. They were shy, too, and they walked sideways, but they had a good excuse --- they were hermit crabs! Hermit crabs live in empty seashells to protect their soft bodies. They have a sticky pad at the end of their tail which they use to attach themselves to a shell. When a hermit crab gets too big for its shell, it finds a slighter bigger one.
We had three hermit crabs. They ate celery, lettuce, and grapes. When they got too big for their shells, we got them bigger ones. But we didn't get to see them switch shells. They made sure to do it when we weren't looking.
   We also had a few regular crabs. They were about an inch and a half across from claw to claw. If you've ever looked at a crab, you'd have noticed that their right claw is at least twice as big as their left. They use the bigger claw for eating, fighting, etc. In our crabs' case, they used them for something else.
We kept the crabs in an aquarium that they shared with some neon tetra fish (see photo). They are very small fish with blue and red streaks on their sides. Evidently the crabs thought that they would make a tasty meal, because they went fishing. One morning, I got up to do my schoolwork and I saw one of the crabs with a fish in his claw. He was happily eating. The crabs would wait motionlessly until one of the fish swam close enough to catch, then grab it with their claws. Soon all the tasty fish were gone, and they got into more mischief. As usual, I got up early, just in time to see both crabs scuttling sideways down the table. Fortunately, my dad was up, and quickly scooped up both crabs and put them back in their aquarium. After that, we made sure the lid was tightly shut!
 

We have had lots of pets over the years, and here are some of their stories:

Rocky, Methuselah, and Slither
  Rocky was a green iguana who lived with two tiny anole lizards to keep him company. Anoles can change color like chameleons, so they were fun to watch. Rocky was fun to watch for a different reason: he hated it. If anyone's face got too near his cage, he whipped his tail against the glass. He especially hated being taken out of the cage when it was time to clean it. My dad would hold him with a thick glove on while he furiously whapped his tail. More than once, Rocky peed down my dad's arm. He wasn't pacified until the cage was clean, and he was inside once again. From the safety of his own territory, he regarded the world with a suspicious glare. He liked grapes, lettuce, and celery, with tasty mealworms for dessert. Alas, he died of kindness. My mom became concerned that he wasn't getting enough sun, so she put him outside. Unaware that for reptiles, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, she left him out there too long. We didn't realize until a while afterward that he had died, because my dad bought another iguana, Rocky II.

   We had many goldfish over the years, but Methuselah lived the longest (that's how the fish got its name). He was in a rather small aquarium, but he lived happily for over two years, and got to be pretty big, too. Well, I guess two years is not really that long, but it was long compared with our other goldfish. Goldfish are supposed to live for 25 years, and, if they keep growing, just imagine how big they would be!

  Slither was the name of Rebekah's pet snake. She found it slithering in the grass about a block from our house. It was a green garter snake. Rebekah and I thought it was cute, but our mom didn't, 'cause she hates snakes! But it's not fair to be afraid of small, nonpoisonous snakes, is it? Anyway, if any of our friends acted up at our house, one look at the snake quickly made them behave. I petted it once. It was very smooth, and its shiny scales felt nice. It was about as thick as a finger and about a foot and a half long. I don't remember it eating anything. A few months after she caught it, my sister released it.

When we were growing up, we had lots of kids coming over to our house, but not necessarily to play with us. The doorbell would ring, and they would ask,"Hey, can your dad come out and play?" It didn't take long for word to get out---our dad was fun! He made up probably dozens of games, including hand tennis, chairball, chair baseball, chair soccer, bounce volleyball, etc. We played one of those games, called keepaway, after dark. It was similar to hide-and-seek, except that instead of tagging people, the "it" person had to say our names. If whoever was "it" made a mistake, we could get away. We had a fence and a good sized yard, so that made lots of good places to hide. My favorite spots were in the grapevine, behind the shed, and under one of two trailers that were parked on the side of the house.
 One night, we and our friends were playing keepaway with our dad. Rebekah was "it". She had found some people and was looking for more when she passed the treehouse. "Do not shake the tree," a voice said from a ways above her. Rebekah looked for where it was coming from. Climbing up the ladder into the treehouse, she saw Danielle, a girl who occasionally came over to our house. "Do not shake the tree. I am scared of heights."
 Bekah said, "If you're scared of heights, why are you up in the tree?" Good question, I thought. I had either been caught or was hiding somewhere near, so I could hear everything. I don't even think Danielle knew why she was hiding in the tree. Well anyway, she was easy to catch!

When I was about 4 or 5 years old, my dad took me to the mall in Rochester.   I always had fun when I went there. Sometimes we would visit a little health food store and my dad would buy me a candy bar. Those candy bars were 100% good-for-you, and delicious! Another thing I loved was watching a neat display in the mall. It was made up of colored balls tumbling around a kind of maze. I wondered how they could keep going without ever stopping. Another interesting thing was the train. It was made up of around a dozen kid-size passenger cars, and one lead car for the engineer. The lucky kid who got to ride in the lead car also got to ring the bell that hung inside the car. I always wanted to ride in the lead car and ring the bell, but I never got a chance. Finally, one day, it was empty. Yeah! I quickly climbed on board and closed the door. The train started up, and I reached for the bell, but it was broken. As the train went around and around the tracks, my dad shouted,"Ring the bell! Ring the bell!" He couldn't hear me yell back that it was broken. Nuts. The one time I got to be a conductor, and the bell had to be broken! Although, that must have been the reason the conductor's car was empty that one time!