{"id":3399,"date":"2008-02-05T21:45:42","date_gmt":"2008-02-06T01:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/idyllopuspress.com\/meanwhile\/?p=3399"},"modified":"2012-10-07T01:39:51","modified_gmt":"2012-10-07T05:39:51","slug":"tullie-smith-farm-log-cabin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idyllopuspress.com\/meanwhile\/3399\/tullie-smith-farm-log-cabin\/","title":{"rendered":"Tullie Smith Farm Log Cabin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Atlanta<\/a>
\nTullie Smith Farm Log Cabin
\nAtlanta History Center, 2008
\nView On White<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Atlanta<\/a>
\nAtlanta History Center, Tullie Smith Farm Area
\nView On White<\/a><\/p>\n

Little log cabins and farm houses don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exactly thrill me. Before H.o.p. was born, these are not scenes I would generally elect to go seek out, but if they were THERE right before my face then I would leap into the fray and go, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh, wow!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d because hell why not learn something. And I tend to want to have fun even though I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m forever boiling over with angst.<\/p>\n

Then came along H.o.p. and that means now I do all kinds of things I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have done before…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

…like getting a membership at the Atlanta History Center and taking him down to look at the Tullie Smith farm house and its auxiliary buildings. As I said above, not that I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have appreciated these things before, but I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have gone seeking them out and electing to spend my money on them.<\/p>\n

But now the world has become an educational opportunity.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

H.o.p. is somewhat like me in this regard. He is generally eager to have a good time just because he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s alive. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got his own angsty side as well. In fact, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot like me. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 3\/3rds angst and 3\/3rds eager to take part in the ride of a lifetime. Like me. He can be wholly one or the other in the matter of a second or two, but always in the angst is the eagerness for the ride of a lifetime, and always within the enjoying the ride of a lifetime is the question mark of angst. So pitch a farm house at him and his eyes light up because that is the ride of the moment.<\/p>\n

H.o.p. asked some great questions on the tour. He was so excited that he couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stand still to save his life and was boppity bopping as he stood there but he was very attentive and asked great questions and I wrapped my arms gently around H.o.p.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s shoulders and he stopped boppity bopping after all, and the tour guide, who knew his stuff, was able to answer all H.o.p.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s questions. We all really did learn a good deal yesterday, in a brief amount of time.<\/p>\n

When the Tullie-Smith farm was built, Atlanta didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even exist yet. The Cherokee had only recently been removed on the Trail of Tears. Much about the Tullie Smith farm, in fact, was reminiscent of what we saw at New Echota.<\/p>\n

We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve done two tours now of different things at the Atlanta History Center and the guides are great. They know how to tell a story, and they know their stuff. A good guide is like a well-scripted history show. As questions arise in your mind, the next moment the guide is relating what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re wondering about.<\/p>\n

The guides also have personality, which is nice. The Atlanta History Center opted to not leave personality out of their guides.<\/p>\n

Another woman and her boy were also taking the tour. As this particular tour yesterday was only of the Tullie Smith house and didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t include the back buildings, they roamed those with us and related to us some of the things they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d learned on previous tours. The boy, perhaps a year or two older than H.o.p., explained why one of the jugs in the kitchen had a grotesque face on it. This was because the jug would have held alcohol and the scowling face was a warning to children.<\/p>\n

H.o.p., of course, decided now was the time to relate the story of the Megaroon<\/p>\n

I made up the Megaroon one night when he was about five or six years of age.<\/p>\n

The Megaroon was a bird that came and picked up children and carried them away.<\/p>\n

I based the story on Amerian Indian tales of giant birds carrying away people.<\/p>\n

I made the story seem very real.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a great fan of Thunderbird tales, by the way. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a believer in Thunderbirds. But we needn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get into that.<\/p>\n

So, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s H.o.p. and you never can tell what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to come out of his mouth when he opens it (and when it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not shut it tends to be open and running), and what came out of it yesterday, inspired by the jug intended to scare the kiddies, was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153GUESS WHAT?! MY MOM TOLD ME THIS STORY ABOUT THE FEARSOME MEGAROON AND\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

And I took a step into the background and started taking pictures of the back buildings of this farm in the middle of Buckhead.<\/p>\n

H.o.p. happily and excitedly went ahead with the boy telling him I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know all what but at one point he came running back to me and said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That boy says buffalo are stupid.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

How they started talking about buffalo I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know. But then I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know why H.o.p. opted to crow about his being American Indian yesterday either.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You have Ioway and Cherokee ancestry,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I corrected.<\/p>\n

It was a few minutes after this that H.o.p. came running over to inform me that the other boy thought buffalo were stupid. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not stupid, are they?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d H.o.p. said, greatly affronted because as far as he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s concerned buffalo are wonderful, remarkable, incredible beasts. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been raised to respect the buffalo and he believes them to be his brothers.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153No, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not stupid,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I said.<\/p>\n

H.o.p. goes running back to the boy and I hear him good naturedly crow, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My mom says buffalo aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stupid!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

I took pictures of buildings.<\/p>\n

Atlanta History Center, Tullie Smith Farm Area
\nAtlanta History Center, Tullie Smith Farm<\/p>\n

What had happened was the boy had apparently told H.o.p. about American Indians running buffalo over cliffs, which the boy had decided made buffalo stupid.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mom, he says that Indians run buffalo over cliffs!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d H.o.p. said, disbelieving.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153They did,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I said. H.o.p.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been told these stories but he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been told a lot of stories about the buffalo and these apparently sank to the bottom of the heap and weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite absorbed.<\/p>\n

H.o.p. stared, mouth agape, but pulled himself together in a couple of seconds.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153But they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not stupid,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153No, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not stupid.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Before we were done, H.o.p of course had related, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m an artist!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Because everyone must know.<\/p>\n

The other boy turned out to be an artist as well and his brother in art school.<\/p>\n

H.o.p. loved that.<\/p>\n

He brought up again today what the boy said about buffalo being stupid. So we talked at length about the buffalo again and read a story on how coyote tricked the buffalo into racing over the edge of a cliff.<\/p>\n

That he won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t forget because it involves coyote.<\/p>\n

There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing H.o.p. likes so much as a good coyote story. In fact, he related two of his favorite coyote stories yesterday to the other boy and the woman.<\/p>\n

H.o.p. sees coyote at work everywhere, I think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tullie Smith Farm Log Cabin Atlanta History Center, 2008 View On White Atlanta History Center, Tullie Smith Farm Area View On White Little log cabins and farm houses don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exactly thrill me. Before H.o.p. was born, these are not scenes I would generally elect to go seek out, but if they were THERE right before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,24],"tags":[424,414,422,312],"class_list":["post-3399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-photos","category-everyday-stories","tag-a","tag-atlanta-history-center","tag-homeschool-2","tag-metro-atlanta-exclusive-of-midtown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idyllopuspress.com\/meanwhile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idyllopuspress.com\/meanwhile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idyllopuspress.com\/meanwhile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idyllopuspress.com\/meanwhile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idyllopuspress.com\/meanwhile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/idyllopuspress.com\/meanwhile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idyllopuspress.com\/meanwhile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idyllopuspress.com\/meanwhile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idyllopuspress.com\/meanwhile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idyllopuspress.com\/meanwhile\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}