The Postmaster of Halfway

Martha Shaddix raises the flag at her store/Post Office in Halfway, Kentucky.

               

Martha Shaddix always wanted to own a Rock City barn.

Growing up in Florida, she rode up through the South in the back seat of her parent's car to visit relatives in Georgia and North Carolina. Watching the road, watching the barns go by, dreaming of a barn of her own. With a See Rock City sign, by golly.

Her dream came true in 1978 when she bought the old store at Halfway, Kentucky, complete with Rock City sign. Opened in 1923, the Halfway Trading Post is one of only two country stores still in operation bearing the Rock City message. The other is in west Tennessee and is not currently maintained by Rock City. 

Life is kinda slow in Halfway, except on U.S. Highway 231, where traffic is kinda fast. Martha opens up her store every morning, six days a week, and since she's the Postmaster too, she goes out and raises the flag first thing.

(From my book Rock City Barns: A Passing Era.)

I haven't been through Halfway in quite a few years. Martha is a very old lady now, if she's still with us. She got a kick out of selling the Rock City Barns book in her store. 

The second edition of Backroads and Byways of Georgia is almost ready to ship. Watch this space for ordering instructions.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

An Endangered Species

Rock City Barn TN-6. U.S. 27, Rhea County, Tennessee

 I received a nice note from reader Mary Norman today. She said, "I’m so glad you created the Rock City Barns book. It has been on our coffee table for many years now. We rarely see any of the barns today. They really were a passing era. Thanks for preserving our southern history with your beautiful photographs and revealing texts. It is a true treasure."

As I wrote in Rock City Barns: A Passing Era, "You may not have noticed it, but barns are actually something of an endangered species these days. They don't build 'em like they used to, and one reason is the way farmers feed their livestock. The traditional barn was built with a large loft to store loose hay. The farmer went up there with a pitchfork and tossed hay down to his animals. Then square bales were invented, and that was okay, because they would also fit in the barn loft, and since they were tightly packed you could store even more hay. But if something happened to the barn there was not much reason to replace it, because hay can be stored more conveniently in an open, metal-roofed shed built at a fraction of the cost of a barn. 

And then, along came the big, round bales. No way you're going to get those 1000-pound babies in a loft. They have to be handled by a tractor with a front loader. So nobody much builds regular barns anymore, unless they have dairy cattle or horses. And the good old barns are falling down and not being replaced."

Case in point: I photographed the above barn on U.S. 27 in Rhea County, Tennessee in 1994. I was not yet officially working on the Rock City Barns book. When I passed by again in 1995, while working on the book, the barn was gone. Victim of the widening of the highway into a four-lane.

(The photo was made with a Canon EOS 10S. The lens was probably the Canon EF 28-105mm f3.5-4.5. The film, as always, was Fujichrome 100D.)

 

The second edition of Backroads and Byways of Georgia is almost ready to ship. Watch this space for ordering instructions.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Am I My Own Best Editor?

Rock City Barn in Grassy Cove

TN Hwy. 68 in Cumberland County, Tennessee

Mamiya RB67, 127mm f4.5 Mamiya-Sekor lens, Fujichrome 100 film

 

Not necessarily. I would like to think I am, but the truth is that I can't always pick out my very best shots. Let's face it: sometimes we're not the best judges of our own work. Here's a true story:

 

By 1992 I had been doing regular advertising assignments for Rock City Gardens, (now See Rock City, Inc.) a tourist attraction on Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga, Tennessee, for about ten years. In effect, I was their unofficial house photographer. In late October of that year I was asked by Rock City's advertising department to go to Grassy Cove on Cumberland Mountain between Rockwood and Crossville, Tennessee to photograph a picturesque old barn with one of their iconic "See Rock City" signs.

 

It was a gray, overcast day, but I did the best I could; photographing the barn and the sheep grazing around it from several angles with my Mamiya RB67 medium format camera (a big bruiser!) and Fujichrome 100 film. As always, I bracketed exposures a half-stop over and under. (For my younger readers, that's like setting your digital camera to auto-bracket mode when you want the best possible exposure. But in those days it was all done manually -- the aperture and/or shutter speed had to be selected and physically set for each situation.)

 

After processing and reviewing the film, I was not happy with the photos. So a few days later on a sunny day I went back at my own expense (about a 160 mile round trip) and photographed the barn again. But just in case, when I turned in my photos to Todd Smith, Rock City's advertising manager, I gave him both the overcast day photos and the sunny day shots

.

To my surprise, Todd immediately picked the photo above. And when I was later commissioned to photograph and write Rock City Barns: A Passing Era, that was the photo my book designer chose for the cover. I would have missed it completely.

 

So it's a good idea to get input about your photos from someone whose vision you trust. You might find that some of your photographs are not as great as you think they are, but on the other hand you might find some hidden gems.

(Reposted from March 2, 2020)

The second edition of Backroads and Byways of Georgia is almost ready to ship. Watch this space for ordering instructions.

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

The Old Mill at the Foxfire Museum

 The Grist Mill at Foxfire

Hidden away in the northeastern-most county in Georgia is one of the most remarkable places in the state -- the Foxfire Museum and Heritage Center.

Foxfire began in 1966, when Eliot Wigginton, an English teacher at Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, seeking to arouse the interest of mountain young people, many of whom were not especially enthusiastic about education, initiated a project with his students. They began interviewing older residents of the area, learning about the pioneer culture of the Southern Appalachians and collecting old tools and artifacts. That led to publishing a magazine which they named Foxfire, which led eventually to the best-selling series of Foxfire Books.

With income from the books, the students began to expand their program, acquiring some property on the side of Black Rock Mountain and collecting old log cabins and outbuildings and moving them to the site. The oldest is a one-room log cabin built in the 1820s in which four generations of one family grew up. The museum now includes more than 20 cabins, a chapel, barn, blacksmith shop, and working gristmill, and a wagon built in the 1790s that was used on the Trail of Tears - the only one known to be still in existence. 

The grist mill was built by Charles William Bell near Otto, North Carolina in the late 1930s. The Foxfire students found it abandoned and deteriorating, moved it the the Foxfire property, and restored it as a fully-functioning mill in 1972 -- the first of many old buildings to be reconstructed at the Foxfire Museum.

There are many interesting things to see in Rabun County, but don't miss the Foxfire Museum and Heritage Center. It's open Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m.–4 p.m. and noon to 4 p.m. on Sunday.  

Photo made with a Fuji X-H1 camera and a Fujichrom XC 16-50mm f3.5-5.6 OIS-II lens.)

Check out the pictures at my online gallery: https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and you might find something you like.

Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.