A Ghost Story or Two

Those who know me know that I have an obsession with a keen interest in the paranormal.  And most know that I've had this interest since birth childhood.   So where did this interest spark from?  My crazy weird strange loving family.  My aunt could spin a scary tale in seconds flat.  Some were true stories, most were not and sometimes it was hard to know which was which. (I do realize that there are not small furry creatures called gretchens living in the rip rap with red eyes and fangs who eat girls with dark brown or blonde hair).  But there are a couple of stories told to me as a child by by step-great-great grandmother that I remember to this day and know that they were true accounts of things she experienced.  And they scared the poop crap pee jeepers out of me.

Grandma Sissy was 104 when she died and a wealth of interesting information. Can you imagine she actually used a real slate board for school?? But this post isn't about the amazing life of Sissy Jackson, it's about a couple of amazingly spooky stories she shared with me (I'm sure I'll blog about her amazing life in the future).

The first experience she told me about involved a Headless Man.  He didn't have a horse, sword or flaming pumpkin like the photo, but he was without a head.  Sissy said that one night, she had a friend over her house.  This friend lived just across the street so when it was time for her to leave, Sissy walked her friend back home.  It was dark back then (it's dark in Deltaville now, but we're talking early 1910's) and Sissy was walking along looking down at the ground so she wouldn't trip over anything.  All of a sudden, she sees the legs and shoes of a man and when she looks up to see who it is, she realizes the man has no head.  She screamed and ran the rest of the way to her house where she told her family what she had just witnessed.  A man dressed in a suit who was missing his head.  What is interesting to note is that about 10 minutes later, her brother ran into the house claiming he saw a man without a head too... did he witness the same person? Or was he the same person messing with his younger sister?  All I know is, I had to sleep with the light on for several nights and was afraid to go for a walk at night for fear I would see the headless man.  And I was sure that he had a horse somewhere that he could use to run me down with. 

The other story took place more recently.  By more recently, I mean when Sissy was older, so most likely in the later 1980's-1990's but that's a guess.  At the time of this experience, Grandma Sissy was living in her blue and white trailer at the entrance of our little "development" called Jackson Acres.  She was living alone, and one night when she went to bed, she closed all the thick heavy drapes, turned out the lights and climbed under the covers.  She said that the room was totally dark, not a stitch of light to be seen.  All of a sudden, she saw a bright orb of light on her drapes.  It was similar to a light from a flashlight, but there was no one else in the room and the drapes were pulled tight.  She watched it while it moved around the room before ending up on the covers next to her.  She jerked up and told it to get off of the bed.  It responded by moving to the floor.  "You stay down there," she told it sternly (and she could be stern).  It was gone by the morning.

There are many spooky tales from the Tidewater Area.  L.B. Taylor has produced a number of books chronicling the supernatural in the state of Virginia.  Deltaville has a few haunted locations and Mathews, VA is home to one of the creepiest places I've been to- Old House Woods.  Have a ghost story to share?  Want to check out paranormal investigations in the Deltaville area?  Check out my website Gettysburg Ghosts or the Ghost Blog

Pauline T. Jackson

This week, my grandmother, Pauline Jackson will be passing away.  She has been suffering with many ailments for several years now and was given a year to live about 3 years ago.  Sadly, she is now in hospice care, and while she has surpassed their 7-10 day estimation (we are on day 13 and hospice is flabbergasted, I'm not as I know she's much too ornery and bullheaded to go when they say she should) it will most likely happen this week. 

But I don't want to dwell on that too much.  I'd rather share the things I remember about her.

My grandmother and grandfather lived in Deltaville when I was young, right up until my grandfather became ill with heart troubles (these heart problems took him when I was around 4-5 years old).  When they moved back to Maryland, they moved in with my parents and I.  I had my grandmother to myself until my sister showed up when I was 7.  When my brother came along, my dad built an addition to the upstairs of our house.  A bedroom and bathroom was added, and as the oldest, I had the privilege of getting the new bedroom.  My grandmother's room was upstairs as well, and she used to joke about how we were roomies.  I spent a lot of time hanging out in her room watching her small 13" black and white TV, mostly when there was a show I wanted to watch that my dad said  I couldn't, like Piranha (I know I should have listened as I worried those freshwater fish could possibly come up through the toilet and bite my butt.  Or worse, come out of the faucet during my bath, but I digress).

Growing up, Grandmother spent a lot of time with me and all her grandkids.  We were all special to her.  She would read to me whenever I wanted her too, even the dinosaur books, though she hated having to say the names.  I remember watching Dallas with her and my mother, and The Waltons.  And every Friday night when my mom had to work late at the bank, my dad, grandmother and I would have liver for dinner and watch Archie Bunker.  Those were the days.

She taught me how to cut the grass.  She was rather particular about how the grass was cut.  You had to get the mower up close to things to minimize the need for trimming later.  And it drove her crazy if the neighbor cut too far over onto her yard or if someone let their dog use the yard as their bathroom.  Those lessons stuck.  I prefer to cut the grass myself because no one else does it right, I got angry with my neighbor for cutting into my yard (in my defense it looked awful and it happened because he was using a riding mower on a lawn it only takes 30 minutes to cut with a push mower) and I never, ever let my dog walk on someone else's lawn while out for a walk.  And speaking of grass cutting, she is the only one in the world I know of tough enough to cut the grass in her bare feet using a push mower.  And I'm not talking about cutting a nice thick plush lawn, I'm talking about the scraggly stick strewn lawn in Deltaville with its pine cones and rocks.  I don't even run out to the car in my bare feet there. 

She enjoyed being outside and working in the garden/yard.  When I would visit each week, we would go to Frank's Nursery to look at the plants and gardening supplies.  Every time she'd say she didn't need a cart.  And every time I would have to go back and get one because we would each manage to find many things we probably didn't need.  Afterwards, we would go to lunch sometimes McDonald's, sometimes Applebee's (depending on how much we had purchased).  And once, after leaving McDonald's, we passed a homeless guy standing on the road with a sign about working for food.  She had me go back to the drive thru and bought the man a Big Mac Meal. 

She was an avid reader of The Enquirer and The Star, also known as her "dirty books".  Everyone joked about how ridiculous they were, but everyone read them whenever they visited.  She kept all her old ones for just that reason.  She was an avid reader in general, and we often shared and swapped books each week.

She tolerated a lot from us grandkids.  Kelly and I were quite the pranksters and hid her dirty books.  She threatened us, but we knew it was empty.  She tolerated us building a snail house in the kitchen sink (side note: periwinkles don't stay in the kitchen sink.  We found several periwinkle shells many years later when we were cleaning out the kitchen cabinets).  We used her lipstick and her perfume to adorn love notes, we also used her perfume and other various beauty products to concoct our own "potions".  We cut up a pair of her pantyhose to use as masks during a midnight covert operation.  I could go on, but you get the idea. 

Grandmother was a fun person.  She didn't always come across that way, but she could have a good time.  One year we went Christmas shopping and I look up to find her dancing around the Imaginarium store wearing red reindeer antlers and singing along to the carol playing on the store's sound system.  And a few years later she wore antlers and a red blinking nose while helping me decorate my tree.  And I can't even begin to count the number of times she tried to marry off Kelly and I.  Our cousin Dawn was luckily already married, but Kelly and I were fair game.  She'd show any attractive guy our pictures, sometimes while I was standing right there.  I will say that while it was mortally embarrassing to have your grandmother trying to hook you up with someone, at least she had good taste and most guys were attractive. 

She was a best friend.  Growing up I told her everything.  I shared secrets, I shared joys and I shared pains.  When we moved out of her house when I was 13, I begged to be able to stay and live with her.  When I lived in North Carolina and had little contact with my family, I talked to Grandmother every day on the phone.  When I moved back to Maryland, I would drive the hour to her house every week to cut her grass. 

She was my constant.

Let's Talk About Love

So what does love have to do with a blog about Deltaville?  Perhaps the fact that I love this town, or that I loved the family members that lived there or that being there and being stress free and relaxed lets me love more and easier? 

Love can be a real royal pain in the nether regions of your anatomy.  You can make some really stupid decisions because of love or because of what you think is love at one time but sadly find out it was simply indigestion wasn't later on.  You throw lust in there, rebounding relationships... it just gets very messy and hard and complicated and typically this happens at such a sneaky, rapid pace it's changed before you know it and you're stuck.  Not that I'm speaking from any type of experience at all mind you.  So despite that rather cynical twisted view, I am a romantic at heart, though more aptly- a tragic one.  I still think you can get wine, roses and dancing to the radio in the kitchen while making dinner.  I read about is all the time in books.  It must have happened somewhere at sometime for someone to be able to think of it and use it in a literary sense.

So what's sweeter and more romantic than a first crush/love/infatuation? 

It was the summer when I was 11 or 12.  My first introduction was made on the way back in from pulling the crabpots.  Even at 11 you don't want cute boys seeing you with your hair messed up and smelling of dead rotten fish but aboard Pepop's boat Pigpen there wasn't much room to freshen up.  We docked briefly at the community pier to say hello to one of Pepop's friends and share information about the day's haul.  I can't really tell you what exactly was said because I was hearing angels singing the Hallelujah chorus as I stared at the most gorgeous guy I had ever seen.  Craig.  (I won't use last names because frankly I would be mortified if he ever stumbled upon this and read it or something).  Craig was the grandson of one of the residents on Sturgeon Creek.  I think I nodded at our introduction though to be completely honest, I might have been standing with a gaping mouth and mass quantities of drool running down my chin right before my face changed into a cartoon wolf's head and I yelled "arrrroooooogaaahhhh" (give me a break, cartoons were my only frame of reference at the time... ok and still are basically).

We'll skip a few weeks ahead to the vacation I took with my cousin Kelly.  In the weeks prior to the trip, I had spent many a phone call filling her in on the hunk living on the Point. I'm pretty sure I probably got in trouble for the phone bill (at some point my mom insituted the timed phone call... but I'd turn back the timer a minute here and there....) Anyway, back in Deltaville, Kelly and I managed to catch a glimpse of Craig, which wasn't hard to do since we spent every waking moment stalking his grandfather's house took a lot of walks around the point.  We decided we needed to write him a letter to request a meeting.  We thought it through, decided to ask him to meet us at the community pier around 1pm, wrote it neatly and tried to figure out how exactly to deliver it.  We ended up asking Mrs. W (Craig's neighbor) to deliver the letter. 

The next day brought gorgeous weather which was perfect for our outdoor meeting.  We put on clean nice clothes  and actually requested to have our hair brushed.  We made it to the pier early and saw Mrs. W checking her crab pots.  Being nice girls we smiled and chatted with her for a minute before going to sit at the end of the dock.  Mrs. W wasn't leaving.  Instead she checked her crabpot again and stayed until Craig showed up.  And he brought a girl.  It was a crushing blow.  Not only was the whole thing chaperoned unexpectedly but another female was present.  We were not part of the main conversation, but had our own conversation under our breath... how nice it would be to shove the girl off the pier and ruin her nice white OP shorts, how it was gross she had mustard and bread stuck in her braces (she was eating a sandwich).  We made some excuse and went home. 

We were down but not out.  No, we decided to up the game a bit.  So we wrote another letter insisting he must come alone and set up another meeting.  To up the ante a bit I donned Grandmother's Azalea pink lipstick and kissed the bottom of the page.  We also used a small amount of her perfume (Elizabeth Taylor's Poison) to make it smell nice.  I think the affect was more a pink jelly fish looking smudge that smelled like a Texas whorehouse.  Perfect.

Of course the delivery of the letter required more thought.  We couldn't use Mrs. W again (the traitor) so we had to figure out a way to deliver it ourselves.  My aunt walked with us one evening and there in Craig's grandfather's backyard working on his van was Craig's older brother.  Aunt Patsy suggested we walk over and ask him to deliver the note to his brother.  She claimed it would make us look more mature (believe me, we still don't look mature...).  So we gathered up the courage and did just that.  And ran giggling back up to the road- so much for mature.

The meeting happened the next day and went more the way we wanted it too.  He was there and waiting, we had a great conversation.  I remember he talked about eating Wheaties.  And seriously, that's all I remember about it.  That and I spent the rest of the summer listening to Lionel Richie's "Hello" and thinking about Craig.  We never saw him much after that.  I think I was 16 the next time I really saw him.  Funny, he was more interested then, but I had moved on.  But you never forget those first summer romances, or the invaluable lessons on stalking how to get a guy to notice you.

The Deltas

The grass is growing, birds are singing and the bats are swinging- it's baseball season!  But, like many people feel these days, the major league teams don't have much to offer me these days.  Once I was a die hard O's fan, then Cal Ripkin, Jr. retired, Brady Anderson left, BJ Surhoff was traded and the coup de gras- Rafeal Palmero swearing he had never used performance enhancing drugs and then testing positive for them.  Talk about let down. 

So where do you go to watch baseball the Good Ole American way?  You go to the Deltaville Ballpark. 

Is there any simpler name than the Deltaville Ballpark?  Short and to the point, with no advertising for a bank or telephone company- simply named for the town it's in.  And when was the last time you can remember paying $5 to see a baseball game?  And get a hot dog and drink for under $5 (I think $5 gets you half a drink at a major league stadium). 

And then there is the history of the stadium itself.  It was built in 1948, and I've been told my very own great grandfather helped with the construction.  The grandstands hold approximately 500 fans with the home crowd sitting along the 3rd base line or home plate.  Fans are protected from foul balls by crab pot wire as it is abundantly available in the area. And if you happen to retrieve a foul ball, it can be turned in to the concession stand for a $0.50 reward.  An interesting bit of information- there are a pair of nesting osprey on one of the outfield lights who sometimes leave dead fish carcasses for the outfielders to find.  Niiiice.

As far as the team, the Deltaville Deltas are a member of the Southern Virginia Baseball League and predate the ballpark.  I heard somewhere that the name Deltas came about because Deltaville didn't fit on the jersey, I can't remember where I read that but it sounds good.  They are a semi-pro team and according to my 15 year old daughter, there are several hotties on the team. 

So next time you're feeling let down by all those grown up children making millions to play a game, head on over to Deltaville and enjoy the sport that way it's supposed to be enjoyed: with family, fans and affordably. 

This is a shot of my son and a family friend enjoying the game.  My son said after I took this shot, "Hmm, this is a good basketball game" I have my work cut out for me...

The Garden

Today the sun is up, it's not too cold outside and I'm headed to a Home and Garden Show.  The onslaught of seed and flower magazines are filling up my mailbox, and yesterday I saw 5 Robins in the neighborhood for the first time this year.  Yes, spring is nearly here despite all the snow still sitting around my yard. 

So, I thought I'd talk about Pepop's Vegetable Garden.

His garden was a thing of wonder.  I have tried to have a "thing of wonder" veggie garden, but it never works.  Granted, Deltaville has perfect soil while I have soil that you could make terra cotta pots out of.  Not to mention the rock ledge that runs through the backyard and prevents good drainage.  So I ripped out the veggie garden and plan to get a pool. 

Anyway, Pepop had everything in his garden: strawberries, eggplant, corn, sunflowers, tomatoes, etc.  It made excellant hiding places during our games of capture the flag and hide and seek.  We all want the garden to be on our territory.  I think one of us made up a parody of Prince's "Purple Rain" about standing in Purple Corn.  We were obviously not songwriters young.

We used to find all sorts of wildlife in the garden like snakes, rabbits and turtles.  Not surprising as there was always wildlife around Pepop and his house.  He might have been a former Disney Princess or something (and I mean that in a manly, deep voice, used to be a park ranger way). 

The most interesting thing about the garden, however, wasn't the plants it was the mulch.  He used crab shells to mulch the rows.  Just threw them down between the rows after the crabs had been picked clean.  Apparently they keep the weeds down and provide calcium to the soil when they eventually break down.  All I know is that I ended up with more cuts on my feet from running barefoot through the garden than I did in the water.... lucky I didn't end up with a nasty infection as a child.

So, here's to spring, magical gardens, birds singing, robins and the glorious sun!  What signs of spring are you seeing?

Crazy Weather

In keeping with the theme of unwanted/weird weather (and I won't mention the 4 letter S word even though we're supposed to get MORE tomorrow night...)

One April, I think it was 2006, the family assembled in Deltaville for Easter.  It was very warm out so I let Bridget take the kayak out on the creek.  While my aunt, uncle and I were sitting on the swing watching her paddle around, we noticed the wind pick up.  I called Bridget to head back in and we hauled the kayak back up on dry land.  The sky grew ominously black though we didn't get any rain.  As the clouds blew past, we noticed a strange cloud forming on the tail end of the storm clouds.....

It was an awesome sight to see.  It never touched down where we could see, but did end up producing a waterspout further up the river near the Bay.  There were no reports of injury or damage thankfully.
PS in one photo I think you might be able to see one of my well known flying monkeys.

A Good Book

This is what my yard looks like right now.  26" of snow.  The good news- I finally dug the driveway out and made several trenches for the dog in the backyard.  The bad news- we are once again under a Winter Weather Warning and have 10-20" of snow headed our way once again.  (Insert shrieking here). 

Luckily, I was smart and went to the library prior to the first massive snow storm and made sure I had enough books for myself and my son to get us through.  Which is where the title of this blog comes in.  There is nothing better than a good book whether it's because you're snowed in under 80 2 feet of white I-think-I-have-a-hernia-developing crap snow or relaxing in a hammock, relaxing on the pier or even better- relaxing on the beach in the sun. 

Deltaville and good books seem synonymous.  Meaning that for every trip south, I make sure I have plenty of reading material.  And I also make sure that I have a stockpile of reading material there waiting.  I love to read, and I read fast.  So, I can burn through 2-3 books easy if I have a week with not much going on. 

In Deltaville, life slows down and the book comes out.  There are usually 2 places I can be found reading (other than in the house): the hammock and the pier.  The hammock is the perfect reading spot.  Sometimes it takes some maneuvering to get in and get  comfortable.  My shirt rides up a bit and I can feel the ropes of the hammock against my skin and I know I'm going to have hatch marks on my back, but I don't care.  My right foot drapes over the edge to offer just enough push to keep the hammock in a gentle swing as I read.  I always doze off listening to the whomp-whomp-whomp of the jet skis jumping waves and the gentle humming of the boat engines going in and out. 

(This is actually a pic of my sister. I took this pic only because the rest of the family was working hard while she was laying in the hammock)

Sometimes I like to go down on the pier and read.  If the tide is high enough, I simply lay down on the pier with my feet dangling in the water.  It isn't the most comfortable way to read a book, but having my toes wet makes the difference.  And if I'm still enough, minnows sometimes come along and nibble at my feet (not sure if anyone saw the reports on the very expensive pedicure treatment where people stick their feet in a bucket of water full of minnows that eat all the dead skin off your feet- same thing only mine is free).

But the best place to read a book is on the beach.  Whether it's sitting in the chair at the water's edge or lying in the sand, nothing beats a good book on the beach.  The waves rolling onto shore, the kids laughing and playing in the water, the shore birds and their various cries.... even the feel of the sand adds to the overall enjoyment.

This is my mother.  I have her picture here because I am always the one behind the camera.

And sometimes the best place to read is in a soft bed at the end of a loooong day.

My son- fell asleep reading after a long day on the beach- just like his mom.