September 22 - “Patrolling the battlefields”

Chalk one more up in the win column. Not just for the Astros. Gotta add this Comfort Suites we just stayed in. Not much to complain about here. Nice, clean, spacious room. Manager’s special free supper at night. Good hotel continental breakfast. Kind, even vivacious personnel. I would go back to that one.

 

Headed out for our next battlefield in the morning. Not that we were fighting or anything. But somebody did. Sometime in the past. Civil War time frame in this case. It was not very well-preserved or marked, but it did honor a lot of lives lost.

 

From there we headed north to Corinth. We went to the Corinth visitor center for some stamps for Chris’ book. Then we needed some food.

 

Where to eat in a foreign city? Where the locals do. Abe’s Grill in Corinth was absolutely, hands down the best place we have eaten so far. The burger shack was carved out of an old gas station. The walls were covered with old license plates. Old Abe himself welcomed us in. Well, after a lady outside saw us taking pictures and offered to take some of the two of us. I was almost speechless. She reminded me a whole lot of my Mom. Once inside we barely had room to turn around, and we sat at the grill area, a bar about three feet from the grill. Abe the second (his son Rob) was the cook. And Abe’s wife (Mom) did waitressing. They chatted with us and other customers who were mostly locals. Our burgers were amazing. Old time style, greasy, cheesy deliciousness. And the fries had been fresh cut that morning. When we went to check out (meaning we stood up so the next customers could have our seat and turned around to face the cash register), Old Abe asked us what we had, said it would be twenty bucks, and called it a day. Oh, he did ask where we were from. He knew of Galveston, though he’d never been there. We told him to put it on his bucket list.

 

From Corinth we drove into Tennessee to the Shiloh National Park. We have been there before, but that was before Chris started getting stamps in her book. We didn’t do the drive around the park again, but as it turned out, it was a good thing we stopped. Sitting in the gift shop area was none other than Ollie Otter, big tail sticking out behind. I love otters. Needless to say, Ollie joined our journey.

 

Next, we took off all the way across southern Tennessee to the town of Murfreesboro. There was another national battlefield there. You know, I remember reading about a lot of these places on the back of the Civil War trading cards I have. Should have brought them for research …

 

We drove just a little further and spent the night in Lebanon, Tennessee. It’s a small town not far from Nashville. Oh, and it got chilly outside. In the 60’s. That’s winter in Galveston. 

 

Not sure if we’ll backtrack toward Nashville today or not. May just keep heading farther east and farther north.

 

Galatians 6:2 says, “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

 

Father, it was pretty sobering seeing how many lives were lost during those battles. And both sides were Americans - family. Please help us learn from that. Amen.