Later, i will add a post about thoughts of mine while i was on this trip with Pete Toennies, one of my best pals since we met in Hobart, Tasmania, in November 1979.

This past week, Tuesday to Tuesday, was planned to be another Toennies, Jewell couples escape. Then, Maureen, not wishing to play six days of golf, shortened our stay to five days, not seven. Nancy was recovering from a medical procedure and decided to not go. When Maureen learned Pete wanted to go for the week, she felt it would be better if these two male friends should have another adventure by themselves.

And off we went.

On Tuesday afternoon, we arrived at the Marriott Summit Watch in downtown Park City, Utah where the Toennies have a time-share condo. We played golf for five days in the six full days at wonderful golf courses

i won’t write a whole lot about our experience, but wanted share some photos and thoughts about dining in Park City.

On Wednesday and Thursday, We played the two incredible links courses at Soldier’s Hollow, a bit down the mountain in Midway,: magnificent views, impeccable condition, and way out in the toolies. Man, out in the toolies. Two courses: Silver and Mountain. Just to add to the fun, the green fees were surprisingly reasonable.

The Gold course is higher up in the mountains and tough. Man, is it tough. There are magnificent views and incredible altitude drops and rises on almost every hole.

This place seems almost a secret. They have a goodly amount of players, but it always seems like it’s not crowded.

The mornings were cool, cold for folks who live in the Southwest corner, but considered cool in the mountains. We went from golf jackets and sweaters to short sleeve shirts during the rounds. But the views of sunrise made the early morning tee times worth it.

Friday, we went to the Wasatch Mountain State Park and played the Lakes course: beautiful and we saw turkeys, lots and lots of turkey as well as quite a few deer.

i took photos of many deer, but none of my shots came out. On a number of greens, we would look in the brush around the green and see them everywhere. All of the courses were in incredible condition and tough, very tough.

After relaxing for a day, we hit the Wasatch Mountain “Mountain” Course. i didn’t take any pictures because i was too busy hitting and looking for a lot of golf balls. It’s a shame as the Mountain course is one of the beautiful courses i’ve ever played. Turkeys, deer, and geese were all around the eighteen holes.

Our last round was at Park City’s public golf course created by Jack Nicklaus. No photos there as we had been there before and i was photoed out. Great course. As with the others, the course conditions was almost perfect.

Since we were on a guys’ trip, we sought to dine at the best places. We did.

Shabu is a Japanese fusion restaurant. A late afternoon rain kept us from sitting on the back patio, our favorite tables on previous trips. The firecracker shrimp and the nigiri sashimi more than made up eating in an inside booth, which was okay in its own right.

We climbed the length of Main Street to another favorite, Grappa. When Maureen and i began our annual ski trip to Park City/Deer Valley, Grappa was an old Victorian house turned into an Italian restaurant. Over the years, it morphed into a high end eatery with a redo that is modern with glass walls looking out on Main Street and a small park, including outdoor dining (not used extensively in winter. The menu is extensive. My scallops on polenta, the Italian name for grits, was superb.

We also dined at River Horse and The Butcher Shop. If you are ever in Park City, i would recommend any of these, plus several others.

My lone disappointment — crappy golf does not qualify as a disappointment: i knew that would be the case for me — was not going to listen to a band at the Egyptian Theater. The Egyptian is the home of the Sundance Film Festival. This was not the season for that. Being away from my home of Lebanon, Tennessee and being old, i tend to listen to the bluegrass from my past, catching up with new bluegrass bands only when i get back home and visit The Station Inn in Nashville. But a Nashville bluegrass band was playing at the Egyptian. As we walked by on our climb to Grappa, the marquee caught my eye. Since coming home, i have listened to the performers: good stuff. But when i saw that marquee, i wondered what “Bluegrass Soul.” was all about.

Coming home, i was in trouble. You see, a couple of years ago, we got a portable air conditioner for the several days each year the dry hot winds of a Santa Ana blows through the Southwest corner. We haven’t needed one this summer as it had been cool and comfortable all summer. When a Santa Ana was predicted while i was golfing, the forecast declared the temperatures would be about the same as they had been all summer. So, i did not retrieve our portable air conditioner as it was stored in the garage attic. Bad move.

The Santa Ana decided to let our home in the Southwest corner scorch. The highs while Pete and i were gone were over 100 degrees. As noted above, our temperatures in Utah rarely reached the 80s and if so, were in the low 80s. It began to cool off when i returned home. If she hadn’t been relieved the heat had receded, i think she might have been mad at me.

i wouldn’t have blamed her.

As i have mentioned before, i still long to have known my grandfathers both of whom passed over that bridge before i was born.

Joe Blythe Prichard died of what i am pretty sure was asthma in 1932. He and his wife, Katherine Webster Prichard, lived in Lebanon all of their lives except for a brief period when he played semi-pro baseball in Arkansas and from 1929 through 1932, and when they moved to Gotha, Florida with the hopes of the climate improving his failing health. When the move did not produce improvement, they returned to their home in Lebanon he had built on the farm of his father-in-law’s property on Hunter’s Point Pike.

Hiram Culley Jewell died of tuberculosis in 1939. He and his wife, Carrie Myrtle Orrand Jewell, moved about twenty miles from near Statesville to Lebanon around 1900. He had been a farmer in Statesville, worked at Lebanon’s pencil factory, bought a steam engine tractor in 1918 and turned it into a portable sawmill. He worked the mill until he lost a large part of his hand in the sawmill. He then was the caretaker for Lebanon City Schools, McClain and Highland Heights elementary schools and Lebanon High School. He installed the gym floor in the basement of the old high school located on East High Street.

(Note: i have several photos of Culley but could not find them before leaving for a golf trip with my friend, Peter Toennies in Park City, Utah — more on that later — but i will add the photo when i return to the Southwest corner).

i have other photos of them. i have a few stories about them. i know what they did for a living. When i asked my mother and father about their fathers, i got some of those stories, but they never really talked about what the two men were like, what they thought about things, just facts and their memories.

By virtue of a divorce and distance, i have not spent enough time with my grandson Samuel James Jewell Gander, named after my father, not me. If someone asked Sam about me currently, i don’t think he would know much more about me than i know about my grandfathers.

i’ve doubled down on leaving him enough of me in writing that he should have some idea after i have passed over that bridge.

For Sam:

Practicality without logic is impractical.

Toughness without compassion is abuse.

Loving without sharing is guilt.

Religion without humanity is demagoguery.

i must confess i am curious to find out how many folks will voice disapproval.

A couple of nights ago, the old song “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain” got stuck in my brain. i was also thinking about how the sun runs low from Mount Miguel east of our house in Bonita and bends over the Mexican border in the winter.

The thoughts kept gathering, and i thought of how Joel Chandler Harris has been vilified for his wonderful “Uncle Remus” stories and how Faulkner has been praised for his accurate phonetic dialogue of folks in the South who had darker skin tones than mine. i thought of those folks heritage and the deep rooted Christian beliefs that were part of it all, and it all kept rumbling around in my head until this came out.

Another vivid memory was the innumerable road trips my family made to Red Bank, a suburb of Chattanooga to spend the weekend with Aunt Evelyn (my mother’s oldest sister), Uncle Pipey, Nancy, and Johnny Orr. Many of those trips were in the 1956 Oldsmobile Super 88 before AC and prior to any interstate cutting through the beauty of the Tennessee hills and mountains.

We headed out south from the Old Murfreesboro road, an extension of South Maple, caught US 41 east just past Murfreesboro, then a town about twice the size of Lebanon but still a town. We headed southeast through the farmlands and Manchester before hitting the mountain, Monteagle Mountain, that is, where 41 turned into a myriad of switchbacks up to Monteagle, the town on the crest . Heading down, we would pass through Jasper where we always, always, slowed to the speed limit. i think the major cash flow of the town was produced by the sheriff and his deputy who always sat on the city limits awaiting anyone who exceeded the thirty mile speed limit by even a mile: a legend in Tennessee road lore. 41 clung to the side of the Tennessee River, ran below the bluffs of Lookout Mountain and made the turn south on US 27 to Red Bank. That was usually on Friday night with a return on late Sunday afternoon.

The three siblings in the backseat were restless. We picked up many road games.

There was “thank-you-maams.” South Maple and the initial section of Murfreesboro Pike was a series of humps in the road. When the car hit them going pretty fast (our father was never known for going slow), the backseat trio would bounce up and then land again, all yelling, “THANK YOU, MAAM.”

My brother Joe and sister Martha may add a whole bunch of other games, but there are two i remember the most.

The long one that could have lasted the entire trip either way was “Counting Cows.” i’m guessing Joe, the youngest shared the competition with his sister or me. The idea was to count the cows in the fields on your side of the road. i know a white mule counted as five cows and there were other point bonuses, but the big one was if the car passed a cemetery on your side of the road, you lost all of your cows, etc. points. Now, the amazing thing about our game on returning to Lebanon, no matter who had the lead, we would pass Cedar Grove Cemetery on the east and Wilson County Memorial Grounds on the west. Everybody lost.

The other major children’s occupation was singing. There were bunches of them but the one that sticks in my mind was “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain.”

She’ll be coming ’round the mountain when she comes;
She’ll be coming ’round the mountain when she comes;
She’ll be coming ’round the mountain;
She’ll be coming ’round the mountain;
She’ll be coming ’round the mountain when she comes.

She’ll be ridin’ six white horses when she comes;
She’ll be ridin’ six white horses when she comes;
She’ll be ridin’ six white horses;
She’ll be ridin’ six white horses;
She’ll be ridin’ six white horses when she comes.

And we’ll all go out to greet her when she comes;
Yeah, we’ll all go out to greet her when she comes;
Oh, we’ll all go out to greet her;
Yeah, we’ll all go out to greet her;
We’ll all go out to greet her when she comes

i hope everyone understands this a tribute, not a prejudicial comment. i honestly believe i don’t have a racial prejudiced bone or drop of blood in my body. i’m just not terribly politically correct. After all, i am a pocket of resistance. Sitting here outside in the Southwest corner in the the cool evening, all of this struck me, moved me, and i wrote this:

dun seen it,
i’d dun seen it
swinging low over de mountain
wid a ball of fire ridin’
on de chariot
pulled by de six white hosses
but
she ain’t no Mother Jones
and
de fire am bright
and
de lawd is hauling down
de five-mile road
to glory
hallelujah.