Sometimes I am fond of Tennessee, sometimes I am not. Mixed. It does not have the prettiness of the rolling hills of Kentucky or the well ordered, size manageable farms. It feels more scrappy either becoming or trying reinvention. The water ways that made for thriving towns and the railroads that connected to the burgeoning west no longer carry commerce or travelers. The River Museum in Savannah (not Georgia, who knew) gives a vivid picture of how life had been. The Civil War battles show its importance in connecting the western Confederate states to the power center of Virginia and make the Western campaign a true strategic plan. I sense that the Civil War really made logistics the backbone of this first modern war and of any subsequent military action. How do you move armies of thousands, and their horses, and their equipment and their feed, both human and animal? Today, how do you move munitions, materiel, and men? More than once on my battlefield tours the lack of water for soldiers has been mentioned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite my misgivings about Tennessee, a middle country ride from Savanah to Centerville on Route 128 then 438, especially the latter, made for a wonderful rural drive. I was so pleased to get off a road type I have only found in Tennessee. The road, with a reddish tarmac, looked smooth. But it is washboard. I think because too many heavy trucks (and there are heavy trucks on almost all roads) use these two lane roads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A loaded logging truck at a four-way stop moved ahead of me. Following it, my cab filled with a wonderful smell of sap, and fresh cut wood. A little while later, wood smoke, from someone burning downed tree limbs, replaced the fresh, green. It seems that the last winter has been harsh. Both in Shiloh battlefield and piled along sides of the roads rise large piles of downed tree limbs, some neatly sawn, many with jagged breaks. Some piles stand bigger than a two car garage. Those storms remnants are in such contrast to the still and heat that hangs on the valley floors after driving through the tunnels made by trees shading the hilly winding roads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Sometimes I am fond of Tennessee, sometimes I am not. Mixed. It does not have the prettiness of the rolling hills of Kentucky or the well ordered, size manageable farms. It feels more scrappy either becoming or trying reinvention. The water ways that made for thriving towns and the railroads that connected to the burgeoning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,10,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapter-4-back-to-ri","category-vignettes-the-road","category-ww-on-the-wroad"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":670,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623\/revisions\/670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omp.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}