Riverbend Journal

  22 October 2024 The day following my concussion, I finished the tasks at hand. Namely I got the fence around the strawberry beds hopefully deer proof until spring when I can hook the electric fencer back onto it. I hauled away the tomato vines and okra trees to the compost pile to compost. From past experience, neither degrade enough over winter to really till well the following year and mostly just get tangled in the tiller tines in big balls. I removed the last half of the fence posts that supported the tomato cages, digging them out with a shovel and put everything away. As a final act, I mowed the straw and smaller garden vegetable matter, chopping it up into fine pieces and spreading it around to decompose in place and be tilled in come springtime. The remaining greenery are what is left of our egg plant and one nearly nearly dead pumpkin vine with two small and very green pumpkins. Since I will have to mow a time or two to mulch up the leaves that pile up on our lawn, I can mow

Today is a day that I look forward to every four years. For some reason, the whole democracy thing, voting, staying up late and watching the returns come in while pundits analyze everything with a microscope, just excites me. It is like unwrapping a present from a stranger and not sure what you will find in the box when you get it open.  Lately though, this day is a double edged sword of sorts. In days gone by, the following day used to be a comment or two at the watercooler at work and then life went back to the way it was. These days however, the days, weeks, months and even years after the election are filled with people on the losing extreme side carping on social media about how the world is ending and spending their days finding fault instead of looking to find middle ground for a solution that benefits everyone. I wish those people could hear how ridiculous they sound. This has gone on for the last four or five elections and to my knowledge, I'm still here and the world hasn

  Fence post driver image ripped from the internet After nearly five decades of fairly clean living, I managed to give myself a concussion for only the second time in my life. The first occurred only seven or eight years ago when someone blew a stoplight and hit me nearly head on. Fortunately it was at fairly low speeds at the time of impact so I only suffered from a mild case of whiplash, which my doctor informed me is the same thing as a concussion. I hoped at the time that would be a one and done event. Nowhere in my wildest did I think I would ever give myself a concussion with my own hands! While cleaning up our garden for the year, I noticed the deer had trampled over our garden netting fence and trampled through the strawberry beds. I guess they did it just to see what my reaction would be. Besides uttering a few choice words which I can't repeat here, I decided to reinforce the fence by putting metal fence posts in the corner to allow me to stretch it so it couldn't sag

Two weeks before the sentence of B.A. McComb, to be hung until dead, was to be carried out, a stay of execution was issued by the Iowa Supreme court until the case could be heard on appeal, most likely not until the December term. This information was duly passed on to Judge Trimble who passed it on to Sheriff Derby. The public however, was in the dark about this stay of execution. By mid morning of July 27, 1864, the streets of Ottumwa were quickly filling up and by noon, they were said to be crowded. It was a peaceful crowd of 2000+ men, women and children who presumably had come to see McComb hung. At noon, the time of the execution, the crowd centered around the jail and a dozen of the more vocal started shouting for the jailer to bring out the prisoner so that he may be hung.  Sheriff Derby became involved and a pushing match ensued with the Sheriff knocking down several of the ringleaders and calling for more assistance. Four high ranking citizens came to Derby's aid, Senator

  1860 Plat Map of Springfield, Mercer, Pennsylvania I recently discovered this plat map dated 1860 of Mercer County, Pennsylvania showing where my 4th and 5th great grandfathers, both named Adam Grim, lived. (Bottom third and left of center next to the color changed notch.) This is significant because both go missing from between 1850 and 1880 leading to a great confusion between armchair genealogists that often combine them into one person. I wrote about this a year and a half ago here. In 1860, my 5th great grandfather Adam Grim Sr. is likely dead but his son was most likely living at the site of his mill along the Indian Run river that is a tributary to the larger Nashannock Creek that you can see more clearly in the above map. Adam A. Grim Jr. though was very much alive as he is living with two different children in the 1880 Census taken a few week apart. Why he never shows up in the 1860 or 1870 Censuses, I can't say for sure. Perhaps because of his itinerant nature, possibly