Georgia - Day 33 - Berry College

James "Sloppy" Floyd State Park, Summerville
Sunday, 30 April 2023

When Dext and I went out for the 1st walk it was just starting to sprinkle, and we saw lightning once but it was too far away for thunder.  Soon after we got back the rain came, and by 5:30 it was pouring.  The forecast was for 40% rain, so it seemed like we got a whole lot of 40%.

The slope of this campsite, combined with the framing around the bench seats in the cabin, have created a new exercise program for me: to get in and out of the seat I have to heave myself up the slope and over the framing every time I want to get up - and the critters see to it that I have to get up often. 

The morning sequence goes like this: I give them all food and sit down to have a 1st cup of coffee; Lily eats a few bites and then goes elsewhere; Bucky stops eating from his bowl and comes over to try to eat from Lily's, so I have to get up to protect it; then Bucky goes over to force Jimmy off his food, so I have to get up to protect him and divert Bucky back to his own bowl; Jimmy stops eating from his bowl and goes to check on Bucky's, so I have to get up to protect that bowl too; Lily comes back to her spot and wants me to give her her food back, so I have to get up to do that; she eats only a few more mouthfuls and leaves again, so I have to get back up to protect her bowl; both kittens again decide to eat out of each other's bowls - and by this time you're wondering why I don't just let them.  And that's because up until just recently, Jimmy was eating far more than his share if I didn't supervise - and gaining too much weight.  And I give Lily senior food and the kittens get kitten food (and Dext gets dog food, which he eats too fast for them to get any, though they used to try anyway) so everybody needs to stick to their own diets.

But all this up and down and up and down is happening before I can even finish my first cup of coffee.  If it didn't seem like cruelty, I'd refuse to feed them till after I'd had some coffee in peace.

Anyway, all that up and down happens wherever we are - it's just a lot more strenuous when gravity shoves me against the window and I have to get from there across the bench seat and over the frame to stand up on a sloped floor.  As it does here.  Like I said - an exercise program.

today's route

Luckily the rain lifted as we were leaving the campground.

Just north of the city limits of Rome is Berry College, which is where I was going this morning.  A million years ago, when I was in elementary school and our family lived in Waco, we got to be good friends with the Blackwood family.  Carol was only a year or two younger than me, Patty was exactly David's age (well, actually, 12 hours younger, I think), and Billy was everybody's little brother.  So Patty and Louise were good friends and Carol and I were good friends and their parents were great so we always thought we were lucky.

Then everybody moved away and time moved on too, as it does, and I think Patty and Louise stayed in touch and I know our mothers did, but the families didn't get together very often.  Still, you know how it is with old friends - if they're really friends then they're always friends.

Carol has been working at Berry College for some years now, so seeing her was one of the reasons I came to Rome, and today was the day.  We met at the entrance to the college so she could vouch for me with the security guard, and we spent most of the day either catching up or touring the campus.

But our first stop - the parking lot that had room for my RV - had a sight to see on its own.  Berry College has its own nesting Bald Eagle pair, and here's the sign that explains them:

details enlarged below

Near the top of the tree in the center of this photo is the eagles' nest -
the thing that looks like a big thick blob among the top branches.

Can you see the eagle?  He or she is sitting on a left-side
branch about 1/3 of the way from the top.

Carol told me about the colorful history of Berry College.  In 1902 in rural Georgia, education was hard to come by - especially for farmers' children who were needed to work on their families' farms.  That's the year that Martha Berry convinced some of the area farmers to send their sons to her new Boys Industrial School.  In exchange for a high-quality education including vocational training, the boys would help to supply the school's needs.  Over time she established for the school a dairy where the boys worked, including care for the cows; fields which the boys plowed and planted with vegetables and grains, then cared for the crops and harvested them; a water wheel to run a grist mill to process the grains; a kiln where the boys made the bricks the school's buildings were made with - you get the idea.  Some of those programs still exist at the college.

In 1909 Miss Berry overcame the reluctance of parents who agreed to send their girls for a similar education bargain.  In 1926, the 2 schools became a junior college - then a senior college that graduated its first class in 1932.  Which goes to prove there's more than one way to skin a cat - which is a dreadful metaphor and I don't want to know where it came from.

Some of these are the original bricks made by an early class of boys.
As you can see, they were well-made, being still in use 100 years later.

In the 1930s, Miss Berry's unflagging fundraising efforts paid off quite handsomely (literally) in a gift from Henry and Clara Ford - a gift that built a substantial complex of buildings still being used today.

If the buildings below look familiar, it may be because Remember the Titans was partly filmed here.

Sort of a medieval castle look about these buildings.

Another angle of those buildings - though
you can see that here, too, there are hills to deal with.

In fact, all these Ford buildings sit up on a hilltop overlooking the main campus.

I took this hoping the original pane windows would show - really lovely.

Carol pointed out this building to show there's a courtyard
and further buildings beyond just the ones visible from the front.
But see details from this photo below. 

This is detail from above the arched doorway.

And this is even further detail from the photo above,
showing Miss Berry's motto:
"Not to be ministered unto but to minister."

This is what the inside of that arched area looks like -
in attention to details, they tiled the ceilings.

We went downtown to a Mellow Mushroom Pizza place.  The chain was founded in Atlanta and I've seen them all over, it seems.  They're mostly in the South, but they have branches as far west as Arizona, and north to Ohio and Kansas.  Anyway, I learned today that they make good pizza and I took home half of mine - premade supper.

There are quite a few historic-type markers on downtown buildings like this one.

For some reason this image fascinated me - in 21 years this location went
from a grocery to a photography studio to a cigar maker to the Chamber of Commerce.

And I found this one that was fascinating for its very different history.

The original building was burned on Sherman's March to the Sea.
As you see, Yankees were Masons too and helped rebuild the temple.

This is the front door -
you can see the plaque to the right of it.

And this is the whole building.  I took it because the cornerstone (the white thing below and right of the blue sign) says the building belonged to the Masonic Lodge.
The lodge entrance is just visible (the black awning) beyond the maroon awning.

This brick building is in the Gothic Revival style - not what I call a graceful style but certainly impressive.  And yes, the building really does slope - you can tell by looking at the sidewalk it fronts on.

In 1886, Rome experienced its worst flood, which crested at 40.3'.  (Along with its 7 hills, Rome has 3 rivers running through or near it.)  The Masonic building got swamped with 7' of water.  Not really something I'd think about in downtown Rome, GA, but it happened.

From town we went back to the school to its historic water mill.

And here's the mill itself:

It was overhauled and rebuilt in 1985 and
is still used to grind corn meal on special occasions.

We did a lot of walking around the campus today, so Dext was the beneficiary - getting more exercise than usual.

On another visit I'll go to Oak Hill and the Martha Berry Museum in the home where she used to live, sitting across the road from the campus.  Miss Berry's home is the fancy "plantation" house Reese Witherspoon's character says she grew up in in the movie Sweet Home Alabama.

Later, Carol and I sat around talking for a long time - very nice - and it was after 4:00 when I finally decided I'd better get us back to the campground.  It was a half-hour drive away and I usually feed the critters before 4:30.

Later I took Dext around the campground again, but this time I took what I thought would be a shortcut - the Blueberry Thicket Trail that cut through the thick trees and bushes from one side of the campground to the other.  I wanted to avoid the very steep hill a walk around the whole campground included - but it turned out to be a sort of out-of-the frying-pan situation.  I hadn't looked at the campground map very closely and missed the fact that the trail was actually pretty long and not a shortcut at all.  It was pleasant enough and Dext enjoyed it, but after a while it seemed to go on and on (because I'd mistakenly thought it was short).  Still, Dext definitely got his exercise quota today - and so did I.