At Lake Tomahawk

From the Swannanoa Valley Museum and History Center;

In the early days of 1913, there were plans to create a Methodist colony just northwest of Black Mountain. Part of this plan included the construction of Lake Tomahawk. However, when the colony's plans fell through, the town decided to use the area for a recreation center instead. With funding from the Civil Works Administration and later the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the town began developing the site. On Labor Day weekend in 1934, Lake Tomahawk and the Community House were officially opened with a fun-filled day of water sports. Unfortunately, a few years later in 1938, the lake had to be closed to swimmers due to water quality issues, and a pool was constructed to continue providing recreational activities for the community.

For my Sepia Saturday contribution (above) I show an old post card, undated. It was good to capture the history of the development of the lake. It's almost unrecognizable due to lots of bare areas without the current trees and homes. The roads ring true however. The dam is in the lower quadrant. Lakeview Center building had a red roof, and all along that north bank of the lake, a lot of little fingers of land had not yet been formed, nor the island.

There is little space in the aerial photo for the pool which was built on the landward side of the center building...but it's there now!
 

Looking up from the lake level at the bank that leads up to the swimming  pool. This bank has been planted with wildflowers. The building behind these photos is the pool house with showers.

The umbrellas and fence delineate the pool.

Yesterday while I ate lunch in the dining room on the second floor of the Lakeview Center, I saw a friend with her daughter and granddaughter at the pool. Unfortunately for them, a sweat bee got inside granddaughter's suit and stung her 3 times. It was the first time I knew sweat bees could sting when they feel threatened. Not the kind of thing one wants to learn!

I also learned that one should really not make big decisions when sick! Hey, I knew that!

I decided to use the last day of Amazon Prime's special discount days to purchase a new microwave. It's been a week without, and I really don't like living without one. So I picked one out, and a little boom box so I could play my CD's,  since all my current players have died.

I placed the order. Then when confirmation came it was all mixed up  (anything to do with my not having ordered often, or the sick brain?) There were two microwaves ordered, on two separate orders. And the boom box had been $37 on sale but I was being charged $46 for it. Not being in the mood to straighten anything out (it's impossible anyway) I just canceled the extra microwave and the boom box. Fortunately they don't place the charges until items are shipped! Then I remembered something else.

I hadn't paid that much attention to the size and they all look the same size in the photos on line. But I remembered 15 inches. So I got out my trusty yard stick, and found I barely had 15 inches clearance. Looked back at the model I'd ordered, and (you guessed it) it is 15.9"... so I canceled that microwave too.

And I checked on line this morning and there are no charges from Amazon!

Today's quote:

Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines. -R. Buckminster Fuller, engineer, designer, and architect (12 Jul 1895-1983)

Sharing with Floral Friday Fotos and Sepia Saturday

-----------

Today's quote:

The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without. -Ernest Hemingway, author, journalist, Nobel laureate (21 Jul 1899-1961)

Some old cars

For Sepia Saturday this week,  I remember going to races...mainly cars, and even a few horses. But never got to sit in a car to observe a horse race, as the photo depicted shows.

So I'll share a few car photos from my "Sepia album" but none racing!

1909 22-year-old Alice Ramsey was the first woman to drive across the USA.

A car that didn't stop at the edge of the Galveston Seawall around 1920s.

 Car and homemade trailer on U.S. 101 near King City, California. By Dorothea Lange after 1936.  Middle aged man and wife, from Wisconsin said: 'You don't know how many people are in trailers until you get to Florida'

Today's quote:

 

To know someone’s pain is to share in it. And to share in it is to relieve some of it.

NNEDI OKORAFOR

Black Mountain Tailgate Market Spring of 24

A few of my pieces displayed...they change weekly!

A lively market, with live entertainers too. 

More here.

For Sepia Saturday

I love living in North Carolina

 Today I feel like sharing a bit of history, and look at how it's right under our noses here in the mountains of western North Carolina.

Skyline Inn, Little Switzerland, NC, 1948 Built by John Greer and his wife Ada. (info from Michael

 Thrift)

Skyline Inn, Little Switzerland NC, 2017

(Yes a repost...) Hwy 221 North in front of the John English Farm in North Cove, North Carolina. near Linville Caverns or Linvill Falls, 1930 and 2022

Squire John Stepp’s Stage Coach Inn (probably posted before)

The Inn was originally built as a stagecoach stop by John Stepp around 1830 and was renovated and expanded in 1940. At its peak, the Inn had would host as many as 16-20 people for breakfast that were staying in the eight available rooms.

The Black Mountain Inn today (formerly Stepp's Inn) located on Old US 70 about 4 blocks from my home on Blue Ridge Rd.

At the turn of the 20th century it operated for several years as the Franklin Humanitarian Home (a TB sanatorium).

Notably, in 1940, as the famed Black Mountain College approached its zenith, the property was purchased by Mary Aleshire and Daisey Erb. Mrs. Aleshire was the manager of the Norton Art Gallery in Palm Beach, Florida. She artfully restored and updated the historic property. In 1942, the house was opened as the Oak Knoll Art Studio, which served primarily as a summer artist's retreat for Mrs. Aleshire and her many famous guest; Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Norman Rockwell, Helen Keller, Anne Sullivan and Joan Sutherland among them.

In 1965, wishing to preserve the house, and prevent commercial development the Aleshires sold the house to their caretaker Jim Reid.

The house was purchased again in 1989 and lovingly restored by its current owners, who transformed it into the Black Mountain Inn.

1954- Penland Post Office and General Store. On the banks of North Toe River and the railroad line to Spruce Pine NC. 

Penland School of Crafts has long been teaching crafts of the mountains as well as more modern media such as glass blowing. The workshops and series of classes are attended by adults from all over the world these days. Everything from woodworking, textile arts, metal work with blacksmithing or jewelry making to wood fired pottery classes are very popular.

The "Weaving Shed."

Making Iron Tools with Anna Koplik and studio assistant Sean Fitzsimmons, By Penland on May 21, 2024 01:27 pm

Patton Ave, Asheville NC 1898

This is now a great place to find enjoyable entertainment at various bars and taverns and enjoy a good meal at a variety of restaurants, as well as shop at a wide variety of stores.

33-Patton-Ave-Asheville-NC today

Patton Ave. Asheville today

Sharing a bit of history on Sepia Saturday today.

Today's quote:

Thoreau said: " "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

It's 5 o'clock somewhere

Unknown photographer and place

A few cowboys enjoying a drink in Old Tascosa, Texas, 1907.

A little store in Westlaco TX 1964

Women having tea in New Zeeland, 1890

 Sepia Saturday  offers a prompt of "Drinks before Dinner."

Today's Quote:

When we begin to listen with our hearts rather than our heads, our whole world changes and becomes softer.

Sewing and other work

OK, I'll get on board and come up with some sepia photos that match the meme!

Sharing with Sepia Saturday this week.

A dogtrot shows in this abandoned home, a design of many where there was an open hall between the two side portions (often with a fireplace in each side.) 

Women in Madison County (right next to mine) 1936. The quilting frame would be worked on all sides by visiting "quilting bee" women, then raised up to the ceiling so the family could use the space the rest of the day.

Women were the seamstresses of the clothes, usually with a treadle Singer sewing machine once they were around. Before that, all men's, women's, boys and girls clothing in the countryside were hand sewn. Here the girls and women wear clothes made from flour sack materials in the 1930s.

Appalachian women either washing clothes or making soap. Certainly not the stewpot!

Today is:

National Puppy Day, 

World Meteorological Day

Today's quote:

The way the world actually is, is an enormously complex interrelated organism. —Alan Watts

Chasing history

 Houses on Vance Ave. that might have been pictured recently in my post featuring a 1915 postcard...HERE.

The other day I wanted to check out the newest coffee shop, "Recess." It had just opened, but I also heard their baked goods had sold out quickly. This was around 3 pm, so I didn't really want/need coffee. 

It's on the left-hand side of this building on Black Mountain Ave.

While on the right end is a meat place. On the other side of the parking lot is Louise's Kitchen which serves breakfast and lunch (and often has a line waiting).

But let's look from the view the post card had...sort of. It's now an auto repair place, instead of a good old hotel which burned down many years ago...new building completely.

The railroad tracks haven't changed, and what I thought was a berm along the far side is really just how the railroad cut into the mountain, which shows in the land below the tracks on Vance.

And here's the post card so you can actually compare perhaps the buildings in 1915 to those in 2024.

So I drove slowly west on Vance, taking photos of the older houses.

On the north/uphill side of Vance St...one of the first old houses.

This one is on the south side of the street, and connected to next door...

This church which is pretty new.

Back looking north, up the hill, I noticed several of these older houses have been cut up into apartments.

These were the only pair of the hip-roofed cottages, which would possibly have been around that long ago. (south side of street)

My last shot of a house on the uphill side of Vance Ave. 

I'm not convinced any are the same buildings. Maybe the register of deeds...but I'm not interested in that deep a search. I want to be making little pottery dragons, remember?

Sharing again with Sepia Saturday. This is where those old photos often take us, to see what's there now!

Today's quote:

The grandeur of human actions is measured by the inspiration from which they spring. Happy is he who bears a god within, and who obeys it.—Louis Pasteur

Today March 9: 

National Barbie Day, 

Get Over It Day

Two years ago, March 11, my blog was sharing some spring beauties before a snow was due to fall.