2012 Alabama Fall Colors

It’s  been a somewhat strange weather year and it affected our seasons.  Spring sprang about two or three weeks early and now fall has extended itself about the same.  My wife still has flowers blooming outside and we’ve only had two light frosts so far.  With tomorrow being the last day of November, colder weather seems to be still snug in it’s bed after hitting the snooze alarm.

I’m not complaining, fall has been especially beautiful this year.  I took pictures on three different occasions when I thought the colors had peaked, all several days apart.  So, if you haven’t seen an Alabama Fall…enjoy!



And maybe just a few more…


“God looked over everything He had made; it was so good, so very good!”  Genesis 1:31  The Message Bible

Bynum Cemetery at Maynard's Cove

I said in my last blog that we again visited Maynard’s Cove to find the Bynum family cemetery.  This time we traveled County Road 79 from Scottsboro, Alabama and turned right on County Road 21.  This descended into the cove from the west side and is quite a steep drive.  Just as the road flattens out at the bottom Jackson County Road 533 turns right and leads to the cemetery.  It is a narrow road which crosses a cry creek bed.  The road dead ends at a gate and if you aren’t careful, you’ll miss the gravesites.



There is a one car pull-off about two hundred feet from the gate, we parked  there and found the cemetery on a slight rise on the right.  There were no signs at the turn off from Highway 21 or at the end of the road.  My GPS marked it at 34  45.129′ & -86  06.009 and in decimal degrees 34.75215 and -86.10015

We found it to be in a dismal state.  Many of the graves are only marked with rocks not much higher than the weeds.


Most had no engraving or were deteriorated to the point of being illegible.  Of the few that were, these were the pictures;

This might be a good time to mention when near old gravestones, please do not scratch with them any object or use any compound to try to clean the stone.  Everything I’ve read said that you would do more harm than good.

I’ll include one more that was difficult for me to read. 
I also found a link listing the names of those buried there.














In my mind I would assume that the cemetery is near ground zero for Isaac Newton Bynum’s original home site.  Looking past the end of the road, there is one house and you can almost visualize what it might have looked like in the early 1800′s.  River flooding must have made the cove a fertile topsoil area and springs would have provided plenty of water.

The Bynum family was not the only one here.  The Maynard, Holland, and Proctor families were also early settlers.

It’s difficult to find Maynard’s Cove history on the internet but one interesting bit I found was that the churches were destroyed in a 1932 tornado.  God was obviously important because I found a reference to the Mud Creek Baptist Association being one of the oldest in the state.

There is a quote by Alex Haley which says, “In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are and where we came from.”  I encourage you to look back at your family history and discover the treasures that lie buried beneath the sands of time.

Genealogy Bug Bites Me

I came home from work recently to find that my wife had decided to do a trial membershp with Ancestry.com.  I thought, Ok, I’ve got seven days to fill in the blanks on my six or seven generation list.  At the time, I believed that was plenty, kind of like Bill Gates with his “64k should be enough for everyone”.

Quickly learning that genealogy can be addictive, I spent the next five evenings between arriving at home and bedtime, digging into the past.  I found my way around Ancestry.com quickly and discovered  how difficult it can be to solve the tiniest of mysteries.  On my Grandfather, Wallace Cox’s side, I couldn’t get past the fact no one seemed to know his mother, Emma Cox’s maiden name.  I hit a wall that couldn’t be scaled.  It would have been so simple to ask, “Hey Granddaddy, what was your Mom’s maiden name?”  But I never did, and all those who would have know it, have also died.  I’ve sent out some emails and will come back to solve that problem later.

With that problem unresolved, I jumped over to the Bynum side and traced the family’s migration from John Bainham’s voyage from England to Surry, Virginia in 1616 at the age of 26.  Spelling was more phonetic back then and the name eventually changed to Bynum.  Each generation seemed to want a new place.    There were relocations from Surry, Isle of Wight County Virginia, to Abermarle, North Carolina by 1746, then Pendleton County, South Carolina in 1781.  Isaac Newton Bynum(1757-1845) moved to Maynard’s Cove, in Jackson County, Alabama, after the Indians had been driven out.  His ancentors moved on to Blount and Dekalb Counties.

The name Isaac Newton Bynum intriqued me so I decided to go to Maynard’s Cove to take a picture of his grave marker as a primary photo in my genealogy list.  With the help of Google maps I found the cove near Scottsboro, Alabama, which was only a two hour drive.  Google also marked the cemetery halfway around the loop of highway 28 which was the main road through the cove.  All too easy I thought…

Not wanting to seem overly excited about a road trip to a cemetery, I suggested that we make a shopping trip to an old favorite store we visited several years ago called “Unclaimed Baggage” in downtown Scottsboro.  That worked well, so the next weekend four of us went shopping with only a quick side trip on the agenda for Maynard’s Cove.

The shopping stop was a dissappointment with zero good buys.  I was hoping the Cove wouldn’t be another.  We followed E. Willow St. and turned left on Tupelo Road which is County Highway 21.  The road was narrow leaving Scottsboro and gave me the feeling the asphalt would soon turn into dirt, but it did not.  About ten minutes out of town the scenery opened up to wide vista’s between two or three mountains of the Appalachian chain.  We stopped a couple of times for pictures then turned right on County Road 28.  It was nice scenery all the way and I understood why it would have been a great place to settle in.

We stopped near an old farmhouse to take pictures and suddenly realized there were no man-made noises.  It was awesome.  Another discovery a minute later was there were no bars on the cell phone, again, to me awesome!


Everyone enjoyed the trip to one of our families historical sites.  We did not find the cemetery on that trip and being pushed for time, had to start home.   We finished the Highway 28 loop and turned right on Highway 33 and headed toward the town of Hollywood and Highway 72.  On Highway 33, we quickly were back in civilization with many run down homes and a trailer park which had seen better days.  I was thinking that time seemed to have slowed down, maybe even rewound a bit while we were in the Cove.  That’s about when then the cooling towers of Belefonte Nuclear power plant came into view, a startling reminder that time and progress march on.

Judy and I went back to the Cove the following Saturday when we had more time and I did my research properly.  I’ll tell you about that next time.

Share this:

• Press This
• Twitter1
• Facebook1
• 
  

Don't Hate Your Union Either

 Hi, I'm an employee of AT&T and the following is my opinion...

This is just a short follow-up on my Don’t Hate Your Job blog.  Some of you may think I’ve become anti-union but that really isn’t the case.  It’s like the Democratic Party, they left me a long time ago.  I stayed with the union for as long as I could, thinking that they existed for my own good and that they just had a few bad habits.  Habits like supporting every political candidate that I was against and being militantly pro-choice.  Almost every good thread of value that holds our society together, they seem to oppose.  Their work as a protector of union employees seems to me, to have deteriorated at an alarming pace since AT&T purchased BellSouth.  The Union itself needs to do a little refocusing on its core values and what it was designed to accomplish.  I was certainly not the only disillusioned member.  I was sent a link for a CWA District 3: Petition of NO Confidence.  It’s a pretty interesting read with almost 3,000 supporters.  It wasn’t widely publicized or the numbers would have been much greater.

One Union member I know had to threaten Labor Board charges just to get a grievance accepted recently.  It should never get to that point in an organization that is designed to HELP employees!  It’s almost like the Red Cross refusing to give blood because they’re just too involved in sports.

My last blog mentioned how to leave the Union and I want to make sure I don’t mislead you in any way.  Another technician emailed me the procedure so here it is;

 Cancellation requests must be postmarked during the 10 day period preceding the expiration date of this Agreement and the same 10 day period each year during the life of this Agreement. Your opt-out period for 2012 was July 26 to August 4 of 2012.
CONTRACT: CWA District 3 BST Utility Operations
Section A.  Except as provided below, or as provided in Memorandum of Understanding between the parties, or as otherwise provided by applicable law, all cards may only be revoked during the 10 day period preceding the expiration date of this Agreement and the same 10 day period each year during the life of this Agreement.  Revocation of dues must be accomplished as follows (all conditions must be met):
*       Cancellation requests must be written or typed.
         *      Cancellation requests must be sent by certified mail.
         *      Cancellation requests must be postmarked during the 10 day period preceding the expiration date of this Agreement and the same 10 day period each year during the life of this Agreement. Your opt-out period for is 2012 period will be July 26 to August 4 of 2012.

Sometimes, an organization can only be corrected by the shock of bleeding away its members.  If you feel that way, then that information is what you need.  If you think an organization can be changed from within and want to work to that end, great!  I wish you the best, but I feel you have an uphill battle against overwhelming odds.

I will note also that AT&T announced September 28th that “wireline employees represented by the Communication Workers of America failed to ratify a three-year contract for the AT&T Southeast region”.  I consider that good news and a complete rejection of what CWA had negotiated for us.  I pray both sides will arrive at a fair solution.

Don't Hate Your Job

I am an employee of AT&T and the following is my opinion.

I haven’t written much lately about work, so I’ll bring you up to date.  I resigned from the Communication Workers of America (CWA) at the contract anniversary.  Just in case you didn’t know, that letter must be certified and received by the company and the union in the two weeks prior to that date.  I’ll even let you see what my letter stated;

This letter is to notify you of my separation from membership in the Communication Workers of America (CWA).  I wish for all payroll deductions of membership dues to cease immediately! 

 I was a member of the union for twenty-five years beginning in 1978.  I previously resigned membership over the issue of their political support for abortion.  I signed back on after the purchase of BellSouth by AT&T, but find little use for continued membership.

 The counseling entry that was placed in my personnel file on January 27, 2012 over MSOC results was removed July 27, 2012 by management.  My corresponding grievance was never scheduled nor met upon.   My “taxation without representation” will no longer be tolerated. 

The Union was absolutely no help, so it seemed silly to continue membership.  The dues I’ll be saving will be applied to the insurance that was negotiated for me in the new contract.  Thanks so much to CWA, because I know AT&T was having difficulty paying medical insurance with only $31.6 Billion in profit just in the first quarter of 2012!

I want to tell you a little about why I’ve slowed down on MSOC blogs when they are so popular.  The stress that all of AT&T employees feel these days is the same for me.  It seems everyone I talk to hates the management style being imposed on us.  A management source told me that they just want to get as much out of us as they can since they know things are winding down.  Well, when you set targets too high to reach and then punish employees when they can’t make it, the end doesn’t justify the means.  You are punishing good employees for nothing!

It became a tremendous burden for me because I’d always looked at my job as something I was good at.  But now, it didn’t matter what I did at work, I was basically unsatisfactory because I couldn’t leap tall buildings with a single bound!  I had to refocus because it was making me hate the company I worked for, and that just isn’t right!  I started working less overtime and picked up a couple of new hobbies.  I spent more time with family and became more involved at church.  In short, I stopped caring so much about making my numbers or trying to please management.  I still hate the fact that MSOC exists and love the fact that I am closer to retirement than yesterday!

After getting a phone call on a vacation day last week from a manager pointing a finger at something I’d done, I decided to bring the Burr back on line with a few changes.  I’ve allowed almost no comments to protect you from the company.  I know how vindictive they are so I felt shielding you was the best thing.  I think I’ve been a voice in the wilderness too long, some of you need to be out there too.  Beginning today, if you make a comment I’ll post it.  Remember to keep it clean and that I still have editing rights to make it family friendly.

I will also invite you to participate as a ghost writer or as a guest writer, if you have something that will help others that are going through difficult times.  You can drop me a line with any suggestions.
We are all just pilgrims here with an eternal home at stake.  Don’t do anything at work to damage what is waiting on you one day!  We do need to put faces and names on the numbers!  Let’s let AT&T see the hardship they place on people!  Employees are more than just a human resource!

Anybody Seen A Mason?

We’ve been looking for a brick mason to repair damage to a retaining wall.


I wrote about that in my last blog on Christian Benefits.  I remember in the movie “National Treasure” how masons were very involved as founding fathers and hiding most of the secrets in Washington D.C.  They must be still currently involved in world affairs and building hidden treasure troves because its difficult to get one to your house to work!

We called over ten for job estimates.  Only three came by to look.  One of those said he’d call back the next day, never heard from him again.  We got only two estimates, one pretty costly and the other very reasonable.  The second contractor needs to finish a job before starting ours.  Both said the repairs would be labor intensive, which is greek for “its gonna cost you”.
I’ve always felt like there was a mason trapped inside me wanting out, so I asked our visiting estimator to describe the labor intensive part.  Well, it was tearing apart the bricks, cleaning the old mortar off, and digging out behind the wall.  Ok, I thought, doesn’t sound so difficult.  I can probably do that.










So, I’ve spent my spare time in “wall prep” while waiting on a contractor to turn loose of world affairs long enough to earn some cash.  They must live on stored wealth from all the previous generations of rulers.

 I started my work by tearing down most of the damaged section from the worst crack to the end of the wall.   It was somewhat challenging to remove the bricks without cracking the good ones.  There were a few casualties, but overall I did a fair job of brick rescue.

After that, I had a pile of bricks covered in old mortar.  Sadly, the mortar has to be cleaned off.














I decided this is the part of the job where “labor intensive” should be capitalized.  It was slow going and muscle tiring.  My method involved taking a chisel and carefully pointing it between the brick and mortar and tapping it with a hammer.  Sometimes it went well and the mortar would pop off, more often though, it took repeated taps and rearranging of the chisel to get it all off. 

 I was working on this one evening when an older gentleman walking by commented that it looked like a hard job.  I said, “yeah, we’ve got the pay scale all wrong.  CEOs are getting tons of money for a little work and guys who do a ton of work get a little money”.

I think I do appreciate the guys who clean brick for a living.  They probably don’t even get into the secret society.  I am hoping that my mason work will at least land me an honorable mention if and when the masons take complete control and their plans come to fruition.

I started stacking my cleaned bricks up on the left and the broken ones on the right.  I noticed that masons often use the broken ones for support behind the wall so I didn’t discard them.  I’m still not finished, but my cleaned brick pile has grown pretty large.







I also dug the dirt out from behind the wall so the broken cinder blocks could be replaced.  I’m sure they’ll have some additional “labor intensive” work to do, but its a good start.

This being our first ever home owner’s claim, I want to mention how well everything was handled by Travelers Insurance.  Our adjuster was Alex Lovell and I’ve never seen anyone so anxious to give us a check for the damage.  I appreciate their prompt service and willingness to work with me on the delays( I wanted more estimates).

I need to give a Bible illustration from all this.  Our lives are oftentimes wrecked from sin and we can’t figure out who can fix it.  Jesus is the world ruler who has time for any life crisis, big or small.  He can clean up the sin problem quickly and at little cost to the owner.  He is available 24/7 and is just a prayer away.   I wholeheartedly  recommend His work and would encourage you to call Him anytime!  His pain is your gain!

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him won’t perish but will have eternal life.  John 3:16 (CEB)

Christian Benefits

Usually, a person’s yard is one of the safest places to be.  I always thought that about mine, until last week. A young man got into his car about five houses down the street, started it, and then had a seizure of some type.  His vehicle lurched forward with his foot on the gas pedal, crossed the street at an angle, completely removed a large crepe myrtle tree in our yard.  He then crossed the driveway and smashed into a brick retaining wall.  The vehicle was almost balanced on top of the wall with only the right rear wheel still spinning  trying to get traction.  Smoke from the tire boiled up as our son, Stephen, ran out of the house and reached through the window to turn off the engine.


My wife called 911 and Alabaster police and fire personnel responded quickly.  The young man was taken to the hospital and released that afternoon.  He and his wife came by for a visit, apologizing for all the damage.  I was home from work by that time and we talked about how quick bad things can happen.  He didn’t remember anything after starting his vehicle, not the wreck or even being taken to the hospital.  My wife told him that she had prayed for his safety and tears came to his eyes as he thanked her.

It was a bad accident which could have been horrific.  Normally, there are children playing nearby or people walking down the street.  My wife, five minutes earlier, had stopped mowing grass.  She left the section with the crepe myrtles for the late afternoon, when it would be cooler.  One more unusual thing, was that Stephen normally parks his truck in front of the retaining wall.  For some reason that morning, upon returning home, he parked on the opposite side of the drive.

I know most people don’t believe in guardian angels, preferring to let their world spin on random chance.  But I can promise you from a lifetime of examples, that God works every day in this world.  He didn’t start it spinning way back in Genesis then walk away!  He is involved in your life every day just as He is mine.

Three weeks ago, I was about to climb a pole while working on a telephone trouble.  I heard a loud noise and the pole shook.  Turning to my right, toward the noise, I saw power lines dancing violently with sparks flying just before they hit the ground.  Needless to say, I stopped working.  I discovered a large tree had fallen two spans down.  The weather wasn’t bad and there wasn’t any wind.   The tree was rotten at the base and it’s time was up.  A definite close call.

One day last week, I was in a hurry to get home from work.  Delayed by a repair job, I was only fifteen minutes later than my usual time.  Halfway home, I found myself caught with traffic at a standstill.  I waited about 10 minutes with no traffic coming from the opposite direction either.  I decided to turn around and go the long way home.  I found out that evening two people had been killed in a head-on crash at 4:15pm, just ahead of me.  I missed being near that ground zero by the time I spent on the earlier trouble.

Now, I don’t want to sound redundant, but it’s pretty neat being a Christian!  Just consider a moment how it is having the God of the universe as your life coach.  Imagine the world as a gym with Jesus as your trainer.  It just doesn’t get any better.  Or, imagine  you’ve got to disarm the next catastrophe in your life and you’re sweating bullets wondering whether to cut the red wire or the blue one… snip the wrong one and everything unravels…  But wait, with God on your side, there is no catastrophe in the first place.

Have you ever seen those people who try to assemble one of their kids toys without the directions?  It isn’t pretty and it’s terribly stressful being around them!  God’s directions make your life easier and lets the disasters become manageable.

In Christians Make a Difference, I invited those of you who aren’t Christians to come over and join us.  I hope you have been reading your Bible and understand God a little more.  He is a loving creator who has made some tremendous promises.  If you’ve got some time, check out a few Bible verses and see if it might be in your best interest to join a winning team!

This is God’s Word on the subject: “As soon as Babylon’s seventy years are up and not a day before, I’ll show up and take care of you as I promised and bring you back home. I know what I’m doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for. Jeremiah 29:11

Why would you ever complain, O Jacob,
   or, whine, Israel, saying,
“God has lost track of me.
   He doesn’t care what happens to me”?
Don’t you know anything? Haven’t you been listening?
God doesn’t come and go. God lasts.
   He’s Creator of all you can see or imagine.
He doesn’t get tired out, doesn’t pause to catch his breath.
   And he knows everything, inside and out.
He energizes those who get tired,
   gives fresh strength to dropouts.
For even young people tire and drop out,
   young folk in their prime stumble and fall.
But those who wait upon God get fresh strength.
   They spread their wings and soar like eagles,
They run and don’t get tired,
   they walk and don’t lag behind. Isaiah 40:29-31 (MSG)


And now I have it all—and keep getting more! The gifts you sent with Epaphroditus were more than enough, like a sweet-smelling sacrifice roasting on the altar, filling the air with fragrance, pleasing God no end. You can be sure that God will take care of everything you need, his generosity exceeding even yours in the glory that pours from Jesus. Our God and Father abounds in glory that just pours out into eternity. Yes. Phil. 4:19 (MSG)


“Because you hated Knowledge
   and had nothing to do with the Fear-of-God,
Because you wouldn’t take my advice
   and brushed aside all my offers to train you,
Well, you’ve made your bed—now lie in it;
   you wanted your own way—now, how do you like it?
Don’t you see what happens, you simpletons, you idiots?
   Carelessness kills; complacency is murder.
First pay attention to me, and then relax.
   Now you can take it easy—you’re in good hands.”  Prov. 1:33 (MSG)


But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.  Rom 6:23 (MSG)

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.  Matt. 11:28-29 (MSG)

If you feel your life is a little busted up and needs serious repair, I know just the God who can do it!  Oh, and don’t wait too long, you just never know when “something bad” might make your lack of choice… permanent!