About town

When we first came out to Fayetteville, we were told two things:
1. Live in Spring Lake. It's the nicer part of the area, despite being on the other side of the base from the jobsite.
2. Never go downtown, it's scary down there.

Well, I have since discovered:
1. Spring Lake is the 'hood. The police department was so corrupt, they closed it down. Only in the last couple of years have they gotten back up and going. There's shootings there regularly. And it's generally not a nice place to live. My current location, on the other hand, is just fine. Most of Fayetteville is.
2. The historic part of downtown is beautiful. The main strip has some nice little cafe's and shops, and the historic areas are really neat.

So why we were told these things, I cannot for the life of me figure out. People's opinions of good versus bad are interesting, to say the least.

Anyway, yesterday I was headed out of town to visit the beach, I couldn't think of anything else to do, and I wanted to get out of the apartment. On the way out, I drove past the Army's Airborne & Special Operations museum. This is what I saw:

It was pretty impressive, to say the least. So I pulled over to take a picture. After looking at it for a few minutes, I figured I had been planning to go to the museum at some point in time, and I had to real reason to go to the beach. So I found a parking spot and went to the museum instead. The flags in the photo above all have a tribute to someone on them. This is at the entrance:

The plaque says this is Iron Mike, and it's dedicated to the Airborne troopers. The sidewalk around it has stones that have been etched with tributes from families to their loved ones who have died in the various wars. It's pretty humbling.

The museum was really cool, I learned quite a bit. I am a bit of a WWII nerd, so I spent a good portion of my time in that area. By the time I finally left, I had been in there an hour and a half. It's not that big, so that's a little scary. I was a little too into it. :-)

And as a side note, I made two major trades this week for two of my fantasy baseball teams. One of them went through Saturday afternoon. While I was in the museum. As further proof I was way too into the museum, I totally forgot to check my teams before the first game. And the major acquisition that hit my roster that afternoon went on to hit two home runs and go 3 for 4. So it didn't count for me, because he was on my bench. It's a good thing I was having fun, that result would have caused me to drink an entire 2-liter of Mt Dew out of sheer depression otherwise.

After the museum, it was too late to head to the beach, and I was hungry. So I figured I'd try to find a little restaurant or something. I ended up driving into the historic part of downtown Fayetteville. I quickly found an awesome little cafe that had an area out on the sidewalk of the street where you could sit. I had a fantastic pecan, raspberry, and brie salad on lettuce, with some chicken salad on it. So tasty! After that, I found some cute little shops that I checked out. I will definitely head down to this spot again.

Next I headed out to drive through the historic district. I didn't make it very far before I found a really cool cemetery. I played it safe in this little space, you could tell it was probably not a spot to meander alone. But I managed to get some cool photos. Just some general shots:

 This monument honors the soldiers of the Civil War. Of course, it's meant for the south :-):

The engraving on it says: "In memory of the Confederate dead". Most of the headstones in this area of the cemetery were of people who died around the 1860's. I thought this one was really neat:

It's hard to read in this photo, but the bottom engraving says, "Died at Kinston, NC April 29th, 1863. Of wounds received the day before at the Battle of Gum Swamp, Craven Co., NC. He fell, in the 22nd year of his age, bravely fighting in the cause of Southern Independence." I thought it interesting that the words "Southern Independence" were a larger font and capitalized. Shows the importance to what those people were fighting for. I also wondered what they would think if they could see how things turned out in this day and age.

Lastly, in a corner of the cemetery, there's a fenced off area of four headstones. A plaque in front notes these graves had been moved from a family plot. But they were four men from the Revolutionary War. One died in 1766, and the other in 1798.

On another side note, being as this was my weekend of history, I couldn't help but be amazed at where we are now as a people compared to the past. Here are the headstones of people who fought to create this country, to give us the rights and freedoms we now enjoy. There are people who fought to split the country over race. I watched a few episodes of the series Band of Brothers. There is a part where they are interviewing the actual guys being depicted in the series, and one guy notes that three different men from his town committed suicide when they found out they weren't allowed to fight in WWII. And here we are today, so many people of our country are doing everything possible to tear this country apart. To take away the freedoms all our ancestors gave their lives for so we could have. To give up the fight and just let a few people run the show. It's so sad to me. I wish more people would look back and see how we got here. Maybe it would change their tune.

Well, off my soap box now. It was quite the adventurous day, I really enjoyed it. And I'm glad I decided to turn into the museum rather than head to the beach.

I needed the relaxing day, this week is going to be pretty crazy. My superintendent, Scott, is off vacationing this week, so it leaves me and Tim to run the place. And as is typical when Scott leaves, we have not one, but two, major concrete pours. I swear he plans it this way. So on Tuesday and Thursday, we have to be at the jobsite at 3:30 in the morning. And given Scott refuses to enforce the work hours on the jobsite, we have subs who like to work till 5:00, when we finally kick them out. So it will be quite disappointing to them all when we tell them the gates are locking at 3:30 each day this week. I refuse to be up at 2:30 in the morning, and have to be at the jobsite till 5 or 5:30. And since Tim has no backbone, it will be up to me to throw everyone out. Fun times! Can you tell I'm excited? Tomorrow's morning jobsite meeting is going to be so fun when I announce this. Pray for me.

My light at the end of this - I am on a plane at 5:00 Friday night for my week of vacation!