Grave Demands Attention

 Winterville Mounds are ceremonial mounds that according to legend were built by a native civilization of America that thrived from 1000 to 1450 AD.  They are located near a community named Winterville in Mississippi. We stopped to see them. The grounds are beautiful 

and there are marker signs that give you a brief history and detail about the mounds and what is believed to be their purpose. The highest mound is about 55 feet tall.

 The Park is a National Historic Landmark. The weeds and plants around this place are huge, 10 feet tall and I wonder how they kept them mowed and the place livable if they had no domestic animals such as horses, donkeys and cattle. Since the mounds resemble those in South America did they have llamas or alpacas? They carried loads of dirt by hand to build the mounds. The more I learned the more questions I had and no solid answers. I am making a note to ask GOD about this when I get to heaven.

We wonder at the vegetation growing in the farm fields we pass. Cotton, soybean, corn, when Seamus tells me steering wheels are made of soybeans. Many parts of the car are edible? In the 1930s Ford started using soy oil based paints and varnishes in the production of his cars. He also used soy by-products to make shock absorbers. Ford’s researchers in his labs discovered that soy meal when mixed with formaldehyde and a few other chemicals turned into a hard plastic like product and he began using them for horn buttons, oil cases, shift knobs, foot pedals, glove box doors and many other parts of his cars including tractor seats. He attempted to make steering wheels but they were not as good as the hard plastic ones in current use.  Ford was an advocate of the soybean and the soybean farmers. He and like minded friends created menus and recipes made from soy. He was a health enthusiast and neither smoked nor drank alcohol and forbid them in his plants. He fired anyone caught drinking or smoking on the spot.

        Robert Boyer and Henry Ford pose with Ford’s Soybean Car. Photos courtesy The Henry Ford.

An eerie thing happened while we were visiting the cemetery at Grand Gulf near Port Gibson Mississippi. It is located on the grounds of the Military Park in the back on a hill. There are tall stately oaks that guard the cemetery.

 They are dressed in green leaves with regalia of grey-green Spanish moss draped over them like swag on Sea Captain. The moss sways gently in the delicate breeze that ruffles them on occasion and they appear to caress a random tombstone. The stones are softly aged and swirled with shades of grey; lichen and moss decorate them granting them each their own unique beauty. I wander through the randomly placed graves, admiring an exquisitely crafted iron fence and arch gracing one family of markers and headstones. The poles are all wrought to resemble roughly cut tree branches and the arch is a swirl of leafy tree branches, it is amazing. 

There are 200 graves, 160 tombstones, 11 family plots, and 30 table top graves, like those found in Louisiana. The tallest monument is 11 feet in height. The first recorded burial here is 1822.  Near the back of the cemetery I was looking at a marker and gently caressed the rope carved into the stone as I had touched a few others also. About 3 seconds after I had gently glided my fingers over the rope and walked about 4 steps a huge tree branch, I mean it could have been a tree it was so large, cracked loudly and fell to the ground in the nearby woods. Seamus and I were riveted to the spot and watched with amazement as this happened. We looked at each other and I wondered what either of us had done. I retraced my steps back to the stone I had touched and took some photos. It marks the death of James A Grubbs. 

There are no Grubbs in my ancestry. He was born in Louisiana on February 13 1834? And died in Louisiana on November 6 1879. Was he or his wife Sarah trying to get my attention?  It was eerie because we recalled later the branch which fell was still healthy and covered in green leaves.

There are 6 Union soldiers buried here, 5 of them belonging to the US Colored Troops. Within the confines of the cemetery are Confederate rifle pits that were used by the 6th Missouri making this the only cemetery in America known to have rifle pits.

I am still haunted by the falling tree branch.