Here's the starting line on Saturday morning. Everyone's anxious!

As we found items we would put a flag down so the students could come over and label the items and bag them and then take GPS coodinates.

Some of the students doing their work!

The best find by far was a complete brass spur with the buckle. One of the Nashville guys named Kelly found it. What a great treasure for the park service!!

What a beauty!

Here's a nice .69 caliber round ball still clinging to the clump of dirt it came out with.

And a few three ringers still in the holes!

This was the last one I found on Sunday. What a great time!

Overall I found about eight bullets and seven cannon ball fragments. 

Here's a link to an article in the Murfreesboro Post.

http://murfreesboropost.com/news.php?viewStory=12077

I managed to acquire another great old postcard last week. This one's a really nice one. It's a rare old view of the Elk's Club. It seems to have been printed with a tag that was changed at the last minute. Under the lines the building is called Mooney's School and then above that in the same font it's properly named as Elk's Club. The Mooney's school building was located on Main Street. Anyway, it's a great early view of the townhouse. It was built in 1908 and this postcard was mailed in 1911. The church roof that is visible in the back was the Cumberland Presbyterian Church which burned in 1915. The Elk's Club building was later occupied by Woodfin & Moore's Funeral Home. They were in the building from 1913 to 1949. Since that time the building has housed a beauty school, and insurance company, a popular night club, and currently, The Front Porch Cafe. It's a great old view of a building that's still around. Hope you enjoy the picture as much as I do. 

I recenty found a few old signs in my building on the square. Since they were relevant to the history of the building and they were in such great condition, I decided to display them in the window. That's were this poster above caught the eye of a man who knew the history behind it. I got a phone call about a week ago from a man named Jeff Jordan. He bagan asking me questions about my building and I really didn't know where he was going with the conversation at first. Then he asked me what I knew about the posters I had displayed in my windows. I knew that one of the old posters was printed by Richard Shacklet based on seeing his name on one of the smaller prints. I told him that I had no idea about the value days poster. Well, he started telling me about his father Ed Jordan who was an employee at Goldsteins. Ed was the man who created the Greater Value Days posters. He was a screen printer and in charge of artistic needs for Goldtseins. Jeff went on to tell me that the Greater Value Days were always in late Septemeber during the 1950's. All the merchants on the square who participated in these sales would display these signs in their windows. Home Furniture was obviously one of the merchants involved. Jeff was even able to tell me a bit about the process in which these posters were made. They were produced in Goldsteins building on Sundays so that the drying posters could be spead out inside the store for drying. The next morning they would be collected and stacked after they had dried all night. The sketch of the courthouse was drawn at the Jordan's household as Jeff recalled. It makes me very happy to know all this history about this poster. It will certainly be framed and displayed in the restaurant for future generation to learn it's story. I also have another one saved back to gift to Jeff Jordan when he gets back in touch with me.

Happy New Year Murfreesboro! 

  

#1 Page 86 top view, The Nashville and Chattanooga railroad did later connect to Missouri but it never connected to North Carolina.

#2 Page 29 bottom view, The old Goldstein's building is now owned by Rutherford County, not the City of Murfreesboro.

My good buddy C.B. Arnette had a book signing today at Mid South Bank located in the old Methodist Church downtown. In just the past year he's written this autobiography. When he finished his last book I sort of thought it might be his last but obviously he wasn't finished. He began selling his last book in February of 2007. It's kind of amazing that he's released another in less than a year. His family is very proud of his accomplishment. I'm sure most families would love to have their father or grandfathers words written in a book for the next generations to read. C.B. has lived such a interesting life in Murfreesboro that his accounts of days gone by are actually important historical tid-bits. I had the pleasure of creating the dust jacket for this new book. C.B. still hadn't seen it as of a couple of weeks ago. His daughters approved of it so he wanted it to be a surprise for himself. I haven't had a chance to read any of the book yet but I'm sure I'll dig in this weekend. I'm so proud to call him one of my friends. His words are very important to me. It's not often you get to learn things from someone with such varied successes in life, not to mention the 89 years worth of reflection he has to look back on. I hope any of you who are interested in the history of downtown Murfreesboro or the legendary C.B. Arnette, seek this book out and buy a copy. It'll set you back $40.00 but as with all of C.B.'s books, the profits all go to a charitable cause. This book will benefit the old Ransom School house. The old building where C.B. once attended school is almost falling apart but there have been plans in the works for a few years to fix the old school up and make it an adult education site. The old school sits on Academy Street. I'm sure this latest book will go into more detail about the School and the Ransom family.

Happy Holidays

Well I finally got to go see The Darjeeling Limited last night and I got to see it with my good friend Kimberly who lives in Nashville. It's a good thing we finally made it or we would have had to watch the DVD when it comes out. It stopped showing at Opry Mills Monday and last night was its final night in Green Hills. Of course, it never made it to Murfreesboro. Apparently there was some good in seeing it later. I read a few reviews from folks who had seen it premier and had to go see it again just to catch the thirteen minute opening film (Hotel Chevalier) that played first. It was weird. The short had its own credits and everything. The short film was set in Paris and introduces one of the main characters, Jack (Jason Schwartzman) and his ex-girlfriend, played by Natalie Portman, who had tracked him down and came to see him at his hotel. The only thing that transfers to the rest of the movie is his robe from the hotel Chevalier. There's a very well filmed scene where the girlfriend seduces the reluctant Jack and even though she strips right on camera, the camera never catches even a glimpse of Portman's privates. Wes Anderson seems to be the king of camera placement on lots of shots throughout the movie, but that's nothing new for him. Fans of Anderson's work should be very pleased with this latest addition. The Darjeeling Limited was all filmed in India. The colors are rich and really help set the mood for the spiritual feel of the movie. Of course, there's plenty of room left for his kind of comedy too. I laughed out loud a few times and at other times I was swallowing my breath trying not to tear up. As with any Wes Anderson film, The Darjeeling Limited continues to include many of Anderson's signature themes and styles. Forbidden love, parental abandonment and/or death, and sibling rivalries all show themselves in this newest film. The music for the film was awesome as usual too. There were three different Kinks songs and none were beyond the early seventies. It just so happens that I only like the old Kinks tunes. I think they kind of sucked after '72. Play with Fire by the Stones was embedded into one of the scenes and then there were lots of songs that I'd never heard that seemed to be Indian artists. I'm sure I'll be buying the soundtrack later today on Itunes. Wes also gave us great little cameos from those signature actors that he must be great friends with by now. Bill Murray plays a menial role who never says anything but sticks in you brain just the same. Anjelica Huston has about a ten minute role but I can't tell you anymore about her. Of course I failed to mention the other two guys Owen Wilson (Francis) and Adrian Brody (Peter). Kim and I had a funny conversation about Adrian Brody after the movie. There were a couple of scenes where Brody is running around in his boxers and in another he's shirtless. I was amazed at how healthy the man looked. He's kind of cut! So I asked Kim "As a woman do you find Adrian Brody attractive? I mean big nose and all." She assured me that Brody IS fine. Nose and all. Well this fifth film of Andersons might possibly be my favorite to date. It just so happens that my brother is staying with me for the next two weeks before he goes back home to Norway. The spiritual journey that these fictional brothers went through made me come home with eyes wide open and the craving to enjoy the little time that I have to spend with my bro. We don't really get to see each other more than a few days every couple of years and I plan to soak up the gift we've got for the next two weeks. There was a scene in the movie were Jack asks the other two brothers "if we weren't brothers do you think we would have been friends?" The delivery was so perfect that it gave me a chill. Well if you didn't mange to see it at the movies, don't rent it when it comes out. Just buy it. You'll thank me later!