The Boomer Chronicles

A number of years ago I visited North Carolina’s Outer Banks for the first time and part of my trip was spent on the island of Ocracoke. What an enchanting place it was. The sultry weather; the wild horses; the few families that populated the place, resulting in the fact that many residents sported the same last name; the lights going out during a sudden, drenching tropical storm. I stayed in an inn created from the old lightkeeper’s house.

Most interesting to me is that the island was once so isolated that some of the older folks still used Elizabethan English. In fact, the summer I was there, I rented a bike. As a I waited in line, I heard the proprietor say to the man in front of me, “That will be twelve dollars for the day, Sire.”

So as I hear the Hurricane Earl evacuation orders include Ocracoke, I am hoping for the best for this little place.

I like the sound of No. 175. Yep, it’s our baby boomer carnival’s 175th edition, hosted by Nancy over at Vaboomer.com

hit the slide
Steven Slater was fed up with working for a–holes, so he hit the slide

I am baaaacckkk from my one-week-long, very ambitious road trip. Here are ten amazing facts.

• I traveled about 2,500 miles in one week
• I didn’t try to sneak a photo of any Amish people, although I was tempted to (Photo 1)
• My friends in Ohio were digging a trench on their farm and they unearthed a very old horseshoe. They gave it to me to take home as a souvenir.
• There’s a former Shaker village in Kentucky where you can book a room and stay overnight. It’s the closest I’ll ever get to living like a Shaker (Photo 2)
• You can tour coal mines in West Virginia and Pennsylvania
• When you’ve driven about a million miles to Loretto, Kentucky, and arrive after the last tour of the day at the Maker’s Mark bourbon distillery and are ready to go home all disappointed, you can still sneak into the last tour when the group walks by
• Bourbon will never be my drink of choice (Photo 3)
• I sort of learned the difference between a bushel and a peck
• Pearl S. Buck (The Good Earth) was born in West Virginia and I visited her former home
• Learned in Gettysburg, Pa., that thousands of Northerners are still obsessed with the Civil War (Photo 4)

I’m on vacation this week, so you’re getting just one link, but it’s a really good one:

The Best of Neatorama

A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors. Ponzi scheme organizers often solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk. In many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters focus on attracting new money to make promised payments to earlier-stage investors and to use for personal expenses, instead of engaging in any legitimate investment activity.

Charles Ponzi, the great Italian-American swindler, said in his last newspaper interview: “Even if they never got anything for it, it was cheap at that price. Without malice aforethought I had given them the best show that was ever staged in their territory since the landing of the Pilgrims! It was easily worth fifteen million bucks to watch me put the thing over.” Read about 10 amazing Ponzi schemes.

One of the primary detectives in the Jon Benet Ramsey murder case, Lou Smit, just died. I recently read two books about the murder. Although it occurred almost 15 years ago, the case still intrigues me. Jon Benet by Steve Thomas, another important detective in the case, was fantastic. Thomas is not afraid to point a finger at the person he suspects committed the murder, and there’s plenty of information in the book that I’d never heard reported. If you are interested in this case and have not yet read this book, I recommend you do so.

I hope. You see, I wrote this “I’m in Amish Country” post before I left on my road trip. So, let’s hope I made it to Ohio. Anyway, I’m not gonna post too much live this week, so immerse yourself in All Things Amish by reading Amish America.

Fabulous After 40 hosts the carnival for baby boomers this week.