Chapter 4 - Finding Answers

Check out links at end of each chapter...



Chapter 1 - May 14, 2009 - Tutu Troubles

Chapter 2 – Oct. 07, 2009 – About My Friends

Chapter 3 – Oct. 15, 2009 – The Inheritance

Chapter 4 – Oct. 22, 2009 – Finding Answers

Chapter 5 – Oct. 29, 2009 – A New Friend

Chapter 6 – Nov. 05, 2009 – A Treasure Map

Chapter 7 – Nov. 12, 2009 – A Treasure Hunt

Chapter 8 – Nov. 19, 2009 – And Beyond

Chapter 9 – Nov. 26, 2009 – Lost Data

Chapter 10 – Dec. 3, 2009 – Found Data

Chapter 11 – Dec. 10, 2009 – The Castle Cellar

Chapter 12 – Dec. 17, 2009 – Forever Never Ending

RosFrankie and Beyond

Chapter 4

Finding Answers

Everything goes on as normal for a few weeks. Except that it rains and it rains and it rains and then it rains some more. Everything everywhere gets wet and wetter and wettest. HOG and Mary-Ann-Drusillda are running out of hay to keep putting on their wet ground floor. Lordy’s computers keep making strange hissing noises. And if dilution is the solution to polution, then my mud bog is pure water. It seems more like a clear fresh water lake rather than a nice, thick, gooey, lovely, dark brown, creamy mud. Right now, the mud is so diluted that it can not even stick to anything. I miss my mud.

One rainy day, as I am standing on my porch looking sadly at my mud bog, Mary-Ann-Drusillda comes running over in a panic. ‘RosFrankie, please help! HOG has rolled herself into a tight ball and I can’t get her to unroll. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.’

Mary-Ann-Drusillda and I go running to the haystack where HOG is balled up. Since HOG is so uptight, I decide that it might be better to pet her gently rather than to yell at her, which never works with HOG anyway. After what seems like a long time and much petting, HOG unrolls a bit and tries to get her emotions under control.

‘What are you feeling?’ I ask her.

‘Everything!’ HOG replies. ‘I don’t know if you are my friends or if you are thieves! I don’t know if I remember right or remember wrong! I don’t know if Méabh will kill me! I don’t think my eyes are working right!’

Finally, after many more patient questions and assurances of friendship, which HOG never really did doubt, the full story is revealed. When HOG went looking for a safe and secret place to put the ‘thing’ she had inherited, she thought the best place would be inside the big salt jar, especially since she is the only one who ever cooks or uses the salt jar. She buried it deep in the salt and never worried about it again. That was quite a while ago. Today she decided to check on the ‘thing’ and when she looked into the salt jar, she got a very big shock. Not only was the ‘thing’ gone but all the salt is a reddish pink color instead of white.

'Oh my goodness,’ I say, ‘I just don’t understand this situation at all. Are you sure you put the ‘thing’ into the salt jar?’

‘I’m not sure of anything right now,’ answers HOG as she starts to roll up again.

‘Méabh, I think, will be angry,’ I say, ‘maybe we better figure this all out before we see her again. We can talk to Lordy and see if he can help us find any answers on his computers. We’ll do that first, and then we’ll see where to go from there.’

HOG unrolls. Whatever surprises life brings, there is nothing like love and friendship to keep one unrolled.

It always surprises me that Lordy, whose antennae are always so bent from flying into tree trunks, is so good at navigating the internet. My mother says it has something to do with the balance of nature, which, of course, is just something else I do not understand and will not understand until I am older. But I don’t really worry about it either.

After we have explained the strange events to Lordy, he leans back on his rear legs and just thinks for awhile. Lordy will go into these deep thought modes rather often, and I suspect that the deep thought modes are why he keeps flying into trees, irregardless of what my mother says about the balance of nature. I am beginning to understand that people who are mostly always right, are not always right. ‘Mostly’ is a very tricky word.

‘Well,’ Lordy finally says, ‘we don’t really have many actual facts to study here. We can’t google ‘thing’ because then everything would come up on the screen, and we would probably spend years getting nowhere. We could google the country far away where your Great Aunt to the 10th lived, but that would also pull up lots of information which would not be relevant, I think.’

‘Think’ is another very tricky word.

He clicks his tongue a bit and then says, ‘Let’s put in the words red salt. The red salt is really the only tangible stuff we have. I can’t think of anything else, so it’s worth a try because it might lead us to other ideas.’

I think that the words red salt will probably pull up many art supply companies because of the color red, and HOG thinks that the words red salt will probably pull up cooking companies because of the word salt, and Mary-Ann-Drusillda doesn’t want to think about what the words red salt will pull up, so she doesn’t.

To everyone’s surprise, google comes up with ‘Kanawha Red Salt.’ Apparently, many years ago, there was a famous salt company in Kanawha, West Virginia, whose salt was colored red as a result of the iron impurities in the soil.

‘Why,’ asks HOG, ‘would someone replace my white salt with Kanawha Red Salt?’

‘I don’t think they did,’ says Lordy, ‘I think what happen is that, with all the rain which has been falling, your white salt got wet. And wet salt will quickly corrode iron. Since the thing which you hid in the salt was iron, it rusted and dissolved and turned your white salt into red salt.’

'Oh,’ says HOG.

‘Oh,’ says Mary-Ann-Drusillda.

‘Oh, oh!’ I say, ‘What will we tell Méabh?’

Well, of course, we will tell Méabh the same thing we always tell her. The truth. But we are very nervous about telling her what we think happened to the ‘thing’ because she seems to think it is very precious.

Finally the sun comes out one day and everything returns to normal. We are all sitting in Daisy’s Field when Méabh comes back. She is quite pleased with herself and doesn’t even say ‘Hello. How are you?’ which isn’t unusual because she never says that anyway. She just starts out talking as if nothing else matters except what she has to say. She’s like that. It’s okay with us because we all know her and we understand what she’s like. ‘A Celtic coin die. Very VERY old. Iron dies were used to mold and shape the coins which were made from various melted metals. Mostly the dies didn’t survive this long because the metal from which they were made isn’t as stable as gold. It’s quite a valuable and interesting piece. But HOG, I really don’t think you should sell it. I think you should give it to a museum. Then everyone can enjoy it.’

We all stare at her and don’t say anything

She looks at us, looks from one face to another, and then she squints her eyes a bit and says, ‘What’s up?’ It’s hard to fool Méabh.

Then we all start talking at once, each giving a slightly different version, but somehow, the information and the events all get explained to Méabh.

Much to everyone’s surprise, she doesn’t blow up or yell at us or run around stomping her feet and punching things. She just says, ‘That’s really too bad. It’s a shame when things get ruined like that, especially if they can’t be replaced. But they are only things, and they are not as valuable as people and friends who love each other. And, quite frankly, I’m very proud of you all. You had questions which needed answering and you figured out how to find the answers by yourselves. I’m really quite proud and pleased. People who are not afraid of finding answers are not afraid of asking questions. And if we don’t ask questions, then we will never find answers. I’d like to say that you all deserve a reward, but you already got it, because knowledge is it’s own reward.’

Then Méabh goes off to do the things which Méabh does, whatever they are.

We all go home, thinking about things. And, me, well, of course, I go for a nice sit in my muddy mud bog. Where I think about things.

Words to look up:
Salt jar
Tangible
Google
Celtic
Coin die
Oblong

Questions:
Why does rain make iron rust?
Why is rust the color red?
What are the tricks to a successful google?
What is the history of the word ‘google?’
Would you like to visit Kanawha, West Virginia?
Do you have a scary friend like Méabh?
What other questions should be asked?

BTW:
Kanawha Red Salt history: Salt, a highly valued commodity in ancient and historic times, is an abundant resource in the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia. Salt production along the Kanawha River grew from a small cottage industry to a huge commercial enterprise, exemplifying the Industrial Revolution as it took place in the United States. Called the Red Salt from Kanawha because of its color which was caused by its iron impurities, it was one of the first major industries in Kanawha County. Red Salt was collected by early settlers from surface pools in the area. The brine collected from the surface pools was distilled (liquid evaporated) in kettles and used by the early settlers to preserve their meat. It wasn’t long before commercial manufacture of salt began. In 1797 Elisha Brooks devised a method of dipping into the pools and collecting brine. He used hollowed-out logs with a long pole attached on a pivot. This enabled him to produce salt in larger quantities. Joseph Ruffner took notice of this and joined Elisha Brooks in his salt production. Elisha Brooks leased land from Joseph Ruffner that was adjoining the salt spring. This enabled Elisha to produce up to 150 pounds a day. Elisha’s salt had a pungent taste but was demanded for its use in butter and meat curing, for which it was unique. By 1807 Joseph Ruffner, Jr. And David Ruffner had began a large scale salt industry. They had the capacity to use drills to drill through bedrock which allowed them to collected brine that was 2 1/2 times as strong as the brine that Elisha Brooks had collected. At its hay day the salt industry had 52 furnaces for producing salt. The 15 to 20 wells operating on both sides of the Kanawha produced some 200 gallons of brine. The brine was cooked in huge iron kettles and shipped down stream via the Kanawha River on large flatboats. After improvements were made to the James River and Kanawha Turnpike wagon trail shipments were sent by wagon. The Salt industry boomed until the Civil War. In 1862, during the war several furnaces were destroyed by the Union Army to keep the salt facilities from being used by the Confederates. After the war salt production all but stopped. Only one company remained open but with little impact. With the closing of this company in 1945 the great salt production age in Kanawha County was over.

Check out:
Celtic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts

Mathematics
Seife, Charles – Zero, Penguin Books, 2000.
http://www-math.mit.edu/
http://www.coolmath4kids.com/
http://www.teachrkids.com/

Salt
Kurlansky, Mark – Salt, Penguin Books, 2002.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt
http://www.saltinstitute.org/
http://www.detroitsalt.com/salt-history.htm


Next chapter: A New Friend due to be posted on Thursday October 29, 2009



All text and images copyright 2009 Jule Dupre
unless otherwise noted.
Observe much - Think long - Say little...
[Credited to Oxford professor of C. Darwin]
Except, of course, in an emergency. Then you should
Look quick - Think fast - Yell loud!
[Credited to The Evil Grandmother]
Remember to always check your references!
Always question, but question with due respect.