h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well done. I enjoyed this very much. I like the style. It's perfect for a ghost story. Are you sure you're not from Baltimore?

We had a staircase before the renovation that went from the main floor to the basement. We had people claim to see a child on it, a girl of about 6 or 7 wearing an old fashioned dress, late in the afternoons. I never saw her and never believed the stories. You know how once word of something like that gets around, people imagine all sorts of things. And the noises that spooked people were from very real steam pipes. Anyway, the staircase no longer exsists, and if there ever was a ghost child, she is now confined to the janitor's closet.

Ah, thou art kind. I was hoping to get a chuckle here, and as Elektra said when she read it, 'Yep. I can see that library.'

About Baltimore - I had this funny feeling last night, and I said to myself, 'Now, why am I channeling Edgar?' But he lived in Philadelphia for quite a while, you know - we've visited his house. Underfunded house museums are something I'm fond of, since we worked for one for a year.

There's ALWAYS a ghost, isn't there? And I think it's mostly tricks of the light, and memory.

In our house museum in Philly, they claimed there was a ghost. I think they more or less had to claim a ghost. I opened that museum in the mornings, and closed it after dark in the winter, and tried my best to contact her.

I can definitively state that if there was a ghost, she didn't like me well enough to say boo.

Actually, we think the rumour got started because a tourist ran into a rather stubborn reenactor in period costume...

A better kind of ghost for Elfreth's Alley, though, was simply looking out at the street - the oldest residential street in the US - through the wavy glass of the front window. It doesn't take much to see Ben Franklin walking by...

Of course, he's a professional and will show up on time, but grumpy, because he may have a hangover. (He does it for a living.)

How funny! A professional Ben Franklin with a perpetual hangover. See, it's information like this that I wouldn't have without h2g2.

And speaking of Philly, the Phillies are in the playoffs again. (You knew I'd have to work baseball into the conversation,somehow.)

Oh, for them. We are always of two minds, as we went to college in Pittsburgh, but that's good news.

The only sports we pick up much here are on WGN, which is in Chicago, so they run Cubs games. I never keep track, anyway.

That Ben Franklin is a nice guy, but he did grump at me one morning at an event. The whole birthplace-of-a-nation bit is interesting, and a sort of low-key industry.

I have sold so many Liberty Bells, to so many tourists...

Awk. The poor Pirates. They set a new National League record this year for the most consecutive losing seasons. They have a nice stadium and some loyal fans. Eventually they'll get it together again.

I remember one man who had to be talked down from one of the bridges...he said he was depressed, this was back in the 70s, lots of personal problems, and then the Pirates weren't doing well...

I can believe it. They were still using Three Rivers then. It was a short walk for him to the bridge. And I'm such a die-hard Cardinals fan that I can easily understand how that would tip him over the edge.

We have so many bridges, I can't remember which one it was. And I never really knew what team was winning unless they won the Series and TPed the whole town, which happened once.

My dad was proud of Three Rivers. He designed the rolling seats that changed the field from baseball to football, or some such.

We mostly enjoyed the Bridge to Nowhere - the one that stopped in the middle of the river for several years before they built the stadium. It was a standing joke.

And then there was the drunk who drove off it one night. And walked away...

Oh my! Funny. I take it he's had one too many ice cold Budweisers.

That's right. The Steelers used it, too. It really was a great stadium. I was sad when they took it down. We've lost so many of them. *sighs*

I wsa totally surprised by that. I thought stadia were supposed to *last*. Like the Colisseum.

Ripping down something that massive after only 20-25 years seems insane to me.

Why, in Nuernburg, they even still have that stadium...I mean, it was too much trouble to dismantle the awful thing.

I remember when they put up Three Rivers. I shouldn't remember when they pulled it down.

Silly question: Have they taken down the SuperDome in New Orleans? I remember 'helping' my dad with that one...by bringing home my calculus textbook.

They still use it. I'm a bit surprised, actually, but pleased.

I'm old enough to have watched games in three St. Louis Cardinals ballparks. *sighs* I dislike the new sigh smiley, by the way. I liked all of the new ones except that one. It looks rather sinister.

Oh, you, too? I always wanted a sigh smiley, but it's kind of large, and doesn't really convey my mood...I thought it was just me.

The Astrodome is still standing but the residents seem to want it demolished to make a parking lot for the new stadium. It is rather rundown and not used that much any more. But it would be a shame, imho. Since it was the first one built.

Yes. And the engineers had to figure it out, hence the calculus.

I think those stadia should be declared monuments and preserved, or something. Stop throwing away good stuff.

They used both domes, Super and Astro, to house victims of Katrina. Couldn't have put folks on a parking lot.

That's right. Just as old mansions make good libraries, museums, public facilities...

In Germany, there's an old castle at Colditz. We just had to visit it. It has been used as a POW camp, but also as an insane asylum. Nowadays it's a clinic.

Was it haunted?

Not that I have ever heard of.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colditz_Castle

Elektra is of the opinion that you and I should collaborate on a 'Hillbilly Mother Goose'. Alternatively, she is suggesting a version of Hansel and Gretel involving a double-wide made of moon pies...

Ah, but you are a suave, urbane intellectual in exile. Could you really get past the stereotype to find your hidden hillbilly?

Suave, urbane intellectual...

I have eaten watermelon, sitting on a stump, spitting seeds into the yard under a giant hickory tree...

I have ridden Kate the mule, who ran away only because she thought they were going to work her...

I have driven a tractor - once, and with my dad behind me, because nobody in their right mind would trust me with a piece of farm machinery on a mountainside...

I have shelled bushel upon bushel of crowder peas, and I know not to call 'em 'black-eyed peas' when they're crowder or purple-hull...I know not to go into the 'garden' for a mess of greens without a hoe, and to look for copperheads...I ran into a rattlesnake in the old Indian graveyard once...I know what the june bugs are like when they buzz up out of the blackberry bushes, and how my little cousin tied one to a string, pronounced 'strang'...I have eaten fried chicken while sitting on a tombstone at Homecoming...

I have listened late at night to my grandmother's ghost stories, and then gone to sleep on the featherbed in the attic, and heard the boogers in the house...

Have you got any idea how hot a featherbed is in June in Middle Tennessee? Especially when your grandmother thinks the ee-lectric fan is going to give you a terminal chill, and turns it off? And you're 10, and worried about boogers?



Sure, I've strolled through a couple of museums, who hasn't? And talked to an aristocrat or two, seen a few ruins, read a couple of books...

But hey, the happiest person I ever met was an 80-year-old woman who lived in a tar-paper shack on a hillside, alone. When asked, respectfully, by my father if she needed anything, she demurred, saying, 'There's a spring about a half-mile that-a way. You cain't beat good spring water.'

I usually only got to be a hillbilly two weeks a year during my childhood. But it was sort of, er, hard-wired, you know? We still watched the Opry every Sa'rd'y night, and listened to the Blackwood Brothers on Sunday mornings.