The Ranch 🐴

Dave & Lisa’s own private Idaho nestled deep in the mountains of North Carolina.

It’s big fun this October as two monster hurricanes rip Florida up. I had planned to visit Brother Dave in mid-October. The timing couldn’t have been better!

Hurricane Season

Florida hosted two terrifying hurricanes in the past couple of weeks. Helene stomped North Carolina just short of Scaly Mountian.

4 1/2 mile eyewall – 185 mph winds

Milton came out of nowhere – and became a terrifying Cat 5 that churned up the Gulf for a couple of days before scaring the death out of everybody in central Florida. Just to keep things saucy, some killer tornados were spawned. One took the roof off the bank a mere mile north of here. Big fun!

Wells Fargo Bank on A1A

I rode out the storm at Brother Ricks on the mainland and checked things out the next day.

My power pole in the condominium parking lot is due east of me. You can see my yellow shed to the left. The fence came down, too. I had been held up mainly by the bamboo for quite a while now.

The rotten power pole, the object of my scorn for eight years, finally bit the fucking dust and blew over. Good riddance. A new one was installed the day I left for The Ranch.

Scaly Mountain Redux

Lisa and Dave bought their first mountain home about 15 years ago in Scaly Mountian, North Carolina. They have spent much time there recently and were looking for something bigger. They found a lovely, modern house with a spectacular view!

Dave & Lisa’s Ranch on Scaly Mountian

It was initially a horse ranch with a stable and holding pens. Compared to their old place, it is way off the beaten path. It is simply stunning, with a killer west view for sunsets!

Burning palettes on the Ranch! It’s time for rural fun as we channel our inner pyromaniacs and hang with the pups.

The temperature dropped into the 30s. πŸ₯Ά We spent a day burning pallets in a fire pit and reminisced about our younger years as pyromaniacs!

I retold the story of the burning can of acetone and discovered Brother Rick had done nearly the same thing!

Hunters Moon in the pasture near the Ranch.

The full moon for October, the Hunters Moon, was stunning from the pasture near their house.

Comet C/2023 A3 on its way to a fiery end in the Sun

We were greeted by their neighbors, who invited us into their home with a breathtaking westward view. They had been stargazing and found the recently discovered comet C/2023 A3. What a fantastic sight!

The Beast 🧌

Dave bought the previous owner’s riding lawn mower. It was quite a beast! I took it for a quick spinβ€”it was enormous fun!

Two Dudes at rest

It was a relaxing week. Dave and I built a shoe bench for the garage. Jake and I took some easy walks through the woods.

Smokey Mountain Color

We went on some drives to check out the Fall color. It was just starting to get good! We drove one day into Smokey Mountain National Park near Cherokee, North Carolina.

We also drove into Highlands. The main road between Highlands and Scaly Mountian was severely damaged and closed the day I left. A couple of fallen trees were also in the woods around their house.


We headed home a week later to our new power home. Praying to the almighty Spaghetti Monster for no more fucking hurricanes this year. Ramen!

Bonus!

Starship launch in Texas with spectacular catch of the first stage by giant chopsticks!

Brought to us by brother Dave’s Starlink connection. Lasers in the jungle, indeed!


A visit from Theo & Family

Theo Plays the Drums!

Most of the family, including the three brothers, the two sisters-in-law, Carl and Kari, and the gem of the Tubridy clanβ€”Theoβ€”came for a visit. Highlights included a celebration at Rick and Myhra’s palatial estate in Rockledge and a stop at Valhalla so Theo could hit the skins.

Big fun for all!



Spring Break with Theo πŸ‘ΆπŸΌ

The family got to spend some time together when Dave’s family visited. Adam and Zeynab flew in from Seattle to meet with Carl and Theo at Rick & Myhra’s. Rick is going through chemotherapy and radiation treatment now and the family got together to give him our support. They headed back to Panama City after a couple of days to spend a week together at the family homestead.

Babies & Butterflies πŸ‘ΆπŸΌπŸ¦‹

Last stop: Panama City Florida for a week with my brother Dave and his family. Dave’s son Carl, wife Kari, and baby Theo arrived towards the end of the week.

We enjoyed Lisa’s renowned cooking and spent time in the Butterfly haven she has created in the backyard of their stunning home on the bayou.

Lisa’s Butterfly Haven in Panama City

Another great set of family memories as the Tubridy family marches on!

Connellsville

It was a very scenic drive leaving the State College area and heading for Connellsville just south of Pittsburg. Beautiful green, rolling hills with a touch of early Fall color.

We stayed at another large KOA getting ready to celebrate Halloween this weekend. It is on the Youghiogheny river in a hollow. A very scenic setting. The weather was cold but fair while we were there.

Morning mist on Youghiogheny river

My Mom’s family, Mary & Michael Kovach, immigrated here in the early 1910s from Checklosovakia. My nephew Adam told me he thought they could be Rusyn Americans. According to a person I met, a lot of Slovakian immigrants came to this area as miners.

The immigrants were of an Eastern Orthodox religious background. A Byzantine Church was built in the late 1880s about 5 miles outside of Connellsville in Dunbar township. This is where the 1930 census has my mother living with her older brothers and sisters. The groundskeeper at the church told me it was the first Catholic church built out of stone in the United States. It was striking (and a bit out of place) with the onion dome towers.

St Stephen Byzantine Church in Dunbar Township Pennsylvania

Behind the church was a larger, well-tended cemetery with the graves of her mother, father, and several of her older brothers and sisters.

St Stephen Byzantine Church Cemetary

Mom came from a large family with 10 brothers and sisters. Her mother passed from complications of the birth of the last child, George. The father, for whatever reason, did not participate in their upbringing. This left the older children to take care of the younger ones. Most of the younger children were girls and married, and left the area like my Mom.

My grandfather Michael. He died at 82 in a car accident. My mother only met him once (after she was older) that I know about.
My grandmother Mary. She died following the birth of the youngest child. My mother was not even 2 years old.
Oldest brother Michael and his wife. He was born in Czechoslovakia and stayed behind for several years before moving to the United States. Mom told me he didn’t like it here but stayed anyway.
He had a large family. One of his daughters visited an area in the Ukraine where she thought they came from but was unable to find anything. It remains a bit of a controversy as to their actual origin but all of my geological research points to Checklosovkia.
Oldest Sisters Ann and Helen. They never married and raised their younger brothers and sisters along with the eldest son Michael. Ann worked at the church for her whole life.
Older brother James. He never married and I believe worked for the railroad.

Like in Snow Shoe, I tried to make a connection with these ancestors while there. Wondering what their lives were like in this beautiful mountain area.


Connellsville itself was a large town – almost a small city – with a lot of traffic. It sits right on the river which makes for some scenic views. I visited the waterfront and learned the Great Allegheny Passage, a 150-mile hiking and biking route, runs through Connellsville.

Youghiogheny river in Connellsville

This ends the ‘roots’ part of the program! Tomorrow we make our way south (through the remnants of Ian πŸ™ƒ) through the Appalachians over three days and a long stop at my friends Bill and Laura Zweigbaum in Tennessee.

Snoe Shoe

It was a quick trip to Bellefonte Pennsylvania for two nights while I started the ‘roots’ part of our adventure. A couple of hundred miles west of New York, this area was opened to commercial logging followed by coal mining in the 1800s.

We stayed at a nice campground that obviously catered to Penn State football fans in the Fall. A lot of unattended large rigs are covered with Penn State hoo-ha. They had a game the coming weekend so a few early birds were there. The facility was very nice, had a nice pond next to some horse pastures. It also had a rather elaborate set of tracks for motocross bike racing.

Pond at Bellefonte KOA
Horse pastures near Bellefonte KOA

My 2 x great grandfather Thomas Tubridy immigrated with his young family to the mountains just north of here in what is now the Burrough of Snoe Shoe. His youngest son, Thomas Anthony, was a successful coal miner and his son Edward Bernard – my grandfather – went to college at Penn State nearby to our RV park. More detail is on my Tubridy page.

It was a steep climb to the exit right off of Instatestate 80 for Snoe Shoe. I identified three different places in my genealogy research: Snoe Shoe, Moshannon, and the village of Gillentown which lies in between. This is where my grandfather lived with his father and two aunts in the 1900 census.

I imagined my grandfather making his way down to State College where he attended Penn State in the 1910s. Did he ride a horse or have a carriage? How long did it take?

Gillentown was listed as my grandfather’s residence in the 1900 census

St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetary is located near the Catholic Church in Snow Shoe. Two generations of Tubridys and some of their children are buried here. The first generation headstones were in pretty bad shape but the second generation had held up very well. The cemetery was well kept up.

It was moving to touch the headstones knowing that my ancestors had once touched them too.

Thomas Tubridy – First Generation born in Ireland
First Generation Tubridy Family
2nd Generation Tubridy – Thomas Anthony. Separate markers for himself, his second wife, and his eldest daughter.
Grand Dad’s younger (half) brother James and his wife. This grave seemed to be visited more often – one of my relatives? From my research, he did not have any male descendants.
Sister of Great GrandFather Thomas Anthony. I don’t think she ever married.
Frank (or Francis) was 2 x Great Grandfather Thomas’s eldest son. Frank was born in Ireland right before they immigrated and had many descendants, including the only males other than our family. He was Thomas Anthony’s 12 older brother.

Moshannon is an unincorporated community about 3 miles outside Snoe Shoe to the northwest. Right before you get into Moshannon is the village of Gillentown. There is a large facility here that is part of the Snoe Shoe Rails to Trails Association. This provides access to the old railroad bed that was vital to the extraction of lumber and coal. Membership in the association allowed the use of the trails for ATVs.

I imagined if my ancestors would ride the train into the coal mining areas.

Gillentown Trail Access. This is the old railroad that brought lumber and coal out of the mountains.

Moshannon has a Post Office and to my surprise a small memorial to the veterans that fought in World War One – including my grandfather Edward. Like the cemetery, the monument was well kept up.

Moshannon WW I Memorial with Grand Dad’s name

I imagined being there when the locals including my family were there to see its dedication.

Moshannon WW I Memorial with Grand Dad’s name

I was planning to visit a museum the Lions David House museum in Snow Shoe, but alas no one showed up at the time it was supposed to be open. It has a collection of memorabilia and books on local history – it would have been interesting to see what was in there.

I spent time driving around. It is rural, to say the least. Mostly nice brick ranch houses like I remember my grandparents had. Felt pretty red πŸ”΄.

Snow Shoe had a pizzeria, a discount beer store, and a laundromat. There is a nice Catholic Church next to the Cemetary and a Firehouse / Community Center. There was a large veterans memorial next to the Firehouse. There is a very large area with baseball fields and a pool at the edge of town. Right outside of town next to the Interstate is a large FedEx facility.

I felt I had accomplished what I was expecting to create a better connection to my past. Makes sense given the fact that it’s really all we have, and all of that is responsible for me being here, now. Pretty ethereal if you ask me.

Dog is good 🐢

Baby Theo & Festivus 2021

Welcome to my grand nephew Theodore Armand Tubridy. He was born on the 22nd to Kariline Bringe & Carl Tubridy. The next generation of the Tubridy family begins ❀️. Theo is the seventh generation Tubridy since our ancestors immigrated to the US from Ireland in the 1800.

Our family got together for the annual Winter Solstice event hijacked by Steinfeld. Following the pagan traditions, we attended Cocoa Beach’s World Famous Surfing Santas on Friday and then decadently imbibed and played a crazy gift exchange game on Saturday in a nod to the fable of the baby Israelite. The highlight was a family Zoom call with the newest Tubridy – baby Theo – born on the 22nd (122221 – how cool is that?). We paid a visit to Mom’s grave, told the same stories over and over, and laughed a lot. I love my Fam ❀️.