Frankie's Bridge

Now that I am a gentleman land baron, ha-ha, I have, as promised, placed a new geocache somewhere in the wooded valley across the road from my house. It's called "Frankie's Bridge," the title being based on a local legend from days of yore.

 

Going back many years before I was born, the area that is now my neighborhood was mostly farmland, and even when I was a kid in the early 1960s, there was a horse stable and a small wooden bridge across the creek that meanders through the valley. A horse named Frankie lived down there, though I don't know who actually owned him.

 

One night, as Frankie was crossing the bridge, one of the planks broke beneath him. He toppled from the bridge and broke his leg, which resulted in him having to be put down. In the years that followed, the neighbors whispered that they sometimes heard Frankie crying out in pain late at night. Personally, I never heard any such sounds, but back when, certain neighbors swore it was true.

 

Nowadays, I don't know whether anyone around here even remembers Frankie's story, but it has always stood out in my mind. Sometimes at night, I'll go outside, gaze at the stars, and listen for any ghostly sounds out there in the dark, but alas... no such luck.

 

Anyway, after the cache's publication the other day, friend and fellow geocacher Skyhawk63 (a.k.a. Tom) came around to hunt the cache, and he earned the almost-coveted first-to-find honors. Afterward, he and I enjoyed a nice lunch at Be Wiched Diner uptown and then went our separate ways. I ventured over to Danville for a first-to-find of my own and then moved on to Caswell County, NC, to seek a few more caches.

 

In April, I'll be hosting a geocaching event here at home, so I'm sure most or all of the attendees will want to venture into the woods across the road to hunt Frankie's Bridge. 

Near the cache: all that now remains of Frankie's Bridge

In this photo from 2016, one beam of Frankie's bridge still remained alongside that sewer pipe;
below, a couple of views near the cache I took the other day

Halloween Party Horrors, Ghosts, Legends, & Cryptids

Joe, Suzy, Jennifer, Jamie, Scott, Samaire, Mark W., Kim W., Kimberly B., Terry, Beth;
the Front Man is behind the camera

The Front Man

'Tis done! Brugger and I put on our annual Halloween Party last night, which was—as expected—crashed by a plethora of frightful fiends. Sadly, several folks who'd anticipated attending weren't able to, but those who did, at least by my reckoning, somehow survived. There was cheese and there was meatballs (alas, no caviar), and long tall glasses of wine up to h'yar. Yes, we did have that and more. I think it's safe to say that no one left the premises hungry or thirsty.

We had a fun Halloween horror trivia contest — 13 questions about horror movies, books, and stories. I made most of the questions pretty easy for the layman, but a few of them required a bit more than casual horror knowledge. At least a couple of people correctly answered the question "Which 1982 horror classic featured the famous line, 'You've gotta be fucking kidding me!'" Go Suzy and Joe!

Now, I started out as the Front Man from Squid Games, but after a while the heat in there began to get to me, pretty seriously, so I changed into last year's slightly more casual costume, which still hung in our entryway closet (see below photo with Brugger). Temperature-wise, this provided some relief, and it also made it a hell of a lot easier to consume wine and vittles. In case I didn't mention it, we had lots and lots and lots of wine and vittles.

Some of us stayed up till the wee hours yakking about scary things, both real and unreal. Sadly, the real is overshadowing too much of the far more agreeable unreal. All in all, we had a fine time. Needless to say, the better part of this morning was spent on restoring the casa to habitable condition.

Horror trivia! Suzy, Joe, Beth, and Jamie won prizes.

This afternoon, I attended a presentation about the ghosts, legends, and cryptids of Martinsville and Henry County, given by Garrett Channel, who is the executive director of the Salem (Virginia) Museum. He provided a lively, very enjoyable talk that was perfect for the season. He related the legend of Sam Lion, a bit of local (very likely embellished) history, which I wrote about a few years ago (here). After his presentation, I talked briefly with him about my writing and interest in such creepy legends, and he told me he actually used my blog as one of his references. Well, I find that kinda cool, particularly since I use both the real and "altered" folklore of this area as a basis for many of my stories and books (most recently, The House at Black Tooth Pond).

As an added bonus, I ran into my seventh-grade American History teacher, Ms. Kerry Tillery, who lives up the street from us. She is a most wonderful person, and I'm so glad she is still around. It's always a pleasure to have the opportunity to talk with her.

"Castle Rock," I call it. I have a geocache here. This was supposedly a part of the original
"Sam Lion's Trail" of local legend.

The Legend of Sam Lion

This remnant of one of the Hairston family’s old farming roads still lurks in the woods near my house.

I have posted links to this story before, but an editing project I’m currently working on brought it back to my mind. In Martinsville, VA, where I grew up, there’s a long, winding road in my neighborhood called Sam Lions Trail. As a youngster, I had no clue — or much curiosity — about the name’s origin. However, a local legend (with a couple of different permutations) explains the road name’s history. The most commonly told story goes as follows (condensed by yours truly from articles in The Martinsville Bulletin):

“The story of Sam Lion is a 175-year-old narrative of brutality and deadly revenge between a slave and his overseer. While several minor variations of the tale exist, the principal character has been immortalized in Martinsville by having a road — Sam Lions Trail — named after him.

“Sam Lions Trail is in the Forest Park neighborhood, an area of about 750 homes in the southeast part of the city. In the mid-1800s, this 1,050-acre tract belonged to the Hairstons, a prodigious family of farmers and slave owners who were headquartered at the Beaver Creek Plantation (now off Virginia Highway 108).

“The story goes that Sam Lion, the son of an African chieftain, was brought to this country, along with about 150 other slaves, and bought by one of the Hairstons. As the slaves started to walk from the auction stand, the hot, tired Prince slipped and almost fell. “Watch it there, Sam!” came the harsh voice of a red-headed overseer named Red Tupper. From then on, the Prince was known as Sam. Legend has it that the slave acquired his last name because he acted nobly and with the courage of a Lion.

“The Hairstons had divided their land into sections, and they sent Sam Lion and other slaves to clear one of the biggest tracts. Instead of climbing the long, high hills to get to work, Sam Lion cleared a path around them.

“Red Tupper was a cruel overseer, notorious for beating his slaves for little or no reason. One day he beat Sam Lion. Lion, knowing little English, responded, ”If you beat again, I kill.” Tupper merely laughed. But the next day, Sam Lion stopped to pick up a chain he had dropped, and Tupper hit him with a whip. Lion straightened up and roared, “Didn’t believe?” The slave then picked up his axe, swung it, and killed his overseer. Lion fled into the nearby woods, and for the next three years, he lived off the land, sheltering in caves and watching for signs of anyone searching for him.

“Eventually, some of the locals happened upon Sam Lion while he was sleeping in a cave. He was taken to jail, found guilty of murder, and hanged in the public square.”

Over the years, some have claimed to have seen the ghostly figure of Sam Lion roaming the woods in Martinsville’s Forest Park neighborhood. Me, I’ve never witnessed any such apparition... dammit... but as one who loves history (particularly local history), I find it both sobering and intriguing that the woods, creeks, and trails where I played as a kid — and still frequently haunt — provide the backdrop of this grim legend.

A hillside covered in clusters of huge boulders along what historians believe was the original trail cut by Sam Lion. I’ve always called it “Castle Rock.” Several years ago, I placed a geocache here, which bears that name.