Fringe benefits of an 8-team college football playoff

 Occasionally, I wake up and feel like a sports columnist. Let me try to make the case for an expanded college football playoff. 
 1. You know you'd watch. 
 2. Why do we have a four-team playoff? Because the folks who designed it knew they could never get eight approved. They assumed that once they gave us a flawed four-team playoff, we would demand more.
 3. In an eight-team playoff, the winners of the Power 5 conferences would get automatic bids. Not only would each team controls its own fate (regardless of committee opinions), but there would be so many fringe benefits. It would no longer be necessary to run up the score to impress the committee. And it could do wonders for non-conference scheduling. Teams like Baylor wouldn't need cupcake schedules. If you can get into the playoff by winning your conference, then there's no penalty for risking defeat with ambitious non-conference schedules. For instance, Baylor could have played Oregon this year, just for fun, without dire implications other than green and yellow stains on our TV screens. 
 4. The September schedule would be so much better. Clemson might play Georgia, Auburn, or Tennessee instead of Charlotte. Why not, as long as the Tigers know they can qualify for the playoff by winning the Sisters of the ACC?
 5. To the previous point, Oregon would be in the playoff picture today if they hadn't gone out of their way to play Auburn in the opener. If the Ducks had played South Dakota (like Oklahoma did) instead of Auburn, they would have one loss today, and both the O's would be circling Georgia like vultures.
 6. Yes, the season is too long already. So cut the fall schedule to 11 games and play the FCS games (Clemson-Furman, for example) in the spring, instead of a split-squad scrimmage. (To make it more equitable, you could even let the FCS team play its graduating seniors, and give them a last audition for pro scouts.) That way, the big boys still have seven home dates, to keep the local motels and tailgaters happy. 
 7. Play the quarterfinals at the home fields of the top seeds, maybe on Thanksgiving weekend. No more embarrassingly empty upper decks like we saw in the 49ers stadium for last night's Pac-12 game. 
 8. In the spirit of inclusion, its hard to argue against offering a playoff invitation to the best of the Group of 5 champions. As proud as I am of what Appalachian State has accomplished this year, I don't know that beating North Carolina and South Carolina qualifies you to compete with Clemson. But Central Florida and Boise State have risen to that level, so make room for them.
 9. Some naysayers worry that in an eight-team playoff, a bottom seed might get hot and win an undeserved title. Quarterfinal home games would make that unlikely, but if it happened, you know you'd watch.
 10. It would be okay if Alabama got in. Most of you are convinced they don't deserve to be in the playoff, so you'd watch just to see them lose. 
 11. Play the semifinals the Saturday after Christmas and the national championship in the vacant week before the Super Bowl. Yep, you know you'd watch.

Hiking the rooftops of the Carolinas

My long-awaited arrival at the summit of Mount Guyot (Photo by Peter Barr)

 Ten years ago, I had never heard of a county highpoint. I had climbed a few mountains that were the highest in their counties, but I didn't appreciate that distinction until I started registering my mountain climbs into an online database called Peakbagger.com. Then to my surprise, Peakbagger started to list me on computer-generated rankings of "county highpointers."
 Before 2009, nobody had completed all the county highpoints of North Carolina nor South Carolina. That piqued my competitive instincts, so in 2010 I began seriously pursuing the county highpoints of my home states. It took me over nine years to reach them all. 
 In 2014, I was able to finish South Carolina's 46 counties along with Charlie Zerphey, a fellow highpointer from Pennsylvania. By then, I had had climbed to the top of 33 of North Carolina's 100 counties, and Charlie and I realized we had a chance to become the first hikers to complete all 146 county highpoints in both Carolinas.

Green counties indicate a completed state.
Yellow marks my other county highpoints.
Pink indicates counties on my wish list.
Dark green is my home county, Watauga.

 The most challenging one, I knew, would be Haywood County, where Mount Guyot is one of the most remote peaks in the Southeast. In 2014, when Charlie was 84, he surpassed me when he climbed Guyot with the Highpointers Club. 
 In 2017, Charlie and I slogged to an island in the Great Dismal Swamp that enabled him to claim Pasquotank County and complete the 100 county highpoints of North Carolina. That left me with two county highpoints to climb—Guyot plus an obscure ridge on the Cherokee County line that I reached in 2018 for #99.
 Mount Guyot is named for a 19th-century Princeton professor who was the first to survey many of our Southern mountains. Arnold Guyot was Swiss, so pronounce it GHEE-oh. Guyot stands 6,621 feet above sea level and about 4,400 feet above the parking lot at Cosby Campground in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. 
 A Charlotte attorney named Henry Pharr joined me Sept. 20 to climb Guyot. This would be my final North Carolina county highpoint and Henry's 99th. His 100th will be a sand dune on Ocracoke Island, which is not accessible right now because of damage from Hurricane Dorian.

 The 18-mile roundtrip would be the longest hike of my life. The trail doesn't even go all the way to the top of the mountain—the last half-mile is a bushwhack through a dense balsam forest that smells like Christmas trees. 

I was honored that Peter Barr hiked with me.

 Henry and I started up the Snake Den Trail at dawn and hoped to get to the summit by 1 p.m., but I was slow, and it was 4 o'clock before we made it to the top. Along the way, we were joined by Peter Barr from Skyland and Zachary Robbins from Carrboro. Peter first climbed Mount Guyot when he through-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2000. In 2015, he became the second hiker to complete the North Carolina county highpoints. I am the fourth, also joining state park ranger Brian Bockhahn in 2009 and Charlie Zerphey in 2017. Henry will become the fifth, once Ocracoke reopens.
 We celebrated my landmark with some photos. I brought a North Carolina flag, and Peter led a recitation of the North Carolina state toast, just as one of his friends had done on his completion day. My favorite line says: "Where the weak grow strong and the strong grow great, here's to 'Down Home,' the Old North State."
 Because I was so slow up the hill, we realized we would have to finish in the dark. Under the glow of our headlamps, Peter spotted a couple of snakes on the way down the Snake Den Trail, but they didn't bother us. Henry and I finished about 10 p.m., 15 hours after we started walking.

With Peter Barr and Henry Pharr on the Snake Den Trail, approaching the Appalachian Trail (photo by Zach Robbins)

 If you are interested in pursuing the county highpoints of North Carolina, here is a list that includes my trip reports. (You may have to create a Peakbagger account to read the trip reports.)

 To complete the list, you will visit four national parks, nine state parks, three national forests, three cemeteries, Fort Bragg, an abandoned prison, 11 communication towers, and three water towers. More than half of the highpoints are on private land. If you aspire to be a county highpointer, you'll need to get comfortable approaching strangers and asking them to restrain their dogs while you explore their backyards. 
 In many of the eastern counties (and at least one place in the mountains) you have to visit multiple sites to be sure you have reached the highest ground. One of the most maddening was Edgecombe County, where the USGS topographical maps identified over 30 locations around the town of Rocky Mount that might be the highpoint. I used more modern and precise GPS maps to eliminate two-thirds of those.
 On the other hand, you get double credit when you climb some peaks that are on the county borders. Grandfather Mountain's Calloway Peak is the highest point in Watauga and Caldwell counties, and Standing Indian is highest in Macon and Clay counties. 
 In case you are wondering, the lowest of North Carolina's county highpoints is a pine plantation in Tyrrell County that is only 17 feet above Albemarle Sound. 
 Peter asked me, "Now that you've completed North Carolina, what's next?" Having finished the state where I was born and the state where I now live, I don't have any desire to try to complete any others. I have 268 county highpoints nationally, and I'd like to get to 315, which would represent 10 percent of the nation. The ones marked pink on the map above are among the counties on my wish list. 
 Next year, I may take on another Peakbagger category, peaks with 2,000 feet of prominence. I've climbed all 11 of those in North Carolina, and I need two more in Tennessee (Big Frog Mountain and English Mountain) and one in Virginia (Elliott Knob) to complete the Southeastern "P2Ks." Mercifully, those hikes are just 8 to 12 miles.

Here's where you can find the county high-points of North Carolina:

National Parks

• Blue Ridge Parkway: Jackson (Richland Balsam), Transylvania (Chestnut Bald), McDowell (Blue Ridge Pinnacle), Henderson (Little Pisgah), Wilkes (Thompkins Knob).
• Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Swain (Clingman's Dome), Haywood (Mount Guyot)
• Wright Brothers National Monument: Dare (Kill Devil Hill)
• Cape Hatteras National Seashore: Hyde

National Forests

• Pisgah National Forest: Mitchell (Roan High Knob), Buncombe (Potato Knob), Avery (Grassy Ridge Bald).
• Nantahala National Forest: Graham (Huckleberry Knob), Cherokee (County Corner).
• Uwharrie National Forest: Montgomery (Dark Mountain).

Other Federal land 

• Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge: Pasquotank
• Federal Aviation Administration: Rutherford (Sugarloaf Mountain)
• Fort Bragg: Cumberland

State Parks

• Grandfather Mountain State Park: Watauga (Calloway Peak), Caldwell (Calloway Peak)
• Mount Mitchell State Park: Yancey (Mount Mitchell)
• Elk Knob State Park: Ashe (The Peak)
• Hanging Rock State Park: Stokes (Moores Knob)
• Crowders Mountain State Park: Gaston (The Pinnacle of Kings Mountain)
• Morrow Mountain State Park: Stanly (Morrow Mountain)
• Occoneechee State Natural Area: Orange (Occoneechee Mountain)
• Great Dismal Swamp State Park: Camden
• Jockeys Ridge State Park: Secondary location in Dare County (Jockey's Ridge)

Other state facilities

• Hoke Correctional Instititution: Hoke

Nature Conservancy

• Secondary location in Dare County (Nags Head Woods)

Communications Towers

• Alleghany (Catherine Knob)
• Surry (Fisher Peak)
• Polk (Tryon Peak)
• Cleveland (Benn Knob)
• Iredell (Fox Mountain)
• Randolph (Shepherd Mountain)
• Rowan (Youngs Mountain)
• Rockingham
• Alamance (Cane Creek Mountain)
• Chatham
• Harnett (Big Ridge)

Water towers

• Person (Roxboro Hill)
• Secondary locations in Harnett, Moore

Cemeteries

• Richmond (Parsons Cemetery)
• Columbus (Meadow Cemetery)
• Secondary location in Tyrrell (West Cemetery)

Private land (listed highest to lowest): Madison (Sandymush Bald), Burke (Long Arm Mountain), Alexander (Hickory Knob), Catawba (Baker Mountain), Yadkin (Click benchmark), Lincoln (Buffalo Knob), Davidson (High Rock Mountain), Forsyth, Rockingham secondary location, Davie, Guilford, Alamance (Cane Creek Mountains), Cabarrus, Mecklenburg, Caswell (Stony Creek Mountain), Union, Chatham, Durham (Red Mountain), Granville, Anson (Gordon Mountain), Lee, Wake, Scotland, Warren, Halifax, Northampton, Johnston, Nash, Wilson, Robeson, Sampson, Wayne, Bladen, Duplin, Lenoir, Edgecombe, Greene, Pitt, Jones, Pender, Onslow, Bertie, Hertford, Martin, Gates, Brunswick, Currituck, Beaufort, Craven, Chowan, Perquimans, Pamlico, Washington, Carteret, Tyrrell.

Family tree: I'm the king of wishful thinking

George II at age 44 (portrait by Charles Jervas)—see the resemblance? 

 

 When you start researching your family tree, you never know what secrets you might find. Ancestry.com tells me that England's King George II may have been my seventh great-grandfather.
 George II was the grandfather of George III, whose reign is remembered for the American Revolution. I can't vouch for the legend that on July 4, 1776, he wrote in his diary: "Nothing important happened today."
 The lineage goes through my mother's mother, Macie Sherard Griffin (1887-1973), daughter of Charles McLaren Sherard (1858-1894) son of James Wiley Sherard (1828-1910), son of Phoebe Beaty Buchanan (1798-1872), daughter of Mary Pack Buchanan (1775-1837), daughter of Joseph Carroll Pack (1748-1827). Joseph Pack was supposedly the son of the Duke of Cumberland (1721-1765), the son (or perhaps the brother) of King George II (1683-1760).
 Documentation is weak for the Revolutionary era, and I may be on the brink of wishful thinking. I'm not content with what I'm finding on the mother of James Wiley Sherard. Some sources list her as Phoebe Buchanan, while others say Phoebe Beaty Buchanan. Was she previously married to a Beaty? If not, the whole royal lineage breaks down right there. The Sherard family history has a full page of discussion on her, but reaches no conclusions. (There are also Beatys on another branch of my tree, so I may be able to circumvent this problem). 

 The duke, William Augustus Hanover, was unlikely to ever reach the throne, and he got involved with a commoner, Mary Anne Packard. Their son supposedly took his surname from his mother and became Joseph Carroll Pack. He settled in the Carolinas in 1770 with royal land grants from his cousin (or uncle), King George III.

 Ancestry.com has a 1976 manuscript called Children, Meet Your Ancestors written by one of my Mississippi cousins named Genevieve Broome Jones (1900-1985). Mrs. Jones spent years trying to track down the Pack branch of her family tree, until a relative in Columbia, S.C., shared a story that supposedly came from a book called England's Turbulent Eighteenth Century, by the acclaimed English author, James Boswell. As far as I can tell, no such book exists. Boswell did write a similar title called The Ominous Years 1774-1776, but it does not contain the passage that Mrs. Jones quotes:

 Then in 1760, George III, twenty-five years old, handsome and well-educated, came to the throne. There was great rejoicing. He felt himself English, and had shaken off the Hanover ties. He was resolved to be a good English ruler. But the rejoicing was short-lived. King George III was a vacillator between generosity to those in his favor and vices of a despot with others.
 (Then an example of despotism is given.)
 On the other hand, he lavishly doled out grants of land in America for colonization. One of the adventurers who got grants was a favorite cousin, Joseph, son of William, brother of the king's grandfather George II. Unlike other members of the royal family, William was tremendously attracted to English customs and living: to the point that he married an English commoner, Mary Anne Packard, who was Joseph's mother.
 Since Joseph was not in the royal line, upon receipt of a grant of land in Carolinas of the America by the king, adopted a portion of his mother's maiden name, Pack, as his surname. Over and beyond this generosity, the king financed the journey to America and the expenses of Joseph's first year in America. 

 Mrs. Jones acknowledged that she could not be certain that her ancestor Joseph Pack, who settled in South Carolina in 1770, was the same person mentioned in the royal family. "My skepticism arises from the fact that no living Pack descendant that I have met ever had any inkling of any royal ancestry. Why? Was Joseph so ashamed of it that it was never told to any of his children? If any one of his twelve children ever heard of it, surely some hint of it would have come down as family tradition."

Joseph Pack rests at Paxville Baptist Church

 Pack may have become estranged from his royal family, considering that he enlisted in the S.C. Militia at the end of the American Revolution, where he would have fought against his cousin's army. 
 Also, some sources say that the Duke never married. If that's the case, maybe Miss Packard was his mistress, which also might explain why Joseph never told his children where they came from.
 Joseph Pack received two grants in the Camden District and two more in the Sumter District, where he is buried in a village called Paxville. He also received grants on the Tyger River and Enoree River, which would connect him to the upstate of South Carolina. In fact, there are Pack families in northern Greenville County, and I once owned a couple of acres there on a scenic ridge called Packs Mountain.
 If George II is indeed my seventh great-grandfather, then I am also a descendant of King James I, known for the King James Bible.
 There is also a chance that my link should go through George I rather than II, since Mrs. Jones' account (and the 1982 clipping below) describes the Duke as the brother (rather than the son) of George II. 
 The following clipping is from the Sumter Daily Item in 1982:

The shady side of my family tree

Cousin Lizzie Borden with her mom, who died when Lizzie was three

 I've been working with my mother to assemble our family tree, and as I've rummaged through ancestry.com, I've found some notorious skeletons in our family closets.
 It appears that Lizzie Borden is my seventh cousin, five generations removed. Lizzie was acquitted of murdering her stepmother and father with an hatchet in 1892. 
 Lizzie's sixth great-grandfather and my 11th uncle, Thomas Cornell Jr., was convicted of burning his mother in 1673, based on second-hand testimony from his mother's spirit.
 The History Channel connected the dots between Borden and Cornell in a 2018 show.
 You may be familiar with Lizzie from the old folk rhyme: 

Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty one.

 Lizzie was a 32-year-old spinster in Fall River, Massachusetts, who was accused of murdering her father, a wealthy casket maker named Andrew Jackson Borden, and her stepmother, Abby Durfee Gray. 
 On Aug. 4, 1892, Lizzie alerted the family maid to her father's mutilated body. He had been hit 10 or 11 times with a hatchet-like weapon while sleeping on the sofa. Her stepmother was found in the family guest rooom and had been struck 18 or 19 times. 
 Lizzie was arrested, gave contradictory statements to police, and was indicted for murder. At her trial in 1893, she fainted when her parents' crushed skulls were presented as evidence, and she was acquitted in just 10 minutes by a jury of 12 men. She lived until 1927, dying at age 67.
 At least she didn't have to face the spectral testimony of her mother, like Thomas Cornell Jr. Born in England, he was 46 years old and his wife Sarah was expecting their third child when his mother, Rebecca, burned to death in the family home on Acquidneck Island, Rhode Island. 
 According to an account published by the New England Historical Society: 

 On the night of February 8, 1673, Thomas Cornell rushed into the sitting room where he had earlier left his mother Rebecca Cornell. On the floor he found a body, badly burned. He suspected he'd found a drunken Indian who had fallen into the fire.

 But as he rushed close, he declared: "Oh, Lord! It is my mother!" And so began the strange case of the murder of Rebecca Cornell.

 The Cornells were a well-respected family in Portsmouth, R.I. Thomas and Rebecca, originally from England, ran an inn in Boston. They left Massachusetts in the wake of Ann Hutchinson's expulsion for her religious beliefs. The Cornells sympathized with the more tolerant society Roger Williams was creating in Rhode Island.

 Thomas Sr. died in 1655. Both Thomas Cornells, senior and junior, were well-regarded citizens, serving public office. By 1673, Rebecca had entrusted her estate to her son Thomas.

 On the day she died, Thomas spent more than an hour talking with his mother in her sitting room. Then he was called to dinner. The evening dinner was salt mackerel, which Rebecca did not eat. She said it made her dry in the night.

 Thomas sent his son Edward to ask Rebecca if she wanted boiled milk or some other supper. As Edward tried to rouse his grandmother, he was alarmed by a dog bounding from the sitting room. Something was amiss and Edward ran to fetch a candle and raise an alarm. When Thomas returned to the sitting room with Edward, he found the body on the floor.

 Kneeling down, Thomas first tried some Indian phrases to communicate with the injured person. On closer inspection he recognized his mother. The first coroner’s inquest was quick and to the point. Rebecca Cornell had died in a fire. She had probably fallen asleep, dropped ash from her pipe on herself and burned to death. But four days after the death, Rebecca's brother John gave a strange testimony.

 He was asleep in bed when "he felt something heave up the bedclothes twice, and thought somebody had been coming to bed to him, where upon he awaked, and turned himself about in his bed, and being turned, he perceived a light in the room, like to the dawning of the day, and plainly saw the shape and appearance of a woman standing by his bedside where at he was much affrighted, and cried out, 'in the name of God what art thou?'

 The apparition answered, 'I am your sister Cornell,' and twice said, 'see how I was burnt with fire.' And she plainly appeared unto him to be very much burnt about the shoulders, face, and head."

 The vision reinvigorated the investigation. Rebecca's brother interpreted the vision to mean that his sister accused someone of burning her intentionally. Rebecca's body was inspected a second time, and this jury found a suspicious wound in her stomach. A new version of events began to take shape, and Thomas Cornell was charged with murdering his mother.

 At trial, witnesses painted an unpleasant picture of life in the Cornell home. Rebecca Cornell had complained about her treatment. She had to work on the farm. She went to bed without her bed made up or warmed. And she complained that Thomas was skimpy in heating the home and would not provide a good fire.

 Her son declined to hire a maid to look after her. And she and Thomas argued over whether rent should be paid for staying at the house and whether he should pay her or vice versa.

 Rebecca Cornell, two witnesses testified, had contemplated killing herself, either by stabbing herself or drowning herself. Further, she had told some, she planned to leave Thomas' house and move in with her son Samuel in the spring. Of particular concern to Rebecca: Thomas' second wife, Sarah, who she disliked.

 Patience Coggeshall testified: "She was afraid there would be mischief done. Her daughter-in-law was of such a desperate spirit, for not long since, said she, she ran after one of the children of his first wife, with an Axe, into her house; but she prevented her striking the child. Yet she did not live with any of her other children because she had made over her estate to her son Thomas. If she had thought her son Thomas first wife would have died before her, she would not have made it over to him."

 Meanwhile, other witnesses questioned Thomas' story about his mother refusing mackerel, charging that she had been known to eat it.  John Pierce suggested Thomas Cornell was glad his mother was gone. He testified: "Thomas Cornell said that his Mother in her life time had a desire to have a good fire, and further said, that he thought God had answered her ends, for now she had it."

 The jury convicted Thomas Cornell of murdering his mother with virtually no evidence that he had done so. Two years after he died, his widow Sarah was charged with assisting in the murder, along with a local Indian, though she was not convicted and the case of Rebecca Cornell caused the people of Rhode Island to debate whether spectral evidence should be used in criminal cases at all.

 Thomas Cornell Jr. was convicted and hanged in 1673, shortly after his wife gave birth to a daughter named Innocent, who married into the Borden family.
 This branch of our family tree is not without honor. Thomas Cornell Sr., my 12th great-grandfather, is the ancestor for a number of prominent Americans, including Bill Gates and Edith Stuyvestant Dresser (who married George Vanderbilt and became matron of the Biltmore House), presidents Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon, the first ladies of James Monroe and Grover Cleveland, aviator Amelia Earhart, Declaration of Independence signer William Ellery of Rhode Island, and Ezra Cornell, who gave the original endowment for Cornell University.
 I'm indebted to my co-worker (and newfound cousin) Terry Harmon for much of this information. Terry also pointed out that on the family tree of English clergyman William Eddy (1550-1616), Lizzie was the sixth cousin of George Stoneman, the namesake for my Civil War newspaper, The Stoneman Gazette. That tree also includes Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and actress Jane Fonda.

 If ancestry.com is correct, I am descended from Thomas Cornell Sr. (1593-1655) and his wife Rebecca Briggs (1600-1673), their daughter Rebecca Cornell Woolsey (1629-1713), her daughter Sarah Woolsey (1650-1727), her son Joseph Josiah Hallett (1678-1750), his son Samuel Hallett (1722-1796), his daughter Jemima Bruce (1759-1846), her son David Moore (1770-1830, the first to settle in South Carolina), his son Alfred Moore (1799-1877), his daughter Mary Alice Moore (1860-1943), her daughter Minnie Barnette Clark (1883-1971), her daughter Essie Layton (1904-1972), and her son Dwight Layton (1928-2017). I am aware of a couple of weak links in that lineage. 

Highpointing in the footsteps of George Washington

Green states are the ones where Charlie Zerphey has reached the highest point in every county. Yellow and blue are others where he climbed the county highpoint. 

 After George Washington was inaugurated in 1789 as the first president of the United States, he decided to visit each of the 13 original states in an effort to unify the new nation and to become better acquainted with regional leaders and issues. 

Washington's 1791 Southern Tour

 In the spring of 1791, at the spry age of 59, the Father of our Country boarded a cream-colored horse-drawn carriage and embarked south from Mount Vernon headed for Richmond, Va., and the Dismal Swamp in N.C. before spending a week in Charleston, S.C. By mid-May he had reached Savannah, Ga., and he returned via Augusta, Ga.; Columbia and Camden, S.C.; Charlotte, Salisbury, Salem, and Guilford Court House, N.C.; and Halifax and Fredericksburg, Va. (Suffice to say, the government survived without him, under the stewardship of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.)
 I was reminded of Washington's Southern Tour when I thought about the hiking trips I've made in recent years with Charlie Zerphey, who was born on Washington's 198th birthday in 1930, and now has unified the original 13 states in a way that no other hiker has ever done.
 After Charlie retired as a printer in Lancaster, Pa. (another place Washington visited on July 4, 1791**), he decided to try to climb the highest points in all 50 states. He reached all of them except Alaska, and he got halfway up Denali before other members of his team turned back. Content with that, he got a license plate that says "49HIPTS."
 Along the way, Charlie also discovered the related sport of county high-pointing, where the goal is to find and reach the highest point in each county. He completed the counties of Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island in 2001, Pennsylvania in 2003, New Jersey in 2004, Maine and New Hampshire in 2005, Massachusetts and Maryland in 2006, and New York and West Virginia in 2009. There's no telling how many miles he's driven—certainly more than the 1,900 miles that Washington traveled. 

 Our paths first crossed in 2011, when we were both interested in climbing Beartown Mountain in Russell County, Va., which Charlie needed to complete Virginia. It took two trips, but we finally made in in 2012, thanks to Rick Shortt. 
 Then we teamed up in 2012 to complete South Carolina and 2015 when he finished North Carolina*. The last N.C. counties Charlie needed were two islands in the Great Dismal Swamp, where slaves under Washington's supervision once dug drainage canals. Again, our first effort failed because of high water, but on the second try we made it. Our hike to the Pasquotank County high point was nearly 8 miles roundtrip with a net gain in elevation of 9 feet.
 After that, I challenged Charlie to complete Georgia so he would become the first person to complete the county highpoints in all 13 original states. Georgia is no easy task, with 159 counties—more than any other state except Texas. 
 In recent years, we've explored the Georgia mountains, then Charlie spent close to a month seeking the highest natural ground in the flat counties of eastern and southern Georgia. On Feb. 28, I had the privilege of hiking with him as he completed his quest on an obscure hill in Upson County known as Dorster Mountain.
 At age 89, Charlie has reached 975 county highpoints, so his next goal is 1,000, which has been accomplished by only 10 men. The national leader is a Michigan man named Bob Schwab who has summited 2,361 of the nation's 3,142 counties. It is unlikely that anyone will ever complete the national map, because several of the county highpoints are on ranches where hikers are not welcome.
 With 16 states completed (including Maine, Vermont, and West Virginia, which were not among the original 13), Charlie ranks third nationally behind Arizona's Bob Packard, 28 states (mostly in the West and Northeast), and Schwab, 27 states (mostly in the Midwest and Northeast).

* COMPLETING N.C.: My county high-point map pales in comparison to Charlie's, though I did complete North Carolina on Sept. 20, 2019.  

** PAPA GEORGE: It was in Lancaster, Pa., in a German almanac published in 1799, that Washington received the nickhame, "Father of His Country."

Charlie Zerphey atop Lookout Mountain, the highest point in Walker County, Ga. On the horizon to the left is John's Mountain in Floyd County, one of our most challenging hikes in Georgia.

Shoeless Joe Jackson, as told to Furman Bisher

Joe and Katie Jackson on their wedding day in 1908

 Sunday would have been the 100th birthday of Furman Bisher, the esteemed sports columnist for the Atlanta Constitution. He was born Nov. 4, 1918 (three days before Billy Graham) in Denton, N.C., named for a Baptist preacher named James Furman, and matriculated to Furman University (why not) before completing his education at the University of North Carolina.
 Bisher was elected the Georgia Sportswriter of the Year 18 times in a span of 50 years, which brought him back home to the national sportswriters' awards in Salisbury, N.C., just 24 miles from where he was born. On one of those occasions I had the opportunity to meet him at the North Carolina Transportation Museum, where he guided me through a Pullman car and reminisced about the days when sportswriters rode the rails.
 I was thinking about Bisher (who died in 2012) this weekend because he was such an authority on Shoeless Joe Jackson, and there was an event in Greenville this weekend promoting the latest movie about Shoeless Joe. The only time Jackson ever gave an interview about the 1919 Black Sox scandal was with Bisher in 1949. After Jackson died in 1951, Bisher wrote the following tribute:  

 Shoeless Joe Jackson was a plain and simple man who thought in plain and simple ways. He stood out from his kind only by a remarkable athletic instinct, and an extra sense that made him one of baseball's great hitters. Fact is, they say he was the greatest natural hitter that ever lived.

 But without a bat in his hands, he had a weakness. He relied heavily on his friends for mental guidance. Any person kind to him got in return warmth and trust, and it has since been proven that Joe's trust was in bad hands.

 I'm sure that he went to his death the other night in Greenville, S.C., still clear of conscience. I'm sure that when and if he did accept a spot of cash for an intended part in fixing the scandalous World Series of 1919 between his Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds he did so without realizing that he was committing a wrong. He was that simple a man, and that trusting in the teammates he thought he knew so well.

 I know his own story because I spent several days with him a couple of years ago recording it for Sport Magazine, which published "by Joe Jackson as told to, " etc., though Joe to his death had never learned to read or write.

 He began in plain and simple manner one August day as we sat under a small tree on the lawn of his neat little home [which is now the Joe Jackson museum, across the street from Fluor Field, Greenville's new ballpark.]

 "I'm not what you call a Christian," he said, "but I believe in that Good Book. What you sow, so shall you reap. I asked the Lord for guidance and I'm sure he gave it to me.

 "Baseball failed to keep faith with me. When I got notice of my suspension, three days before the 1920 season ended, it said that if I was found innocent, I would be reinstated. If found guilty, I would be banned for life.

 "I was found innocent. I walked out of Judge Devert's courtroom in Chicago in 1921 a free man. I had been acquitted by a 12-man jury in a civil court. I thought when my trial was over Judge Landis would restore me to good standing. But he never did. And to this day I have never gone before him, sent a representative before him, or placed any written matter before him pleading my case. I gave baseball my best, and if the game didn't care enough to see me get a square deal, then I wouldn't go out of my way to get back in it.

 "It was never explained to me officially, but I was told that Judge Landis said I was banned because of the company I kept. I roomed with Claude Williams the pitcher, one of the ringleaders, they told me, and one of the eight players banned. But I had to take whoever they assigned with me on the road. I had no power over that."

 Didn't he know something was going on?

 "Sure I'd heard talk. I even had a fellow come to me one day and proposition me. It was on the 16th floor of a hotel and there were four other people there, two men and their wives. I told him, ‘Why, you cheap so-and-so, either me or you one is going out that window!' I started for him, but he ran and I never saw him again.

 "I even went to Mr. Charles Comiskey (White Sox owner) before the World Series and asked him to keep me out of the lineup. He refused and I begged him to tell the newspapers he suspended me for being drunk, or anything, but leave me out of the Series and then there could be no question.

 "I went out and played my heart out against Cincinnati. I set a record that still stands for the most hits in a series. It has been tied, I think. I made 13 hits, but after all the trouble came out they took one away from me. Maurice Rath went over in the hole and knocked down a hot grounder, but he couldn't make a throw on it. They scored it a hit then, but changed it later. I led both teams in hitting with .375. I hit our only home run of the Series. I handled 30 balls without an error. I came all the way home from first and scored the winning run in a 5-4 game.

 "That's my record in the series, and I was responsible only for Joe Jackson. There was just one thing that didn't seem quite right now as I think back over it. Eddie Cicotte seemed to let up on a pitch to Pat Duncan and Pat hit it over my head. Duncan didn't have enough power to hit the ball that far if Cicotte had been bearing down."

 Joe strengthened his case of conscience by pointing to the good fortune that followed him after his banishment.

 "Everything I touched seemed to turn out good for me. I've got a nice home and a 17-acre farm. See that lot across the street over there? I paid $240 for it and sold it for $800 in 24 hours."

 What you sow, so shall you reap. . .

 Joe always did say that "Say it ain't so, Joe" story was a hoax. He charged it to a Chicago sportswriter named Charley Owens, who at least must be given a stout hurrah for his imagination.

 "It was supposed to have happened the day I was arrested in September, 1920, when I came out of the courtroom hearing. There weren't any words passed between anybody, except me and a deputy sheriff. He asked for a ride to the Southside and we got into the car together and left. Charley Owens just made up a good story and wrote it. Oh, I'd have said it wasn't so, all right, just like I'm saying it now."

 Joe lived his last years in quiet comfort, a man who dressed well, drove a Packard and doted on the respect of his South Carolina neighbors. It is perhaps odd, but when he died he was chairman of the protest committee of a semipro league around Greenville.

 Someone else was always delegated to read the protests and write the committee reports, it should be added.

 To Joe, this was equal to exoneration. The people who knew him longest and best felt he was morally innocent. I'm sure he went with a clear conscience.

 As Bisher would say ... Selah. 

If my life was an airline, this would be my route map

     I recently came across a neat website called Great Circle Mapper that makes it easy to display customized airline routes. I decided to enter all the flights I've ever taken (anyone surprised that I keep track of such things?) so I could visualize all the places I've been privileged to go.
     This globe shows the result. It's my version of the Bible maps of Paul's missionary journeys—only without any shipwrecks.
     The green routes span my newspaper career, mostly in Greenville. I wore a leisure suit on my first flight, at age 20, when my benevolent editor/great uncle Slim Hembree sent me to Omaha to cover the College World Series for the Anderson Independent. I have to thank Woodruff's Tony Rice for getting me to Phoenix, and Clemson's Rick Barnes for the junket to Puerto Rico.
     The yellow routes are flights I've made since joining Samaritan's Purse in 1999. Back in 2005, I departed on a 22,664-mile round-the-world trip to report on our tsunami relief work in Sri Lanka and Indonesia. We flew east via London and the Maldives to Sri Lanka, and after we continued over to Indonesia, the most direct way home was to keep flying east via Taipei and Los Angeles. (On a 40-minute backwards hop from Kuala Lumpur to Medan, we crossed a time zone and landed earlier than we took off.)
     The flight over the North Pole was from New York to Beijing to report on the 2008 earthquake in China. That yellow dot in the Sahara Desert is Timbuktu, where I had the privilege of helping to hand out Operation Christmas Child shoebox gifts. Most recently was a five-leg 17,330-mile round trip to Burundi to report on the ministry of one of our surgical teams.
     Here is the flat-earth view:

     Great Circle Mapper says I've flown 327,090 miles to 90 airports in 35 countries. If you figure 500 miles per hour, that's about two weeks of my life spent jammed into airplane seats.
     (On the other hand, I've probably driven close to a million miles. At 50mph, that would be over two years behind the wheels of the Mustangs, Spitfire, Bobcat, Hyundai, Lumina, Windstar, Saturn, Tribute, Accord, and CX-5.)
     These maps only show the places with airport codes like ATL, JFK, and 34NC (the helipad atop Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte). Some of the places I've flown don't have codes, including several dirt strips in Africa and a float-plane landing at Dick Proennecke's cabin in Alaska.

SILLY JET! What else can you do with Great Circle Mapper? Well, the navigators of a Boeing 787 used an 18-hour test flight to draw a self-portrait. Click here!

En route to Darfur, Africa, I had a photo-op in the cockpit of a DC-3 built for World War II.

Orval and Buddy: Inseparable to the end

Orval's driveway has this view of Balsam Gap

     Orval Banks and his dog Buddy lived for many years in a cabin atop Chambers Mountain, where Orval manned the fire tower for the state of North Carolina, while Buddy specialized in search-and-rescue missions. I met them in June when I hiked up their steep two-mile-long driveway.
     Orval knew his days on the mountaintop were running short. Cancer had sapped his strength, and the state had decided to close the tower. His son over in Hendersonville was preparing a place for them to live. When I visited, Orval was working on a crate for Buddy to ride down in the back of his pickup truck. It wouldn't be long until they had to leave.
     Orval welcomed me to climb the rickety lookout tower and was sorry he was no longer strong enough to go up there. From his front porch, he fondly pointed out the mile-high mountains that encircled us: the Pisgahs, Balsams, the Lyn Lowry cross, the Great Smokies, Crabtree Bald, the Roans, Mount Mitchell, and others; as well as the landmarks at our feet: Maggie Valley, Waynesville, Lake Junaluska, and Asheville.
     The photo I've posted here is the view from his driveway looking southwest through Balsam Gap toward Georgia. I'm sorry I don't have a picture of the three of us, but I'm not much for selfies, I doubt that Orval would have wanted to pose, and Buddy didn't want me to get too close.
     One of the commands Orval taught Buddy was "show me," and the last thing Buddy did was show Orval the way out of this world. Orval was already on his deathbed on Tuesday when Buddy suddenly became sick. The family took him to the vet, but there was nothing they could do, and at 8 o'clock Tuesday night, Buddy went to sleep for the last time. Orval’s grandson lovingly told Buddy that when he got to heaven, "Stay!" and wait for Orval.
     Buddy didn't have to wait for long. Just two hours later, Orval followed him. They had an amazing life together, and they were inseparable to the end.

     The family sent out a message saying: 

     It was meant to be, Orval followed Buddy around for years. Only fitting that he follows him now. I truly believe that neither one of them wanted to leave without the other. Buddy will also be cremated and his ashes will be spread with Orval's.

     I believe that Orval's Heaven will be endless mountain ridges and valleys. And that he will spend his time crossing each of them, with a pack of dogs in front of him and Buddy leading the way. Orval will be able to breathe again and his body will work again. And all along the way he will find the people he has been searching for, along with friends and family, who have gone before and will follow in the future. And Dad's face will be lit with God's light as he chases the setting sun.

     And for any of you who have been on searches with my Dad and followed him through the woods, there is bound to be occasionally one of the gnarliest briar thickets and Dad will go straight through the middle of it.

     For more about Orval Banks and his gift for communicating with dogs, check out this 2011 story in the Smoky Mountain News.