Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes by Janie DeVos

                                                                   Charlie's three grave sites.  Kona, NC.

                                        Frankie's grave.  Last name misspelled with an "s" at the end.

     My writing has been sluggish at best in the last couple of years.  It shifted into low gear once Covid set in.  Being “holed up” at home didn’t help the creative juices flow, and according to other artists of varying mediums, they went through the same thing.  Trouble is, it’s been hard getting that creative engine revved up again.  We’re funny people, we are.  We moaned and groaned about having to stay home so much during the “lock-down”, and, yet, people have been slow to get back out there in full force.  I know.  I’m one of them. 

 I decided it was time to go full throttle again; both in the body and in the mind.  So, last week, my husband and I booked our Mediterranean cruise.  As a matter of fact, this isn’t just my first cruise, but it’s also my first trip to Europe. 

It’s not that we didn’t try going before.  The first time our plans were thwarted because 9-11 happened.  We decided staying stateside for the time being was probably best, and we started taking road trips to find our vacation home, which, as it turned out, is now our full-time home in NC.  When we tried to go to Europe again, Covid struck.  So, I’m hoping that the third time is the charm.  We’ll be going in later July, and after landing in Rome, we’ll board our ship to cruise along the Mediterranean coastline.  To say I’m excited is an understatement.  But there’s plenty of time between now and then to get my creative juices going, so, I’m playing what I refer to as “a tourist in my own town”.  I’m getting out and seeing places I’ve either wanted to see or haven’t seen in quite a while, which included the fabulous Biltmore estate, in Asheville, (the iconic mega-mansion of the vastly wealthy Vanderbilts), and last week, it was Frankie Silver’s grave.  

For those of you who are not familiar with Frankie and Charlie Silver, theirs was an intense but toxic—and deadly, as it turned out—love story. 

Frances “Frankie” Silver was executed on July 12, 1833, in Morganton, NC, (which is about an hour from me), for the horrific 1831 murder of her husband, Charlie Silver. Although she never admitted to the crime, Silver was found guilty of chopping her husband into pieces with an ax and then burning them in the couple’s fireplace to hide the grisly evidence.  The remains of Charlie’s body are buried in a cemetery in the small hamlet of Kona, (also not too far from me) in three side-by-side graves as more of his mutilated body was found.  The site of Frankie’s burial, however, has been the subject of much debate for close to two hundred years. 

As the story goes, her family was afraid that people might desecrate her grave—those with morbid curiosities, as well as those who might be looking for some gruesome retaliation on behalf of Charlie.  Thus, Frankie’s actual burial site was never made public and has been argued over for years.  However, I was introduced to a dear man whose wife was a descendant of Frankie’s family, and I was invited to take a trek in the woods to see where Frankie’s body had actually been laid to rest.

As we wandered through the woods, thick with moss and ferns (even at this time of year because we were down in the foothills), we spoke softly, almost reverently, as if out of respect for a woman who almost certainly killed her husband, but only after he’d come home drunk and threatened to silence their crying infant permanently.  As more and more of Frankie and Charlie’s story has come to light, it has become quite well accepted that he was a heavy drinker and mistreated if not flat out physically abused Frankie. Just hearing her story, and walking in the places where she once walked until she was carried; those places that still retain deep and lasting imprints of her emotions affected me and planted the seed of a whole new story idea.

It’s emotions like that; born of people, places and events, that evoke inspiration in a writer, or artist of any medium, and that set the keyboard on fire or move the paint brush seemingly of its own accord.  It’s the sites never before seen, or stories never before heard that shape us and bend us, and change us from the people we are to those we grow into as we experience life, examine history, and travel roads unknown.  Being in a slump is a result from no growth at all, which fundamentally stunts us.  It’s really that simple.

Needless to say, I’m looking forward to traveling lots of unfamiliar paths in the months ahead. I’m anxious to see structures that have extraordinary historical significance, such as the Coliseum, and the Acropolis, and I’m excited to try new foods and unusual flavors, as well as swim in another ocean or sea other than the Atlantic and the Pacific.  Most of all, however, I’m looking forward to meeting the people, to hearing their stories, and watching their eyes as they lay bare their emotions with the telling of them.  For it’s the people who cross our path in life, if even for just an hour or two, who change us the most, and cause our greatest growth spurts to take place.