80 Years of Louise

Louise Devlin Jenkins at age four.

Tomorrow Louise will be 80. Amazing! 

It has been my privilege to share life with her for nearly 60 years. I'm not going to write much in this post; just share some photos of the beauty that has enchanted me since we first met.

 

The verdant Louise. Miami, 1969/70.

 

Louise with our children. Miami, 1969/70.

 

Louise at Deer Run Farm around 1990. Ready for anything!

 But Louise is much more than just a pretty face. She is one of the most courageous people I know; also one of the most caring and compassionate. She is a person of deep faith. Her adventurous spirit matches my own. She's always good to go, ready to tackle any challenge; so we've been blessed with an interesting and eventful life together, even though she has had spinal issues that resulted in multiple surgeries.

Louise on boat cruise, Sr. Thomas, U,S. Virgin Islands, 1994.

Louise at 67. Her staff photo for her church music directors job.

Extremely intelligent and multi-talented, Louise earned two Bachelors and a Master's degrees, had a 36-year career as a nurse and nurse practitioner, was a teacher, and a church choir director. She even served as the video cameraperson on two of my European documentary projects.

Louise at 77 (with Georgia). When we were still living in our camper.

Louise at 80 tomorrow (March 8).

These photos were made with many different cameras over the years, and I have many, many more I could have shown. The photo of "Verdant Louise" was made with my first Nikon F, and the photo of Louise with our children was made with an old, roll-film Polaroid Land camera. For the most recent portrait, I used a Fuji X-T3 and the Fujinon 16-80mm lens.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $3.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 1999-2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography     film photography     Nikon F camera    Polaroid Land camera     digital photography     Fuji X-T3 digital camera     Fujinon XF 16-80mm lens     McLemore Cove     family portraits

Three in a Row

 

Apparently the owner was having a yard sale the second time I photographed this barn. When I first found it, there was a row of smaller sheds built onto the left side of the barn which made the sign a little more difficult to see.

Blog Note: I've been working on a post about my 1992 trip to Asia and got my days mixed up. I still have a half-dozen slides to scan before I can post that story. So I'm repeating a post from November, 2020. The Asia trip will post next week.

When working on the book Rock City Barns: A Passing Era, a box of age-yellowed file cards was my guidebook to finding the old barns with "See Rock City" signs. The very cards that once were used by Clark Byers and his crew of barn painters themselves. 

When I began the project I assumed that all the barn locations were included on the cards and that there were no others. However, as I traveled around the southeast and midwest on my search, I found about 20 barns for which there were no file cards. They had been lost from Rock City's records. I called them "lost barns." 

My usual way of traveling to a barn location was that if there was an interstate that paralleled the old highway where the barn was (presumably) located, I would drive the interstate to save time, get off at the nearest exit, photograph the barn if it was still there, and get back on the interstate. 

After my Rock City Barns  book was published in 1996, I began to receive postcards and letters about other lost barns. I tracked them down and photographed them as I had opportunity. 

One afternoon as I was driving down Interstate 24 on my way home from Nashville, it occurred to me that there were stretches of highway that I might have overlooked because of getting on and off the interstate instead of driving the old roads to see what might be there. I immediately got off I-24 south of Murfreesboro, went over to U.S. Highway 41, which paralleled the interstate, and headed south. I found the first unlisted barn in less than a mile. And not only that -- it was one of the very rare barns with the message "T'would be a Pity to Miss Rock City."  

 

And then I found another one a half-mile or so south of that, both on the left side of 41. 

If I had been watching carefully I would have found a third barn just another half-mile south, but on the right side of the road. As it was, I didn't learn of it until years later, when Brent Moore, who has interesting blogs at http://seemidtn.blogspot.com/ (See Middle Tennessee), and http://see-rock-city.blogspot.com/ (See Rock City), told me about it. I photographed it in 2014 and again in 2019. As you can see, it deteriorated considerably in five years.

 The first two photos were made with a Canon EOS A2 with the 28-105mm f3.5-4.5 EF lens and Fujichrome RDP100 film. For the third one, I used a Canon EOS 6D digital camera, probably with the EF 24-85mm lens; and for the bottom photo, a Fuji X-T20 with the Fujinon XC 16-50mm lens.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $3.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 1999-2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography     film photography     Canon EOS A2 camera     Canon EF 28-105mm lens     Fujiichrome RDP 100  film     digital photography    Canon EOS 6D digital camera     Canon EF 24-85mm lens     Fuji X-T20 digital camera     Fujinon XC 16-50mm lens     barns     See Rock City barns     Tennessee

Nostalgic for McLemore Cove

 

Sunset over Lookout Mountain. From our home in McLemore Cove.

Recently, Louise and I have been increasingly missing our home and little farm in northwest Georgia's McLemore Cove.

When we sold our property and moved into a fifth-wheel RV, it seemed like the right thing to do. And, given our ages and the state of Louise's health, it probably was the best decision. After our two years of RVing, we now have a nice home in Knoxville, with family members nearby. But we greatly miss the active, outdoor life we enjoyed for 33 years. If we were there now, I would probably be busy cutting and splitting firewood or doing some of the other, endless things that seemed to need doing on a farm. 

I'm sure Knoxville is a place with lots of interesting things to do, but so far, we haven't found them. Or maybe they're not the kinds of things we're interested in doing. Our life here is easy, but uneventful.

We miss having deer in our backyard on an almost daily basis.

Today (Monday), we're going to drive over to the Smokies and prowl around. We'll probably drive the Cades Cove Loop Road again -- we never seem to tire of that -- and maybe, on a March Monday, there will not be much traffic. Maybe we'll even see a bear! If there's time,we will go up to Clingman's Dome, and after that, there's a restaurant in Pigeon Forge that we like. We've been coming to the Smokies since the early 1970s, and have always enjoyed it, except for the times when the traffic has been unbearably dense.

A young bear in a tree on the Cades Cove Loop Road.

Well, we are where we are, and I do believe it's for the best. I'm 87, and Louise will be 80 this coming Saturday. We are grateful for the life we have had, but we do miss it.

I even miss removing the dead trees that fell across Sourwood Lane.

The photos were made with several different cameras over 30 or more years. The sunset sky was photographed with a Pentax 6x7 medium format camera fitted with a Takumar 105mm lens. The film was Fujichrome 100 in 120 size.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $3.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 1999-2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography     McLemore Cove    film photography     Pentax 6x7 camera     Pentax Takumar 105mm lens     Fujiichrome 100  film     Georgia     Great Smoky Mountains     Cades Cove