The Montgomery Bell Tunnel, Narrows of the Harpeth

In 1820, Montgomery Bell created an Engineering masterpiece that is recognized today as an engineering landmark and a national historic landmark. Slaves under Bell's direction excavated a 200 foot tunnel about 8 feet high and fifteen feet wide through a limestone bluff at a point on the river known as the "Narrows". It is here that the river makes a loop around a high limestone ridge before returning to within 200 feet of itself again. Bell knew that by diverting water through the tunnel, the weight of the falling water from the plank flume would cause the water wheels to revolve on their axles. As the axles, made of large poplar logs, turned the protuding pins of white oak driven near the end of the log called trip levers, would press down and then release a hammer lever. The hammer lever was a long log with a heavy piece of metal attached to its' end. The pounding motion converted the hot brittle pig ironbillets, which were held with tongs on top of a large anvil, into malleable iron bars and plates that were more manageable for blacksmiths to use in their forges. Each full revolution of the water wheel produced two heavy blows to the iron. Products of the forge were hauled by ox drawn wagons or pack mules through the Narrows Gap to markets in Nashville or Franklin or floated down the Harpeth and The Cumberland River to Clarksville where they could be shipped up or down the river by steamboat to other locations.

Montgomery Bell owned and operated Pattison Forge, which bears his mother's maiden name, from 1832-1854. Afterwards, James L. Bell ran the operation until it was closed during the 1860's. After the Civil War, the iron industry in Tennessee remained somewhat depressed, and the forge did not re-open. During the early 1880's the Narrows of the Harpeth was sold by the Bell descendants. In the years to follow, the tunnel furnished power to operate a saw mill, and later a gristmill, which was washed away during a flood in the mid 1890's.

Today, the site of Pattison Forge, located at the Narrows of the Narpeth, is a part of the Harpeth River state Park and is maintained by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. The site is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The intake side is just down a wooden staircase from the small parking area. The view above was made by walking the 10 minute trail from the parking area.

Here is the Pattison Forge diagram:



Here is a closeup and an extreme closeup of the tunnel, taken at the same spot as above. In the extreme closeup, you can see a lady on the other side of the tunnel.



Here are two views of the inside of the tunnel taken from the other side, the intake side. The second photo looks odd because I used a long camera exposure to brighten the inside of the tunnel.



Finally, the same tunnel from the most commonly pictured angle:


100th post - 1042 hits

Halloween Fun

In October of 1994
Three student novelists disappeared
In the woods near Burksville, Maryland
while writing a documentary-

A year later, their papers were found.

* * * * *

-Tagline for Beavers! and shameless ripoff of the Blair Witch Project.

* * * * *

Are you looking for ways to kill time while you are waiting for the Trick-or-treaters to come by? I can help!

First, this is something I posted on this blog about 6 months ago. If you have ever wanted to come up with a title for your own horror film, I suggest you check out:
The Instant B-Movie Title Generator!

Next: This is only good if you have about 20 minutes to kill, like the time of night when you think the last trick-or-treater has come, but you want to leave the front porch light on for a few more minutes just in case any 8pm drifters come in. This is a short story I wrote about 5 years ago, which parodies those Friday the 13th type slasher movies of the 80's

Beavers!

Happy Halloween.
P.S. Oddity to note. The blog has 1031 hits on 10/31. I need 70 hits in the next few hours for 11/01.

MinitBurger: A brief history of our restaurant chain

Thank you for your support! We now own or operate 352 MinitBurger store locations in 29 states and have come a long way in our 60 years. Our first "Minute Burger" was opened by Raymond Owens in 1946 and hamburgers cost 10 cents. That store doesn't sell food anymore but has been preserved as our museum, and it's next door to our 15-story corporate headquarters. Let's take a brief look at the memorable events along this historic journey!

1946: We open our first store.



1959: Car hops deliver food for the last time.*



1967: We stop caring about food quality.



1976: We stop paying attention to hygiene.




1984: Beef is used in our hamburgers for the last time.



1995: We introduce our mascot Potatey the Aardvark.


Here's to hoping the next 60 years can be as profitable as the last 60!

*Except in New Jersey, because of the car hop union.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Boring stuff:
disclaimer: this is a parody. yada. yada. yada. This does not represent any actual fast food chain. No animals were hurt in the making of this blog post. Wait. I suppose a cow died to make the burger pictured above.
I was hoping to use pictures from different places, so as to not target any one fast food establishment. Pics 1 and 3 were stolen from Hardees. 2 and 5 are a fan site of the defunct Burger Chef. 4 is some ice cream parlor named Farrell's.

When I was in middle school and drew cartoons, I created two rival fast food companies. One was Minit Burger (pronounced "Minute Burger" if you were wondering). Their motto was "it even comes with a costume" which wasn't supposed to make sense. The logo was a tuxedo and a stopwatch. Their rival was Camel Burger. They didn't make burgers out of camels but it was a Desert marketing thing, which also isn't supposed to make sense. The combo meal came with sand fries and a Thirst Oasis beverage. I haven't changed much since then.

A surefire sign I'll lose my job

I finally, after months of procrastinating, have finally got my new badge at my semi-temp job.



I put it off for over 3 months because I thought I was going to get a different job. From a karma perspective, I suppose that means I'm going to lose this job soon. For extra negative karma points, I also signed up to receive a locker in the break room. I spent about 5 minutes trying to open the locker once. Then, I decided I should give up, because I didn't want to leave my car keys stuck in a locker I couldn't open a second time.

*** UPDATE *** UPDATE *** UPDATE ***

My prognostications were correct. As of 10/17, the company I was working for eliminated the second shift that I was on. Luckily, I have a few leads to pursue.

And I never got the locker open.

Politically Correct Math

Just because some integers are different shouldn't make them odd.

Instead of even and odd numbers we should call them even and paritally-challenged.

I've had 10 years to think upon adding to this and I have been unable to expand this concept.
but I did think of this really lame math joke:

A theta walks into a bar, sees acute angle and asks, "So, What's your Sine?"

Feel free to finish this quip in whatever way you see fit:

When life gives you lemmas, make ________ .

My all-time favorite math joke came from Dr. Miller, chairman of the DLU Math Department.

Two Statisticians go duck hunting. The first one shoots at a duck and misses a foot to the left, then fires again and misses a foot to the right. The second statistician says, "You got him!"

If you didn't find any of this funny, then you probably won't like this either.