Another interesting day in Columbia, South Carolina. We started at the Governor's Mansion for a guided tour. It was interesting. As with other mansions, it is a mansion. Very opulent. Every object has a story. You know how it goes. Next stop was the Hampton Preston house. Another grand house. Back in 1820 there were a lot of rich people in Columbia. They had it pretty good compared to the others. Of course, them good old days weren't all that great for a number of practical reasons. Hygiene, horse poop, rotting food and a number of other things would tend to take some of the fun out of living back then. It would be fun to go back for just a few hours to see what it was really like. I would like to take along a camera. Just think of the cool photos you could get.

Our last stop was the Mann Simons House. It was interesting just like the others. Actually, I was pretty much at the end of my house visiting rope. I like houses that are full of real stuff, you know, the stuff that the actual residents used. The Leland Stanford house in Sacramento is like that. So many of the houses that you visit are full of "period" furnishings.

Whenever I tour something, museum, house, whatever, I ask myself if there was anything that really caught my attention. At the State Museum yesterday nothing caught my attention. Today at the Governor's there was something I considered to be very cool, and that is the object of today's photo. This is part of the silver service that was aboard the Battleship South Carolina, BB-26. That battleship was decommissioned in 1921. We have seen at least one other silver service and that was in Phoenix, the silver service from the USS Arizona. It was not aboard the battleship when it was sunk at Pearl Harbor. It had been removed in preparation for war. So that is that. Tempus fugit. So it goes. Carpe Diem. Eso Beso. yada yada yada.