When we left our impulsive young trio, they were standing in the dark on a chilly, rainy night.

They had driven through the rain up a twisting mountain road from South Carolina to Flat Rock, NC.

Their mission was to interview Carl Sandburg, a former newspaper reporter, “poet of the people” and Pulitzer Prize winning author of a 6-volume life of President Abraham Lincoln and other books.

We were 3 college kids – Bennie Lee Sinclair, a writer destined one day to become the state’s poet laureate, her husband Don Lewis, a talented potter and artist, and a future journalist, me.

We had seen the great man walking around in their living room through the windows of his home.

We stood there for a moment after his wife Lilian firmly told us he could not see us without an appointment and closed the door.

We stole away into the night like naughty children.

That was in 1959.

The Sandburgs had lived on their farm, Connemara, outside Flat Rock, since 1945. They did not name it Connemara. They simply kept the name given by a former owner, Captain Ellison Smyth of Charleston.

He named it Connemara after his ancestors who had come from Connemara on the west coast of Ireland.

On their farm Lilian Sandburg raised livestock and most of what they ate.

This freed her husband to write and bring in additional income from his popular tours on which he sang, played his guitar and read from his poetry and prose.

By the time I returned in 1971, the Sandburgs were gone. Carl had died at Connemara in 1967 and Lilian 10 years later.

Their ashes are buried at Sandburg’s birthplace in Galesburg, IL, under a stone named after his only novel, “Remembrance Rock.”

Sandburg lived an unusual life from the rest of his family. When he was at home, he wrote most of the night while his family was asleep, nodded off around dawn and slept until noon.

He ate lunch with his family, spent the afternoon answering his mail and reading, and after dinner went upstairs to his writing room to work until dawn.

In 1971, when I returned with different companions, my wife MacLeod and our sons David and Mark, the National Park Service had turned Connemara into the Carl Sandburg National Historic Site, the 1st for a poet.

We were lucky in tour guides. Ours was a young park ranger and admirer of Sandburg’s work. His knowledge was impressive.

He took us to Sandburg’s downstairs study where the poet and entertainer worked with a secretary on his correspondence with fans, fellow writers, poets, promoters and publishers.

We walked upstairs to the living room where years before I had seen the great man walking around – but only through the windows.

We walked into the dining room where the Sandburgs ate at least 2 meals together with their daughters.

All rooms were brightly lit because Carl and Lilian liked to see outside and had no curtains on windows.

The Sandburgs’ library of 12,000 volumes rested in bookcases all over the house, even in hallways.

We trooped upstairs to see Lilian’s large, bright and airy bedroom and Carl’s more modest one next door to his writing room.

Carl’s writing room under the eaves was small and crowded with desks, filing cabinets, chairs and a small stove for heat with a metal pipe that took smoke out through the roof.

When the ranger and our family stepped out into the hall, I could not resist temptation and sat down in Carl’s chair for a few seconds.

It didn’t improve my writing, but it did give me a feeling for the poet and his life.

Next: Poet Laureate Archibald Rutledge’s Low Country home.

If you plan to go, visit the historic site web site at https://www.nps.gov/carl/index.htm .