Estelle

Estelle Magee, my grandmother on my father's side, was the ad hoc historian of our family.  She had absolutely no equal in that regard.

Grandma was married at the age of fourteen, and I don't recall if she ever had the time to finish high school, but it didn't really matter, because Grandma had the unique ability to remember events in vivid detail, no matter how far in the past they may have been.  As she often told me, "I always made A's in history".  No kidding, Grandma.

During the 1960's, Estelle's husband Leslie, my paternal grandfather, was the victim of a series of strokes which left him progressively more incapacitated.  His first stroke occurred while he was working at his country store on Highway 64, just a few miles outside Memphis.  In an instant, Grandaddy went from a sharp, numbers-savvy grocer with a quick wit to a person who required almost constant care.  Grandma had no choice but to fill in the gaps as best as possible -- there was, of course, no way that they could keep the store, so Grandma and Grandaddy moved into the city, fairly close to our Highland Heights neighborhood.  They had a nice little house on Biltmore Street, just off Macon Avenue.

For a while, Estelle had no trouble taking care of Leslie.  I remember being at their house that momentous night in February, 1964, that The Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show.  Grandaddy didn't want to watch "those mopheads", but I convinced him not to change the channel, and I think I even saw the faintest gleam in his eye once "I Want to Hold Your Hand" kicked in.  But, of course, he would never admit it.

Then in 1966, Grandaddy suffered a second, more severe stroke one afternoon after Sunday dinner at my Aunt Mary's house. (Mary was Estelle's younger sister.)  We waited tenuously in Aunt Mary's front guest bedroom for an ambulance to arrive, and from that day forward, things were never the same for Estelle and Leslie. 

Leslie had to be confined to a Veteran's hospital for a couple of years, and Estelle went to the hospital every day to stay with him.  My Aunt Alma, Leslie's sister and a retired nurse who was already in her late sixties, would often go over to make sure that Leslie was being cared for to her satisfaction.  But always, Estelle was there.

After a time, Grandma moved out of the house on Biltmore to a smaller house on Hollywood Street in north Memphis, and Leslie was able to return home.  But by this time, he was totally confined to a wheelchair, and his days were spent in one long string of Pall Mall cigarettes and 6-1/2 ounce Coca-Colas, which he drank by the case.  Since my dad was a grocer, he arranged for the Coke man to deliver cases to Grandaddy at a good price.  Over time, Grandaddy's condition deteriorated to the point where he could no longer be cared for at home, and he passed away in 1969, after a final protracted stay in Veterans' Hospital.

During the period when Estelle made daily visits to the hospital, my mom and dad would take me to stay with her while they went out for dinner and a movie, or in some cases, for a weekend.  During these visits, Grandma would treat me to Southern storytelling the likes of which I had never witnessed.  She could relate stories about people who had lived during the Civil War, about former Presidents long departed from this earth, and the more colorful family members.  She seemed to know a little bit about almost everything and was full of the most wonderful anecdotes I had ever heard.  I came to realize that in this lady existed a vast repository of family history which no other single person could even begin to match.

Grandma had a stock set of phrases which she would often call upon in certain situations, and one of my favorites was "Little Baby Jesus wouldn't like that."  This was reserved for those times when I had acted out of turn.  Grandma could never get too mad at me, but she tried.  On one occasion when I was about three or four years old, my parents decided to leave me with Grandma while they went out of town for a weekend trip.  Miffed in a childlike way that I was being left alone, I incited a heated exchange between us:

"Grandma, I don't like you!"

"Now, Ricky...little Baby Jesus wouldn't like that."

"Well...I don't like him either!"

In her life, Estelle went from being a traditional Southern woman with fairly conservative views to a more progressive citizen of the New West.  Shortly before Leslie's death in 1969, my Uncle Richard moved Grandma out to Camarillo, California to live with him, his wife Ruth, and their wonderful collection of family dogs, not to mention the 800+ pigeons that my uncle kept.  During one of our last visits together, I sat out by the open fire pit on a crisp California evening playing some of Grandma's favorite songs on the guitar and singing to her.  She told me that night that she could never really move back home to Tennessee, that California was her new home, and that she felt very lucky to have a family there who would take time to care for her and make her a part of their daily lives.  But I think it was one of those situations where she simply got back the love and care that she had provided Leslie in his final years.

Every time I try to recount something in history, whether it is national, international or just familial in scale, I think about Grandma.  She passed away in 1985, but she left behind some wonderful, colorful memories and more than a few great stories.

Another Tender Tennessee Christmas

One Saturday in early December of 2016, we drove to the village of Leipers Fork, about 25 miles southwest of Nashville, to take in the annual Christmas parade. It is a grand occasion for this little hamlet: everyone from the local middle school band to the septic truck makes an appearance. We even saw Jesus, although he was wearing flip-flops and chewing on a toothpick, so I have my doubts. But the thought was there.

The drive to Leipers Fork from Nashville is marked by rolling hills and pastures, and it is quite beautiful. And it's funny how strongly I feel my Tennessee roots in places like this. For every moment of that drive, I felt like I had gone back in time to a place that, although I had never visited it, was somehow familiar to me. It was wonderful. The parade was a community event, and afterwards, we dropped in to a holiday party at the gorgeous home of friends who live just outside town.

So, here's the thing. When I moved away from home to attend college in Chicago, my first visit back to Memphis was at Christmas of my freshman year. I had only been gone a few months, but it felt like forever. I had made many friends in Chicago, but it was so good to be home. My family, school and church friends welcomed me with open arms, and rarely have I felt so loved. We all have milestones in our lives, and that was one of mine.

When I was young, I wanted to explore a little more of the country, and the ensuing years afforded me that privilege. I eventually made my home in Chicago, and then in Atlanta, but every other Thanksgiving, we would make the drive back up to west Tennessee to see my mom and stepfather at their farm house just outside Jackson. Often, we would listen to Alabama's Christmas album, and when the song "Tennessee Christmas" started, I usually found myself more than a bit misty-eyed. (The opening line of the song's chorus is the title of this post.)

Christmas growing up in west Tennessee started with opening presents at home in Memphis, then making the roughly two hour drive to Aunt Ida's house, where we might see snow. It was wood fires, tables full of delectable food, stories told at the dinner table and always the laughter...lots of laughter. My dad didn't have much time off work, but he was always home at Christmas, so we were guaranteed that time as a family. My dad's relatives lived in Memphis and the surrounding area, so other holidays we spent with them, but Christmas night always ended in the small town of Trenton, surrounded by "my mom's folks": aunts, uncles, and cousins.

So you can probably guess how I felt in Leipers Fork. I smelled the wood smoke, I heard that Tennessee accent (it's not quite the same as the one in Georgia), ate delicious food and laughed with abandon. I felt the warmth of being surrounded by friends old and new. Even though I'd never been to this town, I was back home. A part of me will always belong to Tennessee.

Big Boom Below

 Not too long ago, I came across one of those links on Facebook that was posted by a group with a name like "Remember the 50s," "Things That Used to Be," or "You Know You're Old When..." Pictured there was a floor furnace, with a caption that read, "Remember these?" How could I forget?

For those of us of a certain age who grew up in parts of the country where gas heat was the norm, the floor furnace was a standard feature of many post-WWII homes. It consisted of a rectangular grille which sat level with the floor and a compartmentalized gas burner structure beneath the floor. In Memphis, where I grew up, most people's houses had foundations, not basements, and thus the inner workings sat between the floor above and the bare ground below. A small window atop one of the compartments provided a view of the pilot light below. The only way to access all the floor furnace innards was by crawling under the house, which of course chanced encounters with all kinds of insects and other beasts. Such endeavors were always best left to the professionals. The whole thing always looked a little dodgy to me, but it did keep the house warm.

One unique feature of floor furnaces was that due to expansion and contraction of the gas compartment, they would periodically produce noise. For the most part, we adapted to the sound such that it became part of the collective creaks and groans of the house, but every now and then, if the furnace experienced major metal motility, it would emit a large and very loud boom. It was always necessary to warn first-time visitors about the boom, and if we didn't, we'd often find them emerging from the guest bedroom in a panic, fearing that Nikita Khruschev was about to come to blows with Homeboy Elvis. It was unsettling, to say the least.

A considerable amount of focused heat emanated from the floor furnace, such that standing on its grates with thin house shoes, or worse, barefoot, was taking a calculated risk. On several occasions, a guest would hear the loud boom, then flee in their nightclothes, stepping on the furnace along the way, certain that they had, as both Catholics and Presbyterians would say in their Apostle's Creed, "descended into hell" within what appeared to be a cozy little 1949 house. It could inject a fair amount of anxiety into someone's visit, but after that first night, it generally became a source of amusement to all.

Nowadays, heat comes from all over the place. Our current HVAC system features all kinds of blinking LED lights to let you know that it has everything under control. The house stays warm, and no one ever burns their feet, so there's that. But sometimes late at night, when I awaken at 3:15 AM, I wonder -- if both Khruschev and Elvis have passed on, are we really out of the woods?

Emerge 2024: A Cicada Conference

Here at Brooksville, we're busy preparing for the arrival of the 13- and 17-year cicadas. In order to get a little ahead of the curve, I'm publishing our tentative schedule for Emerge 2024. Please forward any questions directly to me.

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Friday, May 3

5:30 PM -7:00 PM:
Check-in at Brooksville Deck. Free luggage storage.

7:30 PM - 10:00 PM:
Emerge 2024 Welcome Xylem Dinner, featuring keynote speaker Dr. Hemiptera McIntosh, author of "Sing Your Heart Out"

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Saturday, May 4

10:00 AM - Noon:
Breakout Sessions: 
  Below Deck: "What You Missed in Hibernation"
  Above Deck: "Making the Most of Your Emergence"

1:00 PM - 3:00 PM:
Breakout Sessions:
  Below Deck: "Lessons Learned: How We Occupied DC in 2021"
  Above Deck: "Strategies to Avoid Being Eaten by Household Pets"

6:00 PM - Midnight:
Celebratory Dinner and Dancing on Front Lawn, featuring dining on some of the region's premier plant materials and music by the one and only Sik-Ā-Da-Mon

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Sunday, May 5

7:00 AM - 9:30 AM:
Go-Forth Farewell Breakfast

9:45 AM - 11:00 AM:
Group Sing-a-Long and Goodbyes

11:45 AM:
Checkout time. Ridesharing available.

The Chocolate Set

My mom and her husband had finally decided to sell their farmhouse just outside Jackson, Tennessee. Set way back from the road, it had always been a favorite destination of ours, one where we'd shared many warm and wonderful family times. But in recent years, my folks had been spending most of their time in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, way over in East Tennessee, so they felt it was time get what they could for the farm property and move on. In 2004, they decided to host an estate sale at the farmhouse, and my Aunt Ida Mae, who lived about 30 miles away in Trenton, offered to help them get everything ready.

Going through a house where you've lived for some fifty-odd years always presents challenges in the sheer volume of articles to be sifted through, and this was certainly no exception. It was decided that the staging area for the sale would be the large dining room, which when I visited was chock-full of dishes, silverware, utensils, and a smattering of memorabilia. Fortunately, neither my mom nor her husband was big into collecting, but even so, the accumulated assortment of household goods was somewhat remarkable, and the dining room table was overflowing.

The sale went off without a hitch and seemingly, to everyone's satisfaction. A few items of special significance had been put away and were not part of the sale, but by the time the event was over, the happy couple was able to list the property and head east to start their next chapter of home ownership. From a distance, it appeared to me that the sale had progressed well. Little did I know that trouble was brewing.

My mom Peggy and her sister Ida (whom all those of her age called Ida Mae) were close. Although twelve years apart in age, they were best friends. When Ida would come to Memphis to visit, she and my mom would routinely stay up until past 2:00 in the morning, drinking coffee and catching up with each other's lives. Although different in temperament, my mom being the subtle one and my aunt the outspoken steel magnolia, they shared enough in common that they were, in modern parlance, "besties." Whenever Ida was around, laughter inevitably ensued. So, it came as a surprise when only a few weeks after the sale had been completed, my mom mentioned to me on the phone one day that she and Ida had encountered "a little problem" and weren't speaking, which to my knowledge had never happened.

It appeared that during the sifting through of the household goods in preparation for the sale, my mom had found a porcelain "chocolate set," similar to the one pictured here, consisting of a pitcher and four matching cups. It was of the design that was so popular throughout the early part of the 20th century, flowers and ribbons, that sort of thing, but that was my mom's style. According to her, when she found the set, she mentioned to Ida that she hadn't seen it for years and was so happy that their mother had left it to her. (My grandmother had passed away 38 years earlier.) Suddenly, Ida stopped what she was doing and said, "No, Peggy, Mother left it to me. Remember?" My mom certainly did not remember, and that's where the trouble began.

The next time I talked to my mother, after we had exchanged our routine updates about what was happening in Atlanta and in Pigeon Forge, I asked how Ida was doing, assuming that the rift had passed. "Well, I haven't heard from her," was my mom's reply. I thought this somewhat odd, given their lifelong closeness, but I let it pass and moved on to other topics. But as the weeks, then months, of 2005 went by, my mom's answer when asked about Ida remained the same, that no words had been exchanged between them. I became concerned about this, because my mom and aunt had always relied on each other to be there. Treading lightly, I finally asked my mom if she had tried to reach out to Ida. The answer was, "Well, no." A-ha. Digging deep into an academic background in psychology and human behavior that I had never used professionally, I suggested that she might make the first move.

Sometime in the very early days of 2006, the dam finally broke. My mom mentioned to me rather casually that yes, she and Ida were back on speaking terms. I didn't ask for details but expressed my happiness that the situation had been resolved. However, the elation turned out to be short-lived, because Ida took her last breath in January of 2007. By this time, my mom had begun to suffer from a debilitating respiratory condition and was unable to attend Ida's funeral. I was quite concerned, because I knew that only if she were in very poor condition would my mom not have been there for her sister. And it turned out that my concern was warranted, for my mom passed away fifteen months later, in April of 2008. It occurred to me that in their last few years together, and I would go so far as to call that time precious, a dispute about an inanimate object had come between them.

A few weeks after my mom had passed, we started going through her possessions, trying to decide which to keep and which to give away. Our two daughters had fond regard for some of the items, but when it came to the chocolate set, they both treated it as if it were made of plutonium. Finally, Sarah said that she'd like to have the pitcher and glasses set with etched sailboat designs, and Hannah agreed to inherit the chocolate set. (But it still doesn't live with her, so there's that.)

Of course, there's a lesson in all this that we shouldn't get too wrapped up in trivial disagreements, because we never know what's right around the corner. At this point, I can only hope that somewhere up on high, my mom and Ida are together sipping coffee, not hot chocolate...out of paper cups.