Red Room Where the Writers Are

After watching as much of the Democratic Convention as possible this past week, I was planning on doing the same with the Republican Convention this week.  Tonight the screens are filled with pictures of the line of cars moving north up the highway trying to escape Gustav.

The television folk are warning that hurricanes are unpredictable. Consequently so is what is going to happen this week at the Republican Convention.  Of course, the nomination of Sarah Palin for Vice President was already unpredictable.    It is an unpredictable world, and always has been.  That’s for sure.

I’m to meet a friend for lunch tomorrow, and I completely forgot when we made our plans that this was a holiday weekend even after she mentioned going out-of-town  to see her son. .  I am wondering if the coffee shop where we planned to meet will even be open.  When I went to the post office yesterday morning to get a large envelope weighed for correct postage, :I was there a few minutes before the regular Saturday morning opening. I would have stayed there those few minutes if another kind patron had not pointed out a small sign taped to the locked inside door.  The post office was to be closed yesterday and tomorrow for Labor Day.  For many years we attended the Glasco Reunion this weekend, but it has ceased.  With no guests and no special plans, this hasn’t seemed like a holiday. 

We did go up to Johnston City yesterday morning to see the middle school play in their softball tournament.  With Geri Ann  in the ninth grade now and no longer in living there, we had only been following the team by newspaper accounts.  We wanted to see her last year’s teammates play again and see this year’s newcomers. 

After lunch at a favorite Marion restaurant, we drove on down to the beautiful hills of Cobden-Alto Pass orchard country to see our friends Bill and Mickey Tweedy.  Bill is recovering from not one but from two recent back surgeries.  Something went wrong with half of the first surgery and he had to go under the knife a second time, which was certainly not predicted--as if one time was not bad enough.

With his hospital bed in the middle of the living room, we were quite comfortable visiting him, but we knew he was not.  He is allowed to sit up only a few minutes a day.  His mandatory lying on his back was made difficult because of the sciatic pain somehow stirred up by the surgeries.  After what we hoped was not too long a visit and before Bill was to get up for one of his twice-a-day walks, we said good-bye and turned down the offer of tomatoes from their garden since we are giving them away also.

For a long time I have wanted to visit the “new” Union County Museum now on the opposite side of “the world’s widest Main Street.”  (All my life I have heard the two downtown parallel streets with the railroad tracks between them called that.)  Actually the museum  is located on South Appleknocker Street.   Since we were already in the area and it was a weekend afternoon when the museum is open, it seemed the perfect time to stop in for a look. 

Gerald remembered coming to that street with his father to sell cans of cream on Saturday when he was a boy.  We both remembered watching the small high school’s Appleknockers  win the state’s Sweet Sixteen tournament against the big schools back in the days when the state basketball championship was for every school in the state.

Inside we enjoyed the Presidential Campaign Memorabilia Display that is showing through November, the fascinating Kirkpatrick pottery, the Indian relics, and so much more.  Most of all I enjoyed the glimpse Bonnie Heidinger  gave us of the equally large north half of the building with its recently sealed brick walls.  Volunteers are working there to create a Jane Brown Resource Center to house genealogical and local history resources for researchers.  

Among the books for sale, I discovered a collection of the letters to the Joneboro

Gazette from James Evans of the 109th Regiment of  the Civil War. My great grandfather had walked up from Goreville to Camp Anna to join this group, and he was one of the few not from Union County. He got in a fight the day he volunteered because one of the local “Seecesh” Southern sympathizers tried to dissuade him from joining up. I feel certain he was bewildered when the unpredictable leadership of this regiment got to Tennessee and acquired the same sentiments.  I was  so pleased to be able to purchase   those ancient letters that caused federal troops to move into the Gazette and shut it down for almost a year. Unfortunately, the troops evidently destroyed all the earlier newspapers, and that early history is lost forever..

Many years ago during the Viet Nam War we took Gerald’s sister Ernestine to see the first Cobden Museum in the little building on the other side of  “Main Street.”  It was an effort I am sure to distract her from loneliness while her husband Don was in the war zone  Not only did the little museum’s collections grow too large for that tiny building, but it started to leak.

 Somehow the Union County Historical and Genealogical Society got involved and some generous person donated the DuBois building, where baskets were manufactured  for the peaches and apples to be shipped on those middle railroad tracks.   Pat Brumleve, Will and Judy Travelstead, and many other volunteers have been busy ever since reclaiming the old building.  Predictably, I loved everything about the old building from the ornate trim on the front to the wonderful ancient smells and the creaky wooden floors inside.