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.

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.

Splendor on the Bypass

That night in 1962, my dad and I were on a mission. As we made the five-minute drive from our house to Summer Center, I once again pulled out the piece of paper which my teacher had provided to each class member and quickly reviewed its instructions. We were to purchase one clear glass candle holder and a single red candle. Then, we would bring our candles and holders back to the classroom, where we were to attach a Merry Christmas tag to the candle with a small piece of red ribbon. On Christmas Day, we would present these to our mothers as a gift. The present was guaranteed to spark joy (although we didn't really know that term back then).

Although by today's standards, these instructions might allow little room for flexibility, that wasn't the mantra of the early 60s. In those days, you just did the same things everyone else did because they seemed like a good idea, and generally, you tried to keep things simple in the process. Of course, to fulfill our shopping requirements, there was no better place to visit than the dime store.

That night, my dad and I pulled up to the TG&Y and walked in from the cold to the warm, lively store. Within five minutes, a helpful saleslady pointed us to exactly what we needed. We purchased a glass candle holder in the shape of a star and the most perfectly finished red candle I had ever seen. On Christmas morning, my mother was indeed full of joy when she opened my candle present, and so was I. Once again, the dime store had delivered.

Dime stores, as most of you probably remember, were the elemental precursors to today's "big box" stores, and my hometown of Memphis was full of them. In their heyday, there was no kid alive who didn't relish a trip to the dime store, or as some of our older relatives called it, "the five and dime," or "the five and ten cents store." The selection of items in these stores was astonishing, even by today's standards, and everyone shopped at them. I recently read that Mamie Eisenhower, America's First Lady from 1953 until 1961, was a big fan and would procure dime store items even while living in the White House. 

For those of you too young to remember, there was actually a time when many small, mass-produced items could be purchased for no more than five or ten cents, hence the name. Many of the items stocked in these stores are now found in almost any "big box" store, with of course larger inventories. Chain store names included the aforementioned TG&Y, Woolworth's, McClellan's, Ben Franklin, and Kresge, among others. There was no question that you could walk into a dime store with a dollar and still emerge with enough change to buy lunch. But one particular dime store, the Trenton Ben Franklin, remains anchored in my mind.

West Tennessee is full of "bypasses," roads which, as the name indicates, skirt the city to (supposedly) avoid traffic congestion. Many of these were built in the 1960s, and the town of Trenton, Tennessee, where my mom's family lived, was the recipient of one sometime around 1965. Even though its population consisted of only about 4,200 residents at the time, and we'd never really noticed much of a traffic problem, Trenton made the most of its bypass. New commercial ventures sprang up soon after its completion, and truly, the alternate route did ease getting around town a bit. So, it was only fitting that a dime store might land there, and in this case, Ben Franklin was the chain to open on what was known as 45 West.

One afternoon, when I was out shopping at Ben Franklin with the family, I spotted a Magnus Chord Organ in the toy section at the back of the store. Chord organs were small instruments with a standard piano keyboard on one side and a set of chord buttons on the other. This made it possible to accompany oneself while playing. I'd started piano lessons a couple of years earlier, and even though I'd seen these organs before, I'd never played one, but that day, I decided to give it a try.

I found the Magnus to be very easy to play, and after a few minutes, my cousin walked up to listen. Then, people from within the toy aisle started coming up and asking me to play songs that they knew. Pretty soon, a small crowd had gathered to watch as I merrily played along in a kind of Magnus Trance State. The store manager, a friendly middle-aged lady, walked up and asked if I would mind moving the organ up to the front of the store and continuing to play. She said it would be nice for the customers, so I moved the organ and continued to play for probably another half hour. I was getting some kind of buzz from all this.

Thinking back, I believe that first taste of spontaneous musical performance threw some kind of switch in my young mind. Prior to that time, I'd played only in piano recitals, forced affairs in which one had to dress nicely and sit up straight. But this new manner of performing was one in which you could let your hair down and enjoy yourself while making other people happy, and that's what my Ben Franklin "buzz" had been all about. As the years progressed and I picked up guitar playing, I realized that there was absolutely nothing like the feeling I got from playing music for people. I played piano all through high school, and I loved those moments when people would come up to me after a recital and tell me how a particular piece had moved them. And there was absolutely nothing like playing guitar on a stage, regardless of its size or that of the audience.

As the years progressed, this fondness for being out there manifested itself in other ways. I found, for example, that I enjoyed getting up in front of large groups of people at company meetings and conducting business as any one of a number of fictitious characters (i.e., Rico Vermicelli) in fake accents. Over the years, many people told me they were entertained by these goings-on, and that of course made me happy. The pleasure was mine, so to speak. But, you know, I'm not sure any of that would have happened had it not been for that afternoon in the Ben Franklin and those kind folks who spent a few minutes listening to that kid from Memphis playing popular classics on the Magnus.

So, the next time you're wandering today's big box aisles at Target or Wal-Mart, think back for a second on that old dime store. Take heed if you see a random youth tinkling around on a musical instrument or giving that basketball a bounce. They may just be up to something good.

Mother Machree and Helen Lucille

My Aunt Ida Mae outlived three husbands and one boyfriend. Divorced at 47 and living in the small Tennessee town of Trenton, she took it upon herself to enroll in a local beauty school and ended up opening her own shop, "Coiffures by Ida," in the mid-Sixties. At the time, we all asked her what "coiffures" meant, and she said it was just a fancy French word for hair styles and that she thought people would notice it more than "Ida's Beauty Shop."

Ida's business flourished. She converted the living room of her High Street house into a salon, and she proceeded to build a loyal contingent of customers who would walk up the steps to the front door, then come in for their scheduled appointments and of course, a little bit of socializing. Ida had a great air conditioner in the salon, so people liked hanging out there to take a break from the Mid-South heat. All the customers (except for her son Marion) were women, but one day, a well-dressed man came up the steps, and Ida introduced him as her new boyfriend Mac.

It's important at this juncture for me to create a mental image of Mac. Think Monopoly Man. Mac stood only about five foot six, just a bit shorter than Ida, and always wore a starched white shirt, suit vest, and trousers. He generally opted to forego the suit coat, owing to the heat, but he always wore a pocket watch attached to his vest, and he would pull it out to check it from time to time. A retired insurance executive who apparently had lived life on a schedule, Mac was well off and lived in a tidy brick house just down the street from Ida, which made walking to her house his preferred method of "courting." He was, of course, always impeccably dressed.

To say that Mac was entertaining would be a vast understatement. He was a natural comedian who spoke in a rather hybridized accent that was some mysterious fusion of Southern, Cajun and a few other things which would be hard to categorize. His expressions were punctuated by long, drawn-out vowels more reminiscent of the South Carolina Lowcountry than our part of West Tennessee, so I had to believe that he had spent some time there or in some place with a similar accent. We never got around to discussing that, though, because it was his humorous exclamations that preoccupied us. My favorite of his was one that I've never understood, even after years of searching for the meaning online. When Mac was truly surprised by something, he would contort his face into an expression of astonishment and exclaim, "Mother Machree and Helen Lucille!" He drew out the phrase so that it actually sounded more like, "Motha Ma-CHREE and Helen LU-SEAL!"

The only consistent reference I've found to either of the two ladies mentioned in this expression is a definition for Mother Machree. This was the title of a 1928 silent film about a poor Irish immigrant who moves to America. Helen Lucille was not the name of any other character in the movie, and a web search only reveals obituaries for people by that name, none of whom seemed to have acted in movies, although I suppose that would have been possible. At any rate, this Helen Lucille appeared to have had quite an influence on Mac.

# # #

The green neon lights shone against the black night sky on the quiet highway outside Milan. Mac had decided to take Ida, my mother Peggy, my cousin Marion and me out for ice cream, so here we were, off this deserted highway at some place that had "Freeze" in its name. Marion and I ordered soft serve cones dipped in chocolate, and as soon as we had them in our hands, we started devouring them. Mac, on the other hand, ordered a large cone of plain vanilla soft serve, and when the server handed it to him, we all stopped to behold its glory: there, resting upon the top of a humble wafer cone, was a veritable tower of ice cream. It must have been at least eight inches high. Mac looked at it, then with a swipe of his right hand, removed the top half and dumped it onto the ground as he exclaimed, "Motha Ma-CHREE and Helen LU-SEAL! No way I can eat this much cream!" We laughed so hard and so long, until we finally jumped back in Mac's Caprice Classic and returned to Trenton, full of frozen deliciousness.

Mac was not a good driver. My mother especially hated riding with him, and for good reason. He would run out in front of other motorists, veer intentionally off the side of the road, and jiggle the steering wheel back and forth, all the while saying, "This car's tryin' to play tricks on me!" Mac loved to go to buffets on Sunday, so whenever we were in Trenton, he would take us out, insisting that he drive one of his Caprice Classics (as you may have imagined, he had several over the years). These trips were always nerve-racking ordeals. One day, Mac wanted to take me out for a personalized tour of Trenton, and my mom reluctantly agreed. Our brief expedition was highlighted by a drive through the town cemetery, where at one point, as the car veered off the drive, Mac commented, "This car's tryin' to play tricks on me, right here in the graveyard!" We got back home, and when my mother found out where we had been, she was not amused.

But despite his reckless driving, Mac had a good heart. He and my Aunt Ida had some fabulous times together, and until his passing in the early Seventies, he was a constant source of companionship and amusement, not only to Ida, but to us all. Mac was really and truly Ida's boyfriend: after her divorce, she focused on making a living for herself and raising the one of her two sons who still lived at home, and she did well, so Mac was like the icing on the cake. He was a classic gentleman who would come courting at predictable times, and even though not formally a member of the family, he seemed like one to us. After he died, his survivors had little to do with Ida, and although at first she was hurt by this, she recovered in short order and found another husband, and when he died, yet another. They were fine gentlemen both.

Which brings me back around to the point of this story: we all encounter people in our lives who leave on us a lasting impression. At the time, it seems that they will be with us forever, but in truth, we must take advantage of the time we have with them. In my case, I have never met another Mac, although my eyes are always open for someone else of that ilk. I would love it if that were to happen.

Oh, and one more thing: If you know or can find out who Helen Lucille was, please let me know.

Driving Mister Bill

Bill, my driving instructor, bore an uncanny resemblance to Hunter S. Thompson, right down to his ubiquitous cigarette holder.

If you don't know who Hunter S. Thompson was, let me give you a brief introduction. Thompson was the counterculture creator of "gonzo journalism," a style of writing in which the reporter becomes involved with a story to such a degree that he or she ends up becoming an integral part of the action. He was something of a folk hero in the 60's and 70's, an edgy writer who served as the inspiration for Doonesbury's "Uncle Duke" character. He once went so far as to tell Garry Trudeau, the comic's creator, that he would set Trudeau on fire if the two ever met.

Bill, on the other hand, worked for the Tennessee Driving School on Summer Avenue in Memphis. He was originally from Detroit, a factor which most definitely influenced his driving techniques, but he had relocated to Memphis some years before he took me on as a student, and he knew the city upside down. Bill was absolutely unshakable, and that was one of the reasons he succeeded at his job. The other reason, I always thought, was that he had a biting but strangely likeable sense of humor.

Nothing phased Bill. I was a somewhat tentative driver initially, but on my first lesson, Bill took me out onto Summer Avenue, a rather major road in our neighborhood, full of commercial distractions and lots of traffic lights. He was patient, funny, and gave me all kinds of pointers: using the car's hood to align where I was in the traveling lane, watching whether people's wheels were moving at intersections, looking over my shoulder when backing up, that sort of thing. The lessons he taught me must have stuck, because I use them all even to this day.

Humor came in handy during my driving lessons. I recall one day that I stalled a manual transmission car at the intersection of Poplar Avenue and Yates Road, and I couldn't figure out how to start it. The problem was that I had the car in the wrong gear, but Bill sat there patiently as I was practically reduced to tears, while impatient motorists behind me began to show evidence of their discontent. By the time we got back home, I was laughing at myself, but I never made that mistake again, and Bill never reminded me of it.

Probably my favorite Bill memory was during an early morning lesson, when we were traveling westbound over a viaduct on Chelsea Avenue, a heavily industrial section of Memphis. Out of nowhere, another motorist suddenly ran out in front of me. I applied the brakes quickly but carefully, thereby avoiding a collision, but Bill shook his head and said, without missing a beat, "Next time, hit the SOB." I laughed, he laughed, and we drove downtown to continue the lesson.

Bill was not what you would call politically correct, and he had entire categories of drivers whom he believed should be monitored and avoided at all costs. The problem was, his list encompassed the vast majority of drivers on the road, in effect all of us, so as with many things I heard back in those days, I took that advice with a grain of salt. I don't think he meant all that stuff, anyway --  even at the time, it seemed more for comic effect.

My time with Bill was brief, but I thanked him mightily when within a decade of his lessons, I found myself commuting on some of the nation's busiest highways in and around Chicago and Los Angeles. Bill was actually very good at what he did, and some of his pointers came in especially handy when dealing with the inherent whims and weirdness of urban traffic. It's almost as if he wanted you to get inside the heads of other drivers and anticipate what they might do. Whatever his method, it worked, and before long, I found myself driving all over the place, beginning what would become a lifetime of urban exploration.

So thanks, Bill, wherever you are. I don't know if you're still alive, but if you are, I hope your driving days have been uneventful, that you haven't skidded in the rain, and that you still have your cigarette holder. Without your tutelage, I might never have driven past the city limits.

J.E. and the Violet Ray

It was probably a little over ten years ago that I first encountered J.E. He was a close friend of my stepfather and lived his whole life in and around Sevierville, Tennessee, just a stone's throw from Great Smoky Mountains National Park. One morning, I stopped in for breakfast with my stepfather and his friends, who met each morning at the local Hardee's on Highway 411, adjacent to Tractor Supply and Big Lots. They called themselves "The University," owing to their rambling, yet quasi-scholarly opinions on subject matter far and wide.

I observed that one man was highly animated, a major contributor regardless of the topic at hand, and the only name I heard anyone call him was "J.E." On that memorable morning, J.E. related to me a story, the essence of which I will attempt to reproduce here. The language is as close as I can recall to what he actually said.

"Well, Richard, I had been havin' this problem with real bad pain in my arm, so I went to see this feller right up here on 66 (Tennessee Highway 66, which runs north from Sevierville up to Interstate 40). I heard he was good. And he was a medical doctor...he had a certificate on the wall and ever'thing.'

'I sat down and told him what was both'rin' me, and he pulled out this thang in a lo-o-o-ng black box. He plugged it into the wall, and then he run it right over my arm a few times, and just like 'at, the pain was GONE. I mean, it was GONE.'"

Surely, one cannot witness such an account without experiencing a rush of curiosity, and I was no exception. Having told the story to countless friends in the intervening years, I'd often wondered exactly what the device had been. As fate would have it, while browsing a large antiques store here in Atlanta over this past weekend, I happened to see a long black box with a plug coming out of it, so I went over to have a closer look.

Sure enough, I had hit pay dirt. There it was, the same type of instrument to which J.E. had been referring. Within the box was a wand-like tool and a couple of glass tubes, which would appear to be illuminated when inserted into the wand. A hand-written label attached to the power cord read, "Western Coil and Electric Co. -- Quackery -- not intended for use. $124.99." I had to know more.

I Googled the name of the company and discovered that indeed, such devices were commonplace in the early twentieth century and were used in a medical practice known as electrotherapy, which involved applying high voltage, high frequency, low current electrical stimuli to the surface of the body. The machines were collectively known as "violet ray" devices and were manufactured until after the Depression, when the companies who made them redirected their production efforts to making wartime equipment and other assorted electrical components.

Wikipedia provides an excellent description of violet ray technology, which was actually introduced by Nikola Tesla prior to 1900:

"A typical violet ray device consisted of an ungrounded electrical control box that controlled the interrupter and which housed the magneto coil, and an attached bakelite or other handle housing which contained the high voltage coil and an insertion port for attachments. Glass evacuated tubes of varying shapes and for different therapeutic uses could be inserted into the bakelite handle to apply the resulting current to different parts of the body."

Granted, the FDA may have seized all the violet ray devices in the early 1950's, but that didn't stop J.E.'s healthcare professional, Lord have mercy on his soul, from finding the right instrument to treat his patient's ailing arm in the new millennium. Besides, these devices were purported to help remedy everything from brain fog to catarrh, and that's no small feat. Quackery? I think that's jumping to conclusions, a premature assessment. The way I see it, when you've got something that works, stick with it.

Misplaced

My Uncle Haywood, like many other young men of his day, was called to serve in World War II. He left his home outside Jackson, Tennessee, and ended up serving on a PT boat in the Pacific Theater. He passed away in 2000 after an extended period of stay in a nursing home in Alamo, some 20 miles northwest of Jackson, which is some 80 miles northeast of Memphis. So basically, this is a West Tennessee story.

I got the call one September morning that Uncle Haywood had died and that the funeral would be held in Jackson on the following Saturday. The week was a busy one for me, so I elected to fly from Atlanta to Memphis, where I would rent a car to drive up to Jackson for the weekend. That part of the plan was executed without incident, and early Friday afternoon, I pulled up to George A. Smith & Sons Funeral Home, on Highway 45 south of Jackson.

I entered the building and was directed to a conference room, where my mother Peggy and her sister, my Aunt Ida, a steel magnolia of the highest order, were seated at the table. My mom gave me a hug, and Aunt Ida, who was engaged in a lively phone conversation, blew me a kiss and continued her side of what was obviously a rather spirited debate.

"Now, I'm telling you, he does NOT know what he is talking about....yes, I KNOW he's been out there and he THINKS he knows where everything is, but I want someone to make sure...yeah, I think that will be fine. OK, thank you, and we'll see you tomorrow."

Aunt Ida, who owned a busy beauty parlor in Trenton, Tennessee, hung up the phone, turned to me with a broad smile, and said, "Hey, sweetie! Why has it been so long since you've been up to see me?" At a loss for words, I apologized to her and said I'd try to do better in the future. She nodded, as she always did, asked me how Karen and the girls were doing, then turned back to my mom.

"Peggy, I'm tellin' you, that derned old J.E. has got this all messed up. They say he's looked at the plot, but I'm not sure." I asked what all this was about, and what I got out of it was that said J.E., who managed the plots at the cemetery, had directed the funeral home about where Uncle Haywood was to be buried, but apparently, Aunt Ida was not all that happy with what she perceived as his uncertainty regarding my uncle's final resting place.

After a few minutes of animated conversation about J.E., we returned to my uncle's house in the town of Bemis, close by, and went through some of his possessions. There were odds and ends for the most part, except for a stack of old candid black and white war photos in a dark red box. In one of these, a group of sailors was pictured aboard a PT boat, and there in the middle of the group was none other than John F. Kennedy! I showed this picture to my aunt, and she said that she indeed remembered Haywood talking about having served on another boat which often accompanied Kennedy's boat on maneuvers, and that Kennedy was remembered as a fair, fun-loving officer. We brought back the pictures and a few other memoirs to Ida's home, then had dinner and turned in for the night.

Saturday morning dawned bright, sunny, and wickedly hot. We headed back to the Smith Funeral Home for the service, and it was indeed a wonderful tribute to Uncle Haywood. As so often happens with funerals, I had the chance to visit with many friends and relatives whom I had not seen for years. Once the service was concluded, we made the short drive to Lester's Chapel cemetery for the graveside service. Again, a lovely message was delivered.

I suppose it was sometime near the end of the service when I looked around and realized that, at least according to what I'd seen on the plot map, Uncle Haywood was about to be buried in the wrong row of the cemetery. In fact, he was about to be buried next to his second wife, and not in the family row to which he had been assigned. I waited for the service to finish, then turned to my mother and said, "I know this may not be the best time to say this, but I believe Uncle Haywood is being buried in the wrong place."

My mom looked around at the other markers, and then a look of total incredulity passed over her face. "Laaaaawws, Richard, you are right. He is NOT in the right spot. We're gonna have to tell Ida Mae."

Instantly recalling Ida's animated conversation from the day before, I replied, "Well, I'm not gonna be the one to tell her."

We waited for a few of the friends and family to disperse, and then my mom and I walked over to Ida together to deliver the news.

"Ida Mae, Richard just noticed, and I agree...they're burying Haywood in the wrong place."

Ida looked around, mirroring the earlier reaction of my mother, and said, "Laws, Peggy, you are right. That derned old J.E. If he'd a' kept his mouth shut, we wouldn't be in this mess!"

At about that time, a lanky gravedigger with very few teeth, resting beside one of the tent poles, overheard what we were saying and exclaimed, "Y'all, I'm gonna tell ya...if he ain't in the right place and I need to dig another hole, I need to know right NOW, 'cause it's gonna get dark."

We called over the funeral director, a pleasant young man, who apologized profusely for the error. He told us that after the crowd dispersed, his crew would cover the freshly excavated site and dig a new one in the correct row, after which time the casket would be lowered into its proper resting place. We all agreed that this was a fair settlement, and as the last of the friends left, my Aunt Ida, my mother, my cousin Marion and I stood there, turning the whole incident over in our minds. And at that moment, my dear Aunt Ida came up with the perfect West Tennessee response to a situation of this magnitude:

"Well, y'all...I guess that'll work. There's really nothin' else we can do. Let's go get barbecue."

And so, Uncle Haywood came to a peaceful rest, right where he was supposed to be.