Month: May 2020

                                                                       May 31,2020

Dear Sam,

Congratulations on escaping from hi school in one piece. It’s hard to believe you’re 18 and its 2020. It seems like only yesterday was March 7, 2002 and your Mom and Dad and Phoenix and Tai were living on Vinedale and your Dad called to tell us our first grandchild, a whopper at over 8 lbs, had come kicking and screaming into the world. Grandma and I were thrilled that our first was a grandson and we came to see you soon after you got home. My mother was 92 and Janet’s dad was 82 and her mom was 81 and I was afraid something could happen to one of them before mom got to see her first great grandchild and Mac and Mary, their 2^nd, Josh being their first. So, on Mothers’ Day weekend in May, Grandma and I came back up to see you and brought your 3 great grands along, and they were thrilled, too!

                                                                          ENTREPRENEURSHIP

I’ve previously written about my grandfather, John McCamey Caldwell’s entrepreneurship, resulting in his acquisition of 1,000 acres of land by growing cotton on it, operating a family farm adequate to support a wife and twelve children, owning and running a country store to provide life’s necessities to his family and the community, owning stock in the Bank of Matthews and a building near the railroad in Matthews which, I think, still stands.  His fourth child, my Dad, Joe McCamey Caldwell, lived under Grandpa’s roof and worked on the farm until he was 25. Unlike his middle son, me, Dad was fairly reticent, as were some, maybe most, of his siblings. For over 20 years, Dad’s brother and my Uncle, Jack and Aunt Virginia lived less than 200 yards across the garden behind our house on Rama Rd where he and Dad faithfully grew most of the vegetables we ate, fresh in summer, and from the jars of green beans, black eyed and crowder peas, okra and tomatoes and frozen corn in winter, which Mom , with Bill, Harry’s and my limited and begrudging help, had canned or frozen, “put up”, in country parlance, during the summer. Mom told a great story of how once, Uncle Jack and Uncle Don, Dad’s and Jack’s youngest brother, were over to visit Dad. They were sitting in the den and she was in the kitchen, separated from the den by a partial wall with a counter to pass food thru to the den, where we ate, with cabinets above and louvered shutters which could be pulled across the counter to cut off view between the rooms but which didn’t restrict sound. She said she kept listening for conversation from the den for quite some time and hearing none, she peeped in to see if the three brothers were still breathing!