Stories

MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT I practiced law in Monroe, NC for 37 years, from 1971-2008, when I was 62. When asked why I retired at 62, I say that I only practiced and never got very good at it so I decided to hang up my spikes, or, put another way, to take down… Read more: May It Please The Court

PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES If I remember correctly (let me say right here at the beginning that at 76.5 years of age my memory is still pretty good but I’m sure is slipping little by little such that when I get a few pages into this story, I won’t remember completely what I’ve written before,… Read more: Planes, Trains & Automobiles

 I’ve just counted 393 classmates of mine in the East Wind, our annual, who graduated with me in 1964 (I’m the 394th) from East Mecklenburg High School on Monroe (where I practiced law from 1971 until I retired at 62 in 2008) Road in Charlotte, NC. My count could be off because I made it… Read more: School Days, School Days

Gleaned from their obituaries: CHARLES FRANKLIN GRIFFIN “passed away peacefully” (me: have you ever seen an obit which said the deceased died in a rage, screaming obscenities at his wife and children?) at the Cypress in Charlotte on May 12, 2014. He was born in Unionville, NC in 1926 to N. Charles and Mary M.… Read more: Frank & Jim

Growing up, I don’t know what I would have done and who I would have become without sports. Artists and musicians would probably say the same thing about their art and music. Maybe mathematicians and chemists say as much about numbers and molecules, and poets about their rhyme and meter, or whatever it is that… Read more: MY SPORTING LIFE

                                            THANKSGIVINGS, HALF-BRO (?) JOE, and MO                            Begun Nov 23, 2021-Completed hopefully by Nov 25, hopefully, 2021 The most important Thanksgiving for me was in 1938, eight years before I was born. Dad and Mom were married at Mom’s aunt and my great Aunt Em’s(Emma Dunn Cook, sister of my maternal Grandmother Nancy Dunn… Read more: Thanksgivings, 11/25/21

                                                                              STRANGERS                     I don’t know when or how I developed my fairly recently (the last few years, I guess) acquired proclivity for meeting and engaging perfect strangers in conversation. Maybe for most of my 75 years it’s been somewhat dormant, lurking right under my skin, or awaiting just the right time to emerge. I… Read more: Strangers, Undated

                                                                                                                                 THE FIRST TIME When is the last time you did something for the very first time in your life? At my age, 75 years and almost 3 months, it doesn’t happen very often; in fact, I can’t remember the last time it happened, that is, until it happened yesterday, Thursday, May 20, 2021.

                                                                              WESTWARD HO, THE WINSTONS GO, TEMPORARILY I wonder if Albert Tweed had heard Horace Greeley’s admonition to “Go west young man, go west” when he decided to load his wife, two daughters and son Douglas, my wife Janet’s paternal grandfather, on a covered wagon and go to California in the 1870s. They got there,… Read more: Westward Ho, 4/2/21

                                                       CHRISTMASES LONG AND NOT SO LONG AGO I don’t know which is the earliest Christmas that I remember. We have a black and white photo somewhere of Mom playing the piano, with Dad sitting beside her on the piano stool, and Bill, Harry and I in our pajamas with hymnbooks in our hands singing… Read more: Christmases, 12/22/20

These thoughts are contained in an email I sent to some Davidson College alums who formed a group called DAVF to discuss non-religious and political current issues, explaining why I resigned. Morning, Charlie, et als (I’m not very computer savy. I’m hoping this goes to all on the DAVFers but it looks on my computer like… Read more: Thoughts on Religion

                                                                       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,… Read more: Graduation Letter to Sam, 5/31/20

                                                                          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… Read more: Entrepreneurship, 5/13/20

                                                                      HOOK IT, KIKER This story was prompted by my regaling Janet yesterday morning with stories from my glory (at least in my mind) days, most of which, except some of the following, she’s heard more than once. I had played Little League baseball for two years but my first school team sports were in… Read more: Hook It, Kiker, Undated

                                                          BONE SPURS & BUM KNEES                                                             Veterans Day, 11/11/19 I wonder how many veterans are alive today. The number will lessen each year of course because of our volunteer military. I’m a strong advocate of compulsory public, not necessarily military, service of a least one, preferably two years after high school. It will never… Read more: Bone Spurs, 11/11/19

                                                                         JOKES The frost is on the pumpkin in Kentucky this morning so I lingered snug in my warm bed a little longer than usual, and a couple of funny stories came to mind, inspiring me to put finger to key.

Readers Digest, a staple at our house growing up, had a regular feature called My Most Unforgettable Character which I found interesting. I’ve known quite a few UC’s in my life but I’d have to rank my maternal grandfather, William Badger Beaty as, if not my MUC, then certainly very near the top of the… Read more: My Most Unforgettable Character, 9/25/19

    Labor Day weekend usually marks the official end of the beach season, though I love the beach best in October when it’s not 95, but still pleasant under the sun and warm in the water. But from ages 13-21, my beach trips ended before August 15, when football practice began.     This… Read more: A Labor Day Tale, 9/2/19

BEST YET                 Dad started in the wholesale business in the late 40’s or early 50’s, after spending his first year or two out of the navy working as a carpenter on the payroll of Charlton Forbis (Sanford’s brother and Shannon (Shank)’s uncle), who was a subcontractor for TJ Watson, a general contractor who was… Read more: Best Yet, 8/26/19

Given what I wrote yesterday, in reality, I guess I was only quasi ratherthan semi recruited by Carolina, but I was definitely semi recruited to playfootball by Wake Forest. East Meck head coach, Don Hipps, SS teacher at StJohn’s Baptist and prodigious as well as prolific purveyor of extremelycreative profanity and vulgarity, as, when chastising… Read more: Wake Forest Football, ’63, 8/13/19

1967 was an eventful year for me. I don’t remember how it started off but it ended with one of the greatest blessings of my life, the birth of my first child, Tom,Jr on Christmas eve. At spring break, I swapped my 1965 Volvo with Mom for her Mercury Meteor and Bill Carr and I… Read more: 1967, 8/10/19

                                            DOWN IN THE COUNTRY, WITH A FEW DETOURS John McCamey Caldwell, my grandfather, was born on July 19, 1861(dates and other historical matters that precede my memory I know only because of the painstaking research by my first cousin, Mary Lynn Caldwell Morrill, the beautiful and brilliant oldest child of our grandfather’s oldest child,… Read more: Down in the Country, Undated

                                                                   LITTLE LEAGUE I told son Tom last Saturday at granddaughter Anna’s volleyball game that, triggered by seeing a rolling cart used for ferrying volleyballs around, I thought that I would write about the bat box we used to tote around our bats the first year I played Little League baseball at age 11 for… Read more: Little League, Undated

                                                                              OCTOBER MAGIC I’ve always loved October. The days are usually crisp and bright. The leaves turn crimson and gold. It’s football weather, but baseball’s fat lady still has to hit her high note before the boys of summer put the bats and balls away. And when I was a kid, the fat lady’s song… Read more: Baseball (October Magic), Undated

KISER MEMORIES These are some of my memories of Aunt Verla Kiser’s family, the accuracy of which are obviously clouded by my almost 72 years: We moved to the house on Sharon Amity Rd owned by Mr Neal Craig around 1949 when I would have been around 3. BTW, Bill called me within the last… Read more: Kiser Memories, 1/17/18

MAC TWEED                                         As Remembered by His Son-in-Law, Tom Caldwell Note:  This memoir consists of my memories of Mac’s life, primarily from my observations and recollections of his stories. I have done no research. I did make a few notes about things he told me, mostly dates, people and places. I wish I had made… Read more: MacTweed 8/22/16