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, probably looking for gold, and when I suppose there was little to be found, they boarded a ship and sailed to Charleston, SC and made their way back up to Marshall, NC, 25 miles NE of Asheville, hard up against Tennessee. Albert may have gained his adventurous spirit and passion for travel when he joined his father Neely and his brothers in going north and fighting for the Union Army, after Neely, the Lincoln sympathizing Republican clerk of court, had shot and killed Ranson Merrill, the Democratic sheriff of Madison Co in April, 1861, as revenge for the sheriff shooting his son.  Merrill, brandishing his pistol with his fellow Democratic Confederates to celebrate their slim victory over the Republicans in an election to decide, along with the 99 other counties in NC, whether to join the Confederacy, most likely drinking moonshine and shouting “bring on those Yankees”, as in a similar fictional scene from Gone With The Wind when it was announced that the Confederacy had declared war on the United States,  apparently by accident,  winged Neely’s youngest son, Elijah, who was milling around the crowd in front of the courthouse on the main street of Marshall, with just a flesh wound. A year or so after Albert and family returned to Marshall from California, he told his wife they were going to California again. She, obviously an intelligent woman, refused, protesting that they had almost died on their last trip, having to trade their blankets to the Indigenous Americans for food. So, she took her two daughters to Knoxville and worked in a hotel to make ends meet, but Albert and son Douglas went west again, getting as far as Kansas, where they stayed for several years before returning to Madison Co.

                                                       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 what must have been Christmas carols since there’s a Christmas tree in the corner in the living room of the old, white frame house we rented from Mr. Neal Craig on Sharon Amity Rd between 1948-9 and 1955. I guess Frosty first and later Bing caused us to associate snow with Christmas. Whether it was on or near Christmas I don’t know, but I remember Dad and Bill racing each other, barefooted if memory serves me correctly or maybe in or also in their under wear through the snow to the chicken house behind the house, and back. Don’t remember who won; also, the only time I ever remember Dad running anywhere, but I do remember thinking it was the coolest, literally and figuratively, event I’d witnessed to that point in my young life.

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 it’s only going to you, Charlie, and if that’s the case, would you please pass it on).

I’m one of those atheists Charlie referred to. Actually, I guess I’m more of an agnostic. I was raised Southern Baptist (I learned to say all the books of the Bible in Sunbeams, went to SS [my dad was superintendent of the SS for over 30 yrs], “preaching”, youth choir practice, Baptist Training Union and Sunday nite “preaching” every Sunday, Royal Ambassadors and, when a teenager, adult choir practice [when we were all home, my mom &dad and my 2 bros and I all sang in the choir] on Wednesdays, revivals at least 1 week a year, sometimes twice, and study courses (intensive Bible study for all ages) once or twice a year. As an adult, I was the college-age SS teacher and a choir member at Carrboro Bap when I was in law school at Chapel Hill, a SS teacher, choir member, deacon and deacon chair, trustee and trustee chair, missions committee chair, Boy Scout master, pastor search committee chair, music minister search committee chair, and church moderator at 1st Baptist, Monroe,NC until I resigned my membership about 15 years ago and became, in the words of Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, a member of the church alumni association. My oldest son, 52, a UNC grad, has a degree from the Southern Baptist seminary in Louisville and is in his 18th yr as one of three chaplains at the federal medical prison facility in Lexington,KY. My youngest, 48, DC ’95, is a hi school ass’t principal just outside Louisville and also a very committed Christian. My brother-in-law, a national merit scholar at Duke and Law Review at Vanderbilt law school, gave up his practice with the largest law firm in NE Tenn about 20 yrs ago and is a charismatic, evangelical minister in Kingsport. 

                                                                       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!

                                                                      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 8^th grade at McClintock Jr Hi in Charlotte. I played JV football and as soon as the season ended I started JV basketball, coached by Joe Coulter. My annual is in Louisville and I’m here in Bakersville, so I’ll name my teammates that I remember: Danny Epps, John Corne, John Lagana, Chris Proctor, Billy Crutchfield, Carl Helms and Kenny Kiker.

                                                          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 happen because most parents want their kid on the fast track to success, straight to college, then grad school, then a sweet job, marriage and grandkids. No deviation from that path even for the good of the country, not to mention the good of the kid. Think about it: kids sit behind a desk for 13 straight years and then are shuffled into another 4 or more years of the same. They need a break. They also can use a year or two of maturing out from under the eye and jurisdiction of mom & pop.

                                                                         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.