Nina Moo is what we called my mother’s mother, my Grandmother Hale. Of course, that wasn’t her real name. Her real name was Nina Mae Keys Hale, and she arrived July 15, 1913, the second of five children born to Orgel Ralph and Addie Mae Shanks Keys. Like her husband,…
Each year at Christmastime, my mom’s side of the family would get together at my Aunt Oria and Uncle Ivan’s house in Johnson City, Tennessee. Aunt Oria and Uncle Ivan lived in the historic Tree Streets neighborhood, on Maple Street, and they were gracious hosts. Their house was about a…
Just up the road a piece from Gray Station, Tennessee, is the Sulphur Springs community. Sulphur Springs, in Washington County, is where my mother went to school—she graduated top of her class from Sulphur Springs High School in 1961. Sulphur Springs is now a K-8 school, and area high school…
I love the holiday season and decorating the Christmas tree with ornaments that our family has collected over the years. My favorite types of Christmas trees are those that feature a hodgepodge of ornaments, serving as a kind of scrapbook of family memories—the ones that hold a story for each…
I’ve shared a few memories about my Great Aunt Edith already—including one about her volunteer work as a living history interpreter at Rocky Mount State Historic Site and also how she attended camp-meeting services at Sulphur Springs for more than 80 years. She was such an interesting woman, and I…
Happy Thanksgiving! I thought this would be a good week to share an old notepad I came across many years ago. From 1950, it included some real gems, including a note written to Santa from my mom, Clara Mae, in my Grandmother Hale’s handwriting. The letter that was still in…
Driving down Shadden Road in Gray, Tennessee, will bring you by a neighborhood development called “Cargille’s Crossing.” The sign there depicts a silhouette of a man wearing a hat, carrying a cane and what appears to be a bucket. That’s my Granddaddy, and much of the surrounding land used to…
When I was growing up in East Tennessee, my family wasn’t a regular church-going family. We were more special-occasion attendees, but my faith formed and grew through three different churches—and through many kind people that God used in sometimes the simplest of ways. Gray United Methodist Church The Methodist church…
High on a hilltop overlooking Piney Flats, Tennessee, sits a portal to 1791. It’s Rocky Mount State Historic Site, the first capital of the Southwest Territory. Rocky Mount was home to the William Cobb family, who in 1769 came to this part of the western frontier from North Carolina. Years…
I can’t look at a pair of Pointer Brand overalls without thinking of my Granddaddy. He wore a pair of those overalls—made in Bristol, Tennessee, by L.C. King Manufacturing Co.— just about every day that I knew him (exceptions being at my grandmother’s funeral as well as his own). My…
