Mary Louise Eklund

Tag: grandmother

A Walk In Time Down Gay Street

I grew up with Knoxville, Tennessee being one of the big towns. If we wanted something and we couldn’t get it in town (Greeneville, Tennessee) one of the big towns to go for it would be Knoxville. We went there to do back to school shopping. We went there for Spring clothes shopping. We went there for concerts. We went there for just released movies. It was the big town with more to offer.

In my day the place we went was West Towne Mall. Near that was a the hip cool place to get record albums (yep talkin’ vinyl here) the day they were released, Cats Records. Couldn’t get albums until a week maybe two after release in Greeneville. Just like movies you had wait for them to be out a bit to make it down the pipeline to Greeneville.

Back in my grandmother’s day the hub of action in Knoxville was downtown. Gay Street was where it happened. That’s where her daddy took her shopping and where she went shopping with my Papaw in tow.

I have a photo of them made by a street photographer on Gay Street. We think it was the mid to late 1930s when this was taken. In those days a street photographer made your picture then tried to sell it to you. Kinda like what we see at amusement parks today but then it was in busy places, like Gay Street.

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August 9, 2012
Can You Read HELP Me Read?

Let me first set the stage for this letter. I am starting to transcribe the 79 pages of my 4th great grandmother Sarah Busick Bright’s application for her widow’s share of her husband James Bright’s Revolutionary War Service Pension. This is going to be a long tedious job as file is all hand written, at times not in the best penmanship. Currently I’m trying to translate this letter that’s in response to Andrew Johnson’s letter of September 1848. At the time he was her representative in the House of Representatives and apparently her lawyer had asked him to help in securing the pension. Yes Andrew would become Lincoln’s Vice-President and President upon Lincoln’s assassination but that was in the future for these letters. Mr. Johnson writes

Will Cal Edwards please inform me what has been done in this case – these papers were left with the comm. before I left the city.
A Johnson

This letter appears next in the file as if to reply (I think)

Here’s what I got so far with blanks for what I can’t make out.

Blountville Sept 7 1848

Dear Sir

I sent you about 2 mo. ago old Mrs Bright’s old P certificate with her application to be continued on the role. – I have not heard from it – Will you please drop me a lin and inform me what you did with it ________ What think you? Is not the election between Cap & Van Buren It seems to me that this old Hero of Buena Vista & Regular(?) after 40 years out do well ___ ____ on the roll of the army. Is it not a strange thing _____ the _______ a party should take a regular _____ ____ and that only of the army and offer him as a candidate for an office of ________ magnitude I tremble for the President

How A Johnson

Yours truly
Saul Rhea

a line by next mail will much oblige

I’m not quite sure how that ending goes with the big pen scribble in the middle there. I don’t get exactly what he’s saying either about the election or what it has to do with Mrs Bright’s application for the widow’s pension.

Any way give the original a look over and see if you can help fill in any blanks or divine the meaning of this reply.

As always love comments, ratings, and likes. You know where to find me until next time!

May 16, 2012
The Things I Don’t Miss About Christmas

Many people paint a rosy picture of their childhood Christmases. In hopes of being a bit more practical I will admit there are many things I don’t miss about my childhood Christmases. Not that they weren’t great Christmases but there are some things I’m thankful I DON’T have to do any more.

I don’t miss getting dressed up to sit around the house. Yes, my Nanny (what I called my maternal grandmother) required everyone to look like a Norman Rockwell painting but better dressed. Didn’t work, I was uncomfortable in a dress or skirt and knee socks trying to play with my new toy. Give me jeans any day and I’m a happy camper, better yet sweats to just wear about the house enjoying myself.

I don’t miss having to make my bed and display my gifts. Well I didn’t HAVE to but my Nanny liked it. It did make writing thank-you notes much easier. Besides it’s easier to play with Barbies on a bed when you are in a skirt than in the floor.

I don’t miss the good china. Yeah it’s nice and I carried that stupidity to a new level when I was a young married woman by having specific Christmas dishes (well we used them all winter because they were winter themed). No really the meal tastes just as good on every day dishes and is much less stressful to do.

I don’t miss all the stupid school stuff. When I was in 5^th and 6^th grade our class went about singing to different places and putting on some odd variety show. We wore orange-yellow shirts with our names on them in fuzzy purple letters (our school colors were purple and gold but gold was expensive so orange-yellow stood in). I’d “blossomed” to a C cup by the 5^th grade and they had to shorten my name to fit on the shirt. It looked like one of the girls is named Mary and the other Lou. I don’t miss that.

I don’t miss the oyster stuffing. I like oysters steamed or smoked. I don’t like them in stuffing. Enough said.

I don’t miss the cut up stuff in the gravy. Why my grandmother insisted on chopped boiled egg and chopped turkey giblets put in the gravy is beyond me. I like my gravy plain like my coffee. They’re both beverages right?

Really, this time of the year many people wax nostalgic about their childhood Christmas. However being the cynic with a good heart I don’t want to gloss over the stuff I didn’t like (besides Mary and Lou are still hanging around, albeit a bit lower now).

Yes, there are things about my childhood Christmases I miss. They can all be summed up by one miss—I miss the anticipation. I miss the build up to Christmas. The excitement was so much I felt was going to burst and squirmed with delight at that feeling. It built so much until on Christmas Eve night I couldn’t fall asleep and my parents would take me on car rides to get me to go to sleep . I’d be in my pajamas with a blanket watching the dark sky and Christmas lights go by until I fell asleep.

No for me it’s gone. I get glimmers here and there of the thrill. The closest sustained anxious feeling like that is when I race from the car to the bathroom in Target wondering if I’ll make it in time. (Hey there’s anticipation and squirming involved with great joyous relief when I get there). No the anticipation isn’t the same.

Still looking on the bright side, I get to wear sweats, not wear the girls names about in public, enjoy a plain gravy while eating off my every day dishes, and skip making my bed that day. All in all life’s pretty good.

December 25, 2010