Category: Family

One more night before I get home. I drove a hard nine hours today from my parents’ place in Asheville NC to my grandfather’s in Leola, PA. Pop-pop is much better mentally, though still having some minor hand tremors and a severe “tilt” toward his right side when he walks. My uncle and aunt were here as well, and we spent a good part of the evening talking through the genealogy. I showed Uncle John some of my Scheaffer research that I had done last time, and we argued about which Benedict Brackbill was which. All good fun.

The other thing that happened on Friday was that I made my first trip to the Marshall Depot. I wasn’t getting on a train or bus, just listening to local musicians and watching people clog.

Marshall, the seat of Madison County, NC, is a one stoplight town on the banks of the French Broad River that has been in the process of evaporating for as long as I can remember. Each time I went to town with my grandmother or my dad, there seemed to be fewer businesses. The only place that showed any sign of activity was the courthouse—the benches out front were always occupied by old men). The Depot sat at the far end of the street and was falling apart. The time was long past when the trains would actually stop in Marshall. Now the Depot was on the brink of being condemned.

My grandmother remembered meeting my grandfather getting off the train at the depot when they were courting. Upset that the property would be torn down, she called my uncle, who had been a railroad man. After a lot of work, the railroad came to an agreement with the town that made the property available for town use if they would do something with it.

Do something they did. A lot of lumber and paint later (as well as a donated sound system), the Depot was reborn as a venue for live music performance. Free admission, open stage (as long as you sign up on the list) and traditional dancing.

I listened on Friday to the band—a pick up ensemble, my mother told me, “and not very good—but they’re having fun.” As I watched one man in his seventies play an old National steel guitar, I had to disagree. They were good. In fact, they were the best thing I had seen in Marshall in a long, long time.

(Yeah, I know, Esta wrote about it first…)

The so-called “Jarrett cemetery” in Asheville, NC, turns out to be pretty well hidden. To get to it, one must go through the town cemetery at Green Hills and out to the far section, a bluff overlooking the current site of Ingles at the corner of 19/23 and the Leicester Highway. It turns out, however, not to host any Jarretts in my direct line of descent—at least, none with legible markers.

I arrived in NC this afternoon after stopping overnight with my sister in Richmond. Not a bad trip, though I was afraid that the car wouldn’t make it over Old Fort Mountain without running out of gas. I screened O Brother, Where Art Thou? for my parents tonight—Mom thought it was funny, but I don’t know if Dad thought anything about it at all.

Tomorrow I’ll be looking for one of the ancestral Jarrett cemeteries and attending a function at the Marshall Depot, which my uncle and grandmother had a role in saving and converting into a spot for live music. Details later.

Happy anniversary to my parents, who (as of yesterday) have been married for 31 years. As I continue in my own path through marriage, I realize just how impressive and difficult a feat this is.

(PS—yes, I’m a day late in blogging this (thanks to Esta for the prod), but I did make dinner for them last night.)

Congratulations to my (distant) cousin Scott who, rumors have it, got engaged over the weekend. Scott was a little bit like a big brother that we only saw once a year when I was growing up. Best wishes to Scott and Karen–you’re about to start a really good journey.

I just got off the phone with my sister. Fortunately, the previous story turns out to be only partly true. My grandfather was suffering from low blood sugar, but not from another stroke. Apparently he had just forgotten to eat–not good if one is on insulin shots. He’s already on his way home.

Now all we have to do is find my mom. She hopped in the car to drive from western NC to pick up my sister in Richmond, then go to PA. They’ll have to call the highway patrol — she doesn’t have a cell phone. It’s probably time for them to change that. 🙂

I just got a call from my sister–my grandfather may have had another stroke. They won’t know anything for sure until they get a chance to process him through the emergency room.

Looks like some of my genealogical research is seriously suspect, according to this article. This is really disappointing: the Freeman family (my grandmother’s family) was one of the genealogies I was pretty happy with, but it looks like some of the records (and it’s not clear how far back) are suspect.

This is an important lesson to me as an amateur genealogical researcher: always document your source…and investigate any second hand evidence before adding it in.

One of the things that came up was my grandfather. He’s possibly my favorite relative (sorry, everyone else), and also my last living grandparent. And he’s been alternately reminding me how much I care for him and scaring me over the last couple of days.

Last Saturday, I wrote about my detour to the family reunion. I spent a lot of time catching up with family–some people I hadn’t seen in quite a while; some read this blog frequently (hi, Jack!). But I think my favorite moment was sitting around the piano with about half the thirty people there, Mom playing, all of us singing Christmas carols (and the “Hallelujah Chorus”). Part way through, Pop-Pop asked the other folks to lay back so that my he, my Uncle John, and I could take a verse. It had been years since I sang with them at all, let alone solo, and it sounded great.

I probably didn’t notice at the time because of that and other factors (like my quick drive over and my need to hit the road), but Pop-Pop wasn’t in great shape. When I got there yesterday at 1 pm, I really noticed it: while his brain was as quick as ever, his speech was a little slurred, his fine motor control was gone (hands moving spastically and constantly), he stumbled when he walked because he was dragging a foot. His diabetes, normally pretty controlled, had really spiked before Christmas, and he was still feeling the effects, they thought. My Aunt Marie and I took him to the doctor this morning, and though his blood sugar’s down he is still having the symptoms. So we took him by the hospital. They’ve ruled out a stroke and are now investigating other causes.

I want him to be ok. I want to be able to introduce him to great-grandchildren some day, so he has a new audience for whom he can be the hysterically funny gentleman he was when I was growing up. I want eighty-four to be a good year for him, not the start of a downward slope.