This is for all of my relatives on the Jewell side. In going (again) through memorabilia i was given from Aunt Naomi to Maxwell to my father and then to me, i ran across the envelope. The writing is a scrawl that says: “Pictures of Mama & Papa.”

i imagine this is written by a hand of a working man — there is a story about my grandfather and why he was a working man and why his brothers got education, along with several other stories about this amazing man — and it certainly has similarities to my father’s handwriting but much rougher. i imagine him deciding what to do with the photos inside and scrawling the description of the contents before storing them somewhere in the house on Spring Street. i picture my grandmother, Mama Jewell to me, finding the envelope and putting it in her place for safekeeping, taking it with her when her daughter Naomi took Mama into her house across the street from ours on Castle Heights Avenue long before there was a Castle Heights Avenue North. i can see my wonderful Aunt Naomi collecting her mother’s memorabilia and putting it in a special place for memories, hers and other members of the family. i can see cousin Maxwell, many years later, taking the two cardboard boxes to my father shortly after Aunt Naomi joined the wonderful man, her mother, and her husband Uncle George Martin somewhere, and Maxwell telling my father he thought Daddy would be best to keep them.

And then there was that night in Daddy’s garage when he took the two boxes off the shelf, telling me he wanted me to have them and how we went through each box, and how those boxes have been shifted through time and time again after they made it back to the Southwest corner for me to go through them again, breaking out an article of memorabilia or two because i intend to identify who of the fifty or sixty dependents should get the real article or if it should go to some historical site and if i can scan it and make it available for those who might interested.

i think i will complete this task along with several things from the paternal side when i reach 176. But now i have this one for action.

i had seen this envelope and photos before, looked at the photos and put them away for later because of the difficulty with editing and my lack of expertise. But this time, i studied the handwriting and realized it was my grandfather’s. Hiram Culley Jewell died of tuberculosis in 1939, five years before i was born. The last event he attended outside his home was my parents’ wedding, July 2, 1938, as i said an amazing man with some amazing stories around him.  If a family member is interested in learning more, please contact me.

So here are the photos inside the envelope. This is my great grandfather, Hiram Carpenter (Buddy) Jewell who has some pretty amazing stories himself:

And this is my great grandmother, Sarah (Jones) Jewell who has one incredible story about her:

i’m guessing the photos were taken circa the 1870’s. i’m planning to have the restored, scanned again and made available to family members.

This post began  to make the photos known by those relatives on Facebook. It’s a little bit more now. There will be some stories mentioned above eventually included here…if i actually get to it.

It takes me to a time when we were different. The world was different. Smaller, perhaps simpler. There was more distinction between good and bad. The line was more defined, even if it was wrong by our standards today. They were young, hard working folks in the country. Farmers. He enlisted in Bardstown, Kentucky as a member of the 8th Tennessee Calvary, Confederate States of America in 1862. He was mustered out at the end of the war. As far as i know never owned slaves.

But that is getting into the stories. That’s for later.

Still i look at the photos and i see “Jewell eyes” as indistinct as they are in the old and worn photos.

i will close now and sit here almost 150 years later and 2500 miles away and contemplate these two young folks and their eyes for a while by myself.

Written on Wednesday, January 2, 2019…or at least begun then:

i am sitting by the hearth. The fire is comforting. i will add no more logs tonight.

We are winding down and winding up. Tomorrow, we will get it in gear.

i, wanting to read four books immediately, have once again put reading aside for later so i might write. i continue to wonder why.

In the last couple days, i contemplated differences between now and then, then being my time. What sparked that contemplation was yesterday, New Year’s Day, January 1. Back a thousand years ago…okay, okay not really…i spent a number of my New Year’s Days in Paris, Texas. Before that, i spent them in a lot of places similar, but the ones in Paris, Texas captured my idea of my New Year’s Day.

My former in-laws, the fabulous Col. Jimmie and Bettie Lynch, the latter being known as Nannie Bettie by an adoring family, put on a Bowl Party to end all bowl parties. Their home on Main Street was a classic and outshone all the other houses  on the promenade leading into the town square.

The Colonel and Nannie Bettie, with a little of my help, had restored it for the wedding in May 1971. The home was built (guessing) in the 1920’s. The Colonel turned the detached garage into a work space for refinishing antiques and then into a recreation room complete with a pool table, a television for watching his beloved Dallas Cowboys, a half-refrigerator, and a very well-stocked bar.

And then, they held their bowl party. Unlike today, the bowls held the attention of the country’s football nation. The Super Bowl, with the first one in 1967, was not the extravaganza of entertainment excess lasting interminably, back then. College football was the focus, not the gaudily and ridiculously rich NFL. We went to college football games during the season to watch decades and decades of sports rivalry on display. The reward for the season was winning in your conference to play in the post-season bowls.

Even though there were 11 bowl games in the 1970’s, only four were considered THE BOWL GAMES and the only ones played on New Year’s Day. The rest were relegated to second place. There were no conference championship games, or even divisions as far as i recall.

New Year’s Day for nearly all of the country was sleeping-in-late after the previous eve of welcoming in the New Year and for many, recovery from hangovers. Then, you had the traditional meals to begin the year and vegged out all day watching bowl games. The Orange Bowl was first (Eastern Time Zone); the Sugar Bowl was second (Central Time Zone, early game); the Cotton Bowl was third (Central Time Zone, later game), and the day concluded with the granddaddy Rose Bowl. They were all day games and played in…gasp…open-air stadiums on real grass. They overlapped to some degree, sometimes a much as a quarter. Back then, channel-hopping was a chore because someone had to get to the television to turn the dial.

The party in Paris, Texas was a center piece for the town gentry. The Lynch’s did not disappoint. They had each bowl game on a television in a different part of the home, including the one in the rec room garage. In case you were having difficulty in determining which game was where, the Lynch’s had a display on top the television: a bowl of oranges for the Orange Bowl, bowls of sugar for the Sugar bowl, a bowl of cotton bolls for the Cotton Bowl, and a vase of roses for the Rose Bowl. There were appetizers throughout the house, all of the famous Texas fare you could find, chips, cornbread, and even a huge round of cheddar cheese shipped in from Wisconsin. And of course, there was a complete bar. One of the highlights was the Colonel’s Bloody Mary’s.

It was a tremendous event made possible by bowl games, undiluted, in the spirit of college football.

Ain’t that way no more. i no longer think it’s better or worse. It’s different.

On New Year’s Eve, we sat by the fire watching “The Shadow of the Thin Man” with a fire roaring in the fireplace. We went to bed early. Yesterday, we watched “Roman Holiday.” To me, they are more enjoyable than today’s movie fare. In those classics, there are no graphics to blow your mind, there is no real violence, there is no graphic sex, and there is no cussing, gratuitous or otherwise. The plots are better, often with unexpected endings. They are witty and entertaining.

Ain’t that way no more. As with the new and old post-season football, i no longer think it’s better or worse. Just different. The new standards of enjoyment are driven by change. The younger set didn’t experience my time with football and movies. They don’t have the same standards. My reality isn’t their reality.

So i am not knocking them for their reality.

But i do like mine better and miss it.