As i have mentioned before, i still long to have known my grandfathers both of whom passed over that bridge before i was born.

Joe Blythe Prichard died of what i am pretty sure was asthma in 1932. He and his wife, Katherine Webster Prichard, lived in Lebanon all of their lives except for a brief period when he played semi-pro baseball in Arkansas and from 1929 through 1932, and when they moved to Gotha, Florida with the hopes of the climate improving his failing health. When the move did not produce improvement, they returned to their home in Lebanon he had built on the farm of his father-in-law’s property on Hunter’s Point Pike.

Hiram Culley Jewell died of tuberculosis in 1939. He and his wife, Carrie Myrtle Orrand Jewell, moved about twenty miles from near Statesville to Lebanon around 1900. He had been a farmer in Statesville, worked at Lebanon’s pencil factory, bought a steam engine tractor in 1918 and turned it into a portable sawmill. He worked the mill until he lost a large part of his hand in the sawmill. He then was the caretaker for Lebanon City Schools, McClain and Highland Heights elementary schools and Lebanon High School. He installed the gym floor in the basement of the old high school located on East High Street.

(Note: i have several photos of Culley but could not find them before leaving for a golf trip with my friend, Peter Toennies in Park City, Utah — more on that later — but i will add the photo when i return to the Southwest corner).

i have other photos of them. i have a few stories about them. i know what they did for a living. When i asked my mother and father about their fathers, i got some of those stories, but they never really talked about what the two men were like, what they thought about things, just facts and their memories.

By virtue of a divorce and distance, i have not spent enough time with my grandson Samuel James Jewell Gander, named after my father, not me. If someone asked Sam about me currently, i don’t think he would know much more about me than i know about my grandfathers.

i’ve doubled down on leaving him enough of me in writing that he should have some idea after i have passed over that bridge.

For Sam:

Practicality without logic is impractical.

Toughness without compassion is abuse.

Loving without sharing is guilt.

Religion without humanity is demagoguery.

i must confess i am curious to find out how many folks will voice disapproval.