She was a trooper, like all of them. In some ways, it was appropriate for her to be the last to leave us and join the others.

Hiram Culley and Carrie Myrtle Orrand Jewell moved to Lebanon, Tennessee, all the way from Statesville, twenty miles away in 1900, and considering it was the time it was and the place it was, twenty miles was a long move.

They brought with them their son Jessie, who was born in 1898, a year after they were married. He was the first of that Jewell generation. Virda was born in 1904, followed by Naomi in 1907, Wesley in 1909, Jimmy in 1914, Huffman in 1917, and Carrie Myrtle, who was born in 1918 but only lived a month.

Virda died at 28. She had married Mathew Graham Williamson and they had a son named after his father. As soon as she graduated from high school, she went to work as a telephone operator.

The others lived lengthy lives. And worked. Lord, how they worked.

Culley bought a steam powered tractor in 1918, and with Jessie, drove it back from Union Station in Nashville to Lebanon. They converted it into a portable saw mill. Jessie and Wesley worked with their father, clearing trees and turning the wood into lumber in a large swath of Wilson County. Even Jimmy, at six-years old contributed by keeping the steam engine running by feeding the slag lumber from the lumber cutting into the fire chamber.

Jessie became a plumber and was one of the best in Lebanon. He married Alice Guild Kelley and they had four daughters, the oldest dying at birth.

Naomi, as soon as she graduated from Lebanon High School, went to work for Ma Bell as her a switchboard operator as her older sister, Virda, had done. She retired as a senior manager. She married George Maxwell Martin. They had one son. They also raised Graham Williamson after Virda, Naomi’s younger sister died when she was 28.

Wesley became a mechanic, married Gussie Barbara Compton. He got the itch to travel and moved to California in 1941. The couple had two sons and a daughter.

Jimmy Jewell went to work as a mechanic when his brother Wesley got him a job where he was working before heading west. Jimmy became known as the best mechanic in the county. Jimmy married Estelle Prichard Jewell. They had two sons and a daughter, the oldest of which was me.

Huffman Jewell was the youngest. He was a postman and a farmer. He married this wonderful woman, Ruby Louise McDonald, the last of their generation of Jewell’s. She was the last one.

Aunt Louise passed away Wednesday, March 30. i earlier wrote it was fitting she was the last of those brothers, sisters, and their spouses because i remember her as the one who always visited her in-laws when they had physical problems, going out of her way to give them comfort.

She was a comfort: a hard-working, Southern Christian woman from a small town. The kind that made you feel at home. The kind that made you smile. And that farm. It made me feel as if i should have been a farmer. And it was hers. Yes, Huffman worked it, but Louise was part and partial of that farm.

Tomorrow, Aunt Louise will be buried beside Huffman in Wilson County Memorial Gardens.

i wish i could be there. i wish i could have spent more time with her, talked with her more. Times and my living kept me from that.

She was the last of a family of brothers and sisters with strong bonds and caring for each other. They worked with each other, they played with each other, and they loved each other. i am pretty sure that most folks who were reared by that generation, especially in small towns like Lebanon have similar feelings about what Tom Brokaw labeled “The Great Generation.”

i’m also sure Jessie and Alice, Virda and Mathew, Naomi and George, Wesley and Barbara, Jimmy and Estelle, and of course, Huffman, will be glad to have her join them in the sky, Lord, in the sky.

Friday afternoon, i drove over to Mesa College for the Arnie Robinson Annual Track Event at Mesa College. Mesa College is a two-year community college about 20 miles from our home. The meet was for high school and junior college athletes from schools in San Diego, Orange, and Los Angeles counties.

i parked and walked around the track and football stadium to the upper area where many of the field events were being held. There were ten or so pop-up tents around the edge of the field. The last one was next to what looked like a batting cage to me. But then, my last track meet was attending the Florida A&M-Tennessee State meet in the spring of 1963, nearly sixty years ago. The cage, larger than a batting cage was where they contested the shot putt, hammer throw, and discus events.

That last tent was for the athletes competing for Saddleback College in Mission Viejo. And there, lying on her stomach talking to her fellow athletes was Danielle Lister. To accurately describe our relationship would take several pages. So i will just use the standard i use for kin: she’s a cousin; i’m her “crazy uncle jim” (CUJ).

Her real uncle, Eric Leo Johnson, had let Maureen and i know Danielle would be competing nearby. Maureen had gone to one of her events that morning, the hammer throw. i was there for the discus.

Before i get into my roiling in my thoughts on track and field, i just want to let you know i have a rather incredible young lady for a cousin. Danielle is pretty, a red-head, smart, engaging, witty, and one heck of an athlete. She is in the top level of JC athletes in California. And we had fun. Oh yes, she finished second in the discus with a personal best of 133′ 9.” There is yet another impressive thing she did at the end of the competition. i cannot divulge what it was for to do so would take away from what she did. Only a few other athletes and her coach know what she did, but i can tell you her ethics, morale, and doing what was right was more impressive to me than what she did in her events.

i am proud to say i am crazy uncle jim for Danielle.

When i created my last post concerning Maureen’s birthday, i could not find one photo i wished to include. i found it today. It is her senior high school photo:

And there is no way i can capture her laugh, which has brought down many houses in laughter. No way.

As i have said and written on numerous occasions, i am a lucky man.

i was going to attempt elegant again in honoring her on her birthday.

71. Doesn’t seem like it.

She admonished me. “Refrain from posting something about me,” she said.

i have written a lot about her. So here is a pictorial of sorts:

And the best part is she is even more beautiful in her heart.

Happy Birthday, dear lady of mine.

i am looking for posts i’ve written in the past to celebrate the birthday of my mate, my wife. Undoubtedly, i will post at least one on her birthday Monday.

i often wonder just how we ended up together and how she not only has put up with a really strange guy, but how she still loves me in spite of my shenanigans (a perfect word for me and my history: the second definition of the noun states, “silly or high-spirited behavior; mischief.”)

Then in today’s early, early hours of the morning, even earlier than usual, i awoke, and this thought came into my head: “as different as day and night.” That was it. Nothing more.

i tried to sleep. i wanted to get a couple of more hours before rising my Friday morning early for my Friday Morning Golf, more of a ritual now than when it first began with Marty Linville in 1991. i could not. i had gone to bed early. i cannot sleep much more than six hours with an old man party break…huh, that’s “potty break,” not “party break.” i moved out of our bedroom and lay down on the guest bedroom bed. Didn’t work. i arose, dressed for golf, and fed the cats. As i placed the cats’ dishes in their feeding places, the newspaper boy…er, no longer accurate: man in a car, pulled into our driveway since there are very few people who get the printed newspaper anymore, if at all, and tossed our paper on the driveway before backing out and continuing on his rounds. i walked out to get the paper. Standing there in the dark, well before first light, i realized the fog was setting in, the Santa Ana had broken. The half moon was hazy. The morning star hanging over Mexico could not be seen, nor Mount Miguel to the east.

i thought, “Night and day are about to mingle. First light will be more of a melding than a division.

“Like us.”

Monday, Maureen will be the youngest 71 i’ve ever known. i mean she ain’t no spring chicken, but she handles it well. She is beautiful and more, oh so much more importantly, she cares about every one, even the rapscallion she married.

Standing there in the seacoast town pre-dawn fog, i thought again, “Night and Day.”

i made the coffee, performed the now required stretches for the morning round and sat down and wrote the first cut of this:

Night and Day

the two of them
are as different as
night and day,
but
if you’ve noticed,
night and day go together very well
and
even if these two are different,
they match perfectly:
she is forever beautiful;
he’s a jolly old elf;
she is careful, planning, specific;
he is bumbling, taking off on whims;
yet,
they understand each other
and
anticipate each other’s needs and wants;

it’s beautiful,
like when
the morning star shines down
on first light
and
night meets day;
the question remains
who is night
and who is day?