have you happened to see
my dreams wandering by
recently?
i lost them somewhere
sometime ago
although
i really don’t know why or when
they went on their own way
perhaps
people took them away
from me
showing me
my dreams did not exist
because
those folks would not allow
goodness
humanity
to overcome
fear greed hate
perhaps even the do gooders
took them with their own kind of hate
victorians in disguise in the new times
wanting to make all is well
when it will never be all is well
or
perhaps
my dreams just got tired
of an old man
knowing too much
learning through the years
his dreams could not exist
knowledge would not allow them in
so
they went away
somewhere
someway
somehow
sometime ago
but
if you happen across my dreams
please send them back to me
i need them for my sanity.

Today (begun last night, Sunday, March 21, 2021) on the “If You Grew Up in Lebanon (TN)…” Facebook group, Elizabeth Spears asked about that wonderful mansion on the corner of Castle Heights Avenue (now with “North” added) and West Main. Responses explained it was the “Mitchell House” and one included a photo of the majestic place.

i could not help but respond. Now when i should be finishing some editing on my book or closing up shop, i am compelled to meet the obligation i created in that response.

My response:

A number of years ago when Danny Evins had bought the Mitchell House and made it the titular headquarters for Cracker Barrel, my mother, Estelle Jewell, wrote a brief essay and i took it to one of the PR folks with an office there. i just ran across her essay. i intended to give it to the City of Lebanon and the Wilson County archives but was not looking for it when i found it, just ran across it while shuffling papers. She played with David Mitchell when they were around five or six years old in that house in the early 1920’s. She also points out that her mother, my grandmother, Katherine Prichard, was a Heights housemother who had up to 20 goobers under her charge from 1958 until around 1971. i will post the link to my comments and her essay on my website soon.

And with no further ado, here is Mother’s essay:

Memories of the Mitchell House
by Estelle Jewell

As I go down West Main Street and see the restoring of the Mitchell House, it brings some vivid memories of my attachment to that house.

I was about four or five years old and David Mitchell was about a year older. After his mother died, his father brought his grandparents here to live and look after his children. They were Rev. and Mrs. Arthur Smith and had lived in Florida. Mr. Mitchell travelled a lot on business and the Smith’s live in the Mitchell house. I don’t remember much about the sister.

The Smith’s came to our church, and in those days people did visiting. My Grandfather was a retired Methodist minister and so was Rev. Smith. My grandparents lived about a mile from town on Hunter’s Point Pike (their farm was on the southwest corner of where Castle Heights Avenue now intersects with US 231 and is where Al’s Foodmart is now located). He decided one  day to go visit the Smith’s and asked me to go with them as they had this grandson about my age. My grandfather, grandmother, and I went in the horse and buggy to visit. David and I had a good time playing. Then, the Smith’s asked me to come back and spend the day after that. David had a “Nanny” (I think her name was Mrs. Lawson). I went back to spend the day and the “Nanny” took us up to the play room on the third floor. I had never seen that many play things (even in a store). Most any thing you ever heard of he had. I can’t remember much about lunch but I did have to go to the bathroom. I think they had one for every bedroom and it amazed me because they all had standup bathroom scales. The “Nanny” took us to the library to read to us. Then she let us bring a car (the kind you pedaled with your feet) and a tricycle and a scooter down to the front porch to ride. Of course, I had never ridden any of them before but David let me try and I had a good time.

Later on the Smith’s wanted to move back to Florida and I guess they took the children with them. I wish I could have met him when he came back to Lebanon, but in 1954, I was working and had three children and a husband so was too busy to get there. When he returned in 1994, I was either out of town or was sick and didn’t get there then. But that house and all it’s grandeur and those play things I have thought about many a time.

And then, in 1958, Col. Armstrong hired my Mother as a house mother for some grade school boys, and she lived on the second floor of the Mitchell house with about 20 – 6th, 7th, and 8th grade boys. So I was in and out of there two or three times a week. She worked for Castle Heights for about 13 years.

This may not interest people, but for a small girl it was a wonderful experience.

Also part of the Castle Heights history, both of my boys attended their high school days there.

//Estelle Prichard Jewell//

My thoughts:

That wonderful place, Castle Heights Military Academy, on the Hilltop is gone, quietly faded away in 1987.

Only a few of the buildings remain: Main is now the city’s administrative office. Colonel Ingram’s home as Commandant is owned by the Castle Heights Alumni Association, i think. The superintendent’s home is now Sammy B’s Restaurant.

The Rutherford Parks Library (where i spent an incredible amount of time in the stacks on the second level reading everything that wasn’t a homework assignment and still remember how moved I was by James H. Street’s The Biscuit Eater and Mika Waltari’s The Estruscan) is now the Castle Heights Military Academy Museum and Archives.

And of course, there is the round guard house  near the Mitchell House. Danny Evins had a circle nearby with the name of graduates and their graduation year on the bricks of the circle.

A goal post and a scoreboard in the back of the lot where Wilson County Bank and Trust’s Operations Center now stands is all that remains of the football, soccer,  and track field which was also the parade grounds where the cadet battalion would march down from Main on Sunday afternoons (along with other big events), march onto the field. The band would perform and then the drill team would put on a show with the parade concluding with the battalion “passing in review” before the gathered guests on the commander, his staff, the honored guests on the large podium, and friends, family, and town folks in the stands.

(i must admit i am in the Southwest corner and haven’t been home in more than two years. So my recounting of what remains of Heights is somewhat spotty. i hope i have gotten most of it correct.

i should add my only regret my sister Martha was not able to attend because it was a boy’s prep school when we were in school. i, like my brother, and so many others profited from the learning, the discipline, and the camaraderie of the corps available there. i wish Martha had the same opportunity.

As we have said many times: “Hail, Castle Heights!”

A good idea but ain’t gonna happen

i’m not going to watch college football in the Spring, even if it is being played because of COVID.

i am pretty much done with March Madness after my Aztecs were completely embarrassed by Syracuse.

After all, i can watch Vandy baseball, and they are, as Coach Creekmore said, impressive.

Even though my ole basketball buddy from one-on-one for hours after everyone else had gone home from school, Mike Dixon, has sent me an article declaring the Vandy Boys are the equivalent of the Yankee dynasty — the text of that article as it appeared on the PL+ website is included below, i’m not going to announce their CWS appearance yet, as there is this nasty thing called the “super regional,” which has knocked out many good teams before the CWS. No, i’m not yet ready to crown the boys on West End the champs.

But boy, am i glad i can watch almost every game courtesy of the sports web, especially the SEC network.

i just wanted to share something i wish were true at many other institutions of higher (sic) learning.

Today’s San Diego Union-Tribune sports section had an article on the back page written by Don Norcross about University of San Diego’s “Toreros” football team.

The Toreros play their football in the Pioneer Football League in the Football Championship Subdivision, or FCS. The PFL is playing this spring because of COVID. USD is 2-0 in this six-game spring season. More impressive and the headline subject of the article is the team has won 39 straight league games. And the reason i started this post is that USD the only team in the conference that does not give football scholarships — Norcross states the Toreros are the only FCS non-scholarship program, but i need to check on that more thoroughly before agreeing.

Still, i was struck by that. Imagine a college football team winning for that long without giving out football scholarships against teams that have as many as 63 scholarships.

i won’t get on my Quixote rant here about college athletics. i recognize such rages will have no effect. But for me, it is encouraging to know that some colleges can have real, no kidding, student/athlete programs that succeed.

On that note, i still think Vandy is trying to do it the right way with their entire athletic program. It is succeeding in nearly all programs except it remains a very tough road for football and is likely to continue that way, and i think the jury remains out on basketball.

But baseball? Just wow. Just flat wow. Here’s that article:

(PL+ Web Site)

Vanderbilt Dynasty: There’s a baseball factory in Nashville churning out big leaguers
by Mitch Bannnon

As Quincy Hamilton walked back to the dugout his Wright State teammate, Tyler Black, stopped him for some guidance — any advice that would save Black from the same walk moments later.

The 6’5” pitcher who had just struck Hamilton out stalked the mound in wait of his next victim. Hamilton’s advice may have been good, but it didn’t help. Black worked the count full, treading water for seven pitches, but on the eighth he was done in by the high heater.

It was the third batter Vanderbilt’s Kumar Rocker sent right back to the dugout in the opening inning, and he’d add five more Ks in the 14-1 Commodores win. A few hours later, in the second half of the season-opening double header, his teammate Jack Leiter bested him — 6.0 IP, 1 H, 8 K, 0 BB.

Rocker and Leiter head the best rotation, on the best team, from the best program in college baseball. The 2021 Vanderbilt squad is filled with not just college stars, but future big league aces (yes, plural), all star outfielders, and MLB starting catchers. Simply put, the current iteration of Vandy baseball is an absolute wagon.

There is a very real chance over 25 percent of the MLB Draft’s top five picks in the next three years will be Commodores. They have FanGraphs’ No. 6 player in the 2023 class, No. 4 in the 2022, and Rocker and Leiter are projected first and second overall picks in the 2021 class.

In his third start of the season, Leiter twisted on the mound and stared downward after his 26th pitch against University of Illinois-Chicago. The 20-year-old reached for the brim of his cap and walked towards the dugout, upset with himself. His catcher, Maxwell Romero Jr., met Leiter at the third base line and slapped him on the backside. Leiter was frustrated he had walked two batters in the inning (no runners scored and he struck out the side).

Leiter is the lightning to Rocker’s thunder. He is listed at 6’1″ and 195 pounds, features a four pitch mix, and has drawn comparisons to Sonny Gray. At 21-years-old, Rocker is 6’5″ and 250 pounds. He touches 98 mph with his fastball and has earned 65+ grades on his late-breaking slider. Vanderbilt’s coach Tim Corbin likened Rocker to David Price.

Of program’s with at least 400 AB this year, Vanderbilt has the highest SLG%, fourth-highest OBP, and seventh AVG. They also lead the country in stolen base percentage (minimum 20 SB) with a 95% success-rate.

High signing bonuses lured the top prospects away from the newly expanded (for $13 million) Vanderbilt athletic facility. It is a Major League-caliber complex with 30,000 square feet of cardio studios, workout rooms, fueling stations, and walls of jerseys from former Commodores who have played in the big leagues.

Walker Buehler and Sonny Gray are front-and-center, but there is room for more. Maybe Austin Martin, one of the two Vandy grads currently in MLB.com’s top 25 prospects, will be next. In a few years it could be Leiter or Rocker. Or maybe it will be one of the seven top 100 recruits already committed to join the program in 2022.

It’s not a question of if but who, because the Vanderbilt baseball factory shows no signs of stopping.

The world keeps changing…and i don’t.

i think and therefore i put those thoughts i can down here. It is a privilege of old curmudgeons. If nothing else, being able to record what i want to say gives me tolerance. i don’t damn those folks who record things that don’t agree with my point of view.

But while i’ve been working on my book in the closing stages, i have continued to think. A couple of those thoughts have been rambling around in this old head for a week or so. Here they are:

Free. Man, it felt like we were free. Maureen and i had our second covid vaccinations over two weeks ago. In celebration of that and also as her birthday gift to me, we spent a day vacation (nah, i ain’t shortening to the new faddish “daycation”) at the Rancho Bernardo Inn with our close friends, Pete and Nancy Toennies. We had a nice dinner, a good night’s sleep away from home, a great breakfast on the veranda, a fun round of golf (where Pete pointed out one of my 468,324 faults, which helped my game a bit…now, i just have to figure out how to correct the other 468,323 faults. We concluded the escape with a lovely late lunch on the veranda again in Southwest corner weather made to order.

You know what? It was like they let us out of our cage. Now, being the age i am i don’t think this sequestering in place has had the nasty impact on me as others. To start, after the first couple of months, we could play golf. Then, there is the book thing, and that kept me busy. and Maureen and i watched the Padres play baseball, which is our nightly event during the baseball season, and, of course, i have somewhere in the vicinity of two gazillion honey-dos to accomplish around the house. The doldrums were further ameliorated by supporting our local dining favorites with pickup, take-out meals, or whatever you call them. So i was really okay.

But that one night outing early this week made me feel like Clint Eastwood escaping from Alcatraz (without that swimming thing).

It gave me hope.

i also, because of my advanced age, have two other advantages: 1) i don’t have to go to work, and 2) i can sit for hours just remembering things that have happened over the first seventy-seven years. If i can’t just sit there and call them up, i can go to photos, old notes, and a bunch of things around this house that relate back to many things that give me pleasure. A few are tender moments.

i had one of those recalls this weekends. i would like to share it.

It happened about eleven and half years ago (if i added and subtracted correctly, which is often called into question: i lost that skill a number of years ago). i have taken two columns i wrote for The Lebanon Democrat, condensed them, and added what was to me one of the most tender moments i have experienced.

My father, Jimmy Jewell, was the Grand Marshall of Lebanon’s Veteran’s Day parade. “Coach” JB Leftwich, and Jim Henderson, LCOL,  USAF, retired, had a lot to do with Daddy being so honored. His children were there, and the one grandchild, Tommy Duff and his mother, rode in the back seat of Jay White’s 1921 Ford “Hack” at the head of the parade with Daddy in the shotgun seat (i thank the oaters for it being called that) beside Jay.

Brother Joe and i went with them to the parade assembly point on South Greenwood next to the First Presbyterian Church on West Main. Joe and i saw them embark on the hack and then went back home to pick up my mother. Estelle was experiencing some significant medical problems. So we loaded up the car with her wheelchair and put her in the back seat. Because of the parade, we drove a circuitous route to the gravel parking lot behind Henderson’s Flower Shop.

An aside (old farts have the privilege of wandering off the original story): The front parking brought memories of my driving Wilson Denny’s claimed utility motor cart owned by the city’s Public Works. On my first day of summer work for Public works, Jim “Beetle” Harding and i took the cart, barely accommodating for two folks,  and answered a help call, pulling a sizable dead dog out from under a house and taking it to the city dump. Jim, who began working the week before i did,  had driven to the house and the dump. He offered the driving to me back to the public works yard. i readily agreed. i was driving down main street and crossed. the railroad tracks just over a block from the square. The motor cart jumped up when it hit the rails and i lost control. We crashed into the fire hydrant in front of the flower shop. Beetle hit the frame for the roof and plastic windshield. i took a somersault through the windshield and landed on the other side of the hydrant. When i woke up, a blond nurse who was in the shop buying flowers had come out to help and she held my head in her lap. i thought she was an angel and i had gone to heaven. We rode to McFarland Hospital in the ambulance. Beetle got the worst of it, with stitches on his eye and forehead. They picked stuff out of my face and  put a clamp on my eyebrow. Lucky.

But on this day, Joe and i pushed Mother in her wheelchair to the sidewalk. The Hendersons brought out a couple of blankets to keep her warm.

Joe and i stood behind Mother as the parade approached, the hack in the lead. My father was waving and smiling and spending a great deal of his time standing on the running board, holding on to the roof with his left hand and waving with his right.

As the hack approached the tracks with the high school band right behind playing its marching songs, my father directed Jay to stop the Hack, the band, and the entire parade. He hopped off the running board, came across the street, reached down, held my mother’s hand, and kissed her.

He went back to the Hack and the parade resumed. It ran through the square up to the new  county court house where a very nice ceremony was held. As my father went back to his role as Grand Marshall, i teared up as i am tearing up now as i write.

It was the best tender moment.

And there are special moments i can remember, like the night before the parade.

When supper rolled around on Castlewood Lane, the original family of five sat at the same round oak table where we sat over fifty years ago. We could not remember when just the five of us had been together since those meals in the breakfast room on Castle Heights Avenue. We have gathered many times since, but a spouse, another relative, a friend or a next-generation member was with us.

The fare: meatloaf, fried squash, string beans with fresh onions, coleslaw, and biscuits with ice tea and chocolate pie for dessert (Grandma Specials, I call them). 

Our family has been particularly blessed. There are not many families with three children born in the 1940s who can sit down and have a meal together just as they did over a half-century ago.

Our parents are gone now. The five us did not have another meal together without other loved ones in attendance. That meal is a special memory.

i hope everyone reading this returns to a more normal life and get out to some place special. And i hope you too have special moments to remember during the hard times.

Okay, sports commentators, i know you think you are cool and impressive and wish to wow the watchers of listeners with your expansive vocabularies (not!). But dammit, here are the definitions of two words you use excessively and inappropriately (out of lord knows how many). Dammit, look it up. The guys you stole it from aren’t the linguistic wizards you think they are, and it ain’t cool to show you can be stupid.

verticality – position at right angles to the horizon. verticalness, erectness, uprightness. spatial relation, position – the spatial property of a place where or way in which something is situated; “the position of the hands on the clock”; “he specified the spatial relations of every piece of furniture on the stage