Family. What a Great Idea!

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My grandparents built a new house in the country during the 1950s. It was a three-bedroom ranch, built in the style of the times. The kitchen cabinets were knotty pine and the countertops were pink. As I have shared before, here is Mama Sue in the kitchen.

The kitchen floors, as you can see, were speckled linoleum. The bathrooms had ceramic tile and everywhere else had hardwood. The light fixture in the dining room was wrought iron. The bathrooms were ceramic tile, pink for Mama Sue and blue for Daddy Leland. It was definitely the day of “Drive-Ins, Bobby Socks, and Poodle Skirts.”

I always loved that house. Mama Sue moved out a few years after Daddy Leland passed away; but before things changed, I went from room to room, taking pictures so I could always remember what I loved about every nook and corner.

A handful of family antiques was sprinkled around amidst the very modern furnishings, but the basement had a bit of nostalgia. In spite of every new and modern convenience upstairs, the basement sink was a very practical, old-fashioned, used one, and I always heard that the basement staircase had once been in the old hotel in Ashland City. I don’t remember if I ever heard how Daddy Leland got those steps.

When our family sold our precious homeplace in 2021, the new owner tore it down in preparation for selling it for business use. Yes, it was very sad, but the landscape had changed drastically over the decades. Businesses already sat on the other three corners of the intersection and a school sat behind our property. There is a time for everything. That was the time to sell.

To my surprise, I had known the buyer when I was in my early teens. Thinking that the Cheatham County Historical and Genealogical Association might like to have some pieces from the old hotel’s staircase, I asked the buyer to save some for me. He was glad to do that, saving the newel post and one of the balusters. Because they had belonged to Mama Sue, they had been painted pink. Mama Sue loved to get out her paintbrush and pink paint in the spring to paint her flowerpots. I have never known anyone who loved pink like Mama Sue.

We now live two hours away from my old stomping grounds, so it wasn’t easy for me to take possession of the two pieces of the staircase. My brother and I sold my parents’ house around the same time as our extended family sold Mama Sue and Daddy Leland’s house. I knew the buyer of my parents’ house, too, because she had rented it while Mother lived with us, so I asked her to keep the pieces for me.

At the time, Cheatham County’s museum was in a small space. When I contacted someone about the pieces, he told me that they didn’t have room for them. I was stymied.

When Ray and I went to the museum last week, I was thrilled to see china and a beautiful oak table that had been used in the hotel.

It must have been a grand place in its day.

I told the docent about the staircase pieces I had saved, saying that I did not know if the lady who bought my parents’ house still had them, but that I would be happy to see what I could do. He was intrigued by the possibility and gave me his cell number. Before going to see Aunt Dot and Uncle Preston, we went by my parents’ old house, and I timidly knocked on the door. To my delight, the same lady still lived there. She still had the pieces in the basement, and we were able to dig them out. The pink paint is peeling badly; but structurally, they were in great shape.

Ray and I contacted the docent and met him in the parking lot of the catfish restaurant where we ate that night and made the transfer from our car to the bed of his pickup truck.

He told us that they have a museum member who does refinishing. I look forward to seeing them back in their former glory and on display at the museum. I’m supposed to write up a description, so I also look forward to seeing my grandparents’ names on the card of explanation.

By the way, I can hardly believe I am sharing pictures from that day! I needed a haircut so badly. I got one the very next day in Clarksville.

My little brother, who had just spent the day running his landscaping business, and his big sister

That was another “As Always Time.” As always, my niece cut Ray’s hair and my hair. As always, we went out to eat with her and Steve afterwards. As always, our hearts were full when we left. As always, I texted Steve when we got back to our hotel. As always, he wanted to make sure his big sister was safe and sound.

That’s why we drive two and a half hours to get our hair cut. We almost always combine our haircuts with a trip to Vanderbilt Medical Center, and that’s why sometimes it’s a little—or a lot—longer than we’d like between cuts. As always though, it was worth the wait and the drive.

Family. What a great idea! How kind God was to make His marvelous idea of family a reality.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 5:14-19

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