Miss Rose

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As I sat in Miss Rose’s sparkling vintage kitchen, she prepared my breakfast. When she finished, she placed my egg, sausage, and toasted white bread before me and gave me a dollar, or maybe two or three, to place in the collection plate at church.

I grew up behind my Daddy Leland’s grocery store in an old two-story house with a wrap-around front porch. We moved there when I was three and stayed until I was fourteen. That’s when Mother and Daddy bought their first and only home. It was a two-bedroom half-brick ranch over a full basement. The den in the basement became my brother Steve’s bedroom. Ours was the last house on a street of brick ranches, built in the 1950s.

Miss Rose lived in one of those houses about six doors down from ours. Miss Rose never married. She lived with her brother T.D., who was one of Ashland City’s house painters. Miss Rose always looked like the perfect picture of a Southern woman. She could have lived down the street from Scout, Jim, and Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird. T.D. looked like a 1960s house painter in his white painter overalls splattered with paint.

Brother and sister favored one another (Is that a Southernism? Favored means they looked like each other.) Both were thin. Both were on the short side.

Perhaps Miss Rose was retired, but the only role I remember her filling was being the homemaker of hers and T.D.’s home. In addition to her brother, Miss Rose had two sisters, Pansy and . . . oh, me, it was another flower. If I had to guess, I’d say it was Lily.

The reason I was at Miss Rose’s house for breakfast on those Sunday mornings was that I had spent the night with her on Saturday night. You see, after many years as a bachelor, T.D. had gotten married. On Saturdays, he went to Nashville to visit his wife while I spent the night with Miss Rose. I don’t remember how long this arrangement lasted, but it is a sweet, albeit unusual, memory from when I was in college.

I’m thankful for the fascinating people I knew in my childhood. Here are just a few:

• Stylish Miss Frances who played the organ at most of Ashland City’s weddings
• The poor family who picked and sold blackberries
• “Bunch” Jean who nicknamed my brother Judge, because as a toddler Steve looked like a chubby little judge
• Emory, the produce man at Daddy Leland’s store, who let me help him put heads of lettuce in plastic bags and use the cool red tape dispenser to tie them up
• Uncle Ronnie who taught me how to make minute steaks in the minute steak maker in the butcher department
• “Rabbit” who helped out with odd jobs, such as cleaning floors, at the store
• Our neighbors, Miss Rose and T.D.

Sometimes I regret that our children didn’t grow up in either Ray’s or my hometown, but I am thankful that our church experiences and our homeschool freedom gave them opportunities for their own list of fascinating people — all created in the image of God.

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;
What is man that You take thought of him,
And the son of man that You care for him?
Yet You have made him a little lower than God,
And You crown him with glory and majesty!
You make him to rule over the works of Your hands;
You have put all things under his feet,
All sheep and oxen,
And also the beasts of the field,
The birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea,
Whatever passes through the paths of the seas.
O Lord, our Lord,
How majestic is Your name in all the earth!
Psalm 8:3-9

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