The Survivor Chair
I have a dear friend whom I’ll call Margaret. I have known Margaret even longer than I’ve known Ray. A couple of years ago, we reconnected and Margaret now reads Daily Encouragement each day. Just knowing that she reads it gives me joy. It is a special blessing when she writes a response.
Last week Margaret emailed me her own Hinkle Chair Company story after she read about Ray’s and my 47-year-apart trips to the factory. She began:
Oh, Charlene, I have just given to some of my grandchildren Hinkle-made chairs that my grandparents began housekeeping with.
Margaret went on to tell me that her grandparents lived on a farm in Coopertown. I know Coopertown. It’s in Robertson County, Tennessee. My family drove through Coopertown about once a week for my entire childhood. Even before Mother and Daddy had a car of their own, we borrowed Daddy Leland’s truck and drove through Coopertown for our Sunday visits to Mother’s parents in Springfield, the county seat of Robertson County.
I’d like you to see the wonderful face of Mother’s mother, Granny.
And, here’s the pretty Robertson County Courthouse.
I well remember the Sunday that we stopped at the Coopertown Elementary School to take our dose of the new polio vaccine, which had been squeezed onto a sugar cube. Until this recent email, I didn’t know that Margaret’s grandparents lived in Coopertown. Her grandparents probably knew my mother’s extended family who lived nearby. It’s a pretty area. I took this photo not far from Coopertown when Mother and I drove around in the area one day so she could show me where she was born.
Margaret’s husband loved the outdoors. Though they raised their family in Nashville, they also owned a farm near Ashland City in Cheatham County. Her husband enjoyed hunting there and Margaret and their children enjoyed spending time in the country. Eventually those Hinkle chairs that had belonged to Margaret’s grandparents became part of the furnishings of the little house on the farm.
In her email, Margaret wrote:
The chairs survived a tornado at the farm in Ashland City that destroyed the house and scattered them in several directions. I call them my “survivor” chairs!
The survivor chairs are an encouragement to Margaret. She kept one of them for herself. Here it is:
God invites us all to be survivors and we get to share that invitation with our children. Jesus said:
These things I have spoken to you
so that in Me you may have peace.
In the world you have tribulation,
but take courage;
I have overcome the world.
John 16:33
