'Nanner Sammiches

I love fresh bread, and when the loaf is good'n'fresh I want the endpiece (some folks call it the "heel"). Fresh "Wholesome Harvest" 9-grain bread with Hellmann's mayo and thick slices of good ripe banana is a great treat to me. The whole grain bread adds a nuttiness that is almost peanut-butter-like. I just devoured the 'nanner sammich in this picture. Yum.

I could not have made it to adulthood without the many peanut-butter and banana sandwiches I consumed in my childhood and adolescence. Back then it was probably Merita white bread. I don't remember if Mother had a favorite mayonnaise -- I never got involved in the Duke's vs Hellman wars till Sheila set me straight. In our household it is Hellmann's.

I vividly remember my first Sunday evening meal at Asbury College in 1965. The tradition there was that on Sunday evenings the cafeteria sets out luncheon meats, cheeses, breads, condiments, veggies, and fruits, and we students generally made sandwiches and salads. I suppose since Sunday dinner (noon meal) was usually the best of the week, Sunday supper was lighter.

I paraded with my new friends sliding our trays along the stainless steel shelf through the meal line. Along the way we gathered our construction materials; and six or eight of us plopped down around a big table and everyone set about erecting a favorite sandwich of his own imagining. I, of course, was busy slicing my 'nanner and slathering peanut butter on my white bread masterpiece when I suddenly realized a quiet had settled over the table. I glanced up and noticed all eyes on me. Those Yankee idiots are gobsmacked that anyone would put banana on a sandwich! How had they survived 18 or 19 years in such a cultural wasteland as evidently exists north of the Ohio river?! Some actually ridiculed my culinary choices; the same folks are known to sometimes put baked beans into sandwiches!

I harrumphed and devoured my delicious creation between gulps of good cold milk!

Gleaning Facebook: Park Street United Methodist

 Today Sheila and I visited the home of Bob & Christine Puckett to celebrate our mutual friend Wendy Davis and support her effort to keep working for Rome and our posterity on the City Commission. 

And I notice this on the Pucketts’ kitchen wall. 

Wow. My father was the pastor at Park Street United Methodist Church in Atlanta in the mid to late seventies. David (my brother) and Vicki were married there. My family loved that church and its people and when my father died in 1986, many of them mourned with us. Park Street’s prominent layman and choir director, Guy Sharpe, spoke and sang at the funeral. 

It turns out, after knowing Bob & Christine for decades, sharing a stage with Christine a time or two, being involved together in education and politics over many years, that we have an old connection we were unaware of: Christine’s paternal grandmother was one of Daddy’s parishioners way back when.

Comments from Facebook:

Ruth Demeter
I know it was hard for you to leave that behind
Tony Pope
Was that Guy Sharon the weather man?

Terrell Shaw
Yes (Sharpe, not Sharon!)
Tony Pope
Terrell Shaw one of my favorite news people growing up. It was Sharpe when I typed...thanks to autocorrect!!!
Terrell Shaw
Tony Pope I figured that. 

Katie S. Kimbrough
I didn't know your dad was a preacher!

Terrell Shaw
I am a "double" Methodist preachers' kid. My father was a Methodist minister from about 1950 until his sudden death in 1986. My mother then began preaching, enrolled in and completed seminary at Emory's Candler School of Theology, and was fully ordained in the United Methodist Church.

Katie S. Kimbrough
Wow you have interesting parents!
Melanie Collette Babb
It is a small world.

Three Words

My Mother wrote an e-mail to her children today reminiscing about her courtship and marriage to our Daddy. It spurred me to reply with this letter:

Dear Mother (and offspring) 

I loved reading your e-mail this afternoon.

I was day-dreaming just this morning about trying to spur my mother and my siblings with some of the prompts that Donald Davis used with us at the storytelling workshop I attended from July 9-16.  Mother has a great one here; we can use it instead: How about each of us sharing how we came to be mated as we are/were? I have warm memories of the courtships and weddings, and early marriages of Janice & Joan, and Carol especially. Less so of my younger siblings since I was already married and less often around to witness y’all’s goings-on.

Donald challenged us to pick a trip to tell about. I could write about my trip from Ellijay to Atlanta to Chattanooga and up and over Fort Mountain and back to Ellijay with a young Gilbert Crouse. Or the trip Joan and I took the week of her wedding to rescue her groom from Wartburg, Tennessee. But I’ll save those for another time.

I wrote about how Sheila and I got together just recently, and all of you have heard the story, but I’ll link that to this e-mail.

http://aloneonalimb.blogspot.com/2017/08/judgment-decision-promise.html

But I’ll add a little here and use our “YoungTales” trick of saying, “Y’all tell us a little “about” how you met, became engaged, ended up married, etc. In other words no completed work of art is necessary… just a little “about" it. 

Sheila and I dated several times my senior year at Asbury College and were sorta “going together” at the time of my graduation — at least in my mind. Y’all will remember that I had just got out of 15 days of quarantine for the mumps, flat of my back in the college clinic where Sheila visited me faithfully, talking with me from the door to a room she was not allowed to enter. I particularly remember, in light of Mother’s recounting of Mama Shaw’s comments about Julia, how taken Mama Shaw was with Sheila when she came up for the graduation in 1969. She thought we made a good pair. She reminded me of that many times after Sheila and I were married. So, unlike my Daddy, I married the one Mama Shaw approved of! (Just kidding, Mama!)

After the adventure of our reunion in the fall of 1970, I kept the road from Putnam County, WV to Wilmore warm. At Christmas we visited together at Mother & Daddy’s (Skyland) and after Christmas I drove to Tallahassee for the New Year. Sheila’s parents bought new furniture for Jimmy’s room to put me up. I learned that I would eat well at my in-laws should our relationship work out as I hoped it would. There is no better fried chicken. I found the silence of Jay (James Clarence) Matthews, Sheila’s Daddy, a little intimidating, but her mother, Esther Mavis Snell Matthews (Mavis, but Mrs. Matthews to me) couldn’t have been more warm and welcoming.

Annie Belle Brannon Snell, Sheila’s brilliant, kind, and wise Granny celebrated her 86th on New Year’s Eve and I was there to meet the huge greater Snell family at their annual combination birthday party/reunion — outdoors on December 31st! With absolute ease I was welcomed and fed my new favorite dessert - Granny’s Butter Rolls. I found I already loved the five Snell sisters (Ethel, Mavis, Dot, Rose, and Inez) and their Momma. 

Later that evening Sheila and I celebrated the New Year twice, once east of the Appalachicola and a second time an hour later across the river in Blountstown with Sheila’s best friend and later bridesmaid Judy Chastain (Cox) and Gary. Again I felt accepted like an instant part of a long-standing club. Back on Highland Avenue in the wee hours I stopped the Opel Cadette I had named “Sam" (in Sheila’s honor — Sheila Ann Matthews) long enough for a good night kiss and, screwing my courage to the sticking place, uttered the magic three words I’d never used before in a romantic setting. She reciprocated. I wonder how many times she and I have swapped that message since. Only a few of those times have the the three words been followed by a “but”.

Less than a month later I officially proposed. I’ll tell that story another time. 

Who’s next? Let’s take some time to share stories.

Terrell Shaw

706-346-9155

terrellshaw@me.com

May your joys be many, your troubles few, and may they all make great stories!

August 4, 1983

I was busy trying to finish painting to get the upstairs ready for the carpet layers the next morning when I heard Sheila call me down. She said we'd better start timing contractions and get ready to head to the hospital.

I remember like yesterday, a little later, driving down Cedar Avenue in the dark, my beautiful courageous Sheila hissing through another contraction beside me, and thinking: “Our lives are about to be forever changed.” We pulled off of Second Avenue/Martha Berry (what do you call that little section of road) to park at the emergency entrance to Floyd Hospital. We made our way across the parking lot, pausing often for Sheila to hug a car hood while she dealt with the next contraction. 

Once into the labor and delivery rooms I witnessed the sweet bravery of Sheila Matthews Shaw as she worked to birth a baby, a process correctly labelled "labor". Brannon Shaw was born at 3:31 the next morning. I was privileged to hold her and bathe her with warm water. 

I slept on the floor for a couple of hours once we got into a room, then had to rise and leave my beloved new baby and Sheila, to drive along city streets blurred by tears of joy, wonder, and exhaustion to meet our dear friend Cotton Franklin at the house, so we could finally get that upstairs straight enough for the carpet layers to do their job bright and early of the fourth of August 1983. (Thank you Cotton wherever you are!) 

On this special day, 34 years later, Brannon is sharing a honeymoon, camping in the Rockies, with the son she has now joined to our little family, John Carlin. 

What a blessing to our lives Brannon has been.

Happy Birthday and unending love to our first baby, Brannon Ruth Shaw Carlin.

(This slide show is a decade old now!)

Brannon Shaw Slideshow

Miscellaneous pictures from the Life of Brannon Shaw born 24 years ago tonight.

YOUTUBE.COM

Judgment, Decision, Promise

A friend asked:

What words changed your life-for the better or the worse?

There is a clear frontrunner for the single quote that most immediately changed my life for the better.

I'd been wrestling with "What is love?" Earlier that year I had been dating a girl who wanted me to make up my mind. She was sweet and smart and attractive, but so were others! What makes it "true" love?

Then I read these words in 1970. They struck a chord with my heart.

“Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

Love is a decision!

Of course there must be attraction -- physical, emotional, intellectual -- but, given that, we have some say about it.

So I sat down and made a list. (I learned that from my eldest sister.)

Lo, and behold, Sheila Ann Matthews of the long blond hair, sweet smile, brilliant mind, unending kindness, and very nice other features migrated to the top of that list.

So I asked her out. And she replied with the other important quote in my life:

"Okay, but you'd better be serious about it this time."

I was.

The rest is glorious and ongoing, and mostly blissful, history. The decision/promise/vow carries us through the less-than-blissful parts.  :-)

Here is a post on the topic from over a decade ago:
http://aloneonalimb.blogspot.com/2005/12/true-love-links.html

Getting Serious

A friend asked:

What words changed your life-for the better or the worse?

There is a clear frontrunner for the single quote that most immediately changed my life for the better.

I'd been wrestling with "What is love?" Earlier that year I had been dating a girl who wanted me to make up my mind. She was sweet and smart and attractive, but so were others! What makes it "true" love?

Then I read these words in 1970. They struck a chord with my heart.

“Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.”

― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

Love is a decision!

Of course there must be attraction -- physical, emotional, intellectual -- but, given that, we have some say about it.

So I sat down and made a list. (I learned that from my eldest sister.)

Lo, and behold, Sheila Ann Matthews of the long blond hair, sweet smile, brilliant mind, unending kindness, and very nice other features migrated to the top of that list.

So I asked her out. And she replied with the other important quote in my life:

"Okay, but you'd better be serious about it this time."

I was.

The rest is glorious and ongoing, and mostly blissful, history. The decision/promise/vow carries us through the less-than-blissful parts.  

Here is a post on the topic from over a decade ago:

http://aloneonalimb.blogspot.com/.../12/true-love-links.html

Gleaning Facebook: Everyone lies; some folks are liars.

I forgot for a moment that I was responding on someone else's Facebook wall and not my own, and got carried away. Comments on others' walls should be short and polite, IMO. So I'm gonna put this here instead.

This was prompted when a friend of a friend, objecting to notes about our liar-in-chief, asked if we realized other presidents had lied. This is the response I have since deleted as too long to put on another's wall...

---------------

True, sir, that all our presidents have been mortals, fallen humans. Like you and me, they have each prevaricated. Though I revere Washington I know he made serious errors as a general, lived in relative ease as his men suffered through Valley Forge, and even held many fellow humans in bondage.

I know that from Washington's literally unprecedented presidency through that of Barack Obama, another of my favorites, who exaggerated (very slightly but exaggerate he did) the ability of folks to keep very bad insurance policies in place under the ACA, presidents have fibbed, exaggerated, or even flat-out lied. Of course.

BUT if you, sir, think that the lies of Presidents Washington through Obama rank in number or degree in a class with the daily excrement of Donald Trump's verbiage, then I suppose he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue (etc., etc., etc.)