CHRISTMAS 2020

Dear Emily, Christmas Day 2020 certainly will be a memorable day for many people for one reason or another – some good – some not so good. I am quarantined. On Monday, I went with a friend to Murfreesboro. On Wednesday, she tested positive for Covid and for flu. Since my contact with her fell into the forty-eight-hour time period, I am possibly infected. So, like thousands of other families around the world affected by this pandemic, our family was not able to celebrate Christmas Day in person. We will do that on New Year’s Day when I am safely out of quarantine. Another reason that Christmas Day 2020 will be memorable is that Christmas morning about 6:20, a truck bomb exploded on 2nd Ave in downtown Nashville near the AT&T building. At first, the law enforcement thought no one had been killed, but now the authorities have discovered human flesh near the site. Where it came from remains to be discovered. Second Avenue is a popular tourist street in downtown Nashville. It intersects with Broadway where all the country music venues are and has lots of neat eating places like the Old Spaghetti Factory. Right now, the street looks like a war zone. As I watched the constant stream of news footage of the bombed-out street on T.V. Christmas Day, I was reminded of the 2nd Avenue that I remember from my childhood over sixty years ago. Second Avenue was where the Dobson-Hicks Seed Company was located in an old building that looked a little scary from my young point of view. Daddy was a traveling seed salesman for Dobson-Hicks for several years. His territory covered an area from Nashville to north Alabama to Cookeville and all points in between. Every small town had a feed store back then. Daddy called on all of them. Every year he made a special trip to 2nd Avenue in Nashville. Dobson-Hicks was located somewhere along the middle of 2nd Avenue. It was in an old building with huge double screen doors on the front. I was there only a few times, but those huge screen doors still stand out to me. I rarely ever went inside the old warehouse, but during the Christmas holidays, Daddy would take our family to Nashville to see the decorations and to pick up his bonus from the company. While Mama, the boys, and I sat in the car, patiently waiting for him to hurry up and come out so we could go to Harvey’s Department Store and ride the escalator, he would visit with his employer, Mr. Howard Dobson. After what always seemed like an exceptionally long time, he returned to the car carrying his “bonus” – a “spiced round” and a white bank bag with twenty-five silver dollars. According to Google, a “spiced round” is a Christmastime beef specially sliced at the Porter Road Butcher in Nashville, Tenn. The specialty meat, reminiscent of corned beef, has all but disappeared in recent decades amid changing tastes and the steady decline of local butchers to prepare it. All I know is that it was a delicious rare treat! Not everyone liked it. Some of the family would rather have had ham, but I thought it tasted wonderful, and I looked forward to the specialty every year. The bag of silver dollars in that white canvas bag tied with a string was also exciting – I thought we were rich! Daddy always carried one silver dollar in his pocket – I suppose for good luck – but he took all the rest of the booty to First State Bank “…for Mr. Rob Stammer to take care of for him.” I was such a naive child. It was years before I realized that those silver dollars were not on a shelf at the bank just waiting for the day Daddy would go back and get them! No, of course they were deposited and used, I’m sure, to pay for our Christmas. I am sad to think that the historic buildings, including the old Dobson-Hicks building, on 2nd Avenue are now structurally damaged from a senseless act of violence; however, God sent me a blessing: a trip down the memory lane of past Christmases: Daddy, Dobson-Hicks, a bag of twenty-five silver dollars, and a “spiced round.” Love, BB