This is the third of a series of articles on the history of Wood Dale School in Union County, Tennessee.

In the first article I shared information about Wood Dale School from 1900 through the depression years to 1940 as related in Our Union County Heritage: A Historical and Biographical Album of Union County—People, Places, Events by Kathleen George Graves and Winnie Palmer McDonald (© 1978 Josten’s); Ms. Bonnie Heiskell Peter’s book Union County Schoolday Memories: A Pictorial History of Union County Elementary Schools From the mid-1800’s to the 1960s; and from available school registers on file at the Union County Board of Education.

My mother once surprised me. In a moment of frustration, she looked me in the eye and said, “If only I could be a genie for a day.”
I normally never thought of my mother thinking this way. There have been several stories and fairy tales that involved people coming in contact with a genie or Leprechaun who would grant them three wishes. Most always, those people wished foolishly and wound up in worse shape than before they had the wishes.

My mother would have been 92 had she lived until January 16th of this year. Our mother/son relationship had its ups and downs, and of course, as Proverbs 22:15 (KJV) says, “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.”

Welcome to 2020! One hundred years ago, it was 1920, the start of a decade of American history known as “The Roaring Twenties”. Were we able to, as my mother once said, be a genie for a day and turn back time one hundred years. How strange it would seem.

I would not go to sleep wearing my CPAP machine, watching one of four televisions in my house as I went to sleep. I would not awake to that same television in the morning and place my CPAP into a machine that would clean it for me at a preset time during the day while I was at work.

In last week’s article I described in some detail the house in which I was raised. That was not exactly what I set out to do, so this week I share with you my earlier intentions.

My father insisted in having his bed in the living room where the heating stove was located. The spot upstairs directly over the heating stove held an unfinished baby casket.

There came a time when a noise could be heard upstairs every night, as if something huge was being dragged over the bare, dusty wooden floor.

The house in which I grew up had many eccentricities to which any old house is entitled. The oppressive summer heat would sometimes literally bake the sap of the decades old indoor tongue and groove pine walls in the downstairs rooms, even through the paint that covered their surfaces.

Our pastor preached a message Sunday a week ago about Jonah and the whale. You Faithful Readers who are well versed in the Bible know the basics of the story. God told Jonah to go and preach to Ninevah, but this was not what Jonah wanted. He decided instead to board a ship and go to Tarshish.

After a long day, with a few extra hours at work at the office, I drove home to eat a bowl of popcorn. It was lightly flurrying when I arrived home. After a pleasant hour and a half with my cat, wife, popcorn, and the local and national news, it suddenly occurred to me that I had forgotten to write and submit this article. Thanks to a phone conversation earlier this evening with a co-worker, I did have a topic for you, Faithful Reader. There are times that inspiration just doesn’t seem to find me, but luckily due to the lateness of the hour I don’t have writer’s block.

The famous quote “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet” is from Act II Scene II of William Shakespeare’s enduring play Romeo and Juliet. Juliet speaks this to Romeo as she tries to reason with him that Romeo’s family name has no bearing on their love.
Perhaps that was true for Juliet, but it sure seemed to matter to her own family, the Capulets. It also seemed to matter to the principal players in the Hatfield and McCoy feud that has become historic in United States lore.

I recently conducted six professional development sessions on homelessness in a single day. I was sent the written comments from the evaluation forms, and I am thankful that they were all positive. At least I assumed they were. From what was visible on the email, it appeared one person wrote, “Ronnie is the dud” (the printed version of the email did read “dude”). Thank goodness for the power of positive thinking!