Life After Windbird, Day 124: Glade Diner Breakfast and Hermitage Tour
Date: Wednesday, December 14, 2016
Weather: Overcast; High Temp 40, Low 19 degrees F
Location: At Home with Patsy and Joe in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee
Today was overcast and dreary, but we ignored that and had a great day. My nephew Tommy had to be Nashville for a business call at 11 am, so we headed to the Glade Diner around 9 am.
This is a Tennessee original and if you like “good ‘ol country food”, this is your place. All orders come with biscuits and gravy, and you have a choice of country ham or city ham. I’ve always heard of country ham, but never city ham. This diner was a little country store before becoming a restaurant, and I’m pretty certain that the wood floor has never been refinished. We all enjoyed the breakfast, and then Tommy was off for Nashville. Patsy, Joe, and I headed home for a bit. While we were home, Joe called his internet provider to inquire about getting help for my computer which had been infected with malware. They reminded Joe that he pays for remote take-over of his computer and they said they would be glad to deal with my issues. Since he is paying for the service anyway, there was no charge. A young man took over my computer and made all the necessary fixes remotely while we went back out to tour Andrew Jackson’s mansion known as The Hermitage.
It is an immaculately kept home with original furnishings and even original wallpaper. Andrew Jackson lived here before he was President and moved back to Hermitage in 1837 after serving two terms as the ‘president of the people’. He remained at The Hermitage until his death in 1845. And even though he was a self-made man, he had enough wealth prior to the War of 1812 and prior to becoming President in 1928, to buy the original 425 acres of land. In the beginning, he and his wife Rachel lived in a log home, eventually building a Federalist-styled mansion. After a fire in the early 1830’s, the mansion was rebuilt in the Greek revival style. And by this time, the acreage had increased to over a thousand. This property was kept intact and became a non-profit museum in 1889. No mention was made of how it escaped damage during the Civil War, but today it stands as a national treasure and monument to “Old Hickory.”
We returned home in the late afternoon, but my sister and I weren’t done yet. We headed back out to the outlet mall about 12 miles east of here. Patsy and Joe game me new Eddie Bauer jacket as an early Christmas present. I have complained since I arrived here of the bulk of my winter jacket, admiring Patsy’s quilted down jacket that is so very compact compared to mine. But somehow she knew this before I arrived and had the gift ready. Today they presented me with the jacket. The size was perfect and I love the color. The only thing that would make it more perfect would be if it had an attached hood. So, we went to the mall to see if it could be exchanged. But the only jackets like it with a hood were a longer length and that I don’t want. So I made the decision to stay with the original jacket. And there will be no more complaints about a bulky jacket!
Tomorrow we are going to need jackets as the daytime high will be below freezing. It is a one-day deep freeze and the temp goes back up until Sunday. The high temperature here and at home seems to change by about ten degrees each day—60 degrees, 50 degrees, 40 degrees, 30 degrees, and then back up and back down again. So tomorrow we will have a high of 30 degrees increasing to 60 degrees by Saturday and back down to 30 degrees with a chance of snow on Sunday. Sunday on the Cape is forecast to have a high of 55 degrees before the temp there drops on Monday and Tuesday. Hard to keep up with the changes.
On this day, I always think of my brother Bennie. He would have been 85 today, but died at the early age of 33. The only sibling I have left is my sister Patsy. My mother had two children, both boys, when she was just a teenager. If the oldest had survived, he would be 92 years-old now. My sister Margie was the third child born in 1928, Bennie was the fourth child born in 1931, Patsy the fifth born in 1933, Dickie the sixth born in 1935, and then twelve years later I came along. Lots of years of memories.
