Elsie Adkins Welch Archives

January 14, 2013

Matt’s Savings Bonds

Wife Lila has been doing some major reshuffling of her office since she retired in November. Part of it is moving all the DedicatedIT business records and stuff to Son Adam, her co-owner’s, care. One of the things she’s finding is that your kids may move out, but some of their stuff lingers behind “so it doesn’t get lost.”

One of the things that lingered was a envelope with two U.S. Savings Bonds and the gift envelopes they and other bonds had lived in. Dad and Mother gave Son Matt bonds when he was a baby, and Mother made some out in memory of her parents – my grandparents, Roy and Elsie Welch.

“For when you are a big boy”

This one was for his first birthday. “From Pa Pa and Grandmother: Matt, this is for something you need when you are a big boy. Love forever.”

For his 4th Christmas

Mother wrote “My dear little boy, this coming year will be a special time for you! I know this paper means very little to you today, but in a few years it could become something very good to have – Have a wonderful day! I’ll be thinking of you this Xmas day. Love Gran.”

$25 DID grow over the years

Matt sent this note:

The back of the envelope shows when the bond was purchased and the amount for which it was exchanged. I’m pretty sure every bond was $25 face value and each was purchased for $18.75. Those bonds were
redeemed in December 1998.

The two remaining bonds are worth…

October 1975… $133.15
December 1975… $134.75

Both stopped earning interest in 2005. You can calculate their value here…

I would have sworn those bonds paid for part of my Stidham house furniture but, given the 1998 date, those bonds probably paid for my Kirkman apartment furniture… which is still in use in my Camellia house 14 years later. So, many thanks to Pa Pa and Gran.”

Three generations of furnishings

We’re going to use the proceeds of those last two bonds to open a savings account for Malcolm. I’m sure he’ll need to furnish an apartment in a few years and it seems only fitting that his great-grandparents buy him a sofa since they bought me and you both a sofa.
Three generations of furniture from those two, right? Didn’t they buy your original fold-out sofa?

He was right. When Lila and I got married, the only things we had in our living room were some concrete block and board bookcases and a twin bed mattress Lila had covered with corduroy, plus a few cushions, that served as a couch.

The first time Dad and Mother came for a visit and had to sleep on the floor on the “couch,” he pressed $300 in my hand and said, “Before we come back, make sure you have a hide-a-bed sofa for us to sleep on.”

Here Lila, Brother Mark and Dad sitting on the sofa in our first house in West Palm Beach. The Cape Steinhoffs had come down to Florida for Christmas.

November 18, 2012

The Candy Dish

Mother said Son Matt had mentioned something about a candy dish, so Mother asked if I’d take a photo of this green one to see if this is the one he was thinking about.

I posted the picture on his Facebook page and got this response: “Yes. That always used to be in the living room.”

Niece Kim Steinhoff-Tisdale wrote: “I think I remember that one! With all the stuff Gran has acquired throughout the years, it’s amazing how much I can actually remember! Man, I love that woman!”

Brother David chimed in: “That was the “original Gran’s” (Elsie Welch) candy dish.

So, Mother sent it south with me for Matt and his family. Grandson Malcolm will be the fifth generation of our family to eat candy out of it. Mother’s request: “Always keep it full.”

It made it to Florida

This is Matt holding the candy dish at Son Adam’s house in Loxahatchee, Fla., proving that I delivered it safe and sound.

October 12, 2012

Emblem of freedom

This 1942 lithograph, Emblem of Freedom, hung on the wall of my grandfather’s liquor store in the Prather Building in Advance. I was always fascinated by the perspective.

I lost track of what I had done with it. It was over the mantle in our living room for a long time, but we shuffled other images up there over the years.

When I was packing for my trip back to Cape Friday morning, I looked in the back of our guest room closet for some stuff I had stashed there. It was behind some framed collections of old press passes.

Not visible in 1946

The flag picture isn’t visible in this 1946 photo of Roy Welch’s store. That’s Mother and Grandmother Elsie Welch in the photo.

The store had been rearranged by the time I was old enough drive my toy tractor round and round the floor, looping through the small store room in the back left. In the winter, some of the regulars would cluster around the old stove visible toward the back right.

I remember the counters being on the north or right wall. The shelves with the bottles were on the left wall.

In background in Spin City

A copy of the flag picture showed up frequently in the background of a TV situation comedy. I’m pretty sure it was Spin City, starring Michael J. Fox. It got so I would look for it as the camera panned the room.

August 8, 2012

Chairs

Funny how you look at things without seeing them. I was in the back yard when I asked Mother, “Aren’t those the same chairs we had in Advance?”

“Two of them were,” she confirmed.

Brother Mark in contemplation

I was pretty sure I have photos of those chairs in my grandparents’ yard when I was only a couple of years old. I couldn’t find them right away, but I did spot them in the Kingsway back yard in the summer of 1960.That means they’ve survived nearly three-quarters’ of a century of rain, snow, heat and cold with only the application of a little paint every decade or so.

We expect every season to be the last for the redbud tree in the right center of the photo, but it keeps coming back every spring.

Brother Mark, stretched out on a bench in contemplation, is trying to figure out what color he’s going to paint those chairs half a century later.

Maple is all grown up

That little maple tree sapling at the left side of the two photos is about 18 inches across now. I keep waiting for it to fall over and hit the house. That’s Brother David, Mother and my Grandmother Elsie Welch in the picture.

Funeral home chairs

I shifted my weight while typing this and was reminded that I’m sitting on what we call the “funeral home chairs.” It’s a set of wooden folding chairs that Mother said was used in a teen hangout in the basement of my grandfather’s liquor store in the Prather Building in Advance. There are five of them around the table I use as a work area in the basement when I’m in Cape. I have three or four in West Palm Beach.

If Mother is 90, that would make those chairs at least that old, because I can’t imagine my grandfather buying new chairs for a bunch of teenagers. I’d creak too, if I was that old.

In fact, now that I think of it, when I shifted my weight, I’m not sure if the sound was coming from the old chair or from me.

Travel update

Made it from Cape to Kentucky Lake to get Mother’s trailer set up for her to stay a few days. Tuesday night found me in Newport, TN. I got to see some beautiful mountain scenery going through the Smokies to the Winston-Salem area Wednesday to visit Don Gordon, a guy I worked with at The Missourian.

After a couple of hours of gabbing, I took off to see my old paper, The Gastonia Gazette. The first thing I discovered is that it’s been rebranded The Gaston Gazette. Then, I went to the corner where it should have been (and where the GPS said it was) and couldn’t find it. The shopping mall that used to be across the street was still there (but much larger), but no newspaper. The GPS gave me an alternative location. I pulled up to the building and thought it looked vaguely familiar, but the location felt wrong. It turns out there’s a Walgreens where my old paper was and this is a new joint. I’m not holding out much hope of finding much I can remember here.