Also in Mama's attic were boxes of papers, primarily old letters and newspaper clippings. The temptation to just throw them away and be done with it was overcome by curiosity, so I lugged them all out to the car, and carried them home for further investigation. I'm glad that I did.
My grandfather, Berkley Mackey, died in 1922, when Daddy was six years old, and I never had a sense of him, of who he was, of what he was like. In one of the boxes, I found a packet of letters written by him, most of them to one of his brothers, and several to my grandmother, from 1917 up to a few weeks before his death.
He had a jewelry store in downtown Valdosta, 131 North Patterson Street; I believe that's a little north of where the Bleu Cafe is now, and where the old McCrory's used to be. The letterhead on his stationery says, "Mackey Jewelry Company, Jewelers and Opticians," which is an interesting sales concept. It sounds a little like an old barber shop/dental parlor establishment, an incongruous sort of one-stop shopping where you can get your hair cut and a tooth pulled at the same time.
His small formal script is difficult to decipher, and at first you feel as though you've come into the middle of a conversation, or are overhearing strangers talking at the next table in a restaurant. Nothing profound is said: it's the humdrum of daily events, and the minutiae of ordinary life, but as you read on, you're irresistibly pulled in, and you begin to feel what he feels, and to see his world through his eyes, as his words paint a portrait of the man that he was.
In some of his last letters to his brother, he talked about how hard the influenza epidemic was hitting Valdosta that year. It was also the Christmas season, and the jewelry business was booming; he would sometimes go in at 4:30 in the morning, and often not get home until midnight. He got the flu, and after going back to work too soon, had a relapse. There were no antibiotics then, and he contracted pneumonia and died, two weeks before Christmas, leaving behind his young wife and his two small children. He was thirty-six years old.
My grandfather, Berkley Mackey, died in 1922, when Daddy was six years old, and I never had a sense of him, of who he was, of what he was like. In one of the boxes, I found a packet of letters written by him, most of them to one of his brothers, and several to my grandmother, from 1917 up to a few weeks before his death.
He had a jewelry store in downtown Valdosta, 131 North Patterson Street; I believe that's a little north of where the Bleu Cafe is now, and where the old McCrory's used to be. The letterhead on his stationery says, "Mackey Jewelry Company, Jewelers and Opticians," which is an interesting sales concept. It sounds a little like an old barber shop/dental parlor establishment, an incongruous sort of one-stop shopping where you can get your hair cut and a tooth pulled at the same time.
His small formal script is difficult to decipher, and at first you feel as though you've come into the middle of a conversation, or are overhearing strangers talking at the next table in a restaurant. Nothing profound is said: it's the humdrum of daily events, and the minutiae of ordinary life, but as you read on, you're irresistibly pulled in, and you begin to feel what he feels, and to see his world through his eyes, as his words paint a portrait of the man that he was.
In some of his last letters to his brother, he talked about how hard the influenza epidemic was hitting Valdosta that year. It was also the Christmas season, and the jewelry business was booming; he would sometimes go in at 4:30 in the morning, and often not get home until midnight. He got the flu, and after going back to work too soon, had a relapse. There were no antibiotics then, and he contracted pneumonia and died, two weeks before Christmas, leaving behind his young wife and his two small children. He was thirty-six years old.
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[Note: The ring Maxwell gave to Elizabeth earlier this month is the same ring Grandfather Mackey gave to my grandmother in 1913. She wore it until 1947, when she gave it to Daddy to give to my mother. Mama wore it until 2006, and the first time I saw it when it was not on her finger was when I removed it after she died.]
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