AUGUST 11, THURSDAY

85/59

Today was my 85th birthday. It was also the 59th wedding anniversary for Kathe and me. Quite by accident, because it was the day the chapel was free and relatives could attend, Kathe and I married on my birthday. Then for 59 years I never forgot our anniversary because it was my birthday and for 59 years my birthday was an afterthought. But this year Kathe is not here and we couldn’t celebrate our anniversary, but my children and their families took me out for a birthday dinner at the Marshall Jail Hotel on the bank of the French Broad River. Until a couple of years ago this was the Marshall police station and jail, but then they moved out and the jail, with a number of its original furnishings became a hotel with Zadie’s bar and restaurant on the first floor. We sat on the patio beside the railway tracks. Just beyond the railway tracks was the full, muddy French Broad River on its way to the Mississippi.

In the cool of a sunny evening it was a wonderful quiet place to sit and eat.

After dinner we walked across the French Broad River to what had been for years an abandoned three story large glove factory, the major source of employment in Marshall.

Now, just as the jail has become an upscale hotel and restaurant, the glove factory has become home to upscale condominiums with offices of business and artists studios on the first floor. There is also a small pool with a strong current where you can swim, a Swedish sauna, a fitness room and a lounge with a large tv and a kitchen where the residents can host parties. It is beautifully landscaped and even the bathrooms sparkle with black and white tiles and sinks that look like works of art and not like sinks at all. In both the jail and the glove factory there are photographs by well know photographer Rob Amberg taken in the old glove factory and the old jail when in use.

Marshall, with its domed courthouse, is the county seat of Madison County. Madison County, when I first came to Warren Wilson was considered by Ashevillians to be out in the sticks, tobacco fields and barns in mountain hollers, all ruled with an iron hand by the Ponder family who ran everything. Now it is suddenly skipping the 20th century and leading the way in the 21st with elegant restaurants, natural food grocery, a craft brewery, trendy craft stores scattered among the traditional Baptist church and the old courthouse and a hardware store so old fashioned that it is now trendy. It is two worlds pressed together.

In the middle of all of this I celebrated being 85, the enormity of which didn’t seem to touch anyone else but certainly weighed on me. I never imagined I could be this old, never even considered it, and here I was still walking around which didn’t seem a surprise to anyone else but did to me. 85 is almost 90, a few short years away. 90, if I make it, for me means likely shuffling with a cane, likely dementia, certain being honored for still being alive while at the same time hardly being able to speak a complete sentence and talking in platitudes. I’ll have to figure out some sort of statement on why I’ve lived so long, if I make it, knowing that the only answer is pure chance and dumb luck.

But for this one day it was enough to walk around Marshall at sunset with my iPhone camera taking photographs and enjoying being with my family.