A Gift from Another Century

 

Charles Newland in 1989

A GIFT FROM ANOTHER CENTURY

Charles Newland 1933-2022 R.I.P.

 

You may never read a sentence like this again:

He died in the house he was born in and had lived in his entire life.

That’s not a clip from an 18^th century newspaper. It’s from last week’s Kingsport Times-News.

That was Charles Newland, who died last week in the home he was born in and where he had lived his entire life.

Charles’ father was a farmer. And after the service and UT Agriculture College, Charles joined him in the family business. He worked as a farmer for the rest of his life.

Charles died just shy of his 89^th birthday.

The family farm was in Arcadia, a community just east of Bloomingdale. It is not a Kingsport suburb, as Charles would tell you, it is a community. The Arcadia community even has its own sign.

I once wrote that Charles was a “gift from another century.” He was courtly, kind, a gentleman and a farmer, with an encyclopedic knowledge of Kingsport in general and the Arcadia-Bloomingdale area in particular, a knowledge that even went back into another century.

One of the first times I met Charles, he told me about riding into downtown Kingsport in 1939 with his father. “We went to Pet Dairy on Market. He had to check the barn to see if they needed hay. He sold them hay. At that time Pet stabled horses because all their delivery wagons were horse drawn!”

He knew downtown Kingsport almost as well as he knew Arcadia and Bloomingdale. When a local real estate company wanted to tear down the Woolworth’s building on Broad Street to build a new headquarters, he told me he remembered when the whole west side of Broad Street between Center and New Street had no buildings on it. The same for the block across Broad between Center and New Street except for Earles’ Drug Store facing Center.

Then he had a question for me. “How many of your readers can remember when the carnival for the 4th of July was set up on that block?”

For my generation, those growing up in the fifties and sixties, the carnival was always in the parking lot between the Civic Auditorium and J. Fred Johnson Stadium.

But after looking around in the archive, I discovered that Charles was right: the carnival was on the Woolworth’s block for fifteen years, from 1931 till the end of World War II.

And talk about specific knowledge of Arcadia.

When I wrote about Leesburg almost getting the railroad instead of Kingsport (it went through Jonesboro), I wondered if very many readers knew where Leesburg was anymore. Charles wrote me, “I raised my hand for I know where and have been to Leesburg. In fact I have been to the DeVault tavern (Leesburg’s most famous – and only – landmark) courtesy of the DeVault family.”

Charles told me there are two connections between Leesburg and his Arcadia community. “Mattie Fain who grew up in Arcadia married a DeVault who very possibly could have been born at the DeVault tavern. He did own it at one time. Their son lived there with his family.”

The other connection: “There was an officer in the Confederate Army from Kentucky by the name of Edward O. Guerrant. He spent enough time in the Leesburg area during the war to win the hand in marriage of one of the daughters of DeVault tavern. This Guerrant kept a diary of his war experiences. These have been compiled into a book (which Charles owned). This book tells of a movement from Abingdon to Gate City down the Reedy Creek Road where a camp was made at night near Mr. Dooley's, a mile and one half east of the Reedy Creek Camp Ground. The location of that campground is the Arcadia United Methodist Church with the old Camp Ground Cemetery beside it. The Reedy Creek Road is now called Bloomingdale Road!”

Of course Charles, “a gift from another century,” would know about Bloomingdale Road in the 18^th century. He was born and lived his entire life in a house on Bloomingdale Road. And he died in that house last week.

Charles Newland in 1962

Shingles - Not the Roofing Material

 

I was walking through the grocery store, filling my cart with candy canes and tinsel, when I heard a voice. “Get your shingles shot….” it commanded.

I stopped and looked up. Was this a message from God? Should I be sore afraid?

No, it was the store’s public address system. It was a commercial for the Kroger Pharmacy.

“Get your shingles shot…in the store pharmacy.”

I’d been thinking about getting a shingles shot for about a year, which is when I first heard there was such a thing.

Then I found out how much a shingles shot cost. Whoa! And I thought $25 was steep for a flu shot.

Depending on your insurance, it can cost over $200.

I have an insurance plan where you never have to worry about whether it will pay or not. It won’t.

So I was looking at $240, right before Christmas.

Then I began thinking about the people I know who have had shingles.

I remember when I heard that Junior McCoy from church had shingles. I didn’t even know what shingles was back then. It was like chicken pox in adults, my dad told me. And then he told me how Mr. McCoy was suffering, itching all around the waist, couldn’t wear a shirt, blisters on his skin.

That’s when I first figured out that I never wanted shingles.

Then my accountant in Kentucky got shingles in her eyes right as tax season began and she had to extend all of her clients.

That convinced me. I never wanted to contract shingles.

I kept hearing stories and every story was just as scary as the one before it.

And then I heard about the shingles shot.

And then I heard about the cost.

I didn’t know which would be the bigger ouch.

But after a little reflection, I knew which would be the bigger ouch.

And that was when the voice from above commanded: get a shingles shot.

So I got my shingles shot and haven’t regretted a single dollar of it.

I’ve since heard more horror stories: the local dentist who lost an eye to shingles and another local man who had to go on disability in his forties because of the damage shingles did to his nervous system.

According to the info sheet the nurse gave me after I got my vaccine, I am protected from shingles for the rest of my life!

 

I published that column on December 11, 2009.

Apparently I didn't see the fine print on the info sheet where it said “the rest of your life or 13 years whichever comes first.”

Because Tuesday night at the walk-in clinic, I was diagnosed with shingles.

That zit on my chest and those two spider bites on my back were not zits or bites. They were a rash from shingles.

If you’ve never had shingles – and I pray you haven’t – or you have forgotten what chicken pox was like, a quick reminder. The infected skin either burns or itches or both.

I am now on an antiviral drug which may help a little bit. Otherwise I just have to wait it out, trying to avoid scratching and shifting around in my seat to ease the burning.

If you keep up with diseases that are advertised on the news then you probably already knew there is a new shingles vaccine, new and improved. The old one, the one I got in 2009, was only 51 percent effective, whatever that means, and the new one is over 90 percent effective. The new one is a two-dose vaccine, which means it costs twice as much.

I’ve known about it for five or so years but just kept putting off getting it.

After all I was 51 percent protected.

Now I know what 51 percent protected means. It means my protection ran out earlier this week.

 

I’ll be getting that new vaccine as soon as my itching and burning stops.

I’m telling all my friends about my experience to encourage them to get the new vaccine.

Now.