Out of Place

My Campbell relatives have been very instrumental in helping to found this country. I am very proud to say that they are part of my family. But there is always that one person in a family that makes the rest of us look bad.  This week I am going to write about an ancestor that I found in a place in which I never expected. Prison. 

His name was John Richard Campbell (1891-1939). When John was twenty-six years old in 1917 he enlisted in the military and was discharged in 1918 during WWI. According to the census he had various occupations from working in a coal mine to carpentry work. 

In 1922 my great great uncle married Mary Bearden, a widow and lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Mary passed away in 1926 and that is when John's life started going downhill. 

By 1929, John was "peddling dope" (morphine) on the streets and tried to sell the drugs to a police officer. Whoops! Needless to say, he served time for this crime. 

I guess John didn't learn his lesson. In 1934, he was again in jail for pick pocketing a man. John stole a bank book containing 55.25 in cash and three blank checks. With one of the checks my great great uncle tried to buy a suit. This time John was sentenced for larceny and taken to a workhouse called Silverdale. He was sentenced for eleven months and twenty nine days. 

This man must have had a cement head because John just didn't learn his lesson from being in prison twice before. I guess three times is a charm. This time John was arrested for attempted burglary in April 1938. Again, John was sent to Silverdale workhouse and sentenced again for eleven months and twenty nine days. 

However, there was no getting out of the workhouse this time. On January 17, 1939 John, 47, was hit in the head with a shovel by Noah Moore, who was only nineteen at the time. The two men had a fight in the county gravel pit in East Chattanooga. John passed away on the 28th from cranial injuries. 

I wish that I knew more of my great great uncles back story. It would be interesting to know why he chose his life of crime after Mary passed away. 

2020: Murder, Mayhem and Chaos

 The year 2020 started off normally like any other. At least, that's how it was for me. Within two months of the beginning of the year our world turned upside down.  

My nephew, who was only fifteen years old, was murdered.  Something so unthinkable for a child,  the pain and anguish his mother felt was hard to watch.  Oh, don't get me wrong. I felt it too and keenly. We were not given the chance to mourn our loss and it was a great loss for our family. A child who had his whole future ahead of him was cut short over something that didn't amount to the value of a life.  It was complete non sense. (I meant to separate the word for emphasis)

Then within a matter of weeks the Coronavirus came in like a whirlwind. We were driven to seclude ourselves in our homes like a cave, the unbearable seclusion we were forced to endure for months on end.  "Don't go near anyone, wash your hands, wear your masks and stay home" was constantly being broadcast on the news like a scene from a Dystopian movie. The streets were bare, shops closed up, we could no longer eat out, visit the library or go to theaters and it felt like the world shut down. People stripped the store shelves bare of nearly everything leaving unwanted items as if they were crumbs for the birds. I don't know about you, but I felt like I was living in a bad horror movie. But you know what it was like, because you lived it too, and still we have no relief from this hell. 

The political freak show didn't help matters either that we experienced in the later part of the year.  Accusations of voter fraud, inciting a riot, a second impeachment and political division compounded an already stressful situation. 

I would not have wished this year to ever be repeated, nor the incidents contained therein. I want to go some place where the Coronavirus word is not spoken ever again. Socializing is normal and accepted. One can stand close to another and even touch without fear. I can face the world bare faced and not be shamed if I do so. A vaccine is not the cure for everything that blows in the wind. Next year, it will bring something different that we must contend with. Fear is not a banner to be displayed over our heads and we should think about things on our own whether we are being told truth or not.  Just think about it.