Thursday, October 7, 2010

Small Town Serendipity

I love making memories as we putter through our lives, basking in the process of every minute of every day. Today, I took my precious deceased younger sister's daughter to do some of my favorite things in the world. While stopping by the Coker Creek Welcome Center and Post Office to get a first-hand look at the University of Tennessee motif quilt that the Quilts for Kids group will be raffling at the Autumn Gold Festival this weekend, we got a chance to visit with and get hugs from Pastor Lynda, who had just met my niece the night before. We were also able to say hello to Barbara and Betty working in the quilt display area.

As we were leaving, I got a chance to thank Marsha, once again, for the generosity she and her husband Bill had shown my niece's daughter in a gold panning adventure on a summer visit. And to top it all off, Adam drove in to collect his mail; so my niece got to meet the husband of the artist that made a quilt that she had purchased on her first visit to Coker Creek. Then, we proceeded to the deck overlooking the Tellico River rapids to enjoy one of the fabulous paninis made by the sisters at Kats Deli. I love the whole sister thing they have going there, along with everything else about their place, including the fall color reflecting in the river.

At Kats, we ran into Judy and Rick , two of the most accomplished people in these parts. They told us that my Richard is, one again, a poster boy. It seems that Rick and Judy were shooting photos and video footage for publicity of Volunteer Federal Bank for the Tellico Plains website, and Richard ended up in one of their shots that we can all enjoy at Tellico-Plains.com.

This isn't the first time Richard has been featured in publicity shots. He's been doing volunteer work for the World War II Museum in New Orleans since before it opened its doors as the D-Day Museum. His countenance adorns a display at the museum, and he was even on a documentary shot at the museum, highlighting the Higgins boats . It really tickles me when these things happen to Richard, who spends his life attempting to avoid the spotlight. (Needless-to-say, he doesn't read my blog.) Upon pulling up the Tellico Plains site, I was very relieved that he hadn't dressed in his "homeless" look before going to the bank on picture day. He's such a stud muffin!

My niece and I then went on to our local Wal-Mart, the closest place in these parts, to develop photos and purchase display supplies. It was time to begin the display board that I promised the Quilts for Kids ladies would be ready for this weekend's festival. When I went to retrieve the finished photos, the clerk was laughing at the coincidence of recognizing two of the quilters in my photographs as two of the store's employees. Talk about small-town life! Maybe I'd better start behaving myself before I ruin my reputation.