P O E T R Y
Ghost of the Confederacy
CHARLES RAMMELKAMP
W
E started talking about the Civil War, after trading observations about the latest Confederate flag controversy. Aunt Eleanor, 98, reminisced about her mother-in-law, a“ Daughter of the Confederacy,” who’ d mourned the loss of the noble aristocratic traditions, ignoring the slavery on which it was based.
“ I remember when Jim was born,” Eleanor mused about the birth of her son, now sixty-four years old himself.“ He was already two weeks late. The doctor wanted to induce labor, and oh! How Nonny fretted about her grandson being born on Lincoln’ s birthday! So we compromised and made it the fourteenth, Valentine’ s Day, but then Jim, impatient to start life, came to us on the thirteenth instead. Talk about a compromise!”
She laughed again, remembering her mother-in-law, dead now more than half a century.“ Henry and I never did tell Nonny we spent our wedding night at the Abraham Lincoln Hotel in Springfield, nor that we took the Ann Rutledge up to Union Station Chicago, the next day.”
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