Origins

     Recently, I was stopped by someone I recognized but was not entirely able to identify.  I knew that I had encountered him in my work as a Journalist in Charlotte County.   He drove up to me as I was crossing the parking lot at a gas station.  He immediately said to me: “I was talking with some people the other day and we decided that you need to start writing a blog”.  He continued:  “Since you are no longer beholden to other people, you should write about the stuff that you were not allowed to touch before”.  Unbeknownst to him, I had already created a blog.  I have not really updated it regularly, but I gave it some serious thought.

Now I am seeing that a blog may be a good outlet to vent some of my thoughts and observations about things going on around me.  I did want to take the time early on to explain the name I chose for my little corner of the internet: From Soup To Nuts.  For those in the know, soup to nuts is an American idiom that refers to the idea of beginning to end.  It is an old reference that refers to eating an entire meal.   Soup being the first course and nuts being the last.   So the idea for the name basically means to cover a little bit of everything.  But alas, the name has a far deeper meaning for me.

I was born in a small corner of Illinois in 1970.  Very early on in my life,  Mary Wiss Grace was an integral part of my life.  Mary stood all of five foot nothing and weighed 98 pounds soaking wet. She lived about 100 miles down the Mississippi river from me in a little town called Keokuk Iowa. She was a God fearing woman through and through.  She never took any slack from any of the eleven children she had reared.  She taught them the ways of the Lord and if they got out of line, she was not afraid to use the rod to put them in their place.  Her oldest and first born son was Joseph Grace—my father.  He also used the rod to put his children in their place.  Something I still value to this day.

Throughout my entire 43 years, I have never met a person that addressed me with more unconditional love that my grandmother.  Her grandchildren were her life.  She held us lovingly and told us the stories of King James and would absolutely shred anyone who dared threaten her grandchildren.  It is so very hard to put into words how much of an impression this woman had on my life.  I was seven years old when she died.  She was killed in a terrible automobile accident at work.  I will never forget the day my father told me.  We were living in California at the time and I was not able to attend her funeral, although I was told it was a magnificent affair.

At the age of 13, we moved back to Iowa.  We lived with my Grandfather.  I spent many hours searching through my Grandmothers old things in the attic of her former Victorian home on Franklin Street.   Mary had been a pretty well known local artist and political cartoonist.  She had gone to art school in Chicago and came back to Iowa and eventually took a job at the local paper, The Daily Gate City.  She wrote a column for years for that newspaper called “Soup to Nuts”.   It is from this that I have taken the humble name for my little corner of the web.  I have spent my entire adult life trying to follow in her footsteps as best I can.  I tried to be a good journalist although some people did not seem to approve.  Although my career as a news reporter seems to have waned,  I still try to follow the lessons of King James and Mary Grace.   It is in her honor that I give you the title to my little corner of the web.  I only hope that I can honor her memory to the extent that it deserves. 

I love you Grandma….. I miss you so much.