End of a Vera
It's a photo of a photo, so kind of blurry, but there she is. Vera Ruth, senior in high school, 1963. She died 12/30/2022, 3:55 pm. All this week I was in Elizabethton, Tennessee, taking care of things. Funeral home, burial site, all of that, but also when I first got there on Monday I was by myself for a day and got so lonely I had to go to the Mall of Johnson City. Johnson City is a big city compared to Elizabethton, and when we lived there back in the mid-80s I used to go to the mall to buy records, get an Orange Julius, etc. Hung out there with some friends from where I worked, Bonanza Steakhouse. So I went to the mall, and it was beautiful. Somehow the Mall of Johnson City has survived and even flourished when most other malls have died. Hardly any empty storefronts, a big food-court, anchor stores with escalators inside them, all of it. I walked and walked around that place, just to be around the life inside there. I could hear East Tennessee accents as I passed,