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Editor’s note: Nannie Jordan, born in Lexington in 1856, was a much-loved teacher and “a woman of happy and pleasant personality and strong character, deeply religious,” as the Lexington Gazette said when she died in 1942.
“There were many amusing incidents that I can recall,” she wrote in her memoir, “Smiles & Tears of Other Years,” and “they would die with me unless I tell them.”
These brief recollections are excerpted from that memoir and are now published in “Rockbridge Anecdotes” (No. 2), available online, free, at www.RockbridgeAnecdotes. org -[Nannie Jordan was a member of the Lexington Presbyterian Church.] A cornet had been added to our choir, a member of the V. M. I band — an innovation, and yet approved by some of our members, Service had begun when loud applause, made apparently with a cane, was heard in the vestibule. One Elder went out to investigate and this conversation occurred: “Was that you making that noise?”
“Yes, I always applaud when I go to a circus.”
The Bible tells us to worship God with all musical instruments, psaltery, and harp. Why not the sweet clear notes of the cornet? -Before the days of manufactured ice the old North [now Maury] River was our only dependence in Lexington. I remember, when the hard winter freezes came, how the great blocks of solid ice were cut and loaded on wagons . . . . Large pits were ready for it, with, in our home, a house built over the top, the wagons were driven up the alley and the blocks of ice slid on a plank into the pit, a man would get into the pit, cover the ice with straw and make it very solid. When summer came we had ice in abundance.
A man named Lord established an ice factory, and our primitive method of obtaining it passed into oblivion. I remember an old lady saying, “I don’t care for Lord’s ice half as much as I do for God’s.” -The Inner Circle of Lexington was not prone to admit within its sacred precincts any individual who had not been born in Lexington, or had other very strong credentials. . . . A Professor, newly elected to a chair in Washington and Lee University, said that when he took up his work there he was told he would be a social out-cast, because the requirements were “birth in Lexington, or twenty-five years residence” (This was Dr. Stevens). He was perplexed by such a situation, and sought a way to rectify it. When he told me this, I said, “Doctor, you are popular in Lexington, how did you manage it?” He replied “I married a Letcher.” -An old man named Wheeler used to sell cherries from Shaners. I once asked him to let me have half a gallon, He said, “I’m not allowed to sell that much, but you can have two quarts.” That suited me just as well. -A V.M.I. boy, infringing rules one night, out when he should have been in, saw the sentinel coming and hid behind the Houdon Statue of Gen. Washington which stood in front of the Main Arch. The sentinel came nearer and remarked, “Lord, George, this is the damned coldest night I ever saw.” The answer came from behind the statue, ‘I’ll be damned if it ain’t.” That sentinel soon walked his beat at the other end of the parade ground.
