The Suet Lady

( Jack Claiborne, the outstanding writer for the Charlotte Observer, and brother of the late "Slug"Claiborne has written a charming story about one of the true unsung heros of our time: our teachers.  This story appeared in the January 17 edition of the Charlotte Observer.)

Wonderful history lies behind Black Forest Books’ location

  By Jack Claiborne   

Jack Claiborne is a retired associate editor of the Observer:

All friends of reading and children’s literature should mourn the closing of Black Forest Books at the end of this month, especially since the shop now occupies its most fitting location – the home of a woman who taught hundreds and hundreds of children to read.

The shop is in “the purple house” at 1942 East Seventh Street, where until her death in the 1970s Caroline Constable lived with her spinster sister Hannah. For many years Miss Constable taught the third grade at Elizabeth School and made a name for herself throughout the neighborhood as “the suet lady.”

(For the Full Story go to CHARLOTTE OBSERVER.

This Old House
This is the house that Jack is writing about.  Homes like this one on 7th Street and in other sections of Charlotte are definitely on the endangered list.
Since I moved from Charlotte in 1961, so many of the beautiful old houses of Charlotte, especially those that were on Elizabeth Avenue and on Hawthorne Lane across from Saint Johns Church have been torn down.
What a loss!

I saw somewhere the other day that old fogies like me don't mind change...as long as everything stays the same.

Makes sense to me!  -Ed







-Ed