January 3, 2017  - Meeting an old friend and bumping into a friendly ghost

          It was a delight today to meet someone I hadn’t seen in a few years.  We immediately hugged each other.  So much in common: age, height, weight, people we had worked with, our so-called work situation, and then the rest of the spectrum – so completely different in so many ways.  I always drop a card to her in March every year to say hello.  It has to do with flowers and the month of March and I will write about it in a future blog in March.

I remembered I sent a Christmas card out this year.  I asked if she got it. She did.  She didn’t take that as rude.  She said she had been so busy.

          Surprisingly, she has the same hair dresser as I do.  It is a small world here in Forest City, North Carolina.  And, as I think about that, not that surprising, it is on the road to town from where she lives; ditto for me. We immediately began to “magpie” talk about all kinds of things as if we had just been away from our mutual work place over a long holiday.

          And, she said, “Funny, I was thinking about you yesterday.”  I said, “I know why; remember that bird book you gave me of Attorney Louis Nanney’s.   I was going through my bookcase looking for something and I stumbled on it. I finally took off that white cover he kept on it to keep it nice. I brought it out to browse through.  My husband had wondered where the book had come from.”   

We both teared up.  She had worked for him her entire life until he had died.  I had worked with him only a handful of years.  But, he was a fine, upstanding attorney.  Rarely do the words “fine and upstanding” end up in the same sentence to describe an attorney these days. But Attorney Nanney was exactly that.  You can ask any one in town.  

          Today was sort of a Déjá vu type thing – both of us happened to think of each other yesterday and then the next day we meet.

          I had shoved his book way in the back of the book case so it was out of my sight.  It has taken me years to get over his death as he was my best client.

          He was there in the shadows when I launched my St. John Title Company and offered any assistance I needed.  He was one of the few attorneys that knew I had a “real brain” in my head.

          He taught me about Caladium bulb planting.  He taught me about “timber land” tracts of land.  He was a special type of man.  Everyone should have a man like that in their corner.

One time I delivered a title search to him that was complex and I simply had a feeling in my gut about it.  I called it ‘women’s intuition’.  Something about the chain was bothering me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.  It was elusive – right there in the wings – I just couldn’t ferret it out.   The project was late and I told him “I’ve got a gut feeling about this – something isn’t right.  I need to check on it Monday morning; can you delay your final write up to your client?”

          He listened to me discuss the chain of title that was bothering me and I ended up with – “My women’s intuition’ is kicking in and it is never wrong.”   He eyed me closely.  I could see he was weighing my intuition with his client’s needs.

          “Well we can’t let that women’s intuition get in the way, now can we? Sure, I’ll let my client know it will be afternoon before I can get the project to him.”  He said it so nicely. He trusted me as he knew I was a perfectionist in my work.

          By midmorning Monday I had the answer – the missing link that had bothered me and I had chased it down and brought the loop to a close and reported it to him.

          “Your women’s intuition is never wrong . . . is it?”  He asked casually after I’d delivered the better chain of title.

          “No.” I said with confidence.

          As I ran errands the ghost of Louis Nanney was in my mind.  Snippets of conversations and situations we had in our mutual work together filled my mind for the rest of the afternoon. 

It was a good rainy day to dust off a few memories.