On East Main Street in the Cranberry Thistle, which is across the street from the Courthouse, friends of Pauline Nisong, Jonesborough's youngest-looking oldest merchant, came at five o'clock one afternoon to celebrate her 80th birthday. Pauline married in 1943 in Winston-Salem NC, came with her husband to Jonesborough in 1948. They could have gone to Floyd VA to open up a Western Auto store but Jonesborough was "quaint." "It reminded me of the Salem part of Winston-Salem." And so they came and lived with Mrs. Keene, whose husband had the funeral home before Dillow Taylor bought it. Mrs. Keene lived in what is now the John Lyle House at 303 West Main Street. They left Mrs. Keene's and went to the Cherokee Apartments. There were four apartments. "We stayed upstairs." They later on bought property from Mr. Roach and bought the house where the parking lot is now. It was a frame house with an upstairs. "In 1954 we built our house on McCoy Circle." The business was located in what was Nayno's building until 1962. Now it is Dilsworth, which is next door to the Cranberry Thistle. Pauline's husband died in 1979 and is buried in the Moravian Cemetery at Salem College. "I am a Moravian." Pauline is 80 and proud of it. She is also lonely and if she can't sleep she comes to work. She does not like weekends because McCoy circle is large and lonely for just one. "Hard work keeps you going, use it or lose it."

A neighboring merchant looked out of her upstairs bedroom window at 12:30 one recent night and saw the Moravian coming to work. The store is no longer a Western Auto but through the years Pauline has been smart enough to figure what buyers are going to want and have it for sale. Anything from stuffed canned possum to unfinished bed rails. She treats everyone with respect. My granddaughter, who is now 30, used to go in with 37 cents and she was treated with the same respect and politeness as if she had 3,000 to spend. Our little dog Amy went to town one day and Pauline gathered him up and kept him until we found him. She goes to the Little Limestone Creek that runs behind the Court House, gathers the extra duck eggs and takes them to Dilsworth where they are cooked. Steve Bacon would see her coming and go over for breakfast. W.C. Rowe, who was 17 or 18 years old when Pauline moved to town, came to her birthday party. He is now a county commissioner. They remembered that the merchants association in the fifties met in the peoples' homes "and one Christmas we gave away a car." Joann Furches was a part of the merchants association. She runs the Antique Mart now that is in the old Shipley Building. Norma Jean and Rommell Ryan remember the Nisongs. "All of our Christmas was from them." Pauline's made a difference in Jonesborough: a woman, a merchant, 80 and proud of it. A powerhouse of stories and manners and memories.

Have you listened to anyone today? Do you take time to watch the crows fly on the updrafts of wind? To feel the dry bones that we will all become? Appalachia is not what you may think it is. It is a Tennessee homecoming. Pauline Nisong, Moravian merchant. Graphic: Empire of Light