+Ruby Red Charm, The Red Square Dishes Story

   My childhood days living in Chattanooga was short but I have vivid memories of those first few years of my life there.  My mom was amazed that I held on to those memories so well, even she didn't remember some of the things until I would mention them to her.  This is the only full picture I have of our house in Chattanooga, which my gr grandfather Daniel Edingburg built himself.

J. Bliss White had this photo of my gr grandfather's home plus a photo of Daniel and an article about Daniel in his book "1904 Biography and Achievements of the Colored Citizens of Chattanooga".  The woman in the photo might be Minnie Edingburg but since they don't mention who she is I'm not sure.

I loved living in this house, my uncle Will lived in a small cabin behind the house which you can see a little of it in the photo to the right in the back of the house.  He was a single man by the time I was born.  My mom said that he use to keep money stashed between the floor boards, or hide it in the walls of the cabin.  He use to come get me after breakfast to walk around the outside, I would always head to the grape orchard and start eating, mom would get after Uncle Will for letting me eat grapes until I was either all stained up or ate too many, but the next time he would just do it again and I was always happy to eat grapes.
  There was a bird bath out in the front yard, the fence in the photo on the side of the house was taken down when the property next door was purchased by our family, and the bird bath sat on that side of the property. We had ducks that roamed around freely, Uncle Will, (who is actually my great uncle), would come get me again and we would go feed the ducks and I loved to play in the bird bath just splashing the water around. Uncle Will was my best buddy.  
At lunch time we would go in and my favorite memory about eating was using those square red plates, saucers and square cups. Even though I was very young I remembered those plates forever.  I wanted everything served on those plates.  I have no idea why those particular plates stuck in my mind.
When we moved away, I didn't think about the plates until I was an adult, then I asked my  mother what happened to those red plates, she couldn't believe that I remembered them, she said that they threw them out when we moved away.  I was just shocked that they would throw away such beautiful plates and cups.

Right then I started on a mission to find some red square plates, I first tried antique shops, no one had any idea what I was talking about. My search went into years, then one day I went into this antique shop and asked if she knew anything about some very dark red square plates and cups and saucers to match.  She says yes but you probably won't find them up in this area, you would need to go to the southern states to find that particular color, she said that color wasn't popular in the Midwest mostly the green and pink were popular up this way.
She did tell me that they were named "Red Charm".  So I went to the internet and started my search..I found not only the plates but a butter dish. I ordered a set of four plus the butter dish.

I was so excited when my dishes arrived, even though they weren't the original red dishes from my family I was just so happy.  I figured I could start my own red dish tradition and new memories.  When I use my red dishes I think back to all those wonderful memories of living in my gr grandfather's home and sharing meals with my great aunts , grandmother and parents.  I was two years old when I first saw those dishes and we moved away about a year or two later.

I know one thing my Ancestors were preparing me at a very young age to record to memory everything they had in mind, for later use, because I can remember things from when I was younger than two years old.