Chip Osborn admits to being somewhat old fashioned.

He rises from his seat when a woman enters the room. He offers his chair and follows the cultured manners of a gilded age that he learned from his grandmother, LaReine Warden Clayton.

As a teenager, Osborn moved in with his grandparents at their Knoxville, Tennessee home — a convenient location, as he graduated from the University of Tennessee.

“My grandmother had a huge effect on my life,” he said. “It was a dramatic education.”

While living with her, Osborn would hear tales of life in Mexico, Missouri at the turn of the last century. The stories had enough distance between them and the interests of a teenager that the memories glanced by. Little resonated but the time-honored way of treating others.

Osborn was serving in Vietnam when Clayton wrote Now, Be A Little Lady. After completing his tour of duty he took a job with NBC in New York.

The book sat on a shelf, unread. It wasn’t until after his grandmother passed in 1993 that he began finding the treasures in its pages.

Clayton grew up on South Jefferson Street on a corner house by what was then Hardin College. Her memoir is a trove of vignettes from a child’s eyes, written with the wisdom and wit gained over time.

Born in 1894, Clayton did not collect her memories into book form until 1967. Yet her style gives the neighborhood and its residents a presence, sweeping the reader into each tale.

She describes her mother serenading the family with arias in Italian, French and German. “She was only five feet two and wore her hair piled high above her forehead to give her height, which it didn’t,” Clayton noted.

There’s her constant companion, brother Hu, and George – a teenager soon headed off to an art academy – who was keen to catch the eye of college girls across the street.

Children were often outside and Clayton observed that “the little boys in our street were splendid spitters.” In one chapter she details the different techniques involved and admits to joining in, although her efforts were not counted by the boys when they held contests.

Older neighbors and relatives kept the kids enthralled with stories of unsolved murders, personalities from the past and their travels.

One day they were inside when they heard peals of excitement. Rushing to the street they joined a row of neighbors watching the first automobile to rumble into town.

“Up the street, chugging like mad, came the Red Devil, its throttle open, its red paint flashing in the sun, its driver tense with the achievement of driving,” Clayton recalled.

Astonishment changed to dread when onlookers realized a horse-drawn cart hauling a family was in the way. Startled by the onrushing vehicle, the animals reared and plunged and caved in to their fears. The scene was bedlam, made more intense by the fact that “the man with the automobile was no expert.”

Fortunately a deadly accident was averted and the car swung off the brick pavement of Jefferson onto the dirt of Boulevard, spinning a cloud of dust in its wake.

Osborn admits to feeling deprived because he did not open the pages sooner. “It’s a wonderful book,” he said. “It triggers so many questions I’d like to ask her.”

Clayton’s family was well traveled, cultured and talented. George – artist George Oscar Baker – started Osborn on a quest that brought him to Mexico. Baker showed his work in Paris, New York and Chicago. Osborn owns a few pieces and contacted the Mexico Audrain Public Library to perhaps fight out more about him.

When he called and mentioned his grandmother’s name, the librarian on the other end of the line recognized her instantly and told him readers always had the book checked out.

“It’s amazing to me,” he said.

During his visit to the city, Osborn found himself on South Jefferson examining the homes and the scenery. The family home had been moved by horse-drawn rig at some point and he never traced its new location. No matter.

“Here I was, walking down a street that has a phenomenal history,” he observed. “It gives you chill bumps.”

Clayton’s book inspired Osborn, who lives in Overland Park, Kansas, to record his memories in three volumes, unpublished but presented to his children so they might experience the same connection.

“They gave me a glassy-eyed stare,” he said with a laugh. “Maybe in a hundred years they will read it.”

That reminded Osborn of how he allowed stories told by his grandparents to pass by. But how their sense of propriety took hold.

“I understood the importance of what they were saying – that this was the right way to live,” he noted. LaReine Warden Clayton advanced his life, both in person and in print.

But, Osborn points out, “I want to assure you she didn’t teach me to spit.”