Uncle Albutt

Changing Leaves

We don’t usually get vivid fall colors in Louisiana but these trees seem to have been decorated for Christmas.

Uncle Albutt Part 6

Aunt Jewel had several nieces and nephews I saw from time to time. Her sister Lucille, of the hairy legs, who was married to Daddy’s Uncle Dunc, had three daughters, Alma, Eunice, and Gladys.  

I guessed Lucille wanted to keep to her family’s tradition of inflicting horrible names on kids including her boys,  Hambone, Mookie, Teeter, and twins Fats and Snake. I can’t imagine how she settled on Fats for one of the twins.  They both were skinny as snakes, though neither bit me.

I was most impressed with Alma. Mother said she was a tramp because she wore her swimsuit and moved the grass when a road crew was working in front of their house.  It made no sense to me.  I thought she looked beautiful with her bright red lipstick, blonde ponytail tied with a scarf, teetering along in high heeled wedge sandals.  The mower gave her a lot of trouble and a couple of the guys came to check on her.  

Her sister Eunice came out in her swimsuit, but she was not so popular, probably because she was extremely thin.  Her suit bagged over her hips like a toddler’s training pants.  Alma got a boyfriend that day.  Eunice didn’t.  No matter, Eunice had somehow snagged a boyfriend named Moxy.  I think he followed her home from her carhop job.  

Mother also thought carhops were trashy, dashing my career hopes.  I was impressed when Eunice got married at the age of sixteen and had a baby shortly thereafter. Eunice and Moxy were great favorites of Aunt Jewel’s, so I heard of them from time to time over the next few years.

Gladys was nearest me in age. Apparently still under the influence of her religious, fundamentalist mother, her clothes inspired no envy in me. Her hair was tightly braided.  She wore a dark, long-sleeved dress and brown leather oxfords I did not envy.  Her mother kept her busy, leaving her little time to play with me.  I helped her wash dishes and mop the kitchen so we could escape outdoors.  

That afternoon, we waded in their pond in our clothes.  Gladys said her mama didn’t allow her to wear a swimsuit.  Afterward, I  wore one of her Pentecostal dress and flour sack bloomers while my clothes dried on the barbed wire garden fence.  I wanted to keep the flour sack bloomers, but mother insisted I give them back.  I never wore anything more comfortable.  

We each got a quarter of watermelon from their garden that had been cooled in their well. Late in the day, the men fried fish while we chased fireflies in the dusk.

Uncle Dunc, became progressively rowdier as the evening drew on.   Though I didn’t know it at the time, It was my first experience with a drunk.  Uncle Dunc began playing wildly with us, chasing us as we jumped off the high porch fronting their house into the darkness.   I enjoyed the day tremendously, though sadly, never got to visit again.  

I lay that deprivation directly at Mother’s feet based on a conversation I heard as we drove home late in the night.  She took a dim view of drunks frying fish and chasing her children into the darkness.  What a pity!  I thought I was having fun.

I later got the impression he was named Dunc because it rhymed with drunk.  Still makes sense to me.

 

Uncle Albutt Part 4

Uncle Albert had an interesting vocabulary.   Even when he didn’t get words right, he forged bravely ahead.  When his energy was low, he didn’t have much image.  When the doctor diagnosed him with emphysema, he referred to his ‘zema. Air conditioners were air positioners. He called my sister Phyllis, Phillips.  I liked that one.  I was Linder.  I didn’t like that quite so much. My mother Kathleen was Kathaleen.  He called Daddy “Willie”, his real name instead of Bill, the name Daddy gave himself once he left home.  

Daddy cringed every time he was called Willie. The only other person who got away with it was his mother.  I wouldn’t have wanted to be Willie, either.  For some reason, Daddy’s brother Parnell named his daughter Willie Carol.  She was a whiny, sullen kid, maybe because of that name. It makes perfect sense to me.

On occasion, we saw some of Aunt Jewel’s relatives.  Her sister, Lucille, who incidentally had married one of Daddy’s cousins, had the hairiest legs I’ve ever seen, man or woman. The wearing of seamed stockings only made it more obvious.  A good proportion of the wiry hairs worked their way through the stockings, trying to escape, while the rest were imprisoned flat against her legs.  I don’t know which fascinated me more, the swirling mass of flattened ones, or the wild escapees.  I never got to look enough, and certainly wasn’t allowed to comment. Mother warned us off when she knew we’d see Lucille.  Daddy swore her legs had gotten hairier because she shaved them!  That just sounded nuts.  How would hair roots know a razor threatened?  He was death on leg-shaving, ascribing to the old wive’s tale that shaving made hair grow back thicker.  I don’t know what planet he was from that made his daughter’s legs, shaved or unshaven, his business, but Daddy thought he was God and his wishes,  commandments.  More likely, he may have feared he’d be stuck with his girls forever should we sprout hair like that. 

Of course, Mother never volunteered the information that she shaved her legs.  I guess she didn’t want Daddy to know what was in his future.  Naturally, I shaved my legs as soon as I could get hold of a razor.  I can’t tell you how happy I was to get away from home.

Daddy’s methods did ensure he never had to deal with adult children boomeranginghome.  Times just didn’t get that hard.

Uncle Albutt Part 3

Uncle Albert somehow came up on a ninety-nine year lease on several acres on Dorcheat Bayou in Louisiana.  Ready to retire from farming, he decided a fish camp would provide a modest retirement income.  My father bought his farm and stock, but that’s a story for another day.  Obviously, he was a multi-talented man, able to turn his hand to any task.  His farm boasted two cabins.  He moved into the second cabin, disassembled the log house he was living in loaded it piece by piece on his old truck, and moved  it to his lease, where he went to work reassembling it just as it had originally been, except he added an additional bedroom, occasionally recruiting help from relatives with bigger jobs.  Once the reassembled house was in the dry, he took apart the second cabin, using the timber to cover over the logs and seal the house tighter.  One day, Daddy decided we’d go by and check on Uncle Albert’s progress. My older sister climbed on the unsecured log walls, tumbling them to the ground.  I was so glad she got to them before I did.  Neither Daddy nor Uncle Albert was pleased.  Daddy spent the rest of that evening and Saturday helping Uncle Albert get it back together.  None of us kids were invited along, for some reason.  When Uncle Albert was satisfied with his house, he used the rest of the salvaged lumber for fishing boats, a pier, fences, a bait shop, and outbuildings.  Soon he had a pretty good business going.  By the next spring, he had a large garden underway.

Prior to construction of his house, Uncle Albert took care of necessities,; first, a toilet before summoning all his nephews for the digging of a well, uphill from the toilet, of course.  They came, bringing all their wives and children, a festive day of barbecuing, fishing, children running wild, while the men took turns shoveling the hard red clay from the well site..  Only one man could be in the hole at a time.  The others stayed above ground, pulling the heavy dirt from the hole.  They all took their turns.  By the end of the first day, thanks to the high water table, water was beginning to seep in at a depth of twenty feet.  They dug a few feet more, set the curb so the well wouldn’t silt in, and came back the next day to build a protective well-housing.  Uncle Albert was able to draw a bit of water by the evening of the second day.

Along with all my cousins, I was desperate to be lowered by pulley and bucket as the fortunate diggers were, into the depths of that well.  Sadly, all the mothers and aunts were just as anxious to keep wayward kids out of the well, warning us away every time we came near.  However, were able to indulge in one other life-threatening activity as they focused on that well.  A gravel road ran down the steep hill along one side of Uncle Albert’s property where it intersected with another dirt road fronting his house alongside the steep-banked bayou. The occasional oil-truck, fisherman, or hunter who travelled that way would have had no expectation of kids running wild, since until only recently, it was nothing but woods.    Someone of my cousins had thoughtfully brought along their red wagon to Uncle Albert’s that day.  Naturally, we pulled that wagon to the top of the red-dirt hill, piled in as many cousins as would fit, and prepared for a thrilling coast down the steep graveled road.  There were no engineers among us.  Confident as only a cluster of kids can be, we set off for a bone-rattling ride.  That wagon clattered and bounced, held down only by the weight of kids.  A couple of the smaller ones were pitched out, left squalling in our dusty tracks.  The clattering, crying, and dust cloud caught the attention of the well-diggers and mothers who were laying out the picnic lunch, secure in the knowledge we weren’t falling in the well.  As they looked on at the screaming wagonload of kids hurtling down the hill, an oil truck approached the crossing at the bottom.  It slammed on its brakes, swerving enough to allow us to pass, though our unlikely survival was concealed by the massive dust cloud.  The wagon flew on toward the high bank of the bayou, where we were saved by a brush thicket just short of the water.

In the manner of parents at that time, once the loving parents found their children weren’t dead, they gratefully expressed their joy with beatings for all. I had one fine ride down that hill, but I never got another crack at it.

Uncle Albutt Part 2

Uncle Albert was the only person I ever knew who never attended school at all.  He couldn’t write or read a word.  I remember seeing him bring documents for Mother to read and interpret and pen his replies.  He was the first person I ever saw make an X mark for his signature. Mother wrote his name afterward and witnessed it. I was filled with awe that a person had never attended school.  Mother filled out his income tax returns for him every year.

Uncle Albert was very shrewd in his accounts, despite his lack of education.  He handled his business affairs skillfully, requiring no assistance.  He was a skilled trader.  I remember hearing him tell Daddy how he left the house one morning with a goat to barter and after several trades, came home with a shotgun and box of shells.  I never knew him to hold public employment.   He farmed forty acres more than fifty years, providing a living for him and his wife.  He paid cash, bartered, or did without.  The whole time I knew him, he drove a nineteen forty-eight Ford pickup truck.  He and Aunt Jewel smoked Prince Albert Tobacco and rolled their own cigarettes when money was tight, and bought Raleigh cigarettes when they were flush.  Aunt Jewel saved Raleigh Cigarette coupons for prizes.  From time to time, she’d show off a fancy vase or pair of pillowcases. I never knew of them being without cigarettes of some sort.

Daddy was always honored when Uncle Albert and Aunt Jewel came to visit.  One evening, Mother cooked our favorite, fried chicken.  We never got enough of her fried chicken, particularly the crisp scrambles of flour that dropped off during the frying.  Knowing this, Mother scraped up every crisp bit and put it on the platter with the chicken.  After the chicken was devoured, she divided those scrambles among the kids.  They were delicious, a highly anticipated treat.  That evening, the chicken platter passed from on end of the table to the other several times.  Uncle Albert liked Mother’s chicken, too.  As he forked  the last piece, the unthinkable happened.  He tipped the platter up and poured all those beautiful scrambled bits onto his plate.  Our eyes were huge with horror.  Surely he hadn’t just scooped up all the best all for himself!  He had!  Mother shushed us with a look as he noisily crunched and chomped through the pile.  A more heartbreaking sound was never heard.   In just a few seconds, he finished off our stolen treat, then burped his appreciation, wiped his mouth, leaned back his chair and remarked, “That’s the best part of the chicken.  I ain’t never got enough.”

We knew just how he felt.

Tale of My Uncle’s Tail

imageWhen I got older, I found out Uncle Albert and Aunt Jewel weren’t dull; they were just worn out. Besides that, Uncle Albert had a fascinating physical attribute Daddy slipped up and mentioned one day, to his later regret. Uncle Albert had a tail! From that moment forward, my brother and I stalked him, probabably the first nasty little, voyeuristic kids in the word to molest a pitiful, worn-out old man. We kept hoping his worn-out old khakis would slide off his bony behind, giving us a glimpse of that tail. Eventually Daddy realized why we were pestering him and threatened us enough to put a stop to our tagging.

At any rate, once I got sly enough to ferret out family gossip, I found out Aunt Jewel had once been a very pretty, if not too virtuous, girl. Apparently, Uncle Albert brought her to his house to visit one evening when his wife, Mary, was out. Mary, came home early and found them together in her bedroom. Not surprisingly, she was unhappy. When she tried to get in the bedroom with them, Uncle Albert slammed the door on her arm, breaking it. He and Aunt Jewel became a couple after that.

It’s not surprising he preferred her to the unreasonable Mary. She was a very understanding woman. She told Albert’s sister,my grandma, “Albert has to have a woman! Fortunately, her three sisters and mother were all friendly women, of questionable virtue, willing to accommodate Albert’s needs when she wasn’t well. Uncle Albert and Aunt Jewel lived together over thirty years, becoming very devoted members of their local church the last ten years or so. They gave very good advice once they got too old to set a bad example.