Remembrances of a Gifted Uncle

Recent Watercolor Going Public in an Upcoming Festival

 

This past weekend, I boarded AMTRAK in Fort Worth and made the sixteen-hour journey to St. Louis to pay tribute to my Uncle Paul who had recently passed away.  He was 91.  His ashes would be interred at the Indian Creek Cemetery in rural Jackson, Missouri.  There was to be a memorial on October 12 at a local funeral home.  My heart was full of memories as I sat in the coach and rolled late into the night.

Uncle Paul was one of thirteen siblings born to tenant farmer parents in southeast Missouri.  Educated in a one-room schoolhouse until he was old enough to work the fields, Paul did the things farm boys did in those days until he entered World War II.  Finishing his service, he chose not to return to his humble southeast Missouri roots, but to move to the West Coast in search of a better life.

Paul landed a position with Greyhound Bus, and stayed with the company twenty-five years, promoting to supervisory status, and choosing to work night shifts so he could have sufficient quiet and space to pursue his real interests—writing and story-telling.

Extending the Mark Twain/Will Rogers tradition, Paul developed a love of humor and stories covering country life.  He carefully researched the history of rural Jackson, Missouri, listened in on the memories of others who grew up there, and carefully committed these stories to print.

Growing up, all I knew was that Uncle Paul was special.  On the rare occasions that he made the excursion from California to Southeast Missouri, all the Tripps would gather to greet him, to sit in the living rooms until late at night, listening to him spinning his humorous tales as he smoked his cigars.  Personally, I felt that I was re-living the days when people gathered to listen to and laugh at the humor of Mark Twain.

By the time I grew into my teens, the Uncle Paul events had graduated from the parlors to weenie roasts along the banks of Indian Creek.  My Uncle Bus and Aunt Bea had a humble house on the banks of the creek, and Paul chose to roost with them every time he came home.  The problem was that Bea and Bus were early risers and preferred to get to bed early.  They became resentful of these all-night parties.  Every year they began to level their protest, but Paul had a tin ear.

I will never forget the time Bea put her foot down and swore there would not be a weenie-roast this time.  “We’re turnin’ in early tonight—no weenie-roast.”  By mid-afternoon, cars began pulling into the driveway.  “Why’s everyone comin’ here?” asked Bea.  “The weenie-roast,” I replied.  “Oh no!  There ain’t no weenie-roast tonight!  I said so.  Where’s Paul?”  “At the store buying hot dogs and buns.”  “No, no!  We’re not havin’ a weenie-roast!”  Children were dragging up driftwood and tree limbs from creekside for the bonfire.  “Stop draggin’ that stuff up here!” shouted Bea.  “There ain’t no weenie-roast tonight!”  Coolers of beer were being hauled out of car trunks.  Folding lawn chairs appeared, arranged in ranks around the pile of timber.  “Get that shit outta here!” shouted Bea.  “There ain’t gonna be no weenie-roast tonight!  Do it somewhere else!  We’re goin’ to bed!”

Paul squirted lighter fluid on the timbers, produced a match, and the blaze went up.  Bea yawned.  Bus mumbled that it was getting dark and time for bed.  People dragged up chairs.  Children cut tree limbs to support weenies for the roast.  The guitars came out.  Music filled the air.  The weenie roast was on.  And soon Paul would be holding court.

Around 2:00 in the morning, all grew quiet.  Paul was out of stories.  People were dozing in their lawn chairs, having pulled blankets and sleeping bags over them.  The guitars had stopped.  Scattered, intermittent conversations were still ongoing.  At one point, Paul turned to me.  I was seventeen and in awe of him.  “You have a good vocabulary,” he observed.  I was startled.  “You should write.  There aren’t enough people writing these days.  People want stories.  You can provide them.  You have a good vocabulary.  You should write.”

Drawing out his wallet, Paul removed a folded piece of paper.  That strange lighter-fluid smell emanated from the paper as he unfolded the “Xerox copy” (remember how those smelled in the mid-1970s?) of a check in the amount of $75 he had been paid by a West-Coast magazine for one of his stories.  “There’s money in this,” Paul mumbled, “but you’re too good to write this kind of stuff.”  Looking up from the check, I could not hold back my astonishment: “Seventy-five dollars for a funny story?”  “No. A scrounge story.  I wrote this one night in the office while on shift at Greyhound.”

I knew Paul was full of stories.  I knew he had the gift to deliver humor before a live audience.  What I didn’t know was that Paul wrote stories for porno magazines and collected good sums of money over the years.  “You don’t need that,” he advised me, “You have much more going for you.  You should write, and write about things that matter.”

That night beside the fire turned out to be a teachable moment for me.  Forty-three years later, I thought about that intimate conversation late at night as I rode back to Texas on AMTRAK.  Relatives that took Paul with a grain of salt remarked that he was only about himself, his stories, his need for an audience, his practice of holding court.  But I remember the night that Paul turned his attention on me for a few minutes and delivered a life-transforming Word, an Oracle.  Paul, I never forgot that moment.  Thank you for your compliment, for your encouragement.  I love to write.  I have found ways to weave this passion into my teaching profession, am proud to have been published a few times, still enjoy keeping an old-fashioned journal and now love to weave words and put them on a blog.  And I am  grateful to have readers.

Thanks for reading.

I paint in order to remember.

I journal when I feel alone.

I blog to remind myself that I am not alone.

Tags: Coca Cola