March, 1963, Corsicana, Texas
I remember my Great-Grandmother’s Tinkle’s house. When I was little, I thought it had to be George Washington’s former home because, in my mind, it looked like his house ought to look. It was large, two story and white with two huge white fluted wooden columns at the center of the roofed porch, which curved around the house on the east side.
The porch was one of those built before air conditioning when people sat out front in the hot Texas evenings hoping for a breeze and talking with passing neighbors. A white wooden swing still hung at the porch’s curve. There were about six steps up to that porch, and the way was shaded by a large oak tree, grown from an acorn Papa and Grandmother Tinkle planted when they moved into the house. The tree had pushed up for over sixty years and, being planted too close to the house, had also pushed up the sidewalk and right side of the steps. There had once been a porte-cochere on the west side over the driveway, now gone, knocked down by the housekeeper Dora’s car some years ago. The porte-cochere had covered a side door. Most people used that door, but Nannaw, Grandmother’s oldest child and my own grandmother, had always used the front door. That door was a large affair with a beveled glass window and a brass key turn doorbell, which all children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren had delightedly twisted and turned.
Parked at the curb among many vehicles was Great Aunt Ruth’s Chrysler with a U-Haul tacked to its rear and her husband, Big Jerre, was re-arranging the contents to allow more room. Big Jerre was a large man and leaning into the interior of the U-Haul he filled the opening.
My great-uncle Hugh, who was always called “Guv” for some now-forgotten reason, was standing on the porch wearing a three piece suit, his signature wide-brim business hat and smoking his pipe. He and his wife Juanita had been driven from Dallas by my cousin Conan. Conan later told me Hugh kept saying over and over, “This is the big hurt, that I wasn’t the first one called.” Hugh was the oldest of three surviving boys in the family and considered himself the scion of the family, although two of his sisters were older. Perhaps his sense of self-importance was why he approved of being called Guv. In later years, we referred to Hugh privately as The Big Hurt. Hugh had left Corsicana as a young man under somewhat of a cloud, that cloud being his wife Juanita, who it was rumored he had met in the redlight district. For her part, Juanita almost never said anything in family gatherings, and was always pleasant, although she seemed clearly uncomfortable and stiff. She was usually sitting upright with her hands folded in her lap, a prim expression on her face. Small wonder she was uncomfortable among the family of the woman she always called Mrs. Tinkle, as they certainly had never approved of Hugh’s choice. The many years since that choice hadn’t made a change.
Clattering up the driveway was Gene, the son of the second son Clifford. He was pushing Grandmother’s old manual lawn mower, urging the ancient rusty wheels toward his own trailer. He was, of course, also wearing a cowboy hat and boots. It was the uniform of his dad, Uncle Cliff. Cliff was the family jokester. I remember his appearing at our house one Christmas, dressed in his usual bolo tie, cowboy hat, well-worn boots and large silver belt buckle holding up his jeans. He had a beautifully wrapped present in his hand. This was unusual as we had never exchanged gifts with Uncle Cliff. When my mother, thanking him profusely and wondering if she had had something for him, took the present it shocked her…literally. She dropped it and all Cliff could do is laugh his big laugh. “Haw, haw, haw…” My mother was, however, not laughing. Cliff loved a joke. Of all six children, he looked the most like Grandmother and always seemed to be laughing at something. I also remember his taking my sister and me at age 7 by the hands and walking us into a pen with his white turkeys then scaring them so they flew at us. Again, he was laughing. We were screaming. Uncle Cliff ran the family farm. He and his wife are now buried in Fairy Cemetery. Just an odd name, really.
The front door was already open and raised voices could be heard through the screen door. Grandmother’s house had almost always been quiet to me, verging on silent. Today, however, there was a busyness in the air. Many of the remaining three generations were there. Hugh and Juanita had no children. Cliff and his wife Lacie had only Gene. My grandmother had two sons, my dad being the younger. Sister Lizzie had three boys and a girl. Ruth had a boy and a girl. The third son, the last child of the seven, Elton and his wife Maude had only Billy Bob. Elton was, within our family, known as “Unk the Drunk.” He was a sad case of spoiled last child. His mother took care of him both financially and emotionally all his life. There is one story of his claiming, again, that he was going to kill himself. Grandmother loaded her shotgun, handed it to him and told him to go outside and “don’t be messy.” For my own part, I remember so many afternoons hearing the back door of our house quietly open then the door to our basement. It was, of course, Unk who would later emerge with a case of our dad’s beer. He had an abusive relationship with his wife Maude, who fought back by going to a clinic for electric shock therapy. Unk once borrowed my dad’s speed boat “Able Mable” and when my dad asked for it back, he told him, “Oh, I sold it.” And that was that. Alcoholism was a thread woven deeply into Unk’s family. Billy Bob was also an alcoholic. Sad, really.
Of Grandmother’s seven children, only one died in childhood, Roy, always called “baby brother,” Roy died a few days short of his first birthday. What still exists of Roy is a faded baby photo, his name in Grandmother’s Bible and his monument in an old cemetery. He died in 1897.
Perhaps it was Roy’s loss that made Grandmother protective of Unk, but it likely crippled him.
Inside the house, Grandmother’s family sat around the walls in the main entry hall. Most of the furniture had been removed, so the hall’s window seats and stairway offered the only multiple seating. As usual, fresh flowers stood in a vase on the remaining hall table. As long as I can remember, Mr. McCammon, the local undertaker, had sent Grandmother flowers every week, a now untimely reminder of an ageless adoration. We had all just returned from her funeral and burial next to her husband Bige in Oakwood.
Five of Grandmother’s children were there, assembled for perhaps the last time, for the wake. Only Unk was missing. Of all Grandmother’s children, only two had “made good,” as Nannaw called it. She herself had married a man of vision who had built the largest book store in Texas and owned Wolf Brand Chili and now contented himself with his cattle and ranches. The next oldest, Aunt Lizzie, had married a quiet, kind lawyer and raised three boys and a girl, the oldest being a doctor. She had been the artistic one, like her mother, and many of her painted plates and china had already disappeared into her car. Uncle Hugh, who dressed like a bank officer but had never risen so high came in and seated himself on the hard wooden window seat. Uncle Cliff was moving toward the kitchen to see if there was anything left to eat. He looked uncomfortable in his black suit today, and I might not have recognized him except for his string gambler’s tie and high-heeled cowboy boots. In the years since I’d last seen him, he seemed to have assumed that peaceful expression his mother always wore.
Unk came in with Maude and crossed to Cliff. He stood there in a short, semi-alcoholic stupor, peering at his brothers and sisters through his half-inch-thick wire frame glasses.
“Have y’all already divided everything? Maude and I just got here and looks like everything’s gone.”
Hugh looked up from his own seat, removed his pipe and said, “We saved you two of the dining room chairs and two place settings of the china. You should have gotten here earlier, boy.”
Unk frowned and turned to the stairway and started to ascend. Lizzie stopped him for a moment by commenting, “No use looking up there. It’s all gone but her letters and junk.”
“I’m going to look anyway. Come on Maude.” Ascending, he turned halfway up and asked, “What about Papa’s Mason things?”
Ruth answered that. “We gave those to Hugh. After all, he’s the oldest, and we all decided he should have Papa’s things.”
Unk leaned both hands on the railing and choking said, “But Hugh’s not a Mason. I’m the only one who is and I could use his sword and stuff.”
Below, no one answered, just heads shaking to disinterested silence. Unk turned and looking weary, threaded the rest of his way up between grand-children and great-grand-children on the stairway. As he trudged past, I felt sorry for his sad, small figure. He would really miss her.
Nannaw was back in the kitchen and I decided to join her for some fresh air and fresh perspective. The huge, high-ceilinged kitchen was all white and airy with a butler’s pantry and a food pantry as big as a bedroom. I had always loved that kitchen and in it Grandmother had made the best chicken and dumplings I’ve ever eaten. She had served them to us when we came from Junior High for lunch or when we spent the night with her. She knew they were our favorite. Dora was there working. Nannaw was slicing a ham and I wandered up beside her and stole a piece of ham from the plate. Concentrating on the ham and the knife and without looking up, she said, “You know, Mama loved you girls very much. We’ll all miss her.”
I hugged her around the waist, kissed her on the cheek and said, “Of course we’ll miss her, Nannaw, and you the most of all I think. Can I help in here?”
“No. Dora’s here and Miss Easter’s coming over after she finishes at my house. Didn’t you think that was a lovely funeral? There were so many people there. Don’t you think they made Mama look pretty?”
I nodded. Seeing Grandmother at the funeral home was the first time I had ever seen a dead person. Frankly, it was scary for me, and Nannaw made us touch Grandmother’s hand. I’m lucky I don’t still have nightmares.
I went out the side door to the back porch, through the screen door, down the old wooden steps and walked over to Grandmother’s vegetable garden or what had once been her garden. The white picket fence surrounding the garden was badly in need of repair. The rows of once verdant vegetable greens were choked with dandelions and milk weed. Grandmother had worked in this garden every sunny day for as long as anyone could remember. She only stopped when her eyesight stopped two years ago. For her, that was the beginning of the end. Blindness meant no more sewing, gardening, reading or even watching television. This was the cruelest affliction for her, far worse than the cancer that finally consumed her.
Starting out of the hot sun in the garden, I heard Hugh, Unk and Gene dividing the spoils of the small servant’s quarters. They had made separate piles of such things as a tennis racquet without strings, a chair without a seat, a dusty chamber pot and a spittoon. Papa had died over 30 years earlier and had supposedly hidden some valuable jewelry somewhere in the servant quarters. They were working just to get all the junk out to search the walls and floorboards.
Turning back to the house, I saw my cousin Conan sitting on the back steps next to Uncle Cliff. Cliff was crying quietly, Conan slowly smoking a cigarette, listening and alternately nodding and shaking his head. I couldn’t hear what they were quietly saying. It was a private conversation so I walked to the porte-cochere door and back into the front hall. I climbed back to my perch on the stairs. Maude was standing below and said, “If there aren’t any objections, Elton and I would like that big elk painting in the parlor.
The painting in question was fully six by four feet with a large frame and had hung for forty or fifty years over a floor furnace. As a result, the once stately elk, painted together by Grandmother and Lizzie, was wavy in the frame, its lips curled, its expression very strange. Hardy a valuable item even to someone who had huge walls and high ceilings enough for a giant ugly painting.
Aunt Lizzie, her naturally curly hair that Nannaw had always begrudged her now silvery white, took another sip of coffee, laid the cup on the floor and stood up, straightening her skirt front. “I believe I painted that and you can’t have it.”
Maude looked sick. “You didn’t want that. You didn’t even think of it until I did. Y’all have cleaned Mama out and Elton and I ask for one little thing, and you’re too selfish to let us have it.”
Smiling, Lizzie said sweetly, “You and Elton cleaned her out years ago. I don’t know what your problem is.” Maude stood stunned, and apparently having no response, hurried up the stairs calling for Unk. I wanted to tell her he was out back but thought better of it.
It was then my father opened the screen door and came in. Behind him was his best friend, the attorney handling Grandmother’s estate. Dad called attention to himself then said, “Did any of you take Mr. Iglehart’s things from his room?” Mr. Iglehart was Grandmother’s roomer and had lived in one of her upstairs bedrooms for many years. Dad waited for an answer, and receiving none, said, “He’s waiting outside and says all his clothes are gone and even his things from the bathroom. He says he would greatly appreciate having them returned. Please help him find his things in your cars.”
There was an embarrassed, half-hearted exodus to the automobiles. Nannaw stayed as she hadn’t taken anything of Mr. Iglehart’s or even many of Grandmother’s. She was the only one of the children that visited her mother every day and made sure she lacked for nothing. I think I appreciated her more at that moment than I could have told her. Her husband, Granddaddy, had been a pillar of strength for Nannaw in these last days. It was he that had called all the siblings and made the funeral arrangements. He now sat quietly, listening. He was far too wise to inject reason into this unreasonable situation. Nannaw was looking very tired, her rouge too bright. Her sister Ruth watched her cross the room and sit down heavily. “Cadda, where is Mama’s ring? You took it off her body, didn’t you?”
Looking up, Nannaw replied gently, “Of course I didn’t take her ring. I thought you did, Ruth.”
So much family history, so many dramas, so many old emotional injuries, so much past joy. The important part here is memory. This old house held so many, many memories. Nights spent talking in the beds on the screened upstairs porch. Playing checkers and dominoes with Grandmother. Taking a bath in the old footed bathtub. The iron baby bed still made up in the upstairs sitting room. The only downstairs toilet in the small space under the back stairway, installed there because Papa didn’t understand “crapping in the house and eating outside” and he didn’t want a “privy” in the house. Hot sunny days in the garden digging up potatoes and carrots. Each of us that passed here carried away imprints and our own memories.
After Grandmother’s death, the house was sold. I drove past it from time to time over the years, noticing changes. The first people who moved in seemed to have invited many other people to live there with them. Well, it was a big house, but it only had one bathroom upstairs and the new one downstairs built when Grandmother had to move down because she couldn’t climb stairs anymore. After all, she was 97 when she died.
Then, in 2021, the house became national news. An accountant for the local bakery and his wife had moved in and remodeled it. Over the following years I noticed an iron fence around the property. That was new, as well as a greenhouse built in the backyard. Multiple cars were parked on the old garden area. The house got a new paint job, thankfully still white. Then one day after I had moved away, I got a call from one of my sons, who had gone to school with the accountant’s daughter, I learned what all the news was about. The embezzlement of 17 million dollars, discovered by a secretary when the accountant and his family were on a trip. The house, seized by legal means then went up for sale. My son and his wife, who was a real estate broker at the time asked me if I wanted to go see it. Well, yes.
It was air-conditioned. That was new. The stairway was carpeted and there was a new fancy kitchen. The accountant’s furniture apparently was being sold with the house. Not my taste, but expensive. I saw they had kept the same light fixtures that were original to the house but so many other additions. The upstairs screened porch we had all played on was still not closed in but now contained exercise equipment. Outside, they had not built a new garage for their cars. I found that odd, but learning a lot of the story I understood why they didn’t want to do too much building on the property. Understandably, in the lurid aftermath of the viral stories about embezzlement, deceit and illicit extravagance, the Tinkle family was forgotten. But not by me.
