Uncle Fred

Uncle Fred was one of a kind. He was very shy about telling me ( a teenage) anything personal or even touching on anything personal. I adored him. I stayed with him and My bedridden Grandmother, who had had a stroke and was paralyzed on her right side and her speech was slurred, during all my summers from the time I was about 14 until Gammy died in 1954. I enjoyed her company tremendously. She had a lot to offer even though she could not get out of bed. She could still tell me how to cook and clean and iron and such. She was a stickler about ironing. The sheets had to be ironed also. What a pain this was. I used flatirons which were heated on the cookstove. The heat was sometimes unbearable, but I never argued with her. My bedsheets DID NOT GET IRONED!! She didn't know that, though. She was a lot of fun and loved hearing me sing. I used to sit in the kitchen and sing all the songs I could think of and knew she was listening.

I went out one day to the store with some friends and got a few things we needed for the house. The store was overtown and we lived in the lower part of town. We had to walk across a swinging bridge to get overtown. This was always a fascination to me.

Anyway, when I returned from town I had things to put away and opened the pantry door to put stuff in there and there stood Uncle Fred with a book called "Tobacco Road". I knew the book wasn't proper reading material for me but had sneaked a peak at it anyway so knew what it was all about. He jumped a foot high and turned 40 different colors of red and came out of that pantry with the book stuffed in his pocket and I was so totally embarrassed to find him in the closet with the light on that I about passed out. After a bit we were both laughing so hard. He hugged me and said he was sorry for scaring me. He would never have hurt my feelings for anything. I never did see that book again. Later Gammy complained to me about him using the pantry light to read with. I never did know how she knew that.