THE CONSTRAINED ROMANCE OF UNCLE ERNEST
Pap's conviction that family members should not meddle in affairs of the heart was on his mind, and showed again in the following letter. It was written long after the death of his older brother, J. Ernest Durham, generally referred to as "Uncle Ernest," but the memory of a romance impeded by an overzealous family was still vivid.
April 25, 1944
Dear Frank: . . . Long, long ago I wanted a diamond like you want a bride. And so, I bought and sold calves, colts and horses; hauled campers to and from Eel River Falls; graded the old ball park at DePauw; etc., etc., and worked in staid, dependable, conservative, old Russellville Bank at $2 per week & board and clothes (I'll say it was conservative—Uncle Ernest started it in 1893 and had his first note loss in 1907. . . ). I spliced my money, went to Walk's (the old tune jeweler at Indianapolis) and bought myself one. They said it would be a good investment. They were only half right. It was an investment . . . Then the ring and I went on to college, and time went on.
Uncle Ernest liked the looks of said diamond—but not the price— and from time to time would borrow it. He had smaller fingers and would wrap white grocer's twine around the base until the ring about fit; then go to the Bankers' State Convention at Indianapolis, where, in trying to be a good fellow, he would eat a lot of cheese, pickles, blind robins, drink maybe a couple bottles of beer, and come home with an upset stomach and a hell of a headache. Thence to Billy Gardner's drug store for a new box of acetanilide.
Eventually, Frank Kennedy's girl went to some woman's college in Illinois to take music. Her teacher was a spinster of questionable age, named Colgate, from New York, New York. It was claimed, either by her or Frank's wife, she was a kinswoman to the dental cream and dirt-removing family of that name who have the big clock in Jersey across from New York City. Mother and Aunt Margaret were inclined to doubt it. Anyway, the teacher came home with her pupil at the end of the year for a visit. Uncle Ernest was invited down for supper next night.
That took a good deal of preparation. He spent most of the day away from the Bank getting ready. Frank Kennedy, the pupil's father, and host of the evening, was our leading barber. He cut Uncle Ernest's hair and shaved him. Uncle Ernest filled the galvanized wash tub extra full and took a thorough bath behind the kitchen stove. That took off about everything except the ink stains on his fingers. Mrs. Forgey, who with her husband, Jim Forgey, kept house for Uncle Ernest, recommended lemon juice, or maybe it was green tomato juice, for finger ink stains, but said she couldn't do anything about the ink stains on his best suit which she was cleaning and pressing. Uncle Ernest had won a bottle of cologne or Florida Water in some sort of a shooting gallery attached to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show at the Chicago World's Fair in '93. He hadn't used much of it, so he doused a little of that here and there. . . All told they did a pretty fair job of grooming. The evening was a success and much praise was given Mrs. Kennedy's salt-rising bread and culinary art.
Uncle Ernest had a Model T of several years back. He had used it hard, and one day, trying to head-off a calf in the barn lot out at the old home farm east of town, had run through the gate with the door open. The door hit the gate post and was torn off. He had to tie it shut with baling wire. That meant he had to keep it shut and get in from the other side all the time. Most of the fenders held their respective places by virtue of more baling wire. He had also misjudged the height of some limbs on a tree up in the north pasture, and torn a hole in the rubberized textile top that leaked when it rained anything above a heavy dew. The back end of the coupe was loaded with an assortment of axes, grubbing hoes, pitch forks, spades, post hole diggers and so forth. Besides that, it had the mud of three counties plastered inside and out, and the upholstery showed sizable patches of cotton wadding. The car in general looked bad enough, and entirely too tough for social usage, but the thing that disqualified it absolutely for his impending purpose was that he had parked it overnight under a blackbird roost, and anybody who had done that in mulberry and cherry time knows what I mean.
Uncle Ernest had anticipated the visit by swapping his Ford for my new chummy little Saxon roadster—35 miles to the gallon—and wherein, a woman companion couldn't keep very far away from you.
Their first trip was decorous and above suspicion. They went to the Rockville Chautauqua to hear William Jennings Bryan, and Cole Younger the famous outlaw and bank robber, lecture on "Crime doesn't pay." They got in by 9 p.m.