I left the office early this afternoon to pick up my uncle at a rental car place, it was near what he referred to as “the best fried chicken in the world” (Babe’s) and he said that if I had time, we should stop in for a piece. We went in and my Uncle asked for a menu saying “that every place in the world has a menu somewhere.” After saying that “there is too damned little light in here”, “I’m too damned old to read this”, and finally maneuvering at the correct angle to a window, he was able to read the menu and passed on to me the words, “Christopher, never grow old” before ordering. He decided to order a bunch of chicken and two pies. When they told that they couldn’t give him a whole pie without 24 hours notice, he asked me to calculate how many pieces were in a whole pie and was about to order the equivalent of two pies in pieces, but added up the cost and decided to settle for only 4 pieces.

He then set his old beat-up Chick-fil-a cup with a QT cup inside of it on the counter and asked that they fill it with iced tea. The girls behind the counter obliged and he thanked them and stepped out for a smoke.

About 20 minutes later, our order was ready and we returned to my car where he placed a CD on the dash and asked if I would like to listen to John Gary, a singer “with an amazing voice who died too soon” (he did have an amazing voice, but he actually died at age 65). I told him I would be delighted to listen to John Gary and soon the sounds of old Irish folk songs and ’40s-’50s style Big Band instrumentation filled the car. We spent the drive home talking about the music of Stephen Foster and how no one in generations beyond my uncle’s would even know any of his references. On the way to the house he shares with my grandmother, he called my Dad to let him know that he was bringing “chicken” for dinner.

When we got to the house, He asked me if I’d like to continue listening to John Gary, and when I said yes, he offered to loan me the CD for a bit. I stopped for a few minutes to admire his new truck, he opened the doors proudly and told me that “these things are all aluminum these days, so I need to make something to protect the bed and keep it from getting dinged up.”
My parents weren’t there and were still a ways off, so I popped in to say “Hi” to Grandma and Uncle Walter insisted that I try the green beans, a piece of chicken, and some pie. I told him that I didn’t want to take pie away from him and he said that it was “just payment for my services”, I thanked him and started eating a piece.

Between spoonfuls of serving Grandma, he turned and said “Daddy (my Grandpa), was always proud to offer his hospitality to anyone who came by, no one left hungry, because he truly knew what it was like to go without. When he was a boy in Quannah,” at this point Grandma interrupts protesting his liberal distribution of the “incredible green beans”. “When he was a boy in Quannah,” I prompted. “Yeah,” he replied, “he told me this story of when he was a boy in Quannah, must have been about ’34 or so. He would have been about 12, they were digging these large ditches, and just slaughtering cattle and throwing them in. The idea was to drive livestock prices up, it didn’t work,” he added, “like most of the New Deal plans.” He continued, “Daddy remembered leaning on the fence with a few other boys his age, with their stomachs gnawing on their bones and wondering why the men from the government were throwing away ‘so much good food’ instead of letting them have some of it.”

“That kind of thing stays with you” I replied softly. “Yes, yes, it does,” he said matching my tone “and that is why Daddy never voted Democrat a day in his life and had no love for any Democrats, but particularly Franklin Roosevelt”. I finished washing my spoon in the sink, my pie long gone thanked him for his hospitality and said that I had to get some work done. I walked out towards the door, he followed me out and told me that sometime, we should go for a ride in his new truck, “no one has ever ridden in the passenger seat” he said. I told him “I’d like that” and got in my car and drove off into the night listening to John Gary and thinking about two worlds that are rapidly fading from view. The first, is Grandma’s house, with my Uncle’s interesting conversation and old-time manners, and the second, the world of that little 12-year-old boy, a boy whom I only knew as an old man, a man who would never withhold hospitality from anyone.