Papaw and Me

In these trou­bled times, mem­o­ry reels of my mother’s father keep rolling through my mind. He lived through the 1918 influen­za pan­dem­ic in Keo­kee, Vir­ginia, a coal-min­ing town where kids call their grand­fa­ther Papaw.

When I was lit­tle, Papaw and Nan­ny lived near our house on route 60 just west of York­town. One of my ear­li­est mem­o­ries is danc­ing with him in their liv­ing room to songs like But­tons and Bows and Swing­ing on a Star played on a crank-up Vic­tro­la. He picked me up and waltzed me around the room with soft laugh­ter that came from deep in his chest.

When I turned surly and lazy in my teen years, he tried to lift me out of my funk with heart­felt talks, but I wouldn’t lis­ten to him. I wouldn’t lis­ten to any­one.

After we moved away to White Hall and I out­grew my sour atti­tude, Papaw and Nan­ny came to vis­it us. I worked on the Maupin farm that sum­mer. On a hot as hell day we baled hay in a field beside the par­son­age. When I came home at quit­ting time, Papaw met me at the door. “I saw you out there, boy,” he said, smil­ing. “For a long time I thought you wouldn’t amount to any­thing, but it looks like I was wrong.” That moment meant a lot to me then. It still does.

Me with my Nan­ny & Paw­paw

When he retired from his job as a car­pen­ter for the Navy’s Cheatham Annex, he and Nan­ny moved to St. Cloud, Flori­da. On UVA’s spring break, I rolled down to Day­tona Beach for the annu­al col­lege stu­dent wild times. Mid­week, I took a break from the crazi­ness and drove over to St. Cloud.

That night after sup­per Papaw sat in a rock­ing chair on the porch, smok­ing his pipe, and we talked eas­i­ly for a while. Then he fell silent. I felt some­thing heavy com­ing, so I kept qui­et.

He cleared his throat. “Your mom­ma told me how good you’re doing in school,” he said. “She says it’s because you’re smart, but I sus­pect it’s got more to do with hard work.” He paused. Crick­ets sang in the bermu­da grass. A car coast­ed down the street. He looked over at me. “You try real hard now, but that hasn’t always been your nature.”

I looked away, uncom­fort­able about the times I’d dis­ap­point­ed him.

“I want you to promise me you won’t slide back,” he said. “Promise me you’ll always try hard.”

I kept my head down, not sure I would keep such a promise. He wait­ed me out. “I’ll try,” I final­ly said in a small voice.

He stared at me for a few moments, then resumed smok­ing and rock­ing. “I’m proud of you, boy,” he said gen­tly.

I didn’t know it then, but some­time before we had that talk the doc­tors found can­cer in his knee. They want­ed to ampu­tate his leg. He wouldn’t agree to it. Over the next two years the can­cer metas­ta­sized.

He had only a few months left when my broth­er and I drove down to St. Cloud. Papaw didn’t know we were com­ing. He was sit­ting in the liv­ing room talk­ing to my uncle when we walked in. He grabbed my arm, pulled me down to him, and pressed his cheek against mine. “I thought I’d nev­er see you again,” he choked out. It was the only time I ever saw him cry.

He took his last breath in bed at home with Mom by his side. Nan­ny had lost her will to live and had been hos­pi­tal­ized short­ly before his death. She died a month lat­er.

Research­ing my mother’s fam­i­ly tree decades after they passed away, I came across doc­u­men­ta­tion of a mar­riage in Keo­kee in 1917 between a man with Papaw’s name and Una Mae Col­lier. Nanny’s name was Martha Alice Huff, so I thought there had to be some mis­take, but the records called out Papaw’s cor­rect birth date and occu­pa­tion as a coal min­er. I dug deep­er and found a birth reg­istry that said this cou­ple had a son, Ralph, in 1918. The details about the father fit Papaw.

Keo­kee, Old Coal Com­pa­ny Camp

These records sur­prised me, but it was the death cer­tifi­cates that took my breath away. The infant son died ear­ly in 1918. Una Mae per­ished in Octo­ber of that year dur­ing the sec­ond wave of the influen­za pan­dem­ic. She was 18 years old. Papaw lost a sis­ter two weeks lat­er. The fol­low­ing year his moth­er fell prey to the third wave of the virus.

Papaw’s father sur­vived the pan­dem­ic and strug­gled on for a decade, but he couldn’t live with the grief. The coroner’s report list­ed his cause of death as a self-inflict­ed gun­shot wound to the head.

Anoth­er death cer­tifi­cate revealed one last heart-break­ing blow. After Papaw found Nan­ny and some­how sum­moned the strength to rebuild his life, their third child, Jack, died of spinal menin­gi­tis.

None of this made sense to me. I couldn’t rec­on­cile these dev­as­tat­ing tragedies with Papaw’s steady opti­mism. The man I had known and loved was con­tent, serene, hap­py.

Mom

Mom was in her eight­ies when I asked her about the records I had found. “Is any of this true?”

“It’s all true. Dad­dy nev­er spoke of it, but peo­ple in Keo­kee told me about those days. They said Una Mae was his child­hood sweet­heart. She and Dad­dy had only been mar­ried a lit­tle over a year when she and the baby died.” She shook her head sad­ly. “Dad­dy was real close to his mom­ma, too.”

I asked about Papaw’s father. “I was a lit­tle girl when he killed him­self. I remem­ber Dad­dy cry­ing about it and say­ing over and over again, ‘He final­ly went and did it.’”

“How did Papaw live with so much loss?”

“I don’t know, but he kept going some­how.” She gazed past me into the dis­tance. “Dad­dy was real strong.”

I wait­ed a respect­ful time and then said, “Tell me about Jack.”

Mom said her broth­er came down with a rag­ing fever. The doc­tor told them there was lit­tle hope of sur­vival and quar­an­tined the fam­i­ly in the house. Papaw nev­er left Jack’s bed­side, wip­ing him down with ice and squeez­ing cold water from a cloth into his mouth, but the fever wouldn’t break. He died at dawn, a few days after his eleventh birth­day.

“You remind me of Jack some­times,” Mom said in an off-hand­ed way. “You resem­ble him some, and he was good in school, like you.”

That casu­al com­ment sank in slow­ly.

When our first grand­child was born, her par­ents asked me what I want­ed her to call me. We live in Cal­i­for­nia, about as far away geo­graph­i­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly from Appalachia as you can get. Some­times peo­ple look at me fun­ny when one of my grand­kids calls me Papaw, but it always gives me a warm feel­ing inside.

Dur­ing this pan­dem­ic, I’m some­times fear­ful about the future and anx­ious for my fam­i­ly. I can only speak to my chil­dren and grand­kids from a dis­tance or tech­no­log­i­cal­ly, and the CDC says hug­ging them might kill me. My clos­est social con­tacts are Drs. Fau­ci and Birx. The high point of the day is walk­ing the dogs while decked out in haz­mat mask and gloves. Ruth­less­ly shel­ter­ing in place, I’m simul­ta­ne­ous­ly scared and bored.

That’s how I feel in my weak moments, but most of the time I’m okay. I have an advan­tage. When my spir­it fal­ters, I call to mind the promise I made, and I try hard to meet the stan­dard set a cen­tu­ry ago by the Papaw who came before me. Despite all his suf­fer­ing, he was a good old guy with an easy smile, unfail­ing­ly kind and patient. I nev­er saw him angry; I nev­er heard him raise his voice; and I only saw him cry once. When he was alive, I took his good humor for grant­ed. Today, I’m inspired by it.

Roger Miller

I sang to my kids at bed­time when they were lit­tle. It start­ed with my son. I tried to get home each night in time to read him a sto­ry before tuck­ing him in. After a while, our lit­tle rou­tine began to feel mechan­i­cal.   

I thought singing him a song might jazz up our bed­time rit­u­al, but I’m not much of a singer. My moth­er said I couldn’t “car­ry a tune in a buck­et.” That was gen­er­al­ly true, but in high school I dis­cov­ered I could some­times find the buck­et by singing along with a tune on the radio when I was alone in my car and no one was lis­ten­ing.

I nev­er told any­one about my car radio sing-alongs and I nev­er sang in pub­lic for fear I’d wan­der off key and make a fool of myself, but I con­sid­ered tak­ing the chance with my five-year-old son in the pri­va­cy of his bed­room. The prob­lem was find­ing a song I could sing that would be fun for him to lis­ten to.

King of the Road

I reject­ed all the slow and sap­py lul­la­bies. I was look­ing for pizazz. Where the bough breaks and the like didn’t have enough juice. Then I thought about my old radio songs. My high school senior year, Roger Miller released King of the Road. It’s about a hobo rid­ing the rails to Ban­gor, Maine, wear­ing a worn out suit and shoes and smok­ing old sto­gies. He’s a man of means by no means, but he sees him­self as a king of the road. The lyrics are fun, and the tune is catchy.

The Lovin’ Spoon­ful

Back in the day, I could sing that song with Roger Miller’s smooth voice and gui­tar chords cov­er­ing up my mis­takes, but I didn’t know if I could sing it solo with no music. So I prac­ticed. I mem­o­rized the lyrics, locked the door to what I hoped was our sound­proof bath­room, and rehearsed. Again and again. After about twen­ty tries, I was no Roger Miller, but I wasn’t com­plete­ly buck­et­less either.   

I was ner­vous when the time came to face the music. I read the bed­time sto­ry to my son, set the book down, took a deep breath, and start­ed singing. My voice cracked here and there, but I fin­ished strong. At the end, my son was smil­ing ear to ear. He asked me to sing it again that night and the next night. And the next. For weeks.

After a while, I had to expand my reper­toire to keep him inter­est­ed. I picked out a cou­ple of The Lovin Spoonful’s songs from the 1960’s. Jug Band Music is about a guy down in Savan­nah eat­ing cream and banana on a day so hot it made him faint. He start­ed to see things as they ain’t, so his rel­a­tives called the doc­tor. “Just give him jug band music,” the doc­tor said. “It seems to make him feel just fine.”

Zal Yanovsky, Bald Head­ed Lena’s Boyfriend

Bald Head­ed Lena is about a girl with a cue ball head that’s hard as lead. It’s so big she can’t wear no wig, but the singer has a thing for her any­way because, well, his alter­na­tives aren’t that great: Messy Bessy, Tricky Tessy, Sil­ly Dil­ly, Lyin Lil­ly. Lizzy’s so dizzy she went and lost her mind. Ella Mae might have saved the day but she’s deaf, dumb, and blind.  

By the time my daugh­ters came along, I’d mem­o­rized enough songs to per­form a low-grade lounge act in a cheap hotel. I sang The Big Bopper’s Chan­til­ly Lace (Oh, Baby, you know what I like!), Six­teen Tons, Day­dream, and a few oth­er stray cats and dogs. They liked those songs, but the big hits were the first three I learned, and of those, King of the Road was the hands-down champ.

That song became my favorite, too. After bob­bing and weav­ing all day to sur­vive in a big high-pow­ered law firm, the stress and ten­sion would drain off as I sang about rid­ing to Ban­gor in the third box­car on the mid­night train. It seemed to anchor my soul in stormy seas. I don’t recall a sin­gle night when singing that song to my kids failed to lift my mood.

Big Bop­per

One of the grave injus­tices in life is that your chil­dren grow up. First, they won’t let you hold their hand. Then they want to play with their friends instead of you. Before you know it, you’re tour­ing a col­lege cam­pus, and they ask you to walk far enough behind so the col­lege kids won’t know they’re with you. And some­time way before that, you don’t get to tuck them into bed any more.

I was mourn­ing our emp­ty nest when a Lath­am senior part­ner died. He was a titan among lit­i­ga­tors, the lead tri­al lawyer in the biggest case our firm had ever han­dled. At his funer­al, his adult daugh­ter spoke to a packed sanc­tu­ary. “It will prob­a­bly come as a sur­prise to the lawyers at Lath­am,” she said, “but when we were chil­dren, Dad­dy sang to us when he tucked us into bed.” I talked to her after the ser­vice. “It was a spe­cial gift,” she said, “and we loved him all the more for it.”  

Danc­ing Under the Lights

Her words helped me adjust to the adult­hood of my chil­dren. They’ve grown up, I told myself, but maybe those spe­cial times with them when they were kids will live on in their mem­o­ries.

A few years after that funer­al, my old­er daugh­ter chose King of the Road as the song for the father-daugh­ter dance at her wed­ding.  The cer­e­mo­ny and recep­tion were out­doors on a ranch in a canyon near Mal­ibu. We danced to King of the Road at night under lights strung in Cal­i­for­nia live oaks. As we twirled, I sang a few lines to her about worn out shoes and fat sto­gies. I was out of prac­tice and off key, but as she looked up at me with sparkling eyes, her smile said she didn’t care. For a few pre­cious moments, she was my lit­tle girl again.  

My younger daugh­ter chore­o­graphed our steps for the father-daugh­ter dance at her wed­ding. We marched to the cen­ter of the dance floor, I in my tuxe­do, she in her flow­ing gown. Our faces were seri­ous and stern. I stood straight, shoul­ders square, and bowed to her. She did a low sweep­ing curt­sy to me. That was the band’s cue to launch into a brassy melody and for the lead singer to belt out, “Bald head­ed Lena/Has any­body seen her/Cute as she can be.” As we hooked arms and danced to the rag­time tune, my younger daughter’s imp­ish grin told me she was still my lit­tle girl, too.

Rag­time Melody

I was con­cen­trat­ing on my steps through most of that dance, but about half-way through our rou­tine I caught a glimpse of my son at the head table, sport­ing a big grin. He’s grown up and has his own kids now, I thought, but he’ll always remem­ber those nights I sang to him when he was a lit­tle boy.    

As I’ve grown old­er, oppor­tu­ni­ties for encore per­for­mances have arisen, and I’ve learned the hard way the down­side of screw­ing them up.  

A while back, I put one of our grand­sons to bed for an after­noon nap. When I fin­ished read­ing his sto­ry, he asked me to sing him a song. Twen­ty-five years out of prac­tice, I sang a rusty ver­sion of King of the Road. The smile I expect­ed wasn’t there at the end. “You messed up the words, Papaw,” he said. “Mom­my sings it bet­ter.”

“I’m sor­ry, Bud­dy-Beau,” I said, feel­ing ambushed by my unex­pect­ed com­peti­tor. “I’ll do bet­ter next time.”

I prac­ticed and I did bet­ter next time, but I still wasn’t as good as Mom­my. It ain’t over yet, though.

Liq­uid Bulk Stor­age Ter­mi­nal, San Pedro

The client was a liq­uid bulk stor­age ter­mi­nal in San Pedro, Cal­i­for­nia. A faulty pipe cou­pling spilled twen­ty-two gal­lons of an acetate chem­i­cal com­pound at the foot of a huge tank. Tech­ni­cians cleaned it up quick­ly but not before the wind blew nox­ious fumes into a near­by trail­er park. The res­i­dents filed com­plaints with the county’s air pol­lu­tion agency about the hor­rif­ic stench, and the agency charged the ter­mi­nal with a crim­i­nal mis­de­meanor for caus­ing a pub­lic nui­sance.

I was a fresh­ly mint­ed mem­ber of the bar when the case fell on my desk. My job was to appear at the arraign­ment and plead it out. “This’ll be an easy first court appear­ance for you,” my Lath­am super­vis­ing attor­ney said. “Meet with the pros­e­cu­tor before the hear­ing. Tell him you’ll plead nolo con­tendere (no con­test). Try to nego­ti­ate a fine under a thou­sand bucks, but any­thing up to two grand is okay. The judge will rub­ber stamp what­ev­er the pros­e­cu­tor agrees to.”

“What if the pros­e­cu­tor won’t agree?”

“He’ll agree. Pros­e­cu­tors hate these piss-ant cas­es. So do the judges.”

I arrived at San Pedro Munic­i­pal Court ear­ly and found the pros­e­cu­tor in the hall­way out­side the court­room. A short guy with black hair that fell to his shoul­ders,

LA Coun­ty Muni Court – San Pedro Branch

he was as inex­pe­ri­enced as I was. He sneered when I offered to plead nolo and pay 500 dol­lars. Fash­ion­ing him­self as a young Ralph Nad­er on a cru­sade to destroy cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca, he refused to agree to any­thing.

I was in a state of semi-pan­ic when the judge took the bench. In his six­ties, port­ly with dark bags under his eyes and a reced­ing hair­line, he asked me to enter a plea.

“Nolo con­tendere, your hon­or,” I said, my stom­ach bathed in acid.

Young Ralph Nad­er object­ed, stat­ing he want­ed to try the case to a guilty ver­dict.

The judge looked at him like he was crazy. “I’ll accept the defendant’s plea. What fine have you agreed to?”

“We have no agree­ment,” Ralph snapped, obvi­ous­ly miffed that the judge wouldn’t go to tri­al. “The dis­trict demands a fine of twen­ty-two thou­sand dol­lars, a thou­sand dol­lars per gal­lon spilled.”

I almost faint­ed.

Twen­ty-two thou­sand smack­ers would con­sti­tute a world record fine for a pub­lic nui­sance mis­de­meanor. I’d nev­er live it down. “But this was an acci­dent,” I said, my voice crack­ing. “The com­pa­ny cleaned up the spill imme­di­ate­ly. Any­thing over five hun­dred dol­lars would be a trav­es­ty.”

The judge threw up his hands. “You’re miles apart. How am I sup­posed to decide this?” Frown­ing, he paged through the case file. “I have no idea what this chem­i­cal smells like.  One of these cit­i­zen com­plaints says vom­it. Anoth­er says ran­cid milk. Some cre­ative soul describes it as burned ass.” He held up one of the forms to us. “This one says human feces, using the four-let­ter word.” He slapped it down on the bench and glared at Ralph and me. “I can’t rule until I’ve smelled this chem­i­cal for myself. Col­lect a sam­ple from your client, Mr. Oder. We’ll recon­vene tomor­row morn­ing.”

Stunned, I limped back to my office. “I didn’t think it was pos­si­ble to screw up a mis­de­meanor arraign­ment,” my Lath­am men­tor said. “You’ve proved me wrong.”

Young Ralph’s Hero

The client’s in-house coun­sel was equal­ly impressed. “When the judge gets a whiff of this stuff, he’ll give us the death penal­ty.”

He brought a four ounce vial of the chem­i­cal to my office. When I was a teenag­er, I went rab­bit hunt­ing with a friend. His bea­gles caught a skunk. The dogs retched. My friend and I did, too. The four ounce sam­ple of the acetate com­pound smelled worse than skunk juice. I agreed with in-house coun­sel. Death by asphyx­i­a­tion in California’s gas cham­ber seemed like a fit­ting penal­ty for spilling twen­ty-two gal­lons of this stuff.

I placed the vial inside a card­board box and jammed pack­ing mate­r­i­al around it in a vain attempt to con­tain the fumes. The next morn­ing, unsus­pect­ing vic­tims I passed as I walked down the hall to the court­room made sour faces and stopped to look at the heels of their shoes.

The judge want­ed to inspect the sam­ple in cham­bers. Ralph and I sat down across the desk from him. I unpacked the vial, pulled the stop­per, and held it out to the judge. “Be care­ful, your hon­or. It’s pow­er­ful.”

He stalled out two feet from the lip of the vial, clamped both hands over his nose and mouth, fell back in his chair, and fran­ti­cal­ly cranked open the win­dow behind him.

Quan­ti­co Marine Corps Base, Main Gate

“Twen­ty-two thou­sand dol­lars!” Ralph crowed tri­umphant­ly.

So this is what I gave up a reward­ing career in teach­ing for, I thought, oppos­ing this jerk in a futile effort to per­suade a judge twen­ty-two gal­lons of human feces doesn’t stink to high heav­en. Wel­come to the prac­tice of law.

I put the vial back inside the card­board box and braced myself to face the judge’s wrath.

It didn’t come. Instead, he gazed out the win­dow somber­ly. A full minute passed. He didn’t move. He didn’t say any­thing. His behav­ior seemed strange, but he was the judge so I kept qui­et. Ralph did the same.

The judge final­ly turned to me. “I can’t believe your name is Oder,” he said.

That was close to the last thing I expect­ed him to say, but with a name like mine you learn to roll with the punch­es. “Yes, well, it’s a safe bet I won’t name my first child Acetate,” I said.

Mary Wash­ing­ton, Fred­er­icks­burg, VA

The judge chuck­led, then stared at me pen­sive­ly. “How long have you been with Lath­am?” he asked.

“Since June.”

“Where are you from?”

“Vir­ginia.”

He perked up. “Beau­ti­ful coun­try. I was sta­tioned at Quan­ti­co in the Marines.”

“I grew up south of there, near Char­lottesville.”

Mon­ti­cel­lo, Thomas Jefferson’s Home, near Char­lottesville

“I dat­ed a girl at Mary Wash­ing­ton from Char­lottesville. She showed me around Mon­ti­cel­lo, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia.”

“I went to UVA. Under­grad­u­ate and law school.”

“Spec­tac­u­lar cam­pus. The colo­nial archi­tec­ture, the man­i­cured grounds, the moun­tains in the back­ground. You must have loved it there.”

“I did.”

“Why the hell did you move out here?”

“To join Lath­am.”

He nod­ded, a wist­ful look on his face. “I see.”

“Shouldn’t we be dis­cussing the amount of the fine?” Ralph said.

The judge looked at Ralph like he was the one who smelled bad. “The fine,” he said. “Yes, of course.” He gave me a sad look and sighed. “I’ll rule from the bench,” he said.

UVA Rotun­da and Lawn

We went into the court­room. The judge took the bench and the clerk called our case. “The defen­dant will pay a fine of one hun­dred fifty dol­lars,” the judge said. He rapped the gav­el, stepped down, and exit­ed the court­room through a back door.

Ralph looked like he’d been hit in the face with a base­ball bat.

I was sur­prised, too, but on reflec­tion, I under­stood. The judge presided over noth­ing but small claims. A thought­ful man, he was bored out of his mind. Our con­ver­sa­tion took him back to his youth and Vir­ginia, a time and place he much pre­ferred over the present. I went there with him. Young Ralph resent­ed the diver­sion and dragged us back to the court­room, there­by deft­ly snatch­ing defeat from the jaws of vic­to­ry.

Back at Lath­am, the reac­tion was mixed. The fine was spec­tac­u­lar­ly low, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing the judge got a snoot full of skunk juice, but it took me two court appear­ances to get there so the legal fees were dou­ble. A mediocre result in a “piss-ant” case.

My first court appear­ance was noth­ing to brag about, but its lessons stayed with me for forty years: When the mer­its are com­plete­ly against you, the best argu­ment may be no argu­ment; and in every case there’s more at play than the mer­its.