Grandpa and Uncle Remus

By BRUCE WALKER Columnist

Grandpa could do anything, including controlling the weather. He would step out on the front porch and look toward the eastern sky, right at daybreak, wring his hands, and pronounce, no rain today.” The next morning the same ritual and he would state matter of fact, ‘We’re not going to the fields today, it is coming a downpour.”

Sure enough, his prognostications were right on the mark. Grandpa did not need a smartphone, he was smart enough on his own, and what he did not know, Grandma did.

I held him in awe, as I grew older, I realized he had limitations, but just barely. With his hands he built a barn, tightened barbed wire, or gently held a newborn, crying, grandchild, quietening as he held the baby to his shoulder. Grandpa was a man of few words, but his actions told his story. A small farm in St. Clair County, AL., and a job at the cotton mill in Pell City provided for his thirteen children and whoever else needed a port in the storm.

One of those individuals, we called Uncle Remus, escaped a storm of his own making, and took cover at Grandpa’s port. Money was scarce but beans, corn and meat were plentiful. Remus rode up to Grandpa and Grandma’s house on an Indian Chief motorcycle, he was 50 years old when he came. I was standing on the porch when he arrived in a cloud of dust, smoke, and noise. With a fulllength leather coat hanging to his knees, hardshell helmet, aviator goggles, gloves and a bright scarf; I could not tell if it was a man or an alien from another planet. By the time Uncle Remus removed his attire, Grandpa had arrived; they took the measure of each other, stared for a moment, then the pull of kinship brought them to an embrace.

Grandpa and Remus were cousins, who had not seen each other since the funeral of their grandfather

25 years ago. Grandpa turned to me and said,” This is your kin, you can call him Uncle Remus.”

Grandpa, without hesitation, offered him a small 2-room cottage, in the back forty, to live in and a plot of land to farm. In the spring of ’56, he broke ground for his first corn crop. Uncle Remus flourished with his newfound family connections. This began our friendship, Uncle Remus treated all of us young kids as equals, and regaled us with his adventures, with no children, and never married, he traveled the countryside hopping freight trains from Florida to California.

Nearly every evening after supper and Bible reading, all of us kids would hurry through the pasture to Remus’s cottage. Sitting on his front porch, we would gather around him in anticipation of what adventure he would tell next. This was much better than the radio or the little brown boxed, round screen black and white TV at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s house. Our eyes were as big as pie plates when he told us of the one game he played professionally, with the Chicago Cubs, playing in the right field position. Remus said, “I was running for a popup fly, jumped to catch the ball, and crashed into the backfield fence, had it in my glove for a split second, then hit the fence, dropped the ball, and broke my left arm, Babe Ruth (we all gasped) rounded the bases for a home run. Babe looked straight at me, I was holding my arm, as he touched second base, later he came by our locker room to check on me.”

We sat in rapt attention, if I had paid as close attention in school as I did to Remus’s tales, I would be a genius by now (ok, that’s an exaggeration).

On the porch around his rocking chair, he stared across the cornfield, summoning up his memories, “I wrestled BAM BAM Bigelow in 1935 in Evanston, Indiana, the crowd was revved up, Bam Bam was leading in the standings for the World Championship Title. In the 7th round, he had me in a

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