Authors: Mark Dunn
IBID (2 page)
And Jonathan apparently did.
Later, a four- or five-year-old Jonathan joined milkman Roddy Chalmers on his early morning rounds. In an interview with Roddy’s great granddaughter, former exotic dancer Trixie Twirl, I learned that Roddy quickly developed a paternal fondness for Jonathan and sought to hire him even at this young age as milkman’s apprentice to spare the boy a life of exploitation at the hands of unscrupulous carnival sideshow proprietors “just waiting in the wings for the lad to reach an age at which he might be put on permanent tour and display.” Following my interview with Ms. Twirl, she sent me several pages of additional material on her great-grandfather who she claimed invented low-fat chocolate milk. Her thoughts are excerpted below:
“I know that the story of my great grandfather will constitute only the slightest of footnotes in your book, but I do want the record to show that there was someone early in the young child’s life who demonstrated a genuine and selfless concern for his well being. The fact that he did not succeed in preventing little Jonny from being swept into the demoralizing carnival life is no reflection upon the efforts my great grandfather made on the boy’s behalf. I have met few men in my life who have demonstrated such concern and compassion for a fellow human being. With only two exceptions, I believe that most men are snorting, rooting swine. The exceptions would be the following: my dentist who treats my mouth as a temple, and Harvey Spools, the man to whom I bore five beautiful babies before I boarded up my womb and moved to the convent
.”
7.
He sat on eggs like young Thomas Edison.
Matthias Huber,
Jonny of the Circus
, Great Americans Every Child Should Know, vol. 32 (Chicago: Pete the Patriot
Publications, 1968), 14. Huber reports that a full dozen eggs were crushed. Odger believes the figure to be closer to a dozen and a half. In any event, young Jonathan carried a mash of yolk and feathers on the seat of his trousers for the entire afternoon.
8.
“Father let me place our order.”
Jonathan Blashette,
Early Memories
, JBP. This particular trip to Claiborne’s General Groceries and Sundry Dry Goods must have, indeed, held special meaning for Jonathan. I found, carefully preserved among his childhood possessions, the very piece of recycled butcher paper upon which Emmaline had hastily scribbled shopping instructions to her husband. The letter sheds light on his parents’ close but no-nonsense relationship.
Addicus,
Jonathan has been looking forward to being a little man and placing the order for our weekly supplies for some time now. He takes the responsibility very seriously. So please do not let any of Claiborne’s mischievous spawn poke fun at him or, Heaven forbid, make light of his little extra leg. If he does a good job, or even if he doesn’t but shows conscientiousness in the task, please allow him to have some stick candy.
Here is the list. I have made a second copy for Jonny with pictures. Step back and do not interfere unless he makes a mistake that we cannot afford. You may exercise your good judgment here.
This week’s home needs:
1 lb. fatback
2 lbs. sausage
2 cans peaches in syrup
5 lbs. lard
10 lbs. flour
5 lbs. sugar
1 box Uneeda Biscuits
Small bag of ginger snaps (make sure they are not stale)
3 oz. nutmeg
3 oz. cinnamon (Xmas will be upon us soon and I need to be well stocked!)Bowel-stopper (paregoric)
Laudanum (If Mrs. Claiborne waits on you, she will make a jest, I predict it: “Lawdy!, Lawdy! Why would a tyke need laudanum?” I have asked Jonny not to respond with, “Because you are a pain in the bottom, Mrs. C!”)
Don’t forget your carpenter’s nails—I don’t remember which penny you are out of.
Can you do without chewing tobacco FOREVER?
Also, I need two yards of gingham and one yard of unbleached muslin, and two spools of white thread. I still need some nice lace for my collar, but I would prefer not to leave its purchase to my two men. I will get it next week when I am feeling better.
That’s all. And don’t forget about the stick candy. And don’t get into a game of dominoes and have the boy waiting around or wandering off.
Or checkers.
Emmaline
DUSTING OFF THE FAMILY ALBUM
1
Jonathan’s maternal grandfather Lutherfurd Plint was a quiet man.
Unlike his wife (Jonathan’s grandmother) Daisy Day whose stentorian voice has been likened to the trumpet of a female elephant during full rut. Nancy Nesmith,
Arkansas Fellow Travelers
(El Dorado, Arkansas: Ouachita Publishing, 1993).
2
The only tailor in a village of seamstresses, the dexterous Plint found it difficult at first to earn respect.
Ibid., 172
3
“I do not appreciate the ribbing. My oven mitts, hand puppets and omnibus conductor uniforms are finely crafted; no seamstress could do better.”
Ibid., 173.
4
“Please stop calling my husband ‘Itchy Stitchy Puppetman.’ It affronts him.”
Ibid. Other sources, notably Arkansas historians Lina Gilford and Jake Elliot (interviews with author), contend that the source of the nickname was Letty Humbree, a jilted lover from Lutherfurd’s youth, who was perhaps otherwise motivated by the fact that avid fruiter Lutherfurd, while usually generous with his figs, never saw fit to share them with her.
5
“Everybody gets figs but me.”
Letty was often heard to grumble her displeasure within convenient earshot of her neighbors. “First Itchy Stitchy stands me up at the altar, then he goes and marries that human foghorn and if that isn’t enough, he continues the abuse by denying me tasty, juicy figs.” Gilford and Elliot interviews.
6
Daisy Plint’s death came unexpectedly, like a fizzy-water
nose belch.
Nesmith,
Arkansas Fellow Travelers,
189.
7
Lutherfurd, however, lingered for days, his ultimate expiration well attended.
No one among the cluster of friends and relatives who attended Lutherfurd at his deathbed seems to be in agreement as to just what constituted the old man’s last words. I have listed some of the more colorful contentions, gathered by Ms. Nesmith, apparently for her own amusement. She reports with unusual candor that she takes them out and reads them for an “emotional lift” when her daughter Octavia comes home at dawn looking disheveled and reeking of “man-stench and cheap hooch.” Ibid., 189-191.
According to Strother Bump
: I suppose, my dear children, that these comprise my last words on this beautiful planet.…No. Perhaps not.…These then.…No. Wrong again.…Maybe I should just lie here and be quiet. Breathing is difficult as it is.…And yet you’re all looking at me as if you want me to say something profound.…Oh hello, Oveta. I didn’t see you there. Is that a new hat? It’s very.
According to Annabelle Goodman
: “Yes, doctor, the discomfort beneath the navel does radiate ventrally, with a slight shift from left to right away from the gastric obstru—”
According to Benjamina Tasslewhite
: “The light. It shimmers so beautifully. Look! Look! The arms of my Redeemer are open and beck—!”
According to Rev. George M. Plint
: “Satan, I come to you now, the bargain fulfilled.”
According to Cloris Plint
: You are all so precious to me. Every last one of you. Not her, though. Or him. Sorry. I
thought you were someone else. Nearly everyone. So precious. Such a treasure to a dying—”
According to Travis Gourd
: “I had no movement today or the day before. Or even the day before that. No, wait, I had a movement on Wednesday. Yes, I do recall it, although it wasn’t a totally successful evac—”
According to Corley Madison
: “Don’t talk to me. Talk to the puppet.”
According to Richard Threadweaver
: “And as to my burial clothes, I should like to be interred in an omnibus conductor’s uniform of my own stitching.”
According to Letta Hinkle, née Humbree
: “Don’t push. There are figs enough for everyone.”
8.
The deaths of her parents within only three months of one another left Emmaline in a protracted state of depression.
Emmaline Blashette to Laurel Malloy, 7 August, 1879, Jonathan Blashette Papers, Pettiville Library and Interpretive Center, Pettiville, Arkansas (hereafter abbreviated JBP).
9.
“My life is draped in black crepe. Addicus has to understand; I am not the girl I once was.”
Ibid. I submit that the lengthy period of mourning was cause for the postponement of the nuptials proposed by suitor Addicus Blashette around the time of the death of Emmaline’s mother Daisy. Indeed, rebuff from Emmaline may have been the reason that Addicus left for a lengthy sojourn through Utah which ultimately found the young man and his older brother, Chimp, working in silver mines until late in 1884.
Addicus and Chimp’s months out west are sadly under-documented. Nonetheless, there is a wonderful picaresque
quality to the few stories about the brothers that have come down to us orally. Jonathan’s first cousin Odger Blashette in one of my many interviews with him before his death at 102 (of a coital heart attack!) related one particularly colorful story in which Addicus and Chimp were given up for dead following a mine collapse which claimed a number of human lives in addition to the lives of seven mules, three caged canaries and one pet chicken named Pebbles. The two brothers dug themselves out from beneath a pile of rubble but were then forced to feel their way like moles through the blackness, eventually discovering the tiny beam of light that would represent their deliverance. The light, which turned out to be the deposit hole of one of the mining camp’s latrines, came and went depending on the timing of buttocks placement over the opening.
The brothers stumbled toward the light, nonetheless, and finally found themselves standing in the reeking muck and calling up to the one man who could not have heard them, Deaf Jones, who, in the throes of amoebic distress, proceeded to make their lot slightly more miserable. Nor did a visit to the outhouse by slow-witted Simpy Mathune guarantee expeditious rescue. His report that Deaf Jones had just shat out two full-grown men was angrily dismissed by the grieving villagers as “that same ol’ Simpy Lunacy.”
I don’t know whether to believe Odger or not (thus, the reason for the story’s relegation to these endnotes). Even though he seemed earnest, Odger had previously claimed—just as earnestly—that he had written the pop hit “Volaré” and was sole inventor of the adjustable spud wrench.
10.
The Plints and the Blashettes had been residents of Wilkinson County for fifty years.
According to Mary Jane Pucci in her
An Encapsulated History of Wilkinson County, Arkansas
(pamphlet, n.p., n.d.), Wilkinson County, Arkansas (like its sister counties in Georgia and Mississippi)
was named for the cowardly, venal and historically discredited General James Wilkinson (1757-1825) who first conspired with Aaron Burr in his acts of treason, then persecuted Burr to save his own neck. In 1979, the county, under pressure from local historians who likened their lot to that of one living in, say, Borgia, Hitler, or Judas County, Arkansas, held a referendum to choose a new name. The highest vote-getter was Tubman, for abolitionist and former slave Harriet Tubman. Some white residents bristled at the idea of having their county named for a black woman, no matter how historically significant. In reaction they created one Billy Tubman, a “local farmer, beloved by all who knew him.” Legend has it that Billy was popular with the local gentry, friendly to a fault, and had a pet pig, also named Billy, who could smoke a pipe. Billy (the man) was fluent in seven languages and once grew a squash that resembled either a boot or the nation of Italy depending on one’s familiarity with footwear and European geography.
11.
Nobody came.
Jewel Romine in her richly detailed, self-published family history
The Blashettes and the Plints: A War of the Roses, Arkansas Style
(Pettiville Library Local History Collection) departs from the accepted notion that the lack of attendance at the wedding was due to the family feud that had divided the Blashettes and the Plints for decades (but which had dipped to its nadir the year of Emmaline and Addicus’s nuptials), insisting, instead, that attendees had been directed to the wrong church. She admits, however, that as the families awaited the arrival of the bride and bridegroom at the second chapel, a feud-fueled melee did, in fact, ensue. Ms. Romine describes it in her breathless style:
“The Blashettes fell back against the north wall of the chapel, and the Plints regrouped against the south wall and the minister, a Reverend Aloysius Green, best described as a little man attached to a very large goiter,
played the role of conciliator until he was silenced by a hobnail boot to the head, and both parties commenced to flinging hymnals and psalters at one another with the exception of three young female Blashette cousins who sat behind the chancel fence guiltily eating book paste.”
12.
The chivaree lasted until dawn.
. The serenaders also sang, “A Ribbon in her Hair; A Smile Upon her Lips,” “Sing me a Berceuse, Berenice,” Come Down to the Bandstand, Malinda,” “Roll the Hoop to My Heart.” “Gazebo Gazibo, This Boy’s in Love, Oh,” “I Have Posies; Kiss m’ Nosey!” “How Do I Know? A Little Birdy Told Me So!” “Spoonin’ ’Neath the Willows,” and “Pretty as a Picture (without the Corset Frame)” and, as the night wore on and the singers exhausted their honeymoon repertoire, “Dixie,” “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” and “Cry-baby, Cry (Wipe Your Little Eye; Go Tell Mammy to Give You Some Pie.” Odger Blashette, interview.
13.
While Emmaline took in knitting, Addicus became a jack-of-all trades.
Seeking to contribute to the nearly empty family coffer, Emmaline also took in wash, baked rhubarb biscuits, scoured out post-office spittoons, sold her own line of shirtwaists, provided lemonade at local temperance meetings, raised rabbits for ladies’ muffs, led calisthenics at the Pettiville School for Orphaned Indian Girls, sold home-boiled lye soap, hired herself out to 450-pound Opal Jamfry to “scratch the unreachable places,” picked apples and pecans, chopped cotton, raced a crippled nag on a bet with the horse’s owner, and read law to young law student Stanley Crew who, although illiterate, entertained dreams of being a Lincolnesque litigator. Jonathan Blashette,
Early Memories
(unpublished manuscript), JBP.
