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William Charles "Chick" Clymer
Jr. He was gone
before I
was a teenager. Even so, I remember some things about him. Chick (January 10, 1887 - November 21, 1847) was the brother of my grandfather Ray Clymer (Dada) and my great-uncle Albert Clymer. A thin, red-faced man, Chick lived at 931 West Morton Street, in the house that belonged to his mother, Grandma Clymer (Annie Ellen Schuel Clymer, a whole other story).
Chick’s
large Adam’s apple bobbed prominently in his long, thin neck. The
mottled red
skin of that neck bore some resemblance to the exterior of a plucked
hen. Such
knowledge was not as unusual in a child at that time as it would be
now.
Besides, the Clymer family’s business was the Denison Poultry and Egg
Company,
and the men of the family all worked there at one time or another. As a
child
doted upon by her grandfather, I used to spend considerable time in the
DP&E office, allowed to peck undisturbed on the typewriter keys
with one
finger or experiment with the noisy adding machines. To me, “Freddy the
Fryer,”
a DP&E brand name, was a character as familiar as Porky Pig,
Mr. Magoo, or
Woody Woodpecker. This was a family where, when you knocked on
someone’s front
door, it would be opened cheerfully with the greeting, “Come on in!
There’s
nobody here but us chickens.” Limp, plucked chickens were not a novelty
in the
homes of my relatives. Chick’s niece Anne Goddard, her whole grown life, used to recall his nasal, nosed-wrinkled parody of Grandma Clymer's nagging: "Ynh, ynh, ynh, ynh, ynh."
The
house at 931 West Morton Street was old, big, and two stories tall, but
Chick
occupied a small narrow room on the ground floor, right in the middle
of all
the action, and close to the front door. His room was filled almost
entirely by
two objects, standing parallel and side by side: an upright piano and a
single
bed. There was a small aisle between them. Chick played ragtime tunes
on the
piano at all hours. I
used to think that Chick had never married, but after I was grown I
came across
evidence in an old Denison city directory to the effect that, at one
time, he
indeed had had a wife - briefly, I gathered. And he had had a
real estate company
on Rusk Avenue, posting a sign that read: “Best Land A Crow Ever Flew
Over.” To
others, the central fact about Chick was that he drank. That is, he got
drunk.
A lot. When drunk, among other things, he would drive his small old
black Ford
around Denison dangerously. Sometimes he would hitch a ride on others'
cars,
standing on the running board the whole way. Upon arriving, he would
lightly
hop off, call out "Thank ya," and weave away. Chick
owned a small house outside town on the old road to the Rod and Gun
Club (now
the Denison Country Club).
One
time, after my grandfather married his second wife, Irma, and they
moved into
the big fancy house with elaborate gingerbread trim at 1200 West Morton
Street,
Chick tethered his goat to a slender tree in the front yard there. It
stayed
there for a couple of weeks and ate a big circle in the grass around
the tree.
We always went to Dada and Irma's house for Sunday dinner after church,
so I
was able to spend some time with the goat in the front yard and observe
minutely how the circle in the grass grew as the grownups lengthened
the rope a
little each day. My
great-grandparents, Mama and Papa White, who lived at 1013 West Bond
Street,
were the parents of Dada's first wife. That wife, the first Mavis, died
when my
mother Mavis was about ten years old. (That latter fact was why Dada,
my
mother, Aunt Anne, and Uncle Ray lived with Grandma Clymer, Chick, and
Albert's
family in the big house at 929 West Morton Street all during the
Depression.)
Mama White used to serve big meals at lunch even during the week,
sometimes
inviting me with my mother and others to join her and Papa White for
such
regular fare as mashed potatoes, boiled green beans, chicken and
dumplings,
fresh rolls, peach cobbler, and other old-fashioned dishes—food for
which I
must say I never have felt any great nostalgic longing. Their dining
room was
furnished in Mission oak. Sometimes they invited Chick to join us. I
remember one day at lunch at Mama and Papa White's house, Chick was
telling a
story and offhandedly remarked, "Now, when I was a little girl, it
wasn't
like that." My ears pricked up. "Uncle Chick, you were never a little
girl!" I protested. "Oh,
yes, I was," he insisted. Being
of an age when I had just gotten all this gender stuff down pat, I went
for the
bait. "Uncle Chick, you were not! "Well,
I will tell you," he said with utmost explanatory seriousness. "I
kissed my elbow and that made me turn into a boy." The grownups had
begun
to snicker. "What?"
I asked incredulously. "Yes.
If you are a girl and you kiss your elbow, you will turn into a boy.
That's
what I did. It works." Then he added, "Try it. You can turn into a
boy, too." Right there at the table, I tried to kiss my elbow. But I
couldn't get my mouth that far down my arm. "Don't worry," said
Chick. "Just keep practicing." For
the next few weeks, I practiced night and day. I thought that, if I
underwent
sufficiently rigorous and dedicated practice, eventually I would be
able to get
my mouth to the end of my arm and I would turn into a boy. But, to my
sorrow, I
never succeeded. Thus I had to content myself with living as a female
member of
the human race. Only later did I get the joke. Note: Aunt Anne
says that Grandma Clymer had a
photograph of Anne’s father, Ray Clymer Sr., as a child, wearing long
curls and
a fancy suit. The photo was kept in a closet. Once Anne, then a child,
came
across the picture and said to her father, “You look like a little girl
in this
picture.” Dada replied, “I was one. But I kissed my elbow and changed into a boy.” Anne, too, did elaborate exercises trying to accomplish the impossible. by Mavis Anne Bryant Biography Index Susan Hawkins © 2024 If you find any of Grayson CountyTXGenWeb links inoperable, please send me a message. |
