17 - A Date With Dephie

     

       Dephie worked for our family for a couple of my pre-school years.   We still lived on Poplar Street in a small two-bedroom house with a pretty basic room in the basement for you-know-who.   My parents were young, my father had just returned from the Navy, and his income was modest.  But in those days in the South, you could be fairly poor and still have live-in help.  

     Dephie was a prime example.   She cleaned house, did some of the cooking, all of the washing and ironing, and still managed to be a full-time nursemaid to me and my brothers.  Unfortunately she fell ill.  Very ill.  She was diagnosed around 1949 with cancer, and in those days you didn't much ask cancer of what, the unspeakable C-word sufficed to say the end was probably near!  

     My clearest memory of Dephie was when I was taken to see her at Moore Memorial Hospital in Pinehurst.  The hospital was then fully segregated with a wing in the back reserved for "colored".  Perhaps non-staff "whites" were not allowed there either, or maybe it was just that children --regardless of race-- were not permitted.   Whatever the case, my Aunt Frances' friend Rose (see Goodbye Rose), then the hospital's head nurse, sneaked my mother and me through a back garden where we remained outside, able to visit with Dephie through an open window.

     She laughed and joked with me, and she told my mother that her treatment was going well.  She said that they might not have to operate after all, that she hoped to be returning to Poplar Street back to her job soon.  

     Only she never did.  Rose later reported that Doctor Bowen had indeed operated and had removed her bladder along with other bits and pieces.  We never heard any more, and she was soon replaced in our household by Ethel.  
  

The Pleasants family, Poplar St. 1944

   I certainly cannot claim that Dephie's absence haunted me or that I gave her that much thought in the years that followed.  But as I got a little older, I guess around 13 or 14, I still remembered that hospital visit.  When I asked my parents what had ever happened to her, they explained that she had just disappeared and had undoubtedly died of the cancer.  I didn't feel they were especially evasive, it was just that they didn't seem to much care.  

     When I was a little older, in a mid-adolescent period of social consciousness, I remember seriously angering my father when I asked if he had paid Dephie any sick or severance pay.  In those days it was an insolent and rhetorical question.  

     So Dephie left our family around 1949.  Now let's fast-forward about 55 years.  

     My mother died in 1999, and my father joined her, at least metaphysically, four years later.  In the South, people drop by for condolence visits for several days after a funeral, almost always unannounced.  2003, the day following my Dad's interment, I was sitting on the porch with Dickie and his then-wife Jeanne when an unfamiliar middle-aged black man knocked on the door.  

     He explained that his mother was past 90, and he wanted to make sure he had found the right address before helping her from the car.  Was I the same Frank Pleasants who had once lived on Poplar Street?  It was Dephie, and she was superb.  I couldn't believe it.  Not only had her bladder been replaced by a pouch decades before it was common procedure, but she had given birth to two boys and outlived two husbands in the interim.  She was almost 93 and sharp as a tack.  A posthumous hats-off to Doctor Bowen would seem well in order!  

     She had been living in the country about 25 miles south of Aberdeen all these years.  She had often thought of us, she said.  She recalled what a chubby little baby Dickie had been, and she said that every once in a blue moon when she would come through Aberdeen, she'd see a fat man on the street and wonder if it might not be Dickie (she remembered fondly how Aunt Ruth had called him her little butterball).  She didn't seem to find it incongruous that Dickie had in fact turned into such a slender adult.

     She recalled a day about ten years earlier when she was thinking nostalgically about our family.  "It was raining and I was real blue.  I picked up the telephone book and said to myself, 'I'm just gonnah' call Miz Pleasants after all this time,'" she said.  She did, and they had their telephone reunion, but I had never heard about it.  Mother was probably already sick, herself, and had other priorities.  

     She recounted her life at leisure, and we spent a couple of hours reminiscing.  I was deeply moved and teared up both when she arrived and when she left.  The happy emotion was stronger than the sadness of losing my father.  

     I took her photo, and when I returned to Paris I sent it to her with a heartfelt note.  I never heard from her again.   It wasn't necessary, the pleasure rests intact.  She loved me as a small child, and her affection remained sufficient to search me out over a half century later as I, too, was fast slipping into old age.

-o-        

        

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

Doctor Bowen and Moore Memorial Hospital were featured in "Doctor Bowen and Janette" from  Musings and Meanderings No.1;  Rose in "Goodbye Rose," Hotel Musings No. 61. Mother and Daddy and Frances were featured in "Stanley and Frances or the Guardian Angel," Musings No. 2; and Mother was also mentioned in "Hazeline and Josephine" from Musings  No. 8.  Frances and Rose were featured in "A Two-dollar Hamburger Under A Silvery Dome," Hotel Musings No. 4.  Aunt Ruth was featured in "Renata," Musings and Meanderings No. 4, and "Thanksgiving" from Hotel Musings No. 49  (to access, click on highlighted titles).

This is it, at least for the moment!

     With this, my Musings and Meanderings comes to an end.    I hope I'll find some more creative juice in the future for another blog adventure; for the moment I don't know what form that might take. 
   

     Many, many thanks to those who have followed these posts.  Your support and feedback have given me enormous pleasure.   It has been a special treat reconnecting with those who share a Sandhills connection and for whom there may have been a special resonance with my Aberdeen memories.

     So, it is au revoir for now, and hope to see you soon.

 

14 - Linwood and Doris

Doris and Linwood, Aberdeen 1957

     My uncle Linwood was my father's older brother.  He was the eldest of six children, and he had left home by the time Daddy started school.  

     He was middle-aged when he married Doris, and most everyone in the family found both of them eccentric and a little comical.   We called him Bubba.  That's what Daddy had called him as a child, and the name stuck.   He always made me think of the actor Paul Douglas, but that is neither here nor there, as I don't suppose there is anyone left who remembers Paul Douglas.

     Doris was generally considered to be a hypochondriac, and growing up I remember Mother and Big Polly gossiping about seeing Doris' car yet again parked in front of Doctor Bowen's office, speculating on what could be wrong with her this time.   She had a raspy, bass voice, the result of years of chain smoking; and as far back as I can remember she was taking a variety of pills for what she called her allergies.   

     As for Bubba, he was  obsessed with money,  with not spending it.   He would fixate on the worst scenario of finding himself without enough money, and each year he became more and more of a miser.

  

Bubba and Daddy 1946

    As simple as our family creature comforts seem in retrospect, we lived sumptuously compared to Bubba and Doris.  Although they had considerably more money (due to the fact that they were childless and spent little on themselves), there was never any question of going on holiday, almost never a meal out, and only rarely an extravagance such as an outing to what Linwood still called the "moving pictures."

     Whenever family members encouraged them to do something which would entail an extra expenditure, Linwood would launch into a lecture on the importance of his money earning interests at every moment.  He could be quite unintentionally comical when explaining how he waited until the last possible moment before settling his electricity bill.

     "It makes a lot more sense  earning two percent in the Building and Loan," he would say, "than giving it to the Carolina Power and Light."

     He was permanently preoccupied with the possibility of one day finding himself without the financial means to take care of himself and Doris.  I don't know if there was any real explanation for this money phobia, other than he had lived through the Depression and had seen his mother lose her savings when the  bank owned by her cousins failed in 1934. This dramatic local tragedy did not, however, seem to unduly affect anyone else in the family.

     So  Bubba continued throughout his working life to spend the absolute minimum.  By the time he retired, and Daddy had bought out his share of the sand company, he had amassed what seemed to be a real little fortune.  Even Stanley Hartly (see blog on Stanley) once said he thought Linwood must be sitting on quite an impressive nest egg.

     Fate decided on a bizarre twist.  Bubba, who had known no illness during most of his working life, suffered a massive stroke in the early years of his retirement.  He was hospitalized at Moore Memorial in a coma for many weeks before being transferred to another hospital and nursing home. 

     Doris, who had no experience in money management or in running anything, pretty much fell apart.  She left bills unpaid and overpaid others.

     Bubba died  five long years later, still hospitalized and for the most of that time still in a coma.  He had been presumably unaware of the horrendously expensive long-term medical and nursing care, or that his most dreaded fear had in fact indeed been realized.  

     It was not until the bank began foreclosure procedures on their home that family realized almost every penny of his money was gone.   My father and Frances tried to help Doris find a last-minute solution, but it was too late.  She paid one final visit to Dr. Bowen, and then chose what she saw as the easy way out, with the aid of an overdose of barbiturates and a plastic bag. 

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

Doctor Bowen and Big Polly were feautured in "Doctor Bowen and Janette" from  Musings and Meanderings No.1; Doctor Bowen is also mentioned in "A Date With Dephie" from Musings and Meanderings No. 17.  Linwood and Stanley Hartly and Frances were featured in "The Guardian Angel", Musings and Meanderings No. 2.   Grandmother Pleasants and Frances in Hotel Musings No. 2 "Grandmother Pleasants and Mrs. Kennedy" and Hotel Musings No. 4 "A Two-dollar Hamburger Under A Silvery Dome"    (to access, click on highlighted titles).

1 - Doctor Bowen and Janette

Doctor Bowen, Christmas 1973

      Doctor Bowen was the archetype of a country doctor: he was chubby, somewhat unkempt, and he seemed to perpetually have a wet, half-smoked cigar hanging out of the corner of his mouth.  His bedside manner did not always include an excess of tact, and over the years he had his share of detractors as well as staunch defenders.  I never remember him having any kind of secretary, and his office was consequentially a mess, stacked almost to the ceiling with years' subscriptions of detective magazines and old medical journals.

      Janette was the daughter of Aunt Zadie, my paternal grandfather's sister.   Zadie and Janette and sister Louise and their brother Ralph (see Aberdeen Hotel musing) and their extended families all lived in particularly close proximity in various houses on the same block around Aberdeen's Main Street.   Janette was the only one of the Leach family who never married, and thereby lies the tale.

      Doctor Bowen had done part of his residency at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, where he had roomed with a Sandhills native.   When Moore County Hospital was completed in Pinehurst in 1929, his ex-roommate enticed him into joining the team as a resident surgeon.   He subsequently found himself one afternoon  at the Pinehurst Country Club in the offices of a certain Mr. Nelson, one of the village's millionaire movers and shakers, seeking advice about an appropriate place to live.    He had begun his employment living in the hospital, a situation he quickly tired of as he felt it too close to work to maintain any kind of decent privacy.

       It so happened that Janette worked as secretary to Nelson.   These were the early years of the Depression, her family had recently given up the Aberdeen Hotel, and she volunteered that her mother would be agreeable to rent a room in the family home in nearby Aberdeen where the new doctor could find a certain anonymity several miles away from the hospital.

      Doctor B. thus discovered both the Leach family and Aberdeen where he soon set up a private practice which he maintained for the rest of his life.

      I do not know if Janette and Doctor B. were already friends before he arrived in Aberdeen.   I suspect not, as the rather draconian rules of propriety prevalent in little Southern towns of the day would have certainly discouraged the bringing of a boyfriend into the bosom of the family, as it were.  Still, at whatever stage their friendship blossomed into something more, it appears in hindsight surprising that townspeople never seemed to raise the slightest eyebrow.

      After a respectable number of months living with Janette and her family,  Doctor Bowen purchased a handsome diamond ring and popped the eternal question.

Janette ... once a little girl

     Janette was a pleasant enough looking young woman, and she had not yet reached an age to be thought of as an old maid.   So it  probably never occurred to her that she had better waste no time in getting herself to the altar.  She was undoubtedly delighted with the ring, but proposed speaking with her mother before making any official decision.  There is no record of Doctor Bowen's response, other than that he acquiesced to await the family verdict.

      Aunt Zadie was of another era.   She had some doubts that the young doctor's financial means would quite come up to her expectations, and she counseled that it might be in everyone's interest to slow down, to wait another year or so before taking the final plunge.   Janette rather obliviously reported back that she was pleased to be engaged, but that she and her mother felt it best to put off making any hasty, precise marriage arrangements.

      Doctor Bowen, who had been exceedingly patient up until this point, reflected briefly on the turn of events, then retorted : "So be it.  Wear the ring as long as it pleases you, we will be engaged, if that is your wish. But make no mistake about it, it will be a cold day in hell before I ever ask you to marry me again!"

      There was of course no cold day in hell, he didn't, and they didn't!

      From that day on, Doctor B. and Aunt Zadie maintained an at-best polite, often frosty cohabitation.  He nevertheless did become a permanent fixture within the household.  By the time I came along (he delivered me, as he did my twin brothers) I never questioned why he was there or quite how he fit into the family.     

     The Leaches changed houses a couple of times over the years, always in the same neighborhood, and Doctor Bowen made the move along with the rest of them.   In later years, he bought the neighboring house of Ralph (who moved with his family a few doors down), but never lived there.  It just sat empty until he decided a few years later to rent it seasonally to a Danish sea captain.

      Little Polly was Ralph's daughter and Zadie's grand daughter.   Her family lived next door, and as a child she would regale me with tales of Doctor B's eccentric behavior.  She used to laugh about watching him pace back and forth in his room clad only in  boxer shorts, with the ever-present cigar hanging out of the corner of his mouth.  But most memorable for us children was the fact that he always seemed to be counting a seemingly inexhaustible wad of paper money which he would then stash  in boxes and drawers around the house.

      (My grandmother's family had owned the local bank which in 1934 –along with many depression-hit monetary institutions across the country-- closed its doors, never to reopen; and to the best of my knowledge no client's money was ever recuperated.    So it was hardly surprising that those with a steady income like Doctor Bowen in the 1930's would harbor a lifelong suspicion of banks.)

      By the time he died some 40 years later,  nothing had basically changed. Janette never removed her engagement ring, though in later life she would voice to family members her humiliation in wearing it throughout the decades, and she once confided that she felt the need to turn the gem side inwards when they occasionally traveled out of town together.

      At the end of his life Doctor Bowen had only one remaining relation, a nephew to whom he intended to leave a modest bequest.   However, in the days following the funeral, no will had been located, and Janette saw fate just about to deal her yet another slap in the face.

      My main source for this part of the family history is Little Polly.   In her recounting, pieced together over the years, the surviving nephew from South Carolina was virtually in the driveway waiting to claim the inheritance while Ralph ordered the house turned top to bottom until the will could be located.  Janette had seen the artisanal document being written, and the family knew it had to be there somewhere amidst the piles of memorabilia and boxes full of cash and general rubbish.   Rugs and carpets were pulled up, mattresses up-heaved.   Janette, who in later years had developed a penchant for bourbon, was in a state of both grief and confusion, but her brother was fully in charge and determined to protect his sister's (and by extension the rest of the family's) interests.

     The will was ultimately located, inexplicably hidden under someone else's mattress, and Janette was declared  beneficiary of the considerable estate.   A lifetime of unfulfilled dreams of a certain officialization of her situation was finally realized, even though it was too late coming and undoubtedly offered her little satisfaction.

TO PAY OR NOT TO PAY ...

     

Doctor Bowen at his office circa 1955

    My mother never dared ask other family members if they were billed for his services, for fear of calling attention to the fact that we were not.

     For whatever reason, he never charged us for a lifetime of medical attention.  Mother would periodically go into a kind of heavy anxiety, fearing he was going to wake up and send us a bill.   That he or his survivors might one day present an invoice for all the years of office visits, house calls and various operations (Doctor Bowen was considered an exceptional surgeon) for our family of five !

     In those days it was just another example of living in a small southern town where intertwining family ties created privileged codes of behavior.   Like many things growing up in Aberdeen, they were thought best left unspoken.

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

Doctor Bowen is also mentioned in "Linwood and Doris" from Musings and Meanderings No. 14 and in "A Date With Dephie" from Musings and Meanderings No. 17; Aunt Zadie and the Leach family are also featured in  "Babe Ruth's 60th Home Run" from Hotel Musings No. 26; Little Polly is mentioned in "The Caldwells Come To Paris", Hotel Musings No. 57  (to access, click on highlighted titles).