In April, my dear Uncle Bob passed away from congestive heart failure. The memorial service was a fitting tribute to a man who touched so many lives and brightened the town of Kingsport in so many ways. Uncle Bob was cremated, and his ashes were placed in an old copper coffee pot that he had bought at an auction (no doubt he got a good deal for it). In between recordings of Jim Reeves's gospel songs, several friends and family members spoke at the service, including antique dealers who considered Uncle Bob the Yoda of haggling. I both spoke and played "Amazing Grace" on my violin. Below is what I said...
Many of you remember Uncle Bob as a
collector and haggler and consummate jokester. In fact, the last time I saw
Uncle Bob before he went home with Hospice, he was haggling about the price of
records. Thomas and I had stopped by to
see him at the Commerce Street shop after we had a dentist appointment in
Kingsport. He was sitting in his
favorite chair by the window surrounded by boxes of old LPs. A young man had come in on his lunch hour and
was sorting through the records. He
would hold one up and Uncle Bob would say, “2 dollars” or “1 dollar” or “50
cents.” When the man had made his
selections, he and Uncle Bob went to the counter to settle up.
Haggling was Uncle Bob’s forte. We
all know that he won’t need to haggle to get into heaven, but he will do it
just on principle. And then tell St.
Peter a joke.
What I want to share with you,
though, are not memories of Uncle Bob as a witty businessman, but one of him as
my uncle and friend when I was a child. Many a day and many a night I stayed
with Aunt Jussie and Uncle Bob when I was young, especially in the summer when
I was out of school. (“Aunt Jussie,” by
the way, is what I call my Aunt Joyce—because I couldn’t say Joyce when I was a
toddler.) Their expansive house was filled with treasures for me to gaze at and
peruse: oak furniture and art glass (those were Aunt Jussie’s favorites); and
piles of Life magazines, encyclopedias, complete sets of Charles Dickens
novels, Coca Cola ads, Victorian photo albums, Christmas postcards, silver
spoons, gold coins, chalk figurines, tin toys, and anything else that caught
Uncle Bob’s eye at an auction.
Mornings at Aunt Jussie and Uncle
Bob’s would start off with a cup of coffee for Uncle Bob and a cup of hot Lipton
tea for me—with lots of cream. Uncle Bob
would make sure that I had an ice cube, which he called a “plunket,” for my
tea.
Fluffy the cat might join us for
breakfast. She had a high chair of her
own, which I’m not so sure she was as excited about as I was. Fluffy was Uncle
Bob’s companion, and she was my
playmate—a role she often assumed reluctantly.
Uncle Bob sometimes shook his finger at me when I was too rough with
Fluffy, though I don’t remember getting scolded too badly when I put a whole bottle
of Johnson and Johnson’s baby lotion on her fur—my version of a spa
treatment. It took weeks, by the way,
for all the lotion to wear off, and Fluffy spent most of that time hiding under
the bed.
After breakfast, we would load up
and go to the Haggle Shop—where even more treasures awaited my exploration. It was better than Toys R Us, believe me. Uncle
Bob might spend the day going through a box of old books he had recently bought
at an auction—donning most with a price label with his #8 booth number on
it. Every once in awhile, he might set
one of the books aside and say, “this is a good one.” We might eat a lunch of hamburgers and french
fries that Aunt Jussie had brought us from the nearby Woolworth’s—all while
listening to Bing Crosby or Nat King Cole croon on the record player.
After we returned home, Uncle Bob
would often sit in his rocking chair, scoop Fluffy up on his lap, and ask her
what she wanted to watch on the television.
I would usually hope for North and
South, starring Patrick Swayze as Orry Main (my childhood heartthrob) or
some other Civil War related movie—but sometimes Fluffy would pick The Thorn Birds, or Centennial, or a John Wayne movie. And we had to go with what
Fluffy chose. Once the movie started, Uncle Bob would put his hand over
Fluffy’s face, and she would begin to purr, happy with a warm lap and her
choice of movie.
To say that Uncle Bob liked movies
is a grand understatement. He filled
book cases and china cabinets alike with movies and mini-series that he
recorded. He could even record a video from another video, and in this way, he
was a magician in my eyes. When I was
nine years old, I received a VCR for Christmas, but more exciting was the copy
of Gone with the Wind that Uncle Bob gave
me to go with the VCR. He had edited out
all of the commercials and recorded it with high resolution. The
technology of the VCR is now obsolete, and I have gotten rid of most of my old
VHS’s—but this copy of Gone with the Wind,
along with North and South and The Blue and the Gray and a few others
that Uncle Bob made for me still hold a “place of honor” in my movie
collection.
While watching a movie with Fluffy
and Uncle Bob, I might fall asleep on the couch; or I might make it through the
movie and then crawl into cousin Kim’s giant antique poster bed and be lulled
to sleep by the cars whizzing by on Stone Drive. No doubt I had begged my mother to let me
stay another night.
Now, thirty years after I had
sleepovers at Aunt Jussie and Uncle Bob’s, my own home is filled with “old
stuff.” I drink several cups of hot tea
each day, each cooled off with a plunket or two. A purring cat is my favorite therapy. I have to watch North and South or listen to Bing Crosby every so often to “recalibrate.”
Some of this might be in my nature, but I like to think that much of it is
Uncle Bob’s spirit in me.
When I was little, Uncle Bob had a
self-prescribe nickname: He would call
himself “Nothing” or “Nuttin.” I can’t
remember where the nickname came from, but I remember him using it. One
Thanksgiving, he and Aunt Jussie gave me a Madame Alexander Red Riding Hood
doll and a collection of fairy tales to go with it. In the “Hansel and Gretel” book, Uncle Bob
wrote: “To: Heather Rhea Gilreath. This
will go good with your Lil Red Riding Hood Doll. Don’t eat the house up. Uncle Bob “Nothing.”
He may have called himself “Nothing,”
but Uncle Bob was a very special “something” to me.
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| Uncle Bob's service picture |
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| Uncle Bob and Aunt Jussie early in their marriage |
