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Last night I dreamed about Granny Satterfield looking confused while Mitch Miller sang to her.
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It's now very late, but I was thinking about Uncle Sherman Isbell, and sat up to write my memories of him, which I'm copying below.The most fascinating Isbell I ever knew was a son of Marion Isbell and a brother to Missouri Ella Isbell. He was older than Ella, he was very old when I was a little kid. Someone said he had joined the Confederate army when he was just a boy. We called him Uncle Sherman, and he was very tall and had a lot of wavy white hair. In the face he looked like pictures I've seen of Hugh Marion Isbell, only handsomer. I think he lived somewhere else, not in Shelby or Jefferson County, so he's probably not buried around here. I remember three incidents about Uncle Sherman.
One Christmas my aunts and uncles got together and bought Sherman a leather jacket. He stayed with my grandparents that Christmas, and he put on that leather jacket and zipped up the front of it. When bedtime came, he couldn't get the jacket unzipped. Everybody tried but failed, my grandpa even got the pliers and pulled on it, but it wouldn't come unzipped. Sherman slept that night with the jacket on. I don't know when or how they got the jacket off of him. I wasn't around at that time, just heard the old folks tell the story and laugh like crazy.
When I was shedding my baby teeth, one Christmas I was running around the house with a long string tied around a loose tooth and the string hanging out of my mouth. I wouldn't let anyone pull the tooth. I passed a little too close to Uncle Sherman, and he grabbed the string and jerked it, and my tooth flew across the room. (Lots of the relatives gathered at our house every Christmas when I was little.)
The best memory I have of Uncle Sherman is of him singing the old English song “Barbara Allen.” Only he called it Barb'ry Ellen. He and Granny Ella still used some of the old English expressions with a southern twist.
“. . . He turned his face unto the
wall
While death was o'er him swellin'.'Adieu, adieu, to my kind friends all—
Farewell to Barb'ry Ellen!'
“. . . 'Oh, father, father, dig my grave,
Go dig it deep and nah-row!
My true love died for me today—
I'll die for him tomorrow!'
“. . . They laid her in the old churchyard,
They laid her true love nigh her.
Upon his grave grew a red, red rose—
On hers there grew a bry-yer!”
It still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, when I remember him singing that song.
“Reed,” he used to say to my paw paw, “these younguns will grow up knowin' more than you and me have ever dreamed of.”
2 comments:
I've been dreaming a lot more than usual lately. I think it's the changing weather. Last night, I could fly. I found a panther stuck near the top of a pine tree. Literally stuck, by the back of his neck, with pine tar. But he didn't seem too worried about it. I flew away, and later I found out that he made it down okay.
Love the stories about Uncle Sherman. I also loved when all the relatives came to our house at Christmastime. I don't think Mama liked it very much though.
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