Not too long ago, someone said to me, “You always were a little off-center.” Later that day I was going to be driving a tractor and was dressed for the part in patched work pants and a rumpled cotton shirt. Though attire is what evoked the comment and his tone friendly, I suspect the fellow’s assessment wasn’t limited to my sartorial choices.
I took it as a compliment, and, had I been quicker on my feet, would have thanked him. Truth is, we’re all “a little off-center.” Each in our own way.
Several days later, while pulling weeds in the garden, the comment came back to me. For some reason the thought evoked the memory of my deceased father, a man who was more than a little off-center, a condition obscured by his taciturn personality and flawless manners.
My father had an abiding appreciation for eccentric people, and I think he instilled the same in me. Like any Southern small town in mid-century, the Columbus of my childhood was awash in distinctive characters.
The oldest of six kids, I spent much of my early childhood in the care of my father’s mother, Eunice, on College Street (on the corner across the street from the Catholic Church, where Clay and Shannon Bowen now live).
Long a widow and herself a distinct personality, Eunice had for years taken in boarders. Enough of them to populate a Eudora Welty short story collection. At various times her household included spinsters, widows, even a couple who spent their entire married life under her roof.
In some instances, the effects of deceased boarders had gone unclaimed, which is to say Grandma Eunice had an interesting attic.
I was particularly enthralled with the trunks of military uniforms and letters with ancient postage stamps buried in that dim, dusty place. Once I insisted on wearing a heavy WWI-vintage steel helmet I had exhumed from the attic on a foray to the Woolworth’s 10-cent store uptown, then at the corner of Fifth Street and College.
I don’t remember Eunice having regular domestic help, but on this day she did, and the unlucky woman charged with accompanying me on that journey of three blocks ended up toting the metal helmet most of the way home.
Dad had a glassed-in office in the front area of The Dispatch. He and his visitors were in plain sight. Some called it “the aquarium.” He might as likely be talking to someone who wandered in off the street seeking (and usually getting) a small loan as John C. Stennis.
There is a fireplug in front of newspaper office and it wasn’t uncommon to see him sitting on it in his bespoke suit talking to anyone who happened by.
He could eat butter pecan ice cream every night and most nights did. After his mother’s death, he drove her black Buick Electra 225 long after the ceiling upholstery began to deteriorate and sag.
He once brought home a duck he’d wounded while hunting and charged me with its care. Seeing it was only stunned, I took the bird back to the scene of the crime. He quacked a thank you and flew off. Later, not knowing I’d released the duck, Dad asked, “Do you think we need to call a vet?”
He called his old friends by their high school nicknames, long after everyone else had forgotten them. A tightly wound stockbroker he’d known since childhood was “Ghoul.”
He and J.C. Shelton, owner of the Ritz Cafe, had an ongoing debate about who was older. My dad called J.C. “Garfield,” because, as my father claimed, the restaurant owner was old enough to have voted for James A. Garfield (who was elected president in 1880).
Off-center? Yeah, I suppose so. It runs in the family. But then, can you show me anyone who isn’t?
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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