I’ve met some really strange people in my days on earth. Now I’m not saying they are strange in a negative sense-I’m talking in a more literal sense; literal, as in, say, a Charles Dickens’ character. Now if you’ve read any Dickens, or even just watched the movie versions, you’d be aware of some extreme characterization on Dickens’ part. My most memorable; the Jellybys of course, and then there’s Mr Uriah Heep. Does he exist somewhere in real life? And the unforgettable Flora Fitching, who throws her apron over her head whenever life becomes too much for her.
I think the most unusual character that I have encountered in real life is a hired man that worked for my father doing farm work when I was a kid. My dad seemed to be a veritable magnet for Dickens-ish characters. George “Travelling Arkansas” Ogglesby lived his life as a hobo and roamed through my home town in cycles of the work that was available throughout the year. George or “Arky” as he was fondly known was a short little sawed-off man, with attitude to spare and whom was just few fries short of a Happy Meal. He had piercing blue eyes and no neck and his grissly head looked like the end of a pencil eraser from the back. Arky worked the fairs in the fall and thought of himself as a cattleman, although he only tagged along with one of the more prosperous farmers usually to feed, clean stalls and do whatever grunt work needed to be done. If I happened to attend the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto (where I showed cattle as a teenager), Arky could be found sleeping on a bale of hay in the barns on any given night. He was a personable sort of guy if you were on his good side. I personally, I’m now ashamed to say, did not particularly enjoy being seen riding around in my dad’s truck with him, during hay season or when my dad occasionally employed him to help tear down a building (which was one of my dad’s many sidelines of work). The main reason being: Arky had a weak spot-he did not like long hair, or those sporting it. He called them, without doubt and great prejudice: 'Hippies'.
On any Saturday afternoon, on a street corner in downtown Glencoe-the small town from which I hail-Mr Ogglesby could be found, after his own personal sprucing up at the local barbershop (owned by my mother’s cousin-for those who believe I’m personally related to everyone within 50 miles of Glencoe), standing on the curb shouting obscenities at the local long-haired youth (longer than a buzz cut) and repeatedly telling them to get a haircut. Now, George did not usually start into anyone unless he was provoked and this provoking was usually part of the regular Saturday afternoon entertainment in said small town. One of the boys hanging in front of ‘Ted’s’, the local Chinese restaurant/pinball palace, would invariably tell Arky to get a haircut, thereby ‘starting’ him up so to speak, and once started, Arky would take hours to wind down.
Mr Ogglesby would show up at our house during haying season, as he knew my dad bought standing hay, had it cut, and baled (often with me riding the stooker-another posting!) and loaded onto his pickup by Yours Truly and Mr Ogglesby, which meant that I got the pleasure of riding though town, stuck in the middle, between my dad and George, in a pickup towering with bales of hay. George would usually pick this moment to hang out the window and yell at some long-haired offender as we passed by, while I sunk as low as I could around the stick shift! One of the most mortifying experiences of my entire life occurred during one of these expeditions to another local town, when my dad turned the truck too sharply onto Main Street and dumped half the load of hay out onto the street. Boy, if I could have ever crawled under a vehicle and died on the spot, I would have chosen that exact moment!
Another of George’s character flaws was that when he admired young girls-which he often did-he called them Heifers. Now as a member of the fairer sex, this did not often sit well with me, when George would gape out the truck window at a particularly fine specimen and announce, “Now, there’s a nice young Heifer, Jack.”
My most unnerving experiences with George, though, occurred when we were taking a building down on Main Street to make way for a strip mall. A group of youngsters would walk by and there we would be up on the roof. They would yell out, “Hey, Arky, get a haircut!” and he would roar and nearly jump off the roof at them or pick up a brick and throw it at them. Nothing inconspicuous about it, just in case you didn’t want any of the local boys to notice that you were standing on a half torn-down building, wearing a Newbury Dinner Jacket (private joke), work boots and holding a pry bar.
The home place sported plenty of piles of lumber that my dad had trucked home and sold, so Arky would show up there when work was scarce, to pull nails. I think he showed up when he was hungry, actually. Arky couldn’t have been taller than 5’ 2” and perhaps 120 lbs but he did have a rather large belly and a food storage capacity that I’m sure came from long stretches between meals. When he ate at our house, he tended to stock up. Lunch at home always consisted of meat and potatoes and gravy and is still to this day called ‘dinner’ by my parents. My mom would often cook pork sausages and make gravy with it. In the South, they call it ‘white gravy’-I just call it bland gravy-but George loved it. A plate of bread was always set out with every meal at my parents’ and if the meat was scarce as it often was, then you supplemented with a slice of bread slathered with gravy. Now George knew a good thing when he saw it. I think he often walked the three miles from town, salivating the entire time as he thought about my mom’s gravy. George would finish the meat and potato course and then start in on the bread and gravy course. He would take a slice of bread from the stack with a flourish, swoop it onto his plate and carefully and lovingly ladle gravy over it all the while stating, “My, that sure is good gravy, Lois.”
My father, the enabler that he is, would push the plate with the stack of bread, over closer and say, “Help, yourself, George. You never know when you’re going to get another meal.” I swear my mother enabled as well by making extra gravy when George was around. He could eat over half a loaf of bread and the spread of gravy would get thinner and thinner but he would keep going. If there was a trophy for style and stamina in Gravy Eating, George would have taken it-hands down! After dinner, he would push away from the table and thank my mom, then head outside. Dad always said that George didn’t get much done for the first while after dinner because he couldn’t bend over. I never saw him split his pants, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if he did!
My dad liked to tease him about the type of truck he dreamed about. George wanted a two-quarter ton pickup truck. He talked about it often. My dad would ask, “Are you sure you don’t want a half ton, George?”
“Nope! I said a two-quarter ton, Jack!”
George lived through the winter months in a tiny house by the town dump. I’m sure he must have qualified for social assistance somehow but his later years were rough. He developed diabetes and eventually lost a leg. My dad would always buy him a shirt or something useful for Christmas, no matter how little we had and get my mom to make up a package of baking and take it in to him on Christmas Eve. He continued to attend all the fairs in his wheel chair and could still handle a pitch fork. He wanted to be self sufficient. They don’t make them like that anymore. I hated having George around as a teenager. I’m sure I sulked through many meals, begrudging him every slice of bread he took. I know for sure I hated riding around with him in my dad’s pickup. But my dad knew more about George than I did, for all my teenage wisdom. He knew that he was alone in the world with the exception of a few distant relatives. The meals that he ate at our table were probably the closest he ever came to eating with family. My dad also knew that he needed respect. Respect back then was measured often by how hard you were willing to work and George was not looking for handouts. He may not have been the smartest tool in the shed, but he knew the reward and decency of a hard day’s work.
I’m sure that there are those who still remember Arky and pass stories about him; I know I do. I remember him as a real character and in spite of his simple values and low IQ, I respect him now and even more I respect my dad’s uncanny ability to take the Underdog and the Unlovely, make them feel loved and give them that little bit of respect that everyone needs.
Breaking her in-the calf that is!
Showing my calf at the local fair as a teenager.
My sons with my oldest daughter, modelling the Newbury Dinner Jacket
*White gravy (sawmill gravy in Southern U.S. cuisine) is the gravy typically used in biscuits and gravy and chicken-fried steak. It is essentially a béchamel sauce, with the roux being made of meat drippings and flour. Milk or cream is added and thickened by the roux; once prepared, black pepper and bits of mild sausage or chicken liver are sometimes added. Besides white and sawmill gravy, common names include country gravy, milk gravy, and sausage gravy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravy
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