"My Uncle Frank"

In this day and age when heroes seem to be in short supply, I think back to those who I considered heroic when I was growing up. The name that is always at the top of my list is my Uncle Frank. He was my mother's sister's husband and he, she and their family also lived in Clinton, South Carolina.

Uncle Frank was a housing contractor by profession but he was also a trained bricklayer. I could take you around Clinton to this day and show you houses my Uncle Frank built. He was also a churchgoer. In all my years growing up in the First Baptist Church of Clinton, my Uncle Frank was there every Sunday. I don't remember a time he missed. He wasn't a man who discussed his religion, he just lived it.

He also was a man who many people called Maggie. You read that right. His nickname was Maggie and I never knew why. It wasn't used in a derisive or derogatory way by anyone. It was just a name he was called. I regret that I never asked him or my father why he was called by that name.

The most outstanding image I have in my mind of my Uncle Frank concerned his laying brick. One summer when I was eight or nine he built a house across the street from us. He built it during the summer and I was usually over at the site watching him lay brick or do other things. He could do everything but I was particularly fascinated by the way he layed brick. 

He would take his trowel and scoop up the wet cement mortar and slap it on the line where the bricks were going. Then he would take the tip of the trowel and make an indention down the middle of the mortar. Next he would take the brick, tamp it down onto the mortar and then scrape away the excess that oozed over the sides from the force of the brick coming down. To me it was like watching someone conduct a symphony. It was that precise and beautiful.

One day that summer there was a report that a bad windstorm was headed our way. We had those fairly often in Clinton and many times they were accompanied by rain and lightning. Anyway Uncle Frank sent his crew home but he stayed. He said he had to get two rows of brick layed before he quit. My mother came over to get me and begged Uncle Frank to come to our house and wait out the storm but he declined.

I went home and got a chair and set it up at our front window where I would have a clear view of him laying brick. The wind came and it was howling. It seemed like some of the trees on Holland Street were bending double, but Uncle Frank never stopped laying brick. He never even looked up at the sky. He just kept on doing what he was doing.

When he finished those two rows he went over to his truck, looked my way and touched the brim of his hat and drove off. Shortly thereafter the storm passed over. The rows of brick were still standing and stand till this day.

Five years later he built another house on Holland Street. This one was for my Daddy and his new wife. Shortly after my mother died they started dating and before a year was up since my mother's death, they were planning their wedding. In the South at that time no one got married in less than a year after their spouse died. It was considered totally disrespectful.

But my father and his intended planned to marry as soon as their house was finished and it was supposed to be finished at the end of July. My mother had died the previous August. I went to my Uncle Frank and told him I could not stand it if my Daddy got married in less than a year. He said he understood and for me not to worry. He said there was no way he would let that house be finished until the year's anniversary had passed.

My father got married in October. The wedding had been delayed until the house was finished. Due to complications it did not get completed until that time.

My Uncle Frank could stare down a windstorm, and he could answer a young boy's heartfelt request. Do you understand why he is one of my heroes?
 

 

 

 

 

©2007 Jackie K. Cooper

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