Pop and ‘Unc’. Roy Edward and Elvis Franklin. Daddy and Uncle Roy. Toad and Pete. Grandpa, PaPaw, etc... Same two guys,
Roy born 1930, Elvis 1934, in western Oklahoma, in the town of Mtn. View.
Born in Grandpa and Grandma's bed. Raised to work, to ride horses, to keep Mr. Hoover's cattle together in Cheyenne, pick his cotton, drive the school’s buses, two sisters came along later, help raise them and themselves.
Roy joined the Navy, Pete got into the Marines. The Korean conflict; Roy as a captains assistant on the ship, Pete as one of the soldiers on the ground, where men fell, from both sides, and incorrigible nightmares would play in his head, for years to come.
Pop didn't say much toward the end, and Pete was the same. The two "old" guys were out in Pete's backyard, underneath the shade of a tree, under the slanted roof, with breezes blowing.
There were just a few kids around, the party had played for the 4th of July, it was hot, the great grandkids played in the yard, iced tea was a-plenty, when Pete spoke up and said to Pop, (or said to no one), “Do you remember that Christmas when each of us got an APPLE and an ORANGE from Mama? And Daddy had made us that hand-carved car with his knife, oh you know, that one year, so long ago; that we took and played with it by that old tree?”
A simple question, a memory that had hit him mid-thought, a fleeting minute that had come rushing into his mind and relit the fire of seventy-five-years ago.
Pop sat there. Staring down at the ground, his hands wrinkled and twisted together and a tear struggled to be released from his eye. If you looked carefully at those two weathered old faces, at the years and the problems that had been piled and stacked, and the hardships and the wonderful celebrations, you would have seen the Christmas Spirit, making its way across their faces, and the memories flooding back in their minds.
Pop was 85, when death came knocking on his Alzheimer's racked door. Pete lasted a few years later, his bones and body were broken, but still a happy man, and he made the same trip to Mtn. View Cemetery as his older brother.
The Christmas was shared in those very few words and the moments that followed, but are shared to the next generation again now, with an apple and an orange, and the love that is strong beyond measure.
Ralph E Peck
Denise Thomas
Photo by Ralph Peck
Mtn View Oklahoma
Comments