For those of you who just tuned in, this is the next installment of my memoirs currently in production. The previous installments are available on my web page duanehiatt.com I hope you find it interesting.
The book is titled Live Long*, Learn a Little, Laugh a Lot.
My grandpa’s hectic home
My father grew up in an unhappy family bordering on dysfunctional as he described it. His stepmother “Aunt Ethyl” was a poor housekeeper, and an inept financial manager, not that there was much finance to manage. His six half sisters were born so close together that he remembers most of his growing years in a home filled with clutter, dirt, and the aroma of stinky diapers in the day and bed bugs swarming over his mattress at night.
My father’s father bought a farm just in time to welcome in the financial crash of 1929. He bought it one day, lost it the next essentially. The rest of his life grandpa would share crop and hire out as a farm worker—not the road to riches. Often he would work for his sons Randall and Delphin who both had farms. The peace of the gospel did not grace my father’s home growing up. My grandfather enjoyed his pipe, and did not enjoy activity in the church. I think it was tied to his feelings of failure as a provider. He hated the idea of paying tithing to the church. He said, “My argument is not with my God. It is with those who want to take my wallet.”
He also seemed to withdraw from a leadership role in the family. Partly this was a communication problem. My grandfather was hard of hearing. The family story was that once when he was working in the field he got tired and lay down for a nap on a ditch bank. A bug crawled inside his ear and ate a hole in his eardrum. I accepted that story long into adulthood. One day my brother Gordon said, “Does that make sense? A bug would eat your ear drum, and even more strange, two bugs would eat both ear drums in one sitting?”
The only way to get a message into grandpa was to shout into his ear. The neighbors probably knew as much of what went on in the Hiatt household as the people inside the house did.
Grandpa never recovered from the loss of his farm or from his most crushing loss; the death of his young wife. She died of heart problems leaving him with three small sons. As my dad related the story, in his grief and insecurity grandpa fell into the arms, or the clutches of a school teacher named Ethyl Tanner. Grandpa and Aunt Ethyl must have had something going for them. She bore him six daughters in fairly quick succession. To her daughters, of course, she was Mom, and to their children grandma. But to her stepsons and their children she was known as Aunt Ethyl.
To me as a child Aunt Ethyl was scary. She had a shrill voice that could peel the wall paper off the walls. She would shriek “Ves” which was short for Sylvester which was short for Franklin Sylvester which was grandpa’s full name. Then announce her message, and grandpa would nod, amble off to perform some duty or just escape. Aunt Ethyl’s signature laugh completed the caricature; a high pitched cackle that made me afraid to look in her oven to see who might be in there.
But my father had no refuge of deafness to run to. He had to hear every word. Most of those words were harsh criticisms of him “She always told me, ‘You can’t do anything. You’ll never amount to anything,’” he told me
According to dad, she was light on her daughters, but heavy on the boys and most heavy on him.
In some defense or explanation of Aunt Ethyl, her designated title itself indicates the problem. When my first wife Diane died, and Sharon and I were married, I asked all our children to call her Mom. Diane and I had talked about this before she died, and agreed on it. All of our children call their stepmother mom, and all of our grandchildren call her grandma. It took awhile to get some of them to do it. But we worked it out.
Aunt Ethyl never achieved the rank of mother with her sons or grandma with their children. Surely this sent her a message about their lack of acceptance of her as a mother..
Beyond this, apparently grandpa never quite got over mourning the passing of his first wife Adella. He kept her picture also containing a lock of her hair hanging above their bed. I can believe this was no comfort to his second wife. Certainly my father longed for his lost mother. Probably insecurity and the lack of acceptance that Aunt Ethyl lived with contributed to her harsh manner with her step sons.
Whether it was as bad as my father described it, and whether most of the problem came from their poverty and lack of social standing rather than from their stepmother and their ineffective father, no one will know this side of the veil.
We had to cut Aunt Ethyl a little slack a few years ago when we read an article in the church Ensign magazine. It was from a `woman in Payson, She said when she was newly married and a young mother she often felt overwhelmed and discouraged. Her two angelic visiting teachers were older women of long experience and great compassion. They helped her negotiate these difficult years. One of these saintly women was Ethyl Hiatt. My brother Gordon and I were stunned. We thought surely it was a typographical error. Maybe there was another elderly lady in Payson named Ethyl Hiatt (not likely in our little town.) Maybe Aunt Ethyl changed in her older years. Maybe she never was as scary as we had been led to believe. Maybe we will owe her an apology when we see her again. I am ready to apologize. I hope it makes her happy. I just hope it doesn’t make her so happy that she laughs.
What do you think about this part of the book?
Everybody I know is busy, including me. Where are those golden years I was planning on of sitting on the back porch picking my guitar? So I will send just one little part of the book at a time. You can give it a quick read and tell me what you think if you would like. I’ve slimmed that process down to two questions, and four strokes on the key board (six if you count “Reply” and “Send.”)
So your response would perhaps be A-4, B-3, (Or maybe A-5, B-5, I’m expecting a minimum number of those.) Also feel free to add comments if you like. |
Also, also, feel free to forward this material to anyone you want to.
Dad as Abraham Lincoln
Category: Commentaries
Every person’s life is worthy of a book. I hope you are writing yours, or saving the material to one day write it. I am in the midst of mine. These stories are hot off the keyboard. I hope they will give you ideas and inspiration for your own book. For previous stories, please go to duanehiatt.com
The book is titled Live Long*, Learn a Little, Laugh a Lot.
Dad as Abraham Lincoln
Whatever dad’s stepmother Aunt Ethyl’s personality was then or now, it is probably significant that her stepsons left home as soon as they got the chance. Delphin the oldest left first, the moment he felt he could provide for himself. Randall did the same. My father was about to, but then grandpa talked to him and said, “Bud, I really need your help. I know you would like to leave, but will you stay to help me?”
My father reluctantly agreed.
According to dad Grandpa sweetened the pot by saying, “If you stay I’ll give you a baby pig. You can raise it over the summer, sell it and buy yourself some good clothes to start school with.” Dad was about 16 at the time. My father reluctantly agreed, and he got his pig in the spring. He fattened it all summer then his father sold it. Grandpa took this money along with the cash from the crop he had raised that summer off to the bank. Apparently that’s where Grandpa’s income went first. I’m assuming this was to repay the debt he incurred when he lost his farm.
Grandpa returned and my dad met him at the door to get those dollars into his pocket. It never happened,
“Bud, when I got there I found out the payment was more than I had, so I had to use your money. But I’ll get it back to you.”
My dad looked down and saw his new fall outfit go into the bottomless pit of their debt. “I knew he’d never get it back to me. He did too.”
“But I did get you this outfit for school, this nice suit,” Grandpa said. “It’s made out of good strong material. It will last you a long time.” Grandpa unwrapped and rolled out the suit. He was right. It was good material. It was a fine looking suit if you happened to be starting school in the mid 1860′s. My father called it his “Abraham Lincoln suit.” It came even complete with button shoes. Some store keeper pegging grandpa for a sucker dragged it out of his back room and fobbed it off on him.
For whatever reason, dad put the suit on and went off to school. His worst fears were realized. He was a clown and a laughingstock among his peers. He particularly tried to hide the button shoes under his desk, but one of his hot shot classmates spotted them. He grabbed dad’s pant leg and pulled it up on to the desk saying “Look, he’s even got the button shoes to go with it.” Everybody laughed at “Ol Abe” born again in their classroom. Dad survived the day some way, went home, chucked the Abe Lincoln suit and never saw it or the pig money again.
My father wore glasses all his life. He said it was a result of his difficult birth where the doctor had to bring him out with forceps. These damaged his eyes. He loved to play sports, particularly baseball and softball. But his semi functional eyes never could get a fix on the fast pitch as a batter or a long fly or hot grounder as a fielder. So his sports career was as unsuccessful as his family life he said. With his athletic, social, and economic life such a struggle, fortunately my father could do one thing well. He could sing.
Ferron Hiatt could sing so well that sometimes he was featured at the Arrowhead indoor swimming pool and outside dance pavilion in the town of Benjamin three miles north of Payson. By comparison, Benjamin made Payson look like a metropolis, but on Saturday night it was one of the hot spots in the valley. Some nights, Ferron would approach the door with his date, and be ushered through without buying a ticket. He paid his admission by singing occasionally during the evening with the dance orchestra accompanying him. The free admission was a perk. He would have paid double the price to get in if he’d had the money just for the chance to stand on stage, and front the band of Ralph Migliaccio and his “Chicago Hotel Orchestra.” Actually Ralph came from Spanish Fork, a neighboring town up the road eight miles. But he had moved there from Chicago. I doubt the band came with him, and I’m not sure if he had ever really played the Chicago hotel of even if there was a Chicago Hotel. But in Utah Valley, at Arrowhead it was big time stuff.
For a kid who had so little going for him to step to the edge of the stage with a full moon shining down, Ralph Migliaccio on one side of the stage pointing his trombone to the sky, and Tommy Nelson on the other side doing the same with his trumpet, and Ferron Hiatt soloing the vocals, this life did not get any better than that.
One life changing night a young man had to leave early, so he asked Ferron if he would mind escorting the young man’s date home. Ferron agreed. Her name was Gladys Wride. Knowing my father, I would bet the farm that his first words to her were something such as, “This is quite an occasion. I’m going to give a Wride a ride. Pardon my stuttering.”
Knowing my mother, she smiled as though she hadn’t heard such lines for as long as she had been able to tell people her name.
Gladys lived in Benjamin which Ferron found inconveniently close because their ride together wasn’t long enough.
According to the old saying, many love songs, and a kazillion romance novels, true love never runs smooth however. The same dance music that brought them together threatened to pull them apart, at least that was Dad’s concern. Gladys cousin invited her to California and get employment in the upscale “city of roses”, Pasadena. The farm girl from the hamlet of Benjamin found herself as upstairs maid in a swanky home of a wealthy family. And if that wasn’t dazzling enough, instead of dancing on Saturday nights to Ralph Migliaccio’s band, she twirled the light fantastic to the biggest names of the big band era including Benny Goodman, The Dorsey Brothers, and Count Basie.
Ferron, like most young men of that day was about a dollar short of having seventy five cents, so, again typical of his time; he hopped a freight car, rode the rails, and hitched rides to get to Pasadena. He convinced a suspicious policeman that he was just an honest country boy pursuing his lost love, and no menace to the community. He charmed Gladys’ employer/landlady by sprucing up her yard for free. To Gladys he must have given one of the most heartfelt love songs he ever delivered; and it worked. He convinced her that he and Payson were a better life than Pasadena and the big bands.
As befitting their new status as seasoned travelers of some means, Ferron and Gladys did not hop freight cars home. They rode in the more luxurious accommodations of a Greyhound bus.
Everybody I know is busy, including me. Where are those golden years I was planning on of sitting on the back porch picking my guitar? So I will send just one little part of the book at a time. You can give it a quick read and tell me what you think if you would like.
I’ve slimmed that process down to two questions, and four strokes on the key board (six if you count “Reply” and “Send.”)
“A” How much did you enjoy this?
“B” How much do you think a person who doesn’t know Duane Hiatt would enjoy this?
1. Glanced at it, printed it out and lined the bottom of the bird cage with it.
2. Sped-read it and filed it with my tax return receipts
3. Thought it was about as interesting as a well written obituary
4. Could have put it down, but didn’t want to
5. Couldn’t put it down. Put it in a magnetic frame and stuck it onto the fridge door
So your response would perhaps be A-4, B-3, (Or maybe A-5, B-5, I’m expecting a minimum number of those.)
Also feel free to add comments if you like.
Also, also, feel free to forward this material to anyone you want to.