When I was just a lad, elderly men in our little country community of Luna, near Teague, were given the respectful title of ‘Uncle.’
Generally, a generation or two before me had applied the kinship label. Sometimes they were actually, as I am wont to say, left-handed kin, but usually it was an honorary appendage.
Two in particular stick out in my memory – Uncle Edward Ezzell and Uncle Gus Mandeville. Each was a bit, er, uh, ahem, quirky.
Both men lived in this community of family origin for both the Webbs and Thorntons (my mother’s maiden name).
Uncle Edward Ezzell was a widower and, if you do a little digging, has some kinship to my family. But, almost everyone called him “Uncle Edward” as a matter of respect. To say he was a bit odd might be accurate, but out of respect let’s say he was eccentric.
He lived in a large old, unpainted house about a mile off the “road to Teague.” He’d been a widower for several years. Uncle Edward wore the “uniform” of that day – either a khaki shirt or a plaid shirt with khaki pants. And galluses. To young folks (under 50 maybe) who’ve never heard the term, that’s suspenders. Generally, there was no belt, but as the saying goes, if they were very conservative, they wore both.
Uncle Edward wrote “The Luna News” for The Teague Chronicle and when I say “wrote,” I mean he used a pencil and paper and that’s the way it came to the paper. I know, because as the paper’s news editor for a year at age 20, it fell my lot to “edit” it every week. We found that people who’d never been to Texas much less to Teague subscribed to the paper just to get Uncle Edward’s weekly report. Most of those had been exposed to his “report” via being friends of some Luna or Teague native in the military.
His report often began, “Well, I must lay down pencil and paper and go gather the news…” And, he’d get out and walk around the Luna community to the scattering of homes left there after the days of cotton gins ended and killed the “town of Luna.”
And we all called him “Uncle Edward,” or as his generation said: “Eddard.” Respect.
Uncle Gus Mandeville was a bit of different kind of “uncle” for my family. My maternal grandmother – Cora Thompson Thornton Mandeville (she outlived two husbands) – was Gus’s sister-in-law by virtue of her second marriage. Gus was a lifelong bachelor who, by all accounts, had not only never been married, but it was said that he’d never had a romantic relationship with any woman.
Of course, Gus loved the title “uncle” and my mother, whose father died when Mom was three, never really knew another paternal uncle. That appendage was a given for youngsters of that time, left-handed kin or not. Plus, poor old Gus craved that title.
I have written about him putting me (and countless other kids in all his octogenarian lifetime) on his knee and telling me about “fighting Injuns” as a young man. Later, when I learned math, I knew he hadn’t even been born when Texans were actually fighting Indians such as the Comanches.
Out of respect for that sweet old “uncle,” and his love of children, I would have never challenged him on that fact.
For all of Gus’ adult life he lived with one or another of his brothers. The majority of the time was spent with younger brother Bill, until cancer claimed him. Then, Gus packed all of his meager belongings in a large paper grocery sack and moved “off to Wortham,” perhaps 25 miles away, to live with another brother, Park.
Men in their 70s with merely farm labor skills and no “old age pension” depended on the love and charity of relatives to exist in those times.
But, he earned and deserved that title he craved so – Uncle – from any with enough generosity of heart to bestow it upon him.
Willis Webb is a retired community newspaper editor-publisher of more than 50 years experience.
