Uncle Henry - Cowboy
Carl M. Pearson
Long and sappy article. Sorry for being away so much, but when it rains,
it pours.
Carlo
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Uncle Henry
My Kind of Cowboy
Carl M. Pearson
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Uncle Henry’s grin could light up a room. Old folks always enjoyed his grin, banter and showmanship. His table manners were not too refined, and some days he was kinda ripe. But man, oh, man, what a man.
Uncle Henry, Hank, Henry, Unc (pronounced UNK,) Ivar (his given name) and a host of others were his handles. Unc or Uncle Henry was my preferred title.
Henry was a cowboy.
Not the kind of cowboy with an air-conditioned pickup with CD and cell phone. Not the kind with a steamed $150 hat (that you couldn’t touch) and would be delicately and religiously placed upside down when it was not perched upon a head. Not the kind with colorful shirts, rhinestone studs, silver collar tips and an earring. Not the kind with a sprayed-on fragrance and clean boots made from any animal other than a member of the bovine order. Not the kind of cowboy who had a personal computer.
Henry was the kind of 160-pound cowboy who would walk into a corral and bite the ear of a cow that had given him trouble. The kind who would actually get on top of a live, PO’d Brahma bull. The kind who would strap his butt to virtually anything for 8 seconds for the fun of it and if a couple of bucks came out of it, all the better.
ME? I’d get on a Brahma bull only if it were dead and I had a death certificate, two reliable eye witnesses and had already stuck the carcass with a sharp prod a few times just to make sure the dang thing’s soul really had gone on to bovine Valhalla. I still think I’d rather park a Buick on it first, though. Naw, two Buicks, one might slip off.
Henry was a Swedish cowboy from North Dakota. Or South Dakota. Or Montana. Any dang place he felt like being a cowboy. A scrapper, but not one who picks a fight. In his youth a good scrap was fun, like a round of golf, a day at the beach or 3 rounds of bare knuckle with the ironworker from over on Racine Street. Summary: A gentle, loving man unless you were a critter with an attitude, 2-legged OR 4-legged.
When Grampa lost the farm during the depression, the family moved to Chicago and Henry, his oldest son, came along. Maybe he came later, maybe he went on ahead. It matters not. They strapped everything they owned to a truck or car and came to Chicago looking like the Beverly Hillbillies without the music, oil wells or stupid script.
Well, cowboying in Chicago is not an oft-advertised career position so Unc became a bricklayer. Let us compare. Bricklayer: outdoors mostly, all-weather, needs strength, needs ruggedness, work with your hands, pushes stuff where it doesn’t want to go (cows or bricks) and retain a firm grasp on you masculinity, not to be confused with grasping your masculinity. So he transformed himself from cowboy to bricklayer, or more accurately from a cowboy-cowboy to a cowboy-bricklayer.
For churches he would drag out his ropes and whips and do his rodeo tricks to the delight of kids from 3 to 93. He always surprised some young-lovely by roping her. They would always giggle and wiggle and wiggle and giggle like only girls full of life can do.
Now as Unc advanced in years, so did his definition of a young-lovely so towards the end the “Young-Lovely” was just as likely to be a great-grandmother as a teenybop so none of the female types were safe as long as his rope was a-twirling. They ALL gig-wiggled whence roped.
Unc would call my folks and ask to borrow me, a mere child, and they’d ask if I wanted to go and I never regretted saying yes. Smelt fishing in Lake Michigan (big sardines caught in a net) and otheradventures happened with Unc.
His basement was a child’s treasure hunt. More stuff to excite a child’s mind than a museum. In fact, it was a museum. Cannon balls, rodeo equipment, various tools, weapons, contraptions, gizmos, great thingamabobs and doohickeys everywhere. He’d let you mess with any of it, for none of it was breakable and if you could lift it at all, it was your job to get your little fingers and toes out of harm’s way.
And buckets. I think Uncle Henry’s luggage was buckets. One time his car showed too much rust so he dumped out a bucket of his things, mixed concrete, patched the car, and returns his things to the bucket. New cars gave his car a wide berth on the road. You would too when you pulled your Lincoln or Caddilac along side a bucket filled car patched with concrete.
Cracking his whips (and a bunch of his related tricks) always sent my heart pounding for fear that my beloved Uncle Henry would pick ME to be the holder of whatever paper was about to be violently shredded by the whip.
I was afraid I’d tinkle in my pants if he picked me. Well eventually I was his chosen one and I could barely stop shaking. His confidence calmed me with a few words and a gentle touch. “Carl, hold still so I don’t rip your arm off.” Wouldn’t that calm you down?
His grin told me it was all for showmanship and that there was nothing to fear. Yup, me go tee-tee. Just a drop, but tee-tee just the same.
SNAP! CRACK! SNAP! CRACK! SNAP!
The whip flew and the paper exploded and the people applauded and I got an 8-year-old’s boner. I volunteered EVERY time thereafter. I was hooked. It was probably the boner thing.
So eventually I trotted off to college, learned more about boners and playing pool and returned to Chicago in my early 20’s.
Word got to Unc about my playing pool and he and his brother (my Dad) dragged me out to play pool. Both played a good game, but I slapped them silly on the table and they loved it! I finally was a man in Uncle Henry’s eyes! Well, maybe. They watched me in some tournaments and asked about technique and rules with skeptical scowls.
Now Henry was a champion in his own rights. Horseshoe pitching. He was both City and State Champ at times. I recall some guy name McDougal being his nemesis. One day he challenged McDougal to a grudge match and showed up with REAL horseshoes, not those made specifically for tossing at yonder stake. Some horseshoes still had nails in them from when they were attached to the horse! McDougal declined the match, cursing in McDougalese.
One time in a 14.1 match to 150, I had this joker down 148 to 60, and I played a safe. We swapped safes 5-6 times, and I left a wee bit of a shot and he ran a few balls leaving a dangerous side pocket break shot. He slammed the shot to the side, and the cue ball crushed the rack. Balls flying everywhere.
The shot to the side hit one of the side pocket’s tits, then the other tit (same pocket,) then headed cross side to the other side pocket at warp factor 4. There it hit THAT side pocket’s tit, then the fourth side pocket tit, and you guessed it, back across the table and into the original called pocket. All the time weaving through flying balls from the broken rack. That dog then ran 85 and out, leaving me a loser at 150-148. My Dad and Unc watched intently. A 4-tit-hit did me in.
Afterwards Unc asked me “Can he do that?” I answered “Yup. But only once in a lifetime.” He grinned and bought lunch. I was out in a 1-out tourney.
Well Unc continued to play pool for 30 more years savoring each shot as a victory and each miss with an easy air of “Oh, well.” Once he got a traffic ticket he certainly did NOT deserve. Chatter about refusing to pay and other advice from family and friends whirled about his head. He shut them down with “Wahl, over the years I certainly recall breaking a few laws and getting away with it, so I suppose this just kinda evens things out.” BIG GRIN. Not much you can say, there. I think of his logic whenever I get a bad roll and I scan back over the last few racks to see if I got away with something perilous. EVERY time I can see where I just as easily could (should?) have bitten the dust back it those earlier racks.
He didn’t care if the equipment was perfect, or the cue looked like a W.C. Fields or 3-Stooges stage prop. He loved to talk as much as play the game. A good shot was a good shot in his book, regardless of who shot the shot. If somebody woofed at him for a bet more than a $1 or $2, he was liable to say “Nooooooooo” like only Swedes can do (3 syllables,) and offer as a counter wager to bet he was taller than you, even as he looked up a few inches at you. You’d take that bet and he’d add that it was while sitting down. You’d sit down back-to-back and you’d suddenly realized he was a big man with short legs.
He always was working on a trick, whether it was slapping at a brick hammer, twirling a rope, or braiding old clotheslines into the most gawd-awful macramé of the century.
I only got mad at Uncle Henry once. I needed money. What’s new there? He called and asked if I wanted to be his laborer. What the hell, young college-grad, old bricklayer, this’ll be easy money. He picked me up and we went to get materials, including lots of sand, 50 boxes of fire clay for a steam boiler and a bunch of tools. We drove to the site after the appropriate breakfast and got to work.
My beloved Unc, Uncle Henry, Hank, that lazy good-for-nuttin-bum just STOOD there telling me what to do. Well, suggesting, but he stood there having coffee and dipping stale Swedish things. I wanted to yell “And what are you going to do? Sit there and get fat?” I (fortunately) didn’t say anything out of basic Unc respect supplemented by a pressing need for money. I just grumbled and got to work lowering those heavy boxes down a 30-foot shaft into the basement of a big old building. He suggested I leave 15 or so on the truck, and I ignored him and got all 50 down the hole from hell. I don’t want to come back up for them.
When it was time to lower the heavy sand the pulley grabbed his glove and ran his hand up into the pulley cutting his hand worthy of several stitches. He wrapped a rag around it and said for me to lower it on my own, in smaller buckets, and he sat down again. Grumble. Grumble.
When we climbed down to the bottom of the pit, he had ME, just me, haul all of those tons of stuff through narrow corridors, over hill and dale, under the bridge and down the yellow brick road and stuff it through a tiny door into a boiler, the inside of which was about the size of 2 pool tables.
It was to be like sitting under a tall pool table and working. We slithered inside the boiler and I had to split the clay and hand him slices of the clay. Unc took tools and cleaned the boiler in about an hour and I cleaned up the old junk. We broke for lunch, shot a few racks, had a few belts of Old Zipper Lips or whatever whiskey was cheapest and came back to work.
Uncle Henry picked up a heavy sledgehammer with a short handle and proceeded to pound with that hammer for 7 straight hours. I barely did anything. Another hour of sculpting with a trowel and he just dropped his tools on the ground and said, “I’m done, clean up.” I never doubted the man’s work ethic again. Don’t forget the bloody rag still wrapping his hand.
From that day forward I also paid more attention to what he said about leaving stuff on the truck. I had to haul 15 heavy boxes of left over clay back UP that 30-foot shaft, hill and dale and yellow brick roads notwithstanding. He gave advice once, take it or leave it. No nagging. Once.
A few more nips of whiskey and he challenged me to an arm-wrestling contest. I used to regularly do a free beer drunk thing in college financed by pool, Ping-Pong and arm-wrestling. Besides, I just saw him pound for 7-8 hours. He has to be tired, right? Any damage I avoided as an 8-year old at the hands of his whips was finally repaid in one swift arm-wrestle put down. No tee-tee, though, at least I avoided that grand embarrassment.
OK, Ok, you ol’ bag-O’Gas, how about some pool? Uncle Henry grinned. I got that twinge I get whenever I feel like I’m walking into a trap. Years later, I KNOW in my heart he wanted to prove that age, cunning and deceit can out do youth, recklessness and energy anytime.
The table was terrible, the chalk was a bare sliver of something previously identifiable as chalk, and there were TWO, not one, but TWO posts obstructing everything. The cue ball had a divot in it, and there were 3 three balls on the table. My arms were shaking so badly from the labor and the whiskey that I lost best of 5, two by scratching on the 8-ball. My 25 year old ego was in flames but I think I was just on the edge of being mature enough to see the wonder in the day’s simple, unheralded labor.
My Uncle died within weeks after my Father’s death, maybe not wanting to leave his younger brother without an older brother to get him out of jams in case that dang iron worker from Racine was around.
One of the last times I talked to Henry, or more accurately listened to him because his hearing was gone, he said “I still remember that pool shot (referring to the 4-tit-hit.) Carl, aren’t you just proud that a once-in-a-lifetime shot like that included you?”
Yeah, Unc, just like you. You are certainly a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And I am certainly proud that you and I share some blood, although the Brahma bull part got lost somewhere.
Now you, Uncle Cappy and Daddy-O are all together. All of the adult men in my life are there. All three are pool players. That just leaves my cousins, brother and myself. Add our progeny.
I just know the three of you are plotting some horrific scam on me at the pool table. Better bring your whip and ropes, Unc, because you’ll be on my turf when I get there. I’ll bring my own chalk.
AND don’t go arranging any 4-tit-hits. I’ve already had mine and one is all I care to see.
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