The Wileys

THE WILEYS

My mother's maiden name was Wiley. When I was born in 1930, and until I was six years old, our family lived in a boarding house that was operated by her mother, Grandmaw Wiley. Granddaddy Wiley had been given the name Nandy by one of the grandchildren, and the name stuck with him through the years. Many of the Wiley children and grandchildren were spread up and down Eighth Street. Three houses up the street lived the older son Orville, with Aunt Alice and my cousins, Mary Grey, Anna Meryl (Mae), Billy and Gerald. In the next block down the street lived the older daughter, Aunt Odie Cooke with Uncle Dewey, and my cousins Wiley, Dewey, Jr., and the identical twins Marilee and Marjorie. When we moved into our own home, we were five houses down the street from the boarding house.

While we lived in the boarding house, my mother helped with the cooking and cleaning. Both Uncle Orville and my father worked at the silk mill. Once I asked my mother what kind of job Uncle Dewey had. She laughed and said, "He's a bootlegger." Then she immediately reversed herself and said that he just had a liking for "moonshine". But she never did reveal to me just what he did do for a living.

Nandy sold "Raleigh goods" - patent medicines - door to door, not only in our immediate neighborhood, but all over Southeast Roanoke. He cultivated a regular customer clientele that had gradually become his personal friends, with whom his visits were as much social, as sales, meetings. He would sit and chat, mostly about the Bible and religion, for an hour or more whether he made a sale or not. In this way he managed to generate a small but adequate income by working fewer hours and without the physical demands of the work at the silk mill. I was rarely aware of his going or coming, although I vaguely recall seeing him with his bag of patent medicines. As he went about the boarding house, he was constantly whistling, to the frequent annoyance of my grandmother.

He kept his supply of Raleigh goods neatly arranged on shelves in the basement of the boarding house. I was fascinated with the varieties of pills, lotions, and salves, and would occasionally sneak down there and "check out" some of the items. Some of the medications represented an advance in the "state of the art" in home remedies. For example, in my infant years I had been forced to take cod liver oil or castor oil whenever I felt bad. But Nandy's wares included a bottle of little pink pills, with a decidedly candy flavor, that accomplished the same effect with none of the nauseating taste of the older medicines. It was wonderful to be cured in a way that was not only easy but actually pleasant, with medicine that tasted good. It tasted so good, in fact, that one day when I was hiding out in the basement, I helped myself to about a dozen of the sweet pills. Later, when my stomach began to ache, I faced my mother's inquisition and confessed to the crime. I was expecting a good spanking but, instead, she forced me to vomit and then released me. She knew well that, over the next two days, I would pay dearly for my sin.

When I was two years old, Nandy began teaching me the alphabet, and over the next two years he taught me to count and to add columns of numbers, and to read. To teach reading he used the common sense approach, which is now called phonics. I was reading children's books and simple fairy tales by the time I was four, and comic books when I was five. Teaching me appeared to be more of a pastime or hobby for him, rather than any dedicated effort toward literacy. I think he may have felt a little out of place in the boisterous social atmosphere of the boarding house. He seemed to enjoy the companionship of Billy and me, especially on weekends. Sometimes he would secretly slip us fifteen cents with instructions to buy a pint of ice cream at Angle's Grocery. Then the three of us would rendezvous at the end of the back yard, where we were hidden from the house by the grape arbor. He would sneak three saucers and spoons from the kitchen and trisect the block of ice cream with his pocketknife. I found that a third of a pint was about equivalent to two large cones, which bordered on my ice cream limit.

On weekend afternoons, when Billy and I were often bored, he would take us on long walks on the railroad track. Then, by the time we were eight or nine years old, we had enough confidence to undertake exploring trips on our own, and many times wandered off three or four miles from home.

It was late in my life when I finally realized the debt that I owed Nandy, because his influence on me was subtle and apparently inadvertent, but it was lasting and so powerful as to be a prime determining factor in the critical turning points in my life. Those long walks that got us started on exploring on our own, for example, led to an unexpected benefit. On those exploring trips without adults we often managed to get ourselves into some kind of desperate situation. Without an older, stronger, more experienced hand to help, we had to find some way of resolving the situation on our own. Such experiences taught us to accept the responsibility for our actions, but it also gave us the confidence that we could undertake a mission with an unknown outcome and somehow work out of it successfully.

The other factor, of course, was teaching me the basics of reading and arithmetic. He would teach me when the two of us were alone, and then when I paraded my newfound knowledge before other adults, I received the plaudits that I craved. In this way, it got through to me at an early age that learning would be the key to my success.

Nandy had a green thumb and could plant or transplant anything successfully. I think he would have made a good scientist, because he loved to experiment and play tricks with plants, like grafting branches of one tree onto another. My mother told me that he once harvested three kinds of fruit from one tree.

He was quietly religious. I heard that he often discussed religion with his some of his Raleigh Goods customers, but I never heard him mention the subject. I'm not sure which denomination he was - I think he was Methodist - but he read the Bible through every year; and I would often observe him praying, when he thought he was alone, with his head slightly bowed, and his right hand cupped over his eyes as though shielding them from a glare.

Nandy had several brothers: Walter, Oscar, and Bob. Betty and I called each of them by the title "uncle" because my mother referred to them that way. I don't remember anything at all about Uncle Walter, except that he lived somewhere in the far western part of the state. Uncle Oscar lived somewhere near route 220 where it crosses into West Virginia. I don't remember him personally, but his shoe repair shop made a definite impression on me, with its belt-driven emery wheels and its strong characteristic odor of fresh leather.

However, I did meet Nandy's other brother Bob on a few occasions - once when he visited the boarding house, and at a couple of family reunions. He seemed to be slightly more outgoing and jovial than Nandy, and expressed himself more vehemently, with frequent use of his swear words, "By jingo!" and "By jings!". He had four sons: Burie, Warren, Ray Francis, and Homer; and two daughters: Lucille and Christina, who was nicknamed Tiny. I don't remember Warren, who moved to North Carolina, but the other three brothers worked the farm, which was nearly adjacent to the Barger farm. At any contact between any of them and my uncles Dallas, Carl, or Collins, there was sure to be plenty of kidding. I don't think they could discuss anything without an underlying tone of joking, and I can't recall ever having witnessed a completely serious conversation among them.

The Barger farm had at least one significant advantage over the Wiley farm - a reliable source of water. A period of drought was like a plague to the Wileys, because the spring would dry up, and they would have to borrow water from a neighbor. Drilling a well in that area was always a problematic undertaking, because the ground substructure was largely solid rock; but when Uncle Bob was in his seventies and the "boys" were in their fifties, they decided to try it anyway. Uncle Bob was in the farmhouse when the drilling team struck water - not just a well, but an artesian well. Someone went to fetch Uncle Bob, who, when he saw the water spurting straight up in the air, shook his head and said, "By jingo! Them boys have done it now!"

Grandma Wiley had several brothers and sisters, but I don't recall having met any of them. However, I do remember her mother, my great-grandmother Julia Myers, who visited at the boarding house for several days on at least one occasion. She was probably over ninety years old at the time, but she was by no means infirm. She would sit at the table in the kitchen, talking to my grandmother, and crocheting - not heavy yarn, but a finer thread that looked to me like string. She crocheted continuously, making lace-like bedspreads and tablecloths - all without eyeglasses!

Billy's sisters rarely played in the neighborhood games, because just as I became old enough to participate in the games, they were outgrowing them. Both of them loved to read, and Mae was especially attracted to mystery novels. She would read us exciting passages and tell us parts of the plots to whet our interest. I'm sure that she read every Nero Wolfe, Thin Man, Ellery Queen, and Perry Mason book that the public library stocked. I tried a couple of them that she recommended; but after I read my first Sherlock Holmes story, I lost interest in the other detectives.

Billy was a faithful playmate from the time that we were old enough to play together until we were well into our teen years. We played, took hikes with Nandy, read comic books together, and pretended we were the Katzenjammer Kids, who were the subject of a popular newspaper cartoon of the day. The Katzenjammers were a German family living on an unnamed island. The two kids, Hans und Fritz, were continually playing tricks on "Momma", "The Captain", and other members of the family. Our pranks were almost as outrageous as those of the cartoon characters, but while they usually got away with theirs, we invariably got caught and were punished.

Having Billy to play with was almost like having a brother; and I resented having to share him with Gerald when Gerald became old enough to play with us. It was Billy's responsibility to take care of his brother, and that assignment put a damper on our fun and games. Just being a couple of years younger made a big difference, and we often complained and berated him for not being able to keep up with us.

Then, when he was about six years old, I awoke one morning to find that he was in the hospital with spinal meningitis. At the end of the walkway from Billy's front porch there was a step down to the sidewalk. We sat on that step as Billy explained to me the seriousness of Gerald's condition. He was silent for a few seconds; then turned to me with tears in his eyes, and said, "I might lose my brother." I was jolted by such a display of emotion in a child my age; and I suddenly had a feeling of terrible remorse for all the mean things that I had said to Gerald.

But in less than a month the crisis was over. Gerald recovered rapidly and was soon as healthy as ever. He was so healthy that he grew and kept growing until he was bigger than Billy, then bigger than me, and eventually about as big as the two of us combined. Once, in a little pick-sides football game, I faced off against him in the line. I figured that, being fat, he would be both soft and slow. But hitting him was not at all like plowing into a bowl of jello, as I had expected, but more like running up against a granite wall. I didn't pass out, but I did lie on the grass for a while, watching daytime stars. Gerald was a bit too slow to become a football player, but he was a successful wrestler, winning the state high school heavyweight championship in both his junior and senior years.

The Cooke children, being a little older, didn't participate in many of our neighborhood games. Of the four, Junior made the greatest impression on me, because of his talent for carving and sculpting. He could carve various animals with great accuracy from bars of Ivory soap; but his real showpiece was a detailed miniature of an ornate Gothic church that was located in downtown Roanoke. For that work he used numerous bars of soap. Then he found out that there was a kind of rock, called soapstone, that can be carved with a knife; and his creations took on a more permanent character.

Later in life Junior's talent proved to be an asset in a most unexpected way. He was a smooth talker and an excellent salesman. In fact, he was such a good salesman that he sold some things that didn't exist, and consequently wound up in prison on a bunko conviction. To pass the time, he returned to his old hobby and sculpted a flattering bust of the prison warden. Shortly thereafter he was released on parole for good behavior.

My mother had a cousin, Beulah, who had married a man named Luney. He was an accomplished artist. I assumed that painting was a spare time activity for him, but I gathered that, although he didn't actually sell many of his works, he was fairly successful in using them in barter transactions. One of his paintings hung in the living room of the boarding house for many years - a poetic rendering of a quiet river with a tree-lined bank, illuminated in the soft pinks, blues, and purples of early evening.

He and Beulah had three children: Garman, Marita, and Wanda, my second cousins. I have no memory of any of the family except Wanda, whom I can never forget because of the trouble she got me into. One day her mother came for a visit and brought her along. For some reason I couldn't find anyone else to play with that day and welcomed a new playmate. We were sent outside with instructions not to leave the yard. In the back of my mind I had some doubts about her, possibly because subconsciously I had connected the name Luney with "loony", but I was so glad to have someone to play with that I eagerly showed her the main features of the yard - the swing in the grape arbor, the apple tree that was easy to climb, and the chickens in the coop.

Then she opened the door to the coal bin in the side of the garage. I had learned to stay out of there, but she was fascinated with it - not just the bin as a kind of play house, but with the coal itself. I wanted to leave, but she kept playing with the little chunks of coal; and when she discovered how easily the black color rubbed onto her skin, she suggested that we color ourselves black.

I hesitated. I had already got my share of spankings for playing Katzenjammer Kids pranks; and not even they would have been so bold as to pull a stunt like this. On the other hand, I didn't want to appear to be less daring than a girl, and I felt that if she thought that somehow she could get away with it, maybe I could, too. So we applied a good covering of soot to our faces, arms, and legs. We waited until our mothers appeared at the back door, calling us, then went marching toward them, holding hands - like Little Black Sambo and his sister. And, as if by magic, we got away with it. Of course my mother fussed at me all the time that she was scrubbing me as I stood in the kitchen sink; but I suspect that she didn't spank me because she didn't want to have to undergo that kind of unpleasantness while her cousin was visiting.

In those days, we attended the annual family reunions religiously. One of the Wiley reunions in particular remains clear in my memory for many reasons, one of which was the beauty of its location. Paint Bank is a long drive from Roanoke and, for some long-forgotten reason, we took the roundabout route - out highway 220 to Clifton Forge and then down a winding country road to the Wiley homestead, my mother's birthplace. It was a warm day in August, but in those days it was customary to hold the reunions beside a creek, so that the children could cool off and have some fun while the adults talked. Sure enough, the makeshift picnic tables had been set up in the shade of giant oak trees along the banks of a stream which, I believe, was Paint Bank Branch just a short distance before it empties into Pott's Creek.

I was so eager to get into the water that I might not have noticed the beauty of the setting if my mother had not called attention to it. With the picturesque mountain rising to the west of the quiet little valley, the widely spread farmsteads, the gently flowing stream, the shady groves - the pastoral setting would have been equally appropriate for a landscape painters' convention.

Billy and I put on our bathing suits in an outhouse that stood in a field, about a hundred yards from the picnic site, and then joined a few of the other children in the water. We could only find a couple of spots where the water was deep enough to swim a few feet, but that was enough. We just wanted to stay cool and have a little fun splashing each other.

The water and the exercise whetted my appetite, which was further abetted as I caught glimpses of various delectable-looking dishes being carried to the tables. Finally, the long-anticipated moment arrived and, after a lengthy grace invoked by one of the patriarchs, I was free to make a pig of myself. At feasts like this there was always a huge selection of delights, but the only ones that I can remember specifically were the old standbys: fried chicken, deviled eggs, potato salad, and chocolate cake. As I recall it was my mother who finally admonished me to ease off. My stomach seemed incapable of telling me that it was full.

We didn't want to swim after such a heavy meal, but one of the older children let us ride with him in a boat that had been tied up at the stream bank. The oars were missing, but we poled it upstream, passing over some of the deeper holes where some sizeable fish were clearly visible in the crystal clear water. We came to a bridge over the stream and rested in its shade before letting the boat drift downstream as we admired the trout, who appeared oblivious to our passage.

Billy wanted me to go with him to the outhouse, to stand guard outside while he went to the bathroom. I didn't relish the idea of standing in the glare of the afternoon sun in that open field but, as it turned out, I only had to wait a few seconds. Billy came tearing out the door, yelling, "snake! snake!" I looked in and, after my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw a green garden snake slithering along the back of the flat wooden commode. One of the men came and removed it, assuring us that it was not poisonous, but was just looking for a cool place to escape the sun's heat. Nevertheless, the experience was a bit traumatic for me as well as Billy, and it left me with a dislike for outhouses and an even greater fear of snakes.

Return to table of contents for this label:

Table of Contents for Memories Label (augustmarsblog.blogspot.com)