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There is a danger here. There was some real pathology in the
family. It may be that there are stories which need to be told,
but that this is not the place to tell them.
Another danger is that of transmitting hurts from their generation
to ours. If A's child tells a story about B having been unkind
to A (where A and B are in the set {Joe, Izzy, Chuck, Myra}),
then B's kids today may feel great irritation toward A's kid. A
possible solution is for A's kid to get B's kid's permission to
tell the story here.
And then what fun we will have when two or more people remember
the same event differently.
I am going to try to list the stories in chronological order,
but in places this is, of course, a completely fanciful effort.
Chuck told me that Dad had a sister whom he greatly loved and another whom he greatly
hated. The first one got sick, and eventually died. The second one would not allow Dad
to visit the first one, because she was thrashing around, and Dad might see something he
was not supposed to see.
=========================================================================================
Chuck was about four years old and was standing on the front
porch of the house on Forest Street in Sidney. An impressive
looking, well dressed man came walking alone along the sidewalk.
His face was recognizable from the front page of the newspapers.
Chuck's grandmother (whose house it was, I believe) shouted to
Chuck, "Salute." Chuck saluted in the way he had seen soldiers
preparing for World War I salute. President of the United States
William Howard Taft nodded his head and raised his cane in
response, but did not turn his head and did not slow his stride.
Apparently his train had stopped in Sidney (the station was only
a few blocks away) and he had wanted to get out for a breath of
air.
=========================================================================================
The Presbyterian Church had a Chrismas gift exchange. Everyone
brought a present and put it in a bag and then everyone took out
a present. Chuck wanted a drum. Mom told him he was sure to get
one (what was she thinking?). Chuck did not get a drum. He left
the church kicking and screaming, "I wanted a drum, and you said
I'd get a drum, and I didn't get a drum, and I still want a
drum." For Christmas friends and relatives gave Chuck a total of
five drums. I think he was embarrassed about that for the rest
of his life (when he might better have been angry at Mom for
deficient parenting).
=========================================================================================
The Collier house in Sidney was two doors away from North West
Avenue. North West Avenue was long, not too steep, and
paved in brick. There were not a lot of cars or buggies in those
days, and so in the winter a light coating of snow made for
perfect sledding. There is bad news and there is good news in
this story. The bad news is that at the bottom of North West
Avenue there was a railroad track. The good news is that the
track was only very rarely used. More bad news is that a train
did in fact come along once while Joe was sledding down the
street and he tried to stop but couldn't. But the good news is
that Joe went right under a slow moving box car and came out
untouched on the other side. Izzy, Chuck, and Myra were
hysterical with fear one moment and then hysterical with relief
and laughter the next. Chuck said none of them ever forgot the
day that Joe sledded under a train.
=========================================================================================
Some of Mom's pictures were sold to an insurance company for
use in their annual calendars. (I would strongly suspect that
the company was Provident Mutual, the company for which Dad sold
insurance for many years.) Doughboys returning to Sidney after
World War I reported seeing Mom's pictures on calenders in
France, China, and Australia (at least that is what I remember
Chuck saying).
(Personal note: Chuck and Dad took out a life insurance policy
on me for $1000 some time in the late '30's. I cashed it in a
few years go when it reached maturity. That experience and
applying for social security finally forced home the point that
I was now officially an old man. --wwc)
=========================================================================================
When Ruth was a little girl at the Pemberton school in maybe
2nd or 3rd grade, (1919-20), the kids all looked out the window
one day and shouted, "Oh here comes Mr. Collier!" They knew that
classes would be suspended while Mr. Collier was welcomed to come
in and read Uncle Remus stories to them. Little did she know
that in 14 or 15 years she'd marry the man's son. And imagine any
school today allowing a guy like that into their classroom. But
apparently he stopped at many schools to read to the kids when he
got tired of selling life insurance.
=========================================================================================
Dad once told Chuck that Dad loved Chuck the best of the four
children. Chuck was happy. When the kids were older, they
compared notes and found that Dad had told each of them the same
thing.
=========================================================================================
Chuck said that the family referred to constipation as 'colored
marbles' which is a funny corruption of the Latin term for the
condition.
I searched for the phrase on Google. It is one of the few
times Google has let me down. Does anyone know the phrase?
=========================================================================================
Oh his way to school one bitterly cold winter morning Chuck met
a couple of kids who told him that if he licked the railing in
front of this woman's house, it would taste like honey. Chuck
had some misgivings, but licked the railing anyway. His tongue
froze to the railing and he was completely helpless. The kids
laughed and went off. Fortunately, the woman of the house had
been watching, and she came out with a tea kettle of hot water
which she poured on the railing to warm it up and thereby to
release Chuck's tongue.
=========================================================================================
Dad was an excellent athlete when he was young. He was good
enough to receive an invitation to try out for the Cincinnati
Reds (though not good enough to make the team). He played tennis
into his sixties, until his doctor told him that people his age
should not indulge in exercise that strenuous. He was an
excellent bridge player and an outstanding billiards player. But
as a high school Latin teacher he was perhaps not so patient with
those less gifted than he.
One day Dad was playing billiards (when he probably should have
been out selling life insurance). The game grew tense. Dad had
a very difficult shot to make to win the game. The entire pool
hall grew silent. Everyone gathered around to watch.
As Dad was about to shoot, one of his former Latin students,
apparently not a great admirer of Dad's, broke the silence with,
"William P. Collier, huh? I think it should be William
Peculiar." Everyone laughed. Dad missed.
=========================================================================================
There was a story about Mom calling Dad and asking him to bring
home a pound of hamburger. The words got mixed up, and Dad was
indignant and outraged, but he showed up at home with, as he
understood the request, FIVE pounds of hamburger. There was
something amusing about the words that led to the mixup, but I
have totally forgotten what they were, and so this story is
pretty lame. Sorry. Does anyone remember the story correctly?
=========================================================================================
At a Masonic Lodge meeting Dad offerred to bet that he could tell
every man in the room his birth date. The bet was taken. What
the other fellow did not realize is that Dad, as a life insurance
salesman, had tried to sell an insurance policy to every man
there, and in so doing Dad had learned each man's birth date.
Dad delivered and won the bet.
=========================================================================================
If a trumpeter's mouth is too dry, he/she cannot move the
tongue smoothly. If it is too wet, the saliva will get in the
mouthpiece and distort the sound.
There was a concert in Sidney, Ohio, during which a prominent
player was to perform a trumpet solo. Chuck and two of his friends
got front row seats and just as the trumpeteer began his solo,
they pulled halves of lemons from their pockets and bit into
them, while looking straight at the player. He was a pro; they
failed to induce the expected catastrophic surge of saliva.
=========================================================================================
Someone told Dad that Dad was addicted to tobacco. Dad denied
it. The man said the only way to prove that he was not addicted
to tobacco was to give it up for two years. Dad said he could do
that easily. The man said he would bet that Dad couldn't. Dad
took the bet, put out his pipe, and did not smoke for two years.
The following day he lit up his pipe and cursed himself for ever
having made such a stupid bet.
=========================================================================================
Chuck played the trombone in the Sidney High School Band. He
told me once that he loved the instrument and spent hours and
hours every day practicing. One morning when I was in high
school my friend John Uncapher stopped by to pick me up on the
way to school. He was carrying his trombone. I asked Chuck if
he could still play. He said, "Sure" and asked John if he could
borrow it. Chuck then played the Sidney High School marching
song perfectly, after having not played for at least 20 years.
Chuck went to Ohio University for a couple of years before the
Depression got too bad and forced him to quit. While there he
supported himself in part by playing in a dance band. One night
they were playing at an outside dance very late in the fall. The
weather had become very cold. Chuck had large ears and they
were getting cold. He had this trick where he could fold his ears
(along a vertical axis) and then fold them down and then tuck the
tip of the fold into his ear canal. There was a rest in the
music for the four person trombone section before the trombones
were to come back in fortissimo. During the rest Chuck folded
his ears in in order to get them warm. He then picked up his
trombone and attacked the music smartly. The conductor looked up
in surprise. Instead of a united attack only Chuck was playing.
The other trombonists had seen what Chuch had done and were all
too busy trying to fold their ears into their ear canals to pay
attention to the music.
=========================================================================================
Unkie was going to give a speech at a Masonic Lodge meeting and
was a bit nervous, and so he practiced beforehand in front of
Dad. In the talk he spoke of "a bouquet of roses", pronouncing
the first word "boe-kay". Dad corrected Unkie, saying that the
word should be pronounced "boo-kay". For some reason this was
very difficult for Unkie, but he worked on it and eventually got
it right, maybe too right. When the time came for the talk, he
spoke of a "boo-kay of ruses."
=========================================================================================
1930. Chuck Walks down the Street in Athens, Ohio.
Dad went to Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, before later going
to Harvard for a second bachelors degree, graduating in 1902.
Chuck also went to Ohio University, but had to drop out after two
years because of the Depression.
One day while walking down the street, Chuck heard an old woman
say, "Collier! Parker Collier! Come back here." Chuck turned
around and came back, and the woman said, "You are Parker
Collier's son, aren't you?" Chuck said that he was and asked how
she knew. She said, "You walk just like your father."
Chuck aspired for me to attend Ohio University and to join the
Beta Theta Pi fraternity. He said that I would then be a fourth
generation BTP, and that while there had been other fourth
generation BTP's, there had never been the case of all four
generations being BTP's at the same school.
It would appear from this story that Dad followed in his
father's footsteps, first going to Ohio University and then to
Harvard.
Dad was born in 1873 (according to the LDS) or 1875 (according
to Walter). So he was either 27 or 29 when he graduated from
Harvard. What happened between the time he graduated from OU
(around 1893?) and from Harvard in 1902? Was that the time
during which he was in Georgia, that Myra mentions?
=========================================================================================
Dad consistently won blue ribbons at the Shelby County Fair for
the vegetables that he grew. The vegetable garden was right out
the front door of the house on the Collier farm. Chuck explained
to me how Dad was so successful. On the site of the garden plot
there had once stood a barn which housed sheep. The sheep had
worked for many years to generate the nutrients that later grew
prize-winning vegetables.
When Chuck told me this story, he laughed a hollow, triumphant
laugh as if he had destroyed any claim Dad might have had to
excellence in growing vegetables. I pointed out that a
fortuitous choice of garden location did not invalidate the fact
that one was a success in gardening. Chuck appeared deflated. I
have wondered since then about what was going on in him.
=========================================================================================
Chuck was at a movie. It was really scary. Equally
entertaining were the reactions of the two women sitting behind
him who were totally terrified. When the newest nefarious
character appeared on screen, one of them said, "Oh, there's
Peter Lorre". The other responded, "Oh, Thank God, you know someone
in this theater".
=========================================================================================
Ruth told me that one evening she was invited to the Collier
family house for dinner. (In my mind this was at the little
farm, but I am not certain of that.) Dad said, "Come here, Ruth,
I want to read you a story." So she sat by him and he read, but
he read in a sometimes halting manner. She wondered why that
was, because he had a reputation for being a very learned person.
Later she found out that he was reading a story written in
classical Greek and was translating as he went along.
=========================================================================================
Buddy Shang was a former slave who moved from down South to
Sidney after the Civil War. Mom painted Buddy. The painting
shows him with a slave shackle still on his right wrist; it was
never removed. He carries a tin bucket in his right hand and a
cane in his left hand. The bucket was known to hold beer at
times. Other times it held fishing worms, and his cane served as
a fishing pole. A red and yellow fishing fly is hooked on his
vest.
Mom sold the painting to a local jeweler who displayed it in
his store window for many years. When Buddy first saw the
painting, he exclaimed, "Well, bless my soul. There's Shadrack
Meshack Abednego White." It was the only time anyone ever heard
him speak his full given name.
Chuck tried to buy the painting back after Mom died, but the
jeweler set too high a price. Then one night the jewelry store
burned. Chuck went down the next day and poked through the
rubble until he found the painting. He took it home. I have it
today.
=========================================================================================
Dad got a bachelors degree at Ohio University and then went two
years at Harvard to get a second bachelors degree, graduating in
1902. (Chuck told me that Dad had gotten a masters degree at Harvard; I later discovered
it was only a bachelors degree. While at Harvard he studied with Kittredge, the great
Shakespearean scholar. Dad remained a student of Shakespeare
throughout his life. Chuck said that on Dad's nightstand when he
died there was a brand new set of the collected works of
Shakespeare.
=========================================================================================
Myra saved a typed copy of the eulogy delivered at Dad's
funeral. She passed it to Joe Stickler who passed it to Jo
Kaestner who passed it to me. In this age of spellcheck,
variable-width fonts, and 600 dpi printers there is something
nostalgic and touching about old typescript. Therefore, I have
reproduced the typed page as closely as I could, including typos,
spacing, and dropped characters.
I knew Jack Meister. He was the minister who confirmed me into
the Presbyterian Church. Dad regularly ranted to Rev. Meister about
the outdatedness of the Apostle's Creed and the inappropriateness
of reciting it every Sunday in church. (Now I recognize where I
got the orneriness to refuse to say the Lord's Prayer or Salute
the Flag in high school.) The eulogy seems to me to be a little
bookish and a little lacking in feeling. But then I am judging
an event of a different time and a different culture by what I have
become today. --wwc
Along with Dad's eulogy came this letter from Myra to her son
David. Again, I have sought to preserve the flavor of the
original typing. --wwc
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