My favorite Hollys dining room table story, from the same era as this post, goes as follows:
There was company at the table and Kent and Donn and Hall told Polly that Vert had a story. Everyone got quiet and TPG told his story: "Do you know how to catch a polar bear? Cut a hole in the ice. Put peas all around the hole. When the bear comes up to take a pea, kick him in the ice hole"
Still a good joke 70 years later.
Kent Hollingsworth
November 16, 1993
Dear Wright:
Morelock, blind and bedridden for some 10 years, died Sunday at 91. Dorcas called and asked if we would share a floral spray. Oh, my yes. There would be a visitation Tuesday at Kerr Brothers Funeral Home on Main Street. We will get there as soon as I get out of class and return from Louisville.
With artificial coloring, she appeared rigid, stern, cold, lifeless-of course. The image I recalled so readily from more than a half-century ago was of a tall, strong, gentle woman whose beauty was in her smile, her warmth, her caring, her zest for life.
Morelock's sister Mary, 79, a nurse burdened all these years with supernumerary patients at home, laughed her sister's laugh in greeting us: "Vertrees called long distance, and we talked for 15 minutes, but I never did get to tell him that story she loved so..."
Vertrees had his second birthday in Morelock's house at The Hollys.
Father had that house (Ed note: Whitlock's house, not the Hollys pictured above [with 3 year old Vertrees on the back deck]) built on the Carrick Pike (now known as Stone Road) at the back of the farm. It was the standard Combs Lumber Co. tenant house: white clapboard frame, four small rooms on the first floor, unfinished second floor under a hip roof; it was heated by a coal stove in the living room, wood stove in the kitchen; no electricity, no plumbing, privy in the backyard; whole deal cost $2,500; well drilling and hand pump out back were extra.
Big Jim Whitlock, a born offensive lineman, had leased the farm for 13 years from Ted Bassett's grandmother before Father bought the 126 acres from her for $20,000 in 1939-$10,000 down, with the $10,000 balance to come, in Father's usual term, “60-90 days." In this instance, the period extended several years after the seller's death, driving Ted's mother to distraction trying to collect.
Father asked Mr. Whitlock to stay on and manage the operation for him, raise the tobacco and hay, help him stock the place with registered black Angus cattle, purebred Dorsett sheep, Duroc hogs, Plymouth Rock laying hens, Toggenburg goats, Silver pheasants, exotic white turkeys, and tumbling pigeons that would strut around the garden house roof and tumble off backward onto a startled peacock which screeched that the sky was falling.
Father agreed to build the house for Mr. Whitlock in the back pond field so he, his wife (Vertrees reduced Mr. Whitlock to "Lock" and when confronted with Mrs. Whitlock, designated her "Morelock"), and their 16-year-old son Jay (a Jim junior, he hardly could be called Little Jim because he was three inches taller than Big Jim, and a diminutive name just could not be fixed to a huge center, "The best basketball player I ever saw in Scott County," proclaimed Coach Adolph Rupp, who raised Herefords farther down the Carrick Pike) could live there.
The Whitlocks moved into the tenant house and Father started remodeling the main residence, the north wing of which was said to have been built in 1806, the main portion with the Greek Revival Doric pillars and portico added by Lexington builder John McMurty in 1845, when Dr. Wm. Addison Smith married Julia Coulter and got the land as a wedding gift from her father David.
During this remodeling, Father and Mother stayed in town at the Lafayette Hotel (now the Urban—County Government Building at Main and Martin Luther King Streets). Rather than drive back to Lexington for lunch, Father wondered if Morelock could cook lunch for us. Well, her dining room was too small to seat Big Jim, Jay, Father, Mother, baby Vertrees, and sundry siblings.
Father thought the new tenant house was too hot in the summer anyway, so he added a 15-foot screened-in back porch that ran the length of the house, incorporating the hand pump (which pleased Morelock, having access to pump water under roof). Wafted by soft summer breezes on the new porch, we enjoyed not just light lunches, but great, grand, immemorial noonday feasts prepared by Morelock.
You like custard pie? Three big ones came the next day, each quartered (Mother always cut eight skimpy slices out of a pie). You like pumpkin pie? Three big ones the next day, dozen slices, only 10 people on hand--how about a second piece? Biscuits were large and luscious, three inches in diameter, two inches high. Mother always had those silver-dollar sized biscuits, too hard to be opened by hand, too easy to crumble when pried by a knife. Morelock’s were hot, light, ready for her peach preserves-you better take two of those before they get cold. Mashed potatoes and cream gravy, homemade applesauce with cinnamon on top, three pork chops. Pass that bowl of string beans over to him. Who is ready for some more ears of corn? No wonder Big Jim Whitlock was big.
Then the smell from the kerosene lamps Mr. Whitlock read by got to Father. He had the house wired, overhead lighting put in every room, plus wall plugs. This pleased Morelock, who inveigled Mr. Whitlock into buying one of those new electric toasters
(Ed Note: Herself has always loved toasters. See the picture of the non-pop up, then the newfangled version that Morelock enjoyed)
that popped out toast before it burned-no more peering into the oven every so often. The new gadget had been invented by a guy named Genter in Minnesota, who died without suspecting his wife would win the Kentucky Derby with Unbridled.
When Mother and Father left, Vertrees and I got to spend the night at Morelock's house. She had a great brass bed upstairs with a feather mattress that enveloped us; one did not sleep on this mattress, but in it. On such nights, Morelock would sit in front of the coal stove, under the new light in the living room, with Vertrees in her lap and read to him. Vertrees liked one particular story - it was a nothing story, something about a cow in the barn asking how the weather was out there, and the horse says it's too cold, the sheep says it's too hot, the chick-chick says somebody could drown out there, while the duck says it's just Great - and Morelock had to read and reread this same dumb story to him every night.
When Mother and Father returned, Vertrees and I went back to our regular beds and meals. We all gathered around the long dining room table and talked to rather than with each other. Father wants to tell about the big oil deal he made in Indiana, Dorcas tries to find out how she and the other cheerleaders are going to get to the next game, Mother wants to explain something about Robert Sherwood’s new play, while Donn and Hall are arguing over who is going to get the station wagon to drive to town. Under this babble, Vertrees-he‘s about three-stares at his plate and mumbles to himself. Mother notices. What is he saying, Denzil? Father leans close to Vertrees; he cannot make it out. Hold it. Hold it! Everybody quiet down. Now, son, what were you saying?
With head down, Vertrees continues to read his plate, reciting a narrative I recognized, about a cow in a barn asking about the weather. He had the thing down verbatim, even with pauses where Morelock turned the pages. When he got to the cat‘s final line, "So you see, all people do not like the same kind of weather my—dear," he raised his head, grinning in triumph to a stunned audience. The Bible notwithstanding, Mother pronounced it the Greatest Story Ever Told. Could Vertrees do that again? He nodded, and proceeded to read it right off his plate, exactly as before my—dear. Later he took to memorizing lines from Carousel and married Alice.
When the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, Jay immediately enlisted in the Marines, Mr. Whitlock took a job guarding the ammo dump at Richmond, Ky., and Morelock was left alone. I visited her a lot, read in her saved copies of the Ladies Home Journal Daphne du Maurier's serialized Frenchman's Creek in one afternoon’s sitting in the privy. Then Hall was inducted right out of U High and was shipped overseas for the Normandy invasion. Donn housed the tobacco and enlisted to become a drill sergeant. Dorcas went off to Sophie Newcombe College in New Orleans. Father was gone most of the time, reopening a coal mine near London, Ky., and putting down some shallow oil wells around Albany, Ky. So nobody was left to milk the cows and clean the chicken houses, except Vertrees and me. Morelock closed her house and moved over with us. This permitted Mother to travel with Father more often, leaving us in Morelock's loving care.
Travel was rare with gas rationing. Everybody who owned a car initially was entitled to an "A" sticker and four gallons a week, good for about 60 miles. Because he was an oil producer "related to the war effort," Father was entitled to a "C" sticker and all the gas he needed for the 1942 Studebaker he was stuck with for the duration. When I was 15, Father averred I was a year older so I could get a driver's license, and drive myself to U High, saving a gallon a day. I had a trucker‘s "T" sticker for our 1942 Chevy pickup and enough gas for seven trips a week to town; two-a-day meant one less trip on the weekend.
Andy Deiss and I happened upon two of the 3,300 tickets for the UK—Cincinnati basketball game in old Alumni Gym. This required two quick trips, hurrying home from school after our basketball practice to milk the cows, then hustling back to meet Andy at 7:30 in front of Alumni Gym. Snow began swirling when I dashed from the shower at U High, but it was not sticking and of no consequence, really, for the tread still showed on the pre-war tires, and I had the confidence of Eddie Rickenbacker at the wheel of that racy pickup.
But I had no weight in the back, and slipped a bit wide around the elbow at the old Cool Meadow Airport (now Fasig-Tipton Sales). I had to flip the wheel this way, then that, then this way, and sped on-—can I handle this snow, or what? The 35-mile—per—hour Victory speed limit was not in effect on the Newtown Pike, not for Toad, Master of the Road, 40, 45, 50, 55, SIXTY. Go Big Blue—-here I come!
Slashing through the blizzard, past what is now Walter Zent‘s farm, then C.M. Boone's place, where there is a slight left bend and an exhilarating bump, that old Chevy took flight. We landed in the righthand ditch, and hurtled down the fence line, taking out a row of hackberry saplings Chuck Schmidt never missed when he bought that frontage 35 years later.
The pilot was ejected through the windshield and did not regain consciousness until after some very nice people who lived in New Zion took him the rest of the way home. I awoke on the front hall floor as Morelock was protesting Mother's trying to pour a hot toddy through my blood-caked lips. My rescuer had reported that I had pert near froze to death lying in the road there so long, and recommended that I be given some inside heat. Morelock said that liquor would get all the blood flowing again. Mother asked no one in particular if an ambulance ever would come. It would not. A train wreck in Lexington blocked traffic on Georgetown, Third, and Fourth Streets, causing the ambulance driver to give up hope of ever making it out the Newtown Pike; he took another call.
Father was in New Orleans at the Fairgrounds with Kendor and the Studebaker. I had totally destroyed our only other means of transportation. Mother called Howard Evans at Winton, where Dr. Bill McGee now lives, and he warmed up his gold Desoto and drove to The Hollys. Morelock and Mr. Evans carried me down the icy front steps and muscled me into the backseat.
We started back to town. Police stopped us at the scene of a terrible wreck, a smashed pickup truck lying on its side and blocking most of the road. Mr. Evans advised the officer that we had to get by, taking a sick boy to the hospital in Lexington. The patrolman sniffed. You people been drinking? Mr. Evans was indignant: Absolutely not! A wrecker pulled up, ready to winch the junk out of the road, and the patrolmen waved us on, out of the way.
Mr. Evans had an unusual mannerism to, indicate his amusement. Without dislodging his omnipresent cigarette, he would hiss twice, and his eyes would twinkle. As he drove toward Lexington, Mr. Evans hee-heed, "Well, Polly, you almost got your boy to town in a paddy wagon, on a DUI charge".
The funeral parlor was filled with people Missy and I did not know. Is Jay here? He had returned from the South Pacific heavier, older, and with a different agenda. He was not interested in going to college and putting up with Coach Rupp's caustic comments. He had a beer, got a job as a fireman, played cards at the stationhouse, on—three off—two, played basketball with Dean's Wreckers, a nationally ranked AAU team, and played semi—pro baseball. He had lost a stride, but none of his athletic grace; and he played shortstop on the local pickup team chosen as foils when Bob Feller’s Major League All Stars toured through Baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler's town after the war.
I had not seen Jay for more than 20 years. I read that he: had been seriously injured when a car rammed into the ladder—extension trailer Jay was steering, but I was not permitted to visit him in intensive care after plastic surgeons put him back together. I did not recognize him at Kerr's, until he grinned. He rose slowly from a chair. His left; leg was bowed and he was five inches shorter, but his big meat hand was strong and warm as ever.
Jay, Mary asked, what was-that story your Mother always liked to tell about Vertrees? Lot of 'em. I mean about feeding his kitten? Oh, the one about his using Mrs. Hollingsworth's finest china. Yes, that's it. Mary laughed and turned to us “Your father had some very important investors down here for the Kentucky Derby and he was trying to sell them some horses or something, and your Mother was serving dessert in these very special little bowls, and Vertrees--he was very little and never said much- pulled on this man's arm and said, "You know you're eating out of my cat's dish." And Jay grinned, and Mary laughed Morelock's laugh.
It happened so long ago, people and things so important to me, yet almost forgotten, so I thought I would set it down, lest you miss knowing of an earlier era that bore on yours.
You have all our love,
Father (Kent)
Mr. Wright Hollingsworth
921 Stephens Avenue
Missoula, Montana 59801
Copy to Uncle Vertrees, and around
I asked TGP what the name of that story was yesterday. Here is his response:
That is a story I used to tell visitors at The Hollys when I was 4, during the war. I have no idea as to its origin, but it was a long shaggy dog tale. that your grandmother loved to repeat as an example of her youngest's brilliance. I remember Father saying "don't let the boy start that silly thing again" when we were driving somewhere. I would stand on the transmission hump in the back of the car and regale them with stories while leaning over their back seat. No wonder they have seat belts now. I think it was the expansion and extensiveness of the number of animals brought into the story that would get to Father.
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