A Contradiction In Terms

July 12, 2006

If mankind is ever to rise to the level we aspire to, our hope will be in that small kernel of goodness that seems to exist in almost everyone, no matter how bad they are. Hitler and his ilk are obviously an exception.

Original photo in my possession is a tintype mounted into a decorative card frame of Alfred Andew Wacaster, my maternal Grandfather. It's a A posed photo typical of early 20^th Century studio pictures and was probably taken sometime before 1922. Based on that assumed date, Alfred would've been around 55 years old when this was taken.

To help you see as much detail as possible, I've cropped the photo out of the frame and enlarged it. Yes, it's a lousy photo and yes it has all kinds of cracks but you're looking at a photo taken over 100 years ago.

Take my grandfather for example...my mother's father. Born in 1867, Alfred Andrew Wacaster was...to repeat myself...a product of his time. Hard, an abuser, womanizer and episodic alcoholic, he also had an element of goodness and tenderness buried way down deep in his soul.

For example, when he was bushwhacked, he was lying in the road with two bullets in him. His assailant...who he knew...walked up and stood over him. He told the guy "You don't have to shoot me any more. You've already killed me." The other man went ahead an Only my grandfather didn't die. He lay in the mud and near-freezing water all night. Then came to and drug himself home ...which was about a mile or so. His wife, Roxie Stovall ...my grandmother...came outside and accused him of being drunk again. He pulled his hand, covered with blood, out of his coat and said "Roxie, I'm not drunk. I've been shot." They called the doctor...doctors made house calls then...who came out, patched him up...which must have been quite a job considering that he had six slugs in him...and said if he got pneumonia he was dead.

Not only did he not get pneumonia, he recovered fully. The sheriff had his attacker in jail with plans to hang him if my grandfather died. Since he didn't die and didn't press charges, they turned the guy loose. Later, according to my mother, the two met on a downtown street. Instead of the expected gunfight, they shook hands and went their merry way. Go figure.

Whether before or after he was ambushed I can’t say, but one day he, my grandmother, my mother and two or her brothers were sitting at the dinner table. What happened I don’t know, but words were said and my grandfather slapped my grandmother across the face. Both of his sons...my uncles...jumped up to defend their mother. My grandfather grabbed an iron poker from the fireplace, hit my middle uncle across the back with it, kicked him out the door, threw his clothes after him and told him to get out. Only about 14 years old at the time, Percy left and never returned. Wound up in New Jersey eventually, where he died at the age of 75.

Another time, my grandfather...who had a reputation for being cruel to his animals...was coming out of the barn and accidentally killed a kitten. Believe it or not, the man picked that dead kitten up in his hand, held it in front of his face and cried like a baby.

Even though he was a womanizer, after my grandmother kicked him out and moved to Memphis, my mother tracked down the women he was seeing at the time...incidentally, my grandparents never got a divorce... went up and banged on her door. When the woman answered, my mother looked at her, said "I just wanted to see what floozy would take my daddy away from his family" and then turned around and walked off. If nothing else, my mother had all kinds of fire and toe.

According to what I heard, when my grandfather found out what my mother had done, he quit seeing the woman and apparently never bothered with another one. He didn't get back together with my grandmother or have anything to do with his family, however.

Finally, when he died in 1936, no one would have known what happened to him if one of my uncles hadn't accidentally found him. My grandfather had signed himself into a nursing home in Ft. Worth, Texas under an assumed name, too proud to let people know just how far down he'd fallen.

Pride, shame, tenderness, adultry, gentleness, cruelty, toughness...he had it all. Makes you wonder what he'd been in modern times.

That's one reason I love genealogy. If you don't know your past, no matter how brutal or cruel, then you can't do anything about the present. It's been said that we learn from our mistakes. But if we don't know what those mistakes are, how can we learn?