Hillbilly Hoedown in Hell

When my maternal grandfather was 8 years old he tried to kill his older brother with a gardening blade but when he plunged the thing toward his brother’s head, it caught on a clothesline and bounced backward so hard it knocked him out cold.  We all laughed when Gramps told this story (?!).

Gramps died on Tuesday.  I’d like to mark this occasion since I did know him for over 30 years.  (Well over.)

Gramps was born in 1923 in southern-most tip of Missouri — the bootheel.  He was of Scots-Irish extraction (and if you know your American history this might tell you most of what you need to know).  Senator Jim Webb wrote a book about the Scots-Irish called Born Fighting if you’re interested in the history of Appalachia.

Gramps was the baby of the family and the only one to finish (or even start) high school.  His older brothers names were Senator (he was NOT a senator) and BW ( I don’t know what BW stood for).  They were very good looking, the Haleys, and very poor but carried themselves like kings. They could turn on the charm like nobody’s business, being very social and outgoing.  He grew up the son of a tenant farmer and although he was a teenager during the Great Depression, it didn’t make much of an impression on him. “I never ate better in my life than during the Depression,” he said.  While city folk were scrounging for meager rations, he and his (poor) family lived on a farm and so had fresh milk, butter, chicken, eggs, bacon, beef, grits, and vegetables EVERY DAY.  (I would also note that he and all 4 of his farm-raised siblings had freakishly good health and died at very advanced ages.)  But all three brothers eventually moved north to the city anyway and got great paying union jobs in car parts factories and forever after ate Velveeta cheese and Wonder Bread. On the weekends they drank and danced and started fights.  And drank.

Being Southern and all, the Haley brothers loved to fight (click here to read a revelatory article titled American Violence and Southern Culture).  Any sort of conflict would do.  Besides hair trigger tempers, they also were world champion grudge holders.  No, I don’t want to hear about how your Aunt Gina refused to speak to her family for 35 years because of a broken teapot.  The Haleys make Aunt Gina look like the Prince of Peace.  They were the quintessential Good Ole Boys.  They never really grew up.  Gramps was drafted into the Army during WWII (if you are related to me, have a look at his enlistment record here) but again, it seems to have had very little impact on him as his single commentary on his experience was this: “I didn’t like the Army.” Not surprising.  The Haleys don’t take orders well from anyone and as Jim Webb writes, like many Scots-Irish, they were also “oddly indifferent to wealth and power.” I feel we can pause to mark this, at least, as Gramps’ one identifiable virtue.

Gramps did like the Army UNIFORM though. He was always surprisingly fashionable and suave. Here he is on the left with his knee raised:Below is a picture of my Gramps and three of his kids (he would have a fourth later in life) in Hayti, Missouri in the early 1950s (my mother is on the far right in the chevron dress):

Gramps didn’t care about wealth but he did NOT go in for poverty either; he worked all the double shifts offered and was frugal to the point of mania.   And I don’t buy any of that “it’s-because-he-lived-through-the-Depression”-stuff.  It’s because every penny spent was a battle lost.  All sources of expenditure — be they humans or businesses — were enemies that had to be faced down.  Like I said, the Haley boys loved to fight.  Though Gramps never did kill anyone.  I’ll give him that.

Gramps took us, his grandkids for ice cream and for a dip in the mucky Potato Creek, which was really a pond and not a creek, and it was fun, and this is how he would like to be remembered.  He also pulled a knife on his wife in front of the grandkids during a regular spasm of drunken rage.  (And he was quite softened by this time in his life.)  It’s true that memory is not reliable, that it revises itself through interpretation over time, but helplessness and fear are like branding tools.  They produce surprising clarity and persistence and now that I think of it, perhaps the best thing is to not be remembered with much specificity at all.  Maybe the best thing is just to confer warm feelings that cling to the beloved and that’s it.  H.O. is branded in our memories.

He is survived (and “survived” is an extremely apt phrasing here) by 3 of his 4 children, his very smart daughters – Diane, Denise and Darlyn.  All four suffered equally. He is also survived by 6 peace-loving grandchildren and a number of amazingly sweet great grand children.  Go figure.  He is pre-deceased by all of his siblings, including sisters Christine and Rachel, his son Duane Haley (d. 1987), two ex-wives, including Elizabeth (seen below) and Henrietta, and millions of other people — none of whom he killed, as far as I know.

Bye Gramps.  It’s been real.

H.O. Haley 1923 – 2020

Gramps and sister Christine (above)

Gramps and first wife Elizabeth Hinchey.

Gramps, rico, suave.

H.O. and his brother, Senator.