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EXCERPT FROM THE
BOOK:
MOST PEOPLE TALK
BULLSHIT -
One Primate's Search
For Intelligent Life (GENESIS)
Uncle Quasimodo
Dennis’s had another uncle who was the younger brother of Luke,
and I will call him Quasimodo.
Quasimodo was also a sharecropper. He was married and his wife
was a very plain but pleasant woman. Quasimodo asked to have
Dennis, Sammy, and me to stay overnight at his house a few times
to help with the chores. His wife always put out a good dinner
spread. She often seemed as if she was long suffering over some
secret sadness in her life. Some of the locals said it was
because she was unable to have children, other people said it
was because her husband was an overgrown child, who drank
heavily and frequented the cathouses too often. From what I
gathered, I believe it was all of the above.
For all of his faults, Uncle Quasimodo, was a very fastidious
guy, he could put a cat to shame. He was a medium height, --
medium built but strong body. He shaved his heavy beard two or
three times a day. He shaved so close it almost appeared as if
his hair follicles were below the skin line. He was bald and
kept the hair that he had very close to his scalp. He had a lean
tanned face and was kind of handsome. When he smiled unlike his
older brother, he showed a mouthful of perfect strong white
teeth. He was always fiddling with a toothpick in his mouth
working it between his teeth and gums. His eyes were his most
striking feature.
They were a piercing electric blue and when he talked to you he
would usually have a slight smile on his face and look at you
with unblinking eyes slightly open wider than normal and those
eyes seemed to have an odd shine. I could tell he didn’t do this
for affect, it was just the way he was, still, and it was very
unsettling. I couldn’t put a finger on it back then but
something about him was wrong. He was scary.
He’d compulsively rubbed his fingers tips like a safe cracker
getting ready to pick a lock. He did this all the time whenever
his hands were empty. I often thought that he did this to get
rid of any debris off of his fingertips, real or imagined.
Whenever I think of him Ted Bundy also comes to mind.
He also liked to change all of his clothing two to three times a
day. His wife would have to keep all of his shirts and slacks
perfectly clean, starched and creased. Throughout the day when
he wasn’t preoccupied with work, in between finger rubbing, he
compulsively straightened his pants and worked to keep the
creases sharp. His shoes and work boots were always perfectly
cleaned and polished. I think he had a sock fetish.
He designated one large drawer to hundreds of socks. He was
always buying new socks. My aunt said that whenever he got a new
bunch, he took the oldest socks out and made them into rags.
When we worked at his farm, and often at the other
sharecropper’s farms, he mostly worked the rafters in the curing
barns.
The
curing barn is the nastiest place on the farm to work; yet while
everyone would be filthy by the end of the day, he somehow
stayed very clean. He was the anti-pigpen (Pigpen- a peanuts
character).
He liked to drink a lot. Beulaville like many of the town or
counties in North Carolina was dry. There were no bars or
watering holes. The locals had to go to Richland to buy liquor.
They would either take the liquor back home, or sit in their
trucks out in the cornfield somewhere, or go to the Moose Lodge
in Richland and keep the liquor out in their auto. The people
would dance in the Moose Lodge and then go out to share a snort
of liquor. It was rumored that Uncle Quasimodo liked to go to
all of these haunts. Sometimes he liked to hang out with the
younger crowd that courted their girl friends in their trunks or
on their father’s tractors.
Sometimes they liked to hang out at a joint called the ‘Hoot and
Hollar”, which was a drive up burger joint of which you hoot
your horn and hollar!
That’s Sure A Purty Lawn
Mower
A lot of farmers would often admire each other’s crops, saying
that sure is some purty bacca (tobacco), and so on. Uncle
Quasimodo was more extreme. On one occasion he had showed all
the farmhands his new shiny red push lawn mower. He didn’t have
much of a lawn because the soil in that area did not permit much
of one to grow. Yet he had to go out and buy this mower because
it had caught his eye. He proudly displayed it to all that would
listen.
“Lookie heah, he’d say, “Ain’t she a purty little thang as he
waxed and shined it up.”
A rich attorney displaying his Ferrari could not have been
prouder.
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