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William Charles
"Chick" Clymer Jr. He was gone before I was a
teenager. Even so, I remember some things
about him. Chick (January 10, 1887 - November 21, 1847) was the brother of my grandfather Ray Clymer (Dada) and my great-uncle Albert Clymer. A thin, red-faced man, Chick lived at 931 West Morton Street, in the house that belonged to his mother, Grandma Clymer (Annie Ellen Schuel Clymer, a whole other story).
Chick’s large Adam’s apple
bobbed prominently in his long, thin neck. The
mottled red skin of that neck bore some
resemblance to the exterior of a plucked hen.
Such knowledge was not as unusual in a child
at that time as it would be now. Besides, the
Clymer family’s business was the Denison
Poultry and Egg Company, and the men of
the family all worked there at one time or
another. As a child doted upon by her
grandfather, I used to spend considerable time
in the DP&E office, allowed to peck
undisturbed on the typewriter keys with one
finger or experiment with the noisy adding
machines. To me, “Freddy the Fryer,” a
DP&E brand name, was a character as
familiar as Porky Pig, Mr. Magoo, or Woody
Woodpecker. This was a family where, when you
knocked on someone’s front door, it would be
opened cheerfully with the greeting, “Come on
in! There’s nobody here but us chickens.”
Limp, plucked chickens were not a novelty in
the homes of my relatives. Chick’s niece Anne Goddard, her whole grown life, used to recall his nasal, nosed-wrinkled parody of Grandma Clymer's nagging: "Yänh, yänh, yänh, yänh, yänh."
The house at 931 West Morton
Street was old, big, and two stories tall, but
Chick occupied a small narrow room on the
ground floor, right in the middle of all the
action, and close to the front door. His room
was filled almost entirely by two objects,
standing parallel and side by side: an upright
piano and a single bed. There was a small
aisle between them. Chick played ragtime tunes
on the piano at all hours. I used to think that Chick
had never married, but after I was grown I
came across evidence in an old Denison city
directory to the effect that, at one time, he
indeed had had a wife - briefly, I
gathered. And he had had a real estate company
on Rusk Avenue, posting a sign that read:
“Best Land A Crow Ever Flew Over.” To others, the central fact
about Chick was that he drank. That is, he got
drunk. A lot. When drunk, among other things,
he would drive his small old black Ford around
Denison dangerously. Sometimes he would hitch
a ride on others' cars, standing on the
running board the whole way. Upon arriving, he
would lightly hop off, call out "Thank ya,"
and weave away. Chick owned a small house
outside town on the old road to the Rod and Gun Club (now
the Denison Country Club).
One
time,
after my grandfather married his second wife,
Irma, and they moved into the big fancy house
with elaborate gingerbread trim at 1200 West
Morton Street, Chick tethered his goat to a
slender tree in the front yard there. It
stayed there for a couple of weeks and ate a
big circle in the grass around the tree. We
always went to Dada and Irma's house for
Sunday dinner after church, so I was able to
spend some time with the goat in the front
yard and observe minutely how the circle in
the grass grew as the grownups lengthened the
rope a little each day. My great-grandparents, Mama
and Papa White, who lived at 1013 West Bond
Street, were the parents of Dada's first wife.
That wife, the first Mavis, died when my
mother Mavis was about ten years old. (That
latter fact was why Dada, my mother, Aunt
Anne, and Uncle Ray lived with Grandma Clymer,
Chick, and Albert's family in the big house at
929 West Morton Street all during the
Depression.) Mama White used to serve big
meals at lunch even during the week, sometimes
inviting me with my mother and others to join
her and Papa White for such regular fare as
mashed potatoes, boiled green beans, chicken
and dumplings, fresh rolls, peach cobbler, and
other old-fashioned dishes—food for which I
must say I never have felt any great nostalgic
longing. Their dining room was furnished in
Mission oak. Sometimes they invited Chick to
join us. I remember one day at lunch
at Mama and Papa White's house, Chick was
telling a story and offhandedly remarked,
"Now, when I was a little girl, it wasn't like
that." My ears pricked up. "Uncle Chick, you
were never a little girl!" I protested. "Oh, yes, I was," he
insisted. Being of an age when I had
just gotten all this gender stuff down pat, I
went for the bait. "Uncle Chick, you were not!
"Well, I will tell you," he
said with utmost explanatory seriousness. "I
kissed my elbow and that made me turn into a
boy." The grownups had begun to snicker. "What?" I asked
incredulously. "Yes. If you are a girl and
you kiss your elbow, you will turn into a boy.
That's what I did. It works." Then he added,
"Try it. You can turn into a boy, too." Right
there at the table, I tried to kiss my elbow.
But I couldn't get my mouth that far down my
arm. "Don't worry," said Chick. "Just keep
practicing." For the next few weeks, I
practiced night and day. I thought that, if I
underwent sufficiently rigorous and dedicated
practice, eventually I would be able to get my
mouth to the end of my arm and I would turn
into a boy. But, to my sorrow, I never
succeeded. Thus I had to content myself with
living as a female member of the human race.
Only later did I get the joke. Note:
Aunt Anne says that Grandma Clymer had a
photograph of Anne’s father, Ray Clymer Sr.,
as a child, wearing long curls and a fancy
suit. The photo was kept in a closet. Once
Anne, then a child, came across the picture
and said to her father, “You look like a
little girl in this picture.” Dada replied, “I was one. But I kissed my elbow and changed into a boy.” Anne,
too, did elaborate exercises trying to
accomplish the impossible. by
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