A Great Great Grandson's thoughts on Great Uncle John


Great Great Uncle John, 1929
He would wake up on a train and wipe the Dust
Bowl dirt off his brow, dry in the throat from a two days
ride. He’d step into the Waltham sun and make the mile
walk to his sister’s, holding his guitar at ease, and the weary
street was lit up the moment he laughed
down the lane. The sweet ruckus rang out
like a dinner bell that would never come
when his banjo rolled into the damp evening. Nana’s raspy drone
crank-and-play Victrola took a rest to John’s rich and dusty songs
that filled the barreled moans of children with a sweet
repeated echo of rapturous repine. “He’d stay for long spells.
Be gone for months or years, and then he’d show
up one day, outta nowhe’a.”
They say John sat out on the side porch to the praise of all, singing
back to the afternoon. “The screen door had a loud slam, but one of those
good ones, ya know?” The frame would clap and crack, then creak back open
along with the picks and banjo rolls twanging over the hot strings,
and the screen sprang, pouring folk through the door, and down-the-road folk
had tired horses hitched to the front post.
The buggy nights brought John and the fiddle inside. A soft slant of the oil lamp
slid along the faces like the horsehair bow, and who couldn’t fit in the light’s flickered
hands held to the front window with eyes agape, ears wide. Neighbors
shared smiles over John’s warm soul as it poured through the bow, young eyes holding
gaze to the heartstring’s whinnying sigh. And the hard-struck husbands spun their wives
around when the lonesome fiddle lay down for the guitar to “sing one for Mama” as the
whole street sang along— the banjo moon with its open mouth and loud rattled belly,
unable to untie its high lonesome gaze.