This is a remembrance of my guest author (my dad) about one of his uncles
Charles Crawford Brannin had many nicknames. Some of the neighbors called him Crawford. Dick Brannin called him Diney. Several nieces and nephews knew him as Sparky. Father and Uncle Ed called him Tommy. However, to my sisters and me he was Rube.
A load of names was bound to slow anyone down. Fortunately this didn’t go against Rube’s nature. It wasn’t that he had anything against hurry in principal; if people wanted to do a day’s work in an hour’s time that was their problem. Anybody with a lick of sense ought to know that rushing about was best reserved for memorable occasions. The three or four times we saw Rube in a rush were memorable occasions.
The winter of 1942-43 Uncle Ed and Aunt Dora stayed with us. The first week in January, Rube came steaming up the road. He busted into the shop where the stormy weather had driven us. He didn’t even bother to brush the snowballs off the bottom of his tattered trousers but went straight over to his older brother.
“Gu-guess wh-what?” he said, waving a chopper mitt in Ed Brannin’s face.
“What?”
Rube burst into a grin. His week’s growth of whiskers grinned with him. “B-B-Barney just married the long legged school marm.”
That was news! Barney Brannin was fifty four years old and Nella Francis was in her early twenties. “B-b-bet they have some l-l-long legged kids.”
Barney and Nella didn’t produce any children, but the marriage did change things at the Brannin Hunting Lodge. About the end of January, Rube came hobbling up the road with a sack on his back. He was mumbling to himself all the way. When he reached the barnyard, he sat the sack on a bare place on the snow spotted ground. He took a short breather, and then, wagging his finger, he began talking to whatever was in the sack. “D-don’t worry. I’ll be back after while.”
“What you got in the sack?” Dad asked as Rube came into the yard.
“It’s B-B-Bones,” Rube answered.
He untied the gunny sack and dumped a red rooster on the ground.
“Brought him up for vacation,” he explained. Then a scowl crossed his face. “I-It’s on account of N-Nella,” he said. “She’s got a h-h-hungry look in her eye.”
Bones was in charge of the Brannin hen house. Every so often the cook would crave a chicken for dinner and Rube would bring Bones up for a vacation. The rooster spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with us. Those were critical days. Luckily Bones was old and tough or he’d have never made it through the Fourth of July. That’s when the Brannin cook would poach some of the spring hatch for chicken dinner. But here it was – January.
“Wh-when B-B-Barney gets to town, maybe he’ll buy Nella some w-wieners.”
It was cold weather and Barney didn’t get any wieners until the end of February. By then things were in a desperate condition. Rube was getting homesick for his pet rooster and so were the hens. In fact, Rube’s pullets were on strike. They hadn’t laid an egg since the end of the year and the first of March is egg laying season.
“D-danged hens fergot how to lay,” Rube announced when he came after his rooster. Hopefully old Bones would stir the hens to action. Rube hobbled down the road with a sack of live chicken over his back. A week later he came back. This time he was traveling in the express lane, coming in a dead run, which for him was twenty yards without stopping to see how far he had come.
When Rube reached the house he didn’t even go for Dad’s tobacco can. You could tell there was something important on his mind. It came pouring out in a conglomeration of words. It seemed that Bones had gone right to work getting the hen house in order. Two or three days after the rooster returned, Rube found him scratching the straw in a nest box. Later that afternoon there was an egg in the box.
“B-B-Bones laid it,” Rube boasted. “B-b-best rooster I ever had.” He shook his head in amazement.
“Whoopee” he shouted. “B-b-ones L-l-laid an egg. Wha-what a r-r-rooster. Wh-whoopee!”
He pulled his ragged jacket off, unzipped an empty tobacco pouch and headed into the middle room for Dad’s can of Prince Albert tobacco.
