The Bluff (1946)
(Margaret-Rose Ramsey and Shannon O’Day)
As told by: Mabel O’Day (Widow to Gus O’Day)
And so Otis Wilde Mather took off to Ozark, Alabama, and he’d wait sixteen-years before he’d return to Minnesota, whereupon, he’d meet Margaret-Rose Ramsey, Shannon O’Day’s second wife to be.
(Mabel O’Day :) If I recall right, Otis Wilde Mather, that there nigger he liked, come up from Alabama one summer, the summer of 1946, after the second war, and he and that nigger gulped down some wine in the cornfield together, like they used to, he was now thirty-six years job, and looking for work. Shannon was forty-six at the time, and still working part time here and there, actually he gave $500-dollars more to Gus from that money he won at the horse races a while back in I think 1940 or 1941, when they hit the jackpot for $5000-dollars. A bad year for everyone else, so it seemed, but the two, and so Gus took that as investing money and when times were good, Gus gave him some investment money back, and he hired Shannon to work, when he wasn’t working. But Gus just wouldn’t hire that there nigger friend of his, said his neighbors would hang him if he did. But Shannon didn’t give a hoot; you know how a fellow is that way. I had figured that out by now. But he was a mighty polite nigger; he was so tall I couldn’t even touch his shoulders I do believe. I’m not blaming Gus any, but that’s jes’ the way he was. I was friendlier I suppose with Otis, my mother being from Fayetteville, North Carolina, and father from Minnesota, mom and I kind of knew how to deal with color folk.
Otis and Shannon went to the Minnesota State Fair that year, and Gus and I tagged along, Shannon wanted to see the ‘Fat Man,’ he was 600-pounds of pure butter, and custard, if you know what I mean, ripples of fat like them there rollercoaster’s, they have out there, I like the rollercoaster, and the merry-go-round, but never cared to see the fat man, what for, fat is fat, but I went along with it all. He even winked at me, and I blushed, but I didn’t tell Gus, had I, gosh Almighty, what then? I just thought, the nerve of this guy, and let it be at that. But gee-whiz, gosh Almighty, there I was.
Anyhow, the Minnesota State Fair, lasted ten-days, and Shannon and Otis, went back there after we had went there with him, by themselves, and met Margaret-Rose there, brought her to meet me and Gus at our farm, and he she wasn’t any mutt. What I wouldn’t have given for a stick of chewing gum, I had jes’ eaten some garlic bread, and Gus, he done smoked a twenty-five cent cigar.
Shannon introduced us to her, and we all knew Otis, and she told us her father was a manufacturer of wooden crates for vegetables and fruits, and there company was named ‘Ramsey Crate Manufacturing Co.’
There was something in the way she dressed, in her designer style cloths, and I mean designer in the sense of creative; I bet it was all bought at the Golden Rule Department Store, or perhaps a personal tailor. And she had kind of pretty eyes, and the way she had looked at Gus, I didn’t like. She looked at me kind of strangely, as I was out of place, or so I felt, and guess that was because of my garlic breath, I did give an ore of dislodgment.
Shannon sat down on a chair by the kitchen table, she stood by his shoulder, Otis, was there, and Gus and I; I couldn’t show her up for a boob, I knew that.
I suppose I made a fool of myself, sure I did, I said I came from Connecticut, and my father knew Mark Twain, because he lived there, died in 1910, but it all seemed to fit. Yet I still had my mother’s southern, Fayetteville, North Carolina slight of speech in me, that minor pronunciation, or blur accent, southern twang. Nevertheless, as I kept bragging, Gus and Otis, and Shannon all leaned over their chairs listening not believing what they were hearing, and what I was saying, and I could just imagine what they were thinking. And I don’t think Margaret-Rose was doing much believing in what I was saying. But I kept on a saying what I was saying—and Gus and Shannon were silent about the truth of it all, and Miss Margaret-Rose’s eyes were shinning and so I went whole hog, and said he even helped Mark Twain, by giving him advice concerning some short stories, one on a frog. By gosh, what was I thinking?
As I look back, I guess what happened was: I got a-bragging in a way I never had before, and as she listened, and things dragged on, the story just kept coming out of me, a tall tale that is, and somehow we all got to laughing, and I felt better, of course she didn’t, because she thought I was making fun of her status. Otis was leaning against the stove at this time, and even he was laughing with those big white buck teeth of his, and big nostrils like a dragon. I could have kicked myself in the butt; my legs are not agile enough to do that though. If a person goes to hell for telling a fib, I’m going to go to the hottest spot they got I do fear.
After a while we sat there talking, like we had known each other for years and years, and I bluffed it through the afternoon, even if I sounded like a lame cow.
Subchapter
Bushel of Spoiled Eggs
As told by: Mabel O’Day (Widow to Gus O’Day)
1948-49
There was something else eating at me, during those few years Shannon and Margaret-Rose dated and married, as she did in 1948, and had their first daughter in 1948—
Shannon broke a few, perhaps more than a few, pretty girls hearts in his day, he was a handsome man, in his youth. But he, himself came out of a bushel of spoiled eggs. I loved him as a brother-in-law, and still do, but a rotten egg is a rotten egg, however you look at it, or smell it: on the other hand, I guess I was left alone on that way of thinking, likened on a deserted island, no one else quite thought the way I did. He was no Rudolph Valentino you know, but you’d think he was, always carefree drinking, getting lucky. There I was small boobs as I am, but Gus loved them and me. And when Shannon come over to visit me and Gus and they’d go off into the cornfields, to drink, and leave Margaret-Rose with me cuz she didn’t drink much, she wasn’t saying much, she had changed overnight, so it appeared, and I guess I wasn’t saying much either that day. My guess was I really kind of knew. She wasn’t stuck on me because of the fib, about my father knowing Mark Twain and all that. I’ve learned there is a certain girl you meet and if you click, you best make some hay together cuz there gone forever and forever in some other world and trying to be close friends with them is impossible, you might jes’ as well fall off a house roof and die.
Why she fell for Shannon is beyond my understanding, but he played her music I suppose and after we had supper that day, Margaret-Rose had to leave at nine o’clock to catch a train to Chicago, to see her father, give him the news she was pregnant. Shannon simply went back to his cornfields with Gus and Otis and drank another bottle of watermelon wine, something he picked up in the war he said, over in France. I think that day was a mad, happy and sad day.
“I got to go to the train now Shannon,” said Margaret-Rose thinking he would follow her, but he didn’t. When she left, she was crying but Shannon didn’t see it. She never knew nothing I knew, and when they divorced I couldn’t believe she was all that busted up.
Margaret-Rose stayed in Chicago until after her baby girl was born. She wrote to me, and I wrote back to her, she asked how Shannon was, told me how the child was, that’s all she said. I suppose it was a chance to repair our friendship, a swell chance I got, but I was too busy too. Whatever kind of guy she was looking for, there wasn’t any such creature on God’s good earth. And me, trying to pass myself off as being a big bug, I never really cared to see her because of that; I was a little shameful about the way I acted.
And then after the child was six-months old, the train come in and she got off it, and Shannon met her and shook her hand, and she gave a little bow to me, and the baby cried like a baby does, “Gee,” I said, “what a lovely baby.” You know, like everyone does. “Did you ever see such a lovely baby Shannon?” She asked him.
What he said next I per near fell over, or as if the train itself had run over me, what he said was “It looks like a raw oversized turkey.”
I wanted to go sit down after that, let Margaret-Rose deal with the hurt, and mend fences with Shannon if indeed that was their plan, but I said, “I bet if Shannon hadn’t a drink of booze today, he’d had said how lovely the child was.” But I knew Shannon, and that was another fib, not like the big Mark Twain one though.
He, Shannon said, “Those gosh darn eyes of hers look like they’re smashed into her forehead, what happened?”
“You’re a big fool Shannon—that’s what he is,” I said to Margaret-Rose.
“Did you find work Shannon?” asked Margaret-Rose.
“I don’t care anything for working or saving or shaving, I’m just a half tramp!”
Seven Months Later
Unfortunately I received one last letter, several months after that visit, where Margaret-Rose had written me, her mother, the child’s grandmother had taken the child out for a ride in the winter, while in Chicago, skidded on a road, and they both ended up in the hospital. The mother losing her motor function ability, and the child’s death; I told Shannon of the news, and it simply made him drink more, he never did make it to the funeral.
“The Bluff” and “Bushel of Spoiled Eggs,” written: 5-12-2009, part two to the three part story, “The Half Tramp” being part one and part three being the “Cornfield Burner”
(Margaret-Rose Ramsey and Shannon O’Day)
As told by: Mabel O’Day (Widow to Gus O’Day)
And so Otis Wilde Mather took off to Ozark, Alabama, and he’d wait sixteen-years before he’d return to Minnesota, whereupon, he’d meet Margaret-Rose Ramsey, Shannon O’Day’s second wife to be.
(Mabel O’Day :) If I recall right, Otis Wilde Mather, that there nigger he liked, come up from Alabama one summer, the summer of 1946, after the second war, and he and that nigger gulped down some wine in the cornfield together, like they used to, he was now thirty-six years job, and looking for work. Shannon was forty-six at the time, and still working part time here and there, actually he gave $500-dollars more to Gus from that money he won at the horse races a while back in I think 1940 or 1941, when they hit the jackpot for $5000-dollars. A bad year for everyone else, so it seemed, but the two, and so Gus took that as investing money and when times were good, Gus gave him some investment money back, and he hired Shannon to work, when he wasn’t working. But Gus just wouldn’t hire that there nigger friend of his, said his neighbors would hang him if he did. But Shannon didn’t give a hoot; you know how a fellow is that way. I had figured that out by now. But he was a mighty polite nigger; he was so tall I couldn’t even touch his shoulders I do believe. I’m not blaming Gus any, but that’s jes’ the way he was. I was friendlier I suppose with Otis, my mother being from Fayetteville, North Carolina, and father from Minnesota, mom and I kind of knew how to deal with color folk.
Otis and Shannon went to the Minnesota State Fair that year, and Gus and I tagged along, Shannon wanted to see the ‘Fat Man,’ he was 600-pounds of pure butter, and custard, if you know what I mean, ripples of fat like them there rollercoaster’s, they have out there, I like the rollercoaster, and the merry-go-round, but never cared to see the fat man, what for, fat is fat, but I went along with it all. He even winked at me, and I blushed, but I didn’t tell Gus, had I, gosh Almighty, what then? I just thought, the nerve of this guy, and let it be at that. But gee-whiz, gosh Almighty, there I was.
Anyhow, the Minnesota State Fair, lasted ten-days, and Shannon and Otis, went back there after we had went there with him, by themselves, and met Margaret-Rose there, brought her to meet me and Gus at our farm, and he she wasn’t any mutt. What I wouldn’t have given for a stick of chewing gum, I had jes’ eaten some garlic bread, and Gus, he done smoked a twenty-five cent cigar.
Shannon introduced us to her, and we all knew Otis, and she told us her father was a manufacturer of wooden crates for vegetables and fruits, and there company was named ‘Ramsey Crate Manufacturing Co.’
There was something in the way she dressed, in her designer style cloths, and I mean designer in the sense of creative; I bet it was all bought at the Golden Rule Department Store, or perhaps a personal tailor. And she had kind of pretty eyes, and the way she had looked at Gus, I didn’t like. She looked at me kind of strangely, as I was out of place, or so I felt, and guess that was because of my garlic breath, I did give an ore of dislodgment.
Shannon sat down on a chair by the kitchen table, she stood by his shoulder, Otis, was there, and Gus and I; I couldn’t show her up for a boob, I knew that.
I suppose I made a fool of myself, sure I did, I said I came from Connecticut, and my father knew Mark Twain, because he lived there, died in 1910, but it all seemed to fit. Yet I still had my mother’s southern, Fayetteville, North Carolina slight of speech in me, that minor pronunciation, or blur accent, southern twang. Nevertheless, as I kept bragging, Gus and Otis, and Shannon all leaned over their chairs listening not believing what they were hearing, and what I was saying, and I could just imagine what they were thinking. And I don’t think Margaret-Rose was doing much believing in what I was saying. But I kept on a saying what I was saying—and Gus and Shannon were silent about the truth of it all, and Miss Margaret-Rose’s eyes were shinning and so I went whole hog, and said he even helped Mark Twain, by giving him advice concerning some short stories, one on a frog. By gosh, what was I thinking?
As I look back, I guess what happened was: I got a-bragging in a way I never had before, and as she listened, and things dragged on, the story just kept coming out of me, a tall tale that is, and somehow we all got to laughing, and I felt better, of course she didn’t, because she thought I was making fun of her status. Otis was leaning against the stove at this time, and even he was laughing with those big white buck teeth of his, and big nostrils like a dragon. I could have kicked myself in the butt; my legs are not agile enough to do that though. If a person goes to hell for telling a fib, I’m going to go to the hottest spot they got I do fear.
After a while we sat there talking, like we had known each other for years and years, and I bluffed it through the afternoon, even if I sounded like a lame cow.
Subchapter
Bushel of Spoiled Eggs
As told by: Mabel O’Day (Widow to Gus O’Day)
1948-49
There was something else eating at me, during those few years Shannon and Margaret-Rose dated and married, as she did in 1948, and had their first daughter in 1948—
Shannon broke a few, perhaps more than a few, pretty girls hearts in his day, he was a handsome man, in his youth. But he, himself came out of a bushel of spoiled eggs. I loved him as a brother-in-law, and still do, but a rotten egg is a rotten egg, however you look at it, or smell it: on the other hand, I guess I was left alone on that way of thinking, likened on a deserted island, no one else quite thought the way I did. He was no Rudolph Valentino you know, but you’d think he was, always carefree drinking, getting lucky. There I was small boobs as I am, but Gus loved them and me. And when Shannon come over to visit me and Gus and they’d go off into the cornfields, to drink, and leave Margaret-Rose with me cuz she didn’t drink much, she wasn’t saying much, she had changed overnight, so it appeared, and I guess I wasn’t saying much either that day. My guess was I really kind of knew. She wasn’t stuck on me because of the fib, about my father knowing Mark Twain and all that. I’ve learned there is a certain girl you meet and if you click, you best make some hay together cuz there gone forever and forever in some other world and trying to be close friends with them is impossible, you might jes’ as well fall off a house roof and die.
Why she fell for Shannon is beyond my understanding, but he played her music I suppose and after we had supper that day, Margaret-Rose had to leave at nine o’clock to catch a train to Chicago, to see her father, give him the news she was pregnant. Shannon simply went back to his cornfields with Gus and Otis and drank another bottle of watermelon wine, something he picked up in the war he said, over in France. I think that day was a mad, happy and sad day.
“I got to go to the train now Shannon,” said Margaret-Rose thinking he would follow her, but he didn’t. When she left, she was crying but Shannon didn’t see it. She never knew nothing I knew, and when they divorced I couldn’t believe she was all that busted up.
Margaret-Rose stayed in Chicago until after her baby girl was born. She wrote to me, and I wrote back to her, she asked how Shannon was, told me how the child was, that’s all she said. I suppose it was a chance to repair our friendship, a swell chance I got, but I was too busy too. Whatever kind of guy she was looking for, there wasn’t any such creature on God’s good earth. And me, trying to pass myself off as being a big bug, I never really cared to see her because of that; I was a little shameful about the way I acted.
And then after the child was six-months old, the train come in and she got off it, and Shannon met her and shook her hand, and she gave a little bow to me, and the baby cried like a baby does, “Gee,” I said, “what a lovely baby.” You know, like everyone does. “Did you ever see such a lovely baby Shannon?” She asked him.
What he said next I per near fell over, or as if the train itself had run over me, what he said was “It looks like a raw oversized turkey.”
I wanted to go sit down after that, let Margaret-Rose deal with the hurt, and mend fences with Shannon if indeed that was their plan, but I said, “I bet if Shannon hadn’t a drink of booze today, he’d had said how lovely the child was.” But I knew Shannon, and that was another fib, not like the big Mark Twain one though.
He, Shannon said, “Those gosh darn eyes of hers look like they’re smashed into her forehead, what happened?”
“You’re a big fool Shannon—that’s what he is,” I said to Margaret-Rose.
“Did you find work Shannon?” asked Margaret-Rose.
“I don’t care anything for working or saving or shaving, I’m just a half tramp!”
Seven Months Later
Unfortunately I received one last letter, several months after that visit, where Margaret-Rose had written me, her mother, the child’s grandmother had taken the child out for a ride in the winter, while in Chicago, skidded on a road, and they both ended up in the hospital. The mother losing her motor function ability, and the child’s death; I told Shannon of the news, and it simply made him drink more, he never did make it to the funeral.
“The Bluff” and “Bushel of Spoiled Eggs,” written: 5-12-2009, part two to the three part story, “The Half Tramp” being part one and part three being the “Cornfield Burner”
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