Mincey’s Musings
Year One, Week Thirty-Seven

I have been blessed with family on my father’s side that are just humorous people by nature. It’s inbred—they can’t help themselves. What makes them so funny is that they aren’t trying to be funny.

Sadly, I was born late in my father’s life, and a lot of those members of my family only live in my mind through stories. I don’t have my own memories of them, though I enjoy other family members’ stories about their escapades. There are some of my now deceased aunts that I was privileged to enjoy for many years, though my time with them seems to have been so brief.

My paternal grandparents, Mary Katherine Nicely Mincey and James Lafayette Mincey, had six children. Two of them died young, many years before I was born. The four surviving children, in order of birth, were: Duskie Mincey Jones, Frank Otis Mincey (my father), Vallie Mincey Lay, and Fleetie Mincey Thomas.

The three sisters lived within a couple of miles of each other. My aunt Duskie was married to a kind man, Roy Jones, who rarely traveled farther than the distance to Hoitt Avenue Baptist Church from his house, about two blocks away. Duskie was afraid that someone would “rob them blind” if they both left the house at the same time. My aunt Fleetie’s husband, Lester B. (Jack) Thomas, died when I was three, leaving Fleetie a widow. My aunt Vallie was married to Jacob Percy (Pers—pronounced “Purse”) Lay. Pers was a kind soul that endured a lot from his demanding wife throughout the years. He always seemed happy and had a pocketful of peppermint that he shared on every visit.

Neither Fleetie nor Duskie could drive, so Vallie and Pers would load them up every two or three months and bring them to the “country”. This was the area where all four were raised. People who live in our area know these places as Hogskin Valley, the Thomas Holler (now Black Fox Hollow), Pennington Chapel, Mount Eager, and Liberty Hill. My dad said my aunts and uncles had become "citified” when they moved to Knoxville several years ago, so now this was the “country”.

Vallie and Pers visited Fleetie quite often, but not Duskie so much. The first thing Duskie did every morning was to fix her Carnation® Instant Breakfast. Then she turned on the television. Duskie could sit and absorb television for the entire day, with small breaks for the bathroom or to find the bare essentials of food needed to keep her small but agile body functioning. (It was said in our family that Roy Jones had never seen his wife Duskie without her clothes on. I once asked, if that were the case, how they parented two children. I never received a satisfactory answer, and don’t suppose I ever will.)

It seems Vallie and Pers always wanted to charge Duskie for gas when they took her to the country, but not Fleetie. They had several arguments as to why Duskie should pay but not Fleetie. It seems Vallie felt sorry for Fleetie since she was a widow, and the baby of the family. Duskie was the oldest, still had a husband, and was stingy with money. It wouldn’t hurt her to “turn loose” of some of that money to “pay her way”, as she didn’t have to babysit to make money like Fleetie.

Sometimes Duskie just got mad and wouldn’t go to the “country” with them. If it ever bothered Duskie that they went without her, she never let it be known.

On these trips our house was the last stop on their way back home. Dad always got along with Duskie and Fleetie, but the visit never ended without Dad and Vallie getting into an argument.

Vallie was highly concerned with hygiene and wary of germs. She would not use any of the country outhouses, ours included. She carried a half gallon paper milk carton (with the top cut off) in the car on her trips to the country in which she urinated, then poured the waste down the outhouse hole. Dad said this was because she’d “got above her raisin’”, a trait he despised almost above anything in a human. Dad said when she was growing up in the Thomas Holler that she had to go behind a tree or anywhere she could get, just like the rest of them.

I think most people in our family would say that to consider Vallie a hypochondriac would be an understatement. She complained with what she called the “Mincey stomach” and would only eat baby food and similar easily digestible items. Dad said there was nothing wrong with her—if she would eat beans and “taters” instead of that BLANK ol’ baby food she’d be all right.

Dad would then try to tell Vallie all about his ailments, but for every “ail” from which he suffered she had a greater one. The visit always ended with Dad getting mad when Vallie would remind him that all that was wrong with him was that he’d “drunk hisself to death”. This resulted in Dad beginning to cuss (or to increase his cussing, depending on his present walk with the Lord). For hours after our company would leave, Dad would cuss, depending on how much he had tipped the bottle, long into the night and into the early morning hours.

For all Dad’s shortcomings, he made things right with the Lord a few short years before cancer took him from this earth. Even then, it seemed Vallie could provoke him as no other.

Around the time of Dad’s re-dedication, Rob Mincey, half-brother to the four full Mincey siblings, became ill with cancer. (Next week I’ll tell you about going to Uncle Rob’s house.) Dad went to Rob’s house in Liberty Hill to check on him every Sunday, when Mother and I would go with him, and probably several times during the week.

One Sunday after we returned home, Vallie called to check on Rob. Just the sound of her voice set Dad off. She asked how Rob was doing, and Dad told her that if she’d get her own BLANK up there that she’d know for herself. He told her how sorry he thought it was that she wouldn’t even go to see her own brother and him almost dead. Dad went on and on, until I heard what was probably the loudest cussing I ever heard from him. He finally got so mad he couldn’t speak and slammed the phone onto its receiver. He ranted and raved and finally revealed what had made him so mad—Vallie had accused him of starting to drink again. That was the maddest I ever saw my father, and I was certainly glad that at least he was mad at someone else and not me!

Oh, these pleasant memories of the days gone by! Until next week, remember this bit of wisdom gleaned from email:

After a quarrel, a husband said to his wife, "You know, I was a fool when I married you."
She replied, "Yes, dear, but I was in love, and didn't notice."