Uncle John Burleson

      Uncle John Burleson was a farmer.  That’s all he knew and all he ever did to make a living.  I called him Uncle John because that’s what I grew up calling him.  I never got old enough to be comfortable calling him John and I don’t think I ever will. 

     Uncle John was not a big man, probably no more than five feet eight and 140 pounds.   He always dressed in blue bib overalls and a khaki shirt, buttoned all the way to the top.  The sleeves were always buttoned, too.  He wore a cheap, woven straw hat with a wide brim and a lot of built-in air holes for ventilation.  When his hat wore out, he bought a new one at Levine’s.  They didn’t cost much.  I never saw him dressed any other way.

     In the front bib pocket of his overalls, he carried a tin of Prince Albert tobacco and a package of papers, so he could roll his own cigarettes.  In his later years, after it became so much trouble to roll his own, he sometimes carried a package of Camels in there, but he never really liked the redi-rolls, as he called them.  I suspected they were too expensive for him to feel comfortable smoking.

     Uncle John loved to laugh and did it almost constantly, even when he was talking.  And when he was talking, he was cussing.  I can’t say it was cursing, because Uncle John didn’t curse---he cussed.  Cussing is just language---cursing carries negative feelings.  He cussed unconsciously, a habit evidently formed when he learned to talk.  Uncle John would talk and laugh and cuss all at the same time.  That was the only way he knew.

     He would say something like, “That silly-assed hired hand, ha-ha, got on that damned old John Deere tractor and, he-he,  backed the sum-bitch off, ho-ho, into the deep end, ha-ha, of the damned silo, hee-hee.  Wonder he didn’t, ha-ha, break his damn fool neck.”

     Uncle John was married to Aunt Zelma, one of my dad’s six older sisters.  She was a slender woman, cute and freckled.  She was short of beautiful only because of her prominent McLaughlin nose.  Their only child was Billy John, one of my ninety-three first cousins.

     Uncle John moved to Lubbock in the late thirties and found work on a farm for Dr. Sam C. Arnett.  Later, Uncle John became a tenant farmer for Dr. Arnett.  Some folks would call him a share-cropper.  His deal with Dr. Arnett included the use of a modest house on the farm, where Uncle John and Aunt Zel lived.  We visited there often and I thought Uncle John must be very wealthy to have such a nice home.

     When I was five or six years old, we always admired Uncle John’s cotton crop as we drove out to see him.  Driving out 19^th street, when you saw perfect, transit-straight, weed-free rows, with healthy cotton a couple of inches taller than any in the adjacent fields, you knew you were looking at Uncle John’s farm.  There was no better farmer.  We knew that and Dr. Arnett knew it.  Uncle John farmed for him until they both retired.

     I said that all Uncle John could do was farm.  That is not true.  He could play a fiddle about as well as Bob Wills.  I remember many Saturday nights when my parents gathered with Dad’s brothers and sisters at Uncle John’s to have a big hoedown.  Uncle John and a few others played and everyone danced in the big living room.   The men slipped out on the back porch and drank beer and the women got bent out of shape over it.  We children, all cousins, played in the adjacent dining room.  Mother, or one of our aunts, checked on us periodically.

     One spring, on a beautiful West Texas morning after one of those violent panhandle thunder storms, Dad and I drove out to see if Uncle John had suffered any damage.  His cotton was gone.  The hailstorm had evidently centered on Uncle John’s farm.  The damage stopped scarcely fifty yards into the neighboring fields but it took out all of Uncle John’s cotton.

     “What are you going to do, John?” Dad asked.

     “Well, heh-heh, I don’t know, Paul.  I’ll have to do something.  But look around.  Just look around.  Ain’t this the prettiest damn day you ever saw?”

     A couple of years later, Uncle John got his left hand caught in the power take-off on his tractor and lost all four fingers.  Aunt Zelma managed to get him into the car with his bloody hand wrapped in a towel.  She learned to drive a car that day, on the way to the hospital in Lubbock.  Aunt Zel was just like everyone else back then.  She did what she had to do.

     The doctors saved his thumb and split his palm into two stubs which gave him some dexterity in the use of that hand.  With a lot of practice, he learned to roll his own cigarettes.  A couple of years later, I heard he cried when he discovered he could still play the fiddle..

     When Uncle John was ready to retire, Dr. Arnett donated the farm to Lubbock Christian College, which is now called Lubbock Christian University and has almost two thousand students.  The campus is on 19^th street, just inside Loop 289, and not nearly as remote as it once was.  If I had to guess, I’d say that bronze statue of a chaparral in front of the main campus building is just about where Uncle John’s living room used to be.

     Uncle John and Aunt Zelma retired to a little house in Vashti, Texas.  They lived about a half mile from my parents, who also retired there.  When I’d visit Mom and Dad, I’d always go over to see Uncle John.  The first time I went to see him there, Uncle John said, “Come on, Jim-Boy.  Heh-heh, I want to show you something.”

     He ushered me out the back door of the dimly lit little house.  He had dug out all the grass and now the entire back yard from the house to the fence was a vegetable garden.  The rows were perfectly straight, the plants all robust and healthy, and not a weed in sight.  String beans climbed the perimeter fence.

     As we stepped out the door, Uncle John unconsciously wrapped his knarled left hand around a well-used hoe and started to cultivate around the base of his plants.   I have never seen a more beautiful garden.  We visited over an hour and all the while, Uncle John was unconsciously tending his garden with that razor-sharp hoe.  When I left, he was grinning and cussing, almost hidden between the squash and the okra.

     About a year later, I visited my parents and they told me to go over and see Uncle John.  He had cancer, was bedridden, and not expected to last much longer.  I did not go. 

      I did not want to see my Uncle John, sick and emaciated, helpless in bed.  It may be selfish, but I wanted to remember him healthy, dressed in blue bib overalls and a khaki shirt, grinning and hunting weeds in his garden.  Saying, “Damn your hide little weed, I got you now, heh-heh-heh.”