Thanks to Ike James’ family, I had a nice reunion to go to this past August. I met Aaron Savage for the first time. We exchanged family knowledge, and I got to take him and a few others on a Great James tour. I showed them the area along the Ahoskie-Cofield road where my grandmother and her siblings lived. Afterwards, Aaron mentioned meeting another Great
James in Philadelphia. Aaron was a boy in the early 1960’s,
when he and one of his parents came across my great uncle Edward
Dewey James. Dewey was selling hot dogs from a cart. |
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Looking like one of J. Edgar's finest,Uncle Dewey stands up for America with my sister Laverne at his side. I was probably too young to remember his visit when Mama made this photograph. |
Uncle Dewey had beautiful penmanship, sported double-breasted suits, and once taught school somewhere in Halifax, Martin or Hertford county. He later ventured north to Philadelphia where he became a street-vendor downtown - in the ballpark, and, when in a more exotic mood, Atlantic City. He looked a lot like Jimmy Durante and sounded exactly like him. He called his great pile of nephews “schon” (pronounced schun) - as in “Howya doin, Schon?!” My sister Laverne and I waited in anticipation to meet him when I was about 5 years old. Momma had worked up our anticipation for the day we would meet him. Dewey, wearing a great long coat and double-breasted suit, arrived in a taxicab – something I had only seen on television. We ran up to him, and he gave us a tremendous greeting and a dime apiece. He was a Great American. |
Over the years he exclaimed stuff to us: “Ya oughta learn piana like ya sista! I know a fella in Philadelphia who gets 15 dollahs a night, playin piana!,” or “Ina ballpark, if ya wanna hotdog with everythin an’a beer, ya say ‘Home run an’a brew!” or “Come wit me to Philadelphia, m’boy, and I’ll show ya how to make a million dollahs sellin’ pretzels!”
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The mule, shying from Uncle Dewey |
Uncle Dewey was 82 when Philadelphia became too much for him. His baby brother, Samuel H. James, and nephew, Otis “Junebug” (or “Redhorse”) Reid fetched him and brought him back to Hertford County. He eventually stayed across the road from us with another brother, Lawrence James. Dewey took to picking up our News and Observer and bringing it to Mama and my grandmother, his sister. Once, on the way in the house, he read about a failed coup against Hassan II of Morocco. This caused him to proclaim, “They TRIED to Kill the KING!”
The last times I saw Uncle Dewey was in the summer of 1972, when I was home from college in Chicago. Our greeting was brief:
“Good to see ya, schon!
Whereya livin?
Chicaga?
CHICAGA!
GUN CITY!
BUM! BUM!”
~
He entered Daddy’s store once shouting,
“G-T-M!
Get the Money!
Who’s in here,
Grabbin all the money?!”
(He shoulda been on the J.P. Morgan cheerleading squad.)
In our back porch, Dewey's sister,
G.A. Robbins seems worried that someone will
see her brother's torn shirt. It is August, 1972 and the peanuts are still
growing.
That pecan tree was cut down last year.
“Ya wanna be a ph’tographa? Well, ya have ta getcha self a peddla’s license! Ya can’t sell pitchas door-to-door withouta peddla’s license!”
~
“There's no fool like a’ old fool!” (I kept my own thoughts to myself)
~
I once asked him if he remembered Halley’s Comet, or as I put it,
the “great comet of 1910.” He pondered his memory of the heavens
and then pronounced,
“Nineteen and ten!
Nineteen and TEN!
I was twenty-one then!
Naw, I don’t remember no comet.”
~
Our dog Peggy was always looking for
a hand to shake. I'm sure
Uncle Dewey obliged her every day. March,
1971 photograph.
Dewey was a riddler.
“What goes up and never comes down?”
“TAXES!” I thrusted.
“Uh, well, un-humpht. Yeah, I guess.”, he said in a rare soft
voice. But then, he continued, “IT”S YOUR AGE!”
My favorite is
“What the first thing to turn green
in spring?”
“Uncle Dewey, I don’t know.”
“CHRISTMAS JEWELRY!”
Well, fellas, here’s a shopping tip for you: The gift-giving season
is coming up when we get to gift our women with gold-looking things. Now
if your jewelry comes from the same peddlin' folks Dewey knew, I offer
you a quote that comes from William Shakespeare and not
Uncle Dewey:
Beware the Ides of March!