Say Uncle

Up until 2000, I was bewildered by the origins of the furious desire to scribble that practically contaminated my blood. Insofar as I knew, no one else in my family shared this urge. My father was a gifted storyteller, but more in the fine Southern tradition of sittin' and speakin' true tales designed to impart some kernel of commonsense wisdom as much as entertain the audience with verbal expressiveness and well-timed gesticulations.

Then Mom told me about my late uncle Marshall. He was one of the singular people on either side of the family: he walked on a wooden leg thanks to a war injury, became an attorney, and ended up a millionaire. Also, he found time to write a few stories for the Saturday Evening Post.

Moreso than grave injury or financial fortune, Marshall's writerly bent intrigued me. I could actually relate to it. This led to my great curiosity over what he wrote about; surely his widow or someone in the family had copies of a magazine or two. But no. She had only a list showing the dates of the issues his work appeared in. My mother copied them down and passed them along to me. I made it my mission to scour Ebay and purchase these five magazines. I thought that it would be cool to have them around not just for reading, but also to give my mother something of her late brother, a remnant to refer to, learn from, or even just take comfort in.

In just six months of Ebay hunting, I won all five Saturday Evening Post issues that Marshall Davenport's writing appeared in. It was not easy, but it was worth it.

12/10/49, take 1: I won this first, from a reputable online store. Within a week I received...not this issue. Turned out that addresses were switched on two packages, one being mine. For whatever reason, the person who received the issue they didn't win refused to exchange it or send it back so the seller could redress the problem. Clearly, they weren't on a mission.

12/10/49, take 2: Ah ha! It was a big day when this baby arrived. The mag was dog-earred for sure, but still in good fighting shape for being a li'l over 50 years old at the time. It smelled like what I have always imagined the 1940s to smell like--a musty easy chair where a man could sit for hours and chew tobacco while watching the flames dance in the fireplace.

Fittingly, my uncle wrote a seasonal piece, about the town of Santa Claus, Indiana. Bright, felicitous pictures of the bustling post office and kid-friendly play areas trap in my uncle's assured write-up. His first paragraph could, now that I consider it, be easily applied to my first time reading it:

"Had the settlers called the community by any other name, it would have remained an obscure hamlet, lost among the knobs of Southern Indiana. The name, however mellifluent, would have echoed no further than the boundaries of Spencer County."

Which isn't to say that if not for our relation I would have disregarded my uncle's prose as forgettable. But just as a fortuitous christening transformed a charming li'l chip of the Midwest into a popular family attraction, so did the name "Marshall Davenport" pull me towards this article, compelling me to read it through several times.

One thing that is instantly, delightfully apparent from only a couple paragraphs in, is that both my uncle and I, as writers, share a love for the expressive sentence that twinkles along the page and virtually supernovas when spoken aloud. I can see in his style my own knack for almost-throwaway wit, blunt exposition, and a smart-if-not-clever vocabulary. He tells the story of the town's origins, its boom, and the many letters that arrive day after day, including the following gem from a Missouri boy: "Dear Santa: Bring me two double barreled Long Tom guns. Bring them."

Almost immediately after I won this issue at auction, I received an email from someone who identified himself as an older man living in California. He explained that there was a story in the magazine about a town in Indiana, and the accompanying color photos included him in a group of kids sitting in the grass watching a miniature train ride by. (Sure enough, it's there on the bottom right of the first page.) This man very politely offered to buy the magazine from me. I simply couldn't do it, especially not after the hassle over my initial attempt at obtaining it. Instead, my mother and I went to the library and made several color copies of the article and sent it to his address. In what seemed like an exceedingly swift period of time, another email arrived in my box; the old man again, this time effusively grateful and eager to reciprocate our kindness at anytime in any way he could. "You've made an old man very happy", he concluded.

2/17/45: The next issue featured the first half of Marshall's most ambitious project--the story of his service in World War II. It was a simple retelling of a horrific series of events.

Attacked by Germans in North Africa, Marshall was the sole survivor of the five soldiers that occupied his tank. The blasts left him with severe facial scarring and a severely damaged left foot. His simple language condescends to no one, and it's hard to forget the story once you've read it.

For anyone else reading it, my uncle's words probably didn't hit them where it stung until he placed himself (and them) in the middle of a war zone, a young man ready to die and hoping it wouldn't be as bad as he always feared. For his family, however, the very first paragraph was a breathtaking gut punch. In it, he talks about his sense of self-preservation, stemming from the death of his mother when he was only five years old and his father not long after. Makes you feel very sympathetic towards him, doesn't it? Gives his story tremendous emotional gravitas. Orphan boy struggles to obtain law degree, lose limb in war, never loses hope. Great stuff. Except, the first part of that sentence is not true. Marshall was not orphaned. His parents lived long lives and by all accounts were loving and supportive. When the article was first published, a mild rift between Marshall and the family formed. His excuse was a familiar one for most any writer, especially one trying to make a little extra cash and gain exposure in a widely-read periodical: the editor suggested that he take what was already a gripping, true slice of life tale and give it some heart-rending back story sure to ensnare the reader.

2/24/45: Marshall laid on the ground for ten hours, kept company by the sounds of planes, exploding shells, and an errant German soldier who tried to use his prone body for target practice. He was taken to first a lice-ridden Italian prison hospital, then a much-improved one in Germany. A year later he was sent home (via a "prisoner exchange") to a wife who loved him unconditionally and a horrified local populace, who could not hide their repulsion at his extensive scarring. My uncle spends the rest of the article detailing conversations between himself and other soldiers about the differences between officers and civilians, and the contempt many of the former could not help but feel for the latter in the face of ingratitude and insensitivity.

11/19/49: A piece on the American Automobile Association that would be reprinted one year late in Readers Digest. The subject didn't intrigue me terribly.

10/7/50: "Why Are Russian Tanks Better Than Ours?"

Captivating as his story of survival was, this article is still my favorite. He asks a question many of the time might consider unpatriotic if not treasonous and answers it with the unaffected confidence borne of a man who attended the grand ball and had a lingering slow dance with the most abhorrent guest present.

Marshall blamed the "unimaginative" Pentagon brain trust for valuing statistics and calculations over armor and arms. "The dogma of the slide-rule boys" he called it, a wonderful turn of phrase that could only slip forth from the pen of one who knows how fatal such folly can be. With no grace, and no delusion of a grand solution, he pointed out the torpid "progress" of the American military in developing tanks to keep up with the Russians (and other nations) and the potential for disaster in continuing to insist that running neck-and-neck with the Jones' in that area of battle was not relevant in the general scheme. I wonder what Marshall would make of wartime technology nowadays.

I wonder what he'd make of my writing. Probably would tell me I curse too much.