Uncle Herb, at left
By David Simmons
NORCROSS, Ga. | When this picture came around on my screensaver, it brought to mind a story, but I never could come up with a climactic ending for it. So let me begin the story with the ending. That’s Herb’s daughter, Lori, and nephew, Terry, in the photo.
My Uncle Herbert was a good man, and there are a whole bunch of us that loved him and surely do miss him now.
Uncle Herb was gregarious, outgoing and a friend to all. He had a warm smile, a handshake or a hug ever at the ready. He always seemed to have a child on his lap, one of his own, or a niece or nephew, or later on a grandchild. Kids gravitated toward him.
He had a great sense of humor, and liked to be the center of attention, and seldom was there a time when he didn’t have a story to fit any occasion. I fondly recall that whenever he got up to leave he would say: “Y’all come go with us.” That was the way he was and I always felt like he really meant it.
Back in the fall of 1989 I had moved home to my parent’s house in Kingsport, Tenn., to help out with my mom who had been diagnosed with lung cancer. (Damn those Viceroys, and later on Benson and Hedges 100’s.)
The following May, my Uncle Gerald passed away and was to be buried in the family cemetery. A call went out to the men folk of the family for volunteers to help dig the grave.
A dozen or so of us showed up bright and early with tools, boots and gloves. It was a cloudless day and as the sun rose it turned hot. Our tools for the day were an old well-worn pickaxe and shovel. We broke up the red Virginia clay with the pickaxe, then shoveled it away.
Each man would hit the ground hard a few minutes, then jump out and another would jump in. It was hard work, but we fell into a rhythm, one man out and another in, while the others stood in the treeless, shadeless cemetery under the hot sun, telling stories, and remembering old times with Uncle Gerald.
We had the grave three or four feet deep when Uncle Herb pulled in and came trudging up the hill to join us. We greeted him, and he us, then went back to the task at hand, plus continued the telling of stories.
Uncle Herb was quiet and subdued, just listening. When it was his turn, he jumped down in the hole and started to shovel, when instead he turned back to us, leaned up against that shovel and started telling his story about a night he and Gerald and his dogs had gone coon hunting together. He finished that story, started to work, but again leaned on the shovel and began another story.
He never did hit a lick down there in the bottom of that grave. He had everybody’s attention and he had stories to tell. And he was gonna tell them.
That was my Uncle Herb.
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