Leola and Uncle Ed

Aunt Leola and Uncle Ed

"Ooooo," she warbled through the narrow crack. "Bless my bars and stars!" I looked up from the top step in time to see one eye before the porch door closed again. Grandma and I smiled at each other and waited. We could hear Aunt Leola fumble to undo the anchor glide for the chain bolt. It held the porch door steady against unwanted intruders and was the last of three protective mechanisms put in place by Uncle Ed. This was the standard prelude to our visits at Aunt Leola and Uncle Ed's home.

The year was 1947 and I was five years old. Home invasions in Fond du Lac were nearly unheard of then, and no one else that I knew ever locked their doors. This was part of what made visits to Uncle Ed's so interesting. That and what mom had said about Ed's rocker being attached to his backside.

I enjoyed frequent visits to Grandma and Grandpa Rogge's house as a child. When Grandma had finished with her housework, she and I nearly always took a walk together. No matter which way we walked, our treks always ended, as if by magic, on the front porch steps of the house at 240 5th Street.

There, Ed and Leola lived an insular existence. Ed worked occasionally as a process server for the city and Leola was an accomplished tailor. She also had a beautiful contralto voice and often sang for weddings and funerals. Their home had a somewhat exotic atmosphere, quite different from that to which I was accustomed.

We, along with Leola's dressmaking clients, were the only people who used their front door as an entrance. Once admitted, we stepped into the small, enclosed front porch, and Leola pulled us both to her soft self. The window shades were all pulled to the full down position, and the open door briefly allowed a shaft of sunlight to cross the dark interior. I watched the tiny flecks of dust float through the beam and back out of sight into the gloom. My eyes adjusted to the dimness and while Leola relocked the bolts and chains, I looked around. The porch was a vault for hundreds of past issues of the National Geographic magazine. There was an old wicker chair there facing a shaded window, and it, too was piled high with Geographic overflow. The porch also served as an airlock between the fresh breezes of the outdoors and the hermetically sealed inner living quarters.

Once the porch was again secure, Leola opened the house door and we stepped into the living room. Curtains and shades served as barricades against the neighbors and prying eyes and it took a moment to adjust to this next level of darkness. Their home was interesting. It had a musty "old" smell from decades of trapped odors. They had mingled into something unique and recognizable. There was a feeling of permanence about the place. Leola kept a clean house but the scenery never changed. The stacks of clutter never shifted, the furniture never moved and no new color ever found its way into the decor. Even Uncle Ed seemed rooted in his rocker. Only on one occasion did I see him on his feet.

I took a seat on the big leather sofa and quietly studied the details of my surroundings while the elders made small talk. The leather was cool to sit on; curiously so, as the temperature in the room was always in the "hot" range. The public space was dainty by today's standards, and living room merged seamlessly into dining room. It held an old upright piano, a round oak dining table, a huge overstuffed leather rocker, and the leather sofa. Scattered between the furniture were several birdcages hanging on tall stands. Their colorless covers hung limply over the arm of each and they merged quietly with the surroundings. Nearly everything visible was tan, brown, or some shade of gray.

Linoleum covered the floor and extended into all visible adjacent areas. There was a faint pattern of squares in it that were offset in such a way that they moved in a diagonal to the walls. Decades of foot traffic and diligent scrubbing had worn it nearly smooth and the colors in the pattern were faded and mute.

Ed was not a big man but appeared waif-like in the big brown rocker. He was always "cold" so, even on the hottest summer days, they kept their home closed up tight. Ed had a full head of white hair and a narrow, thin, bespectacled face. He often had a somewhat pinched appearance, as though something unseen was bothering him or otherwise occupying his focus.

His traditional uniform, summer or winter, was a gray wool flannel union suit. It covered him from neck to ankles and was topped with a pair of extra, extra heavy black wool pants. The wool in the pants was nearly felted and was so thick that it seemed to resist the bend of Ed's legs as he rocked. Multiple patches decorated both knees. The patches had patches in ever decreasing size. Black suspenders held the pants in mid air around his slender middle, giving him a clown-like appearance. His shoes were more in the nature of boots, big and heavy, laced up under the cuffs of the wool pants.

I assume that he enjoyed our company but he did little to show it. Mom said that he was a curmudgeon. I studied him on our visits to see what a curmudgeon was. Ed wasn't very talkative and never cheerful. His conversations nearly always revolved around drafts, chaffing, his daily physic, or his regular visits to Doc Borsac for a "prostatic massage." He seemed entirely at ease discussing his bodily functions in polite company.

Leola, on the other hand, loved to visit and was genuinely happy to see us. She liked to get out of the house and we often took her shopping or to run other errands. She was a Galloway girl, and the erudite one of the pair. She smiled often and had a delightful sense of humor. Leola was a round woman, and plain, but pleasingly so. She too had gray hair, which she pulled to a knot at the back of her head. A faded house-dress topped with an apron, baggy gray cotton leggings and a cloth tape measure draped around her neck completed the picture.

Her bedroom served as her office. It opened off the living room and held her sewing machine, bed and various bureaus. Both rooms were neat but somewhat cluttered with fabric, stacks of sheet music, tailor's chalk, and pin dishes. The birdcages were Leola's delight. Each cage held one or more canaries and occasionally she would have tiny nestlings to show us. Unless the covers were over the cages, the birds rewarded the couple with non-stop warbling. They were Leola's charges, and provided the only splash of color in an otherwise drab existence.

Ed and Leola lived very simply and required little. They did have a car but seldom drove it anywhere. Their passion was their child "Wimpy"

Wimpy enjoyed a privileged life. He was a smallish lad but well fed. His nails were in a perennial state of overgrowth and, when he was on the move, they clicked rhythmically on the linoleum flooring. Wimpy had big, bulgy eyes and a somewhat bulbous nose. He sported pointy ears and was of low mentality. His hair was short and brown and his general appearance was entirely unimpressive. No matter, Wimpy was Ed's child. As such, he enjoyed all the rights and privileges that went with that position. Wimpy slept with Ed, rocked with Ed in the big leather rocker, accompanied Ed on his business in the car, and ate in the dining room with the "family".

It was a heart-wrenching event when Wimpy died. He was old and infirm by the time it happened, and he simply slept away in the comfort of his home. Grief had rendered Uncle Ed useless. So, when Leola called, Dad and I went to the house to help Ed with the interment.

When we arrived, I saw an entirely different Uncle Ed. The crusty curmudgeon was in a state of melt-down. For the first time in my experience, Ed was on his feet, pacing in the tiny room. This development alone, caused a major shift in my appraisal of him. The pinched look, gone now; he was a soggy puddle of emotion. His eyes were red and swollen, and repeated nose blowing punctuated the conversation.

Together we wrapped Wimpy in his favorite afghan. Ed wept unabashedly as we helped him find a quiet resting place for Wimpy in the back yard that in life, he loved to patrol. He rests there to this day. No dog has ever been more loved.

Years later, Ed and Leola gave up their home. Mom and Dad moved the pair to a small two-bedroom apartment on Forest Avenue next to the Kroger grocery store. Everything made the move except the birdcages. They had been phased out after the last canary wasn't replaced. After Grandma passed away, Mom and I made regular visits to see Ed and Leola until they both died of old age.

It's been nearly sixty years since Grandma and I waited on Ed and Leola's porch step. No one says, "Bless my bars and stars" anymore, but I clearly recall how I liked to hear Leola greet us that way. Although I never again saw Ed's emotional side, I knew he had one; and felt the same warmth and affection for him that I had for Leola. I still think of them and remember their curious home and lifestyle, the canaries and their beloved child, Wimpy.