Way back around 1950, a heavy equipment operator working road construction near Knoxville brought a couple of young co-workers home to meet his teenage daughters. One was the boss’s son, barely out of high school, the other his older best friend.
One wonders what Sam Moore actually had in mind at the time, but the results speak for themselves. His older daughter Shirley fell for and married the best friend and his younger daughter Loretta eventually married the boss’s son.
My mother always said Aunt Shirley got the better deal.
The young men must have been quite a pair to see coming. Billy Lou Edwards, the older, was a WW II Navy veteran, muscular and tall. John Will Ruth, Jr., the boss’s son, was wiry and bespectacled. Bill called John “Worm” and John called Bill “Susie”.
They were both Kentucky boys. John came from a broken home in Owen County, Bill from a large tight-knit family in Sebree. As best as I could tell, Kentucky and road building were about all they had in common. But even though time and consequences separated them physically, they remained close until the end.
My grandparents moved to Long Island, New York in the late ‘50s for construction work. Uncle Bill, Aunt Shirley and their young daughters followed a few years later. My dad worked the family’s limestone quarries, eventually landing us in Elkhorn City.
Every summer, we’d travel north to stay with my grandparents. My grandmother never thought too highly of my dad and the feeling was mutual. But sometimes he’d make the trip, just for a couple of days, to see his buddy Susie.
After my parents divorced in the early ‘70s, dad and Uncle Bill would keep in touch every few months by phone. Uncle Bill continued to give dad a call all the way up to dad’s passing in 2009.
Uncle Bill and Aunt Shirley’s house was about 10 houses up the street from my grandparents. Uncle Bill was known for having the nicest yard on the street, always perfectly manicured with flowers and shrubbery. He’d get home from work and spend time working the yard, before weed eaters and electric hedge trimmers. Then he’d sit in a lawn chair and read the paper until dark.
I rarely saw Uncle Bill mad, even when we kids did something stupid. I never heard him cuss. The closest he’d come would be muttering something about that “john darn” so and so. And that would make me think of dad.
Uncle Bill longed for his home in western Kentucky. The pull was so strong that his oldest two actually settled there before he was able to take his union pension and retire there, too. His lawn in Henderson was again the nicest yard in the neighborhood.
A couple of years ago, Uncle Bill and Aunt Shirley were flown to Washington, DC as part of an effort to honor the remaining World War II veterans. In typical fashion, he dodged compliments and pointed to his grandson, a veteran and U.S. Marshal.
Bill Edwards passed away the day after Memorial Day. He was one of the brave Americans who went to war to save the world so proceeding generations wouldn’t have to. I imagine somewhere Susie and Worm are catching up on old times.