Mr. Winrick

Luke 4 [20] And He closed the book, and He gave it again to the minister, and sat down. [KJV]

When Mr. Winrick still worked at the bank he persuaded my dad to open a Buick dealership in Oakapolohka, although a previous venture had failed.

I was five, six or seven and all I remember is Dad bringing home a new car every night. Jerry and David waited for him to arrive at dinner time. Gazing out the living room window,they'd see him pulling up and they'd gasp and yell and run outside.

Electras, Rivieras, Wildcats. "Does the top come down?"

Dad was a bear but a bear you could rush and outflank. Neighborhood kids wondered at us, all the years we were growing up, why his low growling and eventual thunder-clap didn't frighten us more.

We knew to back off, we noticed when the sound of his voice changed. The time to back off was when it was too late. But all the bear could do was make us abashed. He didn't ever kill you, like he threatened to weekly. He could put up with a certain amount of back-talk also.

The business started to fail, but then Mr. Winrick found Dad some partners and helped in other ways until Dad finally got out.

Then Mr. Winrick retired from the bank and sold us his house. No one knew it was for sale.

It was the one house in town my mother had always admired the most, a two story white colonial with green shutters and a large back yard for us. She couldn't believe it. Dad would build a white fence around the back yard, where she thought there should always have been a white fence.

For the next ten years, when we were arriving home after a long car-trip she would wake us in the back seat and, over our groaning, start to sing.

"Oh look everyone, we're home and isn't it beautiful, our very own little house on the corner. Let's stop just a minute and look."
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Mr. Winrick and his wife, Harriet, had lived at the corner of 9th and "B" since the late 1940's. They planned to move to the western edge of town, where there were woods and close curving roads and it wasn't so awfully close to the cemetery and the elementary schools. Those were the reasons my Dad offered, but he may have been kidding.

We arrived for a tour after church. My dad said "Hello, Buford!" and introduced my mother and my brothers and me. I had a sister on her way. Mom and my teacher and every woman in town told me she would "arrive" very soon now and asked what did I think of that?

Mom asked God for Jane and God agreed. That was explanation enough for me. I don't remember being curious, concerned, or interested until the upper cabinets were filled with baby bottles. And it gave me a small amount of fame for awhile, is all.
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Mr. Winrick called my Dad "Edward", instead of "Ed". He was formal and kindly.

I liked it when my dad talked to older men. I enjoyed a casual belief that Dad was at some toddering risk but would always handle himself exactly right. There was a funny solicitousness between men of different generations, a tolerant sense of superiority going both ways.

This day Mom was very happy but perplexed during the car ride home. Mr. Winrick had repainted one side of the house white months ago but left the other three sides weathered and cracked. Also there were little black twigs all over the lawn since the last summer storm.

"Oh that picture over the mantle!" she suddenly laughed.

My older brothers laughed too. David joked he would do the same someday.

I didn't know what anyone was talking about. I hadn't noticed anything. Mom turned in the front seat and asked, didn't I notice? She told me Mr. Winrick had a picture of himself over the mantle and there was a little light shining down on it. Everyone laughed some more and my Dad's bluish/gray eyes sort of shone but he tilted his head like maybe this wasn't fair.

"He was an admiral and spent a few years at the Pentagon."

Jerry asked, why is he called Mister?

"I think he thinks it would sound silly, to be called Admiral. Anyway Buford was a wheel."

"That's Air Force slang, Dad."

"Maybe started that way, Jerry. Anyway, he was already a submarine commander when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He was there."

Mom said, "I'm sure it was his wife or daughter who had his portrait put up like that. His daughter Janine is in one of my bridge clubs. And in P.E.O."

David sat up, alert. "Come on, Mom. What's P.E.O. stand for?"

Any mention of P.E.O. , he always demanded to know.

"I don't know, " she said quietly while looking at the houses we drove by.

Jerry, the oldest, quietly stated, "Yes you do." Dad straightened up and looked in the rear-view mirror at him.

David said, "Mom, I'm going to find out some day. So why not tell me. Hey if you don't, I'll say I learned it from you. Come on, Mom!"

Dad looked at my mom. She was smiling, looking ahead, shaking her head. She made a little cough and Dad said "David, don't blackmail your mother."

"Honestly," she said, "they whispered it to me on my first day but it was so loud there, just before the luncheon, I didn't hear quite right. But I nodded and then I had to whisper to the next pledge ---Oh, my Lord. Ed!--- I told her what I thought I heard. Oh, Lord!" Dad laughed so I laughed too because his laughter was always tickling "And now I'm embarrassed to ask again, ever since. So, David, you'll never find out from me.

"And Jerry, do you hear that? I do not know."

"You're the president. Yes you do."

"Jerry!" Dad warned.

"President!??" I scooted up to her shoulder from this middle area of the back seat and asked how could that be?

The whole damn family exclaimed and explained at once. When it was over I looked to David and he repeated it all to me slowly and calmly. There isn't just one "President". Lots of groups elect presidents.

Mom returned to the subject of the house. She wondered again at Mr. Winrick's half-hearted attempt to paint it and then started to dream aloud what all she would do with the kitchen and the living room and two baths. Everything there was comfortable but old and worn.

"Private Entrance Only!" David suddenly exclaimed.

"No!"

"How do you know? You said you didn't hear, Mom."

"I know it's not that."

Dad reminded us then, "If it wasn't for your mother I'd drop you all off in the country for some farmer to pick up."

"Parents Eat Out, " Jerry said. This was a sore point we had with our parents, they're eating out alone, though it only happened six times a year, if that.

"Yes, no, maybe so," my mother replied.
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But Mr. and Mrs. Winrick did not move to the hilly, forested area west of town after all; they moved next door to an upstairs apartment above Mr. Winricks aging sister.

She was Mrs Doosenbury, a widow. She looked ancient but was very tall and stood up straight.
I came to understand over the years that Mr. Winrick and his sister did not get along. Or rather, the day came I was finally old enough to have it casually mentioned in my company. The animosity was not on the surface. She hadn't spoken to her brother in twenty years, supposedly. It had something to do with money or it was due to some unfortunate off-hand remark about the late Mr. Doosenbury.

She was once the town librarian. You could see a picture of her framed at the library, taken in the 1940's. She looked elderly even then. Or, as David said, like she was prepared to be elderly. Then there was another picture I saw of her as a young woman with long brown hair, wearing a floor length black skirt and a blouse with a big bow. I was sometime in the Lusitania era.

Now Mrs. Winrick explained that the house was so big and with their children grown, there was no sense in all that work keeping it up, or moving to an even larger house.

They liked the neighborhood, so close to the downtown. Our street was the outer most ring for the town's holiday parades. It was a very wide street with pretty lawns, hedges, ever-greens and Dutch Elm trees.
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Years passed. My sister Jane had turned five. On summer nights I was allowed out until eight or nine or ten, and I began to notice "Buford" (as we called him now) had a schedule of sorts. I'd see him at ten o'clock arriving home alone and fumbling with his key to the outside door that led to their upstairs apartment. The whole house was dark , then finally the kitchen light came on.

Jerry looked for chances to use new expressions he'd learned. Once he said Buford was "tipsy".

David, who was four years younger, said, "Yep. Never quite drunk."
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If Dad was up and saw Buford he'd sometimes call across the drive-way to come join him on the screen-porch. The two men talked quietly and eventually my brothers sat at their feet while I weaved through everyone in circles until Dad reached out and pulled me to sit on his lap.

We knew Dad was in the Navy. It seems to me now we all heard it rather indifferently. The bigger question was how a small town hoodlum like him managed to marry a beauty queen like Mom.

Ask him what he did in the Navy and he'd say "I typed a lot". And once he'd kicked a rat off a dock into the Sea of Japan.

They talked Navy, now. The Admiral would say something like: "You watch it for awhile and you'll think it's a damn yaught!"

My oldest brother Jerry went and got a book with the words to "The Lucky Bag", and asked Dad and Mr. Winrick if they remembered.

Shoe of middy and waister’s sock,
Wing of soldier and idler’s frock,
Purser’s slops and topman’s hat,
Boatswain’s call and colt and cat,
Belt that on the berth-deck lay,
In the Lucky Bag find their way;
Gaiter, stock and red pompoonont,;;
Sailor’s pan, his pot and spoon,
Shirt of cook and trowsert's duck,
Kid and can and “doctor’s truck,
And all that’s lost, and found on board,
In the Lucky Bag is always stored.''

"Two hundred years before our time, Edward."

"Just nonsense to me."

"Same here," Buford said. "Sorry, Jerry!"

"You two don't know what the Lucky Bag is?"

"Sure," Dad said. "It's the Lost and Found on a ship."

Buford laughed. "It was the name of our school year book but I'll be damned. I never knew that's what it was. "
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I liked to visit Mrs. Doosenbury for candy, and then after a few years growing up, to look at her history books about all the Presidents. Harriet was usually there visiting in the daytime, drinking iced tea.

Mrs. Doosenbury produced a scrap-book of old newspaper articles and had me read this, from 1922.

Chased by a Mule


Dr. M.S McCreight reports a peculiar accident which happened on Wednesday to Buford Winrick, who lives in the vicinity of Liberty church, a few miles southwest of Oakapalohka.

Mr. Winrick was chasing a calf which had gotten out, and trying to get it by the halter strap, when a mule jumped out of its pasture alongside the road and chased the man and calf. It bumped right into Mr. Windrick and either bumped or kicked him on the forehead, also on the right leg, breaking the bone just above the knee and twisting the knee and jamming him up generally in pretty bad shape. He crawled, dragging the broken limb, for perhaps 150 to 200 yards to the house and managed to get up to the home and ask the operator to call Dr. McCreight. The operator also called Mr. Winrick's folks, who were attending a social affair in the neighorhood.

"That," she tapped at the photo of the young man, "is my brother as I remember him. He wanted to go to Chicago and be a gangster."

Harriet smiled, "Oh, Mary", and Miss Doosenbury said,"Oh, yes he did, Harriet. That mule knocked a little sense into him I guess."

Everything else in this scrap-book had to do with weddings, birth announcements, until it finally veered off wildly to modern times. There were stark color photos of Jackie Onassis. Glossy from Life Magazine, other-worldly from the check-out aisle magazines.

Harriet laughed and said "Wait a minute, we're not through with you, John. I have something more to show you."

She led me upstairs to see his medals and read about all of Mr. Winrick's war experiences. His framed photograph was there but without the little light shining down on it. The apartment was close and it was a still day. Loud electric fans hummed.

Oakapalohka knew her native son, Winrick, very well in 1943.

"For conspicious gallantry and intrepidity in action in the performance of his duties in the USS Amberjack during a war patrol of that vessel..." he has been awarded the Silver Star Medal. The citation further states: "As Assistant Approach Officer, his outstanding skill, excellent judgement and thorough knowledge of attack problems assisted his Commanding Officer considerably in conducting a series of successful torpedo attacks, which resulted in the sinking and damaging of enemy ships totalling more than 43,000-tons. In addition, he was of great assistance in conducting a successful reconnaissance of four enemy positions and completing a vital special mission, contributing immensely to the success of his vessel in evading extremely severe enemy countermeasures..."

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One day Mr. and Mrs. Winrick took Jane and me to see the ducks and swans at the cemetary pond. The two of them made their way up the hill to the Wishing Well, so we followed.

Buford gave Jane a penny to throw in. "If I gave you a nickle would you throw it in the wishing well? Yes? What about a quarter? Ha, ha. I didn't think so."

Mrs. Winrick was quiet but seemed in a good mood. Jane went back down the hill to the swans and I followed the couple to a burial plot with a brand new stone and unbroken ground.

It had their names and their birth dates. Harriet Winrick. Buford Winrick. They explained to me in soft tones that people usually buy their own plots, to spare others the expense. They seemed proud and pleased. There was an inscription. "First, Love God". Harriet seemed dreamy.

They pointed to where Miss Doosenbury would rest. It was away over there, a couple of hills toward the grey, besmirched looking greenhouses adjacent to Forest Cemetary.

That autumn I overheard that Buford had bought his wife a fur coat. Then one day I was outside and the couple came out and I saw the coat. Harriet was holding Buford's arm and she looked small. She leaned into him. As they reached the cement stairs leading down to the walk and their car, Buford turned and gave me a smile and a friendly wave.

A week later my mother called for me to come in and told me to try to keep the neighborhood kids quiet, especially around the Doosenbury house.

A few weeks later my sister and I saw Buford coming home at dusk. Jane asked where was Harriet and I shushed her. Buford said "that's all right" as he worked the key in the door. He looked up, as if to heaven, and went inside without answering Jane.

Myself, I'd recently learned to the expression "passed on", and the sound and meaning of the phrase settled me. But Jane was five, too young for sideway glances at the eternal. I took her to the other side of the house, ready to say what happened to Harriet, but she'd either forgotten her question or kept it to herself, for Mom or for Dad.
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One night Buford was charged with assault downtown. Dad read the paper and said only "Thursday afternoon?"

We learned Buford had broken a man's glasses. Later we heard that this man was a stranger and there had not been a fight at all.

I arrived home from school one day and David reached out and took my glasses. He put his palm on my forehead as I yelled in protest and he told me, "You're healed. You don't need these anymore, Johnny! Look at that clock on the mantle. Can't you see that the time is at hand?"

Mom intervened.

Dad traveled these years. Mom kept score and usually by Friday if any of us had got in trouble we'd bargained with her not to tell.
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Mom and David in the kitchen. They both seemed to be laughing and arguing at the same time. Mom had been doing the dishes. Her hands were wet and sudsy, on her aproned hip now. "Who is this woman!"

"Mrs. Wormak. My English teacher."

"But she's not even in P.E.O. !! How would she know? And worse, why would she tell? Did she tell everyone or just you?"

"She told the whole class. She says it's a sorority for housewives."

"It's not 'Protect Everyone', anyway. If she's an English teacher she should know 'everyone' is one word. P.E.O. means "Protect Each Other". And it's not a 'sorority', that makes it sound silly, she means for it to sound silly.

"This is a very old organization, David, before most women got to go to college and it's mission is to help women get into college. The official meaning is "Philanthropic Educational Organization." P.E.O. Our little chapter is giving five scholarships at your school this year. FIVE. Go tell Miss or Mrs. Wormack to..."

"Go explain herself to your judicial committee?" These were Watergate days. He was kidding, as usual.

"That was a secret. It's just mean."

"Yeah, she seemed kind of proud, come to think of it."

"It's almost like that, you know. Trying to put people down."

"Do you wonder who told?"

"What? Do you know? Oh!" She waved him away. "That's just awful. Awful. I am so mad...Wait, I'm not finished with you, I have something more to say. Come back.

"I want you to ask her tomorrow what she thinks is the difference between 'protect everyone' and 'protect each other'. "
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Admiral Winrick smoked outside in his undershirt now and paced the sidewalk, habitually opening and closing his fists over his head.

"Do you think he's trying to catch bugs flying out of his hair?" Jerry asked me.

For weeks, for a Spring and a Summer, Mr. Winrick was like this. He would also seem to be making a transparent but nervous attempt to look normal by gesturing with his hands and moving his lips. Like he could somehow fool us that he wasn't alone.

There were fairly loud denouements. For instance once I heard him exclaim, "As big as life!"

Finally, as I understood it, the Navy came to pick him up. We never saw him again.
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After his death I took my brothers to see the grave. They were in college and high school now.

On the stone there was that religious inscription. "First, Love God".

My brother David said, "Modest". My brother Jerry said "Frugal!" They had some game of matching one another synonym for synonym.

"Pious."

"Devout. Devoted."

David concluded, "Well. I liked them both."

"I wonder what Dad thought of Buford," Jerry said. "You know, he almost ruined Dad."

"Not to hear Dad tell it." David said.