Cecil

What a grey, rainy day here! ~

 

I hope you all are warm and dry where you are.

 

All of our snow is gone, washed away by the rain and 60+ temperatures...

 

That carol "In the Bleak Midwinter" comes to mind.

 

♥

 

For some reason this morning I woke up

 

 with Cecil on my mind.

 

What brings to mind a person that you really didn't know,

 

but were around a little

 

50 years ago?

 

I don't know.

 

Maybe I'm supposed to write about him.

 

Cecil was a man who lived in a little room at the end

 

of my Grandpa Collier's workshop building.

 

He could have been fifty years old or eighty.

 

There aren't any photos that I know of. Not in our family's photos, anyway.

 

So I looked through Google images until I found this 1924 illustration

 

by Norman Rockwell...from my recollection, Cecil could have

 

posed for it ~ though, if he had a dog, he wasn't with him by the time

 

he came to stay at Grandpa and Grandma's.

 

If I'd ever heard any details about Cecil, I don't remember.

 

And, to tell the truth, I didn't just wake up thinking of him out of the blue...

 

The other night when I was driving home, I saw a man walking along the highway

 

carrying two duffel bags, and my first instinct was to think "That poor man"...

 

and then wondering if he had eaten, as I drove home to my warm house.

 

I even considered circling around, just to see how old ~or how desperate ~ he looked...

 

But then, I was so close to home at that point, and our house and driveway can

 

be seen from the highway...

 

that I reconsidered...I was nervous about him seeing where I lived if I made

 

myself conspicuous by going past him twice.

 

Isn't it awful that our society has come to that?

 

We still have the right instincts, but we push them back for fear of our own

 

or our family's safety.

 

Just not worth the risk. Sad.

 

It was then that I first started thinking about how my Grandparents

 

would have probably offered him help without a second thought,

 

and then I thought about Cecil.

 

~

~

 

As I said, Cecil could have been 50 or 80. He was probably somewhere in between.

 

I don't know how he came to know my Grandparents ~

 

he probably just showed up one day, a "hobo"...

 

He helped Grandpa with the garden and did little odd jobs for them,

 

but most of the time he just stayed in his room, which was dark and sparsely furnished ~

There was electricity and a light overhead, but I believe he chose not to use it often,

as not to put Grandpa and Grandma 'out' further..

 

I didn't go in ~ I just got glimpses of it when I occasionally took him a plate of

 

Grandma's wonderful food...

 

(Grandma provided meals for Cecil three times a day...food was such a big deal

 

at Grandma and Grandpa's...Grandma loved to cook and Grandpa loved to eat! They had

 

owned a restaurant before retirement, and their world centered

 

 around the kitchen and food...♥)

 

I say "occasionally" because I was a little afraid of Cecil...

like Scout and Jem were afraid of Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird...

 

Just because of the way he looked; his general shabbiness...

 

He was never anything but polite and kind.

 

He would say to me, "Tell yer Grandma 'thank ye'"....

 

but I still dreaded going out there and knocking on his door!

 

I can still smell the saw-dusty workshop on my way to his room...

 

I was a shy little thing and didn't like talking to people

 

that I didn't know really well...

 

I dreaded going out to the workshop every step of the way,

 

carrying a pie-pan heaped with Grandma's fabulous fried chicken

 

or ham and vegetables galore, and always accompanied by her

 

mouth-watering biscuits...(the most heavenly biscuits you can imagine ~

I wish I had paid more attention to how she made them!)

 

As soon as I delivered Cecil's food I would high-tail it back to the house...

 

Grandma was trying to "socialize" me a little, I'm sure.

 

(Now I more than make up for my lack of talking then!)

 

~

 

Then one day we came to Grandpa and Grandma's and they said that

 

Cecil had passed away; a heart attack while he was sitting out in the yard,

 

talking with Grandpa.

 

His little room stayed just the way it had been, up until the time the

 

house and property were sold; after Grandpa passed away and Grandma

 

came to stay with us.

 

I can't help but wonder about who Cecil was (I never even knew his last name),

 

where his family was, and how he came to be in such a predicament.

 

Maybe he was an angel.

 

If so, my Grandparents certainly stepped up

 

 and did their part, entertaining "angels unawares"...

~

~
Lon and Elphia Collier (better known as Grandpa and Grandma),

far right, at their 4-Way Cafe in Heath, Kentucky, 1950s.

~
I'll leave you with Cyrus and his new favorite toy,

recommended by daughter Katie's kitties...

the Cosmic Catnip carrot ~ :^)
~

~ I've watched a little too much Lord of the Rings lately, haven't I?   Have a good rest-of-the-weekend!   Love,   P.S. Do you like my January background? Possum Haw! Or, Deciduous Holly ~ Ilex decidua.   We had a tree in our yard at our "vintage house", and my Grandpa Launius had one that   he shaped and pampered at their house in Essex, Missouri. At this time of year you can see it   in all the fence-rows and along the highway. It's an "iffy" plant, though, because depending   on when (not "if") the birds find it, it can be a glorious winter sight with its beautiful plump,   scarlet berries, or it can be feasted upon and be completely bare in an afternoon!   You can read more about Possum Haw here...:^)