Fiddlin' Around A Father's Day Tribute

In honor of Father’s Day, here’s a tribute to a fine, fiddling, farming Texas Dad—my grandfather, Charles T. Nordyke, husband of Narrie (see my entry about Narrie on May  , Mother’s Day), and father of my dad, Lewis T. Nordyke. This entry is at both www.trillap.blogspot.com and www.touchthepast.blogspot.com. I don’t overlap often, but today, I do.

Fiddlin’ around

All of his life Charlie was fiddlin' for friend, family
and party-line pals.

Charlie couldn’t remember when he didn’t have a fiddle in his hand. Everyone in his family did, or a guitar, or banjo, maybe a mandolin. About the proudest day of his life was when he was 12. He got his own violin. No more borrowing or waiting his turn. His own violin! It was beat up and old when he got it but he treasured it and played for the next 75 years, but not every day, he’d promised his mother he’d never play on Sunday until he was 80. (I remember many joyous Sunday evenings listening to “Turkey in the Straw, “The Soldier’s Joy,” and, of course, “Listen to the Mockingbird” after that awaited birthday.) The violin was always Charlie’s proudest possession.

            Born in Missouri, Charlie and his family followed the bumper sticker dictum and got to Texas just as fast as they could. When he was only four, he rode a gray mare tied behind his family’s wagon as the wagon train wound its way to Texas. Once there Charlie’s branch of the family bid good bye to friends and some family in Callahan County and headed south to Limestone County, where Charlie grew up, hating farming and loving his fiddle.

Narrie and Charlie Nordyke
married December 24, 1899

            When he was a young man he determined to live by the fiddle and not the plow. He headed to Ft. Worth where he ended up in the red-light district. He could handle that, but not the requirement that he work on Sunday. He headed back to Limestone County. But he didn’t give up his quest. He decided to set off fo Alaska and the Klondike, but first a trip to Callahan to say good-bye to the Nordyke kin. That changed everything.

One of those dratted mules.

            Young Nancy Narcissus Coffey (Narrie) flat stole his heart. There went the Klondike, here came the wedding bells. On December 24, 1899 Charlie and Narrie married. For the next 50 years Charlie farmed by day, cussin’ mules, hauling cotton, hating it, but in the evenings—ah! Out came the fiddle, here came the neighbors. Right through seven children, Haley’s Comet, two world wars, the great depression, Charlie fiddled, thumped his foot and was happy.

            So were the neighbors who came from all over for their fiddle fix. Lewis, his middle child and my dad, speculated that the Nordyke family may have set up the country’s first network when they figured out that if Charlie fiddled into the telephone, all their party-line friends could join in.

The family gathered, probably for Narrie's sixtieth birthday
in April, 1934. Standing behind their parents
Alda, Clarence, Bessie, Lewis, Elsie, Noel, and Peaches. The
live-giving windmill towers over them.

       

 Lewis didn't grow up to be a fiddler; he grew up to be a writer, and, in 1960, he wrote a piece about his fiddlin’ father for the Saturday Evening Post.  You can read about it and download the article athttp://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2010/07/29/archives/retrospective/power-music-fiddler-hope-alive-1920s-texas.html. Perfect reading for Father’s Day afternoon 

Here’s to Charlie, Lewis and all the great dads celebrating their day.

Wearing the Mortar Boards

Taite Pando, Albemarle High, 2011

 We’re home from an excellent weekend, but one that also evoked lots of memories of Lewis. Yes, he wore a motar board and proudly marched--only he was over twenty-one and grown man. Now how did that happen. I tell the tale a little further on.
 First, here's what evoke that bittersweet memory. We, along with our 10 year-old-grandson, hopped on a plane last Thursday morning headed for Charlottesville, Virginia and grandson Taite’s graduation from Albemarle High. It’s the third Albemarle graduation we’ve hit in the last four years, so we’re getting good at it! And it’s the last one until Hunter marches in about seven years.

Chef Forrest Pando and
some really fresh eggs.
What a breakfast!

Happy chickens and happy rooster of
Rooster Hill Inn near
Crozet, Virginia

            Great fun. The 3 Virginia guys' dad (son Patrick) was in from London; their Aunt Katy came from Atlanta. We took over the Rooster Inn B&B and had a real reunion.

(Rooster Inn is great. We could gather our own eggs, and if we didn’t, the owners delivered some every evening. I could get used to this.)

The Pandos in Virginia
Patrick, Trilla, Hunter, Bob, Forrest--in front
Taite, Katy, Jack--in back

            In the midst of all of the fun, I had some serious and wishful thoughts. I wished Lewis were there to see all the pomp and circumstance.  ‘Course he’d be proud. What great grandpa wouldn’t? But there’s more.

What was Lewis doing being 28 or 29 and newly out of college? (His age always was a sore point.) Soon, I’m going to offer some background on Lewis and his family, but here’s a nutshell on high school in honor of Taite and in honor of Lewis.

            From his earliest memory, Lewis used to tell me, he dreamed of being a writer. But it didn’t happen. He finished eighth grade at the little Turkey Creek one-room school, and that was that. No more school for two reasons. First, the high school in the county seat Baird might as well have been on the other side of the world. It was too far for a daily horseback commute. A student had to board or have relatives in town. The family had no money for boarding and no kinfolks in town. Second, the family needed money. The family needed Lewis to work and bring in some cash while they waited for the crop. So the fourteen-year-old lad saddled up his best friend, Peggy Joyce (more about her later) and went to work as a cowboy at the Cross Bar Ranch.

            Lewis may have roped and galloped rounding up dogies all day, but while he was doing it he dreamed about writing and he dreamed about owning a car. He got to keep some of his wages and he tucked those dollars back until he could buy two things: a Model A Ford and a suit of dress clothes. Cowboy by day, dude in the evening, and at night, he wrote. And wrote. And wrote.

            As he gained confidence, he even began to send some of his pieces off. One day, the mailman brought a letter—not a returned manuscript—a letter. He’d written a story about a truck driver named ‘Lew’ and his adventures on the road, and then he’d waited, and waited and waited. He didn’t open the letter in front of the family; instead, he took it up to the top of ‘Big Hill’ to his favorite tree and sat down and ripped it open. A check for $10 slid out. $10! But there was a letter telling him that while they liked his story very much, for them to publish more he would need to improve his grammar and, by the way, they preferred submissions to be typewritten.

            The cold facts washed over him. He might be twenty-one, way too old, but he was going to have to finish high school and go to college. No option because there was no choice in his life: he was going to be a writer.

            In short order (Ouch!) he sold the car, put Peggy Joyce in his father’s care and headed to Stephenville where John Tarleton (now Tarleton A&M) served as a four-year school. For rural youth like Lewis, two years of high school, and then the first two years of college. Were the students mostly fresh off the farm? You decide. The football team was the ‘Plowboys.’ Today, they are the Texans.

            Good student Lewis knocked off the high school classes in a year. He enrolled in the college classes, wrote a column for the student newspaper and began to follow his star.

No wonder our family loves the strains of “Pomp and Circumstance"!