I asked my father, Dewey Edwin Mansfield, Jr., to write up some of the family stories with which he had regaled us over the decades. This effectively meant that he would be dictating iterative drafts to my mother, Lorna Lee Mansfield (née Jourdain), who had been his secretary until they got married (over 60 years ago).
Despite having been retired for nearly 25 years, he remained anxiously preoccupied with recurring thoughts about his enemies at work, finding it difficult to fall asleep. I thought that the task might not only redirect his attention, but would let us get some of this material recorded before the inevitable occurred. After all, he was already 85 years old, so I didn’t know how much time we might have left.
Well, as it turns out, we had 8½ more years to go, but zero more stories would ever be written (for reasons made clear below).
He died four days ago (September 6, 2022), and I found a printout of this one story among his papers. So what follows is the only story that he committed to paper (entirely unedited by me), which he entitled, “Dewey Doesn’t Wanna Write it.”
• • •
8 February 2014
I really don’t want to write this Story. But, Tracy says I owe it to the family. The way he phrases it, it seems like everyone, after me, will need it as well as a bunch of additional stories to understand their place in our traditional customs of Crocco Clan culture. What he leaves unsaid are his expectations that getting me involved in writing our family’s unending story (remembering and documenting the memorable anecdotes of everyday life) will accomplish two of his high hopes. Number one is that it will exercise my mind, keeping me more in touch with the present. Can’t blame him for wanting that. Number two is that if I record all the fascinating family tales that I have heard, it will somehow put me in a frame of mind to stop embarrassing him when I interrupt his pertinent conversations with my old-age blathering. Now, that’s asking a lot.
The news is that there won’t be a never-ending series of regaling tales from our fascinating past if it’s up to me. No, no, there will only be this one-and-only story of my birth. It will be the first, last and only one. So, there! It’s settled.
The first thing you should remember (at least try to remember) is that I am recalling this from memory about something that I can’t remember at all. What do you remember about your birth? See what I mean? Tracy, who doesn’t really value blather at all, will consider this story a waste of time, paper and ink. What does he expect from me? My most meaningful accomplishments in life have been my use of blather to alleviate Failure Pains. Years of experience have taught me that a happy life begins when a person learns to enjoy life’s pains. That’s pure blather at work. Many times the blather has been sufficiently amusing to inspire spirit revival when that’s what’s needed more than anything else in this world. That is why I sit around all day chuckling to myself if I haven’t fallen asleep.
Wait, what was I saying before? Oh, yeah, I have no real memories of my own about my birth. What I do remember is hearing people talk about it. I have something like five or six different versions sluicing around in my head about how it went.
What I think is that it was sort of like this: It was in Knightsen, California, on the eventful day of November 26, 1928. It was a dark and somber wintery day. No farm produce worth gleaning was left in the fields so the townspeople were all congregated at Hidorn’s Saloon. There were ninety-nine of them so when I emerged, it increased the population to an even one-hundred. The mayor presented me with a certificate certifying that fact. I’ll show it to you if I can still find it. Getting to one-hundred inhabitants was a big deal emotionally for the people of Knightsen, so naturally a fracas broke out at Hidorn’s. Some of the people in that crowd and their progeny still blame me so I don’t go back there anymore. If I were to go back we would surely start fracassing again.
Meanwhile, back at the barn – have I mentioned that I was born in a barn? That accounts for my failure to close doors and a slue of other annoying habits of that sort. Anyway back there, there were five of us including Mom, her mom (aka Grandma Crocco), Dad, the Doctor (not related to the TV show starring “the Doctor”) and me when I arrived.
It is important to note that I was an instrument baby. Unbeknownst to those in attendance at the barn, the Doctor was not licensed for instrument procedures. Not only did this unbeknownst apply to me, but actually everything else was also unbeknownst to me at that time. I simply tried to follow directions as best I was able. I wasn’t very able, so things didn’t go all that well. I remember hearing that I was severely criticized for the part I played in the event. Father was not handling it all that well either, so somebody (it wasn’t me) alerted his friends who decided to carry him to Hidorn’s. In placing him on top of the bar, they knocked over some drinks and the fracas began. I don’t understand why they blamed it on me.
Apparently, proper use of the birthing instrument was somewhat unbeknownst to the Doctor; so there was some neatening-up required after the birth. The Doctor was then attending to Mom, so Grandma Crocco picked me up and reattached my head, which she then molded back into a ball-like shape. Unfortunately, she couldn’t find all the pieces. You can tell something is missing by observing me when I’ve had a recent haircut.
So the moral of this story: Don’t expect me to write a bunch of stories (or any more at all). I’m retired.
• • •
So endeth this lone story.
Today, four days after his death, just for the hell of it, I tried looking up Hidorn’s Saloon in Knightsen, and Google returned a grand total of 0 results in 0.38 seconds. It took me a moment to process that display: there were no results at all (other than that one specific result of no results, of course).
Really? Not even some guesses about something close? I mean, how often do you get 0 results, period? It made me feel kinda weird inside. Spooky.
Then I came across an article that described Knightsen in the early 1900s, and it talked about Heidorn’s general store and Art English’s Saloon.
Clearly, my father’s birth wrought even greater changes than he realized. The fracas must have totaled Art English’s Saloon, leaving Heidorn to pick up the slack by changing his name and converting his store. It is entirely understandable that as my dad grew older, he would have assumed that this was always how things had been.
Which, I suppose, is just a way of saying that, no, I do not consider my dad’s story to be a waste of either time, paper, or ink.
2014-08