Day thinking about that day. The day he had his presidential credentials ripped from his self-identity. Five years later and it still stung, and classmates from school still ribbed him about it, especially Sarah Elizabeth Corn, whom he didn’t like, and JC MacPherson, whom he did.
“Hammie, breakfast is ready!” His mother called up the stairs.
“Comin’ Mama.” Ham rolled out of bed and put on his slippers. When I have a son, he thought, I’m gonna name him Ulysses S. He knew Grant was a Yankee general so that would piss off Thom Jeff—an added bonus—but from Miss Turnage’s English class he knew Ulysses was a Greek leader in some big war. Plus, he really liked the way the name sounded. Ulysses S. Then Ham paused on the bottom step of the staircase to ponder: Wonder what the S. stands for?
He entered the kitchen, hugged his mother and said, “Smells delicious, Mama!”
Chapter 5
Grandpa Dubya’s eightieth birthday celebration was that same night—Saturday night—and it began with a surprise. Carl showed up in the hearse to take Dubya and Cornelia to the Hillbilly Hideaway. Carl was not a blood relative, but Dubya refused to ride with Thom Jeff, and neither he nor Cornelia drove after dark anymore. Carl had the same proclivity to drink as Thom Jeff, but unlike Thom, he recognized when he should not be behind the wheel. So Carl recruited Ham to go with them as the designated driver on the way home. Dubya was fine with these arrangements; he liked Carl and enjoyed his offbeat sense of humor.
So Dubya and Cornelia were not surprised when Carl and Ham showed up to drive them. But they were surprised to see Mr. Ed.
“Whatcha drivin’ Carl?” Dubya asked tentatively. Cornelia didn’t say anything.
“My new hearse!” Carl exclaimed. “Well, it’s not new, but it’s new to me.”
“Happy birthday, Grandpa Dubya,” Ham said, trying to change the subject.
Dubya turned to Ham and gave a broad smile. “Thanks Ham.”
“Okay, everybody ready to go?” Carl asked.
“Where are we all goin’ to sit?” Cornelia asked. Ham hadn’t thought of that when he agreed to ride with Carl.
“Well, goin’ up, Ham can ride in the back. I’ll ride back there comin’ home.”
“That okay with you Ham?” Cornelia asked.
Before Ham answered, Carl said, “Why sure, Miss Cornelia, Ham has been back there before.” He turned and winked at Ham.
“That right, Ham?” Dubya asked.
“Oh, you know Uncle Carl, Grandpa.” Ham said as he headed to the back door of Mr. Ed.
When he opened the door, he saw Carl had removed the mattress. He tried to position himself between the grooves that would hold a coffin in place.
“Don’t raise up too quickly, Ham, you might hit your head.” Cornelia offered.
The ride to Hillbilly Hideaway was nearly an hour, but it felt like ten hours to Ham. He couldn’t hear the conversation in the front seat, but he did think he heard Al Green singing “Let’s Stay Together” on the tape deck until it was abruptly shut off, probably at Cornelia’s request.
By the time they got to the reserved room at the Hillbilly Hideaway, all of Dubya’s family was there, at least those still living. Aunt Nora, his oldest daughter, was there with her husband Wilson and their two children. They lived in Chapel Hill, and Aunt Nora was a deacon at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, one of the first women to hold that position in the state of North Carolina. Thom Jeff and Nina were already there with Diane and Michael Allen, whom Dubya called “Mike Al.”
Dubya’s youngest daughter, Edith, was there with her step-husband, Bill Lovette, and her three boys. Bill was the younger brother of Fred Lovette, who started Holly Farms Poultry in North Wilkesboro in the 1940s. Thom Jeff said Bill and Edith were “well off.” Ham had gone to basketball camp with Edith’s boys when he was fourteen. They went to the camp at Campbell College run by Fred McCall and Press Maravich. UCLA Coach John Wooden was there and taught them how to put on their socks so they wouldn’t get blisters. But the star of the show was “Pistol Pete” Maravich. By that time, Pistol Pete had finished his storied collegiate career at LSU and was playing professionally for the Atlanta Hawks. Each night after dinner he would give a shooting and ball handling clinic in the Campbell gym, which consisted of him spinning and dribbling two balls every way imaginable and then shooting from way beyond the top of the key swishing jumper after jumper after jumper, all the while talking to the campers about shooting technique. He was amazing. Edith’s youngest son, Pat, had been the star of the Taylorsville High School team that year and probably could have played NAIA basketball. But he was called to the ministry and went to Freedom University over in Virginia to study with the faculty that the fundamentalist preacher Gary Farmwell had assembled. Pat, who was a couple of years older than Ham, didn’t think much of Ham’s church. “Way too liberal, Ham. God will spew that lukewarm church right out of his mouth come Judgment Day.” Ham and Pat got along fine so long as they avoided the subject of religion and especially religion as it was practiced at the Second Little Rock Baptist Church.
Conspicuously missing from the celebration were Dubya’s other three sons: Harold, Atwell, and Leo. They were missing because they were, well, deceased. Dubya believed it was the “MacPherson Curse” that had been put on him when he was a kid and was somehow transferred like original sin to his male offspring. When Dubya was eighteen—before he met Cornelia and therefore still drinking—he went to the Wilkes County Fair with some buddies. On a dare, he went in to see Lady Godiva, Palm Reader and Fortune Teller. Her reading was rather predictable and vague: Dubya would marry, have kids, lead a mostly normal life. When she finished, Lady Godiva said, “That’ll be fifty cents.” “I don’t have it,” Dubya confessed over his shoulder as he ran out of the tent. While still in earshot he heard Lady Godiva shout, “YOU will not live to see fifty, young man!”
Dubya mostly forgot the Curse until the night before his fiftieth birthday, when he told Cornelia about the Curse. “Oh Dubya, don’t be superstitious. Nothing’s goin’ to happen to you.” And, of course, nothing did. But the same could not be said for his male children.
The first to die was Atwell, the fourth of Dubya and Cornelia’s children (after Nora, Thom Jeff, and Harold). Born in 1932, Atwell joined the Navy at eighteen and was shipped off to Korea. Dubya and Cornelia were sure Atwell would die in the war, but he came home on furlough for Christmas in 1952. Like most of the MacPherson men, Atwell was a heavy drinker, a habit he continued to cultivate in the Navy. He went to a poker game in Asheville on Christmas Eve. The story that came back to Dubya was that Atwell was accused of cheating in the game and a heated argument erupted, which ended with Atwell being shot and killed. No one was ever arrested; Atwell was dead at the age of twenty. Dubya was sure it was because of the Curse. Rumor had it Atwell was holding Aces and Eights, the dead man’s hand, at the time of the shooting, but Ham was pretty sure that was just a tale told to embellish the story.
Leo, the next to youngest child, was thirty-four when he died, also the victim of a gunshot wound. He had followed a woman home from a local bar to her trailer park. Turned out the woman was married (or at least living with a man), and the man didn’t take kindly to a stranger standing outside his trailer in a drunken stupor yelling for his woman to come outside. The man warned Leo to leave, and when he didn’t he threatened to shoot him. And when Leo still didn’t leave, “by God, I shot him,” the man told the sheriff. Leo died hours later at Wilkes General hospital. Leo left behind
