On this last day of 2021, many of us are still hunkered down — sheltering in the warmth of hearth and family. If ever there was a time to spin yarns and tell tales of long ago (or even of short ago) this evening would seem the perfect opportunity. All of which puts me in mind of my Great Aunt Dora and her stories of early Oysterville.
Although I was 19 when Aunt Dora died in 1955 at age 83. I may still have been considered too young to hear the tale I am about to tell you. Or maybe I just wasn’t around at the right time. For whatever reason, I didn’t hear it from her directly, but read it in my Uncle Willard’s Oysterville: Roads to Grandpa’s Village. This is what he wrote:
Aunt Dora justified the bawdiest story she ever told me as proof that even the most unregenerate sinner can be saved. A certain Oysterville blade, she said, for years had been exceptional in his amorous successes, even against seemingly insuperable obstacles; if his current fancy was wife of the local Methodist minister, that only made the challenge more exciting. His lack of fastidiousness gave him a head start; it mattered not a whit to him whether the female he was stalking was thin or stout, pocked or clear, red or white, young or old, wanton or virtuous. The pleasure of the chase was all, and his percentage of successes was acknowledgedly phenomenal.
Dora Espy Wilson c. 1925
To commemorate each new conquest he was in the habit of clipping off and binding with a thread a snippet of his love’s pubic hair. These he kept in a brown paper sack, which on request he would produce for his friends, identifying the source of each snippet by its straightness, kinkiness, coarseness, fineness or color. The snippets ran the spectrum; some were golden, some brown, black, red, grizzled or gray, and a surprising number white. One youth was incensed to find a sorrel-colored specimen attributed to his own fiancée, whose hair happened to be mouse brown; he charged that the hair had been clipped from a local horse, and a stallion at that. But on his wedding night he found that her lower growth was as handsomely sorrel as the stallion’s.
When the brown paper sack was finally full, the young blade, by then less young, buried it in a secret place, married a fourteen-year-old virgin, and became a deacon.
Dear Sydney and Nyel:
So happy to revisit your blog and see that you are still posting daily. Enjoyed hearing ofAunt Dora. Glad to hear that Charlie visited. We remember meeting him once and enjoying him completely. Of course, we enjoyed completely every single visit with you in Oysterville. Will the future give any opportunities for again visiting? I hope so, but cannot see very far into the future.
Best wishes for a happy and healthy new year.
Margo and Bill from Seattle.