Memories of Bill Vestal (1920-1976)
By David W. McMillan
Roland Pattillo asked Jerry Vestal, Bill’s son, to write a page or so about his father. Jerry felt he couldn’t reduce his experience with his father to a page or two. He asked me if I would share my impressions of his father.
It was 8:30 in the morning. I was ten years old. It was July. I was just waking, waking much later than usual. Most summer mornings Aunt Margie’s black Plymouth honked in front of my house at 7:30; mother would shout, “David go out to Aunt Margie’s car and bring in the black-eyed peas and butter beans.” And I woke up.
It was always one or both of those, black-eyed peas or butter beans, with greens, okra or figs sometimes mixed in, vegetables from Aunt Margie’s farm garden. But on this morning there was no honk, no black Plymouth, no black-eyed peas and no Aunt Margie rocking with mother on the front porch shelling peas. And I slept late.
I went down for my regular morning breakfast of oatmeal, eggs, toast and bacon, only one piece. As soon as I cleaned my plate I jumped on my bike and raced up Aunt Margie’s driveway to investigate why no 7:30 honk from her Plymouth. I used my typical slide stop. The bicycle wheels screeched and slide out from under me. I let it lie there under the carport while I walked to the breakfast room door and announced my presence with the slam of the screen door.
I walked straight in the breakfast room door and saw Aunt Margie and Hazel leaning over the table in the middle of the kitchen, knives in hand, peeling something. “Figs,” they said, after I asked what that was. I allowed as I saw no reason for peeling figs.
“It is for fig preserves,” Aunt Margie said. I allowed again as I saw no reason to peel figs for fig preserves. I had eaten many jars of Aunt Margie’s fig preserves and not one of these figs had to be peeled.
“Bill and Jack are coming,” was my answer to why. “And they love peeled fig preserves.” Aunt Margie made me a second breakfast of fried eggs, bacon, and toast with fig preserves. I loved Aunt Margie’s fried eggs. They were crisp at the edges. Hazel kept on peeling figs.
While I ate my breakfast, Aunt Margie picked her knife up again and continued helping Hazel peel figs. As she did her face got red and seemed to swell. When she took off her yellow rubber gloves, her hands seemed splotchy, red and swollen. Mother later told me that Aunt Margie was allergic to figs. My mother’s answer to my question why did she peel figs when she was allergic was again that “Bill and Jack were coming.”
From my current vantage point of 56 years old, after Bill and Jack are both gone, the first thing I notice about Bill Vestal was that he was one half of a well loved set of boys. I always heard Bill’s name as the Bill part of Bill and Jack. These men, as I knew them, were the products of the kind of love only Aunt Margie could dish out. I think I have some notion of how deeply they were loved. And I’m sure this explains a lot about Bill Vestal. But it doesn’t explain everything or Bill and Jack would have been alike and they were not.
It is through the lens of first cousin, once removed, that I saw Bill Vestal. As I picture him I see a frank clear smile, white teeth, a twinkle in his eye that contained interest and excitement without guile. When Bill came home to Aunt Margie’s he was glowing, full of hugs and kisses for his mother, father, my mother, my grandmother and grandfather, Aunt Selma, Aunt Dot, my brothers, my sister and me.
He seemed to smile the whole time he was in Arkadelphia, a smile that he couldn’t wipe off his face, a smile so genuine and so sincere that I felt sorry for him that he couldn’t live in Arkadelphia and hold onto what appeared to me to be utter bliss at being home again. And besides if he stayed that would mean that his wife, Mary Beth could stay too and his children Jan, Jerry, and Beth, could become my constant playmates.
One summer Bill took me along on a camping trip to Lake Ouachita with his children (or at least Jerry). We camped out in tents on the ground. Perhaps Bill had a camper, my memory is not clear on that. What I remember is trying to fish together and Bill spending endless hours untangling our reels and unsnagging our lines from stumps without one complaint.
This stood out for me because of a perhaps unfair family comparison. I couldn’t imagine my father tending to me and Jerry with our slow learning curves and my impulsiveness with such kindness and patience. He was not annoyed. Bill seemed to enjoy his children and my company. It never seemed that he was needed elsewhere or had more important matters to attend to.
One other summer Bill and Jerry took me home to Snyder, Texas. I stayed there for two weeks. Bill had a new Volkswagen. It was the first VW I had ever seen. It fascinated me. I was especially intrigued by the noise its blinkers made when they were turned on. After Bill came home from work in his VW I would sneak into the garage alone. I would turn on the car so that I could play with the blinkers for entertainment. That was the only time that I remember Bill losing his patience with me. I was startled by his anger. I knew it was difficult to make him angry. He was always positive and affirming. I was especially interested in pleasing him. So when I angered him I was at least as disappointed in myself as he was in me. I didn’t get punished. All I got was his displeasure with me and that was enough.
Two other things stood out for me from that trip. Again it was because of the stark contrast between Bill and my father. When we would stop at a gas station or a restaurant Bill would strike up a conversation with whomever it was that served us. He seemed not to have any sense of class status. He saw every person as potentially a good person to know. If they were strangers at first, they were not a stranger long. He saw the good in them and passed over the bad. That was the first thing I noticed on our trip.
The second was Bill’s unquenchable interest and curiosity. He seemed to always have something he was learning. He was fascinated by talking to people on his ham radio. He would talk to them for hours about equipment and frequencies, people sharing contact by radio waves filled with crackles and static. He had mechanical magazines and he could fix anything. He seemed amazing to me and what was most amazing was that he seemed to be amazed by me and everyone else he came in contact with.
One of the reasons I think I know Bill Vestal is because I knew his mother well. I saw her in Bill, I see her in his daughter, Jan and his son, Jerry. When I have a chance to be with them, I take it, because the kind of love they share with the world and me is so rare and precious. I see glimmers of Bill Vestal in Brian Hegi. When I hear Jerry speak about his children I hear reminders of Bill in Bill Vestal number two and Rebecca. I have faith that Aunt Margie’s genes were planted deep inside Bill Vestal and will live on in his great grandchildren.