Ralph Berrier

by War;Bluegrass If Trouble Don't Kill Me: A Family's Story of Brotherhood

  Which brings up an embarrassing childhood story. When I was in the fourth grade at Lambsburg Elementary School, I somehow wound up making a speech about my family in front of the entire combined fourth- and fifth-grade class. I was blessed with the gift of gab at a young age, so I don’t recall if the teacher actually requested that I speak to the class or if I just started spouting off because I thought everyone needed to know my family’s secrets. Anyway, while enthralling my classmates with the important dates in my family’s history, I somehow mentioned that my parents married on December 22, 1965, and that I was born on June 7, 1966.

  And that’s the precise moment when the cold, hard truth hit me.

  The rest of the class needed the same amount of time to do the math as I did—about two seconds—and when the calculations were finished, the entire room roared with shocked laughter.

  “You were born six months after your parents got married?” somebody hollered.

  The audience whooped like a pack of hyenas. Even ten-year-olds know that it takes nine months’ worth of simmerin’ to make a healthy baby—and no one, then or since, had ever suggested that I might have been born three months premature.

  “Oh my God!” I thought to myself. “My mom was pregnant when she got married!”

  I was humiliated. I immediately sat down and never mentioned my family in public again. Until now, of course.

  My mom had her own childhood foot-in-mouth moment, although not as embarrassing as my own. When she was a little girl, one of her playmates remarked how she couldn’t wait until she was all grown-up so she could get married and have babies.

  Little Renee didn’t understand that at all.

  “I’m not going to get married,” she said. “My grandmother never got married, and she had ten babies.”

  Elinor heard her say that. She calmly pulled Renee aside and suggested that she not repeat that out loud.

  • • •

  Elinor cared for her new grandbaby while Renee attended summer school in order to graduate early. How many people can say they attended their mama’s high school graduation? I can. I was there in the Hillsville High School auditorium when my mother became the first member of her immediate family to receive her high school diploma.

  Ralph played three seasons in the minors before hanging up his spikes after the 1967 campaign. Renee and Ralph lived in a tiny three-room house Ralph’s parents had built for them right in the middle of the family apple orchard. The house had running water but no indoor bathroom. The young couple was not used to using an outhouse. They had grown up poor, but not that poor. They had stepped back in time forty years to live like their parents had.

  Clayton and Elinor stayed busy with work, church, and friends. They even traveled on weekends with other families to Claytor Lake, about an hour away, where they sunned themselves on the public beach and ate picnic lunches. Finally, Clayton found the slow, peaceful existence he had long sought.

  Saford, not surprisingly, struggled with domestic life. He and Clovie argued frequently, often over money. Saford accused Clovie of buying too many appliances for the house. She bought a refrigerator and a washing machine, all on credit. Saford was up to his black-framed glasses in debt, and he let Clovie know he wasn’t happy about it.

  Clovie got her licks in by accusing Saford of womanizing, which he angrily denied. He swore up and down that he wasn’t running around on her, claiming that this time he was telling the truth, a claim he continued to make right up until the moment the woman he was running around with showed up with a passel of kids.

  She appeared at a show that Clayton and Saford were playing in Mount Airy. The twins had joined a red-hot group of local bluegrassers to perform at local festivals and fiddlers conventions. They even called themselves, of all things, the Blue Ridge Entertainers. During one of the Entertainers’ gigs, a rumpled-looking lady wearing thick glasses and support hose arrived with several children. Somebody elbowed Elinor and told her, “That’s the woman Saford’s running around with.” Elinor couldn’t believe it. She was shocked that Saford would run around with another woman … so frumpy looking. Oh, she totally believed Saford was capable of cheating on Clovie. One time at a Christmas party, she had watched him dance with every woman in the house after he got into the punch bowl. He hugged them, squeezed them, and spun them like they were his dates. She figured he had a wandering eye. She just couldn’t figure out what it was he saw in Miss Frumpy. She never knew. Thankfully, Miss Frumpy’s kids were not his, but that provided little comfort. Saford and Clovie were on the rocks.

  • • •

  They thought it was emphysema at first. The wheezing, the coughing, the shortness of breath. Could it be tuberculosis? Weight was coming off. Strength was declining.

  Mamo was dying.

  Mamo the indestructible. Mamo the loving mother and grandmother. Mamo the fearless. Mamo the pie fryer, the basket maker, the healer. Mamo the legend. Mamo the great-grandmother I never knew. Mamo was dying.

  She had been distressed with dizzy spells and breathing problems. As she grew ever weaker, she couldn’t walk to the car without nearly passing out from exhaustion. Her boys took her to Catawba, the same hospital where Saford had recovered from tuberculosis. But Mamo’s little lungs, which had breathed life into all those old mountain ballads, were riddled with scar tissue. They were giving out. As she lay in a hospital bed alongside other poor souls hooked up to oxygen tanks, Mamo told Clayton she was ready to go.

  Clayton, however, was not ready to let her go. For one thing, the newly minted preacher man wasn’t sure if his mama had ever been saved. Mamo went to church, especially when she was older and could go with her grandchildren, but Clayton never recalled her saying anything about being baptized. He had to make sure his mama had been saved, otherwise he would never see her in heaven.

  “Mama,” Clayton said, “have you taken Christ as your Lord and Savior?”

  “Yes, I know Jesus,” she assured him.

  “That ain’t what I mean,” he said. “Have you ever been saved?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m asking, have you given your soul to Christ and been saved?”

  Mamo, weak though she was, got a little perturbed at Clayton’s insinuations.

  “What’s this about being ‘saved’? I said I know Jesus. I’ve lived a good life. Ain’t that all that matters?”

  Clayton grew impatient. “No, Mama. That ain’t enough. Jesus has got to wash away all your sins.…”

  “What sins?” she interrupted. “I don’t like that kind of talk.”

  “We’ve all sinned,” Clayton said. “I don’t mean nothing by it. It’s just that you’ve got to ask Jesus to wash all your sins away. You’ve got to trust in the power of the blood.”

  “Well, I don’t know.…”

  “I just want to make sure you’re saved.”

  “I don’t understand this talk about being ‘saved.’ I’ve lived a good life. I’ve loved everybody. I’ve treated people good. I ain’t ever asked for nothing. Ain’t that the most important thing? I’ve lived a good life?”

  “No, Mama. It’s not.”

  “Well, then,” she said. “I don’t know what to think about that.”

  Clayton prayed for his mother. He prayed that God would shine his love on her and forgive her all her many sins, that He would wash her sins away and leave her soul as white as the snow.

  Judie Elizabeth Hall died June 4, 1968, one day after her eighty-ninth birthday. They buried her in the Montgomery Cemetery alongside her mother and her father, a man who had once boasted that he didn’t want to spend eternity lying next to them leather-eyed Montgomerys. Clayton led the congregation in prayer, and he once again asked that God would bless his mother, and while He was at it, perhaps He could just forgive everyone in attendance of their innumerable sins.

  Mamo was gone. Her grandchildren would miss the nights playing Rook and the Sunday afternoon parties. Most of her great-grandchildren would never know
her. And her babies, those rascally twins, would no longer have anyone to step in and pull them apart when they fought. They would certainly miss that.

  • • •

  Clayton and Saford still had their happy moments. They played games of canasta, badminton, and golf together. Especially golf. Clayton’s son-in-law, Ralph, introduced the game to the twins. They never excelled, but they weren’t bad. My dad still talks about the day Clayton and Saford played eight consecutive rounds on the nine-hole White Pines Country Club all in one day, seventy-two holes in all. They walked every round, conspicuous by their quick little bowlegged steps.

  They still played music with the newfangled Blue Ridge Entertainers, even appearing on local television a few times. I remember that when I was quite young a large crowd gathered at our house—by then we had upgraded from the three-room house to a four-room farmhouse that my great-grandfather had built—where we watched Clayton and Saford play some show on a low-powered North Carolina TV station.

  That was near the end of the good times, though. Saford was unhappy with his life, and he projected that unhappiness onto others, including his twin. They saved their fights for the factory. They argued and occasionally came to blows over work. Clayton’s expertise in color and stains had elevated him to the rank of quality control foreman at National Furniture Company in Mount Airy. He had an office where he filled out paperwork, smoked Winstons, and drank black coffee. He had the power to hire, fire, and discipline workers, which would drive the last wedge between him and Saford.

  Saford constantly challenged Clayton’s authority, even though the two didn’t work in the same department. When Clayton hired Clovie to work in the finishing room, Saford went nuts, believing that Clayton had hired her just so she could spy on Saford while he was at work. Clayton said he hired her because she needed a job.

  Months later, Saford pulled a one-eighty. Instead of coddling Clovie, he accused Clayton of being too hard on her at work, of treating her differently because she was deaf or because he wanted to show Saford who the boss was. Clayton called Saford crazy. He didn’t treat Clovie any differently than he treated any other employee. When she did a good job, he told her so. When she needed to do something over, he told her that, too.

  Saford’s insecurities had made everyone close to him miserable—Clovie, Larry, and Clayton. He yelled at Clovie—who couldn’t hear him—that she was going to bankrupt him. Clovie yelled, too—although Saford couldn’t always understand her—and made manic gestures with her hands, which he also couldn’t decipher. Clovie got her point across, though. She still accused Saford of running around with other women. Saford denied it. Teenage Larry took to staying out late just to avoid the arguments.

  Clayton and Saford’s last fight was a doozy. It happened at the factory. Clayton couldn’t remember what it was about. He might have admonished Clovie for some work that needed redoing, and the next thing he knew, Saford stormed into his office, cussing a spittle-flying blue streak. At some point, Saford took a swing.

  Then it was on. Arms and legs flailed as the two of them rolled out of Clayton’s office. They toppled over each other like fighting dogs, one guy getting the advantage over the other, then losing it. Twenty-five years of simmering anger, bitterness, and blame that had slowly built up like steam in a boiler finally exploded in a blast of rage and fists. They fought right there on the factory floor, punching and scratching in front of an assembly line of coworkers who had probably seen it coming. Years later, men who worked at the factory would come up to my grandmother and apologize to her for not having tried to separate the twin brawlers out of fear of getting their own noses broken or losing a tooth. If only Mamo had been there to step in between them.

  Finally, Clayton gained the advantage. He wrapped up Saford from behind in a steel-lock bear hug, lifted him off the ground, and toted him toward an open window. He would have thrown him out, too, had Saford not been able to spread his feet apart at the last second and brace himself against the frame like a cat that refuses to be stuffed into a carrier.

  “He’s crazy!” Saford hollered. “He’s a crazy man!”

  Clayton did not disagree.

  “I am crazy!” he said, finally giving up and dropping Saford to the concrete floor in a heap. “You’ve made me crazy!”

  That’s when Saford left. Not just the factory, but Virginia. He moved away and found a job in Thomasville, North Carolina, applying finish to plastic mirror frames. He left so quickly, he didn’t even take Clovie and Larry with him. He aimed to leave all his pain and sadness behind and start over. But things only got worse.

  “Thank You, Lord, for Your Blessings on Me”

  —ONE OF PAPA CLAYTON’S FAVORITE GOSPEL SONGS

  The first time Papa Clayton and I performed together onstage was during a countywide 4-H Club talent show in the spring of 1976. I had won the local competition at Lambsburg Elementary School with my impeccable a cappella version of “I Believe in Music,” which had been a smash for the great Mac Davis. Actually, it was one of my mother’s favorites. The lyrics scream “1970s” louder than a parade of tie-dyed Deadheads:

  So clap your hands and stomp your feet and shake your tambourine,

  And lift your voices to the sky; tell me what you see

  Everybody!

  I believe in music

  Oh-oh-oh, I believe in love

  Now, a Mac Davis song was great if all you cared about was dominating the Lambsburg market. But to compete in the county competition against the town kids from Hillsville and the burgeoning suburbs of Galax, I needed the heavy artillery. I needed Elvis.

  And I needed Papa Clayton. I learned the words to “Love Me Tender” from a songbook of a hundred Elvis songs. Papa Clayton had no trouble with the chords. Mom made me a little satin suit dotted with rhinestones—this was clearly my Las Vegas period—and Papa Clayton and I took the stage inside the posh environs of the Carroll County High School auditorium.

  I won a red ribbon. That doesn’t mean I finished in second place; a bunch of people received blue ribbons and the rest of us got the red. I was a second-class talent.

  • • •

  Ricky was his favorite grandson. Oh, I am sure Papa Clayton would deny that he could ever choose one of his three grandsons over the others—I am the oldest, Ricky is three years younger than me, Billy eleven—but Ricky had to be the favorite. He was a live wire. He was rambunctious, loud, hyper, and had a bad temper—which must have reminded Papa of two other boys he once knew. Ricky was the only one of us he ever spanked with a rolled-up magazine, but that just meant the two of them had a bond neither Billy nor I could share.

  Ricky could never sit still for more than thirty seconds, so Papa Clayton took him outside, handed him a golf club and a plastic practice ball, and the two of them duffed their way around the front yard for hours, hitting balls toward “greens” of flower beds, oak trees, and car tires. He taught Ricky how to play chess, which Ricky mastered as quickly as any five-year-old ever had. One time, little Ricky even checkmated Uncle Asey, who quickly claimed that, no, this was actually a stalemate, thus a tie, as he swiftly moved the pieces to start a new game.

  Papa Clayton also taught Ricky how to tie a necktie—where was I during all of these lessons? Watching Planet of the Apes?—in the double-knotted Windsor knot fashion he had learned in the army. To this day, I can still tie only a square knot.

  But the greatest thing Papa Clayton ever taught Ricky to do was play the guitar. Ricky must have been eight or nine, and I can still see the chord positions Papa Clayton wrote in pencil on the pages of a small writing tablet. I might have tried a few chords myself, but I showed no real interest in learning the guitar.

  Ricky excelled on guitar and soon was playing with two of his classmates at St. Paul Intermediate School. Ricky, Tony Jones, and Brad Hiatt formed the famous Cana River Band, named for a body of water that did not exist. They once played the Mount Airy fiddlers convention, unbeknownst to my mother, who thought Ricky was just at a sleepov
er at Tony’s house. The boy band received a huge crowd response, as you might expect of a kid act. Their selection was a vocal number by Ricky, a song called “Ugly Girl,” whose chorus went:

  Always marry an ugly girl, that’s the only kind

  She’ll never ever leave you, ’cause she knows you won’t mind

  The biggest ovation, though, was reserved for the last verse:

  Never make love to an ugly girl, she will never quit

  She will think that it’s the last she’s ever gonna get

  There’s just something about an eleven-year-old boy singing a line like that that can drive an audience wild. Of course, had Ricky known that he would be asked to sing “Ugly Girl” at every cookout, birthday party, wedding, and family reunion for the next twenty-five years—the same way Papa Clayton kept requesting that he sing “The Little Drummer Boy” in church, even after Ricky towered over Papa by a good five inches—perhaps he would have chosen “Fox on the Run.” His wife, who had to grit her teeth every time he sang about the advantages of marrying an ugly girl, would have preferred that, I am sure.

  • • •

  We didn’t see much of Saford when I was growing up. I have vivid memories of his visits to Papa and Grandma’s house when I was small, and I certainly remember Clovie, always lively and boisterous, talking with her hands and telling me and my brothers how cute we were. Saford was forever laughing and telling stories. No signs of family tension were evident to a little kid—probably not to anyone else, either. The twins’ separation served as a balm for the old wounds.

  Saford and Clovie, however, were having a tough time, a fact I would not know until thirty years later. They did not leave Virginia together. Clovie moved to Thomasville several weeks or months after Saford had left. Family legend maintains that when she arrived, she went to the factory where Saford worked and asked to see her husband. She was informed that Saford was working in the shop … with his wife.