I was privileged to write a piece that was read at my Uncle Carl's funeral at First Prebyterian Church in Sturgis, SD, on March 4, 2019.
Dear
Candy, Lisa, and Carl,
I’m
grateful for the chance to write a few words about your dad, my uncle with the ready
smile, the barrel chest, and such resilient faithfulness to his work, his
community, and his family. Uncle Carl was a steady presence in my first couple
decades, when we’d gather at the Atoll school for Christmas programs and at the
ranch afterward to open gift, or when we Jones kids would spend a summer week
each year playing or picking potato bugs down in the garden and dropping them
in a jug of kerosene. Whatever we did Uncle Carl was there.
In
the winter time he’d be dressed in coveralls and a Scotch cap heading out to
feed cattle, in the summer it was a straw cowboy hat and work cowboy boots, and
on trading days when he’d come to town he’d be decked out in that black leather
vest, white shirt, black hat, and black cowboy boots. And along with it came the
badge of a working cattleman: an untanned forehead. That was nothing, though,
compared to seeing Uncle Carl when he took off his pants at bedtime. We’d be
dazzled by the brilliant light show of his tighty-whities in combination with the
brightest white legs that had never seen a ray of sunshine.
In
my memory Uncle Carl took his work seriously. Successful cattle operations
don’t appear magically, and he came by his hard-working way honestly. That’s
what his folks, Jack and Ella, brought him up to do. And it was the legacy from
his grandparents and your great-grandparents Carl and Liesel who came from
Germany and homesteaded that Diamond-S Ranch in central Meade County. The
spirit of the honyockers remained strong in him, that pioneer generation that
plowed the gumbo and ran the Herefords, making do and often barely getting by.
Uncle Carl was a man of the land, always more comfortable it seemed without a
roof over his head, which might have been the reason behind his buying that red
convertible. I remember him putting the top down and racing north to Jim and
Vicky’s place, with gravel dust billowing behind us but blue skies above.
I
never put much stock in the fact that Uncle Carl was on the school board. He
was just my uncle. Besides, no kid understands how those things work, and I
somehow had the idea that my Meade County ranching kin couldn’t have been as
important as bankers and attorneys in the county seat. But I know now that
they’re the salt-of-the-earth folks who actually make life work. And looking
back now I can see the qualities that planted him on that board and rooted him
there for all those decades: his honesty and trustworthiness, his diligence,
and even the example of civic service he no doubt had from his own uncle, Jake
Wahl, who himself served on the school board and in the South Dakota
legislature. Uncle Carl had a commitment to making the world around him better,
more productive, more efficient, more able to bear fruit into the future.
Of
course, Uncle Carl had a side that truly delighted in those times when he let
down. He knew how to have rigorous and righteous fun. I remember him at a rodeo
in Union Center pulling a cold Schlitz out of a cattle tank filled with ice and
beer cans on a hot summer day, with a lit Camel in his other hand. And I can
still see him, rifle in hand, shooting rattlesnakes with the other menfolk, or
watching us kids traipse around Goblin’s Gardens, or stomping the snow off his
boots as he carried an armload of Christmas gifts into our house. Every memory
includes his hat cocked a little to one side, a glint in his eye, and sideburns
to spare. Put Uncle Carl on a dance floor, whether at the Red Owl Hall with my
own grandpa playing banjo in the band, or at those early German Club
Oktoberfests in Rapid with a polka band, and you’d see the picture of suave
delight.
It’s
been over forty years since I lived in Sturgis, and I’m sorry that I hardly
knew Uncle Carl as an adult. That’s how our regrets work, don’t they? If I
could, I would have asked him about the event that in a round-about way led to
my existence. I’ve heard about the destruction of a car in the mid-50s and some
resulting trouble with the law that involved your dad and mine, and how it led
to both of them deciding that the better part of valor meant a hitch in the
military. My dad’s service took him to Germany, where he met my mom and where I
showed up on the scene. And it’s also the connection that got your mom to
follow us with Vivien in tow back to South Dakota, and why you three also
exist.
I’m
thankful for your dad, my dear Uncle Carl. Over the years he came to resemble a
big old red-and-white Hereford bull surveying the pasture he’d been given
dominion over. But not even the greatest prize-winning bull ever had Uncle
Carl’s straight line of white teeth that would stretch into a gleaming grin.
When he directed it at me, it was his vote of approval and my own point of
pride. I’m looking forward to seeing his smile restored, along with the rest of
him. I hear the Pearly Gates are really less of a gate than a cattle guard that
keeps the cloven-hoofed from crossing over and allows the rest of us to roll
in. I suspect Uncle Carl is on the other side, refusing the haloes they’re
handing out and demanding his black cowboy hat back. Thanks for sharing your
Papa with Gine, Troy, and me, and with all of us who’ve been blessed to know
him.
Love,
Kenny
