All About How Uncle DC Got Two Real Names

Got this from Virginia this morning, ya'll

When Wanda and I met with Zach Holmes we were talking about family names, like how Unlce Bear got his nickname. I told them that mother always told me that Unlce D.C.'s name was just D.C. Jr and that the D.C. did not stand for anything.

Wanda, Bennie Joe, Dennis and Zach said it stood for Dallas Calvin. So after some discussion I gave in and said OK. When Wanda and I met with Aunt Adele on Sunday afternoon I asked her about Unlce D.C's name. She said that he was named D.C. Jr. but that it did not stand for anything.

When he went in service he was told that D.C. was a nickname and that he had to have another name, that he could not go in service with a nickname. He (Unlce D.C.) said that since his father's name was Dallas Calvin he would just take that as his name.

That is how Unlce D.C. went from being just D.C. Jr. to Dallas Calvin, Jr. I didn't know if you knew this story or not but I thought about it this morning so I thought I would send it to you. Talk to you later.


Virginia

The second version of how E. H. Holmes got to be known, to all and sundry, as 'Bear'.

Daddy loved outdoors stuff; hunting, fishing, golf, baseball, football, camping, stuff like that. He told me a story once about playing baseball as a young man. In this story I think you'll find that he became the center of attention, while he'd just as soon have foregone that dubious pleasure.

Baseball season was almost over, and the Lincoln High team was in a tie with another school for the county title or pennant or whatever it is that they (you know, 'THEY') give to the winner of auspicious events. Why that's important is because Daddy was (according to this story, which was told as much to inspire as to amuse me, a rather inept athlete, if a stronger term would be unkind) the star PITCHER in this particular year of baseball at Lincoln High School.

The season hinged on this final contest, and it had been a particularly hard fought defensive game, and in the bottom of the ninth inning the score was tied, the opposing power hitter and potential winning run was at the plate, but daddy had a slight advantage.

Two outs, nobody on, the count was two and two, and the outfield was deep, because this particular hitter was a threat to homer, and since his team was visiting, a single run would knock Lincoln High off the bubble and into the second place slot, a one-game underdog. And EVERYBODY knows the underdog is, after all is said and done, just a DOG.

Three hundred pairs of eyes captured every move daddy made on the mound. He leaned over and grabbed a handful of red dust, massaged it between his palms and dusted himself off, exuding confidence, mastery and calm.

Now about this time in his youth, daddy was known for slipping off and firing up a Camel from time to time, and like many of his contemporaries, he kept his matches dry and handy. Which is to say, in his right front uniform pocket. You never know when you'll have to light a lady's cigarette, and it's a good practice to be prepared.

Another point of importance is this. Daddy was born in 1913. At this time, age 16 or 17, it would have been, at the latest, 1930. Now, in 1930 the matches were way different from those we are accustomed to using today. In fact, 1930 matches are so dangerous by today's standards, that a company manufacturing them would get slapped with so many OSHA inspections and lawsuits, they'd go out of business before they got started real good. A 1930 match would ignite if the wind blew across it just right. Why, you could strike one with a thumbnail or a sharp stroke across the tight denim covering a thigh or buttock. Keep that in mind.

At the plate, the power-hitter pawed the red Alabama clay in the batter's box impatiently, while looking at daddy with determined purpose. He intended to take this next pitch and hit it clean to Harpersville, and then saunter casually around the bases with the aire of superiority attendant to such vaunted feats of athletic prowess, all the while basking in the inevitable adulation of the well-represented student body of his alma mater.

Daddy reached up and pulled the mitt out from under his right arm. The ball was tucked safely in the pocket of his favorite baseball glove, a glove lovingly oiled and burnished to a rich leather patina by hours of care punctuated by intense and expert handling in competition. He grasped the ball in a split-finger two-seam grip, checked the signals from the catcher, even though he knew it was going to be a fast ball low and inside, because that was the hitter's only real weakness. He was a known sucker for that pitch, and daddy was confident, if not to say assured of the call 'STRIKE THREE, YOU'RE OUT'.

In one swift and fluid motion, daddy shifted his weight to his right side, raised his left foot, his arm a spring compressed to the uttermost extent, ready to unleash a powerful pitch the batter wouldn't even SEE, much less HIT. That was the plan. Except, of course, for the release of the ball, which was slightly amiss. It was a fast pitch. It was a low pitch. It was an OUTSIDE pitch. Oh hell.

Things sort of seemed to go into slow motion, kind of like the Baywatch girls running to rescue a drowning man. The ball slid casually up to the plate, about 18 inches off the ground and a tad on the far side from the batter, whose bat was a moment early getting down into its power zone, low and away.

The ball met the bat slightly below the center of mass and consequently, instead of taking off in a one 'G' arc to downtown Harpersville, raced back to the pitcher's mound in a bee-line for daddy's box of matches, conveniently suspended on his right thigh in the pocket of his uniform pants.

The ball hit the box of matches dead-center, and they, being 1930's matches and unaccustomed to such harsh treatment, immediately obliged by bursting into flame. This got daddy's immediate attention. And, as it worked out, everyone else was suddenly aware of the fact that daddy was rather frantically disrobing on the mound.

Even the stunned batter, who had taken maybe three strides toward first base, paused and by that time the pants had come off, more or less completely.

No one knows the outcome of the game. It's not recorded.

What is certain, however, is that daddy earned the nickname 'BARE', that fateful day.

But daddy, never a Nobel Prize winning speller, cleverly transposed the letters into an arrangement more befitting his own self-assessment. Hence 'BEAR'.

Celebrating Grandaddy and Grandmother Holmes; without whom we'd be nowhere.

Wanda, Virginia, Joe and Susan and ME.

I really enjoyed the mini-reunion this afternoon, and I hope that whatever comes of this new blog is as much fun for everyone else as our time together was for me. Dinner at the Cracker Barrel restaurant is something I don't do much, being a major tightwad. heh heh.

It has, of course, been way WAY too long between pow-wows so we're going to have to do better. When? In the FUTURE of course.

So, Virginia, here's the story of Bear. Both versions. To the best of my recollection.

Daddy drove a school bus in his high-school days in Lincoln, Alabama, as a junior or senior (and possibly before his junior year, but don't quote me on that). Anyhow, one afternoon his bus failed to show up at school on time. All the kids were needing to get on home; many had errands and chores to do, being as how that's why farm and country folks had big families in the first place. Big hired hands cost money. Kids work for their keep; ergo, have kids and lots of 'em. Avoid the payroll problem.

The hour grew later and later, and the principal (the principal, teacher, administration and chief cook and bottle washer of the school, in all likelihood) had gone way past impatient to angry and was now in a severe state of anxiety when at last the bus rumbled over the low hill to the west and rushed to a stop in a cloud of dust before the assembled student body.

Daddy jumped out of the bus, clothing all shredded and disheveled, hair all messed up (this was early enough in his life to where he actually HAD hair above his chest, you understand), covered with sweat, twigs, leaves, with his right arm all scraped up from elbow to fingertips.

All the kids and the principal surrounded him, some hurling insults and epithets, others peppering him with questions and all shocked at his bedraggled appearance.

Finally things quieted down enough for daddy to get himself heard and he explained his tardiness in the following words (or near enough for this re-telling of a story he told me over fifty years ago).

Well, it's a sort of long story, but since I'm late anyhow, I don't reckon it matters much how long it takes to tell it.

On the way here this afternoon, down by Bearden's Creek, the bus broke down, and I had to walk back to Fowler's store to see if I could borrow a wrench and some other stuff to fix 'er up again.

While I was goin' to Fowler's I took the short-cut through ol man Davis's woods and on the way up the hill over yonder I come up on a bear, doin what bears DO in the woods, y'know.

Well, the bear didn't exactly appreciate being interrupted in his business and he lit out after me and I lit out lickety split up that path by the hill where it goes up to Sugarcane Falls. I planned on jumping off into the pool where the water fall is, but there was this big old tree down across the path about half way up there, and the bear had me kinda cornered.

The bear was kinda grinnin' and lookin' all victorious when he come around the bend in the path and seen me standin' there with my face all hangin' out and nary a weapon to hand.

I knew it was fight or get eat up, so I just figured I'd fight, and maybe I'd get bit but MAYBE I'd win, or at least get away from him.

Well, that bear had his own plans, and I am purty sure they were different, 'cause he put up a whale of a tussle, and ripped my shirt all up, got his legs around me an' started in to squeezin' the fire outta me.

I looked around for somethin' to whack him with, but warn't nothin' I could reach, so I just reached in his mouth with my right hand, and shoved it in as far as I could. Clean up to my armpit (which must've been a thrill for him, 'cause I was sweatin' right smart by this time).

I began to feel around in there and come up on something I could grab a'holt of and I grabbed it an' pulled as hard as I could.

Darned if that bear didn't just give up fightin', 'cause I pulled so hard it turned him inside out an' his hair started to tickle him inside, and he started giggling and laughed himself to death.

And THAT's why I'm late.

This is the first version, as told to Frederick Dallas Holmes by his late father, Elvie Homer 'Bear' Holmes. This version is published without editorial enhancement or embellishment of any kind which could be proved beyond a reasonable doubt in any properly constituted court of law in the land (worth its salt).