Portrait
of Uncle Roy But
somehow, we made do with that little world we lived in: In town, all
the stores were up and prospering, and Saturday nights the street traffic
was often elbow to elbow. The bars, and the movie theater were packed,
and every street corner had a crowd of visiting farmers. Mingled among
all this, both town and country kids found lots to do to satisfy young
curiosities. The high-school boys had on their “snazzy”
khakis, white socks and penny loafers to impress their dates, and the
girls looked cool in their bangs, long skirts and bobby socks. Who needed
Wahpeton (fifteen miles by gravel road) when Fairmount was thriving? I
loved all that, but I loved fishing, and hunting an all things outdoors
more, and thanks to the good Lord, that need was satisfied by the man
who made all the difference, my dear old Uncle Roy. Roy
was the shyer of our mom's twin half-brothers. He had done poorly in
school, while his twin, uncle Ray excelled and thus considered it his
role to order Roy around to do most of the grunt work on their farm.
The Strobusch place where my mom grew up with Ray and Roy and ‘Ma
and Pa’ was over in Minnesota three miles south-east of our place
as the crow flies. Roy
did discover one very handy way of escaping Ray's bossy-pants orders
--taking the Pinkney nephews fishing, and since those trips always brought
in lots of juicy bullheads, sunfish bass and pike, Ma and Pa Strobusch
insisted that uncle Ray let that happen a lot. It was a win win situation,
and tripping with uncle Roy became one of our greatest joys. Roy
was remarkable to me in many ways. He was only about 5'4” and
balding a bit with sparkly blue eyes and a smooth, tan leathery face.
He had an endearingly, bashful smile of pure welcome, but the true beauty
of Roy was his approachability. There wasn't a threatening bone in his
body. His typical greeting was to lay his big hand on my head like one
about to unscrew a jar lid and say “Gene! That's Gene!”
or “Chawz, that's Chawz.” What have you been doing? I'm
going in to town; want to come along? But
the best blessing we got from Uncle Roy was that he loved to take us
fishing to such exotic spots as the Mustinka River or the Dams near
Wheaton where we always loaded up on bullheads, crappies or pike. And
our favorite place of all was Rose Lake near Dalton Mn. There we often
camped out over night to get in on that magical “first light on
the water” when the bass would be waiting, ready to explode on
our Hula Poppers any second. Then we'd row out to edge of the weeds,
anchor, and fill out our limits with beautiful bluegills and crappies.
Gentle readers, those trips were as close to being in heaven as anything
I can recall. We
fished out of Elmer Knutson's resort where we could rent a row- boat
for two bits an hour and Elmer let us camp quite close to their docks
where a kid up early might catch a big one even before the others got
up. Well,
Roy lived to be about 77 and his passing was a sad time. But even now,
his grave at Pleasant Hill Cemetery gets a special hush of reverence
as all of us pause to recollect all the blessings dear old Uncle Roy
gave us just by being the shy humble sweet guy he was. Roi in Latin
means king, and to us Pinkney kids, it was the perfect title for gentle,
bashful, loving uncle Roy.
edited html update 02/29/2024
Portrait
by Charles Pinkney
OUR BEST BUDDY EVER, UNCLE ROY
When I was a 'tween kid back on the old farm in the late 40's and early
50's, I and my younger brother, Charles were pretty much restricted
in our trips out away from the farm because of our dad's heavy work
load. We got to the big city of Wahpeton perhaps once every month, and
an occasional rainy period might give Daddy a chance to take us somewhere
exciting like Bemidji to see Paul Bunyan and Babe the blue ox, or to
Shady Dell on Lake Travers for fall apples, and he once took us all
to the Twin Cities on the Great Northern. That was a mind- expanding
trip! But mostly, we were restricted to places we could reach on foot
or bicycle.
Luckily we lived only a mile
east of Fairmount and another mile east was the Boise de Souix River,
my favorite hang out. The closest neighbor kids, the Kurtzes were two
miles by bike or one if one cut across the fields.
We all knew what that meant:
sodas at Buck Mergens' Drug Store, and the fun of trailing Roy around
as he stopped for Groceries at Vonn's, Pete Nelson's, or Bostrom's.
Then we'd hit Zach's blacksmith shop to get something welded or sharpened
or pounded on. Sometimes we went into Otto Bowman's general store, I
could get BB's in bulk for my Daisy Red -Ryder. Otto was another hardware
man who could weld stuff. We also often stopped at the Freddy Martinson's
creamery to sell a can of fresh cream or go next door to Simpson's Hatchery
for baby chicks. Tagging along with uncle Roy was always worth our while!
We had primitive tackle: five-foot
steel rods with two-dollar Gamble Store reels and fifteen pound braided
line. I, by much practice, could get out a cast of 25 yards but Roy
and Charles were pretty-much stuck with water closer to the boat. When
I was twelve I got my first fly and spinning rods, and that really changed
the equation: finer tackle, lots more fish.
Gene Pinkney/ 4/27/21. - For The
Daily News - 4/28/21