OLE UNCLE WILEY

I had an uncle whose official name was “James Wiley Davidson."

To me he was always “Wiley” without the uncle part. He was different from his brothers in as much as, while they would carouse and drink he didn’t drink or smoke or chase women.

This was all happening during the great depression when it was hard to find work and farm work only paid one dollar a long day. On the farm they never heard of a eight hour day.

Wiley finally found a girl he took a fancy to and would court her country style. This consisted of him going to her house and sitting in the living room with the family and talking about things that had nothing to do with anything. The idea was if a guy came around often enough and stayed long enough it meant he had marriage on his mind and when he had put in his time it was okay to ask the parents to give their okay for the hitching up.

The parents gave consent and Wiley and Cynthia got married but since Wiley had very little money they had to live with her parents and her brother and his wife. The house was small but they had their own bedroom where they spent their honeymoon. Before the innerspring mattress came into popular use, the bedsprings were open, and in order to sleep you had to get used to the loud squeaking noise they made at any movement. Cynthia’s brother and sister-in-law spent a good part of the wedding night laughing very loudly at every squeak that came from Cynthia’s bedroom.

As soon as possible Wiley moved out on the family farm and began to farm. If it hadn’t been for Cynthia’s folks giving them canned goods and supplying some other necessities they would have gone hungry that first year. Cynthia was trained to be frugal and after that first year things got better.

Wiley would get happy and dance a lot by himself. One night I was visiting and we were in the kitchen and Wiley got a dancing spell and he fell through the floor, he got banged up a little and I didn’t ever see him dance in the kitchen again.

Wiley was a good friend to me and I cared for him very a great deal. There wasn’t much he wouldn’t do for me if he could.

Proverbs18:24 a man who has friends must show himself to be friendly; and there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

In my case it was an uncle.