The Family Album/Sad Cases of Brother Jerry and Pop's Brother Eb

by Arthur Baer

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SAD CASES OF BROTHER JERRY AND
POP’S BROTHER EB

THOSE six pictures on this page are brother Jerry. That one there was taken when he was about two years old, when we were afraid that he wouldn’t live. This one was taken when he was seven years old, when we were afraid he would.

The family don’t talk much about him because he was kind of a wild boy and used to sass pop and mom awful. By the way, did you hear that Rockerfeller gave six million dollars to Hopkins? That means the University and not Peggy. But between the two of ’em the Hopkinses is getting all the money in the country.

Jerry was about sixteen when he fell in love with a girl from a small town in Pennsylvania. Mom used to tell him that no man should think of getting married before he was forty years old. By that time he would be old enough to know better.

That’s a strange thing about divorce and scandals. It’s all from getting married too young. They call me an old maid, but that ain’t because I never had any chances. When grandpop died and left me twenty-four dollars, I’ve been afraid that some unprincipled adventurer would marry me for my money.

We never say grandpop, but he remembered us fine. We hard a farm on a flat rock up in Maine. That’s what pop used to say, anyway. Anyway, Jerry went and got married and pop disinherited him without a dime. That’s the only way pop could disinherit anybody, because he didn’t have the dime himself.

Pop wasn’t much of a home man even if he did have fourteen children.

Pop sold wild-hair tweezers. When a man would shave himself he was liable to get an ingrown hair. Then pop would sell him a tweezer. But there wasn’t much of a market for ingrown hairs as people tried to avoid them. Pop endeavored to make them popular but he didn’t succeed much.

Pop had a brother who was kind of lazy, but it wasn’t his fault. He suffered a whole lot from a blighted romance. This fellow, Bill Adams, that I was telling you about last week when you stopped at our house to take off your new Sunday shoes that were pinching you, is the man that caused it.

Pop’s brother’s name was Eb. And Eb used to drive a coal wagon. He worked harder than his own horses, because Eb sold coal by the ton and generally the horses only had to pull around twelve hundred pounds.

Eb was no Beau Brummel on his coal wagon, but the family used to think he could have kept his face cleaner than he did. When his day’s work was done he used to drive past a little shack on his way to the coalyards. It was always twilight at that time. On the porch of the little shanty was a beautiful girl who used to smile at Eb. She looked wonderful in the dusk on the porch in a hammock.

Now, here is what ruined Eb’s career on his coal wagon. Do you know that in the old days there wasn’t any gas or electric lights, and this girl’s family didn’t have coaloil lamps. This girl was really an African princess and she was from a royal family in that country. She was a Kaffir, I think.

But she was darker than a club flush. But Eb didn’t know it, as he never saw her in the daylight. And she was a nice girl, but she never saw Eb without the coal dust on his face. She thought that he was a Kaffir Prince Charming on his milkwhite coal wagon.

But one Summer night, as they sat on the porch,

there came a flash of lightning. And Eb saw she was a Kaffir and she saw that Eb was what you might call almost a white-skinned man, if it hadn't been for his neck.

He had a little coal dust in his eyes and his ears, too, but she knew that Eb came from a good family. Naturally, that blighted Eb’s romance like boll weevils in the South. Our family didn’t care much what Eb did.

It was her family that objected to the match.

He wasn’t good looking, but he was kind of absent-minded and good-hearted. Maybe, being absented-minded was what made him good-hearted. You know, our folks have got a reputation for being stingy.

But we never had anything. And you can’t give away something you haven’t got. When we started to get something, we were so used to not giving anything away that we didn’t.

Life is all habits. Eb never recovered from the shock of his wrecked romance. He couldn’t work. And it looked like he might die any minute.

That was fifty-six years ago, and Eb still looks that way.

He used to drive past a little shack