In my boyhood in the 1940s, Frank Kerr (I blur the name) was the surviving member of the family that founded our hometown as a railroad junction point 80 years before. He was “Mister Frank” to all of us. William Faulkner would have described him as a true Southern gentleman.
As a boy, he was sent to prep school. His college was the University of the South in Suwannee, Tennessee, where he learned Greek and Latin, as well as English and mathematics. He attended law school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Then he came back home to take over his family businesses and become the town lawyer.
By the time I came to know him, his wife had died and his children were adults. They had taken their marriages and careers to cities, leaving Mister Frank living in the family mansion with his bed-ridden sister Miss Emily and a couple who looked after them. The woman did the cooking and housekeeping. The man tended the yard and his office and drove Mister Frank and Miss Emily wherever they wanted to go.
His law office was on the second floor of a Main Street building next to my grandfather’s paint and wallpaper store. Just below him was the drugstore of his good friend, Walter Evans. In the winter, his helper would go into the office, start a fire in the stove, bring in the Memphis newspaper, and make things tidy. The office rooms were lined with law books. On the wall behind his desk were the books in Greek and Latin that he claimed to read for pleasure. On good days, he would walk home for lunch, often nap, and come back to the law office for the afternoon. He spent part of the time with clients and part of it managing his family farms and the businesses in which he was a partner.
The summer days were distinctive. Mister Frank wore “ice cream suits.” Some of them were white linen and some were cotton. He wore a starched white cotton shirt, dark bow tie, and polished black shoes. His helpers washed and pressed his clothes and kept the shoes shined.
Wednesdays and Sundays, he played golf at the local country club. For two summers, I caddied for him and listened to him talk as we walked around the course. He paid me 50 cents for 18 holes and would offer me a bottle of soda, which I always declined.
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<
Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<