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Dyre
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Commentary by Arnold Dyre
During my boyhood to the present, I have been privileged to have been around some true elders who have taught me a lot and have greatly influenced me in many ways.
Initially, the oldest person that I have a cognitive memory of was my Uncle Jack Dyre. Uncle Jack was born in 1891.
Later, as a boy at Gore Springs, I came to know someone even older than Uncle Jack. Mr. Lynn Johnson was born in 1876. Beverly’s grandfather, Pa Biddy, was born in 1895. My Uncle Lowrey Dyre and my best buddy Mr. Jim Moore were both born in 1900.
My father was born in 1906. My mother, who I never thought of as old, was born in 1915. My current friend Old Clovis, who is now pushing 97, was born in 1916. All of those folks had personally lived a good deal of history before I was even born.
Uncle Jack served in World War I. He was a pharmacist and one of the original proprietors of Dyre-Kent Drug Store in Grenada. Mr. Lynn Johnson lived by himself almost at the end of Gray’s Road in Gore Springs and had a fine wood lot where I collected many a squirrel, never failing to take Mr. Lynn a couple and dressing them for him while he told me his interesting stories.
Pa Biddy was such a character while achieving an enviable status of success and self-assurance. I always enjoyed my times with Pa Biddy. Uncle Lowrey always called me “Douglas,” and many times told me the story of my getting born the day my mother’s brother, Douglas Chenowth, came home from World War II.
Mr. Jim taught me how to milk a cow, how to pick cotton and a great host of many other things. Mr. Jim taught me a lot about God, because Mr. Jim knew him really well.
My father, Arnold Dyre, gave me so much of himself – his wit, his drive, and he was the first diehard Ole Miss fan I knew.
My dear blessed, beautiful, smart mother, Daisy Dyre, did her best to teach me to do right. She taught me to finish every undertaking. Mother was fluent in three languages and, inadvertently, she even taught me how to cuss a little in Portuguese.
The youngest elder in my life is my friend Clovis Williams. He makes me smile, and he has already forgotten more than I will ever know.
In thinking about these my elders, who have meant so much to me, it strikes me that there are now some things that all of them would have a hard time understanding. For starters, maybe my mother could master the new cell phones and the iPad and may even “text” her grandchildren, but I am confident that the others would not and would care less.
None of them would understand men wearing earrings or baggy pants showing half of what ought to be covered up except in the outhouse privy.
I am quite certain Mr. Jim and the others would shake their heads in bewilderment over the notion of purchasing three or four pieces of firewood for better than five dollars at a convenience store, or that they now sell bottles of water in grocery stores.
They would have rolled up their britches legs rather than walking on the pants legs. They put patches on holes in pants instead of buying them with holes.
Each day that I live, it seems that I get to be more like them. Already, Beverly says that I am getting to be just like Clovis.
He says with a grin that he does not think I look anything like him.
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