Billy Barron always seemed to have a great secret to tell.
One of my favorite times with Billy was a night when he and his wife Patty attended a fund raiser for the community playhouse. Billy, in one of his dramatic moods, wore a red beret and had a painted-on villain curled-up mustache. I have a picture of us, my arm on his shoulder and Billy mugging for the camera. It is one of my treasures. That night he called me over. It seems Billy, an avid quail hunter and bird dog lover, had just come home with a new dog.
“Mike,” he said, “I just got a thousand-dollar bird dog.”
He jumped right in to telling me that it was a German short-haired pointer about a year old and already trained. He made sure I knew that it was white with liver-colored spots and it was out of the line of “Dannigan’s Old Pete”. I couldn’t have asked for more information if I were marrying the dog.
This was a time when the finest show dog in the country would sell for less than $500. He knew I was bursting to ask the question and finally paused to let me ask it.
“A thousand-dollar dog! ... Really?”
“Yep,” he said with his huge grin. “I traded two $500 cats for him.”
From the moment we saw each other across a room or on Main Street or at church, Billy made me feel that he had a story he had been holding inside just for me. I don’t think we ever shook hands, there was always a hug when we met. That was just Billy and I know, but don’t like to admit, that there were many others who felt like the story was just for them.
At some point in a distant past, our ancestors captured fire and joined together around it for warmth and protection against a harsh world. It must have been a brutal and mirthless existence. When they learned to communicate, they became human and shared information about how to stalk prey and where to gather the best food.
Among those primitive ancestors, there were a few, a very few, who could turn events into words to re-kindle memories in those who were there and ignite visions into those who weren’t. They could make the fire brighter with excitement or make dying coals glow with stories of lost friends. They could create sadness or joy with their words.
They have been called by different names throughout the history of humankind. They are those who can pass down the wisdom of our ancestors through stories and parables. Many Native American tribes used a word meaning “Medicine Man.” Whether called bards or minstrels or jesters in Europe or griot in West Africa, they have enriched our lives with tall tales of giants and frost kings and tricksters like coyote and the spider Anansi.
Those tellers of tales are still with us. Some have moved along into writing songs or novels or movies but despite the times, there are those who capture us person to person, face to face. Those who can look into our eyes and know the story that we need to hear.
Now, back to my beginning. William Harris Barron, called Billy, grew up in Fort Mill and spent his days roaming the woods and fishing the ponds and hunting the fields. He was not solitary, as those activities suggest. Billy loved company and he listened. He listened and watched and remembered everything that happened around him. He heard stories and folded them into tales about people he knew. The stories were never vague. There were always names and places…names of people you knew and places you had heard about. There were always pegs on which to hang our own memories and to make us part of the worlds he built in his stories.
When Billy met his wife-to-be Patty Mc Clary at Winthrop, he had no idea that he was marrying into a family of story tellers. Patty’s father, always known as Mr. Pat, managed Friendfield Plantation near Georgetown. Billy told me about the time, early in his marriage, that he was invited to a big hunt on the property. Mr. Pat assembled the hunters at about 5 a.m. for the rules.
“This is a buck hunt. There will be no shooting does or rabbits or turkeys and if you can’t follow the rules, you will not be invited back. You will be put at your stand and you are not to move from there. We don’t want anybody to get shot.”
Billy was taken out to his spot about an hour before dawn. He was told walk up to the “rise” but since the land was flat and it was dark, Billy just stopped 25 yards or so from the dirt road. He waited, he told me, for about 45 minutes in the dark and finally, just as the slightest light glowed in the eastern sky, Billy thought he saw a familiar form just across the road.
He said that he wasn’t sure and kept still until streaks light filtered through the trees and there it was… a tom turkey, puffed out and strutting, clear as could be. Billy had always wanted to bag a turkey but Mr. Pat’s words haunted him. He hesitated, wanting to make a good impression on his father-in-law but it was a once in a lifetime chance. The temptation was just too great and Billy eased up his shotgun. Before he could draw a bead and pull the trigger, he saw the headlights of the truck coming back from putting out hunters. Billy jerked down the shotgun hoping Mr. Pat had not caught him.
Mr. Pat stopped the truck and came over. “Billy! Didn’t you see that big tom turkey?”
“Yes sir, Mr. Pat. But I remembered you telling us not to shoot anything but bucks.”
Before Billy could relish being a good son-in-law, Mr. Pat said, “Damnit Billy, I was talking about the general public.”
When the Springs Villa was still in its original spot beside the Ocean Forest Hotel, Billy and Patty, my parents and several other families would spend a week having fun together. They would always get together for a big seafood dinner at the Wayside or Oliver’s Lodge in Garden City.
When I was young and was embarrassed by my parents and their friends, I would always distance myself from the men when, in the long line waiting to be seated at the restaurant, they decided to enrich the atmosphere with song. (There was always a long wait for a table for 16 or so) Billy, Dad, Jim Little, Dwight Thomas and this time, Mr. Pat McClary, would begin to sing old barbershop songs or hymns. They were, I admit, pretty good and most of the crowd seemed to enjoy the distraction. On that evening, another man from Fort Mill came up and joined in. After a few bars, Mr. Pat stopped the group and turned to the man.
“Sir, I don’t believe you understand.” Mr. Pat said in his stern low-country accent. “We’re harmonizing here.”
I have learned to miss those songs and I will forever miss those singers.
There are many things I could tell you about Billy. He first saw a Field Trial for bird dogs in the low country and shared the story so glowingly to his friends that, within a week, they organized one in Fort Mill. He was the first Ranger at the Anne Springs Close Greenway and set in motion the building of the replica Webb’s Mill.
Billy was proud to be a member of the Unity Church Choir but was not above being distracted if a sermon got too dull or too long. Once a visiting minister droned well past Billy’s patience and Patty, who sat in the balcony with the children, saw that Billy was passing the time peeling flakes of paint off the wall beside his chair.
Billy was slightly hard of hearing and had lost track of the sermon when the minister launched into high gear with a sudden, “You’ve got to BELIEVE!”
Billy was startled and thought he had heard “BILLY!” so he turned around, stood up and said, “WHAT?” His daughter, Vereen, disappeared under the pew.
We lost Billy Barron during a time when we could not gather and share the wonders of his life. His family did not have the chance to feel the love we have for them and the loss we all felt. We lost in another way too. A long-time tradition in the South and I suspect all over, is that after a funeral friends gather and recall the stories of a person’s life. With Billy, the stories could have gone on long into the night.
Once a neighbor complained to Billy about not keeping his yard up to standard. As always, Billy, who understood life better than all of us, smiled at the complainer and said,
“When it snows, my yard is just as pretty as yours.”
Life will end for everyone and the days we spent plodding through work or tending our yards will be forgotten. What we leave behind will be the stories…the stories that are told and stored in the heart and told again.
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