The King house (Paul and Mary Frances) is rapidly taking shape across the way, the latest of six homes that have been built facing Wetherbee Street since we came to Wilzin Park in the fall of '52.
While we watch the work going on, a big trailer truck is being unloaded of its cargo of two by twelves which must be all of sixteen feet long. And the truck-cab's door carries the name of a lumber company In Zwolle, Louisiana.
We've never been in Zwolle (pronounced like jolly), and don't know where it is but, judging by the length of those boards, it must be somewhere In the tall-timber country. Our interest in the place however stems from the fact that it was where Evelyn Hedleston used to live, she being the wife of David Hedleston III (whose parents David Jr. and Nannie Blister Hedleston lived next door to Peacedale in '43 and '44, along with the younger children Ann, Jimmy, Ellanor and Brist).
At the time of which we write (January or February of 1944) Lt. David Hedleston Jr. was overseas, and his wife Evelyn was staying with her husband's people, waiting for her baby to be born. When the day arrived that the baby was to arrive, young Mrs. Hedleston had been admitted to Kings Daughters Hospital, the fourth-floor supervisor told Nannie that the senior Dr. Jerome Hirsch (late father of the Dr. Hirsch we all know now) had intimated a possibility of complications which might necessitate a section-birth. Wherefore Nannie, who was standing by, telephoned Old Stuff to ask if we wouldn't carry the word to her husband who was a U.S. Engineers Inspector on the levee work at Greson's Camp near the head of Black Bayou. Furthermore. Nannie told us to take her car, then parked in the back of her house. (Where Sgt. and Mrs. Richard Mincey live now.)
Nannie's car gave out before we got as far as Frank and Gordy's house on the nine-foot, road to Winterville. We started walking, found Frank at home and he 'said he'd take us to Greson's Camp in his pick-up truck. Just as we reached the foot of the levee near Eustace and Betsy Winn's house, the truck conked out, so we left Mr. Gordy tinkering with the motor and once set out on foot. Those folks who say Old Stuff never hurries should have seen us hoofing it up the levee that wintry morning.
When we arrived at the camp, still afoot, we were in sight of the water tank at Scott (if you're interested in computing the mileage we had covered). We then zig-zagged through tents, bull-dozers, caterpillars, land levelers et cetera until we found Dave Hedleston and advised of his imminent estate of grand-parenthood.
Dave grabbed a passing truck that was already loaded to the guards, agreed to do something about Frank if the latter was still stalled where we had left him, and said he would also arrange for somebody to take us back home within the hour.
A day or two later we met Frank Gordy in town, and he asked if we'd mind explaining to him once again the nature of the recent emergency, who was having the baby, and so on, which we did as best we could.
"Then you mean it was the Hedlestons' daughter-in-law who was having the baby," Frank, "and the man we went for at the levee camp was the bahy's grandfather."
That's right, we said.
"Well." said Mr. Gordy, "that explains everything, and now I know why Mr. Hedleston grinned so broadly, and seemed so tickled the other morning when I told him I hoped his wife would get along all right!"
BC
