William Ronald Robinson
My uncle Ronnie (known in our family as “Bubby” or to his friends as “Ron”) died in his home on Tuesday, January 17th, 2006. He was fifty-five years old. (Some of the lakehouse veterans may remember my uncle as that quiet guy that used to fish off the boat dock.)
I’ve spent a long time struggling over this post. Every time I started to write about my uncle I’d end up going off on long tangents about my childhood in Kentucky. Although I grew up in Cabot, Arkansas, and lived there until I went to college, in many ways my childhood, or what memory has made my childhood, is a product of Kentucky.
We spent every Christmas in Kentucky but it is the summers there that I recall the most vividly. Every summer from about the age of eight (?) until I was around thirteen we’d load up the car as soon as school let out and make the twelve-hour drive from the flat land of central Arkansas to the hills of far eastern Kentucky. My folks would head back home after a few days, but my brother and I would stay and spend the next couple of months on Thornton hollow (pronounced “holler”) with our extended family: my grandparents Lula (“Mamaw Luli”) and Paul (“Papaw Paul”), my great-grand parents William (“Papaw Bill”) and Cora (“Mamaw Cory”), and my uncle Ronnie (“Bubby”).
My great-grandparents lived in a one-story, two-bedroom house that they built shortly after they were married in 1928. The house was located just across the front yard from a small general store that they also built and which stayed in business into the 1990s. They had their first and only child (Lula) in their home and when she grew up and married a coal miner from North Carolina (Paul) she built her house on the hill behind her parents. Lula and Paul’s oldest child, Angie (my Mom), married a traveling “Encyclopedic Dictionary” salesman named Harold (my Dad) and ended up moving off Thornton, but her younger brother Ronnie stayed and built himself a small house just across the street from his parents and grand-parents. So when I say I spent summers with my extended family, I mean it literally. They were all right there together.
Those summers in Kentucky are some of the most memorable and influential times of my life. To this day a good percentage of my dreams are set in Kentucky. Sometimes it’s the actual place I visited: my grandma’s living room, my great-grandfather’s garden, behind the counter at the store. Often, though, it’s just a feeling. What I see in the dream—landscape, buildings, people—may have nothing to with Thornton nor bear any physical resemblance to the actual place; but still, within the dream, I know that I am there. Thornton is the setting. It’s where everything is happening. This realization is never unpleasant, nor is it surprising. It just is.
My uncle was the last close relative I had from that place. He lived in the same little house across the street from his family for most of his life. He saw his mother and grandfather die of cancer in the mid-eighties. In the nineties he moved across the street and into his grandmother’s house where he cared for her until her death in 2000. Finally, his father passed in 2002. Only then did he leave Thornton to be with his sister in Arkansas. He was living in an apartment less than a hundred yards from my folks’ back door when he died, but he was buried in Thornton.
After the funeral we drove down the narrow, winding road that runs the length of the hollow to the old home site. All the houses of my childhood were gone. A neighbor bought the store, added a second floor and converted it into a home. My great-grandparents’ house is their grassy yard. All that remained of my grandparents’ house on the hill was a brick barbeque that looked out of place up there all alone, and my uncle’s house across the road had been recently demolished. Rough piles of upturned dirt and bulldozer tracks were still visible.
My family and I sat in the car and looked out the windows, and though we felt a sense of loss, we were not sad. We took comfort in knowing that the new owners of the land and the occupants of the converted store, were neighbors from Thornton—kids, now grown, that my brother and I played with in those summers years ago. More than that, though, we were not sad because when we looked at the grassy yard and the hill and blank spot where my uncle had lived we still saw everything vividly and surely more perfectly than we would had the physical structures remained. Though no longer there, we saw the houses and the store and the garden and the people and it was natural and right, just like in my dreams.
* * *
It’s funny what stays with us. When I was first learning to talk I consistently mispronounced my Papaw Bill’s name. In the years that followed every time we arrived for a visit my great-grandfather would meet our car in the driveway, hug me as soon as I got out and greet me with that old childhood mispronunciation, “Hey, Peebo Bybo!”
May 12th, 2006 at 6:54 pm
Thank you so much for your wonderful comments. I too spent many dreamy days and nights on Thornton with Ronnie and Eddie Taylor and Uncle Edgar’s kids. Neal, what a character. I’m rather out of the loop and this is the first I’ve heard about Ronnie passing on. I don’t know how I missed it, but I did. Is it possible to love someone even though you hardly ever see them? If it is so, then I did and do. Thank you again for your beautiful thoughts.
L.C.
May 12th, 2006 at 7:03 pm
What a great read. I could see myself on the store porch wondering why the cars didn’t knock the porch off as they sped down the road, watching Ronny fool the dog by throwing a tomato rather than the red ball and worrying that I had to pee and would have to enter Aunt Cora’s surgical sterile house to do so.
Thornton was always my haven growing up. It was the only place in the universe that I felt loved unconditionally. It’s still my “happy place” I go to when I need comfort. Your extended family was also my source of love and strength.
I’m so glad your mom shared this with me.
May 12th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
I never physically visited Angie’s homeplace in KY, but I knew it just the same. The stories, the characters, and Bubby. I remember the trip he made from KY to AR,in his corvett after getting off work one night. He drove those 12 hours and had a “passenger” along for the ride….a little kitten that had obviously ridden all the way on the axel of the car. Everyone in the neighborhood adopted the kitten right along with Bubby.
Jeffrey, you and Scottie got gooooood genes!!! I love you,
Sandy
May 13th, 2006 at 7:51 am
Such wonderful memories! Ronnie was one of a kind. Forgive me, but the entire time I was reading, my mind’s eye was focused on an old tractor, chugging along, and a tow haired little boy holding onto the side, as he looked up at Papaw Bill and devoured his every word, every movement. I think he became somewhat jealous when it came to be that he shared Papaw Bill with his younger brother, but resignation soon set in.
I miss the sound of that old tractor.
May 13th, 2006 at 7:38 pm
What a wonderful story! Your family is such an inspiration to all who know them. I have only heard a few stories but I do know that I have been privileged to know your parents and can tell by this story how your mother came to be the amazing person she is. It was always with pride that I knew that my Robert was friends with Scottie. With love Jeffrey…
May 14th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
What a comfort it is to know that our Thornton Family still lives on in the hearts and minds of so many people. They always gave unconditional love, with no thought of what an impact it would have on the people around them. They just did what came naturally to them, that’s who they were, that’s how they lived. These three things endure, Faith, Hope and Love, and the greatest of these is Love.
May 16th, 2006 at 11:21 am
Thanks, everyone, for your kind words.
I’m lucky to have such a great family and it looks like I’m not the only one that remembers Thornton as a very special place.
all the best,
peebo
May 17th, 2006 at 7:26 pm
Neal and I just read this, together. and I cried, agaiin, as I did today when reading it alone…Neal said this is in memory of “Peebody Ronnie Robinson”! peebo you and “the family” are welcome to visit us on Thornton anytime…Neal and Lisa
May 29th, 2006 at 7:49 pm
I just saw this. What a wonderful tribute. Everyone should be blessed enough to be loved and remembered this way. Maybe everyone is in a way, but aren’t lucky enough to be related to someone who can put it into the right words. This is the only picture I’ve ever seen of your famous uncle and I’m glad you shared it.
August 28th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
I just did a search for momparker because this would have been the time of year we would have been packing up to go to Morehead and Angie and I would have been deciding who took what. I had a need to talk to her. And I find out that my old buddy, Ronnie, had passed away. It made me so sad to remember the fun times we had so many, many years together in Letcher County. Tell Angie that Charlene thinks of her often.
January 4th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
This has been so uplifting to read. Thanks to your mom for sharing this with me and thanks to you for your love for your uncle Ronnie and your family. As you already know, you did come from a wonderful family. I can still remember your granny Lula and her smile – She was so sweet (my mom was a post mistress at Millstone at the time your granny was one at Thornton). Your great grandfather Bill – I rode his bus many times and he was one of the kindest, loving men I have ever met. Your grandad Paul was one of the sweetest men ever! When your mom shared your picture with me, I said immediately you reminded me of Ronnie. I always thought he was one of the cutest little brothers I had ever seen (I have one that is a year younger than Ronnie). It was interesting to read the other replys because I had often wondered what all had happened to those places in Thornton. I thought it was so cute the Goins guy that wrote about Ronnie and Eddie Taylor which I knew. My aunt was married to one of his uncles. Most of all though, I remember how much I enjoyed calling your mom my friend – your mom has always been so smart! and I think I aggeravated her a lot at Morehead! I wasn’t as serious about my education at the time and sometimes she would have to run me out of her room so she could study. It is so good to be back in touch with her. Thanks again for such a wonderful tribute to such a neat, kind, loving person. I loved the picture. Cil