Clabe’s Pipe

“If a person’s eyes are a window to the soul, possessions are at least the back door.” – David LaBelle in The Great Picture Hunt 2.”

Could Clabe Wilson’s pipe be one way to regard him decades later?

This story is from 1927:

Clabe boosted Junior into his highchair and cut up some green beans and sausage for him. Twelve-year-old Delbert kept Danny on his lap as he ate. Danny wasn’t very hungry. 

     After the meal, Clabe raked back his chair, reached for his pipe and Prince Albert. He tamped a little tobacco into the bowl of pipe. He struck a wooden match on the bottom of his shoe. It popped into flame, which he held into the pipe. Clabe inhaled through the stem several times until it caught. 

     “Danny, come here.” Pipe in hand, Clabe reached for the mewling boy. Danny held up his arms for a lift onto his father’s lap. “What’s the problem, little feller? Did you miss your momma?”

     Danny leaned against his dad, quietly pulling on an ear.

     “Leora, do you think he might have an earache?”

     “Might be. Why don’t you try warm smoke and see if it helps.”

     Clabe had Danny sit up so he could blow warm smoke in his ear. All the eyes at the table watched. Danny settled back against the bib of his dad’s overalls, seemingly better.

Danny Wilson, age 4, is the yawning boy in blue. 1927, south of Dexter. Watercolor by Audubon native Tim Ross, agricultural meteorologist at RFD-TV, Nashville.

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This little scene is in the first chapter in Leora’s Dexter Stories: The Scarcity Years of the Great Depression. Danny ended up needing surgery!