Uncle Hartsough

Both of my parents grew up in rather large families. My mother grew up as one of nine siblings. My father was one of eight siblings, which was not unusual for that day and time. Needless to say, including spouses, they supplied my siblings and me with a gallimaufry (I love using obscure words) of aunts and uncles. 

Since my father was, by far, the youngest in his family (Surprise!), and mother was next to youngest, some of my aunts and uncles had passed away before I was old enough to know them. The ones I knew were characters, funny and entertaining to be with. I loved them all. They were true Kentuckians and, what I would call, classy hillbillies. And that is a good thing – trust me on that. But a couple of them stood out. One was my favorite uncle, Hartsough (Heart-saw) Redding.

My mother said this about him in an interview in 1996.

“The next brother was Hartsough, who was the sweetest person and no one was any kinder.  Even as a little bitty kid I can remember him giving me things. I always hated Mother's Day when I wore a white flower. I just don't think that Mothers deserve all the credit they are given. Motherlove is supposed to be the strongest thing in the world but is a lot of malarkey. A lot of them totally neglect their children, abuse them, and everything else. Anyhow, I didn't like Mother's Day but was sitting in church when Hartsough came in with some of his college friends. When he saw me he told his friends to go on and he came and sat with me. That was just the kind of thing he would do. He was all anyone could ask for in a brother, including very critical of all my dates. I had one date that Hartsough got behind and brushed off his shoulders (indicating that he was getting rid of the hayseeds).”

His full name was Gano Hartsough Redding. And he was one of my favorite people in the entire world. I remember him as a tall handsome man with an incredible head of wavy white hair… a million-dollar smile… a deep, room-filling laugh… and he was just plain fun to be around. He told me his life stories and not quite dirty jokes, gave me the kind of gifts no one else would, kept my secrets and was my advocate to my parents. He teased me unmercifully and I adored him. He was born in 1908 and died in 1965 and he was about 42 and I was around five years old when he appeared on my radar. It seemed to me that he just showed up one day. As I remember it, (probably incorrectly) he starting coming to Sunday dinner each week. He was one of my best childhood friends and I loved him deeply.

One of the ways my family shows affection is by teasing each other and giving each other nicknames. The more you tease someone, the more you love them. Uncle Hartsough teased me unmercifully all of my growing up years. I loved it and teased him right back.

He had a personal and private nickname he called me, “T.H.” For the

same reason he never told my mother what it meant, I can’t tell you what it means. (You are welcome to send me your guesses.) Another nickname I picked up, which had something to do with my teenaged enthusiasm about doing yard work and others of the thousands of projects my father constantly thought up for my brother and I to do, was “Hard-work.” My uncle could be brutal, and I loved every minute of it. As a testament to our view of each other’s work ethic, for several Christmases and birthdays we “surprised” each other with a bottle of Slone’s Liniment. It advertised itself as a product that would relieve those achy muscles one experiences after a hard day’s work. We must have passed that tired old bottle back and forth for five years. Both of us were infuriated when one of my family members actually opened and used the stuff.

The first thing one noticed about Hartsough was that he had only one arm. It was a handicap he never allowed to slow him down for a second. He lived a no-excuses life. The story goes that when he was leaving the hospital after losing his arm, the family tried to dress him. He immediately kicked them out of the room and dressed himself. It took him almost an hour. When I compare notes with siblings, we are not sure exactly how it happened. We are pretty sure that he lost his left arm in a traffic accident. Possibly because he had his arm hanging out the window while he was driving. The reason we aren’t sure is that his “accident” was used as the example for why we children “had  better get your arms back in this car like I told you to.”

Traffic accidents, to make a huge understatement, powerfully impacted my uncle’s life. On one of his frequent trips to Lexington, Kentucky, he was run off the road and the car rolled over. His younger sister, Perk, a blue-eyed blonde beauty with a personality to match her name and the family favorite, was injured in the accident. Hartsough flagged down a passing motorist and rushed Perk to a Lexington hospital. He carried his precious cargo into the hospital, presented her to the first nurse he met and told her to help his little sister. The nurse is quoted as saying, “Young man, we can’t help her, she’s dead.”

Needless to say, this event crushed him and changed the course of his life. Alcoholism runs in my family on my mother’s side. After this accident,, Hartsough became the prime example of what a family problem alcoholism can be. Out of this period of his life came some amazingly funny and sad stories of his adventures and misadventures. A friend tells of dropping him off after a night of drinking and Hartsough was so inebriated that he started up the front steps of the wrong house. His friend jumped out of the car and intercepted my uncle at the top of the steps. Hartsough didn’t even recognize him and inquired, “Excuse me, sir, could you direct me to the home of the Redding family?” His friend did just that. One night he made it to the right house but the wrong room. Instead of turning left at the end of the hallway into the kitchen, he turned right, stumbled down the two steps into the maid's room and fell into bed with her. She came up out of bed screaming, brandishing the pistol she kept under her pillow for just such emergencies. Fortunately, no one died that night.

Family myth has it that Hartsough would “borrow” the family car for frequent trips from his home in Owenton, Kentucky, to Lexington. To keep his father from realizing that his car had been “borrowed”, Hartsough would back up all of the way from Lexington to Owenton to run the mileage that had accumulated during the trip off of the odometer. For most of those trips they say he would not have passed a sobriety test. How he lived we will never know.

God was good to Hartsough and he met a gorgeous young woman named Thelma Cook. Aunt Thelma was a beautiful, genteel, Southern lady with a lovely smile, infectious laugh and a great sense of humor. Hartsough fell madly in love with her, as did the rest of his family. Thelma loved Hartsough and agreed to marry him. Her only provision was that he give up the alcohol. That is a tough choice for an alcoholic to make. Alcohol – Thelma. Hartsough thought about it for five or six seconds and wisely chose Thelma.

Thelma, nobody’s fool, demanded that Hartsough prove that he had truly made a choice, would put action to his words, so they had a waiting period before the wedding in which he would abstain from the use of alcohol. After only about 25 years, they were married. From the day of his proposal, Hartsough remained dry for the rest of his life. During that time he became a leader in his local church. It is amazing what God and a good woman can do in a man’s life. It was during these sober years that I came to know my beloved uncle.

When I was playing Little League baseball, Uncle Hartsough volunteered as an umpire. Though he had the laid-back temperament for the job, it must have been challenging for a one-armed man. It so happened that my uncle was behind the plate when I hit a home run. My mother said it was hilarious watching him try to pretend he did care while trying to hide the huge smile on his face.

My precious uncle died of throat cancer while I was in college. Like everyone else in our family, Hartsough smoked heavily all of his life. I, too, smoked two packs of cigarettes every day. It wasn’t long after watching the life one of the loves of my life cut short and watching the agony he went through, that I gave up smoking.

My Uncle Hartsough’s life dynamically impacted my life. So did his death.

Copyright © 2019, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved

Bill McConnell is an Interim Minister, a Church Transformation consultant and a Christian Leadership Coach. He is a frequent speaker at Church Transformation events. His latest book on church transformation is DEVELOPING A SIGNIFICANT CHURCH and is available at Westbow Press. He can be contacted @ bill45053@gmail.com. Connect with him on Facebook @ William T. McConnell or on Twitter @billmc45053 or visit his Amazon Author Page @ Amazon author page