Grandad Dennis

By

Gary Dorman Wiggins

At the time of my birth in 1943, my great-grandfather, George Washington Dennis, was already past the age when men now draw full social security. He had been a farmer all of his life and would never know the benefits of the “Great Society.” “My boys will take care of me when I am old,” he said. And so it was to be that he would live out the last of his 88 years of life in the damp basement of his son, Zibe, in the valley beneath the cemetery. He expired there with his two boys and one of the girls—the one who loved him more than did any of the other children in spite of himself—gathered around him. There were four children from this union. Three of them stayed in Central City, and one was to leave and find her misery elsewhere.

He was 13 when he said to his brother, “Let’s leave. I can’t take it anymore.” And they left the new and unhappy world of a stepmother’s wrath to set out to live with Uncle Doc Faught. They took with them a bolt of cloth from which they intended to have new shirts made. Before they had gone two miles, Uncle Newt decided that he would return home, so George took out his pocket knife and divided the material in two. He married Florence Arbuckle when he was 24 years old, and she, 20.

George loved to dance and would leave my tiny grandmother alone many a night to drive miles to a hoedown. There was never a question of infidelity during these jaunts. It was George dancing, and that was all. When daylight came and the door opened, he was drenched in the just-baked aroma of country biscuits and mountains of food to replenish his spent energy.

Grandad’s other great love was horses. When Whirlaway won the Kentucky Derby in 1941, no one cheered louder than George Dennis. I would sit at his knee and listen for the tenth, twentieth time how he went to the stable before the race.

“Where do you think you’re going, old man.”

“Ay, God, I’m goin’ in there to see Whirlaway.”

“And just how do you think you’re going to get through that gate?”

“Ay, God, I’m gonna go over it, if you don’t open the damned thing!”

For twenty years, the old man had made the pilgrimage to Churchill Downs in Louisville. The city itself was alien to him. There was no one to swap knives or stories with, but in this oasis of anachronistic heritage, men of his mettle gathered once a year to watch the sport of kings. And this was the greatest horse of all. He must not be seen just from a hundred yards away in one lunging blur. He must be viewed from every angle at arm’s length—the mane, the tail, every inch must be surveyed and committed to memory.

“Let that old man in, John. I know him. How you doin’, Uncle George?”

“Tolerable. Tolerable. Ay, God, which one of them stalls is Whirlaway in?”

“Come on in with me. I’ll show him to you.”

The shaking of the cane in his hand betrayed the excitement which the old man felt. Imagine his luck when not only the horse, but also the fabled trainer, Ben Jones, was in the barn. George pulled out his half-pint of whiskey and offered him a drink. Later, he said he was embarrassed and always regretted it, when the answer came back that the trainer didn’t drink.