Ancestor Archives: Charles Eugene Macy (1900-1972)

 

by Rocky Macy

(Note:  When I began writing these family profiles last January, I intentionally began at the great-grandparent level and have since worked my way back through the g-g-g-grandparent level.  I did that so that I would not have to make difficult choices about what to put in and what to leave out, because, for the most part, I did not know those people personally and had not been directly impacted by their lives.  Most of those profiles focused on facts and the historical record and did not contain many personal anecdotes because much of that personal stuff had been forgotten and lost over time.

This week I am beginning a series on my grandparents, for the most part people that I knew well.  Today's piece is on my paternal grandfather, Charles Eugene Macy, a man with a singular lack of ambition which was complicated by other flaws.  On a personal level, I liked "Chock," as my grandfather was called, but for historical accuracy I felt the need to write about him with complete honesty and not gloss over the problems that did so much to define his life.  Chock's poor choices made this a difficult profile to write, and if any of my Macy cousins are offended, at least know that this one was not easy and I struggled with it.)

Charles Eugene MACY was born in rural Newton County, Missouri, on August 7th, 1900, the son of William Stephen and Louella (PRITCHARD) MACY.   He married Hazel Josephine NUTT in Neosho, Newton County, Missouri, on Christmas Eve of 1919.  Charles, or “Chock,” “Chalk,” or “Chalkie,” as he was more commonly known throughout much of his life, passed away in Joplin, Jasper County, Missouri, on December 27th, 1972.

Charles Eugene MACY was my paternal grandfather, a person with whom I was well acquainted.

Charles Eugene MACY was the sixth of seven children born to William S. and Louella (PRITCHARD) MACY.  He had four older brothers and two sisters, one older and one younger. Charley, as he was known throughout his childhood, did not make it into the 1900 census because his birth occurred after his family had been enumerated, and it was not until 1910 that he officially entered the public record through the census.  In that official tally he was referred to as “Charles E. Macy,” and his family was residing at Seneca in Newton County, Missouri.

Three years later on April 3rd, 1913, his name appeared on page one of the “Neosho Times” where he was mentioned as “Charlie Macy,” one of the many guests at a surprise birthday party for a neighbor.  Also in attendance at that party were his parents and older brothers Arnold, Orville, and Jack, along with a few MACY and PRITCHARD cousins.

My grandfather was not an educated man, but he was literate and could read and write.  He told me once that he quit school after the third grade.  He said that he had been held back so many times that he had outgrown his desk.  The 1940 census lists his highest grade completed as "Elementary school, 4th grade."

“Charley Eugene Macy” registered for the World War I draft on September 12h, 1918, one month and five days after he turned eighteen, but he was never called up for active service, no doubt due to the fact that the war ended two months after he registered.  His draft registration indicated that he was working as a farmhand for his father.

The following year my grandfather again was mentioned in a local newspaper, this time when he married my grandmother, Hazel Josephine NUTT.   Neither of them was prominent in local society and they did not have a wedding, and under normal circumstances their marriage probably would not have even merited a mention in the local press.  But my grandparents’ marriage turned out to be part of a bigger story.  

They were married by Probate Judge R.R. PARNELL at his office in the Newton County courthouse on Christmas Eve.    It seems that 1919 was a big year for weddings in the Neosho area, probably due the many young men returning from the war and eager to get their futures started.  Judge PARNELL, being located in the courthouse where couples went to get their marriage licenses, was a quick and easy option for those who were anxious to wed.

The article that ran on page nine of the December 26th issue of the “Neosho Democrat” was more about Judge PARNELL than it was the people whom he united in marriage.  It reported that on Christmas Eve the judge had married seven couples in individual ceremonies, some sort of local record, and all were mentioned by name in the article including my grandparents.  The story also related that the judge’s total of marriages for the year was then at 122 with another week yet to go in his personal annual tally.  The reporter estimated that previous judges had married only around seventy couples a year.

And with that marriage the happy young couple moved into what my father referred to as a “two-room shack” on twenty acres in Dayton Township of Newton County - between Seneca and Neosho.   It would be their family home until one fateful night many years later when my grandfather got drunk and accidentally burned it to the ground. 

 
We will come back to Charles Eugene MACY’s darker side later in this profile.

Chock and Hazel started their married lives together at the end of 1919 in the two-room shack.  The census of 1920 reported that property as a rental, and it was likely owned by Chock’s parents who were constantly buying and selling properties in the area at that time.  (In December of 1931 there was a notice on page two of the “Neosho Times” newspaper of a land transfer from “W.S. Macy” to “Chas. E. Macy” for six hundred dollars, and that was undoubtedly the “old homeplace” where my father grew up.  The rent was being turned toward a purchase within the family.

My grandfather distinguished himself in the 1920 census by somehow managing to get enumerated twice, in two separate households and locations.   He was counted in the household of his parents, William and Louella, as their 19-year-old son and the only child who was still in residence at their home.  The census taker reported “Charles Macy” as being a single man and a farm laborer.   But the 1920 US census also found 19-year-old “Charley E. Macy” living in Dayton Township of Newton County along with his wife, 17-year-old Hazel.  There he was listed as the married head-of-household and a farmer.

Chock and Hazel had six children while living in the two-room shack, and all, according to notes left by my father, were born at home.  Five made it into the public record, and a sixth apparently died at birth.  My Dad’s notes said there was only one doctor (Dr. Duamber - probably spelled wrong) and he was located seven miles away in Seneca.  Apparently, again according to Dad’s notes, “Grandma Macy” (Louella PRITCHARD MACY) was the midwife who was present at all of the deliveries.  Dad said that he had been  a “blue baby.”

The children who survived the ordeal of a farm birth were: Wayne Hearcel (1921-1956), Garland Eugene (1924-2009), Verna May (1929-1929), Tommy Dean (1930-2002), and Betty Joan (pronounced “Joanne”) (1933-2013).  Of the four children who reached adulthood, Wayne married Mary Olive DAY,  Garland married Ruby Florine SREAVES, Tommy shared his life with Betty TERRY, and Betty married Cecil LANKFORD. Those four couples produced a total of eight grandchildren for Chock and Hazel.

One of my grandfather’s later appearances in the public record occurred when he registered for the draft for World War II on February 14th, 1942.  He was a forty-one-year-old farmer with a wife and four children (two of whom were grown and would soon enlist to serve in that war), and Chock was never called up for active duty.   On more than one occasion I heard my father say that his dad hadn’t served in the military because he was too young for the first World War and too old for the Second - neither of which was technically true, but Chock probably did cite his age as the reason for sitting out of both wars.

(Chock's oldest sons, Wayne and Garland, served in Europe with the Army during World War II, and his youngest son, Tommy Dean, served in the Army during the 1950's.)

My father described his father’s experiences with automobiles this way:

“My  parents only owned one car in their entire life.  It was a Model T Ford Coupe, probably an early 1920-21-22, or so.  Seems like I was about six at the time, which would have been around 1930 - and the car was not new.

“My dad traded a team of horses for it, and someone drove it to our house and parked it in an open shed.  My dad backed it out to try to learn to drive it, got hung up in the garden fence, and tore most of it down before he could get the car stopped.  He got out and left it right there and traded for another team of horses.

“(Dad) never had another (car).  We drove a one-horse wagon to the stores a mile-and-a-half each way after that, and rode with the neighbors or hitch-hiked to town - seven-and-a-half miles to either Seneca or Neosho.  There weren’t too many cars on the road, but most stopped for you.”

A few years ago my Aunt Mary, Wayne MACY’s widow, sent me a letter in which she described the same incident of Chock trying to drive - a story that she had undoubtedly heard from Wayne, the oldest MACY son.  She said that Chock got the car going in circles in a pasture, but did not know how to work the brake - and that he kept yelling “Whoa!  Whoa!” - and he was through with driving when he finally got the car stopped!

This is probably as good of a place as any to discuss my grandfather’s problems.  One relative who was in a position to know told me a few years ago that Chock was an abusive husband, and apparently that was the main reason that my grandmother moved out of the house on multiple occasions during her later years.  She finally left for good in the 1960's and spent the remainder of her life living in a succession of apartments in Neosho and occasionally visiting relatives for extended periods of time.

My father always held his own father in low esteem, primarily due to his tendency toward drunkenness, and also because of the fact that he never held an actual job until later in life.  Chock had six milk cows and fifty or so laying hens, and regarded himself as a working farmer at a time when farming had ceased to be an occupation that could support a family - especially a hand-to-mouth small farm like the one he and his family had.  Not only that, but  much of the actual work was undoubtedly done by Hazel and the kids.

But Chock MACY persisted in the illusion that he was a farmer until probably the late 1940’s or the very early 1950’s when all of the kids had left home.  At that point, my dad related in his hand-written family history, Chock went into Neosho and got a job at “Cudahy,” a national meat-packing concern.  That job did not last long, and then he began working at the taverns where, again according to my dad’s account, he learned to drink.  

When Chock got drunk and burned the house down, probably in the very late 1940’s or early 1950’s, it was a double tragedy.  Not only were he and my grandmother homeless, but the fire also consumed the “milk check,” the sizable payment issued sporadically by the milk company that purchased their milk - and money the family depended on.  The milk company - either “Pet” in Neosho or “Milnot” in Seneca, must have not stepped up and replaced it, because as I heard the story over the years from my grandmother and various other relatives, they regarded losing the milk check as the real tragedy.

Chock and Hazel soon settled in a different shack, an old house on a dirt road about a half-mile from the Westview School - probably two miles from where their old house had been.    The “new” home was the only residence of theirs that I remember.  My parents, who both worked seven days a week at a cafe and gas station that they owned with my mother’s sister and her husband in Goodman, Missouri, would occasionally take my sister and I to Chock and Hazel’s on Sundays and leave us there for the day.

The things I remember about those visits were the chickens and dogs that we would chase around the yard, although I do not remember any large farm animals like cows or horses.  I also remember getting water from a shallow well that was located in the yard right next to the outdoor privy - their only bathroom.  Sometimes my grandmother would make a nice Sunday meal that included fried chicken - homegrown - and delicious white gravy.  

One of our Sunday visits even made its way into the “Neosho Daily News” (on page 4) of the July 18th, 1954 issue.  I would have been six and my little sister, Gail, would have been three-going-on-four.  That snippet was in the “Goodman” news section, and read:

“Rocky and Gale (sic) Macy, small children of Mr and Mrs. Garland Macy, spent Sunday with their grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. C.E. Macy west of Neosho.”

My dad also had something to say about those Sunday visits in the family notes that he left behind:

“I used to take our two children to my folks some on Sunday and leave them for the day - until one time I went after them and my Mother was gone and my Dad was drunk, and the kids were scared to death.  Last trip for them to stay.”

I don’t remember that trauma at all, but I am sure that we were both scared.

Several years later when I was probably in junior high school my mother and I stopped by the house to see Chock for some reason.  I don’t think Hazel was living there at the time.  We found him alone and obviously drunk.  He had killed a chicken and was boiling or stewing it on his wood-fired heating stove in the living room.  Mom tried to take over and get the chicken cooked and served for him, and I remember her being quite upset with the whole situation.

My dad told Tim, my youngest son, that he once met a retired lawman from Neosho, and that when he introduced himself, the lawman said that he had known dad’s dad - Chock.  He said that he would occasionally arrest Chock after he had had too much to drink, and that pleased the prisoner because he really liked the breakfast that they served in jail on the mornings after his arrests!  Dad also told Tim that he doubted if his father ever had a twenty dollar bill in his entire life.

In his hand-written personal account of his history, my father talked about his dad’s cows.  He said that once he (Chock) began drinking, he “drank” the cows one-by-one, and then later when Uncle Wayne bought him some more, he drank those, too.

My own view of Chock was not as severe as my dad’s.  I knew about the drinking and that he led a troubled life, but usually when I was around him he was fine - just an old country guy who liked to chew his tobacco and mess around the farm.  My  Uncle Tommy lived close and kept an eye on him in his declining years.  One time Tommy mentioned how much Chock had enjoyed watching “The Beverly Hillbillies” on television.  (I hadn’t even remembered that he had a television.)  (My father said that when he and his brother Wayne were young, the family had a radio that was powered by a car battery, and that was their in-home entertainment.). The 1930 census, however, which collected information about radios, reported that there was no radio in the Macy household when the census was taken. The one my Dad remembers undoubtedly came after 1930.

I also know that Chock had a telephone for awhile when he was living alone out by the Westview School because I can remember my mother calling Aunt Betty (Dad’s younger sister) from Chock’s house on one special occasion.  Uncle Tommy probably had that phone installed so that he could stay in contact with his family and his salvage business while he was looking after his dad.

 
My Uncle Wayne passed away from leukemia near his home in San Diego, California, in 1956, and my dad apparently sent Chock and Hazel to California on a Greyhound bus to be with Wayne as he passed.  I can remember going to Joplin with my parents and picking them up at the bus station when they returned from that sad trip.

One additional story:  Sometime probably in the early 1960’s  or thereabouts Chock got his picture in the “Neosho Daily News” next to a mountain lion that he had shot on his property.  He had the big cat hanging from a tree.  It made the paper because mountain lions in that area were a rarity - and still are.  Try as I might, I have not been able to find that picture and article, but I do remember seeing it at the time.  The paper referred to him as “C.E. Macy.”  Someday it will resurface!

The last time I saw Chock was in late 1971 or early 1972 just before I went to Okinawa with the Army.  We were in Dad’s pickup and stopped by Chock’s place and picked him up and then the three of us drove around bonding for a few hours - or I am sure that was my dad’s intent. 

I arrived on Okinawa on Ground Hog’s Day, 1972, and sometime that same year as Chock’s health began to fail, Dad moved him into senior citizen’s housing in Noel, away from his friends in the Westview area, and to no one’s surprise, Chock hated his new living arrangements.  Later that year he was moved to a nursing home in Joplin, Missouri, where he passed away in December.  I learned of his death in a letter from my mother.  I was not able to attend the funeral due to being overseas, and did not even learn of his death until after he was in the ground.

My father provided this epitaph, of sorts, for his father, in the family history notes that he left behind. The following two items were taken from two different sections of those notes:

"Dad did his best in the early years, cut our own wood, milked a few cows, had some chickens, rented a little extra ground for hay and corn so as not to have to buy winter feed."

“My dad turned into a drunk the last twenty years of his life.  That was a tragedy for him, his family, and all of his neighbors.  But he was a good and likable man (who) just didn’t have any sense of direction or responsibility.”

Chock passed away on December 27th, 1972.  His obituary ran in the “Neosho Daily News” the next day:

“Charles E. Macy”

“Services for Charles E. Macy, Route 2, who died Wednesday morning, will be held at 2 p.m. Friday at the Clark Chapel of Memories.

“James Hall, minister, will officiate and burial will be in the New Salem Cemetery west of Neosho.

“Friends may call at the funeral home until 2 p.m. Friday at which time the casket will be closed and remain closed.

“The family will be at the home of a daughter, Mrs Betty Lankford, Seneca.
“Pallbearers will be Ben Williams, Jack Donaldson, Bob Smith, Floyd Smith, Ray Lankford, and Max Lankford.”

(Of the pallbearers, Bob SMITH was my brother-in-law, Gail’s husband, but I did not know any of the other five.)

It was a very simple notice that did not even mention his widow, Hazel, who was still living and to whom he was still married, nor his deceased son or his two surviving sons - or any of his grandchildren.  It was, at best, an abrupt ending to a very conflicted life.

The obituary writer could have at least personalized it a little by mentioning that my grandfather liked “The Beverly Hillbillies” - which he did - or that he had shot a mountain lion - or that he appreciated a good breakfast.   Everyone has a few positives in their lives!