Uncle Frand, A Good Quiet Man - Nez

 Uncle Frank, A Good Quiet Man

By Nez Nesmith

Having recently retired at 65 from Northern State Hospital, Mom’s Uncle Frank, a man of action but few words, who quickly became bored doing nothing decided he needed something to keep himself busy. He didn’t have a wife or kids, or a dog and boredom was driving him crazy. Having had many different jobs throughout his life he had the skills to do just about anything. So, Uncle Frank bought a used car, a three year old 1952 Crosley wagon. (The Crosley was an American made little subcompact vehicle. It was very small. It was so ugly it was almost cute.) Uncle Frank’s Crosley was green and white. The day he bought it he drove it to Lyman to show us. Since we didn’t own a car we didn’t dare make fun of his new one, at least not to his face. 

Asked what he wanted with that little car he said he was going to use it in his new business. What? In that clown car? Being retired he needed something to do, so he was going to be a traveling sharpener, a cutler. A what? He was going to sharpen anything and everything that needed sharpening, scissors, knives, axes, saws, scythes, lawn mowers, any kind of cutting tool. He must be crazy we thought. That’s not a business.

But that’s what he did. He put his business name, Frank’s Sharpening, and phone number on the sides of his Crosley. He had advertising leaflets made and distributed them throughout the county. He put leaflets in taverns, stores, repair shops, tailor shops, mills, union halls, churches, in barbershops and beauty shops. He put them on bulletin boards. Soon he began getting calls and started a route for his appointments. He loaded the necessary equipment and tools for sharpening most anything in the back of that Crosley wagon and hit the road. 

There weren’t many commercial calls however, and it soon became obvious that the majority of his business would be from housewives wanting knives and scissors sharpened. (Apparently most men sharpened their own tools.) But calls for appointments came in so haphazardly it was nearly impossible to establish a route. Uncle Frank was jumping all over the county from one job to the next and wasn’t making any money at his new business. He realized his new enterprise had some issues. Obvious solutions weren’t very plentiful or really helpful to his troubles. One problem was that most days he wasn’t home to answer calls coming in for appointments. He was out on a job. Also, he wasn’t getting the repeat business he thought he would. Oh, he could hire an answering service to take messages, but that was expensive. And he needed referrals because it turned out that once knives and scissors were sharp most didn’t need to be sharpened again for a couple of years. The same went for saws and lawnmower blades. 

He decided to create his route without appointments and went to a different town each day. He made calls at homes and businesses that had not previously used him. This worked much better than working strictly from appointments. Soon he added repairing pots and pans to his little enterprise. Thus, he became both a cutler and a tinker. And there wasn’t another cutler or tinker in the county. Before long his business was doing fairly well, plus his referrals were improving. Uncle Frank made a living at his little enterprise for a several years until he met and fell in love with a widow named Grace. Lovely Grace, it turned out, wanted a good husband, and Frank was her choice, but not if he was a traveling cutler and tinker. He was getting older and in her opinion it wasn’t dignified work. He was too good for that. 

So, Uncle Frank obligingly closed down his sharpening business, sold the Crosley, retired again and happily married Grace in 1963. Unfortunately, Grace just up and died in less than one year leaving Uncle Frank heart-broken. Months later he became stir-crazy again but decided against going back into the sharpening business. So, he went fishing instead. 

Epilogue: Christmas Day 1967. Uncle Frank, this good quiet man who had helped Pershing chase after Pancho Villa, while at the family Christmas dinner table took a few bites, sat back, crossed his arms, quietly sighed and died, without a word. He was 77. 

Nez Nesmith 

December 2023