Notes for Fred Shepard

GAYLE AND MARTY GALBRAITH GENEALOGY

Notes for Fred Shepard

Fred Shepard, Anna Shepard's brother lived in a one-room log cabin in the pasture behind Oscar and Ann's farm on Akin Road. He had suffered from cancer of the nose in his youth and had his nose amputated flush with his face. He wore an oval shaped plug of cotton in the gap to filter the air he breathed and for cosmetic purposes, I guess. From my earliest childhood, he was always my cotton-nosed Uncle Fred. Since I grew up with him, he didn't seem at all unusual to me, and I was very fond of him. Every day he would walk the 1/4 mile into the city limits, and another 1/4 mile to the Thompsonville downtown area. Every evening he would come to sit on Grandmas front porch and chew tobacco, while we talked. Every once in a while, he would spit over the porch rail into the front yard. If he forgot and did it while Grandma was present, she would scold him gently, and he would complain, "Aw, Ann, I almost never hit the rail".

Sometimes I would visit his cabin, and we would sit in the light from the open door. He would reach into the dim recesses of the rafters and pull out a bag of whorehound candy to give me a stick. That's the only kind of candy he ever had, but I loved it, because it came from him. We would sit in the dim light from the doorway and he would tell me tales from his youth. He was an outdoorsman, and traveled all over the country in those days . His stories of fishing and hunting, and floods, and tornados, were exciting to me and probably more or less as truthful as a story-teller is able to be with a good story.

After Oscar and Ann moved into town, He moved into a small barn at the back of their lot and converted it into a home. I was in my teens, then and could only be at Grandpas during summer vacation. I would visit Uncle Fred in his one-room barn home and sit in a rocker and talk with him, or just sit together without any talk. He had long since told me all his stories, but I still liked to visit him for a while each day out of affection and respect for who he was.

BG Galbraith