DIY History | Transcribe | Hevelin Fanzines | Orb, v. 2, issue 1, 1950

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Orb, v. 2, issue 1, 1950

Page 7

minded me of a juggernaut: relentless, inexorable. She frightened me a little.
Of me, she was as contemptuous as Culpepper good breeding would permit. You see, I offered no prospect for the kind of marriage Flora Mae must make; not ruled out on age, you understand, for I was only about ten years her senior, nor on appearance, for she was kind enough to remark upon occasion that I was the handsomest man in Laurel (saying it with a kind of cool calculation, as if she were judging a gaited saddle horse); no, my disability was that I lacked totally the qualifications for alliance with a Culpepper. Mine was a humble background-hill people from South Carolina who migrated to Mississippi when their barren land gave out; I had felled timber and scrubbed floors getting trough medical school; my prospects were not good, as simple practitioner who would remain in Laurel so long as there was a tonsil left unextracted or a baby left unborn.
Addison Culpepper had not lost his dream of a fortune to be somehow extracted from the soil of Mississippi. In a quiet way--a secret to all but his partners in the venture and to the president of the bank--he invested heavily in a plan to grow tung trees, to supply a rich source of the oil clamored for by industry, and presently imported from China. The details of his gamble came out only after it failed, all but wiping out his modest estate and causing his death. Repeated attacks of asthma had weakened his heart, which was unable to withstand the smashing blow of financial debacle.
His death left Flora Mae in possession of the big house and a small income through an inheritance from her grandmother. If I had thought tragedy would break through her cool reserve, I was mistaken. She accepted the help of her father's friends with a carefully measured appreciation; I watched carefully at her father's funeral for the signs of a breakdown--there was none. I do not mean that she did not mourn her father, only that she mourned him in the manner she had been taught as a Culpepper: never to display unseemly emotion in public.
The size of her father's estate and the inheritance from her grandmother were just enough to provide a trap for Flora Mae. There was not enough to permit her return to Virginia to live among her kin; there she would have had the status of a poor relation. Pride wouldn't permit that. There was just enough, with the house and a monthly allowance, to keep her in Laurel.
And there she lived, aloof from most of the town, for ten years until she met Carl Erickson, contractor and builder. In the ordinary course of affairs, how would these two ever have met? Erickson was part of a minor tide of Northerners--men who did things with their hands--who swept into the South after the World War. They followed those few industries which had discovered the cheap, unspoiled labor supply. Erickson had built the Hercules Powder plant in Laurel and anticipating more and bigger building, remained in the town.
Flora Mae was chairman of the building for St. Andrews Church. They met when Erickson took the contract to shore up the crumbling steeple of St. Andrews; no one knows how this most unpromising match began, between two people worlds apart in almost everything.
Flora Mae refused to leave the big house on Davis Avenue, so when

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minded me of a juggernaut: relentless, inexorable. She frightened me a little. Of me, she was as contemptuous as Culpepper good breeding would permit. You see, I offered no prospect for the kind of marriage Flora Mae must make; not ruled out on age, you understand, for I was only about ten years her senior, nor on appearance, for she was kind enough to remark upon occasion that I was the handsomest man in Laurel (saying it with a kind of cool calculation, as if she were judging a gaited saddle horse); no, my disability was that I lacked totally the qualifications for alliance with a Culpepper. Mine was a humble background-hill people from South Carolina who migrated to Mississippi when their barren land gave out; I had felled timber and scrubbed floors getting trough medical school; my prospects were not good, as simple practitioner who would remain in Laurel so long as there was a tonsil left unextracted or a baby left unborn. Addison Culpepper had not lost his dream of a fortune to be somehow extracted from the soil of Mississippi. In a quiet way--a secret to all but his partners in the venture and to the president of the bank--he invested heavily in a plan to grow tung trees, to supply a rich source of the oil clamored for by industry, and presently imported from China. The details of his gamble came out only after it failed, all but wiping out his modest estate and causing his death. Repeated attacks of asthma had weakened his heart, which was unable to withstand the smashing blow of financial debacle. His death left Flora Mae in possession of the big house and a small income through an inheritance from her grandmother. If I had thought tragedy would break through her cool reserve, I was mistaken. She accepted the help of her father's friends with a carefully measured appreciation; I watched carefully at her father's funeral for the signs of a breakdown--there was none. I do not mean that she did not mourn her father, only that she mourned him in the manner she had been taught as a Culpepper: never to display unseemly emotion in public. The size of her father's estate and the inheritance from her grandmother were just enough to provide a trap for Flora Mae. There was not enough to permit her return to Virginia to live among her kin; there she would have had the status of a poor relation. Pride wouldn't permit that. There was just enough, with the house and a monthly allowance, to keep her in Laurel. And there she lived, aloof from most of the town, for ten years until she met Carl Erickson, contractor and builder. In the ordinary course of affairs, how would these two ever have met? Erickson was part of a minor tide of Northerners--men who did things with their hands--who swept into the South after the World War. They followed those few industries which had discovered the cheap, unspoiled labor supply. Erickson had built the Hercules Powder plant in Laurel and anticipating more and bigger building, remained in the town. Flora Mae was chairman of the building for St. Andrews Church. They met when Erickson took the contract to shore up the crumbling steeple of St. Andrews; no one knows how this most unpromising match began, between two people worlds apart in almost everything. Flora Mae refused to leave the big house on Davis Avenue, so when