my cousin bill minor (william faulkner minor, no relation to the novelist) of ivy, virginia, died on the 13th of august, 2009. he was 84. i wrote the following for his memorial.
Bill’s wide knowledge and love of nature, his activism, and his ability to write so interestingly about it, had an important influence on me. He was a wonderful writer in several genres. In the last years of his life he wrote some entertaining personal memoirs that evoke the outdoor-loving boy whose interests would grow and sustain him. they also remind us of life in an earlier time.
About sledding one winter in Cannel City, Kentucky, where he lived as a boy: “On that day the snow was unusually deep and light, and Merle Watson and I belly-flopped on our Flexible Fliers high up in the ridge and came zooming down through clouds of crystalline powder. Something—the angle of the light, the dryness of the snow, perhaps our age—made it unforgettable.”
“Early in the fall, wood, split and ready for burning, was piled on our back porch in two rows… By the time I was eight to ten years old I could identify the woods of white oak, red oak, hickory, ash, black gum, sassafrass and chestnut by sight and a few, like sassafrass, by odor.” He goes on to say that he had “a great deal of fun” when his father taught him how to split wood, as what was a chore for other boys was a joy for him.
In a longer piece on his Aunt Mary and Uncle Rob Cole’s house at 1108 Park Street in Charlottesville, he recalled the entrance hall: “To the right hung a large moose head over a coat rack, with and old Civil War vintage pistol hanging from one of the pegs. Underneath it was a double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun…The most interesting place in the house to me in my pre-teen years was probably the bookcase in the back hall, which was filled with old National Geographic magazines. I pored over them so many times that I still remember the titles of many articles. They were crammed with articles on birds, insects, and other areas of natural history, in which I was very interested.”
These were among the chores he was given: helping to clean the house, weeding the flower garden, doing the grocery shopping at the downtown safeway, taking checks to the bank, mowing the lawn, snapping beans, peeling and canning okra, tomatoes, and peaches, making sausage and cider. and the important job of putting out the card to show the iceman how many blocks to leave. he caught black widow spiders for biology class, hit an endless number of golf balls, shot squirrels with a .22, held down a calf in the back of Cousin Robbie’s station wagon, and snuck in late at night by climbing up on the roof of the bay window and into his second floor bedroom. aunt mary didn't allow liquor in her house, but "occasionally there was a fair amount inside George, Robbie, and me."
In the ‘70s Bill wrote a nature column for the Syracuse Eagle-Bulletin under the pen name of ‘Senex.’ He chose to remain anonymous, he said, because he didn’t want “some damn woman coming up to me on the street and telling me I had it all wrong.” (It seems very unlikely to me that he would ever have gotten anything wrong, for he was a scientist with a broad knowledge of many fields).
Senex wrote about a wide range of topics: hawks, owls, salamanders, goldenrod, what you could see at the moment in your back yard, and environmental issues, like the dangers of invasives such as loosestrife. His articles were told from a personal but not pretentious or preachy point of view, full of information, enriched with photographs, sketches he’d made, or details from works of art. He often added poems and other literary references—I recall something from Shakespeare, and maybe John Updike. This would be relatively easy now with information on the internet so easily accessible, but Senex was writing well before he had computers at home. He enjoyed writing and no doubt the readers of the paper were fortunate to have his columns as a resource.
Over the last couple of years I worked with Bill in transcribing the surviving diaries of his Aunt Sallie, who raised him from childhood after his mother died. I’ll miss his cigarette-infused gruff voice on the phone: “Julia! Bill Minor here. I’ve found out one more thing to explain where Aunt Sallie must have forded the Rivanna…”
I too am writing down some of my memories of growing up in Charlottesville a decade or so after Bill, and I am active as a volunteer for various environmental groups in Michigan. I write a blog—Senex would have been a natural blogger, I think—often including what I’m learning about nature. All this is to the good, and I am thankful for Bill as a source of wisdom and inspiration, proud that he was my cousin (even if I can’t say how we’re related without looking way back on the excruciatingly complex Minor family tree), admiring of the way he yelled back at George W. Bush on television, and always grateful for the warm hospitality with which he and Maureen welcomed me into their home.
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