There’s an archetype of sorts in the panoply of southern literature, that of the wandering man, dirty and dark. His thoughts a brooding mixture of childhood atrocity and modern masculine struggle. He thrusts himself into situations with ruthless abandon or withers away in silent anger. He doesn’t have a name, or not one that matters. He’s nameless and timeless and wanders in search of a place where he can rest. He’s the perpetual Stranger.
My family has one of these men. Our Stranger was reborn in the summer of his youth.
Granddad Morgan was dead before I even knew I was alive. Almost a year after my birth he passed away from the effects of a stroke at the ripe old age of 69. I grew up thinking of him as just a name, Clyde Francis Morgan. I think there was once a picture of him holding me, but that’s gone.
But that name meant something to our branch. It belonged to my father and still does to my brother. Perhaps they carry a sense of stewardship over it, or maybe it carries too much weight. I don’t know. I never knew him but I’m told he was a merry man, prone to dancing in the kitchen with his wife as their children looked on. He was a salesman, driving a van in his later years out of which he sold merchandise to local stores. He even led the charge of progress by offering frozen food when freezers were a new convenience. I’m told he was an idea man, a dreamer who loved to tell tall tales. Perhaps the most intriguing tale he ever told was about himself.
Clyde Francis Morgan Senior, as he told it, was born in Port Arthur, Texas in 1900. He later moved to New York with his family, including a sister named Annette. His mother’s name was Honorine Moreau and his father, who worked for Standard Oil, was George Henry Morgan. In 1916 he lied about his age and joined the Army where he fought in World War 1. He took shrapnel during a battle and came home.
The story goes his sister – and possibly his mother — die in an auto accident in Asheville, NC. It may be Asheville, NY. And no one is sure if the mother really died in the accident or of a broken heart.
The pain and anguish of the loss caused him to join the merchant marines, over the protests of his Aunt Frances. No Morgan would join the Merchant Marines if she had anything to say about it! But young men are hard to dissuade and off young Clyde sailed, giving up some birthright that remains a mystery. He sailed for many years, visiting ports in exotic locations, even contracting malaria, a fact that would bring his story to where it intersects mine.
But all thrills become passe over time and he returned to New York, ostensibly to attend Columbia School of Journalism while he worked for Standard Oil. Nothing is known about this time in his life. No college stories and or tales about the campus. We only know he spent two years here at university.
In 1933 his malaria flared up, sending him south to find treatment and relief. He headed to Durham, NC where he checked in to Duke Medical Center. During this time, it is told, he walked into a Salvation Army where he met Adele Cahal. By May of 1934 they were married. Over the next few years they had a family and eventually moved to Henderson, NC, a town of cotton mills and tobacco farmers. There they raised six children and stayed happily married until his death in 1969.
My story is connected by the birth of my father, Clyde Francis Morgan, Jr. His father, Clyde Senior, figured prominently in my father’s eyes, but as a shadow man. His children revered and missed him, a mythical figure or mirth and mystery. Secretly I wonder what my father really thought of the man. My father struggled with the man he thought his father should have been. They all did. But the family accepted Clyde Senior’s take on life, even if they didn’t always understand it.
He never talked about his own family. He mentioned an aunt and his deceased sister, but not much more. Legend has it he once wrote to them in New York, but his letters were returned. Sadly and inconveniently those letters are gone as is everything else for that matter. Not a scrap of something belonging to him is left. My mother claims to have seen papers with Standard Oil on them. She remembers Grandad telling her the aunt’s name was Frances Annette and the sister died in Asheville, N.C. Other members say the sister’s name was Annette, not the Aunt. But all agree he was disowned and never spoke of his times as a child. He might as well have had another life.
The longer my family swapped stories about the man the more fascinating he became. What could his secret have been? Did it contain a body, or money, or scandal?
We’re not saying the following is what actually happened. But we may have discovered that if you change the last name we discover a very compelling story.