'Planting watermelon'

I have a vivid memory as a boy of the time my mother’s father showed me a healed wound in his leg. While he was a decorated veteran of the Second World War, with the Purple Heart (among other medals) to show for it, this scar – deep enough for a child probe with a finger – came from a shooting accident when he was not much older than I. The idea that my grandfather had ever been an unruly boy – his childhood inconceivably remote in the early 1970s – fascinated me, and, anyway, boys love the squeamish and the gross: this evidence of time’s passage, long-healed, formed a Proustian memory, sending me back to a hot summer’s day and a moment’s connection with my beloved grandfather.

Somehow I had a sense that the accident occurred on a similar day, a mishap while out shooting with a friend. The climate of Virginia is different from that of New England, however, and the accident, I now learn, occurred two days after Christmas. My great-grandfather’s journal picks up the story, in J. Frank Bell’s laconic voice:

27 December 1915: Fred[1] shot in leg by neighbor. Sent to hospital.

28 December: Sent pig to Louis for service. No good.

1916

11 January: Fred sent home from hospital.

15 February: Water works frozen up – getting water from Experimental Station. Serving on Corporation Court jury.

25 April: Planting Watermelon and Cantaloupe.

28 April: Planting Rambler rose at base of chimney… Estelle,[2] Mrs. Jackson[3] & Frances[4] went to see the Wendels[5] and spend the night.

2 May: Went to Baltimore to attend the Rotary Club meeting.

But who is Neighbor Bell? – not a relation or, it would seem, a friend:

22 May: Ordered neighbor Bell off farm for burning out trees along ditch bank.

12 June: Fred taught Sunday School class.

14 June: Fred graduated from Grammar School.

19 June: Fred went to Ocean View [today part of Norfolk and Virginia Beach] for overnight hike with the boy scouts.

4 July: Raised US flag on front lawn. Estelle, Frances & Fred took [a party of friends] to Beachwood[6] bathing.

13 July: Fred returned from Wallaceton where he had spent several days with Uncle Ad & Aunt Olive [Wendel].

15 July: Estelle started to wearing glasses.

19 August: Judge White presented Fred with a lamb.

26 August: Fred rode the horse in town and took buggy back with him.

31 August: Took family to Ocean View after fishing[;] had supper at hotel and came home on the 8:15.

The remainder of the year focuses on the farm’s progress, but in November[7] he notes: “Took trip to New York to attend Hotel Exposition.”

Continued here.

Notes

[1] His son Frederick Jackson Bell (1903–1994).

[2] Minnie Estelle Jackson (1876–1935) married J. Frank Bell in 1902.

[3] Mrs. Bell’s mother Rebecca Jane Eggleston (1856–1937) was married to Oliver Dodridge Jackson 1875–1915 and to William E. Waterman in 1924.

[4] Frank and Estelle Bell’s daughter Frances Fairfax Bell (1909–1997).

[5] The Bells’ friends Adam Addison Wendel (1869–1944) and his wife Nancy Olive Durnell (1871–1944), like Estelle Bell natives of Ohio who lived in Wallaceton, Norfolk County.

[6] A section of Virginia Beach.

[7] Entry for 18 November 1916.