Singleton recounts important letter from Fonderoy Fishue to his Cousin Jake regarding marital weight loss

George Buster Singleton

(For decades, local historian and paranormal investigator George “Buster” Singleton published a weekly newspaper column called “Somewhere in Time.” The column below, which was titled “Husband asks for help for weight-watching wife” was originally published in the April 13, 1989 edition of The Monroe Journal in Monroeville, Ala.)

This is a copy of a letter written by a fellow I know to his city cousin. He is wanting information about what city women do to lose weight. It seems that with his wife trying to lose those unwanted pounds, it has created a problem around the farm. The letter goes something like this:

Dear Cousin Jake,

I take pen in hand with much trouble on my mind. Things are not going well here on the farm in the north end of the county. I am in great need of some information that I hope will patch up a bit of trouble between me and my wife, Augusta Jill.

You remember Augusta Jill? She is the one who eats so much at the family reunions.

You probably remember me saying something about me having to put a couple of wooden blocks under our bed so as to give it some additional support. Our bed got so one-sided that I almost couldn’t stay on my side when I went to bed. It felt like I was sleeping on the side of a steep hill. I mentioned something about it to Augusta Jill, and she got awful mad. She said that it seemed that I didn’t care about her anymore. She went on to say that I didn’t like her because she had gotten fat.

I don’t see how she figures that made any difference. She weighed 240 pounds when we got married. She insisted that I carry her over the door facing. I don’t recall the proper name for that blasted thing. All I know is that I’m still having back trouble from trying to pick up that big woman. And I don’t believe she ever will get over me stumbling when I had to turn so that she would go through the door.

To this day, she don’t believe that when I turned sideways to go through the door, my suspenders came loose and my britches dropped down over my shoes. I told her that was what made me trip and fall. But them britches didn’t cause me to fall. That woman was heavy, and I mean heavy.

I really didn’t mean to get carried away about our wedding day. The reason I’m writing you is that I want you to go to Sears Roebuck and try to find something that Augusta Jill can use to take exercise on. Ole Blue got ahold of the new catalog, and you can’t make hair nor hide out of anything in it.

I trust that you will take of this matter just as soon as you can. Augusta Jill was trying to pull herself up on a rafter in the smokehouse – you know, what they call “chin-ups.” It’s gonna take me two weeks to put another top on the smokehouse.

You won’t believe this, but that big woman pulled the whole top in on top of her. I liked to have never got her our of that mess. That big woman was skinned all over.

After she got over her mad spell about the smokehouse top falling, she tried to jump the rope. You know, she completely ruined one of my best plow lines. (I’m keeping one for an extra. Knowing her, she is sure to break that one she is using for a jump rope.)

I slip around and watch her. I don’t dare let her see me laugh. She is about as graceful as a big hog on a slick floor when she takes her exercise. That exercise book that she wrote off for is going to get her in a lot of trouble if she’s not careful.

There’s a picture in that book where a woman is laying down with her feet and legs sticking up against the wall. (She won’t let me see that book. I have to slip and look at it when she is hanging out clothes or out in the garden gathering something for dinner. Then I slip the book out from between the mattresses and go through it real quick.)

I don’t know what this exercise is supposed to be good for. What I do know is that Augusta Jill was trying that, and she got her feet tangled up in the chains that hold the weights on that old cuckoo-cuckoo clock. When that clock fell off the wall and hit Augusta Jill on her nose, she talked something awful.

You won’t believe how she tore up that cuckoo-cuckoo clock, trying to get her feet out of them chains. It’s a mess. I don’t think there’s a man in the world who can fix that clock. I put what’s left of it in a show box and carried it to the barn. She’s still crabby about that gash on her nose.

I didn’t tell her, but I hated it about that cuckoo-cuckoo clock. That clock was handed down through the family. That clock belonged to my great-grandma. I’ll be anyone that it was nearly a hundred years old. The clock would still run, but the cuckoo-cuckoo bird had lost its voice. It would just jump out and not say nothing. I guess after a hundred years, it’s time to lose your voice.

I sure go hope that you can get something that will give me some relief and will help Augusta Jill in her exercise program. If we don’t get some relief soon, she is gonna put me out of the farming business. Me and Ole Blue have just about starved to death.

Augusta Jill is also on one of them slimming diets. She don’t cook much anymore. I don’t understand it. Me and Ole Blue have lost more weight than Augusta Jill.

I had better stop now. I see Augusta Jill coming out on the front porch for her morning exercise. Expecting to hear from you real soon.

Your cousin in need,
Fonderoy Fishue

P.S. Before I could seal up your letter, Augusta Jill had a kind of accident while she was doing her exercise. It looks like that you need not be in any hurry with going to Sears Roebuck.

You remember that old cannonball that I found down there near old Fort Claiborne? That darn cannonball weighs about 40 pounds. That crazy woman was trying to balance that heavy cannonball on her two feet while holding them straight up in the air. She was lying on the front porch with her feet up in the air when that cannonball slipped and hit her right in the middle of the stomach.

What was so bad about the whole thing was, that cannonball rolled down her stomach and hit the porch floor. While Augusta Jill was screaming and yelling, that cannonball rolled off the porch and hit Ole Blue right on the tail (he was lying in the shade by the steps). It must have hurt him pretty bad or scared the daylights out of him, with Augusta Jill hollering and yelling like she did, the last time I saw Ole Blue, he was crossing that big field on the north side of the house. You remember that big field?

Augusta Jill said that if she hadn’t been fat that cannonball might have bruised her kidneys. She said that her fat stomach kind of cushioned the blow when the cannonball slipped off her feet. She had decided that being fat ain’t so bad after all.

Tell you the truth, I was kind of hating to see her get slip, loosing all that plumpness and all.

(Singleton, the author of the 1991 book “Of Foxfire and Phantom Soldiers,” passed away at the age of 79 on July 19, 2007. A longtime resident of Monroeville, he was born to Vincent William Singleton and Frances Cornelia Faile Singleton, during a late-night thunderstorm, on Dec. 14, 1927 in Marengo County, graduated from Sweet Water High School in 1946, served as a U.S. Marine paratrooper in the Korean War, worked as a riverboat deckhand, lived for a time among Apache Indians, moved to Monroe County on June 28, 1964 and served as the administrator of the Monroeville National Guard unit from June 28, 1964 to Dec. 14, 1987. He was promoted from the enlisted ranks to warrant officer in May 1972. For years, Singleton’s columns, titled “Monroe County history – Did you know?” and “Somewhere in Time” appeared in The Monroe Journal, and he wrote a lengthy series of articles about Monroe County that appeared in Alabama Life magazine. It’s believed that his first column appeared in the March 25, 1971 edition of The Monroe Journal. He also helped organize the Monroe County Museum and Historical Society and was also a past president of that organization. He is buried in Pineville Cemetery in Monroeville. The column above and all of Singleton’s other columns are available to the public through the microfilm records at the Monroe County Public Library in Monroeville. Singleton’s columns are presented here each week for research and scholarship purposes and as part of an effort to keep his work and memory alive.)