48 – Troublemaker

During the Great Depression my uncle Harry lived with his parents and extended family which included two siblings, two cousins and aunt, and his grandparents in Fond du Lac (see the blog "38 – Adversity"). Earlier, they had all lived at the Fond du Lac Insane Asylum when his grandparents ran that health care facility. Here is a 4-generation photo of the four boy cousins, their mothers Dorothy and Marie, grandmother Ida Baker Kenyon, and great-grandmother Otillie Baker:

Don and Russell left with their mother Dorothy, Lawrence and Harry right with Marie

When Harry was 13, he wrote a short autobiography for a school paper in which he says "I am considered somewhat of a Public Enemy No. 1 by my relatives and so my word against any of my angelic cousins or my brother or sister is like a microbe's ghost fighting an elephant – I just haven't a chance." 

Harry, right, age 13, with brother Lawrence and sister Pat with dog Trixie

But an essay Harry wrote two years later paints a darker portrait of his younger cousin Russell, and Russell's fraught relationship with his mother Dorothy. Dated May 28, 1937 and titled "Calling Russell" here it is:

Speaking of child problems and the Great American Tragedy, have I ever told you about my little cousin Russell? No? Well, Russell, who's a puny, sickly child of thirteen years, is a typical spoiled child of a typical downtrodden, suffering, widowed mother. Here's how he's called to bed by his mother:

Tonight Russell has bicycled nonchalantly home with one of his cronies at 10:11. He is greeted by his mother as he enters the driveway: 

"Russell dear, you come to bed now."

"Yeah," Russell answers his mother, who, incidentally, is leaning far out of her bedroom window with an anxious look. 

When fourteen minutes later at 10:25 Russell is still conversing with his crony, his mother again entreats: 

"Russell – ?"

"Yeah!"

"You come to bed right now!"

When the next plea comes seven minutes later at 10:32, it is not any change of heart in Russell, but a compassionate weakness in his less-hardened companion, whose conscience drives him off, that forces Russell to obey. It is five minutes later, at 10:37, that Russell enters the house (the time spent teasing the dog).

Tonight Russell goes immediately to his bedroom. For some unknown reason in his pagan heart he forbears from spending anywhere from fifteen to forty-five minutes in hot argument with his other relatives in the downstairs (strange are the ways of Youth, but stranger are the ways of Russell).

So it is at 10:37 that Russell blithely enters his mother's bedroom, which he shares with her. It is three minutes later, at 10:40, that there come forth from the bedroom sounds of angry quarreling and the laying on of hands. Russell, who has found time to change to his pajamas with one hand, while fending off ineffectual but nevertheless discomfiting blows with the other, stalks from the bedroom, swearing like the little trooper that he is, at 10:42.

There is no need to tell you about the many things Russell finds to absorb his time until 11:42, when he deems it safe to enter his bedroom, where his dear mother has gone to sleep with the light on, waiting for him. Now, if this were an exaggeration I am telling you, just to amuse you, I should say that Russell says his prayers, turns out the light and goes to sleep. But, it being true, I shall only say that Russell turns out the light and goes to sleep.

P.S. (Personally, tho, I like the way Russell's grandmother calls him. She shouts: "Get in here now, you little snip, or I'll come out and you'll come in here in a hurry!" Thereupon Russell meekly enters and retires.)

The close of Harry's essay about his younger cousin

Two years later at 17 Harry entered the University of Wisconsin as a freshman, and a year later he was on his way to West Point. I know him only from these early writing assignments and the weekly letters he wrote home from college, West Point, and his military service. 

Russell was a bit of an enigma for me. According to his obituary he served in the Army Air Corps in the South Pacific in WWII, then owned and operated Kenyon Jewelers in Oshkosh, was "an early participant in Experimental Aircraft Association activities," married but had no children. I only remember meeting him once when I was a child, at his jewelry shop – he didn't seem to be very interested in family ties. Russell Austin Kenyon was born 7 December 1923; on 7 March 1997 he passed away at the age of 73, in Florida.

Russell, about 5, with his mother Dorothy and older brother Donald

Russell with cousin Pat

Russell, a bit older...