Old Levi Ponder lived to be one hundred and two. So when I call him "old" I don't jist mean that he was dear to us, but that he was jist that- old. His wife, Vlurma, was ninety-two when he died. They had been married seventy three years. They lived on a little place they worked south of Thackerville jist west of the White Rose schoolhouse. They never had no children neither, which led some of the folks to wonder why.
Part of the answer, and maybe all of it may have been revealed in old Levi's last illness. I was standing there in the bedroom when this young doctor says, "Vlurma, Did you know that Levi had this horrible hernia?" As he asked this, he held his hands about a foot apart, and all of us was afraid he might throw back the bed covers so that we could see the real thang. "Yes," Vlurma replied with her customary shyness. "How long has he had this thing?" the doctor pressed. "Jist after we married. He was pulling stumps in the north field when it came. It jist kindly got worse and worse over the years." "Well, why didn't he get it fixed?" said the young feller. "Levi never took much stock in doctors," says Vlurma. "Besides," she added, in what was for her an unusual commentary, "one of the things I was able to do for Levi through the years was to help him fold that thing ever' morning into his underwear." You could tell that she thought of this as an act of wifely affection, and I was kinda moved by it.
Well, after Levi died, Vlurma stayed on the little place in that little house of theirs for a year or eighteen months, but ever'body knew she was in bad health and couldn't take care of herself rightly, so some of us who was close to her (she is distantly kin to me) persuaded her to go into a nursing home down in Gainesville. It nearly killed her to do it, but she was kindly lost after old Levi died, so she resigned herself to go.
I used to go down and see her about ever' week, beings as how I was partly responsible for her being in that place. I purely hate them places and hope I die before I have to go to one myself, so I guess out of loving her and feeling guilty about putting her in there, I tried to go see her ever' week. It ain't too long a drive from Bomar down there anyhow.
Well, ever' time I went, there Vlurma would be settin' in this rocking chair and lookin' out the window. Always the same. She was always glad to see me and we would visit, and talk about news in the community, and the weather, and old times, and such like. Sometimes I would roll her around the place in a wheelchair.
One day, as I was rolling her down the halls, I says to her, "Vlurma, they's singin' in the big room today. Would you like to go hear the singin'?"
"Levi never took much stock in singin'" she replied in her quiet way.
After a while, I tried again. "Vlurma, would you like to git a book out of the library? They's lots of nice books in there."
Quietly, she says, "Levi never took much stock in reading."
In the silence that followed, I took another stab.
"Vlurma, honey, would you like to go watch the television in the television room?"
"No, thank you, E. D.," she says, polite as can be, "Levi never took no stock in television."
Well, I was getting kindly flustered by then and I says,
"Well, Vlurma, what did Levi like?"
In a big voice that I had never heard her use in all the years I had known her she said
"Levi liked to work!"
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