Mr. & Mrs. Tannerley

Growing up, our family used a lot of firewood. The heat derived from the basement woodstove would comfortably warm the basement level for the most part. Some heat would flow up the basement stairs into the main floor, but not much. We burned a great deal of firewood but it seemed, perhaps more out of habit than actual heat value produced. My parents never had to purchase firewood that I recall. My brothers and I would access all the old timber we wanted from the hundreds of acres our family home backed up to. We’d produce the firewood our family used. It was always fun driving, or riding on, Dad’s John Deere tractor. We’d drive it around and collect the processed timber from those old, dead, hardwood trees. I can still hear the creaking of the tractor as we drove up the steep hill to the house.

As I had mentioned before in a prior story, our neighborhood had a lot of fireplaces. I don’t know of one home that did not. Many homes had two or three fireplaces. Many neighbors were at least steady users of firewood as I recall. From fall through winter, the occasional smoky haze could be had as we road our bikes through the streets. We thought nothing of it, and we all enjoyed it. That smoky smell came every year with the cooler and then the colder weather, just as sure as the turning leaves and then the snow did.

One of our neighbors on another street nearby also enjoyed regular firewood use. Mr. & Mrs. Tannerley (not their real names) had three chimneys, if I recall. It was not uncommon to see and smell two chimneys in action. Their large, long, frame colonial home was white in color then. I believe it had red shutters back in those days. Looking at the home, the large wing on the left side housed the widowed mother of Mrs. Tannerley. Then came the primary home itself in the middle. A matching wing off to the right housed the attached two-car garage, the vehicles would access it from the rear.

The Tannerley’s had a double-lot, looking at their home from the sidewalk, the excess lot was to the right. As I recall it, Mr. Tannerley was a vegetable garden enthusiast. He must have grown a few plants each of tomatoes, green peppers, cucumbers, corn, and more. He probably had some herbs and other things growing as well, I can’t be sure. If memory serves me, he liked tending to a few ornamental trees as well. A Japanese maple tree or two, a few dogwoods, and a few fruit trees at the rear. He had a large magnolia tree or two as well. Finally, he had a few holly trees. While some of these trees might have be native to his property, most he probably planted himself.

The Tannerley’s enjoyed firewood usage as well as noted above. Mr. Tannerley would stack his in rows perpendicular to the house, but down his sloped rear lawn. In this arrangement, the rows probably stood more steady, vs. the potential for them falling over if placed the other way. He always seemed to have a nice quantity at hand, no matter the time of year. For him to have a couple of cords or so on hand at any given time, would not have been unusual. He never seemed to run out of timber. And with two and sometimes three fireplaces underway on the cold days, he needed that large supply. Mr. and Mrs. Tannerley had a son, as best I recall he was their only child. He was a young adult when I was a child, so he was kind of out of his parents home by then.

One of my brothers had several lawn jobs in the neighborhood when we were kids or young teens. Mr. Tannerley knew we all worked hard and that we could be relied upon. My brother invited me to assist him on some jobs at their home. I was probably spreading mulch, or raking the leaves, etc. as a helper for my brother. Mr. Tannerley was a nice man for the most part. He had a very pale shade of “bossiness” to him, just a little bit.

He’d say stuff like “you can spread the mulch over to this point, ‘ya hear?” Or he might say, “if you get thirsty, knock on the garage door, and Mrs. Tannerley will bring you a cold Coke, ‘ya hear?” But the “period” to every statement was always ‘ya hear? Yes, we heard everything that he said, and we always worked hard. I don’t know if “this statement habit” came from his own father or his own grandfather, but for some reason he liked to have his sentences wrap up with ‘ya hear?” Looking back as an adult, I suppose it was simply his “supervisory statement” he put on whatever instruction he was offering.

I don’t know what Mr. Tannerley did for a living. He was successful, this was apparent. Maybe he was a CPA, or an engineer, perhaps he was a business owner, etc. Perhaps he was an attorney. If he was an attorney, that favorite saying of his ‘ya hear? had to come in very handy. It was so authoritative, with a modest touch of “I trust myself, more than I trust you.” What would he say to others if he was an attorney? “I need you to sign this, ‘ya hear?” Or perhaps he’d tell his clients “when we go to court next week, never speak unless spoken to, ‘ya hear?” Maybe he’d take his lunch at a nearby diner and say to the waitress, “I’d like to have the club sandwich and an iced tea, ‘ya hear?”

The years passed on, we all grew older, and new adventures presented themselves as they always do. I was in college or thereabouts when someone told me the shocking news about Mr. and Mrs. Tannerley. First, I will back up a few years. Mr. and Mrs. Tannerley, after many years of marriage, had apparently grown apart. Its unclear what the final straw was, but she had apparently left him. She had left their home and moved into a condo or something across town. Mr. Tannerley, judging by the news that I heard, perhaps still wanted to restore and rebuild his marriage. I wondered to myself, why did she move out? Did he say ‘ya hear? to her, one time too many? I know that sounds silly of me to think, but as a college guy back then, we would often think comical stuff like that.

Mr. Tannerley had apparently become very upset, perhaps despondent, about his marital state. He would reportedly visit Mrs. Tannerley now and again. Or they’d meet for lunch or something, but it was not in the usual marital way anymore, apparently. I was told that Mr. Tannerley went to visit her one day at her condo for the last time. Its not known if the visit was agreed upon, or if he had simply showed up unannounced. Its not known if Mrs. Tannerley had a new love interest in her life or not, or if she had just handed him the definitive news that it was over for good. On this last visit, Mr. Tannerley reportedly produced a handgun at the doorway. After a few moments, she went down, then he reportedly turned the handgun on himself. I was so shocked upon this news that I was speechless. “Mr. Tannerley?” I thought to myself. The guy with the large vegetable garden and that big double lot? The one that had graciously allowed his elderly, widowed, Mother-in-Law to move into his home? The same guy who would sometimes hire my brother and I to help maintain his lawn? What had happened?

A while after the shock and horror wore off, the Tannerley’s adult son moved back into the family home. I’d heard he was either engaged or newly-married, I forget which. The son and his wife apparently lived there for a fairly short while. I suppose they were looking after the emptying of the home, selling off the cars, and the wind-down of the estate. The house was then sold, and the extra lot was sold off as well. A builder picked up the spare lot, and built a nice two-story colonial home on it, which was then sold to a family. Carefully saved on the spare lot was a prominent, well-proportioned, oak tree. This old oak tree was likely well over a century old, and it stood not far from where the Tannerley’s productive vegetable garden would appear, season after season. Lost in this story is what happened to Mrs. Tannerley’s mother, who had lived with them in that wing to the left. I suppose she must have passed away well prior to the tragic end of her daughter and estranged son—in-law.

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