BROTHERS
They lived not too far from where I do now.
The house they were born in has long since given way to one of those combination Fuel Centers for Men and Motors. Fast food for slow people, gas for both cars and persons, rest rooms between - all under one roof.
Melvin, the oldest of the two Clayhill brothers, was small-boned, skinny as a kid, and he always seemed to have an inquiring sort of nervous anticipation in his attitude as if he sensed that something important was going to take place at any moment. Timothy, his younger brother, was a chubby kid from the day he was born. He was always taller than Melvin, and from eighteen on he always semed to have a belly on him that was just about ready to fall over his belt but never did. He was friendlier than Melvin, folks said and more like their mother - a Lester girl from down Tuckahoe way in Eastern Virginia.Their dad, Brutus , was Valley stock. His was the only "Brutus" I have ever knew.
Brutus Clayhill had been a carpenter, and good one, and for that reason his boys were automically to be capenters as well. That was the way careers where chosen in those days. Whatever the father did, his sons were were predestined to do the same thing - only better. Melvin and Tim were doubly dubbed because their Granddaddy was said to have been a carpenter of sorts, himself. Some of the work Brutus Clayhill did is still around and people who know such things tell me it shows an extremely competent hand was at work. His sons, however, not exactly carpenters by choice, skipped a generation to be like their granddaddy in that repect.
My own grandfather would have called them "wood butchers”, but that would have been grossly unfair because they did what could be called “rough work”, but they did it well. If anyone needed a new hog pen, a horse stall, feed racks, or an additon to the barn - something useful; and practical - they called the Clayhill brothers.
You always got both of them. They grew apart as they became adults.They each helped build the other a house at least a mile apart; they each married girls from other areas, and lived oddly different lives apart from each other. Yet, they always worked as a team. They worked with each other, or not at all. They came to be commonly understood by farmers in the area, even some folks in nearby towns, who made use of their services.
I realize I have never said a word to you before about the Clayhill Brothers, but not too long ago, someone suggested that they had both been gone long enough now, for me to pass along some of the interesting things those two did,or told about. You will be reading more about the Clayhills - Melvin and Timothy, in the weeks and months, and , I hope, years ahead.
A. L. M. April 14, 2003 [c499wds]
