General Notes

Hebert Deckard: Nicest man ever wanted to talk to:
by Larry Incollingo
I liked him from the moment I met him .  He said things like, "Once't
and,"I'd reckon," and, "Hit," and, "By gum," and on a very old fiddle he
played equally old tunes like, Bile the Cabbage Down, Big Sandy River,
and, Black Mountain Rag, and he had a smile that was as warm and pleasing
as the sun breaking through a fog.
I remember the welcome signs as I walked from where I'd left my car
down on the road toward the house: the remains of an old sawmill, no
longer used farm machinery, and old model car, out buildings, green
grass, a front porch larger enough to sit and stretch out on. But none
were so welcome as the lean man in bib overalls, plaid shirt, and billed
cap who held open the storm dor and smiled, "Come in, come in."
Hebert Deckard and I were to meet occasionally after that. Usually it
was at Blackwell Church, the Polk Township Poling place of recent years.
In more than 20 years Hebert had trailed it from Burgoon School to
Burgoon Church; from Allen's Creek School to the Cecil Rife home  to
hardin Ridge, and from Chapel Hill School to Blackwell Church.
Always an outside sheriff, he was in a position to greet voters from
Nob Creek and Chapel Hill, from Burgoon Ridge and Dutch Ridge, from
Hunters Creek and Sixteen Corners, from Eads Hollow and Ciscoe Branch and
from places around and in between those.
Expressing one of the pleasures of election days gave him, he told me
at this year's Primary, " You get to see a lot of people you ain't saw
for a long time."
That's how I felt that day down on Nob Creek when Hebert stood there
smiling and holding that storm door open for me, like I was an old
friend, one whom he hadn't seen for a long time.
It was precisely this thought that rushed into my mind when I
unexpectedly saw- then read- Hebert's obituary in Monday's paper.
The eldest of 12 brothers and sisters, Hebert lived there in the
charming house on Nob Creek with his mother, Levesta. For 40 years they
lived there, Hebert operating a sawmill just across the road for many of
them.
The mill was idle-had been idled for some time- that day we met little
more than three years ago.
" YOU NEVER CAN TELL," He said of someday reactivating it.
It was there, if he took a notion to. Like everything else about the
place, it was a part of Hebert's past. It also was a part of his present.
That he didn't reactivate it did not lessen its importance to him.
A self-taught fiddler, he played occasionally for square dances. He
seemed sad when he said they were becoming a thing of the past. He
brightened when he said he looked forward to get-together with
neighborhood musicians Perry Haawkins, Paul Smith, and Will Hardy and his
boys. And somewhat sadly again, he noted that  even those occasions were
few anymore. The smile came back when I agreed to listen to him fiddle
tunes on the ancient fiddle. He had put the question to me as only he
could.
" I take a notion every Little bit to play some," Hebert had said.
"And I just get the old fiddle out and play. Hit's a hundred years old,
or older. Would you like to see hit?"
Hebert was 65 then. He had never married.
I remember Levesta saying that it was Hebert, when he became
sufficiently strong enough, who relieved her of splitting spokes, cutting
down trees, peeling hickory bark, tacking hay, cutting cord wood and a
myriad of other back-breaking chores so that she could give full time to
her large and growing family.
"Hebert's been a good boy," the 80-year-old Levest continued. "He was
gone almost three years during World War Two. He made his allotment to
me, and we made out on that while he was gone."
He sought no easy way out when that call came to go to war. His
country needed him, and that was that.
The right to vote was also serious business, and Hebert illustrated that
on our last election day together with a brief r