Wild Caleb Kendel

The man in the picture above is Caleb Kendel, my uncle and half brother to my father William Jackson Williams II. My brother William Jackson Williams III (Hypo), me,  and my sister Jean Renee Williams Barbour Hoy lived in Glen Hazel Height in Pittsburgh, Pa. in the early part of our lives. 

We lived in the left end of the row.

This was Glen Hazel in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

Glen Hazel over looked the Monongahela River and the Calvary Cemetery.

****************************

Grandmother Susie Cribs

My father William Jackson Williams II was 20 years younger than my uncle Caleb. My uncle was a Kendel while my father was a Williams. I did not know this until after my uncle and father died. People did not like to tell me things. That is why starting in the 1960s, I had to run around the nation finding out about my family independently from others. 

Susie Cribs Kendel was big in the Eastern Stars Organization and traveled around the country doing Eastern Stars Work.  She used this job to look for her oldest son Caleb. Caleb was 20 years older than my father.  My uncle liked to leave from home and come back a day, a week, and sometime months later.  One day, he did not come back home at all.

 When Susie had business one day in the 1930s in Pittsburgh, Pa.,  she ran into some people who claim that they saw a man that looked like my Uncle Caleb.  She investigated and found after over 10 years, her oldest son is in the Pittsburgh area. 

Remember that my father and his brother had 20 years between them. They did not know one another.  My father wanted to help his brother because he thought that is what a brother should do. Plus he wanted to please his mother.  So my father  went to West Homestead to the brick yard and got my uncle a job making bricks.  The problem, my uncle never showed up for work.    

What my father and mother did not know was that both my Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Caleb worked at night running their own gambling business. They where card sharks, playing such games as:

https://www.pagat.com/boston/bidwhist.html

Bid Whist

https://www.pagat.com/euchre/500.html

Five Hundred

https://www.pagat.com/poker/variants/5stud.html

Five Card Stud Poker

Plus many others. 


***************************

Nanny and Uncle; It is Just Business

I called my Aunt "Nanny" and my Uncle Caleb, "Uncle." My parents built their home with their own hands at 3111 West St. West Mifflin in and around 1954. From the time I was born to about 4 years old, Nanny watched me in Glen Hazel while my parents went  to build their West Mifflin home.  Renee and William (Hypo) was in elementary school.

Burgwin Elementary School

Never underestimate children and what they can learn at any age.  I memorized the directions from West Mifflin to Glen Hazel, 3.7 miles and walked it regularly from age 6 to age 14 to see Nanny. My parents were shocked when they received a call from Nanny telling them that I was at their house.

Darnell at an very early age walked across the High Level Bridge from West Mifflin, Munhall, and Homestead to Glen Hazel, a 3.7 mile trip in heavy traffic.  (West St. across the bridge)

Sometimes Uncle and Nanny would have card parties at night. I wanted to learn how to play cards so they started showing me card games. My specialty, War, 5 card Poker, and 7 card Poker.  My hands were only so big and I could not hold the cards the way the adults can hold them.  Uncle and Nanny warned me many times about holding my cards. I am left handed and I held my cards upside down. I was also told about that. They warned me that in a serious game of cards, people would think that holding cards in my lap and upside down my give people the impression that I was cheating. They told me that is how people get shot and stabbed.

By  this time, my parents were told about my aunt and uncle's activities and feared for my life being at their house so much.

**********************************************

It's Only Speculation   

Years later, I started putting all this together.  Uncle Caleb not going back home when he was young, how good Uncle and Nanny became at cards, and running card games. Nanny was half White (fathers side). She was from Mississippi back in the hills. I asked her how can her father be white when it was against the law from whites and Blacks to be together. She replied, "No one cared what people did back in the woods."

Typical Gun Fight in a Saloon 

They played cards up and down the Mississippi. I heard that one time they got in a serious situation in a card game when a man pulled a gun on Uncle. Uncle had to kill him. Not only that, Nanny had a husband who she was running from. This man beat the crap out of her. That is why she left.  So she was already running from the law.  

Later, Nanny and Uncle got married. They never divorced. Who knows what happened to her first husband.

****************************************************

Here is why I write about some people who are currently living and wait to write about some that have long been dead.  Some I have written about but will not be published years after I am in my grave.