Charlie

Charlie Brewster was part of one of the old families with money and influence in the county. There were two kids, cousins, Elliot and Cheryl, both my age so I was an occasional classmate of one or both up through the sixth grade when they divided us by intelligence and I was in the top class and they weren't. Cheryl was pretty but flat-chested and I never knew how things worked out for her. Elliot's dad was an insurance agent and had some other business interests and they were pretty well off. More on him in a bit.

Charlie was one of those kind of on the fringes of the family. Not real bright and always happy and glad-handing whoever he bumped into and trying and failing at one enterprise after another. All good things like that end sooner or later and by the time he was in his fifties he was getting close to the end of the rope. One of his last enterprises was a small cattle ranch. He bought a bunch of cows and borrowed the money and when the money situation got tight he sold them. The bank came around to check on the collateral and no cows. He said they all died.

He was a short fat dude and never married but the talk was he spent a lot of money on whores, apparently pricier whores than just regular. He got prosecuted but when he was found guilty off with next to no punishment. Seems his intellectual disability was such that the judge had pity on him and didn't want to put in prison. He pretty much dropped out of sight the way them people do but lived to a pretty old age. The obituary said 86 and I guess maybe it is only the good that die young. I know some no-good types that's pretty old.

Cousin Elliot was the son of the one that was in the insurance business. They were pretty well off and raised Tennessee Walking Horses and had them in shows all the time. Elliot took over the business when he as old enough and had a pretty sweet deal but it seems he was homosexual. Most of the time I would catch it by the time we were adults but hadn't figured him - there were signs but not strong ones. A guy opened a dance studio in town, teaching young girls. Women doing that I get and knew two or three that did it, usually majorettes in high school and maybe college and then opened a dance school. Men who do that you figure on them being that way and this one was. Elliot had got married to a nice local gal and all was pretty good until she caught him in flagrante delicto with the dance teacher. She divorced him right quick and he kind of dropped out of sight. What I knew of him the shame was too much and that's better than a lot of them do.

His old man had some property on the south side of town and build a good-sized subdivision. Named the streets after various women in his family including Sharon. The last street was on a big ditch that he filled in. It had been there for years and when they just filled in and built houses over it it didn't go well. The foundations began to sink and the people that bought the houses on some of those loans for lower income people just stopped paying for them and let them be repossessed. This was the same subdivision with the streets that fell apart the first winter. Twenty or so years later the land had stabilized and some of the houses were repaired and some rebuilt and one or two burned down.