But it is time, I think, to meet some more of the Rhines. The reader may recall, I had said there were five brothers, I believe it was. But here's where it gets interesting: several of the brothers had divorced their wives, and married the divorced wives of their other brothers...! And George had married and had family at least twice over - maybe more. Half-brothers, half-sisters, "cousins" of every stripe abounded. No one put a fine point on anything.

    One brother lived in Paragould and ran the newspaper. I always remember its name: The Big Picture in Paragould. And its tag line was "All The News That Fits" - a takeoff, of course, on the New York Times' "All The News That's Fit to Print" - but you have to be "in the know" to appreciate this. For The Big Picture was one of the nation's first offset-printed newspapers, and as such, it didn't run from hot-set type - but rather from photo-plates. And the beauty of photo-reproduction, as anyone remotely connected to the World of Words should know, is that if something can be seen by a camera, it can be printed in the paper.

    There was in Paragould at this time a stand selling out-of-town newspapers... Washington Post, L.A. Examiner, New York Times, etc. This brother wore a big pair of editor's shears in his belt and daily would stroll down to the newsstand to browse the offerings. When no one was looking, out would come the quickdraw scissors, and snip! snip! he would cut out an article, a bylined story, an AP wire release - whatever, right out of any paper which interested him! (Copyright didn't bother him... "So sue me!"... he was a Rhine and could probably recite the PL&R's by heart forwards and backwards).

    Back in the composing room, the various stories - all, by the way, in different and competing typefaces, were pasted into the upcoming edition's dummy - and "Roll the Presses!" Now you see why it was "All The News That Fits" ....literally.

    Another brother had a large farm and still lived back in Kansas. It was 1953, if I recall correctly, and the Year of Elizabeth's Coronation. This was creating quite a stir in the press and many stories daily. The brother in Kansas was busy looking for oil on his property. To this end he fired two geologists who had run up a big bill on him and produced nothing. He hired, instead, a dowser, and on the second day the dowser found oil! They brought in an actual gusher! I mean - Big Time! This guy was in the chips from Day One.

    In exuberance, he did several things at once. First, he announced that anyone who had been on his farm the day the gusher came in was going to get an all-expenses-paid trip to England with him and some other cronies of his to see the "Queen Coronated". Second, he went to his local car dealer (I forget the make - no matter). He entered a quick delivery order for a super, custom Belchfire Eight. This thing had venetian blinds, phones, wet bars, and all that in an era long before they were the commonplace they are today. Then he assembled his little group - and they all do drove East to take the ship to England.

    Some troupe! There were a couple of family "aunts" or grandmothers or something in their dotage. There were two of his teenage daughter's neighbor's kids, who had been visiting his daughter on the farm the fateful day. A couple of Kansas farmhands. The dowser. The brother and his (then current) wife. All farm and hillbilly types, but their leader was Big Time Rich and a factor to contend with.

    They drove to the office one day and all came into George's office. George was beside himself, because he was scheming how to get himself a slice of that gusher pie - and the brother knew his Georgie 'cause he was just as skittish to blandishments and strange suggestions and everything - and all-in-all it was hilarious to behold!

    In due course, the ship sailed, and with it went the lucky Kansans...

    Don was Chuck's half-brother - and a crooked little weasel if ever I saw one. But he didn't surface much (just as well for my money: never liked him). He did however, figure in some of the last contact I ever had with the Rhines when what was left of the family moved away at long last and went back to Missouri - one of their former haunts. By now Chuck was on the skids and unreported for long intervals - no one even knew where he had gone or if he was even still above ground. Don had risen instead to Head of the Family (George had been dead some years). Don called me once - and I asked how things were. And how was "Mom" now - an old woman.

    Well, seems Don had taken the clan surviviors all back to Doniphan, I believe it was, and he had bought a real estate complex of some kind. These were either attached houses or buildings, or may be all the buildings or homes on one block or something like that. Everyone was settling in - including Chuck's son, Ronnie - who by now had served two hitches in 'Nam. One place on the block had been a Funeral Home and they had bought this for "Mom" to spend her closing days in. Don told me that it had long, two-story-high stained glass windows in the walls that lent a most somber and peculiar glow to the interior, but the family had decided in the end it was all "very nice" so they left the windows in and fixed the Funeral Home up real cozy and tight.

    I often think of Ruthie there - rocking away alone in the twilight glow of the Funeral Home. Rocking and thinking perhaps on the time she did the blowtorch murals down on the river, or when she hand-painted the wallpaper design for George over in the brickmaster's house in Haverstraw... I hope she wasn't too lonely.

    One other family tale - then we shall try to return to the mainstream of our story (whatever that is). Not long after I had gone to work in the old Cleworth Company, George called me in one morning for a conference on my work - and sure enough, it proved to be yet further disclosure of his life and times... during which he mentioned that "...his son had been shot down and lost as a flyer over Germany in the War...".

    Later, back in our office, I said to Chuck I was sorry to hear he had lost a brother in the War. (I hadn't known at the time George had been divorced). Chuck turned with wide eyes and said he hadn't lost any brother... "But," I said, "your father just told me..." He maintained his denial. Then suddenly, in seeming recollection, his face relaxed. "Oh -you must mean old Tom. Gosh, Bernie, I don't really know. I don't think I ever met the guy. Didn't know he flew...".

    Thus, his flying-ace brother. Whatever.

    I thought I had forgotten these tales long ago and always regretted that I had not put them down earlier while they were still fresh in my mind. So many family members and others over the years have urged me to "write about the Rhines", but I have always been a commercial journalist and writer - and characterizations and human passions in print were not for me.

    But I have come to see that the Rhines - and George W. Rhine - their Patriarch and Pater Familias, in particular, typify American "types" of another Age and Time. O. Henry might have written of them, or Damon Runyon perhaps or maybe Ring Lardner. They would be at home as bit players in a Hemingway story. But alas! Such was not fated to be, and I alone, sort of a latter-day Ishmael, I alone am left as their sole and feeble chronicler. 'Tis an assignment that bears heavily upon me...