Chapter 267

• STORY 105 - Grandma's Funeral -
• Uncles and aunts, and brothers and sisters all gathered at the homeplace later for a dinner and a reunion of sorts. I got into a conversation with a nephew I had never met before, Jeff, who lived in a city a few hours away from my home. I mentioned that I had would be visiting there in a few weeks and he spoke up and said “why don't you stay with Dottie and me?' I politely refused, but he insisted so finally I said I would stay with them, but only if he would accept the per diem my institution was paying me for the trip. He agreed to that.
• Jeff is about 25 years old, about half my age, and is about my height and we are similar in physical appearance. He has been married to Dottie for almost a year. She is a little chubby, about 5 feet 2 inches tall, light brown hair and brown eyes, weighs about 140 pounds, sort of cute, but not especially good looking, and is shy. Jeff told me she had led a sheltered life, and that she does not make friends easily, which I could see as she did not mingle easily at the dinner after the funeral. He also mentioned that her grandfather had told him he would give them $25,000 for every child they had in the first ten years of marriage. Jeff was a little frustrated that Dottie had not become pregnant and he was beginning to think maybe she could not have children. He hinted that he had fathered a child with another woman in their neighborhood, so he knew he was the reason Dottie was not getting pregnant.