Excerpts from Horace Crutch Oberman Remembered: An Oral History (Frondeur Press, 2001) Originally published in The Bookpress, November 2001. Frondeur Press is pleased to offer, as a companion volume to its Horace Crutch Oberman: A Life, this revealing anthology of recollections from Oberman’s friends, family, and acquaintances. A sample: David Miniver, 19, store clerk: “I was closing the donut shop early cause of my mom having to go get her thing removed, and this guy comes in and he’s like, ‘Have you a pen?’ Just like that. ‘Have you a pen?’ Except he didn’t say pen, he said ‘writing instrument.’ And I’m like, ‘I just cleaned that floor,’ and he’s like ‘Young man, do you know who I am?’ So I put the mop down and I say okay who are you, and he tells me and I’m like ‘Okay, Horace Crutch Oberman, now get the hell out of here.’ He just about freaked. Finally I had to call the cops and when they came he told them to arrest me. The guy was a loony. My mom almost missed her thing surgery.” * Annette DeCrum, 34, former student: “He used to write stuff on the board while he talked and we’d copy it down. Sometimes he’d forget himself and start talking about other things, like the weather. I have my old class notes right here. ‘Sunny today. Hope class ends before sun goes in. Walk to Campus Deli. Ham or roast beef? Muenster. Ham does not go with muenster.’ I remember that day, too, because I went to the deli after class. He was eating a sandwich. I said, ‘Roast beef with muenster?’ and he said, ‘Why yes! However did you know?’” * Eldridge Means, 59, neighbor: “Old white guy in 9C? Not really, we didn’t talk much. Is this for the paper? He go nuts and blow some people away? Because if you want me to say something about his cold dead eyes I can do that.” * Lenia Oberman Frank, 71, sister: “He was not much fun when we were children. I would invite him to play house and he would sit cross-legged on the floor, staring at me with a quizzical expression. I might say, ‘I’ll be the mama and you be the daddy,’ and he would shake his head and say ‘I would feel out of place in such a role.’ “Oh, I was about seven and he was eleven. Daddy used to say that he was some kind of genius, but Mama knew better. She would whisper, ‘Your brother is very odd, dear. You must protect him.’ I’m afraid I once slapped a girl who called him strange. But when he’d gone away to college I went ahead and mocked him behind his back. “It’s a shame my husband is dead. He used to do a wonderful impersonation of Horace putting money into his wallet. Every bill smoothed and inserted separately, in numerical order. Really, it was quite a hoot.” * Betty Rack, 45, academic secretary: “He had some funny ideas about what they were paying me to do. ‘Betty, does this look infected to you?’ ‘Betty, be a dear and pick up some shredded bark mulch for me during lunch, won’t you?’ ‘Betty, would you see to the spider in my office?’ I was going to have him talked to, but what was the point? The man had no clue.” * Edith Chopahonic, 75, childhood sweetheart: “Yes, I loved him. We might have married, had we been twenty instead of ten. As it happened, my family moved away to France for two years—my father was an army officer—and when I returned, I simply thought poor Horace was too peculiar. “Well, he talked like a seventy-year-old man. I had thought that romantic, but at twelve it just seemed odd. And when I last saw him just before his death, he seemed to talk like a 150-year-old man. “Well, of course I don’t know any. A hypothetical 150-year-old man, then.” * Don Klaxon, 57, mechanic: “He used to come in with these weird problems, except there weren’t any problems, the car ran fine. He’d say, ‘I detect a rattle,’ or ‘I detect a rumbling.’ Always ‘I detect’ something. First couple times I didn’t charge him, but then I got wise and started making up some problem to tell him I solved. ‘You were right, Mr. O, it was the carburetor.’ After that he started bringing the thing in more often. I felt guilty for awhile, but it was like I was his shrink, that’s how I explained it to myself. ‘Don’t worry, sir, everything’s okay now.’ “Of course I remember. ’79 Olds Cutlass Sierra. I never repaired the thing in fifteen years. He couldn’t have driven it more than five miles a week.” * Sandra Frank-Gumm, 26, grandniece: “All I really remember’s that mom told us to stay away from Uncle Horace, so I did. He was always sending us postcards, even though we never wrote back. He was real friendly. “I dunno, Mom never said. I guess we figured it was some kind of sex thing. You know, dirty old man, never married and all that. I do remember one time he hugged me and I felt this hard thing poking into my leg, but it turned out he had a bottle of pills in his pocket. Like doctor pills, not like drugs or something. I still cried though.” * Lawrence Talc, 37, neighbor: “He had a big yard sale where he was getting rid of lots of books. I wanted to buy this thriller, this sort of mystery book. It said fifty cents so I offered him a quarter. And the guy argued! ‘The price marked is the price I shall accept, sir.’ He called me sir. So I figured whatever, and I gave him the fifty cents. Then I got the thing home and it’s all scribbled in and underlined. I could hardly read it. “Oh, just notes and scribbles. Like a picture of a cat with a little mouse tail sticking out of its mouth, or there was this one line about how the killer stabs this woman in the throat, and it’s underlined and there’s a note, ‘The piercing of the feminine will.’ I remember that one because I showed it to my wife, and now sometimes when we’re arguing she says ‘You’re piercing my feminine will!’ and we crack up. Or we’re all romantic and she’ll say, ‘Oh, Larry, pierce my feminine will.’ She’s really a scream. “The book? Yeah, do you want it? I’ll give it to you for ten bucks. That’s right—the price marked is the price I shall accept, sir. Not a penny less.” * Matt Spurge, 14, bystander: “I think I saw him barf into the gutter out in front of the library once. Fat guy, big mustache? Oh, well then I don’t know who you’re talking about.” * Linda Haim, 59, university dean: “Horace was supposed to deliver the lecture for last spring’s faculty luncheon, but he forgot all about it. It was tragic, really. “No, I called him and he made up some crazy story about having to wait for the gas man, and then the gas man came and fell down the stairs and so he had to wait for the ambulance, and then they wanted him to come to the hospital to administer CPR. It was very embarrassing. He said, ‘Well, Mrs. Haim’—he absolutely would not call me Miz, let alone Linda—‘on balance, a human life is worth more than your silly luncheon, don’t you agree?’ I could hear ‘Days of Our Lives’ in the background. “We would have had to force his retirement, I’m afraid. I’m glad it didn’t come to that. Not that I’m glad he’s dead.” * Albert Lippincott, 56, mailman: “Nothing was ever good enough for that one. If I left the package on the porch he complained about the rain. If I knocked, he complained about me interrupting his nap. If I left a slip he complained because he didn’t drive and he would have had to drive out to the mail P.O. Except he did drive, I saw him, I saw his car. “Plants. Always plants from greenhouses halfway across the country. Not that I ever saw him gardening. All he did all day is write letters to the editor and sleep. That’s it. “Yeah, I heard that, but I don’t know what he could have taught them.” * Katya Drape and Lubella Jackson, both 7, neighborhood children: “That’s the crazy guy’s house. “What one? “The one what eats kids. He’s got a big oven and he catches them and cooks them. “Huh-uh! “Yuh-huh! “That guy’s dead. The house is haunted. “His ghost eats kids! “You eat kids! “Shut up!!! “Shut me up!” * Jennifer Maron, 38, police officer: “Mr. Oberman was well known to the force. He drove extremely slowly. Several times he was issued tickets for obstructing traffic, which he contested before the judge. The judge was always lenient. My impression was that Mr. Oberman feared becoming involved in a deadly accident. We do appreciate driver caution, but Mr. Oberman’s slow driving often came close to causing an accident. It is hard to know what to say to someone like that.” * Martin Sales, 47, colleague: “I don’t understand. You’re writing a book about Horace? Why are you doing that? “I still don’t understand. Who would read such a thing? “Let me think about it. That’s a toughie. Just let me think it over. Look, are you looking for manuscripts? I mean, Horace—he wasn’t really doing what you’d call groundbreaking work, you know? I have something I’ve been trying— “Ah. Well. No, then. I don’t think I have anything to say.” c2001 by J. Robert Lennon.