How David Learned Freddie’s Name
by David Ferguson
One summer when I was a teenager, my family went to Inverness, like we did every year. While we were there, my cousin Jackie (Freddie’s daughter) and I went to the cemetery. She spent more time in Inverness than I did, and I asked her to show me graves where relatives were buried.
She showed me this one and that one. Then she stopped for a while at a headstone for D. A. Macdonald. After a minute, I asked who that was.
“Daddy,” she said.
“What’s the D. A. for?”
“Donald Angus. That was his name.”
My entire life, I’d known him as Freddie.
Some thirty years later, I was in Detroit for my dad’s 80th birthday. Lots of people had come from out of town, even some from Nova Scotia. I ended up talking with my cousin Gerard Ferguson (Roddie and Pat’s boy), whom I hadn’t seen since I was a teenager. I often stayed with his family when we were in Inverness. I told him this story, finished up with “I never knew his name was Donald Angus.”
Gerard said, “Neither did I till you told me.”
Characters • Ferguson, David • Ferguson, Gerard • Macdonald, Freddie • Macdonald, Jackie • Stories • Storytellers • told by David Ferguson | Dave Ferguson February 8, 2006
