HIDE & SHRIEK

When hot summer evenings closed in the game of choice was hide and seek, the dusk making it more fun to hide beneath the old willow or behind the pillars or in the chimney ell. But playing at the funeral home was the best.
Although it was forbidden, we would slip one at a time into the house..."I need a drink"..."I have to use the bathroom" or any other excuse. And of course the grown ups aren't paying any attention, right? Right.
The rooms were full of shadows lit only from a front hall light left burning all the time. We hid beneath tables, behind sofas, in back of half open doors and jumped out to scare one another in lieu of being discovered. But when we discovered the best, most wonderful hidey place of all, we could hardly believe our good fortune. THE CASKET ROOM!
I suppose it was a normal, though good sized room, but in my memory it stretches on and on into forever, darkening into nothingness as it goes. Casket after casket stands on display, some open, some closed. Satiny wood finishes, gleaming metal handles cold to touch, the silky fabrics on the interiors. It took a dare to get me into the room and a friend's hand guiding mine to touch the objects....then it was game ON, and we ran, hooted, hollered, jumped, and laughed between, around, under and across the caskets.
Bobby was drumming on one of the caskets, when a moaning sound ululated from inside. We froze.
A pale hand lifted the casket lid. A moon face rose washed in the dim hall light and a maniacal laugh issued from the open mouth.
Screaming ourselves breathless, tangling feet and arms at the door, squirting out into the hallway we made a mad dash for the safety of our parents' presence.
Behind us, the shrill laughter lowered to a familiar tenor cackle as Uncle Harvey, short and round as a beach ball, levered himself up and out of Uncle Bill's very best casket.
Do you suppose it had to be sold as 'used'?

I scream for ice cream 1

In the years following WWII the hearse was the only ambulance the tiny town of Aurora, Missouri had. This meant the funeral director or an assistant was on call around the clock every day of the year. Now, calls were not necessarily coming in around the clock every day of the year, but if they did....well, you get the picture.
This meant that when we had a picnic or a gathering of any kind the huge concrete apron of the enormous garage housing the hearse became party central.
I don't mean partying. The hardest beverage available was iced tea. If we were lucky the kids got Kool Aid and home made cookies. If we weren't so lucky we got to share the iced tea.
But sometimes, just sometimes, there was home made ice cream in an old fashioned churn. 60 years later I can feel shivers of anticipation and the chill of sitting on the churn. The flavor might be whatever fresh local fruit was in season, but plain old vanilla was just as welcome. And I don't remember chocolate ever being an option.
At first we kids would turn the handle, but later the men would take turns as the mixture got thicker and harder. Eventually the paddles would begin rising as the bottom of the pail froze and pushed up. The smaller boys and girls would then take turns sitting on the churn while the men sweated the last crankings a few turns at a time as it got harder and harder.
Whoever was sitting on the crank when it was ready got the first lick of the extracted paddles. As hard as it was to sit still while your friends ran and played this was a glory moment. You usually only got one or two licks in before every kid gathered to share, but OH to be that first one!
Making ice cream was a long and arduous and expensive job that only happened once or twice a year, and was treasured for it's rarity. The ice cream from the drug store came in your choice of flavors, but the stuff we made on the apron of the funeral home garage tasted of summer and freedom, friends and reward. And in my memory my mom's curls catch fire as she turns in her lawn chair to smile at me, sitting in glory on the top of the churn.

UNCLE JOHNNEY'S STORY

Grandpa's older half brother Uncle Johnney Campbell was the son of Jerry Campbell and Mary Elizabeth the first.
He was a foreman at a lead mine in Aurora, MO when he and Henrietta helped to found the First Christian church, pillars of the community that they were. They adopted a boy from one of the orphan trains, but within a few years the boy ran off to Texas because they were so mean to him. Mom's words, not mine. My mother rarely spoke ill of anyone. Uncle Johnney was the sole exception.
In some kind of defense, Uncle Johnney suffered the usual side effects of lead mining and eventually was forced to retire. They moved back to Union and lived either with or near my grandparents. He medicated the pain with liquor.
Mom and her little sister, Girly would hide when they saw Johnney reeling on the seat of his wagon, whipping his horse through town. I heard that even Aunt Hazel and even the older boys did much the same. If he saw you he was as likely to use the whip on a human as on the horse. My guess would be that he had used that whip on the orphan boy who ran away, but it is only a guess. Lead poisoning creates a hell in the body and slowly destroys the brain.
He finally died, either of lead or booze poisoning, no one said. Etta lived long and prospered, honored aunt of the Campbell clan. Her "jewelry" and goods were left mainly to her namesake, Blanche Henrietta, my mother. To this day I have a delicately painted china cup known as "Uncle Johnney's cup", and this is a story to go with the cup.

"Over-halls"

When I was little only the poorest of the poor wore what we called "over-halls"...the straps let them up and down for the next kid. They were always frayed, patched and faded, but never dirty.
Rarely did the child have shoes, never socks and at a guess, no underwear. The kids usually smelled bad, not from dirt, but malnutrition and bad teeth.
A boy sitting next to me in first grade could not be allowed to have crayons because he ate them as fast as he could get his hands on them. His father was a lead miner, out of work after the mine closed and they were starving.
Their home was a tar paper shack, literally. There was a light bulb hanging from the ceiling over an old wobbly dining room chair. In one corner was an old bed with broken metal springs and a threadbare quilt folded neatly at the bottom and one pillow at the head. A huddle of fabric scraps in another corner served as a bed for the baby and several children. In the place of honor, in the center of one wall was an ancient console radio. The light bulb over the chair had to be removed to plug in the radio. A pot bellied stove with 3 intact legs and a couple of bricks served for heat and cooking.
I know all this because my father took me along on 'pastoral calls' like this so he could say that "Judy wanted to stop in to say hello to her school friend." I had several of these friends, some I never knew at school as they were older or younger.
Most families were too proud and refused any help at all. But we got free milk for a lot of them because all the kids got it. Some wouldn't even accept it then. They didn't want to be beholden.
What a change to the welfare way of life. Today those kids would be fed, but would they ever understand the pride of a day's work? I can't judge about better or worse.

The ladies in the outhouse.

Judy,

One thing I remember is your mother, Girlie, and my mother all sneaking out to the outhouse at Grandmas to smoke!! My daughter was astounded when I told her that.That these grown up women had to sneak around to smoke and in the outhouse! I couldn't remember if your mother smoked, though. I knew Girlie and my Mom did.

Of course, they didn't all sneak out at the same time!
Love the stories.

Priscilla

To:
"priscilla lewedag"
Yes, my mom smoked at that time, too. Grandma C could be pretty fierce! Remember the story about her taking a couple of Aunt Maude's boys by the ears and making them pour their "hooch" down the drain? She told them she didn't allow that rotgut in her home!

Grandma and the Jameses

We were at Grandma & Grandpa Campbell's little house on St. Claire Road. All the uncles, even my dad, had gotten together to build the house above the Bourbouse River outside Union. It was a ramshackle place by today's standards, but Grandma was happier that we had ever seen her. A home of her very own, after all those years.
All the big people had wandered off, the men had gone fishing, The women were in the kitchen, or sitting on the porch drinking lemonade or iced tea. Grandma was glorying in the quiet, alone for a while in her own living room.
Several of the cousins were playing in the terraced front yard between the gardens. Flag stone walk ways and steps led up to the highway. At the corner of the house beside the summer kitchen was a whet stone run by pedal power. Grandma's cats and kits mewled under the porch, untouchable and unreachable.
A game of cowboys and Indians was in progress and as I slurped up a quick drink I announced to Grandma that I was going to join the game and be Jesse James.
Grandma went still as a pouncing cat. Her voice RANG in the quiet house.
Those Jameses! They're TRASH! NOTHING BUT OLD WHITE TRASH!
I'd never seen my grandma angry before and this sounded real personal. I think my mouth dropped open. I slipped out of the house and I am not sure she noticed right away.
We never talked about it again. But I never mentioned Jesse James in her presence, either. Probably should have. But she wouldn't have told me. You don't tell the kids.

Preacher Gray & Jesse James

Dick' grandfather was a Methodist circuit rider minister. He farmed outside of Allerton,IL and was also the editor of the local paper. He was not a young man when he married Orpha Jane and started a second family. But the exciting story is that he rode with Jesse James! Ha! a connection with my family! I was intrigued but like most of the family thought the story apocryphal.
It seems that Grandpa was driving the old wagon into town one day and saw a stranger along side the road. A battered saddle rested beside him, but no horse was in evidence. Grandpa offered him a ride into town and as they went, they talked. There is no record of the conversation, either by hearsay or guesstimate, but at some point a group of men overtook them on horseback.
"You need a ride, Jesse?" one of them asked.
"Nah, I'm doing OK, Frank" the man in the wagon replied.
And that is where the family story ended.
Fast forward to the mid 1990s. Son Geoff called one night all excited. He had been watching "Biography" on the History Channel and the subject was Jesse James. In an interview the great grandson told of Jesse's being "born again" after a wagon ride with a parson on a dusty old road in Illinois.
Fall back again to a Franklin County MO story that tells of my great grandfather and a group of neighbors building a church in the hills near the farm. A stranger stopped and offered to help. He worked hard, shared a meal and was gone. No one was sure who he was, but this was Union country and there were suspicions.
When my mother was a young girl a huge cavern was discovered across the road from her grandparent's farm. In the cave were artifact from the years following the Civil War including some things that were supposed to have belonged to a notorious outlaw.
I grew up visiting that cave, known across the country as Mermac Caverns, Jesse James hideout.
The wagon ride and the church raising fit nicely...and maybe they are true.