November 21st

I do genealogy on our families, and I know most of what I find interesting others would be bored to tears. But there are a few family tales that I think anyone would appreciate, so I'll include one here. If it bores, just surf on by, I won't blame you.


This is a story told about two families back around the first part of 1900, as told by an elderly relation to one of my cousins.

"My grandfather was Peter H-, and he had a younger brother named Luther, and Luther married a woman named Minnie; and back in those days it was customary when a couple married -- poor families-- they would borrow furniture from relatives until they could establish their own -- buy their own furniture and what have you, so Luther borrowed a bedstead from my grandfather, his brother, and he had already borrowed $50 from him to get married. Everything went alright for a short time, and they lived neighbors; and Luther asked my granddaddy about tending some tobacco on my granddaddy's land, right close to Luther's house. And my granddaddy says, "Well, that's all right, Luther, but you'll have to put a fence around it, because I'm going to pasture that field." And Luther said, "All right." But Luther neglected to put a fence around it, and went ahead and set his tobacco out, and my granddaddy's cows got up there and got to walking around in these young tobacco plants, and Luther sicced his dogs onto my granddaddy's cows, and the dogs ran the cows down to Granddaddy's house, and my granddaddy walked out with his shotgun and buckshot both his dogs. Luther heard the shots, he wasn't too far, about half or a quarter of a mile, and so he went down there, and was upset about my granddaddy shooting at his dogs. Now grandaddy would always *sniffle* when he got offended or got excited, and he says, *snff*,*snff*, *snff*, if you don't like it, he says, "I've got the same thing for you!" And Luther took his dogs and went back home. Well, the next day, Luther had come by in a wagon, and set the bedstead over the yard fence and went to Dawson Springs and rented a house or an apartment or something in Dawson Springs. And a short time later, about a month or so later, they went to a restaurant -- my granddaddy went went to a restaurant in Dawson Springs -- and as he went in one door, Luther came in the other. So they both went to the same table, sat down, and one of them, I don't know which, but one of them, ordered two plates (back in those days, you just ordered a plate lunch, you had no choice of what went on it) -- one of them ordered two plates, and the other ordered two coffees, and they sat there and ate, and drank their coffee, and each got up and paid for what they had ordered, and went out separate doors and never did speak to each other. But Luther, a short time after that, he and Minnie went to Arkansas, and they were gone about 20 years, or maybe a little more, to Arkansas. In the meantime, my granddaddy went ahead and put a fence around that tobacco, and tended it, and sold the tobacco. And according to his bookkeeping, after he paid himself for his work, he considered that Luther still owed him $9 of the $50 he had borrowed from him."

Family, nothing like it.

Bumper sticker for the day: "Instant human. Just add coffee."