Vibrant Village ™

These stories are in the words of Charles Aloysius Cathcart, known to ‘most everyone here in Coltrane as Grampa Charlie Loy. Most evenings except Sundays, he occupied a wobbly old straight-back chair in spitting distance of the squat, rusty pot-bellied stove in Homer Henderson’s dry-goods store. They were collected by Mr. Cathcart’s grand-nephew Ernest, who took to hiding in the back room on Thursdays and listenin’. Thursday was only night that his mother left the house after supper. She did her visiting on Thursdays.

Ever wonder how it is Doc’s got a horse hitched to his car, and there’s a crank still in front but no motor? If you heard it another way you just let me keep on, ‘coz if you don’t I’ll still know what rightly happened and you won’t.

No, I didn’t truly see it but Lucius Calhoun did, granted he was fallin’ backwards off the roof of the livery stable at the time with a bottle in each hand, but he swears he saw Doc come hurtlin’ up past him and remembers a mighty bang about that time too.

Now Doc, he was all for keepin’ up with the times, and the first time he saw a car he had to have one. Put up his old nag Pokey Belle and the shay at the livery, it was next door t’ his place, and plunked down his hard-earned. Not that anybody’d tell Doc, but that car wasn’t much to look at, already four years old and fixed once too many with a hammer instead of a wrench. He’d get out there and work that crank and work that crank, and there was always plenty of pops and bangs and sheer obstinacy before it’d get serious about startin’.

Doc always wore a glove with no fingers on his crankin’ hand, says he got the idea from Arn Heeter the blacksmith who says HE got the idea from Porky Washburn the butcher. Porky says he’s not clear on why, he just always has done it.

Gettin’ back to the startin’, it’s Wednesday, here’s Doc out front of his place, and here’s Pokey Belle watchin’ out her window at the livery, and Doc’s on his way to bein’ altogether aggravated, him all duded and polished and off to see the widda’ Spruill, whose good health he was known to be sufficiently in pursuit of as to stop by pretty much every Wednesday for the afternoon. So naturally his car’s in a mood to debate the matter, and Doc’s not, so just about the time Lucius Calhoun’s backed off the edge of the livery stable roof, Doc gets up on a stump in the yard there and takes a flyin’ jump down on that crank. Just before the crank hits bottom, there’s a backfire the likes of which was never heard of, and Doc takes to the air and passes Lucius who’s on the way down.

Lucius, he got lucky and landed in the back seat of Doc’s car, and Doc to this day says it’s not so but he ended up in the manure-heap out back.

Now, all this didn't stop Doc from wantin’ to keep up with the times, so he worked out a harnessin’ for Pokey Belle to his car and made the farmer down the road from the widda’ Spruill’s a present of the motor to anchor down his windmill. It had a clear habit of fallin’ over and scarin’ the layin’ out of his chickens. And don’t ask Doc about that manure-pile either, you’re not gonna get a straight answer.