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.

I’m goin’ to let Lucius, here, tell you how it was he got into his present line of work. Don’t think you’ll be inclined to doubt him too much, considerin’ his standin’ in the community. You be sure to tell it how it happened, Lucius. It don’t take much embroiderin’ on a story to make folks entirely skeptical.

“Wal,” (says Lucius), “me fallin’ off the roof of the livery stable into Doc’s car was purely accidental. An’ me tryin’ to argue with that wooden Indian in front of the drug store wasn’ nothin’ more’n mistaken identity. It might be true I make empty bottles out of full ones in not much more time than it takes to open ‘em, but you never did see what that tornado did to me an’ my farm an’ I’m workin’ on forgettin’.

“When it got high summer the coolest place was in the hog shed, so I generally slept there. Hogs didn’t mind as long as I kept still and didn’t keep ‘em awake.

‘Long about twelve-thirty one night I woke up. It had got real quiet but I could hear a roarin’ far off, so I stepped outside. Couldn’t see much so I clumb the highest tree in my yard. Wind started t’ blow and there came a flash of lightnin’. I could see fine then. What I could see was my neighbor’s hangin’ laundry, his back porch, an’ his propeller off his windmill, all headin’ toward me in a whirlin’ cloud of dust. I wasn’ much inclined to stay an’ watch but before I could get down outa that tree I got jerked loose an’ then scooped up by his back porch. Lucky the door was open. I would’a just as soon do that as t’ fight off his windmill propeller.

The porch an’ me went around once or twice, then that tornado blew the roof off my silo and dropped me in it. About the time I got ready t’ splat on the bottom, it was about empty, the tornado sucked me back up and squashed that silo flat like you was stompin’ on a rotten log.

“I was feelin’ pretty good in view of the circumstances until my neighbor’s hangin’ laundry an’ rope came around an’ I got wound up in it, so when I got pulled through a big ol’ pine tree I couldn’ grab hold of it, just got to eat some needles and part of a cone. Came another flash then, and I could just make out my house had been twisted half around and turned up on its end. Guess if I’d’a been sleepin’ there I might’a had some things to worry about.”

“All this served to distress me some, but the hardest part was how the wind unwound that laundry rope an’ then it got my hat, then my boots, then my overhauls an’ shirt and THEN my long-handles, an’ right after, it dropped me upside down in the swamp out back of where those three old maids live, down by the end of town. Wasn’ much I could do to improve my appearance an’ by this time I was right confused, an’ knockin’ on their back door didn’ seem all that strange to do but THEY thought so. Two of ‘em fainted and the third set their hound on me. I managed to stay ahead of that dog clear to Abner Fosgate’s still-house, an’ once I got inside I put on Abner’s stiff old smelly leather coat an’ opened a jar to calm my nerves.”

“Abner says he was three days gettin’ out to check on his still-house, after the tornado. He had been bein’ a guest at the county bar hotel, somethin’ about him shootin’ the weathervane off the schoolhouse one night, an’ he says there I still was, smilin’ a lot but not sayin’ much. Now any more, seein’ as I’m his best customer he’s stopped bein’ mad about all the empty jars.”

“What’re you grinnin’ about, Charlie Loy? And you too, Homer Henderson. Ain’t nothin’ all THAT strange about sleepin’ in a hog shed.”

About Scott: Scott Bogue lives and works in Greensboro, North Carolina. Five days a week he’s a freelance technical editor and writer who specializes in manufacturing and industry—but he vacations in the small town of Coltrane, somewhere in America, and the year is perhaps 1915. It might be 1912, or it might be 1925, he doesn’t know. Grampa Charlie never says.