These stories are in the words of Charles Aloysius Cathcart, known to ‘most everyone here in 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.

The Price of Fame

If you go lookin’ for the name of Purcell Witherspoon over to the post office you’re goin’ t’ go from Miz Walters, that’s Box 480, directly to Hooch Wyatt, his bein’ 481, and you won’t even get a rise out of that new postmaster by askin’ about it. Been nobody by that name here for a long enough time for most folks to forget twice. He got pretty famous there for a while, an’ got unfamous mighty quick. That’s more’n three-quarters of why he left without even closin’ the door, and so late at night even the hoot-owls’d gone to sleep. He had a good enough reason, just ask Doc. It was Doc’s pa’s step-brother Emmett as found the bones first, Purcell took the glory. Lookin’ back, Emmett ended up better off.

Now, the last thing Purcell Witherspoon had any use for was a dry well in the hot middle of August. He could get a bucket of mud any time he wanted, just had to let it down then crank it up, but he couldn’t think up too many good uses for mud, try as he would. Even knowin’ it wouldn’t do half as much good as spittin’ into the wind, every so often he’d go out back and cross all his fingers and what toes he could, and drop that bucket. He kept hopin’ for a splash instead of a splat, but after he missed his bath for three Saturdays, it plain pushed him over the fence between discommoded and disgusted, and the next night he got up in the middle of the night and got a shovel. No sense sleepin’ when your mind is made up, that well was goin’ t’ get a whole lot deeper before it got left alone.

Didn’t take him long to figure out it’d be easier to kick a hole through a tree than to get water when he had t’ climb down, fill up the bucket with mud, climb up, pull up the bucket, dump it out, let it down, and climb back down and fill it up again, so when bein’ altogether cross about missin’ his bath for three Saturdays couldn’t keep him at it, he quit and climbed up, all over mud and near as sweet-smellin’ as a swamp, and sludged over to Emmett’s place and woke him up. Told Emmett he’d get fifty cents for every foot he dug if he was doin’ the diggin’, and a nickel for every bucket he hauled up if he was doin’ the haulin’ and dumpin’.

Emmett wasn’t much for calculatin’ but he convinced himself he was about to put one over on his neighbor Purcell, there couldn’t be all that much to diggin’ and haulin’, so he said it was fine with him and turned over and went back to sleep. Purcell, he saw he hadn’t made it clear enough about doin’ it startin’ right now so he left but he came right back, and woke up Emmett again and gave him the shovel.

They’d got about three feet dug when Purcell, he was doin’ the diggin then, he hit into mud that got so black and smelly he figured it was as good a time as any for Emmett to take over. Emmett climbed down and stuck the shovel in that black stink and instead of a ordinary slobber-suck noise his shovel clanked and stopped. Tried again, same thing. Tried again, harder, same thing, only louder.

Now Emmett was about half as curious as a brick but whatever it was, it wasn’t makin’ that fifty cents any easier t’get, so he bent over and rooted and come up with a black old bone. Put that in the bucket and filled it up the rest of the way.

Purcell’d about given up tryin’ to stay awake, not havin’ had enough sleep to be worth even goin’ to bed to start with, and he was pullin’ and dumpin’ some and noddin’ off some. Half the time it was a close thing was Emmett gonna get that bucket back full or not, and when he dumped out that bone on his foot he let out a holler and ran around the well makin’ a thorough racket. He was clear in his own mind it was a dinosaur finger-bone and no tellin’ how rich he’d get off the rest of ‘em, there must be more like ‘em down there if dinosaurs had bones all through ‘em like his teacher’d said.

Naturally, Purcell ran off and woke up everybody he could think of, had some trouble convincin’ some on account of him not lookin’ all that agreeable, then he got Miz Drummond, she ran the post office and did some newspaperin’ for Thurston Tredway over to Robsonville, he got her to put in Thurston’s paper all about Local Man Finds Proof of Dinosaurs in Coltrane.

When he got back, Emmett had gone home and gone to sleep in the barn, bein’s his ma wouldn’t let him in the house, so he woke up Emmett again and laid into him about stayin’ on the job and would he mind awfully if he’d let Purcell do the diggin’ from now on?

By the time they’d got another four feet Purcell’d found two more bones and had hit water, that made him even madder’n missin’ his bath ‘coz that was the end of the diggin’. He climbed up and started another hole, which put quite a strain on Emmett’s uncuriosity, and it wasn’t two days later when here come Thurston Tredway and four identical brothers, you couldn’t tell ‘em apart but it didn’t matter ‘coz they all said they knew about dinosaurs and Purcell’s bone wasn’t a finger-bone, anybody could tell that. They said it was a foot-bone from a Torontosaurus.

Thurston Treadway made a big story, all about how the find was made and how the other two bones were one, a part of a backbone and one a half of a arm-bone. No tellin’ where the rest of it was. He was mighty impressed with those four brothers. Purcell told him to put in also that he’d part with any two of his bones for six hundred dollars, he’d keep the third. He was countin’ on a handsomer offer than six hundred dollars ‘coz the more some folks can’t have something the more they want it. He never said a word about Emmett findin’ that first bone.

Now, it didn’t take long for Purcell to put up a little fence around that well and charge ten cents to see it. He put up a box to hold the dimes and went back to diggin’ his second hole, didn’t look for any help so it took some time but he was easy in his mind about there bein’ more bones. Folks’d stop and holler down and want to talk, Thurston Tredway kept up with the progress in his paper, and the mayor tried to pass an ordinance that what was ON the ground was the owner’s but what was UNDER it belonged to the town, just like mineral rights. Naturally Purcell didn’t vote for that.

All this diggin’ and newspaperin’ went on long enough to get spread around, and inside of less’n a month Purcell got a letter from the keeper of a big city museum, he wrote Purcell he would be there in three days to come look. It was all Purcell could do to not turn backflips, he could see that six hundred dollars so clear he could almost smell it.

Half the town come out, eleven paid to see the well and one took his dime back sayin’ he could see just as much in his own yard for nothin’. That museum egghead, when he got there he took one look at those bones and excused himself and turned his back, but he couldn’t keep it in and he let out a whoop and bent over and laughed himself near unconscious. Couldn’t say a word until he ran entirely out of breath. This not bein’ what Purcell’ had been expectin’, he had to wait but he got impatient and dumped a bucket of water on the egghead and asked him what was so unbearably amusin’ about a man findin’ a dinosaur bone in his well?

That egghead said, “Those bones would be dinosaur bones if there were butcher shops along with dinosaurs but nobody’s ever tried to convince me there were. Those’re cow bones, probably got dog-snatched twenty, thirty years ago, an’ dropped in. See how the one end’s all chewed? You keep digging that new well, all you’ll get is tired,” is what he said.

Naturally Purcell didn’t ask his opinions on anything else, but he climbed down in his new well and he didn’t dig but he stayed there until everybody got tired and went home, then he collected his dimes and took his clothes and his bones and he didn’t have any good reason to close the door when he left, so he didn’t. He’s probably hopin’ there’s somebody out there who knows a dinosaur bone when he sees one. Never did pay Emmett.

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.

Once Upon a Telephone

Now, it wasn’t until nearly half-past midnight exactly three months and two days later that Agatha Pond mostly forgave her husband Ellsworth for what she says he said the night before her last birthday. Catch him off by himself, he might tell you how he never did say what she says he said, an’ maybe even add that the gettin’ forgiven was harder than the doin’ without it, but Agatha never lets him start explainin’ any more now than she did when it first happened, her mind is made up.

Longer’n he can remember, he has to ask his ma if anybody asks him, Ellsworth Pond has been buyin’ and sellin’ stuff, anything made of iron or wood or leather or glass or rope, up to and includin’ ol’ rusty plows, used nails, leaky barrels, saddles, fence wire, bottles, jugs, an’ iron frypans. Learned it from his pa how to spot a bargain.

He’s got a wobbly old wagon an’ a swayback nag that looks less’n half a step away from the glue factory, travels around clankin’ and rattlin’ and tradin’ as far as from here to Robsonville in every direction. Not home much, sometimes even stays out a night or maybe two if he comes up on a barnful.

Agatha’s half used to it, but the half that isn’t keeps after him about bein’ late for supper and not sayin’ where he’s been or where he’s goin’, so Ellsworth’s generally in enough hot water to boil his boots. It doesn’t help that before that night he’d already forgot their anniversary more’n twice in thirty-nine years an’ her birthday only once, but that once was once too many and he’d got reminded over six hundred and eighty-two times about it.

Oh, he’s altogether careful about birthdays. When she says he said what he says he didn’t say, her birthday was on a Wednesday and it was closer to supper time than lunch the Monday before when he happened up on a barn entirely full, plus a house PLUS a rickety shed.

It was over to Robsonville and he was havin’ such a good time figgerin’ out what of what there was, was something he could use (now knowin’ Ellsworth that was close enough t’ all of it not t’ make any difference), then how he was gonna haul it off and where he was gonna put it and who he was gonna sell it to, that he entirely lost track of what day it was.

Somewhere between sunset and dark on Tuesday he developed a convincement that it had got to be Wednesday without him noticin’ and his troubles had already begun. Not surprisin’ that about then he started spendin’ half his time worryin’ about it and the other half thinkin’ up seventy-three good reasons to hand Agatha.

Now before you get altogether curious about how it is I know about Ellsworth Pond and birthdays, it’s not so complicated to be next to the only telephone in town and it in Gilmer Madden’s barber shop and him hollerin’ out to Agatha what Ellsworth’s sayin’, she’s not about to come into any barber shop she says, and her hollerin’ to Gilmer what to say back, and me in the chair with half a shave, that’s how.

So here’s Ellsworth, he’s wonderin’ what he’s goin’ t’ do to keep Agatha from plain bitin’ off his ear about missin’ another birthday, doesn’t see much chance of gettin’ back in time, and he’s walkin’ by the hotel there and he hears shoutin’ and then quiet, shoutin’ and then quiet. Naturally his curiosity bump is itched and he looks, and the shoutin’s into a telephone and the quiet is the listenin’ after.

Pretty soon Ellsworth’s got a beard full o’ teeth from him smilin’ ‘coz he has such a good idea, and he waits for the shoutin’ and listenin’ to stop, then he goes in the hotel and after a while of explainin an’ repeatin’ himself he’s talkin’ to Gilmer.

Now the one sure thing about telephones is, they’re over twice as good as a hail storm on a tin roof for makin’ it hard for two people to understand each other, mostly what you get is pops and crackles and hisses, so it took Gilmer a while to figure out who it was and what he wanted, but bein’s it was only the second time his telephone had ever rung he waited, and hollered “WHAT?” every so often, and finally he said, “Agatha’s standing right outside, Ellsworth, but she won’t come in.”

Right after that the shoutin’ and listenin’ between the three ‘em got goin’ good, but pretty soon after nothin’ half important enough to truly need a telephone was gettin’ talked about, Agatha puts the eye on Gilmer and says, “Just you ask that bowlegged whiskerchops weasel-face husband of mine what it is that couldn’t wait one more day, he had to tell me right now.”

That’s when Ellsworth, now there was a man who could turn a phrase when he had to, he says he said, “Tell her I’m lonely and sure miss her kisses, and I didn’t forget it’s her birthday.” Gilmer leaned out the door and got a look on his face like he didn’t want to see what was goin’ t’ happen.

“He says, ‘Tell her to go home and mind her own business, and I don’t care a bit it’s her birthday!’” was what Gilmer told Agatha. Agatha turned seven different colors and she tried and tried for the longest time to say something but all she could make was a gurgle, then she let out a screech and ran off. Wasn’t much Gilmer could get out o’ that t’ tell Ellsworth, so he hung up. That left Ellsworth satisfied he’d have an easy time of it when he got back so he didn’t hurry. He even thought about gettin’ his own telephone.

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.

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.

CONSTANCE’S BIG DAY

Afterwards, well-fed, she was quite content

Not any time before, and surely not since, was there ever a party like what Elvira Crossfield threw on the occasion of her daughter Nancy Jean’s weddin’, and bein’ it was also Elvira’s dog’s birthday and the anniversary of her sow-pig Constance’s winnin’ of a blue ribbon for general disposition at the state fair, naturally she wanted it to be rememberable. Anybody that was there can tell you (an’ you don’t have to necessarily take it uncritical from me, but it will save you some askin’) how all Miz Crossfield’s organizin’ and changin’ things around and writin’s down and crossin’s out didn’t amount to a whistle in a windstorm when that party got goin’.

About anybody that could be counted on not to stay the night got an invite, includin’ Miz Crossfield’s sister Luba, Luba’s husband Grinner (his ma named him Grenholm but it never stuck, not surprisin’) and their son Arthur. Now Grinner hadn’t had a bath in three years, claimed soap was bad for the follicles, but he was family. Seein’ that, Miz Crossfield’s husband Burl, now he had six toes on his left foot so when he’d go barefoot it was just on his right, he had to invite his cousins. A mighty gang of ‘em there was, too, and not just first or second cousins either, he wasn’t sure what but they claimed his great-granddaddy so THEY were family. Miz Crossfield wasn’t any more enthusiastic for a repeat of eleven Thanksgivings back with Burl’s cousins and the destruction of her new couch an’ the door tore off its hinges than she absolutely had to be, but he insisted.

Now Nancy Jean was clear in her mind that it was her weddin’ and there wasn’t much could convince her otherwise about not lettin’ Constance run loose and cotton up to folks for a handout, with her ma just as firm as to how it was important to let folks know Constance was a pig of accomplishments. Naturally they fell out some.

It was Bill Stubbins, he was lanky as a bean tree and had ankles showin’ outa every pair of pants he ever wore in his life, along with bein’ Nancy Jean’s intended, as got the idea to just winkle Constance away to his brother’s pig farm shortly before the party so’s his new bride could get to shine the brightest.

That seemed like a good idea at the time.

On account of the size of the occasion, Miz Crossfield borrowed two tents that said “Rest in Peace” from the undertakery and the awning off the barber shop, along with nine rickety tables and forty-three chairs from the church basement, and set up in the back yard, the front yard bein’ unlevel and folks not likely to stay long if they had to work just to stay in one place. Almost everybody could be counted on to bring enough food to feed their own selves plus at least six more so there was gonna be more’n plenty, even bein’ that Burl Crossfield’s cousins wouldn’t bring anything but they sure could eat if experience was any sign of what to expect.

All that evenin’ Miz Crossfield and Nancy Jean hung out ribbons and bows and such as that, gettin’ along fine, an’ Nancy Jean smilin’ a little smile when she didn’t think her ma was lookin’.

The day of the party, Bill Stubbins and Nancy Jean got married in the mornin’, and Miz Crossfield didn’t have time to think too much about it when Constance turned up missin’ that afternoon from the hog-wallow. Knowin’ Constance, she was most likely rootin’ down in the woods behind the barn.

It did fret her some, bein’ she’d told folks about Constance’s anniversary and had put up a big sign on the roof of the back porch, it said CONGRATULATIONS CONSTANCE and WE LOVE YOU, NANCY JEAN AND BILL in black letters with red hearts and real arrows through the hearts, but she was plenty busy so she didn’t go lookin’.

About the time the mayor, now he was Burl Crossfield’s fishin’ buddy, he got set to toast a toast to the new bride an’ groom before the eatin’ started, it started in sprinklin’ rain so all of ‘em got up under the tents an’ awning.

The food now bein’ real close, folks got started in on what they came for, and the mayor had to get up on a chair and holler a little and hold up his glass.
He had got to a place in his toast about how he sure would like to stay bein’ mayor come next election, he must’a been savin’ his best wishes to the newlyweds for last, when there come a rumble and here came Constance at a dead run, headed for home and plain cross about bein’ shanghaied to start with, and right behind her there’s at least thirty of Bill’s brother’s hogs takin’ advantage of the door bein’ open, and all of  ‘em at a dead run too, that’s how porkers are.

Constance knocked down the dessert table and right behind her came another four hundred pounds of ham and bacon, smack into the mayor’s chair, well he turned a perty cartwheel and grabbed the edge of the awning and pulled it down on him and the chicken, cornbread, and lemonade table, which bein’ rickety gave up and collapsed, and that awning naturally tangled up everybody and they all ended up in the plates and bowls in a heap.

By the time the entire fleet had sailed through, all the tables were flat down or only standin’ one end up, and all the food on the ground either way. You can’t say hogs are dumb when it comes to eatin’ so they just turned around and took advantage.

Everybody includin’ Nancy Jean had took out runnin’ when the stampede arrived, well they got to chasin’ those hogs off their lunch before too much got gone and the hogs’d run off and circle around and come back. It was a perty sight, and exactly thirty-one times as much fun t’ see as a greased-pig chase.

Bill Stubbins must’a figured he’d end up bad off eventually, ‘coz Nancy Jean was givin’ him looks like all this was goin’ to cost him plenty, so he got his new daddy-in-law’s shotgun from inside and cut loose in the air, pigs generally bein’ real suggestible about loud noises. Oh, that sent the hogs off all right, but it got their neighbor’s cows so rattled they ran around and around the feedlot until they busted the fence and headed through the party, and while cows aren’t much for eatin’ chicken or dessert they didn’t do what was left of the food or surroundings much good on the way through. On top of that, it started to rain again.

By this time, Bill Stubbins is in a state of decidement should he own up and take it, or run off and leave his bride. Doesn’t see too many good choices, but Miz Crossfield’s determined to save what isn’t plain impossible to identify and she picks up what she can and invites everybody into the house. Before she’s got out two words about how she’s mighty glad to see everybody,  just like her to put a good face on it, Nancy Jean gets up on the back of the couch and absolutely dumps the only pot left of pinto beans on Bill Stubbins, who’s sittin’ there tryin’ not to be noticed. If there was ever a man as didn’t know what to do next, it’s him.

Now you know Miz Crossfield’s never quite calculated what happened, or how Constance came to show up with all those hogs at the wrong time, but Bill Stubbins is the very model of a husband ‘cept he’s not much admired by the men folk ‘coz he’s what their wives say she wishes her husband would be like.

Nancy Jean, guess she pretty much got what she wanted.

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.

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.

The Dentist and the Polecat

I bet you didn’t know there used to be a dentist in this town, well there was, an’ he left a carpet bag of picks and pliers and things he might’a known what they was for, but nobody else does. Ask Doc how he got ‘em, he'll tell you. Doc says he’s figured out some of ‘em so he’ll work on you if you have a bad enough toothache you’re willin’ to take a chance on him pullin’ one that didn’t need pullin’ after all. Don’t suppose it helps that Doc’ll match you one for one with that whiskey he gives folks to take their mind off the pain, an’ some folks take a lot of pacifyin’.

Now, t’ get back to that dentist, he’d set up practice in the little side room over to Miz McCarrick’s, you remember how she took in boarders ‘til they started eatin’ more than they paid her and she didn’t have the heart to tell ‘em, so she just locked the door one afternoon and didn’t even leave a sign sayin’ what she thought they could do for a place to sleep and eat. The dentist, he was already gone by then, but if he hadn’t been he would’a got turned out too. Miz McCarrick wasn’t one to play favorites.

Gettin’ back, the first time we ever seen him he got dropped off at the barber’s, bein’ it was in the center of town and nobody’d miss the sign, it said BARBAR and was turned rightways to the shop and was the biggest one to start with. He must’a paid that farmer to bring him clear from Robsonville. Train didn’t stop here then. He had his carpet bag and a folded-up black umbrella in one hand, and a burlap sack tied with a rope in the other.

Sheriff Morgan, he was deputy then, he says the stranger must’a heard about Blackie Pinkerton bustin’ out of jail over to Cobb’s Creek and he didn't want to leave any doubts about what his business was, so he headed straight for the sheriff’s office and opened up that carpet bag.

Roscoe Loomis, he was sheriff then, he didn’t know what it all was but he knew a knife from a gun, and none of it was either one so he didn’t say anything, not that he was all that worried about it ‘coz he had Blackie Pinkerton in his own jail, and mighty proud of it. Wouldn’t tell how he got him there. Deputy Morgan knew all right, he was there and must’a been itchin’ to tell, except he reckoned it was better to be a deputy now and a sheriff someday than neither one, so he kept quiet.

So here’s the dentist, he’s got himself installed in Miz McCarrick’s side room, and it wasn’t but a week or two before here comes old Toothless Stommelhorn in a buckboard, clear from Robsonville. In the back is the pertyest white enamel dentist chair, you can tell the dentist is tickled pink.

It was the very next day, and you can ask Toothless, he was sleepin’ in a dried-up horse trough under the BARBAR sign, when Sheriff Loomis comes in all in a lather, says Blackie says he’s dyin’ and would somebody PLEASE shoot him or else pull his toothache.

Sheriff's tired by now of the moanin’ so he brings Blackie in, keepin’ a gun on him, naturally the dentist is unsure which of the black stumps he’s lookin’ at is a good place to start so he’s plenty nervous. Blackie’s givin’ him the eye too, that doesn't help any.

Just about the time he’s reachin’ in with the pliers, he hears a skiffle-scrape noise next to his feet, and he looks to see and it’s Miz McCarrick’s boy’s pet skunk with its tail up, ready to fire. The dentist, he leaps up into Blackie Pinkerton’s lap, the fancy white enamel chair crashes over into Sheriff Loomis, and Blackie grabs the sheriff’s gun and takes out after the dentist ‘coz he’s seen the dentist’s pliers is holdin’ Blackie’s gold tooth, the only thing he was ever proud of.

Now, Blackie’s pretty soon back in jail at Cobb’s Creek, and the barber has a fine new white enamel chair, but Miz McCarrick’s still mad ‘coz that dentist didn’t stop to pay her. Don’t know what became of that dentist.

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.

Painting by Rudine Aycock, Pikeville NC

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.

THE CARPENTER AND THE CARDS

Exactly forty years to the day after Thurmon Coltrane got this town named after him in a card game, he figured it was time to move into the place he’d been hammerin’ and sawin’ on for all that time and take up residin’.

Thurmon, he wasn’t much to hurry things, always said things was better done right than done right now, but after forty years of scroungin’ wood, switchin’ windows, addin’ stuff and takin’ it off, and tryin’ out different colors, he got to hearin’ pretty often from folks goin’ by about how it surely would be nice to see a vacant lot there next to the barber’s instead of what there was.

He was mighty proud of his house, but he was the only one. Didn't help he was just as likely to start carpenterin’ at three o’clock in the morning as any other time. He claimed workin’ in the dark was easier, no distractions.

Now, there wasn’t much to this town when he got started buildin’. The whole place was just a saloon, a church with one gravestone, and a general store under a tent. When Thurmon happened up on the place on his way through he told Ollie Hardbarger, now Ollie ran the store and was the mayor and owned the saloon, that he’d had enough of livin’ so far from town, wanted to settle down, so he asked Ollie if he wouldn’t sell him a piece of ground. Ollie said he would, forgettin’ to mention he’d never actually been elected mayor and didn’t own anything except the saloon, but Thurmon gave him twenty-five dollars, made four piles of rocks, that was the foundation, and parked his old wagon out back to stay in. Thurmon’s rock piles sat way off by themselves in those days and he put up a sign that said FUTURE HOME OF THURMON COLTRANE out front so folks’d know what it was.

Now, there bein’ no more’n seven livin’ here then, along with one or two snake-oil types passin’ through, it didn’t take a sign for folks to know whose place it was, but Thurmon had his heart set on it .

How Coltrane got named after him had exactly nothin’ to do with that sign, before you head off in that direction. It was a kind of poker game that Thurmon won, happened less’n six months after the rock piles. Even after six months of him livin’ behind those rock piles that’s still all there was. Every so often he’d put up some boards but he’d never get around to nailin’ ‘em, so every time it blew a wind they’d just fall down. That didn't upset Thurmon much, he’d just go stand ‘em up again. He said there wasn’t no sense in getting’ in a hurry about something as important as buildin’ a house.

Now, it bein’ as they didn’t have all the poker cards the rules had to get bent some, but Thurmon and Ollie and Uriah Redfern the preacher and Doc Tillotson and Miz Redfern, it was her cards so they had to let her play, they’d be at it every night except Sunday. They’d play twice on Mondays to make up. Didn’t have anywhere to play that had a table except the saloon, but Ollie'd push one halfway out the door so the preacher and Miz Redfern could set their chairs outside and not strictly be in the saloon. Worked pretty good.

All that playin’ poker, well it wasn’t really poker without all the right cards so it wasn't really gamblin’ and the preacher could play, it got everything anybody had, won off ‘em by somebody else until they all ran out of somethin’ for the pot and they had to get imaginative. It was a travelin’ water-finder named Tobe McGinty that come up with the idea about the name. Tobe McGinty made his livin’ goin’ around divinin’ for water, or maybe he’d call down some rain, or for a dollar sell you a little tiny bottle of what he called condensed water. He made it clear it was just for droughts. Tobe had stopped on the way through, and watchin’ ‘em tryin’ and tryin’ to think up somethin’ new to bet he hollered out, “Why not the next hand wins this whole town?” Naturally Ollie gave him a look, he figured it was pretty much his to start with, and he looked around and scratched his head and scuffled his feet and said NO but that he'd consider lettin’ the winner at least name the place anything he liked, up to but not includin’ Drury.

Now Drury was the name of Ollie’s intended, except she’d kept him waitin’ for an answer Yes or No for twenty-four years and three months, and he didn’t like to be reminded. Nothin’ more was said about actually winnin’ the town.

Besides bein’ a mighty slow carpenter Thurmon Coltrane had a poker face, but when he drew three aces and a recipe for cornbread, that was Miz Redfern’s way of makin’ up for misplacin’ the last ace, he let out a whoop and slapped his cards on the table, but right then his chair took an opportunity to collapse into tooth-sticks and he fell and knocked himself out, cold as a snowdrift, on Ollie Hardbarger’s brass spittoon. Ollie kept it close ‘coz he had no eye for distances and any cleanin’ up that got done, had to get done by him. After a while Thurmon came to, and he opened his eyes and said Thurmonburg had every possible name beat except maybe Truitt's Camp on account of his mother's people bein’ Truitts, but not havin’ too much interest in makin’ another sign he decided to use the one he had, so he just crossed out FUTURE HOME OF THURMON and that left COLTRANE. Naturally Ollie Hardbarger had already started thinkin’ about a big archy gate across the road that said HARDBARGER on one side and CITY on the other, but he had to admit that Coltrane had a ring to it and he didn't raise any objection to that cornbread recipe even though he had two kings and two queens and he was the mayor to start with.

Miz Redfern was altogether dissatisfied ‘coz it was her cards and she was sure her actual name, it was Drusilla, it surely would look pretty painted on a rock and all over flowers, and POPULATION 7 painted right underneath. Not any of the men took up for her on that except the preacher, not surprisin’.

Now, after all this Thurmon just went home and got started back on his house. He never got to makin’ a sign for the other end of town so only half the people that came in knew what its name was until they left, but some stayed instead of leavin’ so after a while Thurmon found himself livin’ right in the middle of town instead of out a ways like he started.

With time goin’ by they got a new mayor, the general store got a roof, and there got to be two rows of gravestones. How Coltrane got named got forgot or not admitted to, it bein’ as Thurmon's house has never looked any better than it did when it was four rock piles and a wagon, but you just go ask Thurmon. You can't miss his house.

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.