Sampiro, thank you for sharing stories about your mother with us. Because of you, we love her, too.
THE FAMILY GENIUS, OR KEEPER OF THE LARARIUM SAMPIRAE
I have no more memory of the first time I felt his white eyed silent stare than I do of the first time I noticed any other member of the family I grew up with, but I do know that his eyes and his beard were in my dreams before I started school. My dreams were the only place where I ever heard his voice for in spite of all the times I spoke to him he never spoke back, even when it was just me in the room, which it usually was, other than for his wife of course. But I knew that she could not hear me, I doubted she could even see me, I knew that she was there solely as his comfort and his consort and that her senses were nothing compared to his. He could hear and see me, he just could not respond.
I saw him and his wife whenever I went to see their granddaughters and that was if not every day then at least several times every week. When I was a child the biographical details I knew about the couple, picked up from my father and from their granddaughters as the couple themselves did not speak about their past or anything else, were scarce. I knew that he was fifty-nine years old, she a little younger, that she had borne him many children, all of whom were dead, that he had once been a soldier and a farmer and a merchant and a whisky maker in some order and that *she * had the same name as my great-grandmother. I knew that if you looked into either of their faces you could find the faces of almost any member of my father’s tribe (save of course for my mother and for his mother, neither of whom were of this couple’s blood).
Even as a child, fifty-nine was not old to me, for I knew that my three living grandparents were all much older than that and they seemed to be doing well, while Kittie and Carrie were even older and still kept a garden and drew well water and cooked everyday, and their brother John was 8 years older than they were and still plowed his own fields! Even so, the white eyed man’s wife who was only perhaps fifty-five or fifty-six, did look old, though I supposed a life as a farmwife and mother to a large family and the dourness of her pose could all add up to make those years in her plump face and take life from her eyes. While she certainly did not look as old as her granddaughters, I’d have put her up there with Meemaw and Lucy at least.
He, however, did not seem old. He did not seem any particular age but rather all of them and none, both ancient and young and neither like the statues of Moses for whom, with the beard and the glowing face, he could have been the model. Above all he was independent of time, his temporal secession a success even if the secession he fought for had been an unqualified failure.
His name was Marion Branson Cotton and his lady wife was the former Louisiana Jane Thompson. Their images were captured in sepia in 1891, which they may or may not have known would be the last full year of his life, and in only slightly less than life size they were placed in a hand carved (but not well carved) frame long ago painted silver. They hung on the plank boards of Kitty & Carrie’s front room, centered between the rough mantel over the fireplace and the “Hebrew” water stains where the wall met the ceiling. They were the parents of the already legendary “Ma”, Kitty & Carrie’s mother who had raised her grandson, my father, and who I coveted my brother and sister’s memories of for she had died between their births and mine, a few months shy of her hundredth birthday.
Over the past three generations the photograph had faded, beginning perhaps with the sunlight that managed to creep into the house for about an hour each day and then, from the time of the photograph’s half life, from the bare bulb that had hung like a lynched thief from the room’s ceiling since this area of the state received the “electrocity” during the Depression. Over the same period of time it had darkened as well from 90 years of smoke wafting up from the wobbly stone fireplace that had still been used as late as my childhood before being replaced by the gas space heater that would accidentally but permanently alter the destinies of three relatives. But the images were still there, the gaunt and pale former Confederate private (my father oft remarked that our family’s chief ancestral distinction was from being descended of “the only known privates in the Confederate army- everybody else can give you at least a Captain or a Sergeant, usually a Colonel if they need one”) and his pudgy and dark lady, both facing straight ahead, her eyes black even in the dun limits of the picture and his so clear and large and white that when added to the glow it was obvious he knew I was there.
I would look at him for what probably was not hours but still seems it, absorbing every possible detail of the man. His suit was dark, there was a vest and some sort of pinstripe. If there was a tie or any kind of neckware it was impossible to tell for the full but bodiless beard cascaded far past his throat before coming to a perfect point in the center of his chest. The beard may have been white or perhaps light blonde, or some combination of the two, but it was only an accessory; it was the eyes and the glow that gave him the countenance of a holy man, and the smile, a quality rarer than horses in old photographs.
Her face was a perfect contrast to his. (Is that what first attracted him to her, or her to him?) She seemed his equal in height, but while he was lean and fair she was round and plump with lines that, while not deep, were visible even on the faded and darkened paper under the filthy pane of glass. If you’ve ever been to a Cracker Barrel™ you’ve probably seen a woman decorating the wall who looks much like her, with large bosoms beneath a gray or dark dress, high white collar with some frills and lace but ultimately conservative, and the unsmiling but not unfriendly face crowned with raven hair pulled what must have been painfully tight into a bun atop her head.
Though she did not live to be ancient like some of her children and many of her grandchildren did, I knew that she did outlive her husband by many years. Her twin granddaughters had been young adults when she died, the age at which most women married, while her eldest grandchildren were almost twenty years the twins’ senior; had she lived another year she’d have seen the first of her great-great-grandchildren. But aside from her fertility and age and general appearance in her mid-fifties, that’s about all I know of her.
I do know this, that she had both pity and disdain for a haughty neighbor lady who lived in “genteel poverty”. The neighbor was the widow of a Confederate officer and her family lost their slaves, their money, their land and everything else but their arrogance after the war.
I mention this for one reason: it’s the only time I ever heard Kitty and Carrie quote their grandmother. It’s the only evidence I have that she could speak. She was just the consort on the mantel. A god’s consort, but not a goddess.
Why was he a god? Well, the beard for one thing, the eyes that were so wide and even in brown were grey and white for another, but mostly the glow. His face literally shone. I now know that it was probably due to an accident- the photographer, perhaps a novice or a careless experienced man, had probably used too much flash and held it to close to the man and too far from the woman but the result was a face that glowed even though his wife’s did not and a flash that probably reflected in his eyes similar to redeye in the image of a digital camera.
But at the time I did not know this and certainly would not have wanted to. At the time those white eyes were so clearly sighted that I had no doubt he could see me, and if he could see me he could not be mere mortal, for he died almost seventy-five years before I was born and yet he knew us. I’d certainly never read Plato by this time and his cave shadows, and J.K. Rowling with her sentient pictures was younger than I was at the time, but I had the definite feeling that his half of the image was aware, that something about him had been captured that perhaps was not supposed to have been but was nonetheless and what was on the wall, while it was not the man but only his fiery reflection, was knowing and stayed there. And I ‘knew’ that whatever had made him sentient had also left him free to go, but I knew that he stayed by choice.
And why would he stay then? To do what any good patriarch does- to watch over his family. And did he know that I knew he could see me? Of course he did. That’s why I was his favorite, the one he had chosen even, though for what I wasn’t exactly sure. But more than why he had chosen me, I wondered why his face was glowing.
Please remember, I was a lonely and unmedicated gay kid growing up in the heart of redneck country in Alabama- you do these things when you’re not playing with sticks or castrating pigs for $3 in spending money. I’m much better now…
To Be Continued (and the Relevance to the Rest of My Increasingly Masturbatory Posts Delved Into)
As neurotic and febrile as my notions about the portrait may have been (and in my defense I should say that it wasn’t all photographs or images in general or even all the photographs of him that I believed were sentient, it was only this particular one) there was one member of the family who I think shared it. He was the keeper if not the outright builder of the best tended of the lalariums for any of my bloodlines when I was a kid.
Ralph Cotton was a garrulous and jocular and obese old character who sold barbecue billed as “BEST IN ALABAMA!” and “WORLD FAMOUS” (though combined into “world famous in Alabama” may have been closer to the truth- it was an is good). Ralph was Kitty and Carrie’s first cousin, born in 1906 to their youngest uncle who had inherited the family homestead which he in turn inherited from his father. Ralph had been a professional blacksmith in the 1920s, an auto racer in the 1930s, he’d played piano in a New Orleans whorehouse for a while and banjo in a Dixieland combo that played WW2 USO shows. He’d been, or claimed to have been, Harry S Truman’s favorite bartender in Independence MO for a while and accepted his invitation to move to D.C. and work at the White House receptions during the late 40s but he quit after two receptions because “politicians talk your ear off about themselves and drink like horses but then don’t tip worth a damn”.
Ralph came back to Alabama in the 1960s after touring the world (like my father he wasn’t that impressed with it) by which time the homestead had long since burned and the property quadrisected into an interesting arrangement by the building of new county roads and widening of others. (Alabama’s road building was notoriously corrupt, a way of rewarding campaign contributors for their efforts- basically, you supported a candidate with big money, and you formed or bought or teamed with an existing LLC called ‘Your-name-here Roadbuilders [or Gravel or Asphalt or whatever] and you got your monetary payback by getting the contracts to build state and county roads for majorly inflated prices, and these contracts were so ubiquitous that you can forget what you see on bad movies where every road in Alabama seems to be a dirt path to nowhere followed by a ride on a mule and a machete worthy thicket; Alabama, due to decades of corruption, has paved roads where other states have cow paths, but I digress.) The old homestead was now home to Ralph’s constantly-being-modified trailer which was sandwiched perfectly between the four remaining chimneys, while across the crossroads directly in front of it his cinder block and plate glass and aqua-blue-painted dogwood columned restaurant (I could build you a duplicate for probably $400 and the place took in twice that on any weekend day) was built on the site of his grandfather’s general store. Across the road from the restaurant was/is the Cotton family cemetery, while on the remaining corner was the family’s peach orchard (though a little south and east of the state’s huge peach farms) though now it’s a service station and small rural subdivision. Ralph was literally surrounded by his grandfather.
And in the entry to his barbecue place was the official lararium. There were the tintypes of his grandfather and various aunts and uncles from the 1870s to the 1890s, the same photo that was at Kitty & Carrie’s but in much worse condition (torn) though the eyes still glowed (though not as much), and even a relicry. There were also framed photocopies of the family Bible and of the old Confederate’s pardon and discharge dated May 1, 1865 in Durham, N.C., and below it a small table with a white cloth and actual relics: his eyeglasses (thin gold frames, he was apparently fashionable), a plain wooden pipe and two Confederate pennies the patriarch had apparently kept as souvenirs. There was also a vase that always contained cut flowers, including peach blossoms from the orchard when they were in season. It was from these photocopied pages and from Ralph relaying tales of the grandfather he worshipped even though he died 15 years before the old barbecuing bachelor and rotund raconteur was born that I learned most of the tales I knew of him. I’ll spare you the dialect full retelling, but these are most of them:
—He was born September 25, 1832 in Muscogee, Georgia and married Lousiana Jane Thompson in Coosa County Alabama on November 23, 1852, the bride’s 17th birthday. Their oldest child was born nine months later.
–The unit he was discharged from was the 51st Alabama Cavalry
–The names and dates his children were born. Strange for a large family in the 19th century, they all not only lived to adulthood but outlived their parents (or at least if any died young they were not recorded).
—He had a condition I’ve since heard referred to as “soldier’s heart”, a far more pleasant euphemism for what’s today known as “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder”. His son, Ralph’s father, remembered him falling apart emotionally on a few occasions while doing routine things such as breaking bread with his family, plowing his field during planting season or just sitting down reading the newspaper.
–He recognized his brother’s dead body on a battlefield by the cast iron ring his brother wore because his brother had no face left. (PTSD in part, though far from wholly, explained.)
–He kept a store off and on for twenty years on this spot and when he died his wife managed it for a couple of years, impressing many with her business acumen and selling it for enough to ensure herself a comfortable retirement.
–He had hunting dogs named Roscoe and Obadiah that he loved.
–He hated his firstborn’s fiancé and forbade her his permission to marry. When she eloped the old man mounted his horse and chased her across the county for more than a day, finding her only after she’d said her vows. The marriage took: they were together for more than 60 years and had 15 children. I’m not sure why he hated the son-in-law or if he ever changed his mind.
None of these things are fascinating, only a couple are even moderately interesting, but it was the whole of what I knew of this man. So when I had my chats with him I’d bring them up.
I’m not sure when I started talking to him, though I do know that I was myself sentient enough to do it when nobody was around. I wanted to find out if he was able to communicate, or if he was able to affect any of the world around him, and if so, how much. And as always when dealing with elders, I was very respectful.
“Great-great-grandfather- I know you see me but I’m not sure if you know my name. It’s Jon. I’m the youngest son of the son of the youngest son of your daughter Cute… How are you? Is there anything I can bring you? Or… or her… great-great-grandmother…”
And over the course of a few years I brought little offerings and put them on the mantle beneath him. Sometimes a peppermint, once a cigarette I’d pilfered (for if he smoked a pipe then…), once a wheat penny. I knew he couldn’t very well light up, but he was spirit more than flesh and perhaps he could… smoke the spirit of the cigarette? I don’t know, it was up to him, I wasn’t in a position to know how or why spirits did things, but when I’d look later and they were be gone I was elated. It didn’t occur (because I didn’t want it to) that it was Kitty and Carrie removing these items from the mantel beneath him, I just thought he liked them. And when I had a dream about him- a dream that I remember when I could remember it but I can’t remember the dream itself- specifically he was talking to me in a glade in our woods that I called Moriah- why he was there I’m not sure as it was never his land, but see LCSH “Spirits. Rules and regulations. Those knowledgeable of.” above.
Once I brought some red buttons (not the entertainer- he may have been willing but his agent was a jackass when I tried, and consequently he never got a world famous barbecue dinner) that my mother had taken from a dress whose cloth she was salvaging for making rugs. These were for his wife, for though I didn’t think she could see or hear me, he could alert her to them, and in courting her I was courting his favor as well. She’d been dead for sixty years, it must be a long time since she’d had a present after all.
Anyway, this went on for a while. I had the occasional dream that I took as contact (hell, wise adults paid for less than that at Dodonna thousands of years ago) but ultimately either thought the whole thing through or just got tired of always having to be the one who propelled the conversation and picked up the tab. By the Bicentennial I’d pretty much tapered off to an occasional “How ya doin’?” but you know how those friendships are when you used to be close and somehow, without any official falling out, you one day realized you weren’t and it was even awkward to be around them- that’s what happened to Grandpa Marion and me. I’d still smile but… if he was choosing me for something then, in all due respects, he really needed to be a little more direct, and if he wasn’t- well, keep the buttons and cigarette anyway, but let’s agree to do lunch but never set a date. Sorry gramps, I got peeps (and hell, at least the disappearing black kids all those years before had had the courtesy to make sounds and moves- maybe they’d drop back in sometime and take a message to him).
By the time I was twelve I was thinking “what the hell was I thinking?” with regard to past thoughts. But I still thought it was a damned cool photograph.
My father never had to pay when he took me to Ralph’s Barbecue because the old man for some reason really liked me (odd because I was usually really shy as a kid). Consequently whenever my father was responsible for my dinner (he did not cook) we went to Ralph Cotton’s, where sometimes Ralph would get me to sing Adeste Fideles or Lorena or Mountain Music and he’d shout “I feel I oughtta be paying for this kid’s entertainment! Garland put your wallet back on your fat butt there, I’d rather charge my old mama for a hug around the neck than take your money. Use it to send this boy to college.”
My father: Or more likely pay his bail. But thanks.
Several times the conversation turned to Marion Branson Cotton. Once when my father was out back using the detached restrooms (they had plumbing and all, Ralph just liked outhouses- maybe that’s where Kitty and Carrie got it) I secretly asked him “When you were a kid… did you ever talk to him? I mean… and think he could hear you and see you and all?” First he looked at me with a “What the hell are you talking about?” expression then burst into a sincere beam. “Jon-Jon I talk to him every morning when I’m here chopping up barbecue before the restaurant opens! Hell, those eyes can flat out see this place. Grandmama not so much though, which is a pity cause I remember her a little. Did you ever give him presents?”
I was amazed. “YES!”
“M-hmm. And he never said thank you did he? Used to piss me off.”
Damn I wish I hadn’t lost contact with Ralph. He was a cool old man and probably had a lot of stories, but… as I did earlier with his grandfather, we drifted and he’s long dead. He left the restaurant to his assistant chef who still has it and it’s remodeled and a lot nicer now and still has great barbecue but lacks the personality. By Ralph’s will, though, the photograph has to remain on that wall for as long as the place is in business in that location, and so it is. You can see it there to this day. And have the coconut pie- it’s Ralph’s recipe and it’s great.
To be continued (and I promise it’ll be relevant, and yes, in fact, I have heard that I need an editor worse than Andrew Ridgley needed George Michael, why do you ask?)
Since I have a librarian’s need to complete the series, I’ll add the one other story I know about the man since it is the longest even though it says little about the person. When I was a teenager my father found an old reel-to-reel tape he’d made many years before that he no longer had the equipment to play. He took it to his work, loaded it on a reel to reel and made a copy of it using a handheld cheap tape recorder with a cheap cassette (the kind without its own case). What I heard was a very poor copy of a very poor recording made 25 years before as a 98 year old man recalled 90 year old memory. In interest of time and patience I’ll again spare the dialect and exact phrases but I will add that this barely audible recording was of a man speaking very slowly, as if half asleep (again, he was 98), having to be constantly prompted lest he forget what he was talking about, so though about 20 minutes long the story could be told in about two, but it was still fascinating (if only to me if only at the time) for its antiquity, atmosphere and personal connection (though by this time I was no longer on “speaking terms” with my great-great-grandfather).
The harvest after the war was over (either Fall 1865 or 1866, I’m not sure which) Marion B. had a great peach crop and, returning after years at war, he needed money. He was already known for making good peach whisky so he made enough jugs and bottles to fill two wagons and with his oldest son, Frank, the old man who was at the home of his sister telling this story in the 1950s, he set out to Montgomery to sell them. They packed biscuits, hardtack and sausage and both father and son (Frank was then perhaps 8) carried a rifle, for the war had only just ended and there were straggling soldiers from both sides still roaming the woods as well as the usual menagerie of wild animals, wild dogs and other things that could do worse than go bump in the night.
Frank described the trip- they left before daybreak, spent the night in the field of a relative, and arrived across the river from Montgomery after sunset the following evening. When the bridge into the heavily occupied city (capitol of the state and former capitol of the Confederacy and still swollen with refugees from Selma, Tuscaloosa and other badly damaged cities and towns and former slaves and ex-Confederate soldiers all seeking employment after the war) was open the next morning they drove to the farmer’s market they were among the first to cross as Marion was heading downtown to the riverfront farmer’s market to sell his whisky.
They were accosted by two “bluecoat Fed’rals” (the phrase Frank used in his 90s rather than “Yankees” before they got to the market who “impounded” the whisky for “unpaid tax revenue”- aka they attempted to steal it. After messing with the recent rebel veteran they turned their attention on his son, picking him off the wagon and scaring hell out of him (probably rough play as a show of force to his father but impossible to know) and Marion aimed his rifle and ordered them to release the boy. Now this was a BIG deal in and of itself because Marion, like all other Confederate veterans, was essentially on probation and leveling a rifle at a Federal troop violated that. The “bluecoat Fed’rals” could have shot him dead or arrested him either one.
However, along came “a couple of Irish” came to his rescue, both of them returned rebels themselves and neither with any use for Union soldiers. Frank didn’t recall them being armed but he did say the Fed’rals had a pistol out and a brawl was about to start, and then more Fed’rals arrived and then more Montgomerians or other locals arrived and within moments elements necessary for a hot and humid sequel to the Boston Massacre (then far more recent than the Civil War is today incidentally) were in place and both the Fed’rals and the civilians who hated them and would use this farmer’s whisky as an excuse to fight them again were about to get out of control and it could have been a bloodbath. It was saved by the arrival of a high ranking Union officer who rode onto the scene, ascertained the service more like a cop than a soldier, reprimanded the original two Fed’rals in front of the mob, sent everybody home and gave the farmer and his son a not particularly wanted but accepted escort “from up in Iowa he say-ed- quiet but friendly enough” to stay with them til they sold the whiskey, the extra wagon and mule, and get safely back across the bridge. Marion did not get into trouble for holding the rifle on the soldiers but didn’t return to Montgomery until Reconstruction ended a decade later.
When Carrie moved in with us I brought the photograph of her grandparents as well as other photographs, a lock of her dead baby sister’s hair and some other mementoes to the house along with her clothes and few personal belongings. The picture I hung above the dresser in her bedroom (which had previously been my sister’s and was also the room in which my father died) and I rarely looked at it, in part because it no longer had a lot of mystery for me and in part because after Carrie moved in the smell of pee in that room would have made the Jolly Green Giant say “ho ho ho—shit!”
When we evacuated the house and refugeed to Montgomery as “Chevette People” five years later it was among the mountain of things left in the house. I’d intended to retrieve it but unfortunately we were dispossessed before that could happen and so that and most of the other really old family pictures were lost along with a few tons of clothing, books, furniture, books, dishes, books, bric-a-brac, books, canned food, book and other items (and books) that wound up on the lawns and in pick-ups belonging to the good Christian folk of north Elmore/south Coosa county at the time. I have no photograph of the man now. (I was told by Jeanine that Lou Ida took several family photographs from the Free Trade Agreement in the yard but she denied it when I asked her, proving conclusively the old bitch can speak.)
For years I was too busy workin’ for the man every night and day and going to school and wrangling schizophrenics and my mother to concern myself much with the family history, always thankful when a cousin (always on my mother’s side) gave us a copy of the latest family tree or genealogy findings but not doing them myself. I was really only interested in the family members I personally knew.
My father once told me a story about one of his great-uncles who, having reached a stage of sufficient monetary and temporal leisure to care about such matters, became obsessed with the family’s roots. He wrote his oldest living relative, a great-uncle of his own, to ask what all he knew about the family origins and received a message to the effect of “My dear nephew, I am so pleased to know that you are doing well. You did not write that you are doing well, but in my experience people who are not don’t care where the family came from, just how to get out of the mess they’re presently in.”
A few years ago my sister, having reached a stage of sufficient monetary and temporal leisure to care about such matters, became obsessed with the family roots. She wanted to know everything there was to know about who we are, where our ancestors came from, what did they do in the Civil War, what brought them to Alabama and when and all that kind of stuff, so she began her research. Research in this case translates as ‘my sister called me and said “I want to know everything there was to know about who we are, where our ancestors came from, what did they do in the Civil War, what brought them to Alabama and when and all that kind of stuff, so look it up and send me a report. I want some family trees, pictures, and the heritage back to Europe. If you could have it by this weekend that’d be great.” (True story.)
Since I worked in a research library and had some interest in these matter myself and high speed Internet and the like I began the exercise in large part to shut her up (for after my “this weekend” deadline passed she called again. And again. And again.
I’d always sworn I’d never get involved with genealogical research as it was something I’d in fact referred to as the hobby of “the bluehaired legions of the Walking Dead”. (Genealogy researchers, particularly the total novices with the computer skills of a sleepwalking Bedouin, can be a source of misery in libraries, staring blankly as you try to explain “They didn’t have obituaries for regular folk in most 1740 newspapers” or “Yeah, we have a lot of books here we sure do, but unfortunately we’re somehow slap out of books on the history of Oongagyllabitylihakamakalaka County, Mississippi from 1882-1884 with particular emphasis on the ancestors of Miss Maple Sugar Smith-Smythe of Troutville, Alabama and her friend Myrtle who thinks she may have had an uncle-in-law there either around that time or possibly long after, though it might have been a century before and of course if you could help them that’s how you’d get the four hour lecture on how their great-great-great-grandfather saved the entire state of Louisiana from being destroyed in the world’s first atomic blast by giving General Hooker a secret Masonic signal and how their grandmother’s brother’s first wife’s uncle’s half-sister had the same tailor as Mrs. Jesse James. But I’d promised and I started the research, and a strange thing happened: By the time I got enough information together to satisfy her my sister could no longer have cared less, looking at the family trees with all the attention to detail I use when being shown pictures of a stranger’s “adorable little grandbabies”- “Oh how sweet… gee, look at the time!”, while I had become obsessed with genealogical research.
Since cousins on my mother’s side had already done a ton of research that part was easy. It was some while before I started my father’s side though, then the discovery of a possible African ancestor on my paternal grandmother’s line led to several fruitless research efforts on that end, and finally I got to the Cotton side. Another descendant had done a good bit of research: I discovered among other “fascinating” things that his father’s name was Leonard and his mother was Rebecca Bibby Cotton, he had an older sister, two older brothers and three younger brothers, that Leonard’s father was probably named David but may not have been, and through Census records and judgments levied for taxes and the like I was able to track their progress from South Carolina ca. 1800 to gaining and losing land in the Georgia Land Lotteries of the 1810s and 1820s and finally to Alabama ca. 1850. I learned that one of Marion’s brothers married one of Louisiana’s sisters, and the same dates I already had, and I learned a little bit more about his Civil War history, namely that he joined a unit formed in Wetumpka AL along with his brothers in summer 1861 and was reassigned to the 51st Cavalry (Company H) the following year, but no copies of his photograph. Pretty much a dead end after his possible grandfather David. (I’d hoped there’d be a connection to the Cottons of Plimoth since I have a James Towne ancestor and would love a matching set of early one, but I can’t make a definite match before David.)
Disappointed at getting little information other than what I already had, at some point a year or two ago I started researching his unit to see what battles they fought in. That was interesting.
As I mentioned in Mississippienne’s genealogy thread, one reason I enjoy genealogy has nothing to do with any notions of tracing my descent to Pompey the Great and enjoying 64th generation reflected glory or whatever, but strictly as a research game- connecting A & B to H & K when C through J and L are all missing- it keeps my research skills sharper than they might be when 99% of student’s reference questions are answerable in 10 minutes or less. I don’t generally feel any strong connection to the names on the papers as they’re just that- names on papers- and I have only the faintest sense of connection that the history and migratory patterns I’m reading about really connect to me since I don’t have faces and stories to attach to them. Usually in genealogy the public records and the general histories of time/place/groups give you a skeleton to work with but it’s the stories and the photographs that are passed down that supply the flesh, if any.
With Marion Branson Cotton it was exactly the opposite. It was his regimental history that supplied more of the flesh than I’d had before. And about that more when I return as well as, more importantly, why this is relevant to my mother’s death (other than the fact they’re both dead folks now) and what I’m doing next. I promise that if you’ll bear with my babbling, this really isn’t a “my ancestor is more interesting than yours” vanity thread because ultimately he’s just a Civil War veteran and middle class Alabama farmer who died 115 years ago, but while researching him recently I had a semi-epiphany about something far more current and why, if he did, he “chose” me (though I doubt he did- I still think it was just a freak occurrence when the powder exploded, but I was wrong when I said there’s no way that Jeffrey the Obnoxious One-Trick Pony could win PROJECT RUNWAY when Michael was so far more varied, so I could be wrong about the mystical nature of all things including ancestor worship and prophetic countenanced men anointing gay kids who bring them and their wife buttons and peppermints as well.)
VERY LONG FOOTNOTES TO THE ABOVE POST
*1Though not all- after my mother’s funeral I discovered a cache that I’d thought long gone that includes, among other things, a picture of Kitty and Carrie from when they were very pretty teenagers ca. 1905, predating the next oldest picture I have of them by at least 50 years).
*2Totally immaterial but I’ll mention it anyway: About a month after she moved in with us Carrie’s house was burglarized twice in the same week; they cleaned out a small fortune in antiques, none of them particularly valuable in their own right probably but collectively worth a tidy sum. There was substantial evidence that whoever did the job knew the place- they pulled up to a back entrance you most people didn’t even know was there (it looked like a boarded window but was in fact a door), they stole a stack of quilts from a “closet” of sorts that was on the floor under the (never used) bathroom [again, you would have no idea this closet, or bin, or whatever you’d want to call it, was even there if you didn’t know the house, which was jam packed with furniture cast off by relatives over the decades] then came back a few nights later after the sheriff’s reports were filed and did a clearly informed strike to take the items that were less valuable and or harder to get to.
Because of the inside knowledge of the job my mother immediately believed it was some of Carrie’s relatives or in-laws who planned it and possibly involved Lou Ida on some level. When Lou Ida, who was always broke, soon added vinyl siding to her house it strengthened my mother’s opinion. When Lou Ida never even gave us an evening’s break with Carrie and would never so much as bring a meal to her to help us if we had business in town it made my mother even more convinced [“It’s so obvious she’s feeling guilt or thinks I suspect she was involved”] and after the eviction/adjustment episode she was pretty sure Lou Ida had masterminded the entire thing, probably drove the truck and at very least helped move the stuff. By the time she died, after she had cussed out Lou Ida again for calling her about “genealogy shit” she was pretty much convinced Lou Ida had done it single handedly while wearing a parrot on her shoulder, using a cutlass to sacrifice cats to The Great Shaitan and wiping her ass with the family Bible on her way out the door to find a sleeping babe to murder.
I have no theory on the matter. It certainly would not surprise me; Lou Ida is capable of incredible self-justification and could easily have convinced herself that she was owed that furniture, but on the other hand I think she’s a monumental coward who would have been terrified of my mother finding out.
The most damning bit of evidence was when she asked us later “What ever happened to the bedstead that was in Kitty and Carrie’s log room off the front room? I could have sworn it was still there when Aunt Kitty died but it wasn’t.” (She had absolutely no reason to even enter that house after Kitty died- besides which half of the front room was scorched, the chair Kitty fell in after catching on fire was burned to nothing but charcoal and a pile of burned cloth and stuffing, Kitty’s upper dentures were on the floor in the midst of the ashes and there was identifiable organic matter among the debris- only a sicko would have even wanted to enter the place and she’d have had to pass over this to get to the little room she was talking about.
When told my brother had the bed, that he’d taken it a few months before Kitty died and refinished it and slept in it, she was livid. “That was my bed! Ma wanted me to have that bed!” My mother told her “You had 18 years to get it if you wanted it” to which she responded “I DON’T HAVE A TRUCK!” She even called my brother at home first demanding and then politely requesting its return (my brother has the worst temper in the family and fired a warning shot that let her know to change tactics). He refused, and she later commented to others “Ever since learning they took that bed right out from under me I’ve been so glad I got what I did get from that house”, which my mother took as a confession. I wouldn’t be astonished but I think the old bitch probably just pilfered continually over the years.
Lou Ida had not seen my brother in many years and had never seen his kids when he dropped in on her one day while showing the kids the farm he grew up on. She came out to see who was there and when she recognized she smiled and hugged him, said “Oh these are your children…that boy’s the image of Garland when he was that age!” and then feeling caught up said “Do you still have my bed? I wanted that bed my whole life.” When told my nephew now sleeps in it and in fact loves it she greeted him (he was about 11 years old at the time) with “Has your father taught you it’s a sin to steal? Cause that bed was mine but was stolen from me.” My brother made a surprisingly civil but immediate “goodbye” and left.
When my brother cursed her out recently, which was separately and equally from my own cursing out of her but for similar reasons, he told her “And if that goddamned bed is so important to you after all these years I want you to know you can have it!” When she started to take directions to his house he told her “All I want is notice when you’re coming. And $8,000. Or the deed to your house. I’ll give you two months to vacate.” (That bed is not worth anywhere near that much; it’s ca. 1880 and large and heavy but it’s not ornate and was a mill-produced mass produced number.)
When she told him that was ridiculous and that she didn’t have anywhere near that much and wouldn’t pay it if she did he politely told her “Then I guess you’re just shit out of luck once more. How many times does this make?” and told her “I was just joking… if you’d come up with $8000 I’d have burned the damned thing before giving it to you.” Injunctions to respect ones elders carry a Lou Ida specific line-item-veto in the new family by-laws.
Marion Branson Cotton was born to a family of very modest means in Georgia in 1832. They moved a lot and according to court papers at least twice his father seems to have lost in everything. Marion’s memories of life before the Creek Indians were removed from Georgia and Alabama would have been as hazy and brief as his twin granddaughters’s memories of him. He was too young to have fought or feared rampaging redskins, he was too young to fight in the Mexican War, it is likely that if he saw violence growing up (other than that which will come when there are six boys in a family [though one seems to have died in childhood or else disappeared]) it was very localized. It was a brutal time very dissimilar to our own where criminals were publicly hanged and black skinned people could be forced to work the fields that had been cleared by brown skinned people whose land had been taken with complete impunity by a small class of white skinned people who looked upon poor whites like the Cottons with obvious contempt as well. It was a time when every year you had to wrestle Mother Nature until one of you was worn out for food and then at the last minute the bitch might still decide to serve it up to locusts or the sun or the rain gods instead. Hunting was not a sport but a way of not starving, butchering animals was done publicly and constantly- seeing intestines would have been old hat to him from the time he could walk. Whole families often lived in one room (Twain in Huckleberry Finn refers to the Grangerfords as a family so rich they didn’t have a bed in their parlor [Kitty and Carrie had two in their parlor]) and privacy was something you found under a sheet. Infant mortality visited almost every family at least once and parents who had buried eight children were not uncommon (though the ones who buried them alive were still looked down upon). From the Census I know that Cotton and his brothers could read and write, but it’s doubtful they could afford books and there weren’t that many available in small communities to begin with and those communities were remote, so it’s likely he was extremely provincial and that if he had any personal distaste for the slaves he definitely would have seen (though his own family did not own any) he would have kept it to himself and even thought of it as God’s will, for certainly owners had no problems believing this.
He married at twenty, then as now young for first marriage. His wife became pregnant within days of their wedding. By 1860 his family was living more comfortably than they ever had and his father owned approximately 80 acres; what Marion owned I’ve no idea as he is not listed in the 1860 census. From the family Bible and the history of his unit I can tell you that he supplied his own gun and his own horse (as all men joining his Ranger unit did) when he left his wife, pregnant with their fifth child, to serve the new country founded where he would one day go to sell his whisky (if he had not gone there already). That first year he saw little or no combat, basically crisscrossing the state. The next year his unit was disbanded in Montgomery (whose capitol was the first to fly the flag of the Confederacy, though not the Confederate flag that’s up there now [or is it? I haven’t checked the papers today]) and there he was reassigned to the 51st Alabama Cavalry, sent to serve under General Nathan Bedford Forrest and for the next four years he would be one of the case studies that proved Sherman right. He was already well blooded from battles in Tennessee when he evidently returned home long enough in spring of 1863 to impregnate his wife. He may have discovered his brother’s body by then, for I can find no death record of the only brother it could have been; he simply disappears after the 1860 Census.
When he returned to his unit it was to be unrelenting horror for the remaining two years of the war. His unit was sent to Chickamauga and saw horrible combat. In October 1863 they participated in the capture of a huge Union supply train (about which more in a moment) and he was among the survivors when half of his company was killed or captured near Shelbyville (his brother?). On November 23, 1863 his wife celebrated her twenty-eighth birthday by giving birth to her sixth child, a daughter she named after herself and after a verse from the Bible in which Jesus is quoted in Aramaic: Talitha Cumi- little girl, rise. (Was the child sickly, I wonder?) On that same day, 250 miles to the north of his farm and more than a thousand of feet above Chattanooga her husband was fighting for his life in the romantically named “Battle Above the Clouds”, a Confederate victory in a campaign that was a Confederate thrashing, in which his unit (now under Braxton Bragg) fled the field for north Georgia after days of fighting that left thousands of men dead and tens of thousands captured or missing.
For most of the rest of the war he fought against Sherman, first in north Georgia then bivouacked around Atlanta and then harassing his offshoots as much as possible en route to Savannah and then into South Carolina, the state where his parents were born. For four months in 1864 his unit saw battle every single day. I cannot imagine what that would do to one’s ears even (for if you’ve never fired a black powder rifle or heard a cannon shot trust me, the greatest Dolby Digital Sound System yet made cannot reproduce it- it literally hurts your head, and he would have heard it by the thousands). There were times when supplies were unavailable for days and his unit slept without tents or rations in South Carolina swamplands just as they had in the light snows of Tennessee two years before.
When Lee surrendered Cotton’s unit was still in the field, North Carolina now, fighting and desperately outnumbered and out provisioned under General Joe Johnston. Jefferson Davis was in flight from captured Richmond at the time but had a long enough layover in Charlotte to order Johnston to react to the coward Lee’s act (Davis was furious with R.E.L.) by dispersing his infantry who wanted to go home (all of them- desertion was up to hundreds of men per day) but to keep his cavalry, of which Marion was still a part, and literally head for the hills, there to continue to harass the Union soldiers as guerillas until he, Davis, could get safely to Cuba or Paris or London or Mexico City or Brazil or somewhere that wasn’t running fast from Yankees and organize a government in exile that would return with funds and arms for a new powerful offensive, plans like the miracle weapons that never appeared for Hitler. (Davis almost certainly did not don a woman’s dress as often reported but was nevertheless a yellow and arrogant bastard who should have been hanged by his own men for cowardice and incompetence or at very least for his direct responsibility for the racial murder policies that led to Andersonville.)
Ironically Marion’s last victory occurred when the 51st Cavalry defeated and captured a Union regiment from their homestate of Alabama. (For those who do not know this already, every Confederate state fielded at least one full regiment of white southernern soldiers who fought for the north, some more than that; in Alabama all of Winston County was pro-Union, much of Cotton’s stationing in Tennessee had been in its large Union sympathizing midsection, all of west Virginia withdrew to become West Virginia and Scott County, Mississippi seceded from the state [and was renamed Jeff Davis County after the war as an act of spite by the post-Reconstruction legislature.) I wonder if the fact that their prisoners were Alabama farmers just like themselves made the 51st’s victory sweeter (that they had captured a Judas legion) or more bitter (that they had opened fire on men so like themselves) or if they even much gave a damn by that point, for the densest among them knew the Confederacy was damned.
Johnston knew he could not go on and so he perfectly bookended his Civil War career with acts of treason. (His first had been turning against the United States at the beginning of the war, his last by betraying his Commander in Chief Davis by surrendering to Sherman at Bennet’s farmhouse not quite two weeks after Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse.) The first terms posed by Sherman were generous and mirrored those of Grant but they were refused by Stanton, eager for blood after Lincoln’s death and Lee’s too lenient (in his assessment) terms. The edited terms were unconditional surrender. Among other indignities all men under the rank of lieutenant had to surrender their horses and their guns, even though they were in most cases the personal property of these men. I’ve no idea how many horses Marion had been through by this time, but as a private he would definitely have had to surrendered whatever he was riding as well as his weapons before beginning a 500 mile trip back to his farm.
There are no records of the homecoming. Whether he walked, commandeered a horse, rode trains or boats part of the way or exactly how I do not know but he arrived back in Alabama, where Montgomery and several of the other towns he had known were occupied by the troops who had defeated him (and where upon the approach of Union troops the legislators and officials, knowing there were more Union troops by far surrounding their city than there were inhabitants, let alone soldiers, in said city, voted unanimously to do what no white Alabama legislator has dared to propose since- lower the Confederate flag; I’ve always wondered why whenever the issue of that damned [incorrect] flag flying over the capitol comes up and the same “it’s heritage not hate” rhetoric gets drawled for the cameras by good ol’ boys hopin’ to impress their ‘constitchency’ no media person has ever addressed that when the Union army came to town that flag came down in record time.)
He arrived back in Coosa County probably in late May or June 1865. From the Bible I know that by July his wife was pregnant with their seventh child. And then the oral story of his whisky making occurred, and then the incident with his daughter’s elopement when his wife was pregnant with their 8th child. In the 1870 Census he was listed as a dry goods merchant with real and personal property worth a cumulative $4000 (not a lot when one considers Vanderbilt and Gould and Fisk earning tens of millions by this time, but by the standards of his county and the time he was quite well off). In the 1880 Census he is listed as a farmer only (though he had the store again at some point) and the household includes a 14 year old black boy I never heard mentioned in the family, probably a hired hand. The 1890 Census is famously missing and by 1892 he was dead. And that is the extent of what I know about him, for much stood out from the regimental history.
But the objective and general histories give more insight than the tales that remain of him. They also ask a thousand questions each.
As I mentioned before, he had no military past and grew up in times that while barbaric by our standards were relatively peaceful when compared to what came before and after. He was a farmer and the son and grandson of farmers. He would have been around mules his entire life and known them as essential and often even beloved animals (for mules have more personality than horses- they’re not pets but even to animals as stupid as cows and chickens one grows attacks, and mules can live for decades). He would surely have seen dead babies or children if not from his own family then from their friends, he may have witnessed or even experienced one or more beatings, he may even have seen murder before the war, but this simple farmer was suddenly thrust into a life of constant manmade thunder where the guts and smoke weren’t from pigs being bristled but from humans killing other humans for- well, 140 years later the ‘for’ is still being debated, though only a fool would say that slavery was not a major issue, and the Cottons owned no slaves. He had to have known on some level that he was fighting largely to protect the property and the way of life of the plutocrats he must have loathed like the squire who repossessed his father’s farm when he was a child. What did this do to him? Did he ever talk about it?
I don’t know when he found his brother’s body and identified it by a ring because the face was gone, but how did he react? Was he close to the brother? When and where did this happen and is the grave marked? But most of all my thoughts were of the mules.
[THE CONCLUSION OF MARION, THE BIGGEST DEAD MULE STORY EVER ON THESE BOARDS AND JUST WHY THE HELL I’M WRITING ALL THIS {for I swear there really is a reason} WHEN WE RETURN, I PROMISE]
The Sequatchee Raid occurred in October 1862. The 1st and 51st Alabama cavalry units were the primary Confederate forces involved. They had long been deployed specifically in the disruption and confiscation of Union supply caravans, but Sequatchee (now spelled Sequatchie, a pretty mountain meadow west of Chattanooga) was the mother load.
The Chickamauga campaign was coming to a head. Men were being deployed and redeployed constantly on both sides, intelligence was unreliable and often outdated as soon as it was received, this was going to be a monster battle and more than 100,000 soldiers were already in Tennessee with more arriving constantly. A major supply caravan (accounts range from a conservative 800 to more than 1200 wagons) was enroute to Sherman’s forces: medicine, blankets, meat, coffee, potatoes, hardtack, flour, ammunition, uniforms, rifles, cannon, etc., and because the troops guarding it had been called to reinforce northern surrounds at Chattanooga almost last minute it was far less guarded than, obviously judging by what happened, it should have been.
The 1st and 51st Alabama Cavalry attacked the caravan and the battle was brief. They took 1000 prisoners as well as the supply train. This was a major capture. News was sent immediately to General Bragg.
Unfortunately this most fortunate of hauls could not have come at a more unfortunate time or place. Sequatchee Valley is squarely in the middle of a section of Tennessee that had strong loyalist sympathies to the United States government. To the south of the cavalry units and separating them from Bragg was a semi-circle of thousands of Union troops, almost impenetrable for anything as slow moving and cumbersome as that caravan. Just getting the light cavalry and their thousand prisoners down to rejoin was going to be a total bitch (and a bloody one it turned out). A fast moving Union force large enough to pulverize the 1st and 51st cavalry could be to the area in a matter of days and they would be sitting ducks if their priority was to guard this caravan. As disgusting a notion as it was, the best thing that could be done with these desperately needed supplies that could have saved the lives of hundred of Confederates dying of exposure and malnutrition and disease and running low in many places was ammunition, was to destroy them to make sure it didn’t give comfort to the Yankees for whom it was headed. ‘At least if we can’t use it, neither can they’ was the logic, and it’s quite understandable. It could not be transported to the bulk of Confederate armies.
The soldiers packed as much as they could onto their horses (and that wasn’t much for the horses had to be able to make a speedy getaway, but I’m sure it was more than they were ordered to take as that’s just human nature) and then they set the rest ablaze, even the ammunition and the wagons themselves. But they were not finished. Bragg’s orders were explicit for what else they had to do: kill the mules.
For those who’ve never been around mules, they’re extremely intelligent animals and a major part of American history. They’re also extremely expensive animals for several reasons. For one thing most mares [female horses for those not familiar] resemble Nicole Kidman and Mimi Rogers more than they do Katie Holmes- they don’t want to mate with an ass. Because it’s an odd number chromosomed hybrid miscarriage is more frequent than with horses or asses and it’s a bad idea for a mare to give birth to a mule very frequently, so breeding mules, though an ancient specialty, is highly skilled work and thus most mules had to be purchased from breeders. A good mule could sell for more than a horse or even more than a slave before the Civil War, but in a land where cotton was essentially fluffy gold that had to be planted as quickly and efficiently as possible mules were indispensable to any farmer wanting to capitalize on a cash crop. They’re stronger than a horse, bigger than an ass (or donkey if you prefer), easier to train for hard work and heavy lifting, and while you’ll never race one if you expect to win mules can pull plows or wagons everyday while a horse has to be constantly rested.
I’ve personally known farmers who loved their mules (and not in the sordid way- I’m talking true love like you’d have with another person or a mechanical device or a blonde coquettish goat). They’re not pets- they are purely beasts of burden- but they’re beasts of burden who can have 25 good work years, who are as responsible for the success of a farm as the farmer himself, who you continue to feed if it means you have to starve your cows and hogs because if the mule dies the farm dies, and as I mentioned they have personalities- a farmer who worked with a mule for decades would know its quirks and its methods and the mule would learn the farmer as well until ultimately, with a good mule and a good farmer, there would be a near synchronicity twixt them, almost like co-workers. Marion Branson Cotton would probably have had mules he’d known for longer than he’d known his wife, he probably thought of them when he was in the field, he would have had extreme respect for the animals.
Oh, and by the way, there’s a major battle looming. Bring as much of that ammo as you possibly can with you because you’re going to need it. And don’t waste it on anything, including killing the mules (besides which, having to continually reload would have been time consuming). Kill them by hand: swords, bayonets, hammers, axes, hatchets, but kill them all. If we’re to win this war everything counts and the supply lines are the life force of the damned Yankees invasions, so kill those mules so they have to requisition 4,000 more. That’ll take weeks if not months.
Mules are strong but they do feel pain. They sense fear. Though they can be spirited and stubborn they’ve also been bred for thousands of years to trust humans. Marion Branson Cotton had been around mules his entire life, he respected them, he knew their value, if he was not made of stone he probably stroked their hair and gave them sugar and apples and other treats the way you’d give a dog a bone or a bite of chicken. Now he had to take a hatchet or a sword or a blunt object and start killing them.
They’re strong animals. A well placed blow to the head with a hatchet would crack the skull or to the back might instantly cripple them but off by an inch or so and what you’ve done is just caused them immense pain. They’re going to bray with a high pitch that those who’ve never heard one might be surprised how much it sounds like a scream. The arterial spray will start, the mule will panic and it now knows that human or not you’re an enemy and with all its very considerable strength it runs from you, fast, for while they have no stamina with speed they can be very fast when running in spurts. And a wounded mule can also recover- you have to go chase that down and finish the job. Hit in the head again, and again, don’t stop til there are brains on your hand. And when the first few mules are dead the others have heard their cries of pain and they are panicking and resisting and the killing becomes harder.
It took two days to kill all the mules.
The plow was pulled by a mule, one he may have had for 20 years or one he may have gotten that week, who knows, but a mule no less. Picture a man plowing a field when- and this is of course complete conjecture- the mule steps in a hole and lightly twists its legs the way we’d stump our toe. It does no serious injury, it’s fine in seconds, it was mostly just a shock, but it cried out in pain. Your wife is cooking dinner over a wood burning stove and the smell of smoke is in the air and the mule is crying in pain and you don’t want to but your memory is holding your head under its arms and forcing your eyelids open and making you look at another time there was smoke in the air and there were mules crying out in pain. Could this be what triggered a breakdown?
He saw battle every day for four months and he was a cavalry private. In 1869 when ‘Old Man Cotton’ rode through woods and over streams and through briars at night, alone on a horse in a land with no ambient light to see by or distract him, what memories must that have brought of a time not 5 years before when he rode through woods in fast retreat or in pursuit even. The sound of a gun goes off as a farmer kills a deer in his yard and he hears the report in the woods where he’s riding like a madman and memory chains him again perhaps.
Why was he trying to catch that daughter anyway? Did he think the husband, a much older man than the bride (though only 30- his daughter is 16), was no account or a cradle robber? That he’d had his way with the first babe of his own he’d held? Perhaps he simply did not want to be a father-in-law at 37. Which of these is the answer is it something else entirely?
The first child listed on a genealogy database born to this couple arrived in 1872, but in the cemetery across from the barbecue restaurant this couple and several of their children are buried and among the graves is that of an infant with this man’s surname, almost certainly their child, and the grave is dated Christmas 1869. She was almost surely pregnant. Did her father know this?
For that matter did he ever make peace with her? Did he accept her husband and their many children or did he never speak to her again?
And it occurred after doing a mountain of research, this blonde-white maned god-like man from my childhood I knew so much more about now I knew less about than when I was a child, for at least then I had an elaborate mythology constructed as to why his face glowed and his eyes were watching you. There are only questions and each questions leads to more questions.
What kind of a father was he? Did his children worship him or fear and respect him or outright hate him or did they find him distant but affectionate or did he wear his heart on that pinstriped sleeve? And her, his wife, who all I know is that she respectfully disrespected a snobby penniless neighbor who had come down in the world, what was she like? Her husband had seen carnage and horrors that we cannot imagine, perhaps that’s why his face glowed a century later (but more likely it was too much flash powder), but what had life been like for her, a single mother with five children and a sixth on the way and a husband she had to know could well be dead and blasted beyond recognition somewhere in Tennessee. Who attended her births? How did she cope with the stress of the constant needs of her children when her man may or may not come home and shortages of all kind were all about? Who lived with her while he was at war- was there a man in the house at all, a father or uncle maybe too old or crippled to fight, or was she isolated with nothing at all? What were the circumstances of the conception of that sixth child, my great-grandmother, born when her father was battling above the clouds- could she be from an extramarital affair? After all she was born in the middle of a war, but she did look like him, she had the blonde hair and lean face in her own pictures, and he certainly accepted her.
What of this couple in general, Marion and Louisiana? There is nothing remotely carnal in their pictures, nothing speaks of sensuality of any kind in her stern and his prophetic countenance. She’s but another southern sepia matriarch scowling pleasantly and he’s a man with a glowing face whose eyes may be reacting to a giant flash (did it remind him of cannon fire?) or may be schizophrenic for that matter or perhaps he had a thyroid problem. And they’re old in that picture, but only in their fifties, not that much older than I am now, and yet they had a granddaughter born 22 years before and a great-grandchild either born or on its way when that very picture flashed.
What was their relationship? By 1874 she had born at least 8 children, presumably all of them full-term, in an age with nothing resembling modern exercise and diet regimens. They were not rich, she’d probably nursed her own children, she probably did her own cooking and housework and took care of the 8 kids, and by 1874 with a body covered by stretchmarks from the 72 months it had spent pregnant over the years and breasts that must have nearly searched for oil from the nursing and the gravity of age, for she was 39 in a time and place where jazzercising and step exercises were not known and support and nursing bras still decades away, she cannot have looked much like the girl he married on her 17th birthday. And yet in that year, to speak biblically, he went into her and she conceive and bear her ninth child. Twenty two years after they were married, two decades evenly divided by his exposure to carnage beyond imagining on battlefields that though preserved in black and white would have been filled with Technicolor guts and blood and brain with accompanying smell days later as buzzards circled, bodies on fields that you could not even identify as Union or Confederate and either way they’re boots belong to whoever gets their first- and yet having seen all that and her having endured all those pregnancies and the anxiety of putting children to bed and comforting them as they cried when your every thought goes to the fact the father they can’t remember could well be dead and there is no place for a woman to make a living and all the future is poverty and want for not a house in the land is without its dead- after twenty two years she still yielded to him and he still wanted her.
Why? Was it love? Was it comfort- that with his head between her breasts were the place he could not see the visions that made him cry? Need? Habit? Comfort? Did they feel it was duty? And when she, a 39 year old with several grandchildren, learned she was pregnant again, was there joy? Resignation? Just general acceptance?
Did they write to each other during the war? Do those letters survive? According to the census they were both literate, it would surely stand to reason. When he d
Well, enough of the skinny rebel whose face glowed from flash powder and carnage, the genius of the family (in the “protective ancestral spirit” definition) at least in my childhood whose eyes stared from pupil dilation and perhaps DSM-IV diagnoses and of the plump grandmother he liked to impregnate. The point is that I asked the wrong questions about them when I was young and knew the people who knew them. Who were these people, this man I semi-worshipped and his lady I never quite did due to lighting. Did they read Mark Twain? Or hate him as a deserter? Or had they even heard of him? Did they drink? Were they nice? Were they funny? What about me is most like them? What secrets died with them? What type of marriage did they have? Without these things they’re ultimately names on parch with an index card of trivia attached to them. They’re sepia because the colors were forgotten a century ago.
And turning to Mustang’s family, sometimes just the Census Records and family trees try their best to tell a story like a cow that’s begging to be milked but there’s no one to do so. His grandmother Amanda was married twice. She married her first husband when she was 23 and he was 68. Her family’s worth in the census was $200, even then a piddling amount. Her husband had real estate worth $60,000 in 1860 (by when he was 73 and had three children by his young wife, the youngest a baby) and that does not count the 43 humans he owned in the 1860 Slave Index. At risk of being cynical I’m guessing that the disparity of his income and that of her family plays a part in her willingness to marry a man older than three of her grandparents (her parents were 19 and 16 when she was born) but what’s the story there? Did she pursue him or he her or did her parents arrange it or did she actually marry him from love (not inconceivable)? Did she grow to love him by the time he died (1862, when she was pregnant with twin sons)? How did his many children from his first marriage, all of them older than his wife (as was his eldest grandchild) react to their new stepmother or to the new flock of heirs she produced? Not that it much mattered- the slaves and most of the land was lost after the war, but all in all it’s amazing how much she salvaged, along with her second husband, her wedding date to whom is lost but 19 months after her first husband’s death and 17 months after the birth of their twin sons she had a baby by her second husband, a 30 year old who does not appear to have been in service even though the Civil War was raging full force. Who was he and why wasn’t he off fighting?
The baby born in 1864, her first child with her second husband, grew up to have fifteen children of his own, the third being my grandfather Mustang. Mustang was 15 when his grandfather, that 30 year old who was not at war and who had married a recent widow with twin babies, died. Mustang was 30 years old when his grandmother Amanda, the woman who married so shortly after one husband’s death, who had a set of twin sons by both of her husbands and somehow saved 300 acres of her first husband’s plantation and the house even in very hard times and who though she bore 8 children left her entire estate to her oldest daughter, yet even my mother only heard him mention her one time. He said she had jet black hair as an old woman. That’s the extent of what’s known about a woman whose very public record skeleton begs to be expanded.
And there are others, but I’ll spare you.
Conclusion when I return (I promise- there’s really no more dead mule or Civil War stories or Census Record stuff, and I really will get to the point- and thanks to anybody still reading this. If it seems unduly masturbatory and boring it’s because frankly I’m to the point that I’m writing it far more for my own reflection and clarification of my plans for the coming months (which does not involve genealogical research) than I am for those of others, but I promise I will wrap it up and sign off the thread starting and probably concluding with the next post. And don’t do drugs.
(For weirdness sake I mention this complicated bit of genealogy: Amanda’s oldest daughter, Reba, the one she left everything to (her will is online- it’s about a paragraph), married John R., a significantly older widower who had several children from his first marriage. John R.’s late wife was Paralee D., a granddaughter of Amanda’s first husband from his first marriage. This made Reba the aunt of her husband’s previous wife, though she was 20 years younger than that niece, and the biological great-aunt of her stepchildren. She and John R. had twelve children of their own.
One of John R.’s children with Paralee was Keturah, who married Reba’s half-brother, Will Henry, and with whom she had Mustang. She was 15 when she married him and 6 months pregnant (a lot more common than the Santorums of the world seem to realize- I had three great-grandmothers whose first children were “premature”). This made Reba Mustang’s great-great-aunt and step-grandmother, Amanda his grandmother, step-great-grandmother AND his step great-great-grandmother, Reba’s children his first cousins and his uncles/aunts, and meant that John R. and his daughter Keturah each had the same mother-in-law, all among other oddities and that’s far from the most confusing genealogy on that side of the family.)
I’ve been stuck in bed sick for the last few days, which has been lucky, because that’s the only way I would have had time to read this, and I’ve enjoyed every bit of it. If you ever do find an editor, ensure it’s one who appreciates your rambling style - I find it part of the charm.
I also agree with Cheez_Whia - through your writing , your readers have come to love your mother as well. Glad your back. (My SO says hello, and sends her love.)
Eagerly awaiting the next installment.
I also join everyone else in welcoming you back, Sampiro. Did I ever tell you you’re the reason I joined the Dope?
~Tasha
A welcome back and a suckup. You’re good tashabot! 
I’m up to speed? How the hell did that happen?
<stre-e-e-e-tches>
Oh well, these parts aren’t going to ship themselves…
THE LAW OF COTTON’S OCTOPI BEING A GENEALOGICAL FANTASIA ATOP LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN ON A MORNING OUTSIDE OF TIME
So as a child I believed dreams were the conduit through which M.B. Cotton was able to step out of time and become tangible. Let you imagine then that I was right, and that now on the eve of my 40th birthday I have mastered the power myself to arrange such a meeting, and so I’m now able to drop in on Great-Great-Grandpa Cotton through carefully arranged dreams. (I can’t obviously, hence the “let you imagine” disclaimer.)
In a waking dream I drop in on him in a small portal that is free of time and space yet at the same time it is on Lookout Mountain, above the clouds, and we’re both warm and safe inside the mostly invisible portal. While we’re out of time there is an excellent view from the transparent front of the portal of November 23, 1863 and we can actually see, in very slow or fast motion depending on what we wish, the Battle Above the Clouds, a place and view chosen because it was on November 23, 1863 that my great-grandmother was born and he became my ancestor.
To the left is a very nice view of Chillicothe, Ohio on April 12, 1992; nobody really knows why it’s there, it was probably just never turned off by a former occupant who also left some Black-and-Mild butts and grape juice ringed glass stains on the coffee table, a really outdated but kitschy-cool kidney shaped lime green that along with the Broyhill recliner I’m in and the overstuffed Victorian number Cotton is sitting in are the invisible portal’s only furnishings. Point: please clean up your mess when you know you’re not the only person who uses a time-space liberation portal because only the walls are invisible, and for God’s sake always use a coaster!
Cotton, in his wool Confederate uniform, takes a seat, looks around, I sit beside him, we shake hands (his generation really wasn’t big on the whole affection thing) and he says “Long time no see”.
“That was the title of Helen Keller’s autobiography” I tell him.
“Really? Who’s Helen Keller?” he asks. I try to bring him up to speed but… well, frankly the joke’s lost before we ever get to “Wah-wah”.
He asks the obvious segue into an extended conversation. “So what you been up to since the last time I saw you?”
“Well, I left Weokahatchee in 1987” I tell him, “and then we moved to Montgomery and auer aljd foaj oaj ofj ajoij gioajp piwojoia where I worked as a bellman aiou dif aiojd fiohauyy w wacua erjaoj aodjf and finally just said, ‘I’m gay’ aaioduf ioau dihyufuu7puasu f ap odfaoui Christmas 1990, which was the only time I ever dropped acid and that was an accident, but the point is aiou dfu a dfay7yey auiyau faodjf aiu a f dfjojado and that’s the incident I call ‘The Parking Lot Pieta, but I digress, the point is that AIDS was bad and New Coke was worse, whichi audioua diofu aioduy uyu7h7z uu w98peur a dfu aipu diof u faiuioda finally just broke down and bought a CD player because after all, wejuoaiu ioauj duihfa7hy 7xopiuepr a sfaiou the cruise got cancelled, so Mama did what most people would do and shot the Bible with adij afiosdj fiau iodu faioud fu77z uppweraudfa fijaoj af and blue, but everybody knew he was dead except for ijfioaj daufua pdoifuaiohy7y apaidofu au and that’s when I said to him ‘Well if we go see Les Mis again aiudiau diuf ioaudfhjaoipuioj a[zknotiajoa huah aoijf a College Bowl in Philadelphia, except thait aiud fioau dpuau 7hwoja dfoaupau adjf and delivering faxes, and thinking I wonder if I’m the only one delivering these who’s shot a guy with a .22, but then it was self defense and even the officer didn’t taudiouf apu fau paiu yuyapup uaiu afu adiou fa sold her drugstore for a bloody fortune and devoted her life to calling us every five minutes, but Mama was igoua duf aiduf au aoiu iofuiaou 7u hyadfa MLS or MLIS? I honestly can’t remember and I’m the one who has the degree, but the point is that Albany Georgia ijadi oua dfuapoiud fihj ahupfu ap adjfiaj dpifo adf a fnaojpa fojaodjf a dojuau ajfap and Milledgeville was also the home of aou dfau po uiau yu7fy a a but his wife would have objected strenuously, which is a pity because otherwise he’s my soulmate, and foajd fpaupi upu epruaopud fiouapo uiaou iofua taojojua fnadf and back to Tuscaloosa, where iaudio faup uaiou pwioue riuap outoua r arouoau ra rijau u27ad ra I’m sorry you don’t feel welcome for the Fourth of July down there I really am but I don’t think she meant to iaud ifuaioua iofu iua7yapu fua poufou which brings us to early 2006 and padf adfa df anjf aduf metastasized into the lymph nodesa dj fioauduf aiodf ioau dfiojoijpa f adfafaf only hospital I’ve ever seen that still had a frigging wooden floor? Well she was right, the doctor lost his license two weeks after she died and iadu fiau iudfiau diufaiou dfu aeiopau coja dadn picked up the brick and BAM BAM BAM killed the cat! Yes, she killed the cat and talked about it at the funeralu aioud fpaiud apioud upupiousufts qera andfa wojua and I swear to God while he has the latex glove on his hand fresh from my ass my doctor starts to witness to me! As in, about Jesus! And I’m thinking these things only happen to me! Well, I told my trainer who’s hotter hajif aioj aouiou afalaf oaijior a tarad afoua for the last month. Well I’m not really bothered by the fact it’s a McCollege now but I can see where I will be soon and faiod fuaoiuouw apiur afa roaur a but ultimately I’ve decided on the Pacific Maple flooring with a green sofa, but I could still change my mind. Well, that’s the long and the short of it since last time we talked.”
Even in timelessness about twelve hours has passed. I really shouldn’t have taken all that time to make the Tina Turner analogy side-story I realize, though he seemed to genuinely enjoy the “Fool In Love” performance.
He’s just nodding his head, blonder than I remember it, though this is 1863 M.B. and not 1891 M.B… Finally I ask “So how about you… what have you been up to these past 19, 20 years?”
M.B.C: Aw, I’m still dead. That’s about it.
J: Well… at least you got that picture to look out of.
MBC: Yeah. I’m still pissed and confused about how it wound up in that Shreveport Cracker Barrel. I remember the trunk of the car and the flea markets but damn… and if I gotta here one more time them peckerwood waitresses whine on about how they just cain’t handle more than 4 tables at once… know what I wanna tell ‘em? Try riding a half-dead horse through a froze over swamp dodgin’ Yankee gunfire when you ain’t eat in three days and don’t know where the hell you are or even if you’re headin’ towards your own unit or right into a waitin’ Yankee brigade that if it don’t go blow your head off’s gonna send you straight up to a hell on earth prison camp to starve to death while some whoreson shoots you in the thigh just to show off his dang repeatin’ rifle, which Lee hisself don’t want us to have now tell me what that’s about so we’ll both know why don’tcha! Then come talk to me about can’t take care of three tables…hell, get you a new set up so’s the server with two tables can take your fourth why don’tcha? All about deployment folks’ I says, but they cain’t hear me. One of ‘em said I looked like Chartie Hester’s Moses one time whatever the hell that’s s’posed to mean but that’s the only half look I ever got from any of ‘em. But, you die, you exist in a sentient picture for a century or more, you learn.”
J: Ain’t that the truth.
MBC: Yep. Yessir Bobby. Kinda glad Louisiana don’t know what’s goin’ on, she’s just still stuck in that damned ‘tographer’s studio ya know. I love her but tell ya the truth, her not able to see out and all, kinda run out of things to talk about long about 19 and 16, just kinda nudge her once in a while make sure she’s still there. She’ll say ‘Dang he shore used ‘nuff powder there didn’t he, husband’ and I’ll say ‘we had that much powder at Chickymaugwa we’d have held that damn mountain’ and she’ll laugh. Hadn’t got no idea I said it to her before over the years… hell must be two millions of times by now. So whatcha got good to eat there?
J: It’s called a peanut butter Kashi. Want some?
MBC: Don’t mind if I do. Hadn’t had goober peas since God was a puppy. Swap you even for some of this hardtack and a slice of hoop cheese- just wipe that green stuff off it’s still good. I gotta say the chicken smells good at that Cracker Barrel. Still don’t git why they call it ‘chicken fried chicken’ though, seems like one word too many. Now that Ralph’s gone nobody ever brings me no barbecue anymore.
We eat and after a while there’s an awkward silence but the portal doesn’t open for a while so we’re looking for things to talk about. Occasionally he’ll point something out about the battle-
“Watch this heah… okay, that skinny Yank’s gone try to shoot that bald fella from Miss-ippi in the back of his haid as he’s takin’ a dump, unarmed, that’s just dirty sport… but wait a sec… here we go here we go- HOT DAMN! Gun jammed! Does it ever time and now watch this… WHOA! There it go- see that Fed’ral’s face go flyin’ off the mountain! Caught a piece of his own rear guard’s grape… I could watch that o’er and o’er. One fo the few times in this thang someone got what’s comin’ to ‘em. How’s Carrie doin’ by the way?
J: Dead. About 18 years now.
He’s emotionless, not the least upset, just sort of shrugs it off. “Not surprise- hard to keep up with the years in that damn Cracker Barrel but figured she oughtta be dead or not much differn’t from it by now.’ There’s another long silence. To maximize time and free us of silence again I say
“I learned some stuff about your father when I was doing research on the Internet recently. He was from South Carolina right.”
“Yep. Darlington. What’s an Inner Nest?”
“It’s… well… okay… hard to explain… it’s like a library sort of…”
“That Carnegie fellow did it, did he?”
“No, did you ever use a telephone? Or… I know… telegraph…”
“You got telegraphs in your home now?”
“Sort of except they’re underground and they go a million billion times faster and bring movies and sounds and… anyway, let’s just say I found some information on…” and trying to change the subject I say “You know, I was here about a year ago. I mean, not in this portal here but down there here in Chattanooga.
MBC: You don’t say? What was you doin’ down there?
J: I went to the see the aquarium there.
MBC: Don’t say? I seen an aquarium once. It was in a rich woman’s house up in…oh, Eclectic I guess. I’m sure she’s dead now if she’s ever gone be but I’m sure someone’s got one lot closer to Chattanooga. Hell, must have took you a week even travelin’ light to get there just to look at some dirty water with a bunch of gold minnows. That starved for somethin’ to do up there in the 2000s?
J: No, it’s the big Aquarium, plus I went to the IMAX. A 3-D show on sharks. And it didn’t take that long, I drove there from DC where I took the car because I didn’t feel like flying. But…
MBC: Okay… what’s the Eye Mats? And 3-D show, like a minstrel show or sumpin’?
J: It’s hard to explain. So… I’ll mention this, I heard that back in the war there was…
MBC: I know all I need about the war and I ain’t got nothin’ but time. Don’t have to be back to the Cracker Barrel anytime soon. I’m more interested in how there’s an underground telegraph that you learned about my Daddy through and how you flew somewhere and why you went to Chattnooga to see an aquarium and an Eye Mass. Tell me all about it. And tell me about this inner nest thing too. Take as long as you want.”
Seventeen days later I finish the story of this routine tourist trip in 2006 and he has some interesting viewpoints on the matter.
I keep re-checking this page in the hope I’ll find out what they are.
sampiro -your stories are wonderful as always. As to your grief re your mother, I think I may know in a small way how you feel. 2 years ago, I lost a sister (the second sister of mine to die) whom I was very close to.
I’ve never had a huge cathartic weepage. Perhaps I am still numb, although I don’t feel numb. It feels like a great big Eraser came along and out went Leigh. Tons of things around the house remind me of her; we talk about her and share pictures and memories…I do wish we hadn’t been rushed by the landlord to remove her things from her apartment, though-there were things that we threw out that we probably shouldn’t have; things we kept that we shouldn’t have as well.
I liken it all to having a limb amputated. You can get along and all, but it’s damned awkward and most of the time, irritating.
M.B. Cotton begins to opine, but before he’s a word out we have a third occupant of the portal who I don’t recognize, primarily because his face is blurred, though he seems to resemble vaguely Ian McKellen… or perhaps James Garner… can’t really tell… he’s wearing a string tie and a broadcloth suit that happens to be covered in bloodstains.
“Hey gempmen… saw your timespace distortion light on and figured I’d drop in…”
“Well do come in, Dr. Murdock… “
“Still in Shreveport M.B.?”
“Yup. Where you these days?”
“A Ruby Tuesdays in Athens, Georgia. Can you b’lieve such as that? Nears I can figure my granddaughter who hung me in her parlor died long about 1950, her grandkids didn’t know who the hell I was, wound up at an estate sale and got picked up by somethin’ called a decorator… still, the crabcakes don’t smell too bad.”
“This here’s your great-great grandson Jon I’m talking to, mine too…” M.B. says by way of introduction.
“Figured must be some kin, count of that nose and upper lip from my family. How do.”
I shake hands but still only see a vague facial outline as I’ve never seen his photograph. (I have seen his tools- they’re on display in Birmingham, a city in large part founded by his oldest son.) But I realize who he is: Dr. James Madison Murdock, my paternal grandmother’s paternal grandfather. Him I’ve also researched and learned some interesting things. I wonder if he knew one of his grandfathers was very possibly a light skinned African American who crossed the color line? Either way I shouldn’t bring it up probably.
Of course I know some other things about him. As he’s around 60 as much as I can tell he’s pretty near the end of his own life as he didn’t long survive the War, which he served in as a surgeon, though I’m not sure with what unit. Hence the bloodstains I suppose. He also has one of those “Oh Belvu-deah, come heah boy!” voices, but this may be fabrication.
He’s also the reason that Bryce Hospital had such a banger crop of Murdocks in the early and mid 20th century. Hell, he could well be the reason I take pills. That was an interesting discovery that explained a lot.
Even in the late 1980s many psychiatrists and geneticists believed that mental illness traveled far more through maternal bloodlines than paternal, but it is now thought that if any difference the other is true. Hereditary mental disorders travel any way they can through the gene stream. In addition, it was once believed that only the mother’s age at time of conception mattered to the health of the baby and that the father, whether 20 or 80, could beget healthy offspring, but also reversed somewhat: children born to men over 50 tend to have greater probability of physical and most especially mental illness (schizophrenia, for example, is three times as likely to occur in the child of an older father than the child of a young father). And of course marriage to member of the same blood group or other person with the same genetic propensities more than doubles the odds.
James Madison Murdock had many brothers, two of whom are listed as “defective” or “idiot or insane” in the 1850 Census. From their very old father’s will dated a few years later I know they’re not idiots- their father specifically refers to them as “insane” and makes provision for them with their brother Madison as their caretaker and guardian, and he refers as well to a sister who is “impaired”, though if his other kids are crazy it’s not mentioned, though it would explain why Dr. Murdock is picking his teeth with a frog bone and humming Bonnie Blue Flag backward.
In any case, the Murdocks had the genes for crazy (CHECK) long before the birth of my great-grandfather Sam Murdock. Sam was a doctor like his father, and incidentally he was born in 1864 when his father was 59 (CHECK) and his mother was 40 (CHECK). And though his mother was his father’s third wife she made up for it by being his first cousin (CHECK). And she had a brother who was…you guessed it… idiot or insane in various censuses. (CHECK) (She’s also another ancestress who made it to her hundredth year but not the elusive hundredth birthday.)
Essentially Dr. Madison Murdock’s children from his last marriage were born with unfair advantages and dispositions for decathlon medals in the Disturbed Gene Pool Diving events of the Schizo-Olympics. Dr. Sam himself (Grandmother’s father) was famous for several “oddities” including never returning home by the same route he’d left home with {for their might be thieves lying in wait}, for having a block-long Pierce Arrow limousine with separate chauffeur compartment that he drove himself (he bought it cheap from a cash poor once rich family and used the main cab of the car for his many children and traveling office) and there’s the story of what he did to the new doctor in town who tried to commit him that is still talked about in Eclectic, Alabama. He’s also famous for the fact that of his 11 children, at least 8 spent time in mental hospitals (including, tellingly or not, all of the ones born after he was 50) and he has one of those odd marriages that you’d love elaboration on (he was a bachelor until he was 35 when he suddenly marries a 16 year old girl) and though I know for a fact he was a doctor (my brother has his medical degree framed in his own house, my sister has several of his books on horse ailments [for as with many doctors of his time he was a pediatrician/gynecologist/surgeon/veterinarian and other specialists rolled into one).
Dr. Murdock had another odd quirk: he loved to lie to Census takers. His occupation is given in various Censuses as mortician, farmer, liquor salesman and mill proprietor, but is never once given as doctor. But I digress.
Not knowing what to say to him other than “So you’re the one who was the superconductor of the family psychoses” I just say “Eh, what’s up Doc?”
“Up wheah?”
“Up… you know, Bugs Bunny…” I say without thinking.
Nine days of explanations later we’re back on track.
Great great grandfather Cotton starts: “So you got all these magic boxes…”
“No, they’re not magic, just… electronic, or technologically advanced you might say…”
“Okay, so these magic boxes… there’s a little one lets you listen to dead people sing. Did you ever hear me singing on it?”
“No, because…”
“Because what? I ain’t good enough for you? You had to go off and listen to dead Englishers instead?”
“The Beatles. Actually only two of them are dead. The box is called a radio… or, a walkman because you can buy a recording of their music and listen to it on a pair of earphones, either on a disk…”
“That’s one of those itty bitty silver saucers you were talking of…”
“Right, or now you can just carry around an IPOD which is about the size of a… well, it’s a lot smaller than your wallet, and run a cord and…”
“So it’s the cord let’s you hear the dead Englishers sing…”
“Yes and no. But…”
“And there’s this whole other box you got where you can set up in your own bedroom or a corner of your parlor and you can look at it and it’ll tell you where my Daddy was born or you can use it to buy tickets to that aquarium or you can use it to send a letter to someone and they’ll get it soon as you send it and…”
“Yes, the Internet. The box is a computer and you use it to look at the Internet…”
“And you say you can…” (he leans over and whispers to me) “…you can use it to see nekkid people makin’ love… even two mens or two womens…”
“Yes, and…”
“Well why in hell would somebody wanna use that magic box to see where my daddy was born when you can see somethin’ like that?”
“Well, you can see pretty much anything you want on it…”
“Takin’ up from where he left off” says Dr. Murdock, “you say there ain’t a child in the country ‘cept the poorest of the poor can’t look at a box in their parlor and see a talkin’ rabbit make jokes, ‘cept he ain’t really a talkin’ rabbit but millions of drawin’s of one…”
“Right. Sort of…”
“And the rabbit ain’t in the box, but he’s comin’ through the air to ‘em…”
“Sort of. Or, they can buy a DVD of him…”
“And that’s another silver saucer is it?”
“Exactly, and…”
“Now how you know when you get a silver saucer if’n it’s a dead Englisher or a talkin’ rabbit?”
“It’ll have a picture and a description on it…”
“And that dead colored man you said tickles you, the one they call the red fox…”
“Redd Foxx…”
“He’s dead but you see his ghost…”
“No not his ghost. Just his image…like a photograph…”
“Oh! Like a photograph, ‘cept it’s in full color and it talks and makes funnies and laughs and all…”
“Yes and no… you see…”
“And you call that a teleo-vision…”
“From the Latin for far-seein’ and dang if that ain’t right! Let’s you see things in California and dead folks… can’t you see anything ain’t dead?”
“Oh yeah… you can see and hear the president talk as soon as he speaks there in your room…”
“So the president comes to every room in America…”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“Who’s he visit first?”
“Nobody. He visits them all at the same time…”
“And you were sayin’ how the big play-actors of your day, like Sarah Bernhardt or Josh Billings and all… that they appear in every single town at the same time when they got a big show…”
“Well yes and no…”
“Now when you see my daddy’s birthplace and all, whatja do with it? Can’t very well just take it can ya?”
“No I save it onto a CD or a…”
“And that’s one of them little silver saucers is it?”
“Right, but…”
“Well Dr. Murdock, looks like if we e’er get back into our own bodies in our times we can turn the tide of this here war by getting’ us some silver saucers!”
“You ain’t yarnin’” says the doctor, “if them things can conjure up your daddy’s birthplace and nekkid women and listen in on dead Englishers sangin’ and see a red fox who’s really a dead colored man makin’ funny but ain’t a ghost and all…”
“Ooh, and don’t forget what he said’s gone be right down there- a theatorium where a shark can attack you but it’s 50 foot high and you don’t e’en get wet, and genuine bunch of octopus swimmin’ around you ain’t even gotta go in the water for ta see and a whole heap of penguins and crocodiles and otters and beavers and butterflies and sharks and dolphins all just a swimmin’ around a cave but it’s light as day where they are and you gotta look up to see ‘em cause you’re somehow breathin’ under the dry water…”
“No, the water’s not dry, and you’re under the water but not under water…”
“Lemme guess… you gotcha a silver saucer thing that keeps you dry don’t ya…”
“No it’s…”
“Now don’t fergit M.B.” says the doctor, “That a freed slave woman is the William Seward of her time…”
“She’s not a freed slave, she’s the descendant of freed slaves. All slaves were… oh that’s right, you died in aidua faoiu ioauj ifaoijf fjaijd f o oaijs a “ I try to say the year (1865) but the words come out gibberish.
“You cain’t tell him that” says M.B. Cotton, “anymore you can tell me. I figured I died since I was in that picture and couldna been too long after that picture got took, but maybe you can…” he begins laughing, “Hell maybe you can use one of those magic silver saucers to get me a new body and live f’rever…”
“Do people live forever in your time?” asks the doctor.
“No, they do live longer. Average life expectancy is in the late 70s or so…”
“Well hell, my daddy made it to 91 back in 1840! I’ve known a couple made it to about a hundred. That ain’t sayin’ so much…”
“I know. Your wife Temperance makes it to alm fa u … aiodufa d… adfoaufoau a…. oh, guess that’s not allowed either. Anyway, the…”
“So medicine ain’t much better then?”
“Oh it’s incomparable… you can take pictures of organs inside the skin, you can see the face of a baby before he’s born, you can impregnate women who aren’t even present, you can…”
“Alright… when I axed you about the nekkid women you see somewhere around my Daddy’s birthplace in that damn box and how they kept from gettin’ familial you said they took a pill stopped ‘em from it and women didn’t have to get pregnant they didn’t want to, ri… what’s that?” (He turns his head to his left and addresses someone I cannot see.) “I’m just dreamin’ out loud I reckon shug… no, I didn’t say you can be familiar without gettin’ in the family way… well hell hon, you’re about fifty-six anyhow… just smile for the ‘tographer…” then in a conspiratorial whisper to me “anyhoo… you said that and that if they need to ‘correct an obstructed menses’ shall we say they can go to a well lit room and it’ll be safe and clean… but then they hadn’t even gotta have relations to have babies?”
“No… in fact it’s not unknown for two women or two men to hav…. Let’s not go there.”
“I’m sure a silver saucer’s involved… reckon a fella can be a gal in your time if he want’s ta…”
“Well… ooh, well look how late it must be getting where there’s time…”
“So what’s a doctor get for his service in your time? Must not be much call for him if those silver desks can raise dead colored men…”
“They don’t raise the dead… and a good doctor earns hundreds of thousands per year, sometimes millions…”
“Oh now I know you’ve burned your last wick up there. Boy I took out an appendix and a colon just last week and charged the fella $14. And can you even imagine how many bushels of corn and peach preserves a hundred thousand would be? Where’d you put when he brung it in…”
“Son” says M.B., now serious. “I know things have come a ways in your time, but I don’t know if you’re just jesting or really b’lieve this stuff, but if it’s the second there’s one thing I know that you don’t. Now I’ll go with you when you say mushrooms taste good, but there’s some out there you just cain’t eat- now I et some of those one time and that’s when I thought I was growin’ a tail and my wife was turnin’ into a bird and I figured what was wrong, but what you gotta do is…”
“No, I haven’t eaten magic mushrooms. What I say is the truth, it’s just that…”
“I don’t think mushrooms caused it” says the doctor sadly. “I was a hopin’ that my brothers all carried the whole lode of the family demon but apparently just like my grandpa’s big nose and Uncle Roy’s hemorrhoids it jumped back into the bloodline for another few generations…”
“Actually it did. Your grandchildren adu aio uaoiu uiy… hell… anyway, I’ve gotta run…”
“So soon?” They say. “I was hopin’ you could use one of them magical silver saucers to get that octopus to come up here and use all eight arms to shoot at Yanks- hell, he could reload with two or three… if it can make a dead Englisher sang it oughta help an octopus kill an Ohian or three…” he says, either miffed or amused, impossible to tell.
“Yessir… well, I must go.”
“Well if you’re ever free of time or in the Shreveport Cracker Barrel drop in on me again… this time tell me what the future’s really like. Place you described is one I cain’t imagine… nobody’d understand me…”
“Actually” I tell him “you’d be able to read every word, understand anybody on the street and… well, shalom. And if I find myself in Shreveport I’ll get you some chicken fried… well, take care.”
“Nice to meet ya boy. If you know any my kids in the future tell ‘em I said howdy and to always remember never use their saw and scalpel more than three days in a row without washin’ em off good.”
“Will do sir. Later.”
And I’m out of my portal
So the Law of Cotton’s Octopi (previously known in my writings as The Law of Crockett’s Whales [where a visionary Alamo combatant attempts to explain the Sea World that will eventually exist in San Antonio to a perplexed Senator Crockett] and The Law of Osceola’s Mouse [whence Osceola, a Seminole chief in what is now Orlando, attempts to make sense of Disneyworld after seeing it during a “black drink” trip) is this: it is ultimately impossible to predict the future as it’s surely going to be weirder than anything you can come up with. And yet, another component to the law, is that it will be extremely familiar.
Marion Cotton took part in the slaughter of 4,000 mules, saw blood and guts and visions worthy of Bosch in a region now praised for its scenic beauty where $200/per night will not buy a room for a night in season so devoid is it of carnage and horror, fought with Union soldiers in the city where I now live when it was an occupied former capitol of another land and probably never flushed his feces or even knew what most presidents of the United States looked like and certainly never heard their voice and he grew up on farms so recently stolen from American Indians that the fields had been cleared by them and very possibly his family originally resided in their abandoned houses. He’s that far removed from the modern world. And yet at the same time when I was a baby I was held in the laps of old women who when they were babies were held in his lap and played often in a house he’d entered many times and knew several of his grandchildren quite well, because he’s that close to me generationally.
And yet I know nothing about him other than the short sentence length fragments of his life I posted above and what I learned from historical record. Of Dr. Murdock I know nothing other than what was given above, and that only from Spartan records in fading documents preserved online. Grandmother’s maternal line I can trace to the 17th century, they were in Virginia by 1620 and probably at James Towne, but they’re nothing but names and dates on genealogical charts and the occasional census. They were neither wealthy nor indigent, there’s no oddity in their marriages (they didn’t marry close relatives, they were generally about the same age as their spouse, etc.) and other than they had a like of odd names for boys (Zadock, Hercules, Melchizadek) there’s nothing remotely interesting about the generations of them on record. They’re not people, they’re just data.
Of Mustang’s ancestors I know only what I’ve learned through genealogy and his few very brief glimpses, none of which were that fascinating and the interesting tidbits from their family tree long lost to history.* The same of my father’s crew: there are some stories that beg to be told from oddities in the family tree**but the details are long gone.
I don’t want that to happen to my own family. I don’t want them to be known to descendants looking for them in 2140 as names on a paper. And the immediate plans I’m considering (beyond the general “writing a book” thing) are the whole point of this which I’ll conclude shortly.
*Most interesting was the brother of his grandmother. He was taken prisoner at Antietam, lost his foot in the prison camp, eventually escaped and carved a crutch in the forests of Maryland and walked home to Alabama where he never married but had a large family by a black woman and spent the rest of his life with his cavalry saber attached to his hip. When he was an old man his biracial daughter was raped and robbed by two local boys and he stopped his son from taking vengeance, knowing that the son would be lynched if he killed white men even for the rape of his sister, so instead he took the matter into his own hands, killing them both and getting acquitted by virtue of the fact the money the boys stole was his. I know this because the story was posted by one of his grandchildren.
**My father’s great-grandfather, the man with his surname, married between the ages of 17 or 19 (depending on the record) a woman who was (again depending on the record) between 29 and 32 and six months pregnant. This man served with the 47th Alabama Infantry and was supposedly killed at Vicksburg, but strange thing is: the 47th Alabama never served at Vicksburg (they were in fact at Gettysburg) and there’s no mention of him in their casualty roster. His “widow” remarried almost immediately upon his death to a much older man and had two children, the youngest born when she was possibly as old as 49. Meanwhile, the 1870, 1880 and 1900 census all have a man with my great-great-grandfather’s name, the same general age (give or take a couple of years) who was born in Alabama (where 1850 and 1860 Censuses list nobody by that name other than my great-great-grandfather) and with another wife and children, only this one is in Arkansas and later in Oklahoma. Is there a story here, first the shotgun wedding with the major age differential and then the death where his regiment wasn’t and the “other” man with the same name, or did he desert the CSA and his wife and let her claim to be a respectable war widow rather than a scandalous “grass widow”, and who is this man 12 years her senior who’s listed as illiterate and a laborer while she was born into the wealthiest line of my ancestors? I’ll wager there’s a quite interesting story there, but it’s dead, and then there’s the other records that are just names and dates with no more personality than a silhouette.
Any records from the U.S. Decennial Census that identify individuals are by federal law sealed for 72 years. The most recent census available for genealogical research is 1930, the one in which my father make their debut. There’s not much to tell from it: my father is listed as a 3 ½ year old child living with his father (age 38), widowed grandmother (67), two maiden aunts (41) and one maiden great-aunt (61) and, listed lastly probably because she was not actually living in the house but was away teaching and used it as official address, his mother (31). The only surprise is that I had forgotten about his great-aunt, Mary Elizabeth, the reason that Kitty and Carrie became adamantly opposed to the notion of naming me that if I was a girl (their aunt, Mary Elizabeth, half-sister to their father and born when her mother was close to 50, was “simple”- she died not long after this census and if my father remembered her he never mentioned her). Also appearing for the first time in this census are Lou Ida (3 ½) and her older siblings who were too not born in 1920. Mustang and Meemaw and their two oldest children are listed, one family up from her parents who lived next door. My mother will not appear in an online Census until 2012 when she’ll be living with her parents, siblings and widowed grandmother and an elderly couple who boarded with them. None of these records tell any story or ask any questions, they’re just names on paper.
My first Census appearance will be available in 2042. By then the standard for information technology may make Gutenberg look advanced due to the New Ice Age and zombie hoardes or, more probably, will make Internet 2 seem as quaint as quill and parchment. It will show that a 3 year old child lived with his two older siblings (11 and 9) and his parents (44 and 35), his nearest neighbors were his grandmother (71) and great-aunts (81 and 81), maiden cousin Lou Ida (44) and her father Gene (86), all bearing the same surname. It may give incomes and property values, but otherwise that’s it. Again, no stories. I’ll be there again in 1980 with the exact same cast of characters only ten years older, only subtract Gene and add Lucy (70), who may be listed as “insane” or “defective” (an actual term in the Census) and the only member of the “community” with a different surname. Again, no real stories to interest a casual distantly related genealogist (for I’m sure even if there are zombies there will still be genealogists due to the considerable overlap of the two groups that exists now).
If I’m still alive at the time (neither of my parents made it to 72 though many made it much further, while advances in healthcare are of course offset by the zombie hoardes, so all in all I’d say 50/50 chance) I might take a look at it but hopefully I’ll be too busy assisting my orpah [one of roughly 18,000 first generation clones of Oprah Winfrey who work mostly in managerial and diplomatic capacities] arranging my virtual wedding to Alexander the Great [long story] after transferring my pleasant but vapid 28 year old concubine to my ranch near St. Louis as I replace him in my pied-a-Terre in Clintonopolis [the new city built by President Hillary in 2014 and commonly regarded as capitol of the world now that NYC is depopulated and most of America’s reverted to autonomous lithium powered city states save for the half the contiguous land mass that joined The United America’s Under Franz-Agustin Gutierrez, Greatest of Leaders] with his two 24 year old replacements and arranging my next astral vacation in 18th century BCE Sumer. All long stories of course, but none as hard to imagine as the current world would be to M.B. Cotton, and again I’ll still speak and read English and whatever languages I need on an upload basis. Or if I am dead then perhaps my Reinstantiation will be doing it while residing in the Hagar VII.A1 Surrogate body, but I digress.
The point is, speeding ahead to 2130, the time that separates me from the last census to record my ancestor Cotton, any descendant or great-grandclone my parents may have who are researching them on whatever passes for online or in person will see stark records that tell when they lived, how much they earned, what they did for a living, perhaps a few other things, but nothing substantive. Like I have for Marion Cotton they will have, if their predecessors were lucky and I do nothing, only perhaps a few tiny fragments of their life (“Is she the one who shot at her husband? Or was that Sybil? I remember there’s a story about a dead mule somewhere…ha, she lived in Montgomery during the Bus Boycott, I wonder if she had any stories…”) and stark records.
No public record will ever tell of poor lobotomized Lucy and how she wound up in a state hospital for what today would be the lightest of offenses or tell of her morning “Crisco piss can sun salutation ritual” or of her manner of speaking (“What withholds the young boy child unto his bosom?”). Grandmother’s snake execution procedures and her house or Kitty & Carrie’s feline chamber of horrors, the line “That’s where Smoky got off to” or of Carrie’s incredible heroism on the day of her sister’s immolation or how a charitable act of their mother in a cotton field in 1893 made her a pariah for 70 years or who “Aunt Pig the sausage and cheesemaker” was and how she lost her nose and how that was my greatest epiphany and insight in shattering the “happy darkies in the fields” myth, how my grandfather got the name Mustang [they won’t even know THAT he was called Mustang- that NOBODY called him Irvin] or why he thought French women were disgusting and why he ultimately and willingly left the love of his life when he was 50 to return to a frigid wife, or of how my father handled “the discipline problem” student in a way that made the rest of his family or his revelation about his own childhood that explained so much and why he wouldn’t swim with us even though he’d swum under flaming water in the Navy… all of these things will be lost and replaced with
They’ll see the remains and perhaps, if they’re particularly curious, wonder what the face looked like and who they were just as I used to do when I worked on an archaeological dig and wondered “why did they bury this dog skull with her? Was it a skull then? And what on Earth happened to her right leg- must have been when she was young because of the scarring and how shriveled it is…”
I want to provide the flesh. I want to leave another record that tells what the official records don’t, the details to go with the data. These people were vibrant, larger-than-life even in the estimations of people who knew but were not related to them and did not grow up with them. They were all living proof that eccentricities need not be charming or endearing but by God they were unique, they were all of them, even the identical twins, one of a kind individuals. Because of how they lived their lives some were the last survivors of an era incredibly few people my age- a fraction of a percent- ever got to see even though it was so recent, and then there were my parents who saw transition as great as the Civil War and Reconstruction, just not as bloody, and how it affected them as individuals, and how either of them would have dominated any marriage had they not each met their match in a person who, when you discount all the ways the person could not have been less compatible or more disastrous for them, was their perfect soulmate. And of course the kids, the dead mules, the odd traditions, my mother’s comeback (which of all her aspects is the one I’m most proud of- without the option of marrying rich men like Scarlett she survived and ultimately won her war).
Well, call me Nebuchadnezzar for I do Babyl-on, but the point is I feel it is damned near my duty to write their story. Warts and all. Perhaps that’s why Marion “chose me” (though more likely, it was too much flash powder). And I’ve chosen an odd format that’s probably not as unique as I think it is but it’s still one that I want to use- certain parts are straight-out-memoir, other parts (those I did not personally witness) memoir, even a musical interlude and a chapter written as a graphic novel, though all that may change. I want it to be my gift to them, and while I have no expectations or hopes it will be in print when folks go digging in 2140 (if the zombies haven’t taken over Clintonopolis by then) I want them to at least be able to find out it exists and go from there.
I’m far from wealthy but thanks to a legacy from my mother I am debt free (I still have a student loan but I have the resources to pay it off if I want to, I’d just rather have the free cash). What I want to write will take time. That’s why I’m strongly considering returning to graduate school to study Creative Writing, not so much that I want to learn the craft (there’s a part there but mostly I’ll probably smile, nod, do the assignment and turn it in) but because since it will be my thesis and an automatic deadline and the like it will give me the incentive and perhaps some of the time needed to make this book my main concentration. So I’m applying to various places from (a hail Mary “I don’t expect to be admitted but why the hell not” application to) The University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop (basically “The Harvard of Creative Writing Degrees”) to far lesser known places with consideration of who will give me the most liberty and time (and of course aid package, for even if it is the duty the blonde demi god in the probably insentient picture from my childhood “chose me for” let’s get real- I ain’t spendin’ all my inheritance money on it ).
I would truly love to read opinions on the grad school idea, even if they are in total disagreement with the notion, especially since the constant genealogical babbling (which will not appear in the book) should have rooted out the snarkers and the ultra casual readers. Please give me feedback as to whether you think it’s a good idea, terrible idea, whether you think I have or I lack the talent for a MFA program or if I should consider something other than this book, etc… I promise not to meltdown (well- the usual “no dead mama snark” thing of course… sorta the ‘don’t mention O-ren Ishii’s mixed heritage” caveat, but otherwise) even if you say I’m a talentless hack and I’m all diagnosed with the shugger diabeetus and medicated now so I can quite take the criticism.
As lagniappe, here’s a “Family Story” that’s a bit more upbeat. I haven’t had the time since I wrote it to edit or even proof it (other than to change the names with a quick FIND/REPLACE) but I’d once thought of using it as an opening chapter even though it’s not the first event chronologically in the book. (There are two additional parts of it that occur later in the book, hence the PART 1 thing and not because it’s the first post.)
Anyway, apologies for being even for me rambling and incoherent in the past few days but I’ve been writing piecemeal, quickly and under very heavy fire. There’s a Thanksgiving Drama going on that would have made Squanto open fire but for that later. For now, eggplants. (Plus always remember, nothing I post here is anything other than free association rough and first draft- there’s no sex in the champagne room and there’s no editing or proofing on the message board by me; the failure of “certain mediocrities” to understand that Message Board postings [by me and or by most other Dopers] are not the same as polished correspondence is interesting to me.)
And HAPPY TURKEY DAY! (Unless you’re vegetarian, in which case ‘happy broccoli with feathers or whatever you people eat’ day.)
Sampiro I say go for grad school if you think that’s what it will take to motivate you to write the book. Hell, build the world’s largest Popsicle stick and Elmer’s glue house if that’s what it takes to motivate you to write the book. Do whatever it takes to motivate you to write the book. I want to read the book!
The wrong teacher can kill a great talent more assuredly than a good teacher can help it. You’re no babe in the woods here, so I expect you’ll take a big giant salt shaker with you and take a grain with every lecture.
That said, of course you should do this. The Iowa workshop would be extremely lucky to have you. Put together a portfolio and send it to them - maybe they’ll actually be smart enough to realize it themselves.
Do it. Leave your doubts behind - there’s no room in the suitcase for them. Don’t forget to keep us in the loop, and godspeed!
I think grad school is a great idea; just don’t let anyone change your style. I don’t think you really need grad school to write the book, but it might make it easier.