Don’t tell me! I know them.
My wife’s people lives down there, and I never seen the beat. Ain’t nothing ever suits them.
If them fellows would only print the truth I wouldn’t mind. It’s them lies that gets me.
Of course now, I ain’t saying we ain’t burned some of them people up — cremating them, I call it, regular cremation. But all this stuff about not having no Christian praying for them, why there ain’t nothing to that. I’m for Christian praying same as anybody else. I been a church member for twenty-five year now, and from what them fellows has put in the paper you would think I was brother-in-law to the devil.
And me his stepchild.
Why, Mr. Wade, the grand jury would be after me in a minute if I tried to bury all them people. I’m under a bond, I am.
Them is the things people never understand.
How come you to tell all them lies on me, when you knowed them people gets put away as good as anybody could ask for?
I never knowed they was paper men. If I had of knowed they was paper men, I wouldn’t never told them nothing.
Why, Mr. Wade, me and Mr. Mukens figured it up one night, and you ain’t got a idea what it would cost to bury all them people.
I ain’t got no doubt of it.
Something tremenjous. Nobody wouldn’t never believe it.
First off, Mr. Wade, the county would have to buy more land. That graveyard is all filled up down there. County would have to buy another graveyard. Then we would have to hire two extra men regular, just digging graves. It takes two men a whole morning to dig a grave, and a whole day in wintertime, when the ground is froze.
Them is the things that runs into money.
Then you got to have a box. And I tell you, it ain’t like it used to be, when you could knock a dry-goods box apart and nail it together again and have as good a box as anybody could want.
Them fellows is asking money for boxes, too. A dollar apiece for them, some of them gets.
What with the high price of lumber and carpenters’ wages, I tell you a box costs money.
Lumber and wages is out of sight. I just finished building a storm door on my porch, not no fancy storm door, just a regular storm door, and it cost me seventy-five dollars time I was done with it.
It’s a shame what them fellows asks for a day’s work. There ain’t none of them will touch a job for less than ten dollars a day.
And what’s more, they get it.
They ask railroad fare to come down our way.
Time you figure it all up, like me and Mr. Mukens done one night, I expect it would cost twenty-five dollars a head to bury them people.
I don’t doubt it.
Every cent of it.
Then people don’t stop to think how many of them people dies on us down there. We had a hundred and sixty-two last year, and that’s a average of more than three a week. Wintertime is the worst, account of so many of them bums getting committed.
They ought to send them bums to the county jail.
Jail is the place for them. I always did say so.
Time you figure it all up, Mr. Wade, it would cost the county ten thousand dollars a year just to bury them people.
And them nothing but paupers!
I tell you, Mr. Wade, I would be afraid for the grand jury to come down there if I had to tell them I was spending ten thousand dollars of the county’s money every year just to bury them people.
Seems to me like them people’s relations ought to bury some of them.
Them people’s relations that got burned up ain’t never heared tell of them after they died. Don’t even know they’re dead.
Who asked you to get into it? Mr. Wade is the chairman of the County Commissioners, and I would think a fellow that was in the county almshouse would have enough respect for him to shut up until somebody asked him to speak up.
I didn’t mean nothing, only I hear tell a lot of them people’s relations was looking for them.
You hear tell a plenty.
Well, I tell you how it is, Mr. Wade. It would seem like them people’s relations had ought to bury some of them, but I found out it don’t hardly pay to look them up. Half of them ain’t got money enough to have a funeral anyhow, and the other half you can’t find them.
I reckon that’s right.
Then it makes it bad in summer if you try to keep them people while you’re looking up their relations. You got to ice them, and that costs money.
They won’t keep long in summer.
The whole trouble is them people down in the lower end of the county. Seems like them people won’t ever listen to reason.
Yes, it’s them people down in the lower end of the county that makes it bad. They got a couple of preachers down there that want to be called in all the time, and then when they don’t get no business they put up a holler.
Then another thing I hear a lot of talk about, how they don’t never have no preacher called in. People dying all the time and they don’t never have no preacher.
Don’t that beat all, Mr. Wade? Say, how can you say them things to Mr. Wade, when you know Mr. Mukens is a preacher and you been hearing him preach every Sunday since you been down there?
Them people want a regular preacher!
And you know Mr. Mukens is a regular preacher, Baptist I think it is, a regular preacher with a license. Don’t you know that?
I never hear tell of it before.
Are you a reverend, Mr. Mukens? I declare, I never knowed that.
Not Baptist. Disciples of Christ.
Now that there just goes to show; Mr. Wade, how much of a kick these preachers is really got.
Of course, now, I’m for the Christian burial.
Why, certainly, Mr. Wade, everybody is for Christian burial. What I mean is, everybody is for putting them away Christian. Me, I don’t see no difference between burying them and cremating them, just so they get put away Christian. When I go, it don’t make no difference to me what they do with me, just so they say a Christian prayer over me, like of that.
Me neither.
Me neither.