In the year
of 1973 –
There was a
commercial on TV.
A sexy
octopus comes on to tell –
As an
underarm expert, what she’d sell.
Arid was dry
and would never sting –
And Dee also
began to sing.
Then Aunt
Gayle hung a sexy octopus on her Christmas tree –
And this brought
forth a special jingle by Dee.
She looked
at the tree with a shine in her eye –
Saying, “Oh,
look, there is NEBER, NEBER, NEBER, - DI, DI, DI!!!
Gaylia Kenslow
– Stogsdill
1973
Written for
Deanna Salazar
Copyright
Roy Richard
I’ll tell
you ‘bout the fishing trip we took the other day,
It sure has
me thinking some ‘bout what folks have to say,
You hear
some awful stories ‘bout he color and the size,
And I begin
to think be-gosh, you hear some awful lies.
Si Briggs
just caught a three pound bass a week come Wednesday night,
And Hiram
Jones, he caught a eel, he said he caught it rithe,
He said it
measured more’n three feet by inches two or three,
He said they
had a wash tub full, that’s what Hiram Jones told me.
Well after
hearing Hiram talk about what he had done,
It sort of
made us fellers want to have a little fun.
So we looked
the almanac clear through to see what day was right,
And we
hented cravs and crickets and worms most half the night.
We reached
the old pond by the mill some time twix three and four,
And boys, I
want to say right here, I won’t fish any more,
The rain it
drizzled down our backs, it chilled me nearly though,
The fish
stayed on the bottom, for fish know what to do.
Still hope
stayed with us pretty good, each moment brought delight,
For Hiram
said, “On good dark days, the fish were sure to bite.”
Well fishing
haint the easiest job on the earth today.
If you want
to catch the big ones, you got to know the way.
You’ve got
to know what kind of bait is best for a certain day,
And how to
hook it on your hook right in the proper way.
The folks
was all to bed asleep when we got home that night,
Bill Snell
had caught a sucker and I didn’t get a bite.
Katherine
Carey-Place 1878-1934
Copyright
Roy Richard
You went
away,
Leaving me
alone.
Exposing a
hole,
I could not
fill.
I felt the
vast emptiness,
A chasm I
could not cross.
Days filled
with helplessness,
And long nights
of restlessness.
On a cold
snowy January night,
I lay in the
snow, full of hurt and broken might.
Wishing for
an end to this madness,
Or for your
loving, comforting embrace.
Days later,
A sudden
passing thought,
A random memory,
Triggered in
my consciousness.
Only then I
realized with startled wonder,
You had not
left!
Your body is
no longer present in my world,
But your
spirit dwells beside me never less.
Embarrassed I
shook my head.
The
blessings,
The Love,
The
experience!
You are
still here,
Though in a
different form.
Living in a
new realm,
That’s
inside my heart and head.
I love you
mom
Coot (Roy Richard)
June 2020
For my Mother.
Copyright Roy Richard
If you ever
have a mountain to climb –
And
everything ‘round you was smooth and sublime –
Just think
how dull your life would seem –
If there was
no reason to plan and dream.
So when the “going”
gets a little tough –
And solving
a problem is extra rough –
Just dig
right in and climb that mountain –
And savor
the taste of “success” from life’s fountain.
Gaylia
Kenslow – Stogsdill
Written for
her nephew, Randy Lee Stogsdill when he graduated from high school in June,
1973. He graduated from Southwestern High School, Flint, Michigan
Copyright
Roy Richard
If you are
tempted to reveal,
A tale
someone to you has told,
About
another, make it pass,
Before you
speak, three gates of gold.
Three Narrow
gates first, “Is it true?”
Then, “Is it
needful?” in your mind,
Give
truthful answer, and the next,
Is last and
narrowest, “Is it kind?”
Katherine
Carey-Place 1878-1934
Copyright Roy Richard
My dad, Earl Richard had a half-brother named Homer Warren from his mother’s first marriage.
Homer was born March 5, 1897 in
Stoddard County, Missouri. He died on January 24, 1925 in Williamson County,
Illinois.
Earl had gone to live with Homer,
who was living in Herrin Illinois and working as a miner in the summer of 1924.
Homer had also become a member of the Klan and was a bodyguard for one of their
top guns, S. Glenn Young.
Earl shared two stories of his
time in Illinois. The first he and Homer were riding in a wagon outside of town
when some brush began to rustle just off the road. Homer without missing a beat
or slowing the horses down, he pulled a pump shotgun from beside himself and
emptied it into the brush.
The second story and the one
that made Earl decide to go back to Missouri happened later in the fall of that
year. He and Homer were living in a garage behind a house in town. One night
when they came home they found that the garage was fully riddled with bullet
holes.
Homer was killed in a shootout
with the local Sheriff.
Homer is buried Herrin City
Cemetery, Herrin, Williamson County, Illinois, USA. He was survived by his
wife, Mary E Harris Warren. She later married Clarence Rippy and moved to
Flint, Michigan. Homer was preceded in death by his son, Willie Hoffer Warren
(1917-1919).
Williamson County where Homer
met his death had a bloody history.
The Carterville Mine Riots of 1899
In 1889, Samuel T. Brush
started up a mining operation north of Carterville, Illinois called the St.
Louis and Big Muddy Coal Company. Brush decided to break the Union and brought
in scab laborers. To make the matter worse these laborers were African American
from outside the County. On September 17, 1899, a group of black miners from
Brush’s mine left his mine property and went downtown to the train station.
This was the opportunity that the union workers had been waiting for since they
already had a wagon full of guns and ammunition prepared for the event.
Before the black miners could
reach their destination they were confronted with the union workers and a
gunfight ensued. In the end, several non-union workers were killed and several
were wounded with no casualties on the union side. The union men responsible
were rounded up, arrested, and jailed. After three days, all were released and
no convictions were ever filed.
The Herrin Massacre
In 1922 William J. Lester began
developing a mining operation called the Southern Illinois Coal Company. Lester
had a plan, his mine would be a strip mine operation, unique for that time, and
instead of making the mistake that Brush made by using black workers, he would
use non-union white workers.
On June 21, 1922 the mine was
attacked along with the convoy that ferried
the scab workers to and from the mine.
On the next morning, June 22,
1922, Sheriff Thaxton, headed for the mine. When he arrived, the mine was a
virtual mob scene. Everything had either been burned or dynamited or was in the
process of being destroyed or plundered.
The remaining 46 scab workers
were marched through the woods to Coal Belt Electric Line’s power house where
the attackers opened fire on them, killing or wounding 20 of them.
Twenty one people were killed
in twenty four hours and three would die later from complications.
The KKK in Williamson County
Williamson County had become a
fertile field for establishment and growth of the Ku Klux Klan. The area was
predominantly fundamentalist Protestant and fervently patriotic, and these
factors contributed to prejudices and intolerance. They also contributed to
fanatical support of Prohibition laws.
Herrin had a ready-made scapegoat in its Italian miner community, as
these people were “foreigners,” Catholic, and “habituated to wine”; many of
them had become bootleggers after passage of the Volstead Act.
The local Sheriff George
Galligan was not strictly enforcing Prohibition, and the Williamson County Law
Enforcement League, organized to help stamp out bootlegging and gambling, had
condemned him, publicly announcing that other means would have to be found to
enforce the law. Many citizens believed that the Klan offered a way to clean up
Williamson County and redeem it from its shame.
On January 24, 1925, Deputy
Sheriff Ora Thomas confronted S. Glenn Young in the Canarg Cigar Store that was
located in the European Hotel. The meeting of these two enemies ended in a
gunfight that left Thomas, Young, Homer and another Klansman dead.
On January 27, the coroner’s
inquest covering the Young-Thomas shootout, decided that Young and Thomas had
killed each other and that the other two men were killed by parties unknown.
http://www.mihp.org/2013/05/bloody-williamsons-history-of-mine-massacres/
http://www.mihp.org/2013/09/the-ku-klux-klan-in-williamson-county-part-two/
Remember
Great Gramma’s humming bird –
And the
honeysuckle vine.
And how we’d
love to sit and watch,
In the good
ole summertime.
Those days
are gone but not forgot –
We’ll
remember through the years.
And those
lovely, joyous memories,
Will wipe away
our tears.
Gaylia
Kenslow – Stogsdill
Copyright Roy Richard
