FAMILY by Roy Richard

 

In the greater scope of things, is your clan weird?

Mine won’t win any prizes, they’ve proven their true worth.

My dad was a “dirty old man”.

My mom a “gold digging hussy”.

Or so the respective “Families” said.

 

I have always felt disowned by my blood,

We were rarely included, given a thought

In celebrations and fun.

They all could not see the love, they had for each other,

Our “Family”.

 

Mother’s menfolk had to ‘work’ and so missed the wedding.

Dad’s family said they could still see his dead wife beside him.

Twenty-six years was too great a divide,

Their love didn’t meet the proper definition,

Of “Family”.

 

At Christmas Grandmother bought me pj’s while my cousins got trucks.

One exceptional year nothing under the tree for me,

“Oh, I left it upstairs, I’ll get it in a moment”, she muttered.

I could hear her wrapping something and I was presented with mis-fitting pj’s.

Some “Family”

 

The Uncles took the boys fishing and hunting,

To learn life skills that would make them men.

I wasn’t included, wonder what they were thinking?

But I learned a life skill,

How to hate “Family”.

 

Older cousins left me on the bench at little league.

Psst, dad forced them to put me on the team,

Then they lied why I didn’t play

I learned isolation at an early age,

From “Family”.

 

Funny, they could ask my parents for loans.

Risking handouts wasn’t forbidden.

Deals on cars, loans for houses, a little pocket money,

Dad never complained, just did what was right,

For “Family”

 

Only mother could care for grandmother when she took ill,

After all she had the ‘room’ and the ‘time’.

Never complaining after working forty hours and then cleaning up shit.

Sitting near the hospital bed, knitting mittens and waiting.

For “Family”.

 

Their marriage was not perfect,

Yes they quarreled and fought,

No more than others I’m sure.

But the love they shared inspired,

Our little “Family”

 

I’ve now built my own little brood,

Successful and strong,

Based on the example of their love.

I’m sure mom and dad would be proud.

If they could see, my “Family”

 

Roy Richard (Coot)

July 2022

 

Copyright Roy Richard

THE SEXY OCTOPUS by Gaylia Kenslow – Stogsdill

 

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

THE FISHING TRIP WE TOOK by Katherine Carey-Place

 

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 by Roy Richard

 

 

Nan Marie Edmonds-Richard (1933-1978)

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

Randy Graduates by Gaylia Kenslow – Stogsdill

 

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

Three Gates by Katherine Carey-Place

 

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

Homer Warren

 

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/

http://livinghistoryofillinois.com/pdf_files/Complete%20History%20of%20Southern%20Illinois%20Gang%20War.pdf

Copyright Roy Richard