Ray's Corner

The Lord's Acomin'!

"...Now this next I'm gonna tell you is about a woman that used to travel around the roads when I was about 10 years old. She was preaching the gospel she claimed she was. She was a woman of about, oh 50 I suppose, maybe 55, she was about 4 foot 8 high, she'd hog dress about 325 pounds, she didn't walk, she waddled. She made her trips around about every two weeks from house to house, and all she was doing was bumming her living because she never worked or done anything beside that. I know all the preaching and praying she done at our place, why they was hanging up in the attic on the rafters like cobwebs, they never got through the roof, I had to go up and sweep them down about one a month. She was never any more religious than I am and that was needless. But all she was doing was using that as a front to bum her living. She always arrived at our place at about oh, 4.30 in the afternoon, quarter to five, and just in time for supper.

She was always prophesying that the world was coming to an end, I think September the 23rd, 1923, 7 o'clock in the evening. We didn't pay any attention to her because we knew what she was doing, she'd always wanted us to repent and go to heaven with her. She kept doing this and this went along till the time come and she arrived there that afternoon about oh, half past four and and she was hollering for us to repent and go to heaven with her and the Lord and all this and that. So, my brother said to her "How are you going to heaven?"

"Oh, the Lord is coming down in his golden chariot drawn by angles and taking me to heaven".

He said "How may angles is he bringing?"

She said "I don't know; I didn't ask him!"

"Well," he said, "He'll want to be sure to bring enough because if he don't He'll have to make two trips".

She said, "Humpf, kind of smart for a young feller!"

Anyway, Mother got supper ready and she set down for supper. Well, she always had to set in two chairs because when she set in one chair she always run down over the chair like a loaf of bread that run over the pan, so Mother always gave her two chairs to set in; she filled both of them. Well, she said well she'd suspect she'd have to eat a big supper; she said didn't know how long it would take the Lord and her to get to heaven and she might get hungry before she got there. Well, she et more than the two hogs we had in the barn because I know, I fed them their supper. She cleaned up everything there was on the table and after she got everything et that was on the table and much grunting and groaning she got up and said well she guessed she'd have to go out and find a good place to wait for the Lord. She didn't want him to miss her when he come. My older brother said, "He couldn't miss you if you was hiding under a rock," he said, "there would be some of you sticking out!" She just said, "Humpf!"

So anyway, she went out the door and she looked around. Out by the barn there was a stack of bedding hay that we'd cut in the swamp for bedding for the cattle for winter; it was about oh,16 feet high and about 25 feet over the bottom and it was shaped like a mound of hay. So she went in the house and she asked my father if she could get up on that stack of hay and wait for the Lord. My father said yeah, he didn't care as long as she didn't take the stack of hay with her. So he told my two older brothers to get the ladder and put it up on the stack of hay so she could get up on top of the stack of hay. Well, they went and got the ladder and put it up on the stack of hay and stood down at the foot of the ladder to hold it and I was there. And she started up that ladder, grunting and groaning, and she looked like a big porcupine going up a hemlock stub. And as she got about halfway up the ladder - we was standing at the foot of the ladder - we started laughing; we couldn't help it.

Because in those days the women made their underwear out of these flour bags, they were white cotton flour bags - flour come in 98 pound bags then - and all different types of flour, every manufacturer had his name and flour on there and the brand he called it, and the picture that represents the company. So there was flour like oh, Royal Household and there was Cream of Wheat and Five Roses and Daily Bread and Robin Hood. The women would go to work after the flour was taken out of the bag and they would boil them bags up and then they'd bleach the colors out and the letters out of them and then they'd use them to make underwear and they made good soft underwear because there wasn't much silk around those days and no nylon or anything like that - it hadn't been invented. So anyway, she had a pair on that was made out of Robin Hood flour bags and the legs came down to the top of her knees and she didn't have the colors bleached out of these pants. When she was going up that ladder you could see this picture of Robin Hood and he had the arrow in his bow and he had the bow pulled back the whole way and you know where that arrow was pointing.  Well, we couldn't help but laugh, we had to laugh! She was about 4 foot 6 across the rear end and there was lots of room there for Robin Hood, it never cracked him one bit.

Well after much grunting and groaning she made the top of the ladder and got off on the stack of hay. She told my brothers you take the ladder down she said I wont need it after this; I'll always be going up, I'll never be going down again. My older brother said "That's what she thinks, I've got a surprise for her!" So anyway, he went to work and took the ladder and put it in the barn and we went in the barn, in the stable, and watched her out the window. She set there on that stack of hay and she was looking around and looking around and by and by her head started to nod she'd et so much she was getting sleepy and after a few minutes she flopped over on this stack of hay asleep. She started in a snoring and she snored so loud that she scared the cattle in the barn. My older brother went out and took a match and touched the bottom of that stack of hay and the flames shot up over that stack of hay "Whoosh!" and when they got up about eight feet in the air just a roaring she jumped up, woke up, and threw her hands above her head and she hollered "Hell at last, no more than I expected!" and about that time she lost her balance, went over backwards, come down over that stack of hay end over end, rolled down through the orchard, and she lit up again an apple tree. She laid there oh, maybe I'd say 10 or 15 seconds and by and by she scrambled to her feet and she took off waddling down through the orchard toward the main road and we never saw her after that, she never came back. So we got rid of her.  So I guess she found out where she was going after all..."