In Memoriam 

 Kathryn Tucker Windham

(June 2, 1918 ~ June 12, 2011)

Master of Yarns and Tales

 

 

Graveyard Shift

      Hoyt “Hambone” Ledbetter was always quick to cock his head back and proclaim that he was the toughest man in Cherokee County. “I ain’t skeered uh nothin’ ner nobody.” And most of the folks in Rusty Springs, Georgia believed him…until the night of January 18th, 1968. 

     Rusty Springs was an off-the-beaten-path town of just over 600 people, mostly older folks who had retired up north and moved south to escape the cold, harsh winters.  Ancil Griggs’s Peace in the Valley Funeral Parlor was the town’s largest employer with seven workers, which included the “interment site attendants,” as the uppity Mr. Griggs liked to call them. (Everybody else just called them grave diggers.) Rusty Springs was a quiet, peaceful community until a rash of burglaries hit, of all places, the funeral parlor. That’s when Hoyt Ledbetter’s life began to unravel.  

     In small, closely knit towns, news, good or bad, spreads like a sagebrush fire…and Rusty Springs was no exception. In the darkness of a cold November morning, the town ne’er-do-well, Mickey Joe Clayton, was caught red-handed inside the funeral parlor. The word around town was that he was stealing embalming fluid and selling it to deer processor Carl Haskins, obviously for “preserving   purposes.” But the town folks saw right through that ridiculous rumor, fairly certain that it was the work of Harve Brantley, the town’s other deer processor. Mickey Joe was actually helping himself to the unclaimed personal property of accident victims…rings, watches, women’s jewelry, even pocket change. But on Halloween night of ’67, the granddaddy of all burglaries, or pranks, if you will, took place.  A threesome of boys from the nearby junior college got into the funeral home, made off with the training cadaver, rode it all over town,  its head stuck out the window, and then sat it in the front seat of a friends pick-up while he and his date were in the high school gym attending the annual “Halloween Booger Bash.” Mr. Griggs had had enough.  

     After pondering the situation for what seemed like months, he decided on the obvious…a night watchman. It would have to be the only person who had the intestinal fortitude to work a graveyard shift at a funeral parlor…Hoyt Ledbetter!  

     Hoyt had been fired from his truck driving job with the county highway department after he threatened to “whup” his supervisor, so when Mr. Griggs offered him the job, he didn’t even blink. “I reckin ye gotcha self a man.”  “Then be here tomorrow night at ten ready to go to work. You’ll get off at six in the morning. And I don’t put up with any foolishness,” Griggs replied, in his trademark gruff voice. “In addition to making rounds through the building, your job will include some minor janitorial work...sweeping, mopping, cleaning the toilets, and the like.”  

     The night of January 18 was a typical mid-winter night…cloudy, cold, wind whistling through the trees, which made for an especially eerie night at the small-town funeral parlor. Having finished his cleaning, Hoyt stepped outside for a quick smoke when the ringing phone ended his break. Concerned that it might be the county hospital reporting a death, he hurried back in…maybe in too much of a hurry. When his feet hit the newly mopped, still-wet floor he slipped and started falling backwards, grabbing the nearest thing he could, which happened to be the arm of the dearly departed Aunt Maudie Tullis, still lying on the prep table. Being a big, strong man, he accidently pulled Aunt Maudie right off the table, her corpse landing face down on top of him, with her cold, hollow eyes staring straight into his.  

     The next morning, a truck driver reported to the sheriff’s office that around 4:15 AM, he had seen a man running at top speed down Highway 49 toward Aldersville.  

     Hoyt Ledbetter was never seen again in Rusty Springs, Georgia, and for the rest of his days, Ancil Griggs wondered if hiring a night watchman to work a graveyard shift at a funeral parlor was such a good idea. 

 

 

    

Speedy Atkins: His Story

     In May of 1928, as Charles “Speedy” Atkins sat on an old wooden pier on the banks of the Ohio River fishing for what probably would be his supper,  he suddenly tipped over, fell into the water, and drowned. Two nearby fishermen pulled him to the bank and tried to revive him, but it was too late, testifying later that Atkins “appeared to have dozed off, slumped over, and just fell into the river.” Having no relatives to claim the body, undertaker A. Z. Hamock took custody and kept the corpse at his funeral home until some decisions could be made. With no apparent means to pay for a funeral, Atkins was given a pauper’s burial in Maplelawn Park Cemetery……66 YEARS LATER!

      Charles Henry Atkins had rightfully earned the nickname “Speedy” for the fast and efficient way he could strip, tie up, and hang tobacco leaves. He was seen almost daily headed, on foot, to one of the drying barns in and around his hometown of Paducah, Kentucky.

      Hamock, out of curiosity, had concocted a preservative he thought might mummify a body if properly administered…and under the circumstances, Speedy might be the ideal prospect to try it on. He never revealed the formula but told that the “fixins” could all be bought in a grocery story.” And the townspeople let it go at that. 
 

     Unlike other processes where the body is rubbed with salt then wrapped with strips of linen, Hamock’s preservative was simply injected into the body’s bloodstream. And strangely enough, the process worked well. With the exception of a reddish skin tone and a wooden-like texture, the physical appearance of Speedy was almost true to life.
 

     After A. Z. Hamock’s death in 1949, the funeral home was sold and his wife, Velma, assumed custody of the body. After considering a limited number of options, she decided to keep Speedy, standing in a closet, in her home where he remained for the next 45 years. With the strange story of the “mummy in the closet” being featured in newspapers, magazines, TV programs, and on Paul Harvey’s popular radio program, The Rest of the Story, Speedy became a circus-like attraction, with people coming from near and far to “visit” him. And with her usual cordial manner, Velma would always welcome them into her home.
 

     Soon after Velma Hamock’s death in 1994, the people of Paducah, agreeing that Speedy should have a proper and respectful burial, raised the necessary funds for a short and simple graveside service and interment. On the bronze marker at the head of his grave is this simple inscription:  ~ Charles “Speedy” Atkins ~ Lived 53 years as a pauper…buried 66 years later as a celebrity.

    

Preston Grunt's Pet Snake

     Trying to convince the Reverend Willard Reno that there’s no such thing as a hoop snake is a waste of good time. “Oh yes they is! I seen one myself! Seen it with my own two eyes! Come a’rollin into one of our Sunday mornin preachins, right in the middle of  ‘An Unclouded Day.’ Never heard the like of shoutin’, foot stompin’, and amenin’ in all my borned days. So I know they’s hoop snakes!”  And he was right. Well…..sort of.     

      Preston Ray Grunt was the fifth of five boys born to Porter and Pauline Grant:  Paul, Pete, Percy, and Porter, Jr., so he had to learn to be thick-skinned early. So why Preston Ray GRUNT? 

 

     Prissy Siler, the hospital’s maternity ward clerk, was a good worker, never late, got along well with others, and all the other things that make a good worker a good worker. But her handwriting was, let’s just say, less than terrible! She would sometimes forget to dot her i’s and cross her t’s which made them look like l’s. And, her a’s looked like u’s and her u’s looked a’s. And so the story of Preston Ray Grunt begins.  

     Preston came into the world on a Friday the 13^th mid-afternoon, definitely an omen. On that particular Friday, Prissy was to meet her cousin, Fancy, at the VFW’s Friday Frolics, so she started watching the clock about 3:30 PM. Somewhere around 4:15, she began working on baby Grant’s paperwork and the associated pile of red tape. But that was not at the top of her priority list, not by a long shot. So, as she usually does, she went through the process quicker than a lizard snags a grasshopper, licked and stamped the envelope, pitched it in the outgoing mail basket, and headed her Plymouth Valiant toward the local VFW Hall.  

     Three weeks or so later, an envelope bearing the return address, “Bureau of Vital Statistics, State of Mississippi, Jackson, MS,” arrived at the Grant’s RFD address. Porter, realizing what it was and being a little nervous, sliced it open with his pocket knife, and, wouldn’t you know it? There it was in big bold letters, “Preston Ray GRUNT.”  

     Over the next week or so, Porter and Pauline discussed their options and possible solutions to the unheard-of tragedy. But after finding out that the state would charge $300 for making the change and a $200-an-hour lawyer would have to file a written and documented request, Porter and Pauline decided to leave it as it was. “Aaw, he’ll learn to deal with it,” Porter rationalized. Well, he didn’t…or maybe he did.  

        As the months and years dragged on like molasses in January, Preston heard the expected array of Grunt-related jokes: pig stys, rootin’ for acorns, and, of course, mud holes. And although Preston appeared to just let it slide off, people wondered if he really did. But the home folks knew one thing for sure. If you got on his bad side, you could count on one thing…being the butt of one his pranks. That was his way of diverting attention away from his cartoonish name. And his strategy worked! So, just as his daddy had prophesied, he learned to deal with it, and in the process earned the much-deserved nickname, “Preston Prankster.” 

 

     One of his classics took place on a cold December night on the occasion of the annual town Christmas parade.  

     Abner Jennings, the high school biology teacher, had failed Preston twice and then rubbed salt in the wound by blurting out in the teacher’s lounge, “I don’t know if that Grunt kid took biology or if it took him.”  So with the help of his cousin, who was the school janitor, Preston got into the biology lab and “borrowed” the model human skeleton, dressed it in a Santa Claus suit, pinned a label on the back that said, MR. JENNINGS, and rode it, tied to his four wheeler, right down the middle of the Main Street parade, and believe it or not, was awarded 3^rd place for “Most Creative Entry.” But the prank to end all pranks was yet to come.  

     The Millstone Creek Congregational Church sat at the bottom of and across a typical rough county road from a long sloping hill. A trail, as straight as an arrow and worn smooth by Sunday afternoon four-wheeler riders, went straight up it, exactly in line with the open front doors.  (Reverend Reno wanted the doors to be left open as a sort of invitation to “come on in.”) The Grants were loyal members of the church and supported it in every way loyal members should support their church. But something happened one Sunday morning that really got under Preston’s thick skin. Elder Jarrold McFadden refused to let him go in because he thought the not-so-flattering image on his sweatshirt looked suspiciously like Dottsie Reno, the Reverend’s wife, although Preston insisted, that it was a caricature of his lady friend, Jaleen Jaggins. So, with that unfortunate incident, the prank to end all pranks was conceived.  

     Preston’s favorite pastime was sitting on his front porch doing nothing…and he was good at it. On one particular hot August day, something unusual happened. Like a bolt of lightning, seemingly out of nowhere, Preston had a would-be award-winning prank idea. With a little bit of back-woods engineering, he could create a hoop snake. With his brain running in high gear, he reasoned that if a stamp could be steamed off of an envelope, a snake skin could be steamed off of a belt…and his brother, Percy, had one. So after a little old-fashioned arm twisting, Preston traded Percy a Roy Acuff 8-track tape for it, steamed off the skin, and headed to the flea market in search of a cheap hula hoop and a bottle of Stik-Tite glue. A hoop snake was about to be born.  

     When the following Sunday rolled around, Preston, with his hoop snake in hand, and hoping that some good might come from his harmless church prank, made his way to the top of the sloping hill, aimed his "snake" toward the church’s open front doors and let it go. And as true as an arrow, the hoop snake rolled down the hill picking up speed along the way, hit a pothole and jumped the front steps, rolled down the aisle, bounced over the kneeling rail, and landed right in the middle of song leader Margie Dinkins’ lap. Rejoicing, hand waving, and shouts of “It’s a sign, it’s a sign” rang out and went on for at least fifteen minutes.
  
     And so, it can truthfully be said that on that fateful Sunday morning, Audell Sullins, who had kept the Dirt Road Bar in business for years, literally got the Devil scared out of him. Not a drop of liquor has touched his lips since.   

     

The Ghost of Fenton Farley

     Fenton Farley, as far back as the local folks could remember, always said he would die on the day of  Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. And true to his prophecy, on December 21, 1953, he was accidently shot and killed by his brother-in-law while hunting deer on Backbone Ridge…or so they say.  

     Turner’s Gap is a peaceful little valley town cradled between Lodestone Mountain and Candlewick Hill. Sister Bessie Barton likes to say that “God just reached down with His mighty hands and patted out a pretty little valley like I pat out a pie crust.” Turner’s Gap’s only claim to fame was…well, they really didn’t have one, except that Arthel Wilburn played stand-up bass for a short time with Hank Snow and his Rainbow Ranch Boys. He told that he had to quit and stay home ‘cause his milk cow, Audrey, had stopped giving milk and he thought it was because she missed him.  

      The Country Corner Market was the gathering place for the local men folk, who would come by on a daily basis to sort through the local gossip, chew their Bloodhound tobacco, and play checkers. One of their favorite topics of conversation was Fenton Farley and his mysterious ability to see into the future and to converse with the departed. Fen, as he was known, could foretell the outcome of ball games, elections, raffles, and even the Cedar Hill Methodist Church bingo tournaments, and was right about 85% of the time. He liked to brag about correctly picking the winners of the ’47, ‘48 and ’49  World Series, always braggin’ that he had discussed it with “The Babe.” But he was always quick to tell you that he was “agin gamblin,” so he was very selective about who he shared his predictions with. His wife’s brother, Albert Earl Scroggins, was notorious for playing poker, rolling dice, even pitching pennies,  and to see him dragging in, probably flat broke, at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning, was not uncommon. Needless to say, he was not on Fen’s prediction-sharing list, not by any stretch of the imagination.  

     It was common knowledge to all the folks in the Gap, and even some in the next county over, that Albert Scroggins didn’t want his baby sister to marry Fen. He was always quick to rare back and bellow out, “Ain’t no sister uh mine gonna marry no Farley!” But when his brother, Billy Joe, told him in no uncertain terms, to quit acting like a “Missouri jackass,” he decided to tone down and accept the fact that his sister would soon be Mattie Belle Farley.  

     Delbert Garvin, who had quit school and moved to Chicago to find work, was back in Turner’s Gap for the annual Garvin family reunion. On a  particular June morning, he had joined up with the locals at the Country Corner for their daily roundtable session.  

     Delbert: “Guess who I seen at church yesterday mornin’…Fenton Farley!” Just kinda slipped in, set on the back row, then slipped out.”  

      “You didn’t see Fenton Farley. His brother-in-law, Albert Scroggins, accidently shot ‘im up on Backbone Ridge. Killed ‘im, stone dead! They’s huntin’ deer,” Abe Stoddard replied.  

    Delbert: “I could’a swore ‘at was him. Looked bad… thin, pale, that gray color ye look when ye’ve smoked ‘bout all ye life. I hurried out after the service to speak to ‘im but he wuz gone. Didn’t see him nowheres.”  

     “I thought I seen ‘im , too,” added Ed Tittle, “foldin’ clothes down at the Load-N-Wash with Mattie Belle.”  

     There was a “hmm” or two and the men began to look at each other with raised eyebrows. That  morning session ended sooner than usual.  

     Rumors of Fen Farley sightings began to spread through the Gap like a Kansas grass fire. Shorty Ledlow said he saw him at the church softball tournament, Sarah Baskins said she saw him coming out of the Sandy Creek Bait Shop, and just when the local folks thought the situation couldn’t get any more bizarre, it did.  

     Somewhere around the end of November, Riley Southern and his nephew were taking care of that annual, dreaded task, cleaning the leaves out of his gutters.  

     “Es go son, ‘bout to get dark on us. Be careful goin’ down ‘at ladder.”  

     “What’s that up on the ridge, Uncle Riley, that  glowing?”  

     “At’s jest the moon risin’.”  

     “Well Uncle Riley, if the moon rises in the south, you must’a played hooky the day your teacher talked about the earth rotating, cause ‘at sure ain’t what Coach Watson told us.”  

     As the days passed, more and more sightings of the mysterious glow on Backbone Ridge were being   whispered around town. And of course, more and more speculating as to what it was began to surface…coon hunter’s lights, Boy Scouts camping out, and even a huge formation of foxfire. Finally, James Neal Pritchard, the Gap’s kind of unofficial mayor, suggested that two or three of the men get together and go talk to Sister Rosie Ola Horton, who was a kind of modern day soothsayer. She could count her Indian bear claw beads, and solve about any mystery that came up, once even helping the county sheriff locate a still that was puttin’ out poison moonshine. So they paid a friendly visit to Rosie Ola, and after exchanging the normal  and accepted niceties, the by-the-way question was brought up.“I guess you seen ‘at strange, glowing light that everybody’s talkin’ ‘bout, the one up on the ridge,” queried James Neal.“Yeah and I done counted the claws and I knows exactly what ‘tis. An ole wive’s tale has it that where a ghost lays down to sleep, the ground will glow until the next full moon. I seen it happen when I’s a little girl.”  

     Having no reason to disbelieve her, the men, not wanting to be rude, visited a bit longer, wished her well, and went on their way.  

     As the mystery’s apparent answer made its way through the Gap, it was naturally received with skepticism. “Oh phooey!  ‘At womern’s crazy, crazy as a Bessie bug, an I ain’t tha only one that thanks ‘at!” That response seemed to be the consensus and the Gap’s folks tried in vain to pass off the whole thing as “a figment of the people’s imaginations.” But the glow didn’t go away. Then something happened that put the strange glow talk out of mind for a while. Albert Scroggins had come up missing.  

     Word immediately went out that at daybreak on Monday, everybody that could, would meet in front of the Country Corner to lay out plans and organize a search party. Mayor Pritchard said he would contact Sheriff Dixon and the county rescue squad, Shorty Ledlow volunteered to contact all the folks that owned horses and ask them to help, and others were asked to round up needed equipment…lights, ropes, hack blades, etc. The plan was that if and when Scroggins was found, someone would ride back to town and ring the Methodist Church’s dinner bell 10 times, wait 30 seconds, then ring it 10 times again,  different from a fire alert. At 2:20 PM on Tuesday, the signal rang out. Albert Scroggins’ body had been found.  

      In the bottom left corner of the front page of  Friday’s Mountain Times-Ledger, was a small article detailing the incident:  

                                          Body of Missing Man Found

              After a day and a half of searching, the body of Turner’s Gap resident Albert Earl  Scroggins has been found and recovered from a location atop Backbone Ridge about two miles from town. No sign of foul play was detected. Sheriff Brady Dixon gave Ledger reporter Janice Motes a detailed account of the event:  “Scroggins’ body was located about ten feet or so from some sort of marking on the ground, something looking eerily like a cemetery plot. It was approximately 5 ft. by 10 ft. with rocks perfectly outlining a section of charred, slightly sunk-in ground. At the top was a large flat rock, I guess weighing close to 500 pounds, with a crudely etched date on it:  December 21, 1953 – the day of Winter Solstice.”   

      The cause of Albert Scroggins’ death was never determined. 



 

  

      

    

    

 

Uncle Bush: Tennessee Mountain Legend

     Felix Bushaloo Breazeale was, without a doubt, Roane County, Tennessee’s most well-known and celebrated citizen.  Uncle Bush, as he was known far and wide, was and may still be, the only man to ever attend his funeral…while still living!     

      Being a rough looking, reclusive mountain man and for fear of the unknown, more than anything else, rumors always ran rampant about Uncle Bush…he killed a man, he would shoot prowlers on sight, he was crazy, and the like. Fed up with all the unfounded gossip, he decided to approach funeral home owner Frank Quinn about having his funeral “now, while I’m still living so I can  hear what people have to say about me, what they know about me.” After the initial shock and weighing in on all the ifs, ands, and buts, Quinn agreed and the service was set for late spring of the following year.

     Describing Uncle Bush was easy. He had a long thick beard, always wore bib overalls, dipped snuff, was a master craftsman (he made his own coffin from black walnut wood), and was a crack shot with a rifle. He could reputedly bring down a fox from a hundred yards away, having gotten a lot of practice protecting his chickens. His best friend and constant companion was his mule which he had raised from a young colt and named, “Mule.” He never married, telling folks, “The ones I wanted I couldn’t have and the ones I could have I didn’t want.”

     He claimed he could communicate with Mule and apparently, he could. Other than the normal work chores…plowing, skidding logs, and pulling up stumps, he had taught Mule quite a repertoire of tricks. As word spread about the near-famous twosome, folks from around the area began to muster up the courage to come and request a showing of Uncle Bush’s mule and his “trick show.” And he would always oblige. To say that Uncle Bush enjoyed the limelight was an understatement.

     As the day of the “living funeral” as it had been tagged, began to draw closer, Frank Quinn realized that this was going to be an event of big proportions, much bigger than he first thought. And when East Tennessee’s largest newspaper, the Knoxville News-Sentinel ran the story, the Associated Press picked up on it, and the tale of Felix Breazeale, his mule, and his living funeral, spread like wildfire.

     June of 1938 was exceptionally hot for the mountains of East Tennessee as Sunday, the 26^th, the date set for Uncle Bush’s funeral, grew closer and closer. People began arriving on Friday, camping out in the woods around Cave Creek Missionary Baptist Church. By early Sunday morning, people were stirring like bees around a honey tree. Travel along the narrow dirt road leading through the woods to the little white church had slowed to a crawl. Estimates of the crowd ran as high as 8,000 to 10,000.

     June 26^th was anything but usual in the small Roane County community of Cave Creek. People began to gather early…in cars, trucks, buses, wagons, on horseback, on foot, some arriving before daybreak. An unofficial survey of license plates showed vehicles from fourteen states as far away as Louisiana, Missouri, and Alabama. An old and dear friend of Uncle Bush, the Rev. Charles Jackson had driven from Paris, Illinois, a distance of over 500 miles, to preach the funeral. Frank Quinn realized early on that the small church house would not hold a fraction of the people so plans quickly changed and the service was moved outdoors.

     The rumor that the funeral procession would be led by Mule, pulling a wagon bearing Uncle Bush’s handmade coffin, was just that…a rumor! Actually, Uncle Bush rode in with Frank Quinn in the front seat of the funeral coach, forty minutes late because of the clogged up narrow dirt road. Other than that, the well-planned service went off, pretty much, without a hitch.

     Uncle Bush, decked out in a new suit donated by a Knoxville clothing store, sat directly in front of his coffin. Others, including Quinn, Jackson, and a vocal group from Chattanooga, the Friendly Eight Octet, shared the stage. Songs, as requested by Uncle Bush included, “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand” and “In a Land Where We’ll Never Grow Old.”

     One man, looking for a quick buck, made close to $300 charging people to park on his property and two other men had set up a crude hot dog stand. Uncle Bush later told that he “didn’t mean for it to cause such a big stir.” At the conclusion of the service, Uncle Bush stayed for several hours to shake hands and sign autographs with his “X.”

     During the ensuing months, the name Bush Breazeale became almost a household name. Radio stations wanted interviews, newspapers and magazines, including Life, ran articles and columns, and Uncle Bush, of all things, was asked to throw out the first ball at the Loudon - Harriman baseball game.  Robert Ripley even asked Uncle Bush to come to New York to be interviewed for his “Believe It or Not” column. He later told that, “They were the nicest people, but to be honest, their vittles weren’t worth a dern.”

     And so goes the story of Uncle Bush. On February 9^th, 1943, Felix Bushaloo Breazeale, age 79, died peacefully at his home. As he had requested, a short simple graveside service was held. He is now at rest in his walnut coffin in Cave Creek Cemetery.  

                                                                ~~~
      In 2009, Sony Pictures released Get Low, a somewhat factual film depicting the story of Uncle Bush and his living funeral. Robert Duvall was cast as Uncle Bush, Bill Murray as Frank Quinn, Bill Cobbs as Rev. Jackson, and Decatur, Alabama's Lucas Black as Buddy Robinson, Quinn’s employee.