t was the winter of 1948. We were all home from the war, those who were coming home, and many were married and had started families. My friend Ray already had one child and another was on the way. He was making extra money by helping out at a local funeral home on weekends. One cold Sunday afternoon he called and said he had to haul a body to Smithland and did I want to go?
Haul a body?
A callous way to put it, it seemed to me. Maybe that was
funeral home talk. Yet I had heard the phrase somewhere
before. Lines from "Will the Circle be Unbroken," an old
sacred song, drifted through my mind:
Undertaker. Undertaker.
Undertaker do drive slow,
For the body you are hauling,
Lord I hate to see her go.
"Sure," I said.
"Wear a tie," he said.
When I reached the funeral home, Ray was waiting in the hearse with the motor running, all primed and ready to haul the body that was resting under a blanket of flowers in a dove gray casket in the back. And the hearse! It was a new Cadillac, black as coal and shiny as a mirror, trimmed in gleaming chrome, with tasteful gray curtains gracing the windows of the rear compartment. I had never ridden in a Cadillac before, and this was a brand new one! I climbed in, sank back in the plush seat and said. "Let's haul a body."
We threaded our way out of town and were soon on the open highway. Smithland was about forty miles away, a small Western Kentucky town with a business district of maybe three blocks and a red light and the rest was residential. Ray was driving at a steady forty-four miles per hour. At this speed the engine was only a low hum and the ride was like floating on water.
"Hey," I said, "kick it on up there. Let's see what she'll do."
"Naw," he said, "better not. She ain't broke in yet. They said to keep her under forty-five."
"Are you going to let me drive this thing?" I asked.
"Maybe some on the way back, but you got to promise to take it easy."
I'd promise anything to get to drive a Cadillac, especially one this big. In fact it occurred to me that working for the funeral home might not be such a bad thing. "You think they might take me on?" I asked.
"I don't know, they might. If they did, you would be on a list of people they call when they need extra help, just like me, only you'd be at the bottom of the list. You might not get many calls. Tell you what, Mr. Gerome will be meeting us at the church. I'll introduce you and he'll have a chance to look you over, and then later on I'll mention to him you'd like to work."
"Great," I said, "I really appreciate it."
"But I better warn you, when you're around him, you need to watch your mouth. Mr. Gerome is pretty straight-laced and he won't stand for any cussing."
Habits picked up during the service were hard to break, but I had mine pretty well under control. "Hey," I said, "thanks for the tip."
I sat for awhile visualizing myself at the wheel of this new Cadillac, hauling bodies from place to place. After a time I became aware of a peculiar odor that was making my eyes burn.
"What's that smell?" I asked.
"Formaldehyde. It's what embalming fluid is made out of. You'll get used to it."
"I'm going to get some fresh air in here," I said and rolled my window down halfway.
"Don't do that!" Ray said. "It's freezing outside. It'll ruin the flowers."
I closed the window and began to look around under the dash for a fresh air vent but instead found, of all things, a record player. It was attached to a shelf below the glove compartment and slid out for access. Directly above it on another shelf was a stack of records. Who ever heard of a car with a built-in record player? This was 1948. Why, hi-fi hadn't even been invented yet.
"How do you work this thing?" I asked Ray.
"Beats me. I didn't even know it was there."
It couldn't have been simpler, or so it seemed. There was an ON/OFF button and a VOL button. That was it.
I took the top record off the stack and slipped it over the spindle of the turntable. I switched the player to ON, lifted the tone arm and placed the needle in the outer groove of the record. Nothing. I turned the VOL button to the halfway mark. Still nothing. I cranked the volume up as high as it would go, and there it was, faint but listenable, an organ rendition of one of my favorite hymns, "When They Ring those Golden Bells for You and Me."
I looked for a way to increase the volume but didn't find
one, and concluded the control must be defective, but what
the heck, we could still hear the music. During the rest of
the trip, we went through nearly the whole stack of hymns,
singing along. Ray had a nice baritone voice and I wasn't a
mean tenor. Before we knew it, we were almost to Smithland.
I took the last record from the stack, glanced at the label,
and smiled. It was "Will the Circle be Unbroken." I put it
on and we began to sing:
I was standing by my window
On a cold and cloudy day,
When I heard the hearse come rolling
For to carry my mother away.
And the chorus:
Will the circle be unbroken,
By and by, Lord, by and by?
There's a better home awaiting
In the sky, Lord, in the sky.
As we began the second verse, the one that begged the undertaker to drive slow, we reached the outskirts of Smithland and Ray slowed to a stately 10 to 15 miles an hour. I noticed several people coming out of their houses to watch us pass.
Then Ray stopped singing and began to rehearse the directions he had been given to the church. "Go one block past the red light and turn right. Go two blocks and turn left. Go five blocks and the church is on the right corner. Turn into the parking lot and drive to the rear."
The light caught us. As we waited, several people came out of the corner drug store and stood looking at us. One man took off his hat. I guessed in a town this small, it wasn't every day they saw a hearse hauling a body.
The light changed and we continued, very slowly because Ray was being careful to follow the directions, which he kept repeating. "Light, one. Right, two. Left, five. Drive to the rear. Light, one. Right, two. Left, five. Drive to the rear."
I glanced back and noticed there were cars following us with their headlights on. As we made the last turn, I could see the line went back quite a distance.
We reached the church, turned into the parking lot and drove to the rear entrance, precisely as directed. Ray pulled up close to the steps leading up to the door, which was on my side. As we stopped, the church door flew open and a man stood there, gaping at us, for a moment completely transfixed. Then he bounded down the steps, rushed up and tried to open my door. When he couldn't do that, he began beating on the window.
"What the hell does he think he's doing?" I yelled.
"It's Mr. Gerome!" Ray said. "Open the door."
I tried and couldn't. "I think it's locked."
"Well, roll down the window."
I grabbed the crank and began to wind and was immediately deafened by ear-splitting organ strains of "Will the Circle be Unbroken." Mr. Gerome leaned in and yelled, "Shut that thing off!"
What I should have done was smoothly fade out the music with the VOL button. Second best would have been simply to lift the tone arm off the record. What I did was obey Mr. Gerome's order to the letter and turned the power button to OFF. The music ended in a prolonged descending squawk.
Mr. Gerome leaned further into the window until his face was within an inch of mine. He was a jowly man and his complexion was at the time uncommonly red. He was breathing hard through his nose and his eyes glittered. And he said to me through gritted teeth, "Hell! Damn! Shit!" You could tell he was not a cussing man.
He wheeled away and stomped to the rear of the hearse to unload the body. I finally managed to get the door open and stepped out. And sure enough, there they were--two large speaker horns fixed to the roof. How in the world could I have missed them? It was of little consolation to me that Ray had missed them, too.
Since the burial was to be in the cemetery beside the church, the hearse would no longer be needed once it was unloaded and could go back. I stayed well out of the way until the casket was removed and carried inside.
On the drive back to Paducah, there was no offer to let me drive. I didn't expect one. And being added to the list to be called was beyond all consideration.
"Do you think he will fire you?" I asked.
"I expect so," Ray said.
I felt really bad, but I needn't have. Ray wasn't fired. I learned later that a few of the good citizens of Smithland, as well as some members of the family, had praised Mr. Gerome for the very fitting and touching way he had arranged for the loved one to be borne through the town in state, so to speak, and for the very appropriate music he had chosen to accompany the cortege.
Ray and I drifted apart soon after, as friends sometimes do, and later I moved to another part of the state to live. The last I heard Ray was still working part time for the funeral home. Perhaps he still is, still after all these years hauling bodies in long black Cadillacs equipped now, perhaps, with stereo CD players and, I would hope, inside speakers.
I went on to develop a taste for British sports cars, once even owned an Austin-Healy 3000 , and delighted in hauling other kinds of bodies.
