Did She Die?
Taken from the memoirs of Marion Wright
Marion Wright’s great-grandfather was Elijah Gaddy, Jr. Tales of his antics lived long after he died. Uncle Lige, as he was fondly called, was an inveterate consumer of whiskey. Now, whiskey was not easy to come by. You could buy a drink when you went to Sumner, but that was probably no more than three or four times a year. On those rare occasions you might be able to hide a jug under the buggy seat and smuggle it home.
Country women in those days were teetotalers; hard liquor was for settlin” the dust! One day, Grandpa hitched old Douglas to the buggy and took Grandma to town. It was a two- or three-hour drive, depending on how muddy the roads were. When they arrived, they parted ways. Grandma shopped for things she needed for months and tried to anticipate her needs for several months ahead. I suppose grandpa had a list, too, but at the top of that list was whiskey!
The account of the rest of the day’s activities is lost. In the early darkness of a winter day there is a lone figure in a buggy pulling up to the barnyard and gate. Grandma always got out of the buggy and opened the gate. Gradually, the realization came to Grandpa that he shared the buggy seat alone! He slipped the reins on the horses back and said, “If you’re Douglas Gaddy and if I’m Lige Gaddy, Mommy’s still in town”
Another time, Elijah drove his rig to Sumner, tied the horses to the depot hitchrack and boarded the train to Vincennes, Indiana. At this time in history, Vincennes was a blissful paradise for topers-it productively boasted three distilleries! The one I remember, sporting bright yellow horse delivery wagons, was Hack and Simon. It was good business to go directly to the distillery to buy gallon jugs or barrels of whiskey wholesale. Barrels were unpopular only because they were hard to hide.
Grandpa bought his coveted merchandise, freely sampled the wares and was able to get on the westbound afternoon train for the ride of twenty miles back to Sumner. He found his trusty team patiently waiting at the hitchrack. He transferred the villainously precious cargo into the wagon and started home. Feeling nothing but the glorious exhilaration inebriation brings on, Grandpa left the driving up to the horses and went to sleep,… lethargically asleep.
The horses were tired, too; they had stood and waited at the hitchrack all day. They were looking for a familiar stopping place and they found it---at the church! For my grandfather was a church-going man! The team pulled up to the front door, where they had been trained to go to unload the family and stopped. The cessation of the creaks and jolts of the wagon brought Grandpa out of his stupor and he assumed he was home. He crawled out of the wagon and stumbled up to the church door. When he opened the door and saw all the people in the church, he bellowed out, ”Good gosh Almighty! What’s happened to Mommy? All the neighbors are here!”
(Apparently he thought she had died.)
