Music Appreciation

... when I was four we drove down from Cleveland to Kentucky where a cousin of my grandfather was going to be buried.

We couldn't drive to the church, we had to park on the road and walk through the woods. The little church was raw wood insdide and out with benches.

The casket was a wooden box on two sawhorses and the preacher gave his sermon of fire and brimstone standing on the casket.

We went down to the house for dinner. They put the open casket on the buffet table next to the table. And she had her glasses on. I thought she was napping and I wanted my grandmother to take her glasses of so they wouldn't get broken.

When we finally went to bury her, we followed the wagon and mule up a slick clay road to the cematary. At the gave, after they lowered the casket and we were tossing Zinneas over her, her grandson, my age, jumped into the grave.