2. My Mama

This suggestion, as anyone can see, was totally impracticable. The number of the slaves had increased by geometric progression. And, in any case, the Southern planters wouldn’t sell them. But, any way you looked at it, this war was going to be a bloody business, and the Northern Democrat wanted no part of it. He said, “Even if the North wins, and sets the Negroes free to be on their own, without a dime or a mule or an acre or a hoe, will they be any better off? And wouldn’t a war put the North and South at everlasting loggerheads, no matter who won it?”

Let the gentle reader keep it in mind that I am serving merely as a reporter here, making an honest attempt to record what my mama had to say about her father’s political opinion as the great tragedy bore down upon the nation. Once the war had begun, the Northern Democrats, or at least the more prudent of them, shut up, donned the uniform and trudged along behind the drum.

My Uncle John was only a kid and he had never been rugged. He left his soft young bones in the National Cemetery at Chattanooga. Mama’s favorite uncle, Saul Cassel, a bachelor who lived with them, was buried at Antietam. Grandpa Cassel plodded home with little to show for his experience but a well-developed taste for corn liquor.

“Yes,” Mama used to murmur, sadly, “he often broke down and cried about it; but, somehow, he couldn’t quit, though he was a good man.”

Unhappy old Sam, from there on out, contented himself with odd jobs as a carpenter, helping to build barns and small mills. He put up a little shop, not far from the house, where he mended broken farm tools and various household tackle.

Occasionally, during a swearing-off period, he made beautiful pieces of furniture which he readily sold for more money than was good for him. He would come back from town with empty pockets and a terrific hangover. Once, during a period of sobriety, he built a walnut chest for my mama’s fifteenth birthday, an exquisite piece of craftsmanship still highly prized and proudly displayed in the home of my younger daughter, Virginia Dawson.

Grandpa Cassel also made coffins to order which the girls of the family lined with whatever inexpensive fabric was available. Whenever anyone in the neighborhood was reported as very ill, good old Sam would get into his neatly stacked pile of lumber, sort out the right number of oaken boards, and begin planing them; for no embalming was done at that time in the deep woods and funerals were held—especially in warm weather—without delay. When anyone needed a coffin, he wanted it now. Mama said that certain parcels of lumber were stored in their cow barn, each tagged with the name of some frail old person who probably wouldn’t make it through another long winter; though this recollection may have been a gilding of the lily.Mama was pretty good at that sort of artistry, and I hereby pay homage to her for bequeathing to me at least a semblance of the talent for invention that she was never able to fetch to market.

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