Country Folk (Redneck) Funeral

Recent humorous emails themed “Etiquette for Rednecks” sparked a conversation about how my sister, late brother in law, and I acted like we didn’t have “proper fetchins”.

ETIQUETTE FOR REDNECKS...

DRIVING ETIQUETTE:

5. Do not lay rubber while traveling in a funeral procession


Our extended family has a history of taking care of funerals for our members. Professional mortuary service are usually not used except for preparing the body and placing the remains in a casket, or boxing the cremains. A section of the old family homestead West of Craig. CO., has been set aside for a family graveyard.

My father had remarried at the time of his death and his wife wasn’t coping too well. Various family members prepared the grave. I conducted the services at the Community Church, while an aunt played the music.

A step brother and I picked up the body, in a coffin, at a Craig Mortuary in my late father’s GMC pickup for his last ride. We stopped in the small town of Maybell, CO for the service. That is where the trouble began.

The widow’s sister in law tried to take over. We damn sure didn’t need her “help.” My sister could see I was, quite literally, ready to kill. She got between us and put the sister in law in her place, with a hovering throng of kinfolk standing by, and we started and finished the service.

The ten mile procession to the homestead was outstanding. There were nearly forty vehicles. Strangers going Eastbound stopped their cars and trucks, stepped out, and paid their respects (love the Old West people). After a brief Odd Fellows graveside service conducted by a cousin, we closed the grave and everyone left except my sister, brother in law, and myself. We stayed there about an hour, talking quietly, and trying to calm down.

I had borrowed a cousin’s S-10 4x4. As we left, I started roaring around the sagebrush, kicking up dust, and generally raising vehicular hell, i.e. laying down rubber. My sister was whooping and hollering. My brother in law was silently and grimly holding on for dear life. If our father was watching, he was laughing and whooping and hollering too. That is just the kind of irreverent people we are. You can be sober, prim and proper, and solemn for only so long. In fact, I needed to decompress, before going back to town and the post funeral pot luck. I still wanted to kill that bitch.