Todays missive comes to you from my mothers cousin Joe Kee and his wife Mary. The story they tell is one of childhood and then one of my dad in adulthood. The one from adulthood is one I have never heard but it fits with my dads personality and sense of Christ. I hope you enjoy it.’
Jan. 3, 1984
Joe and Mary Kee
Odella was Joe Kee’s cousin and Foy had lived close by since Joe was a small boy, when all would come over to play at Uncle Toms house. Uncle Tom Allen lived close to Monroe Kee with their wives being sisters.
Us kids had some good times and gave others some bad times. What one couldn’t think of one of the rest of us was bound to. In later years we all moved to Amber. Joe took Rhoda, his sister to practice on a play and he stayed at Bob Allens home. Jess and Joe decided to scare all of the other boys in the house. They tied a string above the window in the bedroom and down to the castor bean stalk in Linnies garden. Joe put rosum on the string. Jess and Joe told the others they were going into town and of course there is always someone else wanting to go it was Tom. Finally when they couldn’t talk Tom out of going, they let him in on to what they were going to do. They said “now Tom you get the shells out of that gun of Ralphs or he will shoot us.” Tom played the French harp and he was good. About dark he was playing that harp and we hit that string and it made a terrible racket. We could see them open the bedroom door and peep into the room. They couldn’t see anything so they went back, a few minutes we hit that thing again and back they came and would peep around and look all over the room. Finally they came peeped out the door but they wouldn’t come out. That line did make a terrible racket and was enough to scare you. We decided that they were too scared to come out so Jess sneaked down to the hen house and got an old hen and he would grab a feather behind that old hens head and pull it out and of all the swaking that hen would do it. Ralph got his gun and stuck out the door. He didn’t even come out where he could see he just put it around the corner. Jess took off and I could hear him running plop plop plop,. He sounded like a herd of cows., Ralph hollored again, “stop or I will shoot”. We started to laugh and he said you are mighty lucky I could of shot you. We said oh you didn’t even have any shells, he said “I always have shells.” He looked and the gun was empty,
I remember after Mary and I married they came to our house at Stonewall and stayed the night. Mary started to fix the meal and had no bacon.. Odella went out into the car and got some and Mary has always remembered that visit. They had to bring their own food but that wasn’t the only reason we remembered that visit,. Foy told of a man in his church that he really had got to the point of not being to worship at church because of. He could hardly stand the man, so bad was his dislike for the man he could hardly worship, One day the Pastor had them all knell in prayer at church and Foy said he started to pray for that man and then Foy said, “I found myself praying for old Floy and when I got up and looked at that man he looked so different”, Mary and I talked about that many times since and I think he taught us what the parable in the Bible meant to first cast out the beam in your own eye, Foy and Odella taught many people things, I was around them all my life in growing up and I never heard them or their family ever say a bad word, we love Odella and Foy and hope they feel our love through out all of the years to come.
Angie World 