Coatesville: Part 1

Coatesville. Such a nondescript name for a nondescript town! But that's where I grew up! Or at least my body grew. I'm still a child in some manners and it's all because of Coatesville. It's the memories of this sleepy little town which keeps me forever young. As long as I remember I stand far from death's door. Dementia will never smother me with lost memories as long as I cherish memories of Coatesville!

There is a certain mystery about that small town. It never grew. It always stayed the same! Sure... people move in and out, some die and are replaced with new ones and others stay there all their life. Coatesville is a moniker for "sameness". It's number was 800 in 1880 and it's number is 800 right this instant. Coatesville could be the constant in all equations which makes everything turn out alright!

For the most part what's there today has been there since "then". "Then" is when I first saw Coatesville. If I return today it's still the same! Oh, the paint may be different and a few old buildings long gone are replaced with the new, but even with that, it seems that even the flora now is the flora then! The footsteps down Main Street are the ones that were then; only trod by different people, but people who remain the same!

"Then" was when we came. Like all others who attempted the change, we all went on our ways. As those before us, some died, some moved away and some stayed, but now we're all gone except for the memories of us which remains there. Seven children were changed in a few short years. Coatesville changed us one and all!

For us it's a haunted town. Maybe that's because of the old cemetery. My family lived with those who were gone! There are memories buried there with the dead. Their memories died with them, but our memories which we once had, but now are gone, lie there moldering in that Old Moravian Cemetery. That old cemetery had memories buried, but the names on the stones came alive. Those old gravestones were scattered from Joe Davidson's garden where apple trees grew, through Albert Buffo's pasture where a few cattle grazed to the Elston Herrin home on which portions of that old house covered.  That was my home. I lived upon the dead. As others reposed in eternal solitude, my own heart gushed with lifeblood!

The life we lived was eerie to say the least. We all feared, but fear kept us quiet! No one in our home ever mentioned the hair-tingling encounters which we knew that we had, but denied even to ourselves! It wasn't the dead which scared children quiet, but impostors who stole the identity of those returning to the dust. Nice people had died, but evil ones lurked from long closed graves.

As children we walked in Joe's garden, stealing apples when we could. Sometimes we drifted north easterly and found some gooseberries whose tartness we learned to love. I'm not certain that it was the taste that was so tantalizing, but the thrill of stealthily drifting to places forbidden to take what belonged to others. Wrong doings are part of Coatesville and it was there that I plied my childhood trade, at least until detection shamed me into honesty.

The cemetery spread into the neighbor'pasture and there we seldom ventured. A growing cow was gigantic to youngsters such as me, and Buffo cows as well have been dinosaurs as far as I was concerned. It was there that I learned my empathy for animals when old Albert de-horned his Buffo-lo with shears large indeed. It took all his might to trim the horns down to the skull and too deep he surely went. As the first horn fell to the ground it was followed by a torrent of blood. The ground grew crimson fast as the cow bellowed in pain. I didn't watch the second horn fall, but the evidence on the ground meant surely it happened again.

I still cringe at the pain of this melancholic cow and would never ever hurt any animal even for it's own good, let alone for entertainment.

This was tested one day when real life  awakened me again. I had watched my Dad back in Hazelwood provide the final solution to the over-abundance of puppies. He placed them in a sack, held it up into the air and shot and shot until the movement stopped. It was the way to put them to sleep in those days, and that's what I thought it was!

The Robinsons family between Coatesville and Stilesville had a litter of pups. They couldn't do the dirty deed so I puffed myself up. "Let me do the shooting!" I implored yo them. "I have seen my Dad do that, and I'm sure I can." I lifted the sack of puppies high above my head. I was ready to shoot all those dogs in the head. Then memories of Buffo-loes changed that, and I laid down the gun and sank into defeat. I'm not the man I thought I was,  but maybe I was; for those dogs lived on! We were all cowards to be the meanies who would kill these innocent puppies.

Before we continue through the graveyard to where I lived, let me digress for a moment on Prince. He was a mongrel dog who had the misfortune of wondering into Herrinville. We fed that red puppy until he was a big red dog. He may have been a girl dog, but that wasn't something that we would notice. He or she, Prince was Prince! But Prince liked to wonder the neighborhood and chase a few chickens and sheep. He (or she) was a wanted dog!

Glen Curtis was the marshal of Coatesville. He was a nice guy, but had a gun! We liked Glen, but we hated that gun. Why? Prince was his prey. Prince, girl or boy, had to die for the chickens pointed their beaks at him! Glen stalked that poor dog and stalked him with a passion! Finally Prince limped home with a bullet in his shoulder, if that indeed what dogs have. I remember the lead protruding through the skin. I took my finger, and trying to help that poor dog, I pushed the bullet back into the flesh, out of sight, more for my sake than his. Prince yelped. I cried for him. That's what ten-year old boys do, but not so others could see. We cry in private. I learned that in Coatesville!

Before long, Prince had another and another bullet lodged in his poor dog body. Puppy hurt. I hurt for him. It's been many years, but I remember that it was nine bullets which felled Prince. He was a noble dog indeed. Maybe she was. I would not have noticed! I'm a dog lover because I would never harm something who can be in pain. Coatesville did that to me! I'm not romantic with dogs though because they're dogs. Their place is outside! Dogs can be loved, but still be dogs. I learned that in Coatesville!

Let's continue now our walk through the old cemetery. Stones were found in our garden. I remember pushing the plow through the fertile ground when suddenly I would be jerked to a halt. It appeared that a hand from the grave reached up and put a stop to me tilling his soil, but it was merely an old tombstone of some German of years ago. We would lay those stones aside and continue on. It seems that we weren't hurt by the dead, but would always look back with caution as with each furrow we would pass it again.

I wish that I could remember the names of those on the stones. Some I'm sure are lost in the mud. It's a shame that with the granite gone, people were lost with them! Maybe from where they resided then they saw my wonderment and felt remembered. Perhaps some were in eternal pain and could care less about a little boy who read their private information. Wonderment I learned in Coatesville. It yet lives with me even until now! I inquire about the things of life because Coatesville taught me to!

Our old home on Milton Street was dirty white when we moved there from Cartersburg. It belonged to Hoot Gibson. His real name was Hampton Gibson and he lived near Indiana Highway 75 and on U.S. 40.  Hoot is another reason that I "give a hoot"! He was surely nick-named after the famous cowboy, but because we didn't have a television, Hoot was the real "Hoot"!

This small man was a worker with a big heart! Over the years he charged our poor family fifty-dollars a month to rent our home. He never ever raised the rent even after fifteen years! He was generous. I learned generosity in Coatesville from Hoot Gibson. Who else can claim that?

Hoot made his living by various odd jobs. He provided work to my brothers and me over the years. I picked tomatoes for him, picked sweet corn for him and roofed many houses when I was in college. He helped me out because he was generous. Hoot got a deal on shingles for roofing. They were all light green. Before we were through, half the houses in Coatesville and vicinity had light green roofs! If you live in Coatesville and have an old light green roof, remember Hoot Gibson; remember the Herrin brothers. I learned to work in Coatesville!

Hoot even bought red paint to paint the Herrin home. It was barn red! As a pre-teen I climbed the tall ladder and even painted the eves. We all pitched in and painted. I did the south side. We trimmed it in ivory. This home was known to everyone. It really stuck out, being a barn red home, among white clapboards and beautiful brown bricked homes. The best of the best homes were the McCammacks to the south of us and Mark Hadley's across the street. To the north was Albert Buffo's in white asbestos shingle along with his vacant appliance store. On the other side was Harmon Hathaway's and the beautiful modern brick home of Joe Davidson beyond that!

All these homes were clean and beautiful. Ours was scattered at times with broken-down cars. We were "rich Kentuckians" as they say because we had two cars jacked up in our yard! If our neighbors had only known the truth. Those old cars for us kids were playhouses. For my mom the old Nash, whose seats let down and the entire car became a bed, was a place of sanctuary from seven kids! Only when I was an adult did I realize why mom would nap out in the old Nash. It was to escape me! It was to escape Dale! It was to escape reality because dead cars aren't really real!

Our house had something else that the others didn't have. It had tombstones beneath the enclosed back porch. The burial of the dead stopped at our house, but those long dead never stopped people from building.

I remember often us kids crawling under the elevated back porch and dragging the stones out. They had names on them then, but now I'm sure most are forgotten and lost! Those buried still are, but we made them disappear from history. They exist only in the dirt through which they were dragged. The dust from whence they came contains what's left; their dust and their memory. There was no living among those dead and we certainly weren't looking for them either! We thought they were ghosts, but reality taught me that ghosts don't exist. If I had known then what I know now, I would have been afraid to live there. I thought I was dealing with mere souls of dead people, but those spooks were evil.

This big house had an attic which we called "upstairs". It was unheated, uncooled and inhospitable, but that was where us boys slept. Each night the old plaster from the ceiling was swept away from the bed tick before we went to sleep. Hoot hadn't wasted any time nor money to fix things so cracks were around my window. In the winter the wind howled through the cracks and made things eerie. I slept often with my head covered over; in fear of what I could not see and to keep myself warm I'm sure! Sometimes I woke up to snow on my pillow and in my hair. Even the ghosts were cold on those nights!

Adjacent to our attic rooms were unfinished attic spaces. They were where evil lurked and the dead lived. We called them "ghost rooms" because we were sure that's what they were! How so? We could hear ghost noises as we tried to go to sleep! Even covering our heads didn't help because the ghosts made even more noise. Added to their creaks and groans from the ghost rooms was the thump thump thumb of my own fast-beating heart which I swore was the footsteps of the dead!

Almost everybody has always been afraid to hang limp hands over the bedside because a "truth" is that the boogie man lives beneath beds. Of course for others that was mere fear, but for us the fear was real! I could feel their hot breath on my hand and would jerk my arm snugly beneath the covers. I was safe there! The boogie man never got me because I was smarter than mere dead people. I kept my hands under the weight of four comforters where my cautious body couldn't even move!

I learned something in that old Coatesville house. The dead can't harm me, but evil spirits can. I still keep safely covered in prayer to keep those posers out of my life. I now always sleep with my feet sticking from beneath the covers because I couldn't do that in my old house in Coatesville. We Herrins learned much in Coatesville, That old red barn house molded each of us in some way. As I write, my mind will drift back to lessons learned in Herrin House.