Cousins for counting

What are cousins for? For playing with when you are a child. Now, for counting at funerals of uncles and aunts. At the funeral of Uncle Irvin thirteen attended. Here they are, including the four children of the uncle (back row, right) and Aunts Gladys and Jane (front row left, and middle with laced collar).

Cousins are for knowing who you are, for knowing where you started out in the great maze of life. You can't fool your cousins. In a good family they won't fool you. What a great bunch!

Music at Uncle Irvin funeral

My Uncle Irvin died last week. I went to the funeral at Park View Mennonite Church, Harrisonburg, Va. last Saturday. I was asked to lead the singing and to sing "The Holy City," a solo popular in mid-century. Both hymns were by Isaac Watts, first published about 1719--When I Survey, and Jesus Shall Reign.

Click here to listen to about eight minutes of exerpts. I found the words online, but I was playing the piano by memory and ear.

http://www.box.net/shared/d3elrzbqit

A good dozen of my cousins, one coming as far as from Wisconsin, came to the funeral.

Haunted Monterey house sold

Monterey's haunted house for 20 years was sold. Before its fame as haunted, the house was Furman funeral home from about 1954 to 1964. Before that is was Overly funeral home. Overly was bearded and a member of the Church of the Brethren. A neighbor has an invoice for his services i n the late 1940s--$70, exactly. He was known to flush his formaldehyde down his well. It overflowed sometimes and sickened the ducks across the road.

After 1964 Furman moved his undertaker operations to much better digs on Main Street, Leola. The owner made the house into three apartments which became abandoned about 1990. Children avoided it on Halloween. Weeds grew. Paint peeled. Windows cracked. Rodents invaded. Who knows, maybe ghosts hovered.
In the photo here the focus is on the building behind the house where the bodies were prepared for funerals.

The property sold at public auction on Tuesday for $157,000.