March 1, 2000, Cornelia, Missouri

By Tracy Prince

One by one the cars filed slowly into the cemetery and took their places among ancient cedars and fescue, turning green to hint of a change in seasons. The rear of the hearse was opened and the pallbearers carried Roger to his tent where he was met by a small crowd of well-wishers. For the first time in his life Roger was the center of attention.

Elvin, Roger’s youngest sibling and closest surviving relative, stood up in front of family and friends and waited to say a few short words about his brother. Everyone in the crowd knew the family’s history — that Roger had been Elvin’s father figure since their father’s death when Elvin was four years old. Everyone knew that Roger had willingly taken the responsibility of raising Elvin after their mother’s death a year later. And everyone knew that Elvin and Roger were together for the last time, six decades and six plots removed from their parents.

After the pastor of Roger’s church, where he seldom missed a Sunday, had said a few words, Elvin looked out over his audience. Old men dressed in jeans and Western shirts were chatting about old times. Neighbors, who usually couldn’t find the time to pay a visit, found the time to shake hands and pay their respects for the loss they shared. Cousins, barely recognizing one another, swapped genealogy information.

All around the tent the sounds of camaraderie were heard. Laughter and joy took the place of the customary tears. And Elvin took comfort in knowing that Roger, who had always found time to visit family and friends, would be pleased to know he had given them all a chance today to do the same.

“Roger could tell you the name of everything you could see in the woods,” Elvin said proudly. “He knew the name of every tree, flower, bird…. Roger saw the Lord in everything.”

Elvin wasn’t exaggerating. Roger had kept an extensive library of nature guides, almanacs, and a decades-old set of encyclopedias that never rested long enough to get dusty in the farm house where Roger had lived alone. When Roger wasn’t watching the cows, tending his magnificent vegetable garden, or delivering melons and squash to family and friends in his old Chevy, he read.

Roger’s eighth-grade education didn’t keep him from becoming a walking textbook of information. Roger learned the names of the capitol cities of nearly every nation on earth. And when he finished that, he learned their populations. While he let his old Chevy rest up between vegetable deliveries, Roger let his set of Brittanicas take him to exotic places all around the globe. In his 90-plus years, Roger seldom ventured far from his boyhood home in rural Johnson County, Missouri. But in mind, Roger was an explorer.

Roger never took grasp of the modern way of living. He didn’t see much point in it. Elvin gave him his first television back in the ’70s, a hand-me-down set with a tired picture tube that blew weeks later. Roger never repaired or replaced it. “I just use it to listen to the news,” he said.

Roger always used a hand pump in the yard to draw water out of the old well and still utilized a rickety old outhouse out back. These were luxuries to Roger. Any locals in town making appointments with Roger soon learned they had better adjust their clocks if they wanted to see him. Roger lived on Standard Time.

As Roger lugged an armful of cantaloupes into his brother Harold’s house one day, his sister-in-law noticed some papers in the pocket of Roger’s thread-bare shirt. “Roger, you’re going to lose those papers in your pocket,” said Clara.

“Oh, those are my checks,” said Roger. He was carrying four monthly social security checks in his pocket. “They keep sending me these and I don’t really need them,” he said.

“Why don’t you buy you some new clothes,” Clara asked as she looked at the worn shirt and old jeans that Roger had cuffed two inches thick at his ankles.

“I got a lot of clothes,” said Roger.

Once Elvin had grown up, Roger figured his family was raised. Living alone for the next 70 years, Roger found a lot of time to do what he loved best — observe the world around him. He started keeping a journal of the daily happenings. He made notes about the weather, the high and low temperatures for the day, rainfall amounts, and the birds and animals he had seen. He noted happenings in nature, like the date of the first violet blooming in the spring or the first morel mushroom he found. He noted frosts, freezes, snowfalls, and anything he thought significant. And Roger noted happenings in the lives of his friends, his seven siblings, and their families.

Some of those family members gathered around after the funeral and passed around some of Roger’s recorded memories. “Look, Janet,” someone said. “Here is your birth announcement.” Janet took the book and read the words her uncle had written about her birth 48 years earlier.

“Here is where we got married,” someone else discovered. No matter when or where an event took place, Roger wrote about it in his journal. From that run-down Johson County farm house with the hand pump and the outhouse in the yard, Roger saw the world. And in all the world, Roger saw the Lord.

Tracy Prince is a freelance writer living in Jasper, Arkansas, and has been published in The Ozarks Mountaineer, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Harrison Daily Times, and numerous weekly newspapers. The writer is a nephew of the deceased subject.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Monday, March 12th, 2007 | Email This Post

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