THE HEARSE

"A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you." -Elbert Hubbard

I had a few friends, when I was  a kid. Not many. But a few. Abby was one of them.   As the years have meandered on, I’ve accumulated about a gazillion friends, from all over the world. They fill me up till I could just burst, like bubble gum. They complete me. But back when we were 11, Abby was my nearest and dearest. Her parents were a hoot.

Her parents were cool. They had parakeets flying about the house. Her mom didn’t believe in cages. She was a professional protestor. Every few weeks  or so, she switched causes. At this time she was involved in a meat boycott. Her group staged sit ins at grocery stores. The owners gave them free toilet paper if they went away. 

Her dad wore groovy clothes. He didn’t seem to have any particular job.  Those days he worked at a used car lot, polishing cars and  cleaning them up for resale.  

He came home with a Cadillac Hearse one day. His boss sold it to him for $50. Abby’s dad fiddled with it day in day out. It sat in the driveway for a month. Then for two months . Then three. 

The latter half of August , saw a ton of rainstorms. It poured.  The hearse got wet. When the rain stopped Abby’s dad polished it up. Her mom stacked toilet paper in the hearse in bags. She’s run out of room in the house.  We stood around the hearse, with a few of the neighbourhood kids, and stared into its tinted windows.

“Do you think there’s a body in there?”

“Nawwww. Well maybe one body”

“I think I see blood and gore. I’m not allowed to see blood and gore”

“I wanna see the body!!” All the kids clamoured. 

The hearse was  stuffed  with bags of toilet paper. Abby and I didn’t tell the neighbour kids though.  We told them maybe  the bags were filled with  body parts , from  not just one , but maybe a ton of corpses. Arms and legs, mostly. Maybe a few heads. With the eyeballs attached.

Entrepreneurs that’s what we were.  We sold  tickets.They could look inside the  hearse, for a quarter, but they couldn’t open the door or the body parts might slide out of the bags.

We told whoppers about the hearse, to an enraptured audience. About how a cowboy had owned the hearse, and he had died while driving it, and his wife had died trying to pull him from the car. Their bodies were  in the bags. Their bodies had NOT decayed over time, and the hearse and its contents had been used in a movie shoot. We weren’t sure which movie. But no one cared. We would give them full access to view the inside of the hearse, for only the price of TWO quarters! Paid in full, BEFORE  viewing. So everyone  crowded around the windows , gawking at the bags, oohing and ahhhing.

We made a killing, so to speak……

We even gave away door prizes. One package of toilet paper per customer. There was enough to go around.

That Hearse sat in Abby’s yard for about two years. It was our greatest source of entertainment.  Abby’s dad was looking for something better, so up he joined with the Canadian peace keepers in 1973,  to join the Vietnam conflict. Much to everyone’s surprise. 

Technically it was America’s war, but he couldn’t stand by and watch. ”Never be a bystander” was his motto. 

In April 1975 the Vietnam war was over. Abby’s dad returned with his life completely changed. Her mom ended up going into politics, while her dad stayed at home and wrote  books.

And the Hearse? 

Well, that amazing machine was given to the Wax Museum, where the curators filled it with wax body parts and heads galore. 

And we paid  to go see it  spill its guts to the world….

Photographs 2022