What Would Jimmy Do?

For sake of completeness, this is a continuation of yesterday’s blog whose topic was — undertaker. During the undertaker discussion, another “funeral” term came up — wake. No one was really sure where the term came from. Here’s what my extensive research revealed…

Apparently, the custom of the wake came about, at least in part, because it was important to ensure that the dead did not wake. The time of watching over the body was insure that the person was, in fact, deceased. The term and custom, still in use today, has basically  been replaced with a time of visitation. Wakes probably had a superstitious origin — the fear of evil spirits hurting or even removing the body. Typically, mourners would keep watch or vigil over the dead until they were buried.

Growing up in Oklahoma, the term wake was never used, but I did learn a bit about Irish wakes along the way… I remember thinking it was more of an Irish thing rather than religious in nature.

In Ireland, the custom of waiting for the person to “wake” soon became a time to celebrate and mourn together. Family and friends would gather in the home to share stories, share food and — most often — drink in excess. The wake became a party. Irish wakes have some interesting traditions…

During Irish wakes the body would never be left unattended just in case the deceased did “wake.”
Usually the wake would begin as soon as the body could be prepared and it would continue until the family left for the funeral service. 
All the clocks in the house would be stopped at the time of death. It was a sign of respect for the deceased.
Often, all mirrors would be turned around or covered.
Candles would be lit and placed around the deceased.
The Rosary would be said at midnight and most visitors would then leave.
Those closest to the family would remain throughout the night.
Professional mourners were often employed to display grief for the deceased.
The more unexpected or tragic the death —the louder the mourning would be.
Games, music and merriment would take place outside of the mourning room where the deceased had been placed.
Food was an important part of the celebration.

Today, a wake, even in Ireland,  is no longer about ensuring that the deceased does not revive, but instead about the healing process for family and friends left behind. Traditional Irish wakes have been replaced with the custom of visitation. Most families no longer display the body in their own homes, but conduct their rituals in funeral homes or churches. 

Many people use the term wake today, but usually they are referring to a visitation period prior to the funeral.
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We had some behind-the-scenes tasks to accomplish prior to a funeral at our church this week. While we were working someone mentioned the word/term undertaker. When I was growing up in Maysville, Oklahoma, the town had one funeral home, and the proprietor was always referred to as the undertaker. I guess I never thought much about it before, but undertaker is a strange word. He is obviously involved with certain “undertakings,” but so is everybody else. I’m not sure, but when I was a kid I probably thought he was called an undertaker because he put or took someone under the ground. 

Undertaker is someone who undertakes a task. Obviously the undertaker we were referring to was someone who undertakes to embalm, beautify, lay out, arrange services for and bury or cremate the dead. Again, I’m not sure why the term came to be applied this one profession and not some other. 

During my extensive research for this blog, I found a blurb from The American Language by Henry L. Mencken stating that during the Civil War, undertakers used to follow the armies like prostitutes, not to pleasure the soldiers but to embalm them. In newspaper ads they called themselves “doctors.”
It may be that acts like these gave the term undertaker a bad name and in 1895, the trade magazine The Embalmers’ Monthly put out a call for a new name for the profession to distance itself from the title undertaker — that term being tarnished over the years for a number of reasons. They initially settled on the term mortician that is derived from the latin word mort- (“death”) + ician.

Today, mortician seems to have become tarnished and pretty much been replaced by funeral director. If you can find a phone book anymore, look in the Yellow Pages and you won’t find any listings under either undertaker or mortician. Everything related to practitioners of this profession is listed under Funeral Directors. Under that heading, some establishments call themselves mortuaries, some are called funeral homes, some memorial parks.

My extensive research uncovered a funeral home called Aftercare. Although I don’t know how they came up with that name, I think it’s kind of interesting. Maybe before too long, Aftercare will replace mortuary, columbarium, funeral parlor and memorial park. And — it’ll be near the front of the Yellow pages, if there’s any of those left…
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It’s been a little busy around here couple of weeks and one noteworthy event got by me without me mentioning it here.

Our number one grandson had a birthday!!
Locke is now five years old. We hope to get to see him soon and celebrate.
Looks like he’s been busy with school work even though he appears to be taking a well deserved break….

Happy Birthday, Locke!!!
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I read something a bit disturbing the other day. Someone did the research and determined that Double Stuf Oreos are only 1.86 times as “stuf’ed” as classic Oreos.

I think this is coming from the top. From the President right on down — the truth doesn’t seem to mean anything anymore. To claim you didn’t say something when you really did, or claim to be rich when you’re not, or honest or great when you’re not is one thing. 
But to publicly lie about the white stuff in Oreos is just too much. Next, I’ll probably find out that Twinkies don’t really last forever….
In spite of this disturbing news, happy Veterans Day to everyone.
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Almost 50 years ago when Claire and I decided to get married, we made a trip to Cleveland so I could meet the family. We weren’t aware of it at the time, but the family had planned a surprise party for us — the party was at Bernie and Ed’s house. So Bernie was one of the first Stracensky’s to welcome me to the family.

Over the years, Bernie and Ed visited us in Virginia more than any of the other family members. They’d come down for just the weekend sometimes and occasionally they stayed longer. I always went through a similar routine with Bernie after they had arrived…. I’d always ask if they had a good trip, and Bernie always said, “Oh, it was very nice.” Then I’d say something like “did you hit any rain?” And Bernie would respond, “I’m really not sure.” This would go on for a little while and I’d always ask if the construction on the Pennsylvania Turnpike was as bad as ever. Again, Bernie’s response was pretty much always, “I’m not really sure.” It turns out that Bernie slept all the way to Virginia. Ed did the driving, and Bernie took a nap! So she never developed the hatred for the Pennsylvania Turnpike most of us did.

They always brought us some good Cleveland bread, because Virginia just didn’t have good bread. And Bernie always brought one or two or three of her world famous nut rolls. Bernie was known for many things, but she might have been most famous for her nut rolls. Ed once told me that he’d heard that Bernie made just about the best nut rolls of anyone. I looked a little puzzled when he told me that, and he explained that he was only allowed to eat the ends of her nut rolls — the good part was always saved for other people. I don’t know if that’s really true or not, but that was Ed’s story, and he stuck to it. 

Bernie was the teacher in the family. Every time I was around her and said or did something kind of stupid, which happened fairly often, Bernie would always say, “Jimmy, when my children (meaning her students) say or do something like that I always tell them….” and it would usually be something like it was inconsiderate or might be offensive to some people, or something like that. Always made me think I should hang my head and say, “yes, Mrs. Hudak.” She never seemed to get too far from her teaching mode…

Life is basically what happens from a time called birth to a time called death. That’s all we get — life itself. There aren’t even any instructions — it’s left up to us to do the living. Like everything else, some of us do a better job than others. I was thinking a few days ago, that Bernie did a pretty good job.
She pursued a noble profession — teaching, and influenced a lot of people over the years. She met, and loved her soul mate for many, many years, raised three pretty great kids in Rusty, Mark and Peggy and had untold friends. She also got to spend a good number of years enjoying her grandchildren. Overall, I’d say she had a good, long life.

The last time we visited with Bernie, near the end, she seemed sad. See, that’s the thing — the truth is, there are no happy endings. Endings are the saddest part. So that leaves us with a happy middle and a very happy start. I think Bernie achieved that. 

We’re all going to be a little sadder around here, but there’s gonna be a big party in Heaven. Bernie and Eddie together again — just like old times. I’d even be willing to bet that Bernie will let Ed have some of the “good part” of her nut rolls this time….
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Kelly and Chris and Emily live in Leesburg — or at least they did until today. In honor of the Nationals World Series victory, Leesburg officially changed the name of the town to Natsburg — through Sunday.

I thought that was a great idea and because of lack of action here in Deerfield Village, I have officially declared the village’s name changed to Nats Village. This will be the official name through Sunday. To carry it a bit further, if you want to visit us or send us mail, our new address is:

The Williamsons
47 Nationals Court
Natstown, West Virginia

To make it easier for you, I kept the Zip Code the same.
So come on over if you want to visit in the village of champions….
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We went out to dinner with a group of friends the other evening. I’m not sure how the subject even came up, but city chicken was mentioned. There were ten people at the table and only two had ever even heard the term. Actually three people had heard of it if you count me, but I knew about it only because of Claire. City chicken was our son’s most favorite meal when he was growing up — maybe it still is.

If you’re from Cleveland, or around there, there’s about a 99% chance that city chicken is a familiar term to you. Otherwise, you may have never heard of it, let alone know what it is.

First off, city chicken is a dish that contains absolutely no chicken. I’m not sure about the origin, but I think that city chicken originated during the Great Depression, when folks didn’t have enough money to buy full cuts of meat, so they assembled meat scraps on a wooden skewer, creating a make-shift drumstick. Apparently during the Depression era, chicken was scarce and more expensive. So pork and veal meat was cubed and threaded onto skewers, then breaded to create a drumstick-like shape to better resemble chicken.

Chicken used to be the preferred dish and it was more expensive and more desirable — families would have chicken for Sunday dinner. When the Depression came along, a number of mock-chicken products came into vogue so I imagine all that played into the naming of pork and veal on a stick, city chicken.

When Claire made city chicken when the kids were young, she always used pork and veal. What with the price of veal today, it’s hard to imagine it was once cheaper than chicken. But apparently that was the case a good number of years ago. The last few times we’ve had city chicken, Claire has used only pork…. It’s still good, but not the same as the pork and veal version.
Once one of Dave’s friends was over when we were having city chicken — he said it must be called city chicken because the bones were so small (he had found the stick.)

It’s kind of fun to serve it to someone for the first time — and tell them that this isn’t actually chicken we’re eating. Sort of an instant conversation starter….
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Well, today is not April Fool’s Day… you may think that when I tell you that the Nationals just won the World Series. I’ll repeat that just so you don’t miss it — The Nationals won the World Series!!!

It’s not April Fools Day, but it is Halloween. Happy Halloween everyone….
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A while back during one of our discussions of all things important, it was mentioned that men have one less rib than women. Interestingly, just about everyone agreed that was true. A couple of us disagreed, but not much came of the discussion…. I suppose we moved on to more important topics. However I got to thinking about it and after some extensive research on my part I determined we (the minority in our discussion) were right.

In fact, men and women have precisely the same number of ribs — 12 (actually 12 pairs of ribs or 24 “individual” ribs.) The fallacy probably arose from the account of the Creation given in Genesis 2:21-22. God was said to have taken a rib from Adam while he was asleep and from that He made Eve.
These verses tell us how God made the first woman. Of course that doesn’t mean that from that point on women would have more ribs than men. If someone accidentally cut off a finger or lost a leg in an accident, we wouldn’t expect children he had after the accident to be missing a finger or a leg.
During my extensive research, I discovered that some people do have too many ribs or too few ribs, but this exception only occurs in people born with specific genetic anomalies. There is a disease known as cervical rib that produces a single extra rib at the base of the neck, but this is very rare and can occur in either sex.

So basically men and women have the same number of bones…. thank goodness for that. There are already enough differences in men and women.
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A few days ago I ran across a quote from President Eisenhower when he was President….
“We the people, elect leaders not to rule but to serve”

I wonder how many people in Washington today believe that?
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