From the East Wing With a Dog Along The Way, The Toto Volunteers, and The Funeral Church of Toto

Greetings to all, and welcome new friends to the East Wing.

On the way home the other day, driving out here in the country, no house within ½ mile or so, I saw something in the road a ways up ahead. As I got closer, I realized it was a dog that had been hit by a car or maybe a truck. Either way it was easy to tell the dog was dead.

It was a big dog in the middle of the road. I stopped to move the dog to the side of the road, which I did. But on the way home I just couldn’t stop thinking ‘bout that dog. Got to thinking ‘bout an old song I once heard sung in a black church in Weeksbury KY. When I was just a kid, went there with my dad.

He was some mother’s baby
He was some mother’s child
Once he was fair
And once he was mild.
But Some mother rocked him
Her baby to sleep
But they left him to die
Like a tramp on the street

He was a pretty dog, part shepherd, maybe part retriever, and I believe a big part just good ole boy dog. Brown and white and, even in death, ya could just tell, he was a good dog. He looked much too young to die that day..

By the time I got home the decision had already been made, I’d go back and bury the dog close to where he died there on the road. I got the shovel and took the post hole diggers along just in case the ground was still frozen at the puppy cemetery in which I was about to dig.

The ground was not frozen and the digging was easy. One good thing ‘bout Starke County Sand, ya can dig holes easy most everywhere. As I buried one of God’s neglected creatures right there close beside where he died, I got to thinking ‘bout how much fun we had a kids in downtown Toto burring whatever animal that happened to die in Toto or along the roads for miles around.

We didn’t have the Boys and Girls Club for summer activity in downtown Toto, but we did have the Army, officially known as the Toto Volunteers and we had the Funeral Church. Now both these organizations served the public interest of Toto with a great deal of community pride. I was active in both groups. I served as the general in the army and the preacher at the church.

We were an army of 12, with 7 bb guns, 12 sling shots, 6 wagons and 4 bicycles, 14 dogs and 6 little brothers. The job of our army was much like the job of any army today. We protected our stuff. We protected Toto. We protected each other. We were proud, we were brave, we were the Toto Volunteers. We still are.

The Funeral Church was different, we didn’t protect stuff, we took care of God’s dead creatures. Jobs were assigned to most everybody. Those who owned wagons got the job of finding corpses so we could have funerals. Sometimes we would go for days with nothing to bury, and all of a sudden we would get a bunch of stuff and have to have two or even three funerals in one day.

I remember one day I preached so much and so loud that my voice hurt when I talked. Back then preaching was a tuff job, with no loud speakers or anything like they got today. Today ya don’t have to yell even if you’re preaching to a crowd.

Now with my dad being a Baptist Preacher, I had plenty of opportunity to attend many people funerals. That’s why I decided that I should be the Preacher at the Funeral Church. And besides, there was no one else who knew how to preach except me, and another thing was that every boy in the Funeral Church was also in the Toto Volunteers and I was the general in that army.

We had people assigned to sing and people assigned to cry. People assigned to pray and people assigned to shout, and people assigned to testify . People assigned to gather the flowers and people assigned to dig the graves. Most everybody, ‘cept me took turns being “the family”. I couldn’t take my turn, ‘cause I had to do the preaching. Now the family of the deceased had to cry a lot and carry on more than the rest of ‘em at the funeral.

Most of the time we didn’t have any, but If we did have any money on the days we had funerals, the “family members” for that day got to decide what we would buy with the money. Whatever was bought was divided by the number of people who attended the funeral. I had a pocket knife and I divided it up with my knife. I can still to this day cut a candy bar into 20 slices if I have to. It may be harder today, Milky Way’s are a lot smaller now than then. Twinkie’s are a lot less too, but they cut easier.

It was a rare day that we had enough money for a bottle of pop, but if we did, ya took a swig and passed it on. Now if ya took too much drink and someone yelled doubles, then we voted and if ya lost, ya missed the next round of drinks when it’s your turn. We watched each other drink real close.

One time a wagon came back from a collection trip with a snake, we had a lot of people who didn’t want to bury a snake. One girl who’s turn it was to get flowers for the funeral said there was no such thing as snake flowers and she’s wasn’t gona go look for any flowers for a snake, ever. I knew that something had to be done real fast or else I’m gona have a big mess on my hands ‘bout this dead snake.

So I goes over and look at the snake one more time and say “has anybody ever seen an eel?” Nobody had ever seen and eel in their whole life. So I say “I don’t think that’s’ a snake, I think that’s an eel.” One boy said he thought it was still a snake, so I said we would all vote, and if it’s was a snake we wouldn’t have a funeral, we’d just go throw it in the ditch, but if it’s an eel, then God would want us to bury the eel.

The vote was 14 to nothing in favor of the eel. We buried that eel in our cemetery, right next to the little red squirrel from the day before. I was so glad that it turned out to be an eel, ‘cause I sure didn’t want to preach the funeral of dead a snake.

It was several years later before I saw another eel, and it just didn’t seem to look very much like the eel we buried in Downtown Toto in 1955.

Sometimes the Funeral Church was fun and sometimes it was sad. Now when someone’s own dog or cat got killed and we had to do a real pet funeral, that was sad. But one thing I learned from my dad ‘bout preaching the funerals was, never preach ‘em into hell. So I never did.

That was the way of some hillbilly Baptist Preachers back then, when a person died and had not professed their Christianity from the hilltops, some of those Baptist Preachers had the fortitude to stand up and preach the dead sinner into the depths of hell. They called those type the “Hard Shell Baptist”, now these same Hard Shell Baptist also believed they’d be the only ones who’d enter in the Kingdom of Heaven.

My dad had a different point of view on that sorta thing, “God don’t judge man until after he dies, so why should I”, I heard my dad say many times. He also said that whatever words that are spoken at any funeral are for those in attendance, not the deceased, so speak kind and gentle words at all funerals. I always did.

One day somebody found a frog that had been run over ‘bout a hundred twenty seven times on the road. Well, when the collector brought this frog in, everybody laughed and laughed, ‘cause we seldom every got anything round like a plate, dead as a frog.

One of the boys said we should bury the frog in a round hole, and his dad had a post hole digger that he could get. He went home and came back dragging the post hole digger. The problem we had to deal with right up front was, the post hole digger was too tall. In fact, the post hole digger was taller than any of the boys. That post hole digger was taller than everybody ‘cept one girl, and she’d never seen a post hole digger in her whole life, but she was taller than a post hole digger.

Me and the boy who got his dad’s post hole digger tried to make it work, but it turns out that post hole diggers are for bigger boys than we were, and two can’t do it, only one can make a post hole digger dig holes. So the regular grave diggers dug the grave for the frog with their shovels. They made is kinda round, but not real round, it was kinda like egg round, but it fit the frog good, ‘cause the frog was not real round either. The frog was kinda egg round too.

The flower girl for that day got some of that green stuff that grows on ponds in the summer time. She thought it would be good for the frog funeral. Everybody agreed that it was just the right kind a flowers for a round dead frog funeral. That same day the collectors had found enough returnable pop bottles for the Funeral Church to purchase a 12oz Pepsi. We watched each other drink real close.

Memories of the Toto Funeral Church were interrupted when a car stopped beside me and asked if I needed help. I said no, I was just burying a dog that had been killed on the road today.

It was just almost totally dark when the last shovel full went into place on that grave site, and then, in the presence of God and only the little night creatures that make the sounds of the springtime, I Preached the Gospel according to BobbyRay for a brown and white dog I had never known.

It was a sad feeling when I thought ‘bout what a short life this pretty dog had lived, and wondered if he ever met the 2girldogs. As I turned away and started walking to my car, and looking up into the cold night sky, I was so happy to see that brown and white dog running and playing with the Angels, ‘cause everybody knows that all good dogs go to heaven.

When I got home that night, they all knew, they just knew, the 2girldogs Sophia, Sarah and the Angel, they all knew. I don’t know how, but, they did. I had not much more than sat down when Sophia climbed onto my lap and laid down, something she had never done in her whole life, she always sits on the back of my chair. Sophia just looked at me and smiled that special way as if to say, “it’s ok, ya still go me in your life” Not one time that whole night did Sophia say anything that made the 2girldogs mad a wet hens. Nor did she try to kill either Sarah or the Angel. Peaceful harmony that night. We hugged and told stories by the warmth of the fireplace in the East Wing till way past everybody’s bed time.

Stay safe in Iraq and Afghanistan.

From the East Wing, With a Dog Along The Way, The Toto Volunteers, And the Funeral Church of Toto

I wish you well,
BobbyRay