last trip home

Celtic Lyrics Corner > Compilations > Scotland The Real > The Last Trip Home

A've aye worked on farms an frae the start The muckle horses won my heart Wi big broad backs they proudly stand The uncrowned kings o' a' the land And yet for a' their power and strength They're as gentle as a summer's wind

Chorus (after each verse) : So steady, boys, walk on Oor work is nearly done Nor more we'll till or plough the fields The horses' day is gone An' this will be our last trip home So steady, boys, walk on

Now you'll hear men sing their songs of praise Of Arab stallions in a race Or hunters that fly wi' the hounds Tae chase the fox and run him down But none o' them compare, I vow Tae a workin' pair that pulls a plough

And a' the years I've plied my trade And a' the fields we've ploughed and laid I never thought I'd see the time When a Clydesdale's work wid ever end But progress runs its driven course And tractors hae replaced the horse

As we head back, oor friends have lined The road tae be there one last time For nane of them would want tae miss The chance tae see us pass like this They'll say they saw in years tae come The muckle horses' last trip home

The Last Trip Home...

This CD, released in 2024, is available from Riverlark Music , whose proprietor, the great blues guitarist Andy Cohen, commissioned it. You can buy direct from Riverlark (email [email protected]) or from Amazon (US) . Review at Jazz Music Hi-Res . What follows are the liner notes (with a few corrections), so that those who only play music via streaming services can see (and, if they like, download) them. You can stream from: Spotify ; Last.fm ; 7digital ; AirPlay ; Qobuz ; Amazon ; iTunes ; Shazam . The Last Trip Home The last time I made a record was in 1980, when they were still "records". Roseville Fair was self-financed/published (with Paul Mills as producer), so I was honored and delighted when Andy Cohen approached me to do this one. I've known Andy, like many of the songs here, since the 1970s, when I was still a college student and he was already an experienced traveling musician. It's astonishing when I look back now to realize what an amazing cohort of folk musicians we had in and around Ithaca, NY at that time, when English singers John Roberts and Tony Barrand and banjo virtuoso Howie Bursen were Cornell graduate students and Ken Perlman and I were undergraduates; and Ithaca was also home to string bands such as Country Cooking and Desperado, blues singer John Miller, and singer-songwriter Bill Steele. So many of us were inspired by the musicians who came to perform for the Cornell Folk Song Club and for Phil Shapiro's weekly Bound for Glory radio show on the student-owned and operated radio station, WVBR-FM . The show has been in reruns since the pandemic began, but I 'm sure it will be back. Its 40th birthday got a write-up in the New York Times . All of my earliest connection with folk music traces back to Pete Seeger: my mother sometimes played his records of an evening, and my oldest sister, Lee Harter Kimmel, learned to play banjo when he visited her summer camp up along the Hudson River. She showed me some of the basics when I was about 13 or 14, around the time I began playing guitar seriously (I also had piano lessons starting at age five). That early contact might never have amounted to anything if I hadn't landed at Cornell in the early 1970s, where I was introduced first to the commercial folk scene, which was already waning, and then to the traditional folk scene. Phil Shapiro was almost the first person I met on arrival. He and Bill Steele (who himself was hugely influenced by Pete Seeger) did a lot to push me to learn banjo; Phil even lent me a banjo to learn on. I think it was attending a Mike Seeger concert that first led me to pick up autoharp, and the playing of Robin Morton of the Boys of the Lough and Alistair Anderson that led me to concertina. I experimented with many other instruments in those years; these are the ones that have stuck. Between the Cornell Folk Song club's weekly concerts and Bound for Glory, I had two chances a week to hear and learn from established musicians with many different approaches. Among the first and biggest influences was Ed Trickett (1942-2022), whose taste in songs (and Drop D tuning!) was extraordinarily similar to my own and whose gentle, direct singing style was extraordinarily communicative. I also learned a lot from listening to Lou Killen (1934-2013), a master ballad singer who could make a more powerful impact singing unaccompanied than most singers can make backed by a full band and a troupe of dancing monkeys. Listening to Lou taught me to put the rhythms in the words of the song first, and keep the accompaniments subservient to them. If you're not going to communicate the words and sense of the song, why sing them? Two other major influences, both Scottish: Archie Fisher, who showed me the favorite British guitar tuning DADGAD and sang so many wonderful songs (and whose 1976 Folk Legacy record, "Man With a Rhyme" I played on) and Dick Gaughan, whose work translating Irish and Scottish fiddle tunes onto guitar suggested approaches for doing the same with banjo, and whose heavily ornamented singing style taught me that voice and accompaniment can usefully have contrasting rhythms. Regarding this CD, I would particularly like to thank John Ive, who welcomed me into his home studio and worked tirelessly to produce the best possible sound. It would be wrong to underplay his skill and determination by calling it "magic", but that's what it seemed like. About the Songs I was startled to realize that I've known and sung some of these songs for nearly 50 years without ever inquiring further into their origins than the person I heard them from. Links in the chain matter, and so I've done my best to provide more detail about them and their origins. The Last Trip Home (Davy Steele) This ode to the Clydesdale horses that worked Scottish farms for generations was written by Davy Steele (1948-2001) during his time as lead vocalist and guitarist with the Battlefield Band. The song highlights the passing out of use of Clydesdale horses in agriculture between the 1930s and 1960s as they were progressively replaced by tractors, a story Steele is reported to have been told by a bandmate who'd heard it described by a caller to a radio show. Clydesdales have since made a comeback as carriage horses and are often seen in parades, processions, and the Household Cavalry. (More here and at Wikipedia). The song was suggested to me by the Scottish singer Hector Gilchrist (1940-2022), who thought banjo might go well with it. This turned out to be true - although I excuse my initial skepticism by noting that to make it true I had to abandon my usual frailing/clawhammer style and switch to finger picking. Played on banjo in open G, capo 2, and baritone guitar in Drop D (key of A) tuning. This CD might not exist at all without Hector, whose broad knowledge of local studios led him to introduce me to John Ive and his studio. Sadly, Hector died unexpectedly while we were approaching the final stages of recording. This song is for him. The Gold Ring (Traditional, arr. Wendy Grossman) Jigs on clawhammer banjo are one of my specialties (for more, try Howie Bursen, who taught me how to do it, or Ken Perlman, who I believe also learned from Howie.) The secret is getting comfortable with the rhythm and with hitting downwards twice in a row. This one I originally heard from the Boys of the Lough; it's on their Second Album. Banjo in open G. The Laird o' Drum (Child 236, Roud 247; traditional, arr. Wendy Grossman) I think this was the first real ballad I ever learned. It came from the singing of George and Vaughan Ward, who played it at a Cornell Folk Song Club concert around 1974; they learned it from the Scottish source singer Elizabeth Stewart (1939-2022), whose family were famed for their knowledge of balladry and folklore. The ballad is based on a true story: the laird in question, Alexander Irvine, the 11th Laird of Drum, was first married to the somewhat aloof and aristocratic Mary Gordon, and, after she died, chose for his second wife Margaret Couts, a 16-year-old shepherdess. That part is creepy by modern standards: he was 63 at the time. What I like about the ballad, though, is her father's insistence that she be treated as a wife and not a servant, and her own post-marital insistence, despite his family's snobbery (here represented by his brother John) that they were equal - the last verse, unusually, gives the woman the final word. In real life, the marriage lasted six years until he died in 1687, and produced four children. Guitar in drop D, capoed three. The Wife of Usher's Well (Child 79, Roud 196; traditional, arr. Wendy Grossman) I learned this song in the mid-1970s from Bill Destler. Bill gives its origin as Virginia singer Texas Gladden (1895-1966), who sings it unaccompanied under the title "The Three Babies" on her CD Texas Gladden: Ballad Legacy , which was recorded in 1941 by Alan Lomax and reissued by Rounder Records in 2001, The ballad has many versions in both the US and Britain; the story of the woman whose children have died away at (magic!) school and needs to make peace with their deaths is timeless. Like many ballads about grieving, the spirit of the dead can't rest until the living mourner lets go. Banjo in mountain modal. South Wind In this Irish song (as in the Scottish song "Norland Wind"), a homesick person discusses their longing for their former home with the passing wind. In this case, the person is living in Munster, and in the first and third verses pines for their home country of Mayo (while stipulating that life in Munster isn't at all bad); the south wind answers in the second verse to boast of its warming influence and promise to help. The tune was already well-known and widely played on its own when Archie Fisher showed up in the US circa 1976 with the words. On his Folk Legacy record, Man With a Rhyme, he gave the origins this way: "Composed by Donal O'Sullivan from the translation of the song by 'a native of Irrul, County Mayo, named Domhnall Meirgeach Mc Con Mara (Freckled Donal Macnamara)' and published in O'Sullivan's Songs of the Irish (Crown, New York, 1960)." Played on tenor-treble concertina in Bb. Mary Hamilton (Child 173; Roud 79; traditional, arr. Wendy Grossman) It is rare to hear a version of this classic ballad that *isn't* the one popularized by Joan Baez in 1960. I heard this one from Folk Legacy Records co-founder Caroline Paton (1922-2019), who learned it from the Texas singer and musicologist Hally Wood (1922-1989), and preferred it immediately, in part because the different tune leads you to hear the story afresh. The basic story is the same: a personal attendant to the queen becomes pregnant by the king, kills the resulting child, and is caught and hanged for it. Caroline sang it unaccompanied; this is the only song in this collection that I play in "standard" guitar tuning, expanded by the baritone guitar in drop A, capoed two, to add some bass notes of doom. Griselda's Waltz (Bill Steele) My old friend Bill Steele (1932-2018 and no relation to Davy Steele), best known as the writer of the environmental anthem "Garbage!", wrote this relatively late in his life. As he told the story, he was driving down the road in his van when the tune came to him, and he thought it was the best tune he'd ever written. I put it on the autoharp (because autoharps love waltzes!) and added the key change. Starts in Bb, ends in C. The story is, of course, a fractured version of "Cinderella", in which one of the stepsisters (the Griselda of the title) colludes with Cinderella to captivate her prince in hopes of rewards later. Bill did a lot of research to decide on the details in this version. Many older versions have Cinderella's slipper made of fur, as it is here (although New Jersey singer Mike Agranoff insists that "glazier" scans just as well as "furrier"). You may wonder what happened to the other sister. Bill couldn't figure out how to include her in the story, so rather glossed over her. He observed later that Gregory Maguire, whose 1999 novel Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister also retells the Cinderella story, had the same problem. Someone needs to write a song about this neglected woman! In reviewing this, St Paul folklorist Robert Waltz suggests that "Griselda" may be a mishearing of Disney's name for one of the sisters, Drizella. The Perrault version of the tale, which appears to be Bill's main source and which Andrew Lang used as the main source for his Blue Fairy Book, doesn't name the sisters, but gives them distinct personalities, in which one was at least somewhat kind to her abused stepsister. (If this were an LP with A and B sides, the break would be here. Mominette (Maxou Heintzen) The 2022 San Francisco Spring Harmony virtual camp featured a session in which a large group called Fete Musette hung out in a breakout room playing French country dance tunes at a slow pace so anyone could learn the tune and join in. This schottische was the standout among them. Written in 1981 by the French musician Maxou Heintzen, it has since been shuffled around, adapted, renamed multiple times, and even refashioned as a jig. I managed to find its original name by typing in the first few notes to the invaluable FolkTuneFinder.com site, which knew it at once. Played and overdubbed on the tenor-treble concertina in D minor. One, I Love (Jean Ritchie) The great Kentucky singer Jean Ritchie (1922-1915) explained the genesis of this song in a 2001 posting on Mudcat.org , the invaluable site for folk song lyrics and discussion. She heard a song fragment - the first verse - while listening to group practicing banjo (all male, because playing banjo was not ladylike), and slowed it down, added her own tune, and wrote more verses, borrowing some lines and images from other songs. I know roughly when I learned this - around 1981-1982 - but not how. I *think* it was from one of her recordings. Guitar is in open g minor, capoed two, and (fingerpicked) banjo in open g minor, also capoed two. Queen Amang the Heather (Traditional, arr. Wendy Grossman) This song comes from the Scottish traditional singer Belle Stewart (1906-1997). I first heard it from several of the Scottish singers whose music arrived in the US in the 1970s - Archie Fisher, Dick Gaughan, and others, usually either with guitar or unaccompanied. As in "The Laird o' Drum", a rich guy goes out in the countryside and immediately proposes marriage to a pretty teenaged girl keeping sheep, who initially refuses him because of the vast class differences. In both, they end up (presumably) happily coupled. I like to think the age gap is a lot less here than in "The Laird o' Drum"! There is no real excuse for playing it on the banjo except that the sparseness of the banjo and of Scottish music seem to go well together, and in my opinion there really ought to be a Scottish mountain banjo tradition. The banjo is tuned in mountain modal. The Jeannie C (Stan Rogers) The Canadian songwriter Stan Rogers (1949-1983) wrote dozens of wonderful songs in his all-too-short life. Some of the best, like this one, were those in which he illuminates the lives of Canadian working people. I believe it's a sign of a great songwriter that the inner logic of the words makes them easy to learn; this one about a fisherman's grief at a catastrophic accident that costs him the boat that has been his partner throughout his working life practically sings itself. Guitar in open C, plus a drizzling of concertina. The Surveillance Waltz (Wendy Grossman) For the 2005 Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference, the organizer of the Big Brother awards, given to the worst privacy violators of the day, thought it would be fun if I sang Bill Steele's song "The Walls Have Ears", a remarkably prescient imagining of something more like our time than 1974, when the Watergate discovery that Nixon's conversations had all been recorded inspired him to write it. Because the tune doesn't have much variation, I began noodling on the only instrument I had with me, the autoharp, to find something I could play between verses to liven it up a little. Instead, I got this four-part waltz in A minor. My Sweet Wyoming Home (Bill Staines) I first met Bill Staines (1947-2021) in 1973, when we hired him to do a concert for the Cornell Folk Song Club straight off his demo tape. This was before folksingers had media packs and sent photographs, and when we went to make the poster we had no idea what he looked like. But we knew he played guitar, so our resident poster-maker, John Bric, made a poster with a silhouette of a man sitting on a stool playing guitar. How could we go wrong? As the world and all now knows, Bill was left-handed and played the guitar upside down and backwards. Bill traveled more than three million miles around the US singing the hundreds of songs he wrote, likely the all-time record for miles driven by a folksinger. "I have the log books," he said back around the time he hit two million miles. I know this wasn't the first song I ever learned of Bill's - that was "Sweet Winds Blowing" - but I think it was the second, as it was on his first album, issued in 1975. ("Roseville Fair", which I recorded in 1980, was later; I was in the audience at I think its first performance, at the Fool Killer in Kansas City, Missouri in 1977 or so and started singing it immediately, and Bill didn't record it until 1979). Other people tell me they remember me singing it since the mid-1970s. I haven't spent much time in Wyoming as a matter of fact, but on my most recent drive across, in 2015, I was reminded what a really beautiful state it is. Lead guitar is in open G, capoed two, and the baritone guitar is in what would be drop D if it were a normal guitar, which makes it drop A. A note about tunings One of the first things every banjo player learns is that different keys require different tunings. If you're a guitar player as well, transferring tunings between the two is very easy because the top four strings are close enough so that many of the chords are the same. Here are the ones I've used on this CD. Notes are from bass to treble. Guitar: Drop D ("My Sweet Wyoming Home", "The Laird o' Drum"): D A D G B E Open G ("My Sweet Wyoming Home", lead guitar): D G D G B D Open C ("The Jeannie C"): C G C G C E Open g minor ("One, I Love"): D G D G Bb D. Baritone guitar: Drop A* ("My Sweet Wyoming Home", "Mary Hamilton", "The Last Trip Home"): A E A D F# C# *exactly the same as Drop D on a standard guitar Banjo: Mountain modal, or G modal ("Queen Amang the Heather", "The Wife of Usher's Well") Open G ("The Gold Ring", "The Last Trip Home"): g D G B D Open g minor ("One, I Love") About the instruments: Autoharp: This autoharp was made by Greg Schreiber (www.schreiberautoharps.com); it has 37 strings, fine tuners, and 21 quick-change chord bars - basically, it's a luxury autoharp. We have Bryan Bowers to thank for the idea of reorganizing the chord bars to make it easier and more ergonomic to play tunes on the autoharp; the downside is that many autoharp players have their own ideas about the optimal layout (with the unfortunate result that a lot of autoharp players can't play anyone else's harp). Most layouts are largely based on Bowers' order, because one great benefit of his rearrangement is that the most-used chords remain in the same relative positions in every key. In other words, a key shift like the one in "Griselda's Waltz" may sound impressive but is actually incredibly easy to do as long as the first button you hit is the right one. My personal layout is documented on my website at https://www.pelicancrossing.net/autoharp.htm, though with one exception: most of the time, I have a C suspended 4 chord in the top left position where the very weak Ab chord is indicated. Banjo This banjo was originally an Orpheum Number 2 tenor banjo. John Ellis, then-owner of the Guitar Workshop in Ithaca, NY (the precursor of today's Guitar Workshop), sold it to me in 1975 and arranged for it to be converted to a five-string by Al Worthen, of Old Forge, NY. I doubt I could play the way I play on anything else - the slim neck and the excellent action make it easy (at one time, Howie Bursen and Bill Destler had near-identical banjos to this one). I use medium-gauge strings. Guitars: My main guitar is a 1984 Taylor jumbo I bought used from the Ithaca Guitar Works in 1985 when I went there looking for "something like a really good Guild jumbo like the one Ed Trickett has". I string it with medium gauge strings except for the bottom E string, which is extra-heavy (.059) so I can tune it down to C without buzzing. The baritone guitar is a 2010 Taylor I found on eBay and is strung with a standard set of medium-gauge baritone strings. Concertina: My concertina is a 56-key Wheatstone tenor-treble that at some point was altered to place a low Bb stashed away on the lower left. The serial number dates its manufacture to September, 9, 1912; I got it from Chris Algar at Barleycorn concertinas in 2008, many years after the concertina that appeared on Roseville Fair was stolen. He says that the presence of that low Bb was usually done to suit the requirements of the Salvation Army, and also that this particularly concertina was, for a while, owned by Charles Bramwell Richardson, a well-known music hall performer from (if I remember correctly) Birmingham. Personnel Wendy Grossman: vocals, guitar, baritone guitar, banjo, concertina, autoharp John Ive: recording engineer Recorded at IveTechMedia Studios Cover art by Lyn Stocks Patron saint: Hector Gilchrist I used to be a *full-time* folksinger... Back to front Back to folk On to email

The Battlefield Band – The Last Trip Home lyrics

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Last Trip Home

CD $15.00 Digital Download $9.99

Proudly introducing his daughter, Linnea, David presents some of his favorite songs accompanied by his favorite musicians. Stepping out from under his Maritime hat these songs cover a wide span of topics, from the Clydesdale horses to the coal mines of Scotland; from the struggling fishermen to a hopeful song of Spring; and a new instrumental arrangement of Spered Holvedel. And a few “chestnuts” including Stephen Foster’s Hard Times and a tribute to John Langstaff, Cecil Sharp’s collected version of John Barleycorn.

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• Reviews (1)

1 review for Last Trip Home

David Coffin – December 19, 2020

Hi! I grew up in a small town by the sea in sweden. 3 years ago I lost a friend, a fisherman. Not to the sea, but to cancer. However he spent his entire life farming the sea. Everytime I hear you sing “no more fish, no Fisherman” I think of him. Your powerful voice gives me comfort. Although him and I mostly spent our Times singing parts to songs by the posies. I am left here. And your songs give me comfort. I just wanted to let you know. People are fast to let other folks know when they are feeling upset. Not when they are feeling thankfull. So I do hope this finds its way to you. All the BEST/John

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Last Trip Home: A Story of an Arkansas Farm Girl Kindle Edition

• Print length 345 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher She Writes Press
• Publication date May 15, 2018
• File size 2939 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
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About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., last trip home, a story of an arkansas farm girl, she writes press.

I buried Daddy on Christmas Eve in Arkansas. Even in death, he was inconsiderate. Nick and I were getting ready to go to a private party at our tennis club when Aunt Desser called with the news. It was always my aunts, Desser or Guster, Daddy's younger sisters, who called with bad news. None of my older relatives had owned a telephone long enough to feel free to waste hard-earned money on a long-distance call just to chat. I had longed for this call all my adult life.

Asleep in the side room, I am awakened by the shot and filled with dread, but I am unable to move. I conveniently remain frozen while he continues his bloody path through the front room, where my younger, handicapped sister, Violet, is asleep on a pallet. I hear Violet's piteous cries as she begs him not to kill her. One more shot, and I am up. I stumble over the trunk on the floor and am unable to save my sister.

I hear him thump heavily into the middle room, where so many bad things happened. I turn on the light and fling myself fearlessly at him before he shoots my older brother, Joe Buck. Sometimes, I allow Daddy merely to wound Joe Buck, so I will have to drag us both to the hospital later. Daddy is always wearing the dingy white Jockey shorts he wore when he walked around the house at night, when he sat in the pink plastic platform rocker and read or watched television. With superhuman strength, I wrestle the gun away from him. Sometimes he shoots me in the struggle — a serious wound, but not mortal.

He throws me against the wall, but I keep coming back. Sometimes, I beat him to death with his own gun. I never shoot him. That's too quick and impersonal, letting a bullet kill him. I prefer a hands-on approach. Touching him in real life repels me, but, in my revenge fantasy, I am thrilled to grab him by his leathery neck and beat his head against the wall until his skull turns to mush and his brains drain through the hole in the floor where I used to sweep dirt. His last breath makes my breath quicken.

The reality was less dramatic. Aunt Desser got right to the point. "Grace-Mayree, your daddy's dead." Nobody in my family pronounced my middle name, Marie, correctly. I heard her cry softly. I felt the blow to the belly people are supposed to feel when a parent dies, but I tightened the stomach muscles around it. I needed time to examine my reaction and decide how to respond without being a hypocrite.

She continued, "He died suddenly. A heart attack, they thank."

I waited for more, something more dramatic.

Aunt Desser broke the silence. "I don't thank he suffered much, Grace baby. His heart just give out, Ruby said. Your stepmama was with him."

Didn't suffer much? That wasn't what I was waiting for. Right before I numbed myself, I felt a flash of anger. It wasn't fair that he died quickly and quietly. He should have died in agony, moaning and begging for mercy and forgiveness. An ordinary heart attack, his first one, and he died? Maybe at eighty he was too old to die in the midst of a scandal — shot or beaten to death. But couldn't he have died from a brain tumor? Or crazed from a venereal disease? Or from lung cancer after chain-smoking all those unfiltered Camels? Instead, he died peacefully at home with my stepmother, Ruby, at his side.

With the phone at my ear, I pictured Aunt Desser, smart and energetic enough to run a large company, solid and block-shaped like her mother — Mee Maw, we called her. My aunt would be sitting heavily, knees apart, in her spotless little house, built by her late husband.

After another long pause, Aunt Desser spoke again, hesitantly, maybe to see if I was still there. "I'm sorry to bring this up, Grace-Mayree, but we have to make arrangements."

Arrangements. I knew this word. It meant funerals and coffins and flowers. I tried to snap back and sound normal.

"Of course," I said. I couldn't leave Desser and Guster to handle this alone. Aunt Guster was prone to nervous spells and not as strong as her older sister.

"Is he at Wilson Funeral Home?" I knew he was. All my dead relatives were arranged there.

"Yes, he is. But we can't get anybody to bury him on Monday, that being Christmas Day and all. It has to be either Sunday or Tuesday."

"That makes it a little tight, doesn't it?" I knew without being told that I was the holdup, since I would need time to get there. It was just like Daddy to expect everybody to work around his schedule. I made a quick decision. "Let's shoot for Sunday, Christmas Eve, and get it over with. I'll try to get a flight out tonight or early tomorrow."

"That's good, honey. I'm glad you said that." She didn't even try to hide the relief in her voice.

"I'm sure you've had enough of funerals," I said.

We talked a little then about the coincidence that her husband and Guster's and now Daddy, all three of the patriarchs — though we didn't use the word patriarch — had died this year, within two weeks of one another.

Aunt Desser spoke again hesitantly, elliptically, but I could fill in the gaps. I knew the language.

"There's another problem. Nobody has called Joe Buck or Violet."

"I'll call them." I knew it was my job to call my older brother and younger sister.

"Well," she said, "that's not all. Ruby said for nobody to call Joe Buck. She said your daddy didn't want him called when he died."

I had heard Daddy say that myself: "I don't want Joe Buck called. He don't care a thang about me." He thought excluding my brother from his funeral would be the ultimate punishment.

Joe Buck had not returned to Arkansas even for Mama's funeral. "I'm afraid I'll kill the son of a bitch," he had told me on the phone.

Aunt Desser spoke again, with more of her customary energy. "Now, that ain't right, not to call him. I told your step-mama that, flat out: 'Now, Ruby, that ain't right, no matter what Goode said.'"

"Of course I'll call Joe Buck. There's not a chance in hell he'll come, but I'll call and tell him."

"Good," she said again. Usually up to any task, she seemed relieved to have me take responsibility for defying a dead father's wishes. "That's on you," she added.

Responsibility? It would be a pleasure. I wanted to call Joe Buck and tell him our daddy was dead.

"About the arrangements?" She introduced the subject again. "Ruby is too upset to make too many decisions. She don't know the first thing about making arrangements."

I knew we had to make decisions quickly about the coffin and the ceremony if we were going to get him buried on Christmas Eve. I said, as carefully as I could, "I don't want to embarrass you and Aunt Guster. I know funerals are important to you, but my vote is to keep it as simple and as inexpensive as possible." In our farm community, people spent more on funerals than on weddings.

"That's so sad. He was my only brother, but I understand," she said.

I relaxed a little, knowing she did understand, even though she and her children had bought an ornately carved wooden coffin for her carpenter husband. I guess he deserved an expensive coffin. Aunt Desser didn't judge me for wanting to give my father a cheap funeral, because she knew Daddy as well as anybody did. She was one of the few people with the balls to cross him.

Unfortunately, I relaxed too much and grew careless. I confided in her my barely remembered Jessica Mitford theory about all morticians being bloodsucking scumbags who talked grieving people into buying coffins and extras they couldn't afford, on the pretense that their loved ones would be protected from the elements.

Aunt Desser flared up at that. "Well, we did pay a extra two thousand dollars on a vault for Travis. Yes, we did. His wood coffin didn't have no insulation at all."

I put my guard back up and managed to eke out a few words of sympathy for her, but she brushed them off quickly.

"Don't you worry about me, child. I'm fine. Yes, I'm fine."

Her calling me child used to annoy me, but now that I was fifty-five, I enjoyed the illusion.

"One more thang, Grace, honey," she said. "Your daddy didn't leave no will. I know you say you don't care about the land, but I told Goode again and again to sign it over to you."

"Why me?" I asked.

"Because you're the only one who will pay the taxes on it," she yelled, as she tended to do when she was excited. "Now it'll just be a big mess. If Ruby gets her hands on it, she'll sell it to any kind of trash before your daddy is cold in the ground."

Daddy's daddy, Papa Joe, had told me the less-than-proud legacy of Hall land. His grandfather, who had moved his large family and a few slaves to Arkansas in 1856, left Mississippi because one of his sons was accused of being a horse thief. He didn't think the law would follow them that far into the woods, where there was no railroad or churches or graveyards. He was right. He bought four hundred acres cheap and settled a whole future community of Halls. They were left alone to work their land and multiply. As the land kept being divided, new generations became poorer and slowly deteriorated, perhaps poisoned by that horse thief who never had to pay.

The land was passed on in an orderly fashion — divided equally among the children when their last parent died. This kept the adult children tied to their parents and the land for a long time. The land had always felt like a heavy burden to me, but I knew I didn't want Ruby to have it.

I was used to Arkansas messes but hoped this would be the last one. Maybe, finally, this would be my last trip home.

I was glad I had been getting ready for a Christmas party when I got the call that Daddy had died, because it meant I was already groomed for travel. That would save time. When I told Nick the news, he said, "Oh, Marie, I'm so sorry," and reached out to hug me. Nick was a freshly widowed doctor I had met playing tennis and had been living with for almost three years. He was solid and respectable, smart and athletic — combinations I liked and never had before. Each year, more of the wispy brown and gray hair on the top of his head seemed to drift to his beard, but I didn't mind that look. He had a warm smile and laughed at my jokes. He offered safety and comfort, but that wasn't what I wanted the night Daddy died.

I brushed him off with "No, no, I'm not upset. I'm fine; I'm fine." Then I realized I sounded like Aunt Desser. I told him to go ahead to the party without me. For the hostess gift, I dipped my signature black-eyed peas and hog meat from a full, simmering Crock-Pot into a canning jar. The hostess wouldn't like them, but her husband would enjoy the subsequent farting.

The next few hours were a blur of phone calls and arrangements. I postponed the call to my younger sister, Violet, as I often did calls to her. As I expected, when I called my still-handsome, fifty-seven-year-old brother in Florida, he said he was relieved Daddy was dead and didn't even consider going to the funeral.

I spent a lot of time packing for the three-day trip. I worried about what to wear to the funeral. Since I had no contribution to make from the inside, I needed the outside to look just right. I wanted to look good but not tarty or ostentatious. I rejected the funky party clothes and the black wool suit with the mink collar I had worn to Mama's funeral and packed some schoolteacher clothes. Comfortable, respectable, drab.

I bought a Delta ticket to Little Rock for early the next morning. Nick offered to go with me and was visibly relieved when I said he didn't need to. I knew he wanted to be home the next day for the arrival of his grown children and a new grandchild. More important to me, his presence at the funeral would remind people that we were living in sin.

I had spent weeks decorating our home to compensate for hating the holidays. The whole house smelled of pine boughs and baskets of potpourri in every room, freshened daily with droppers full of liquid cinnamon scent. I had even decorated the two hand-carved, wooden Polynesian statues, a gift to Nick from his former mother-in-law. I had stuck bows over their private parts and taped a plastic champagne glass into the female statue's hand. Festive, I thought. It was a small bit of rebellion against Nick's insistence on traditional holidays and a large rebellion against my tense Arkansas ones, when Daddy sometimes threatened to "kick old Santy's butt" if he came to our house.

I walked alone around the house and looked in the hall mirror, topped by sprigs of mistletoe. My face, framed in L'Oréal-blond, shoulder-length hair, looked pale and frozen, but not swollen with grief. In the middle of the mirror, I had glued a large pair of smiling, red velvet lips that I had cut from a wide ribbon, left over from last year's wreath. "For people who prefer to kiss themselves under the mistletoe," I had explained. Now the garish red lips seemed to be reflected in the mirror, right in the middle of my face, with Daddy's blue-green eyes staring back at me.

This was not the face of a woman in mourning, I thought, even without the mocking lips. I was appropriately shaky but glad to be leaving the house of Christmas cheer.

When Nick returned from the party, I was already packed and in my office with my neck in traction. To keep my herniated disk under control, I put my neck into the stirrup of an over-the-door traction device at least once a day. That night, I strapped my neck in for a second time.

Nick opened the door without knocking, as he usually does. My chair banged forward, and my neck jerked backward.

"Oh, I'm sorry — are you hanging?" he asked.

"Of course," I snapped, then immediately felt guilty, thinking I should be softer in my state of bereavement, kinder to Nick.

Nick was such a good man that I had snatched him up practically at his wife's graveside, before the dirt hit the coffin. He could be boring with his hours of sports watching, but he also played sports and played them well. He played to win and, even at fifty-five, usually did. I liked that. A good mixed-doubles tennis partner is hard to find.

I even liked it that he was interested in hands-on gardening, which bored the bejesus out of me. After surviving the farm, I believed devoutly that, if God had meant me to get my fingers dirty, he would not have created Bristol Farms and Trader Joe's, where I could get everything but good tomatoes.

One of the things Nick and I typically fought about was his worm buckets. He had one small stainless steel bucket inside the house to collect coffee g rounds and old produce, like banana peels and radish tops. Then he had a huge, ugly, green compost container, full of worms, outside, into which he emptied the small container so the worms could break down its contents to enrich the soil for his garden. Since I washed the coffeepot and prepared most of the food, this back-to-nature process required my cooperation.

I was willing to make a reasonable contribution to keep Nick and his worms happy, but I refused to be a slave to either. I tossed a token amount of garbage into the worm bucket, but not all the garbage. Putting a rotten apple in the more conveniently located trash compactor required only one step. So, I compromised and tithed to the worms as I once did to the Southern Baptist Church: one piece of garbage to the worms, nine pieces to the trash compactor. Nick noticed and complained.

"You're not dumping all the coffee grounds into the worm bucket."

"It's too much trouble: I have to take extra steps, and the grounds drip all the way to the bucket."

"But the grounds make my worms happy," he countered, with no irony.

"They're worms!" I yelled. "How the hell do you know if they're happy?"

"When I throw in the coffee grounds, they hum."

"Jesus Fucking Christ!" I said, but I increased my tithe on the coffee grounds: two filtersful to the worms, eight to the compactor. I didn't care if his damn worms hummed or died, but I owed Nick a few extra steps.

As I sat with my neck in traction, trying to create some slack in the rope, he said through the crack in the door, "Marie, I know this is a bad time, with your dad dying, and I could wait if you'd rather, but I really need to talk to you before you leave. I'm seeing my attorneys next week."

Oh, Lawdy, he's noticed how unsuitable I am and is dumping me while I'm weakened by grief.

Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B074CW6QG2
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ She Writes Press (May 15, 2018)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 15, 2018
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 2939 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 345 pages
• Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1631523392
• #1,886 in Dysfunctional Families (Books)
• #17,830 in Parenting & Relationships (Kindle Store)
• #19,264 in Memoirs (Kindle Store)

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Wanda maureen miller.

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The Last Trip

Six teenage friends take one last trip of the summer and camp at Big Sur, CA. They uncover a horrific truth that will destroy their friendships forever. Six teenage friends take one last trip of the summer and camp at Big Sur, CA. They uncover a horrific truth that will destroy their friendships forever. Six teenage friends take one last trip of the summer and camp at Big Sur, CA. They uncover a horrific truth that will destroy their friendships forever.

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Prince Harry Stayed at Princess Diana’s Childhood Home During Recent U.K. Trip: Report

Prince Harry reportedly stayed at the home of his late mother, Princess Diana , while visiting the U.K. for his uncle Lord Robert Fellowes ’ funeral.

Harry, 39, was apparently the guest of his uncle Charles Spencer at Althorp House — where Diana grew up — late last month, People  reported on Monday, September 2. The Duke of Sussex made a surprise appearance at the August 29 memorial service for the late Fellowes after previously denying attendance. ( Us Weekly has reached out to his representatives for comment.)

Although it was previously understood that Harry would not make the trip home for Fellowes’ funeral, he was spotted at the service last week . His estranged brother, Prince William , was also present for the funeral but the siblings reportedly did not cross paths.

U.K. outlet The Sun reported that Harry and William, 42, kept their distance while honoring their late family member. The publication alleged that the brothers sat separately during the memorial service and did not speak to each other. Harry and William have allegedly been at odds for years, which the Duke of Sussex wrote about at length in his 2023 memoir Spare .

Related: Princes William, Harry’s Heart-Wrenching Quotes About Princess Diana

Fellowes died at age 82 in late July from “undisclosed causes,” according to U.K.’s The Times . He was married to Diana’s older sister, Harry’s aunt Lady Jane Fellowes , who he is survived by, along with children Laura Jane Fellowes , 44, Alexander Robert Fellowes , 41, and Eleanor Ruth Fellowes , 38. Us learned that Harry had spoken with the members of his extended family following Fellowes death.

Harry’s recent trip to the U.K. came after a four-day visit to stint Colombia with wife Meghan Markle in August, which was centered around their Archewell Foundation’s latest initiative, The Parents Network , focused primarily on online safety for kids. “It was a lot of listening, learning and engaging,” a source told Us Weekly of the trip, where the Duke and Duchess were hosted by Colombian Vice President Francia Márquez .

During one part of their trip, Markle, 43, also offered a rare update on her and Harry’s 3-year-old daughter, Lilibet. (The couple also share son Archie, 5.)

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Related: The Royal Family’s Tributes to Princess Diana Through the Years

“I think part of the role modeling that I certainly try to do as a mother is to encourage our daughter,” Markle said while speaking on a panel titled, Afro-Descendant Women and Power: Voice of Equity. “And at 3, she has found her voice.”

She spoke about the “ripple effect” from generation to generation.

“If someone else is encouraging them to use their voice and be heard, that’s what they’re going to do. They’re going to create a very different environment than so many of us grew up in, where our voices were meant to be smaller,” she said of today’s young women. “And now in raising them, we’re changing the conditions and the environment where everyone has space to be the best version of themselves.”

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TfL staff told to work from home after another cyber attack

Tfl was attacked by russia last year, article bookmarked.

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Transport for London (TfL) staff have been asked to consider working from home on Tuesday as the transport body faces an ongoing cyber attack.

It is mainly the organisation’s corporate headquarters at Palestra House, Southwark , thought to be affected.

Employees have been told to work from home if that makes it easier to do their role due to mitigations implemented in offices.

There has been no impact on the transport network and no evidence that customer data has been accessed.

In a statement on Monday night, Shashi Verma, TfL’s chief technology officer, said: “We have introduced a number of measures to our internal systems to deal with an ongoing cyber security incident.

“The security of our systems and customer data is very important to us and we will continue to assess the situation throughout and after the incident.

“Although we’ll need to complete our full assessment, at present, there is currently no evidence that any customer data has been compromised.

“There is currently no impact on TfL services, and we are working closely with the National Crime Agency (NCA) and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to respond to the incident.”

A spokesperson for the NCA said: “We are aware of a cyber security incident involving Transport for London, and are working closely with the National Cyber Security Centre and with TfL itself to respond to it.

“The investigation is ongoing, and we are unable to comment further.”

William Wright, chief executive of cybersecurity company Closed Door Security, said: “The big question people will also want to know is who carried out the attack and if it can be attributed to another country, like Russia .

“TfL was also attacked by Russia last year, so it definitely isn’t out of the realms of possibility.

“Furthermore, given Russia’s recent uptick in attacks on the West, it wouldn’t be surprising, but it is far too early to speculate.”

TfL was targeted by Russian hackers in June last year as part of a wider raid that saw personal information stolen.

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