The Pooting Pallbearers

Watching the Royal military pallbearers tote Queen Elizabeth’s casket around off and on for he past few days brought back memories of a certain funeral I was part of in 1960. I was 18, the other pallbearers were about the same age. The late friend of ours were killed in a wreck. The funeral was at Little River Methodist Church on Highway 92 out in the country, a couple miles east of Woodstock. After the service us pallbearers took positions and a grip on the handle and started the long walk to the grave. It was vey heavy. The trail to the dug out grave was not level. The terrain went down and up deeply. Going up the hill bearing so much weight I had a fear of losing my grip. I suppose some others of us had that fear too. Then Larry, the oldest of us, let out a loud deep fart. Which we were immature teenagers. We always giggled at loud farts. We did this time too. Five of us were giggling, trying to swallow our giggles and the other one was cursing Larry. He cursed Larry for his crudeness and disrespectful, and sacrilegious . The more he fussed the more we giggled, silently, of course. Luckily we were far enough from the rest of the funeral congregation I don’t think they heard us. If they hid they hid it well. Incidentally the one that got offended over the loud fart died about a month ago. Woodstock has grown. The cemetery we buried our friend at on Highway 92 is now next door to the Woodstock City Hall and across the highway from Walmart. Through the years I have been to other funerals there and sometimes when shopping at Walmart I have dropped by to pay my respect to my died-too-early friend. That trail is still steeply up and down.