Bring Me the Head of My Least Favorite Nephew. (original) (raw)
Texas | Columns | "They shoe horses, don't they?"
Bring Me the Head of
My Least Favorite Nephew
Getting what you wish for
in Marlin, Texas, 1908
In back of many lunch counters and cash registers in Texas and around the South, there is a sign that states: "If Mama Ain't Happy, Ain't Nobody Happy." It is mildly amusing if it was a family member who put the sign up. It isn't funny at all if "mama" herself put it up. This is a story of a son who tried to please "mama" a little too enthusiastically
Like certain parts of Louisiana, life in Falls County, Texas could sometimes be a little scary. And like Louisiana, it was widely known that you could pretty much trust your friends - while it was your family you really needed to watch.
This tale of teenage obedience and decapitation comes from the entertaining memoirs of Waco newspaper publisher W. S. Foster - a man who knew a good story when he heard one. In this particular case, Mr. Foster (while submerged in boyhood himself) witnessed firsthand what happened when a Marlin mother and son had a "failure to communicate."
The story, as it often is with murder, is short and Mr. Foster's terse writing only touches on the barest of facts. Foster relates that he was "about a dozen years old" when his family moved to Marlin, county seat of Falls. The year was something like 1908. He refers to the incident as a "gruesome happening" strangely, those are the same words used decades later to describe the gathering at Woodstock, New York.
The story (at last):
O
ne day a boy named "Bus" (no explanation is given for this unusual name) Wyers heard his mother say she wouldn't be satisfied until a certain nephew's head was hung from the front porch of her home. It's possible Mrs. Wyers may have had some novel ideas on porch d�cor, but more likely she was expressing displeasure at some childhood prank or misdemeanor performed by her nephew. Bus, however, took his mother's wish as a command.
Soon after her spoken request, under one pretext or another, Bus lured his cousin to a nearby creek where the "gruesome happening" took place. The hapless boy's head was indeed placed on the Wyers family porch albeit briefly. Unfortunately Mr. Foster omitted any mention of the mother's reaction in his story. Presumably Bus was given a serious sermon on figurative vs. literal speech and the incident undoubtedly caused a severe family rift.
After its appearance on the porch, the boy's head was taken back to the scene of the crime and buried in the creek bank. The boy's body, however, was laid out at a Marlin undertaking parlor - one that was run by Mr. Foster's Uncle.
The Foster family operated a restaurant right next door to the undertaker. 1908 Texas was nothing if not a practical place and people could enjoy a home-cooked meal and between courses pay their respects to departed friends and neighbors. Or else choose a casket and then grab something to eat before returning home.
Mr. Foster described the visit by simply writing: "We all went to see the body without a head, lying on the slab." The head was sent for a second time and brought back for a reunion and proper burial.
Bus was apprehended, (Now, you just march yourself down to the sheriff's office, young man..") tried and sentenced to 99 years. But he somehow managed to become one of the few people to escape from the custody of the Falls County sheriff. He enjoyed freedom for some time, if you call living under your girlfriend's porch and eating leftovers freedom. Bus served two years in Huntsville before being pardoned by one or the other of the Governors Ferguson.
This tragic and macabre case shows that "the good old days" weren't always peaches and cream - at least in Falls County, Texas - about 1908.
�
John Troesser
"They shoe horses, don't they?" September 7, 2003 column
Source: Observations: A Compilation of Events in Texas History by W. S. Foster, Founder of the Waco Citizen, Waco Texas, 1976
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