Whiskey Funeral. (original) (raw)

They called him Whiskey for obvious reasons.

A cowboy who worked on ranches along the Concho River in the top part of McCulloch County, Whiskey was known to take a drink or two or three.

He won his nickname when he got so desperate for a drink that he traded his horse and saddle for a gallon of whiskey.

Whiskey cowboyed and drank back in the 1890s, long before the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous. His friends probably didn�t even know what the word �intervention� meant, but out of concern for their near-always sodden co-worker and friend, they resolved to resort to a little tough love in the hope of at least slowing down Whiskey�s whiskey drinking.

Before relating the details of Whiskey�s intervention, it�s important to understand the place and times. One of the principal communities of northern McCulloch County was Rochelle.

The town offered all the necessities of life and when the cemetery was started in 1894, at least one of the necessities of death. One business the town did not have was an undertaking establishment, but the burial process was not nearly as complicated as it would become.

When someone died, his or her survivors took care of preparing the body and �laying it out� at home for visitation. A woman would cut and hem the shroud, while the men folks built the dearly departed�s coffin, using 1� by 12� planks and lining the box with white silk or satin. That amounted to a lot of work for a bereaved family, so it was taken as quite a sign of progress when the general store in Rochelle began stocking factory-made coffins.

Some families, worried that sudden death might catch them short, bought a coffin and kept it in the barn until the need arose.

All this was of little concern to Whiskey, who was still young enough to believe that he would live forever.

But when someone noticed him lying passed out in public, once again having drunk himself into a deep stupor, Whiskey�s friends looked on it as an opportunity to have a little fun and perhaps teach their pal a lesson as well.

They scooped him up and carried his limp body to the general store. Next, they lowered him into one of the coffins the store had in stock and folded his arms across his chest. Then they waited.

When Whiskey�s eyes began fluttering as the alcohol started wearing off, the boys gathered around his coffin, doffed their cowboy hats in mock respect and broke into a somber hymn.

For a bewildering moment or so, Whiskey thought he was on the verge of being buried alive. He rose from the �dead� so scared that he vowed never to drink again.

As someone who knew the story later related, the incident touched Whiskey so deeply that he stayed sober for a whole week.

Whether Whiskey ever put the plug in the jug is not known today, but he long since had a real funeral, whenever or wherever that was.