Thursday, 25 January 2007

• Wham Bam Hunger Clan

  I want to thank the late Willard Herman Louis Hunger, my great-grandpa, for putting the "fun" in funeral. Grandpa lived his whole life in the same town where he was born, and his packed funeral was held in the same Lutheran church where was baptized in 1910 by the last German-speaking pastor of Olean, Indiana. Grandpa was tall and gangly and had a brown cane, the thomp-ing of which I can still hear when I play back my interview tape from 2004:

   

  WILLARD: There’s been big change in my life. I’ve seen a lot of changes. Thomp.

  KATIE: Can you give me some examples?

   

  WILLARD: People used to…thomp...they were just about self-supporting. I mean, they had everything either canned or smoked, the meats and everything. And they kept their own supplies. There was, you know, sugar, coffee, stuff like that. Because the huckster wagon went through every week. And he’d buy the…thomp...at that time, people churned the butter at home. And he put...thomp... He had a scale with him. And then he had a big barrel and he’d put it on that barrel, haha. And eggs. And if you had an old hen you wanted to get rid of, he’d place it.

   

   

   My great-grandparents had eight kids, who all went out and had more kids, so you can imagine how many relatives squeezed into that church, and how many forms of jell-o desserts were represented at the potluck table. As usual when I go to Southern Indiana, I was struck by many things. I was struck by the history, both of my family (or "clan", as the pastor called it, which somehow made me feel really good, which somehow made me start crying), and of the area. On our drive to the Clifty Inn we crossed Bates Ridge, a densely wooded and hilly road that passed by the farm where my mom grew up. She commented that the woods behind their farm were so big that not even her dad knew how far they went. From the backseat Uncle John, who could not get any cooler after his grizzly bear story at the McDonald's pit stop that afternoon, told me exactly what I wanted to hear: in those woods, there are abandoned homesteads from the Daniel Boone days, a bunch of crumbling cabins with trees growing up through the middle.

  Another thing that struck me was that this was my first big funeral ever. I couldn't help but feel extremely lucky to have coexisted with my Great-Grandpa Hunger for so long and to know his face well enough to pick him out in the parish photos from 1922 and 1938, when he was surrounded by frowning widows, dusty kids, and men with Andrew Carnegie beards. My Great-Grandma Giltner is still kicking and looking great in lavender, which she wore to the visitation. My Grandma, Willard's daughter, was also a vision of youth when she stood up to read her poem, and later when she was flanked by her similarly vivacious sisters, all of whom wear awesome jewelry and brightly colored coats and who together (along with Grandpa Willard's peacefully folded hands in his open casket, which, from where I was sitting, looked like twiddled thumbs) made this funeral so celebratory.

  So there I was at St. Paul's church in Southern Indiana, thinking about Bates Ridge, the jell-o, the farms, the fields, and the huckster wagon. I tried to envision my gangly great-grandpa meeting his wife at a Lutheran picnic. I thought about all of the things that Grandpa Hunger has introduced me to, including close-up death and funerals, to which I feel like a latecomer. I realized that I have my clan to thank for that. I think that's what made me lose it during the pastor's sermon, and sniffle all the way through "My Church, My Church, My Dear Old Church." 

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