UNDERTAKER, TEMPORARILY

I was not yet out of my teens and in my second year as a one-room rural school teacher, when there was a death in the community. The deceased was father of one of my pupils. So, the school was closed on the afternoon of the funeral. Upon arriving at the house of Mr. Kresl, I discovered that there was no undertaker to be in charge. Highly irregular! The body had been prepared at a funeral home in Fulton and then returned to the home. I had never known, before or since, of such an arrangement. There lay the dead man in an open casket.


I had never met the widow of the departed, and I was a bit taken back when she approached me and asked, "You can take charge, can't you?" It seemed to me that there was only one course open to me. It was time right then to leave for the little river town of Portland where the service was to be held. I might have stammered a little, but gave consent to this unusual request. I think that up to date, I had attended only two funerals.


Now, in addition to this being an unusual situation, there were other matters not yet mentioned. The road to the church and burial place was not a paved road. The time was mid January of a very hard winter. A few days earlier, the mud had been almost axle deep to an automobile, then after a few days of extreme cold had frozen the deep ruts almost rock hard. The means of transportation was a livestock truck which had been hauling cattle to the St. Louis stockyards. It was abundantly clear that many cattle had been there, for the truck had not been readied for any funeral purposes. But as I have said, it was the dead of winter.


There were other considerations. Although the distance to travel was not great, just a few yards over deeply cut frozen ruts would be enough to shake the man from his temporary bed. To provide some level of safety, we rolled up some bed sheets to place on the side of the head of the corpse, and headed off on our journey. Of course, there must be attendants to ride in the truck to make sure that the casket would not escape or be upset. Fortunately, I had volunteer help from a Mr. Charlie Masek, a neighbor of the deceased.


Upon arrival at Portland, a village on the very banks of the Missouri River, it was necessary to remove the padding before the remains were presented in the church. This we did in our truck bed mortuary in the most discreet manner possible.


This strange story has another strange twist to it. Bro. C.E. Cowen was preaching a revival in Fulton at that time. A son in law of the deceased who lived in Fulton engaged him to preach this funeral of a man he had never before heard of. To complicate the matter, in the reading of the obituary, Bro. Cowen read the name of a son in law named Masek. In those days, everyone pronounced this name "Mar-shack." Several times during the service, the minister spoke of Mr. Marshack, never once remembering the proper name Kresl.


Finally, the ordeal was over, or nearly over, and the casket was closed, by the young undertaker, and reloaded on the truck and headed up the steep river hill to the burial ground.


My helper, Mr. Charlie Masek (or Marshack), and I were guarding our charge. I said to him, "When you pass on, your wife won't have to have a funeral for you."


"What?" He exclaimed.


"No, the preacher just preached Mr. Marsek's funeral. You heard him."


Those people of Bohemian extraction, or at least the ones I knew, were not given to joking. I don't know whether he ever got that figured out.


At the cemetery, I was handed the certificate to sign as the officiating undertaker and to be returned to Dr. W.O. Payne. I hope it got back to the Bereau of Vital Statistics. In years later, I was upbraided by a real undertaker, who with great fervor said, " I guess you know you did something very unlawful!"


"No," I calmly replied, "I was not aware of that."


Anyway, that was my first and only time of being an undertaker.


Footnote: In the years immediately following this episode, Bro Cowen and I were in close association in a varied ministry. He was extremely busy in helping to found or establish new churches. He ministered in Columbia, Fulton, Hallsville, Boonville, and to a lesser extent, Moberly and Mexico. Often I filled in the gaps in some places. Those were pleasant and fruitful years. Bro Cowen was a great hand to tease. Even Mrs. Cowen was not exempt. But I always had a come-back up my sleeve, that is a quench-all when he pressed an advantage on me. I could just say, "Do you remember when we had Mr. Marshack's funeral?" That was the clincher!


There aren't any more Marshacks in our part of the country. Now they are all properly Masek.

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