My paternal grandfather was a World War I veteran. Many times I've heard the story of how, when he was twenty-two years old, in early 1918, he and a cousin were lollygaggin' in a little mountain town not far from his home place in the knobs. They spotted a recruiting poster--yep, one of the famous UNCLE SAM WANTS YOU! ones, painted in 1916 by John M. Flagg and used in the next two years in particular for recruitment purposes--and decided it would be a great lark to join the Army and see if the world was really bigger than the knobs and mountains. They caught a train that very afternoon and rode to the nearest big town, about thirty miles away, and signed up. They were first sent to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, if I remember right, and then on to Belgium. Cousin Jim, a little sawed-off wart of a man, ended up in the cooks' corps, and Papaw, a strapping six-footer who could shoot a hickory nut out of a squirrel's mouth at three hundred yards, ended up as an infantry sharpshooter. He found out the world WAS bigger than he'd ever dreamed, captured thirty Germans singlehanded but turned them in to the wrong unit so he wasn't credited with the capture, and busted an ankle stepping in a shell hole--and, ornery mountain boy that he was, was unimpressed with the fabled AEF general "Black Jack" Pershing.

I expect that was how a mountain boy named Charlie Smith ended up in Europe in the waning days of 1917. Charlie's story was a bit different, though; Papaw was pretty much footloose and fancy free, while Charlie had a steady girl, Ruthie Jones. When Charlie told Ruthie he had joined the army, she cried, of course; but he promised her that he would write to her every chance he got, and when he came home they would be married and live happily ever after. So Ruthie let him go.

For awhile his letters came regular as clockwork; then they tapered off and then stopped altogether. Ruthie was afraid something had happened to Charlie, especially when her own increasingly frantic letters got no answers. But then, Ruthie didn't know about the machinations of Charlie's older brother, Sam. Sam had a vested interest in Ruthie, one might say; he was in love with her too, but she loved Charlie. Sam took to destroying Charlie's letters and telling Ruthie that Charlie had probably taken up with some French hussy and had forgotten all about her. Sam played on her fears so well, and made her so angry with Charlie, that she agreed to marry Sam from sheer spite. They were married in October. And still, never a word from Charlie.

So things stood on Christmas Eve 1917. There was a snowstorm that day; by the evening the snow was a foot deep. Ruthie was cooking supper when she heard a knock at the front door. Sam called that he would answer it; when he opened it, he let out a startled cry. "CHARLIE?"

There was a sound as if Charlie had pushed his way past Sam into the front room, and he spoke one sentence: "I know what you have done to Ruthie and me, and I have come to kill you as you deserve."

And then there was a single gunshot that echoed through the entire house. Ruthie rushed in from the kitchen to find Sam lying dead on the floor, a look of surprise on his face--and the front door standing open. She also caught a glimpse of a man in an AEF uniform going out onto the front porch, but she was in too deep a state of shock to follow.

Nobody, least of all Ruthie, ever knew how long she knelt there beside Sam, in a spreading pool of his blood, with the door standing open and the house full of snow and wind. The next thing she knew there was another knock on the door facing and a youthful nervous voice saying, "Ma'am?"

The voice at the door belonged to a Western Union telegraph delivery boy. It was not until he had delivered his message, and rushed back out to summon the sheriff, that Ruthie, still in shock, read these words in cold lifeless black letters, on a black-edged sheet of paper: "Regret to inform you that Private Charles Smith died in action in France on the 21st of December, 1917."

It was proven that Sam Smith owned no gun; and no murder weapon was ever found. It was equally proven that there were no footprints in the foot-deep snow other than those of the Western Union boy.

Ruthie insisted until her dying day that Charlie had come home from the dead to avenge his brother's lies. And the sheriff, in the absence of all other evidence, had no choice but to concur.

This story is told in at least two versions that differ mostly in small details; one, from Morgan County, Kentucky, is retold from his own family's recollections by the late Michael Paul Henson in MORE KENTUCKY GHOST STORIES (1996); the other, from Logan County, West Virginia, is told by Lonnie E. Legge in VISIONS OF GHOST ARMIES: FROM THE FILES OF FATE MAGAZINE (2003). I've pretty much collated the two versions and changed the names, but it's told for true in both those collections.

Vengeance isn't always the Lord's; sometimes it belongs to the dead. And on that chilly note, fair thee well.

Hi everybody. Hope all your Christmas celebrations were merry and bright. One of the high points of ours was explaining to the Princess that navel oranges have belly buttons. The one in particular I was showing her had, I solemnly assured her, an "outie." The look on her face was absolutely priceless. She's outgrowing the bags and baskets full of silly little bits and geegaws she wanted in her younger days; she's a big girl of eight now and wanted gift cards! Less wear and tear on everybody's ingenuity!

Meanwhile though, here's a sweet old hillbilly custom that my mom and aunt still follow: the "ruling days." The old people would make note of weather conditions on the twelve days beginning on Christmas Day, as they believed these would correspond to weather in the coming twelve months. Christmas Day "rules" January, today "rules" February, and so forth. The ruling days end on January 6th, to which the old people often still refer as Old Christmas.

I've done some research into that last. "Old Christmas" in the Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions is the Feast of the Epiphany; this festival celebrates among other events in the life of Christ the visit of the Three Wise Men. In England, during Shakespeare's time, this had been renamed "Twelfth Night" and was a day of partying and revelry; his play of the same name takes place on January 6th.

Here, yesterday's weather was cold and cloudy, windy with rain late in the day. Hopefully January will be rainy; we could use it after this year's severe drought. Today is partly cloudy early; at the moment, just before eleven AM, it's sunny but chilly and damp. Mom and my aunt will write this down faithfully until January 6th. Then we'll wait and see.

And with that weather report, fair thee well.

a newborn's angry cry
sparks hope in the eyes of an old man
sitting by the side
of an exhausted mother, a child herself

her tears catch the spark
as she opens her arms to this infinite grace,
taking the son of God
out of the hands of the innkeeper's wife

who knows only that this night
she has midwifed a miracle,
a hope, ever green
in a sorrowing world

May Christ's joy, love and peace be with you and yours this Christmastide.

The following events happened to my great-grandparents neighbors back in the
early 1900s. This older couple and their son
lived the equivalent of next
door to them.
The son and husband died close together one fall
leaving the woman in this
old two story house that was next to the oldest tree
in the area.
On December 24th of that year, she was asleep up in
her bedroom.
"Mommy come here." She woke with a start. Her baby
boy's voice sounded so
close even though she knew it was impossible because
he was in the grave down
the road between her house and the C_____s' place.
"Mommy come here now."
Despite her disbelief in the voice she followed it.
Then stopped at the
head of the stairs. It was dark. It smelled
strange.
Meanwhile down the road. "Mr C_____, Mr C_____.
Come quick." Granddaddy
Robert and Grandma Haley heard a voice yelling.
Strangely it sounded just like their old neighbor
that was dead. "Come
help." The voice yelled again.
They got up and looked out the window that faced
the cemetery. The sky was
lit.
"George, get up, fire." Robert C. yelled for his
youngest son.
They ran for the road in nothing but their
overalls.
Down the road the poor old woman was trying to make
it down the stairs
through a thick cloud of smoke. She fell and the
voice kept saying "Mommy you
have to come now. Finally at the foot of the stairs
she fell and couldn't get
up. The voice then yelled, "she's here."
The neighbors heard the voice and raced into the
inferno that had one been a
home. They carried the woman out just before the
building collapsed into
cinders.
As the building fell a distant voice softly called,
"I love you Momma" and
was gone.
A second voice whispered even more softly, "I love
you Helen" and left with
a gentle kiss.
Helen went to live with her only surviving child
and never talked about what
had happened. The C_____s only knew that they
had heard the voices where
nobody was and knew that they could never have
saved her if not for the help
received from two ghosts.
All that is left of this house is a bit of old
chimney near a huge tree that
is so big it takes four men to reach around. That
and the story of the
Christmas miracle that allowed a husband and son to
save a life.

(A disclaimer here: Willard and Miss A and I have
never been to a Christmas Eve shindig with Madame.
This is how we figure it might be.)

Twas the night before Christmas, and in Madame Sadie's
house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

(He was probably drunk too.)

Madame Sadie was feeling grouchy and lonely. Alone on
Christmas Eve. None of her young friends were
available for festivities; Fairweather and Miss A were
busy with family, and Willard was splitting her time
between family and that interesting new young man, who
is NOT one of the dark-haired men Madame warned her
against.

She was so despondent, in fact, that she went to bed
early, after chugging one last eggnog.

She was awakened by the sound of her clock striking
midnight. For a minute or two she lay there, trying
to get her bearings. Just as she was about to go back
to sleep, a man's voice roared from the next room:

"GET IN HERE, YOU OLD BAT!"

Madame sat up. That voice sounded awfully familiar.
Could it be. . .

She crawled out of bed and tiptoed barefoot across the
floor, opened the door into the next room and--

There sat a man dressed in 18th century knee britches,
high boots, and a tricorn hat. His hair was dark
brown and hung in curls that clustered around his
shoulders. His eyes sparkled with naughty good humor,
and he laughed loudly and joyously. "Come on in,
Sadie. Remember me?"

"Capt--Captain Morgan?" Madame croaked.

"The very same, milady. Why on earth are you alone on
Christmas Eve of all nights?"

"Well--all my friends are--well, busy and anyway--"

The Captain sighed and shook his head. "Sadie, you
know how many times I've told you you shouldn't drink
alone! No wonder they're all busy! Caught you
deglazing with the hard stuff again, huh?"

Madame hung her head and nodded.

"Tell you what," the Captain said. "I have--for one
night only--arranged a party just for you. But before
we go, you've got to change clothes. What in the hell
IS that thing, anyway?"

Madame glanced down in surprise, then blushed when she
realized that she was wearing her prized possum fur
bikini--the one Willard, Fairweather and Miss A had
made rude noises about when she first modeled it.
Even tiny Miss A was more--uh, amply endowed than
Madame. But she liked the scraps of material, and
wore them to sleep in because it would be awhile
before she could get back to the beach; that trip at
Thanksgiving had blown the budget for the year.

For the first time she noticed the background music;
Rod Stewart and Dolly Parton singing "Baby, It's Cold
Outside."

The Captain said, "Don't you have a pretty party dress
somewhere? And not that Scarlett O'Hara thing
either."

"I think so. Let me go look."

Madame rushed to her closet and found a perfect party
dress; cranberry satin with a deep--but not too
deep--vee in the front and a tea-length skirt. She
even hunted out the dyed-to-match flats that went with
it, and put on all her jewelry and freshened her
makeup. She loves a good party, and the Captain knows
how to throw them. She tossed an embroidered shawl
over her dress and went back to the other room.

The Captain whistled flatteringly when he saw her.
"Not bad AT ALL," he said. "Now come here."

She stepped close to him, and he put his arm around
her waist. "Hang on tight, love."

Before Madame could even squeal, they were in front of
a tall fancy house in a fancy part of town. "I rented
it for the holidays," the Captain said proudly when
she gasped. "Like it?"

Madame could only nod.

"Ready to go in?"

"Oh, yes!"

And just like that they were in a big room,
beautifully decorated for Christmas, with a huge tree,
lots of greenery (including mistletoe), and a long
table with lots of food and drink, buffet style. And
there in a bunch were all her psychic friends!

"Merry Christmas, Sadie!" they chorused, raising
their glasses in a toast.

Oh, what a wonderful evening she had! She got to talk
to all her dearest friends, including one VERY
handsome psychic from across the pond who had,
unfortunately, been exposed as a fraud and reduced to
performing in music halls to make ends meet. He was
in good spirits (in more ways than one), and he was
the first to pull Madame under the mistletoe and give
her a big kiss.

She danced, she ate, she drank, she played On the Spot
Divinations--and won with her prediction that the Bush
administration was going to go into a four-corner
offense for the duration of its term. She danced some
more, and even managed to spend a little time under
the mistletoe with the Captain himself!

All too soon, though, the sun came up, and the Captain
shouted, "TIME TO GO HOME, Sadie!"

He grabbed her around the waist and in a heartbeat
they were back at her house. At the door the Captain
gave her another hearty kiss and said, "Merry
Christmas, Sadie!"--

and she opened her eyes to find she was on her bed,
still wearing her party dress.

"Huh. That WAS some dream," she said. Then she
chugged another eggnog, growled to herself, "It's only
six days till the end of the year," and went back to
sleep.

With apologies to Tim O'Brien (and the Captain out in Vancouver!) fair thee well.