Every town has its haunted house, this was ours. We always made the new kid run up to one of the windows, look inside and yell out loud "Miss Mary Miss Mary, can you come out to play?" Meanwhile one of us would run around to the other side to yell back, "No! But I want you for lunch today," in our scariest voice. Redd Raney was that new kid. On his panicked dash back to our hideout, he stepped on a nail and died a few days later from tetanus. After that we made the new kids yell,"Redd Raney, Redd Raney, can you come out to play?"
Alton Treaddwell never liked this place much. Ever since he was a kid he would build these contraptions "to escape the earth's gravitational pull," he'd announce and we would all laugh as if it was possible. "Alton has predictably irrational behavior, for a child," his father would say. We would scratch our heads and look at each other funny. Alton never did fit in and come to think about it, his family didn't either.
Halbert Queen thought himself a lady killer. When he died, he gave strict instructions to have his body taken to this place and have Opal, the lady attendant, work him up. During the service, Mrs. Queen thought Opal was paying too much attention to her Halbert. A fight ensued.
Everybody hated Erliss Way. He was a bully and a snitch and he talked with his mouth open as he ate. He was found hung from this tree upside down, "must have been bitten by a snake while climbing,fell,snagged his foot and died," the sheriff said. "An ugly way to go," he smiled.
That year's county fair seemed a bit more jubilant.
Marlin Simley loved trees, especially this one. On occasion you could spot him way up in the branches, chatting away while the limbs and leaves would shake and flutter as if the tree was talking back.
"Crazy cripple," Mrs. Simley, Neola, would say. Funny thing, Marlin was a cripple and nobody could ever figure how he got himself way up there.
"Them Primrose's, they is hateful people," my aunt Frenetta would always say to us kids. Seems all the other kids in the neighborhood heard the same or close to the same things too. Merle, who we all called Mule, was the first of us to throw something at their house. After that, when we all walked by, which was almost every day because that house was on our way to school, someone would throw a rock, or stick, or piece of fruit, or whatever we hated to eat from our lunch boxes at that little white house.
We all rejoiced, I think Mule more so than most, when they boarded up that place. They were hateful people.
Sonny Ray of Millersville, whose mother Rubel Ray, was an optimist, used to swear this tree could move.
Ivery and Annie Earl had a son they called Bluberry. "Your baby has what we call a cyanotic condition," the doctor said, "that's why he's blue."
The Earls and the entire town of Olar Loved that boy more than all the other children combined it seemed. On account of all that love, prayer and of course modern medicine, Bluberry grew up big, strong and as healthy as they come. It was a good thing too, after Ivery's farm accident. "Lost my writin' arm," he said, along with part of his leg. "Bluberry brings in the bacon in this house," Annie would boast.
The war came along and Bluberry, along with an abnormally large number of other local boys, got drafted and sent to fight for God and country. "You can't take my boy, he's all we got," Ivery protested. The draft board could not have cared less, they had a quota to fill, so off went Bluberry to fight in a place most people from Olar had never heard of.
A distraught Ivery took to this chair. Morning until night he sat, holding a sign that said "Bring Our Boys Back" in big red letters. Bluberry never did come home. Annie died shortly after from a broken heart and Ivery stayed in that chair through the heat of summer and the cold of winter. The sign, the chair and Ivery slowly disintegrated. Some townspeople said he died in that chair, but there's never been proof of that.
The chair and the house are just about gone now, but the town lets it all be.
