PADUTCH-LIFE-L Archives

From: "Vee L. Housman" <>
Subject: 60-His Deathbed
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 12:18:41 -0400

HIS DEATHBED

This week Polly caught housecleaning fever again, and I'm
writing this to you from bed. I don't know when I'll get out of bed,
maybe never. If I die, it is my fondest wish that wherever I go
there'll no more housecleaning.

The reason I'm not getting out of bed is this. Polly started
housecleaning on Monday morning, but she already had the fever
for a week prior to that. Last Monday night I visited Hullahecka to
deliver the bushel of red beets that Sammy Sensawetzer won from
me on election day. I met a lot of vendors who were selling
clothes, kardoo, sugar, and so on to Mike Blotner for his new store.
They were all fine people, wearing stitched hats like mine, white
shirts, and well dressed. They began to set up drinks from the black
bottle and before I realized it, I was completely under the weather
again.

About eleven o'clock they took me home, and when I got to
my door--I mean Polly's home--I called for Polly to come and help
me get into bed. When she came to the door my friends departed
into the night. I told her I thought maybe I had leg cramps, but
when she smelled my breath she said she thought I'd been drinking
the “cramps” and that she'd be settling with me the next morning. I
crawled upstairs on hand and foot, while she pushed me from
behind.

Tuesday morning she tried to get me up to start the fire. I
jumped out of bed like a rabbit, and on the second step I stepped on
a tea cup filled with carpet tacks. I yelled, jumped forward,
bumped a stool which struck me so hard on my left eye that I could
see a fire ball as big as a pumpkin. It was unbelievably cold, and I
soon had goose pimples as large as peach stones. I found my way
to the stairs and started down. On my first step I turned on a cake
of soap. Then the accident happened.

I tumbled down the stairs like a bundle of straw across a snow
crust. I felt like I was being kicked by a dozen mules after which
the whole house fell on me. When I stopped moving, my goose
pimples were gone--and almost everything else was gone. I called
for Polly telling her that I was dead and that I needed someone to
stretch me out before the rigor mortis would set in. As soon as she
saw me she called for Doctor Hefflefinger. He examined me and
said that I broke 23 bones und het aws g'netz farsprengt. He felt
my pulse, checked my tongue, gave me three pills, and charged me
two dollars.

I swore I wouldn't take those pills, and Polly said it was a
shame to throw the pills away since the cat had a nose discharge for
two days. So she gave them to the cat. She did, and now the cat is
dead. If I ever recover from all of this, I will see to it that the cat
gets a royal burial for saving my life.

If I don't make it and I die, I want you to get all of my
clothing, Billy Bixler will get the half-filled bottle of keffer-bree
that
I buried under old Sammy Sensawetzer's haystack, and Polly will
get everything else except my new skunk-protected burglarproof
safe. That needs to be sent to Dellawetter far si majority ni
schleesa. No lawyer will be called to draw up this will, because he
might sell our home to pay for his retainer.

This will is made with clear mind--as clear as it's ever been in
my life, and any of the beneficiaries who objects to any of its
provisions will be disinherited.

* * *

Note: This collection of Boonastiel stories was written by H.
A. Harter in the original Penna-Dutch dialect and were published in
the Keystone Gazette, Bellefonte, PA, between 1894 and 1904.
They were translated and transcribed by Bob James of Alaska and
they are being posted to this PADUTCH-LIFE mailing list with his
permission.

This thread:

• 60-His Deathbed by "Vee L. Housman" <>