Something to Remember You By

I bought my father's grave marker yesterday.  Nearly four months after he died.  I don't know what took me so long -- for awhile there I actually forgot about it.  I'm not big on visiting dead relatives, although I love cemeteries.   My loved ones aren't really there. But it's a testament that someone has been here, made their mark on the world and left.   I'd made big plans to put his Natchez poem on the stone, but in the end I decided it wasn't appropriate.

So I drove out to Natchez Monument Company and looked through their catalogue.  It's amazing the array of stones and benches available.  You can have pictures put on them.  Lazer etchings that look three dimensional.  You can add a photo of your loved one if you like.  You can get black, white and pink granite, polished or unpolished.  Slanted markers, straight markers.  But they all look so new.

I love the Natchez Cemetery.  The old grave markers are works of art.  Marble angels, obelisks, broken obelisks with ivy carved on them, pedastals, lambs, cradles, tree trunks, mausoleums, all softened with the patina of hundreds of years.  Some have elaborate wrought iron fences around them.  Some only have the gate left or part of the fence, all nestled under the moss-laden branches of ancient, giant oaks.  It makes the shining new monuments look almost garish in comparison.

In the end I decided an obelisk would be the closest I would come to an old-fashioned monument.  I wondered what to put on it.  Finally, I simply decided on this:

William Howard Pritchartt, Jr.

April 14, 1926 - March 5, 2013

Beloved Father

Veni, Vidi, Vici

When we said our prayers as children at night, we always ended with, "Veni, Vidi, Vici."  I came, I saw, I conquered.  And my father did that.  He was a self-made man who grabbed life by the horns and rode it for all it was worth.

I drove to the cemetery in the evening and looked at our family plot.  There's room left for one more.  I'd like to be buried there when my time comes.  The grave is settling, the mound a little lower than before.  The remains of some peacock feathers were strewn about, put there by a dear friend who knew how much my father loved the peacock she tends at a crumbling old mansion in the country with its own ancient cemetery.  Some of my own ancestors are interred there.  Ancestors I didn't even know about until recently.  Some of the stones are so old, it's hard to see the names, like many at the Natchez City Cemetery.

I thought back to a day I spent with Daddy in the country when he was feeling his mortality.  He talked about people dying:  

"You know, when people die," he said, "...it really doesn't matter who they were or what they did.  Theyre only remembered by the few people who knew them.  And once those people are gone, you're forgotten.  It's like you were never here at all."

He couldn't imagine not being remembered.  It reminded me of a novel I once read called The Brief History of the Dead.   In the story whenever someone died they went to the realm of the dead, which was very similar to the realm of the living.  As long as someone remembers the person who died and the world they lived in, they lived an alternate existence.  It wasn't until the last person died who remembered you that your own little universe -- and you -- truly ceased to exist.  There was a plague and everyone was dying.  Universes expanded and winked out of existence until the last person on earth had died.  And I guess that's kind of how it is.

Sleep well, Daddy.  You are not forgotten.

A Hollow Space

MONDAY, JANUARY 29, 2007

A Hollow Space

A Hollow Space 
By Elodie Pritchartt

"The big sweetgum by the front gate finally died." 

Every death affected him these days, animal or vegetable. 

"Oh, really?" I answered, still unaware of its significance in the scheme of things. 

"I took the tractor and went down to the gate to cut it down the other day." 

He crushed a pecan with a hammer. Shells skittered across the counter and spilled onto the floor.

"I hooked a cable onto it, up high so I could pull it down, you know?"

I nodded, having seen it done many times before. "

And then I went to cut a vee out so it'd fall the way I wanted it to. It's a big tree." 

I shuddered. He had no business pulling down trees like that sweetgum. He was eighty-two, and still doing the work of a younger man. But to tell him otherwise would be cruel. Better to let him die quick and violent than to take away his power. 

I remembered the time we brought the pony into town in the back of the Scout. The pony wouldn't budge. He was a stubborn brute with a mean streak. Finally, he reached down and picked up its front hooves and put them on the tailgate. Then he squatted down behind its hindquarters and lifted while we children watched, astonished, as muscles strained and bulged and 600 pounds of horse was heaved bodily into the truck bed.

Those boys are men now. They still talk about it in tones of marvel and wonder. 

"Well, when I started making the cut, I got about six inches in, and realized it was hollow. So I worried that it might not fall the way I wanted. I called Power & Light and told them they’d better send some people out to cut it down. It could fall the other way and bring down those lines out on the road. You know?"

I nodded, quiet."It was the weekend. So I left it hooked to the tractor 'til they came out on Monday. They brought a crane and cut it off at the top, got it down to a manageable size. Then they said, 'Let's go ahead and pull it down with the tractor.' So we pulled it over. It broke about halfway up the trunk. And you know? It was the strangest thing." 

"What was?""When it broke, the front half of the trunk fell off, but left the rest of the tree standing. And inside the trunk, about six feet up, was a horseshoe hanging on a nail."

"You're kidding." 

"No. You should've seen the look on the faces of those men. That tree had to be over a hundred years old. And it was solid, all the way around. No knotholes, nothing. And six inches thick. "

I had to see. Before we left the house, he put the cat outside. 

“Oh, no,” he said as he opened the door. “There’s a dead chipmunk out here. One of the cats probably killed it.”

“He's brought you a present.”

I smiled. He didn't. 

“I wish they wouldn’t. They’re cute little things and I hate to see them dead.” 

It surprised me to see him so upset over a chipmunk. I could remember when we were little, and he’d come home with a deer he’d killed. He’d hang it from the rafters in the barn, make a cut all the way around its neck and set a hook into the skin. He’d attach a chain to the hook and attach the other end to the bumper of the Scout. Then he’d back the Scout up, pulling the skin clean off the deer. It was quick and bloody with a thick, coppery smell that hung in the air. He didn’t give it a second thought. 

Now he spent his days putting out salt licks and corn, and chasing off anyone who dared try to poach a deer, in season or no. It was late afternoon and the light was slanting at sharper angles, sending shadows out across the field. We stopped by the workshop in the woods.

"See that metal post right there?" 

"Yes." 

"Okay, now look over there."

He pointed to another post some distance away. 

“Those two posts are forty feet apart. If you take a string and tie it between the posts and measure 20 feet, that's where you'll find the water line for the house. I know because it broke one time and I had a heck of a time trying to find it. When I did, I made sure to mark it. I couldn't mark the exact point because it's in the roadbed, but you measure, and that's where it is. I'm probably the only person who knows that."

He sighed and his shoulders seemed to sag.

"You’re going to need to know these things when I’m gone.”

I nodded but couldn’t speak. 

“You know, when people die, it really doesn't matter who they were or what they did. They're only remembered by the few people who knew them, and once those people are gone, you’re forgotten. It's like you were never here at all." 

I knew he was right. I’d thought it, myself, on occasion. We spied two deer eating acorns under the oaks before they saw us and fled for the woods. 
"Brandon died day before yesterday."

“Oh, no. ” 

Brandon was the golden retriever he’d rescued a couple of years ago. He couldn’t stand seeing a dog without a home and he now had a pack of about 14 dogs. At least two or three times a day, they’d gather in the front yard. One would begin with short, high yips and within a moment the others would join in, howling and yipping at ghosts.
Brandon had been a steady quiet, companion who never complained. 

“Remember how he chased after the car the last time you were here? A few days later he just lay down and died. He seemed just fine, and then he died.”I wondered how old he'd been.
We stopped beneath the oaks from which the deer had fled. He showed me how to tell the difference between a buck and a doe.

“The scat the doe leaves looks like little round balls, like pebbles. See?” 

I looked.

“Now, look over here. This is a buck.”

Several mounds of scat, larger than the first, like little mushrooms bloomed beneath the tree among the acorns and the leaves. I thought about all the lessons I’d missed by moving so far away. 

By the gate, the trunk still stood as he'd left it. I looked down into the hollow. Twisted through the trunk was some ancient barbed wire that emerged again on the outside of the tree.

"Only thing I can figure," he said, "is somebody hung that shoe on that fence a hundred or more years ago, and the tree just grew around it." 

He reached in and pulled out the shoe where he'd hung it. 

"Well, I'll be," I said, shaking my head. I wondered why the shoe hadn't become embedded in the tree. Who had put that shoe on the nail? How long had they been gone? Does anyone remember them? I tried to remember when barbed wire was invented. How many people had come and gone since that day? 

I remembered the arrowheads we'd found in the lakebed a few years before, just feet from that spot. 

"I'm tired," he said. "I don't know why I'm always tired lately." 

We started back to the house so he could lie down for awhile in the cool of the evening.

Ladies' Man

A few days after my father's funeral, I stopped in to see Mimi Miller at The Historic Natchez Foundation.  She told me she'd been too shy to get up in front of a crowd and tell one of her stories about my dad at the service, but if she had, one of the stories she'd have told was of the first time she met him.

"I was intrigued by him," she said.

My father had this -- je ne sais quoi -- charisma.  He was handsome and self-assured.

It was at a party my parents were giving with another couple.  Somehow the conversation turned to the question:  What is your favorite thing to do?

Most people had the usual replies:  traveling to Europe, watching football games, going to the lake with friends, dining out.

When it came my father's turn to reply, he didn't miss a beat:  "Carpool."

"Carpool?"

People looked confused.

"Yes," he said. "Every morning I get to drive my children to school.  I have them all to myself.  Sometimes I pick them up in the afternoon and drive them home.  It's my favorite thing to do, the best part of my day."

He didn't say anything about going out on the river, hunting....anything.  His children were his favorite thing.  The man who had every woman's eye on him wanted nothing more than to be with his children.

What a guy.

I only hope I lived up to what a child should be to her parent.  He did his part, in spades.

Celebration of LIfe - Howard Pritchartt, Jr.

On March 9, Howard Pritchartt, Jr.'s family and friends gathered for a celebration of his life.  My father's one request for his funeral was that he have no preachers speaking over him.  So instead, we simply invited one and all who knew him to come up and tell a story.

It started off with a beautiful eulogy by my dear friend, Brent Bourland.  After that, we all told some stories, remembered the wonderful times.  It got downright silly at times, and after it was all over, we all agreed he would've approved.

For anyone who'd like to hear what kind of man Howard was, this is worth watching -- some of it sad, some of it amazing, and a whole lot of wicked funny.

Because my father's life was defined by his days on the Mississippi River, we ended it with a gorgeous a capella rendition of Old Man River.  Enjoy.



Video created and produced by: 

Bill Slatter Video Productions
423 Main Street
Natchez, Mississippi 39120
(601) 446-9401

Incredible Honor

William Howard Pritchartt, Jr. R.I.P.

William Howard Pritchartt, Jr., 86, died March 5, at 1 a.m. at Natchez Community Hospital after a brief illness.

Mr. Pritchartt was born April 14, 1926, at the Natchez Sanitorium and attended Natchez Schools.

At the age of 18, Pritchartt volunteered to join the army during World War II, where he served in intelligence and reconnaissance.  He traveled to Europe on the Queen Mary and had many memories of his exploits overseas. 

Pritchartt was an entrepreneur.  Although he studied at the University of Mississippi, at Washington & Lee and at Amherst in preparation for his appointment at West Point, he left early to begin his career as a realtor and developer.  With partners and friends Paul Green, George Guido, and Waldo Lambdin, he developed several subdivisions, including Broadmoor and Pineview Subdivisions, and the Trees.  He also was involved in the development of Woodhaven next to Trinity Episcopal School and La Grange Subdivision near Liberty Road.

Pritchartt was instrumental in creating Trinity Episcopal School, visiting schools all across the country to learn about how to build a proper educational institution.  He also donated the land and built the main building on Highway 61 South.

Pritchartt’s life was defined not only by his children but his love of the outdoors and, in particular, of the Mississippi River, where he spent his youth with friends rowing the river, camping on sandbars, hunting, fishing and enjoying all that nature had to offer.  His love of the river was inspired by his father, who often took him and his friends on expeditions up and down the river.

His other great love was for his children with whom he spent nearly every weekend on the river in a cabin he built for that purpose.  With them, he showed them the outdoor life: fishing, swimming, hunting, boating, and riding horses through the woods – an opportunity few children shared.  He shared with them his time, his attention and his help, both emotionally and financially. 

He will always be remembered for his kindness in mentoring other businessmen and entrepreneurs and his overwhelming love and concern for other creatures.  Throughout his life he had numerous pets – cats, dogs, and chickens, and fed and protected the wild creatures that lived on his property near Kingston Road. 

Related posts:

A Man in Full

The Weight of Water

Army Humor

Road Trip

Howard's Revenge

Daddy

Adventures in World War II and Pritchartt Recalls Life of Boating on the Mississippi River

The Shanty-Boater

Balls of Steel

A Hollow Space