Taking a short break from pretty much everything while I introduce Kevin to my family roots in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Specifically we are hanging out in Deadwood, the town in which I was born and my dad and his siblings were raised.
Yesterday we walked up to Mt. Moriah Cemetery where Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane are buried, which is about half a mile from my dad’s childhood home. It also happens to be where his cousin Tom almost hung himself when he was 10.
The cemetery is built on a steep mountain with lots of cliffs. Tom, who apparently carried a rope around with him all the time, was showing off for his younger cousins, my dad and his sisters. He was saying, “I’m going to show you how they hung people in the old days.”
He tied the rope to a tree branch hanging over one of the cliffs, made a loop and put it around his neck… and then promptly fell off the cliff by accident.
While my aunts ran home to get the grown ups, my dad stood in the cemetery and yelled, “Is there a doctor here!?” over and over until a stranger came by who happened to have a pair of scissors in his bag and cut down cousin Tom.
The stranger told them later that he had been compelled to carry those scissors around for years and now he knew why.
Tom was blue in the face by the time he was cut down. He could never wear a buttoned shirt or tie again.
Whoa, that is creepy and amazing.
Sounds like a great spot for family history.
Yes, there’s a lot of family lore in these parts. We got the walking tour of historic Main St in Deadwood with my aunt the other day. As a kid she delivered newspapers to the businesses there.
“And this was the brothel with the better-looking whores… And this was a restaurant run by the only black couple in town, and they’d be fighting when I came in and she’d be throwing knives… And here’s where your uncle punched his romantic rival in the face when he was 16 and went to jail for assault…”