Laughing out loud

One of the photographs accompanying last Monday's story about the women from Altenburg who have been cleaning other folks' houses since the Depression is on my desk. Every time I look at those four faces -- Arleen, Lillian, Betty, Myrtel -- my day improves. And if I look at the photo for longer than just a few seconds, I start laughing. Out loud.

It's like one of those laughing spells that make you laugh so hard you can't get your breath. Your sides hurt. Tears are rolling down your face. What good medicine.

Some smart entrepreneur from Altenburg could make a mint selling the years of stored-up laughter shared by at least a hundred local women who, at one time or another, took over household chores for families willing to pay for their services.

They remind me of some of my aunts, my mother's sisters, who would tell stories of their own if they could. During the Depression they left home in the Ozarks over yonder to work for other families, taking care of the sick and dying, cleaning house, cooking, doing laundry, ironing, changing diapers, fetching water, building fires in wood stoves, emptying chamber pots, nursing colds, helping with homework, cranking cars on cold mornings, chopping ice on ponds for livestock, milking cows -- all for room and board and a dollar a week of their own.

I'm looking at the photos of the Altenburg women again. Don't you love those names? Hecht, Wachter, Schlichting, Fiehler, Petzoldt, Weber, Pilz, Palisch, Gerler, Kuntze, Bremer and Pinkerton. Pinkerton? How did that one slip in?

Pinkerton sounds like the names of the families I grew up with: Boyer, Brown, Clyburn, Cole, Fears, Laxton, Mann, Pogue, Wylie.

I didn't know how to pronounce most German names until I met my wife, who grew up near Concordia, Mo. My wife's mother did a radio show for the station in Marshall, Mo., six mornings a week from her kitchen. The program included local news, sports and commercials. Most of the names of the people she talked about were German. Missouri Synod Lutheran German, just like the women in Altenburg. Her folks' backyard in Sweet Springs touched the parking lot of Immanuel Lutheran Church. The local grocery store was Koch's, a name that can be pronounced at least four ways, depending on which branch of the family you're talking about.

My wife is a laugher. When something goes wrong, her first response is usually a laugh. Like when I stub my toe. Or dent the fender of the car. Or drop a pie fresh out of the oven.

In such situations I do not laugh. I cuss.

Some of the best stories our sons tell about growing up have to do with the blue words they learned from their father. I did not learn such language from my father. Or mother. Good Lord, no. I blame Charlie Cole.

When Charlie and I were barely in the first grade, we were wandering around Killough Valley when we scared up a rabbit. We chased the bunny into a hollow log. Charlie decided we would chop the rabbit out. He ran to his house and got the dullest ax in the world. We started banging away at the log. The rabbit was in little danger, except I suddenly had a vision of the ax slicing though the log and into the rabbit, which would meant a lot of blood and other gory stuff. Neither Charlie nor I had the slightest clue what we would do with a live rabbit. Or a dead one.

After half an hour of whacking with little more than a scratch in the log, Charlie screamed, "That dadgum log!"

"Dadgum" was next to "darn" which was a shade off ... . Well, you know.

Later, when I told my mother about all the chopping and used "dadgum" in my story, she grabbed a bar of soap and stuck it in my mouth.

See, what I should have done was tell my tale and then double over laughing. Like the women from Altenburg. If you laugh just right, you can say just about anything, and everyone will laugh with you. They won't reach for the soap.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.