Cold Sassy Tree

by Olive Ann Burns

Hep me remember my faith that Yore arrange-ment for livin’ and dyin’ is good. Hit ain’t fair or equal, Lord, but it keeps thangs movin’ on.

If Cold Sassy folks would bother to remember that day and how happy he looked, they’d know Miss Love was nothing more to him at the time than a way to make a profit on ladies’ hats.

And nobody who saw the heartbreak on Grandpa’s face when Granny breathed her last would have thought for one minute that he was glad to get shet of her so he could marry Love Simpson.

But personally I didn’t think guilt had anything to do with the nice coffin. I thought he used it because he loved her. Despite all I found out later, I still think so.

Grandpa’s eloping wasn’t a matter of him not loving Granny or not respecting the dead. He just needed a cheap cook.

What God give you was a brain. Hit’s His will for you to use it—p’tickler when a train’s comin’.”

“Life bullies us, son, but God don’t.

Hit’s God’s will for us to be good and do good, love one another, be forgivin’. . . .

“Jesus meant us to ast God to hep us stand the pain, not beg Him to take the pain away.

If Grandpa wanted to keep his whiskey in your closet, marry three weeks after Granny died, and be buried in feed sacks in a coffin box, if you couldn’t say yessir you didn’t say no sir. Him saying what he did about cutting anybody out of his will who tried to interfere was entirely unnecessary.