The Obsequies of Penny Featherstone

A Report from our Down East Correspondent Shadrach Spencer

Penny Featherstone was a large woman and weighed just about as much as a black bear. Her husband Harry remarked that it was just all the more to love; but in an unguarded moment he allowed as how she could also eat just about as much a brown bear.

Well, it happened that Penny died and the Wake and the Obsequies were being held in Harry’s living room. The Rev. Pearly Gates did the preaching. You heard it right; Pearly was his name. Harold had a large coffin made ‘specially for her with extra handles on the end. Bein’ as how she was that heavy and the coffin was so large the pallbearers bumped the coffin into the door frame. Immediately there came a hammerin’ and a shriekin’ from inside the coffin. They set the coffin down right there on the door jamb and unscrewed the lid.

Penny struggled to a sittin’ position and looked around wildly sayin’, “Harry, what are you doin’, wearin’ your best suit?”

It turned out that she had just been in a coma. Well, she lived to eat for another year, and Harold stowed the coffin away in the hayloft in the barn, ‘cause, as Harry said, “There’s no use wastin’ a good pine box.”

About a year later Penny gave up the ghost again, and the wake and the obsequies were once more held in Harry’s living room. The Rev. Pearly Gates preached the same sermon as the year before, ‘cause as he said, “There’s no more use in wastin’ a good sermon, than there is in wastin’ a good pine box.”

Penny had made good use of the last year and had added a fair amount of weight. The pallbearers groaned as they lifted the pine box and staggered out the door once more banging the coffin into the door jamb.

Harold, in high dudgeon, hollered, “Easy, boys! Easy! We don’t want another resurrection.”