'J.A. Morehead' talks to God
Our alarm was just starting its morning annoyance when I saw a double flash of light right through my still-closed eyelids. In the nano-second it took me to open my eyes, the noise of thunder engulfed the world and shook our old house to a fare-thee-well. And then came the rain!
It was 5:00 a.m. and pitch black outside and I couldn’t help but think of Dorothy Williams’ grandfather, J.A. Morehead. He was an early stagecoach driver here on our weather beach, later a county commissioner and storekeeper in Oysterville and Nahcotta. He was one of the characters Nyel portrayed in Shoalwater Shenanigans on Saturday:
… By four a.m. you’re traveling pell-mell
Along the Weather Beach; it’s black as hell;
Daylight is hours away; tide’s coming in;
The breakers catch you, and a sudden swell
Lifts up the whole durn shooting match, to spin—
The stagecoach, horses, all – as if they’d been
A toy. Just managing the ribbons ain’t enough –
You’ve got to navigate or lose your skin.
In dark so pitchy, it’s all blind man’s buff
Your face is raw from flying sand. You bluff
Your way past half-sunk lots, roots grappling air,
The carcass of a whale…
Although these words are Willard Espy’s rendition of Morehead’s job description (page 74 of Skulduggery on Shoalwater Bay © 1998), in the early 1900s old J.A., himself, wrote an even lengthier account about the lot of the old stagecoach drivers. He left no question about why, after four years of driving from Oysterville to Ilwaco and back, he turned to storekeeping for his living.
As for me on this loud and blustery morning, I hunkered under the covers for another forty winks. As the flare and rumble of the storm receded across the bay, I thought of my of Willard’s brother, Edwin. During a similar weather event when he was about three years old, so the story goes, he asked his mother “Is that God duck-hunting in Heaven?”
Sydney: those lightening flashes and thunder claps woke us too!! Can barely imagine what travel on the Peninsula was like in days gone by. Thanks for giving up a clue.