Stealing Cars

By Molly Donnelly

Previously I have written about my trouble getting my license.  I had lots of practice before I took those horrible horrible tests.  Shortly after getting my permit my parents went away for a day and left my dads big red work truck at home. It had a dump on the back that was controlled by a push button cord in the cab.  Many times Dad would pile 3 or 4 of us kids in the front.  Sometimes the dump would mysteriously start to rise up in the back and Dad would shout, “Someone is sitting on the dump button!” Lots of scrambling would ensue and then we would pull over to use the metal lever in the back to lower the dump back down.  On this particular day when mom and dad were safely out of town I had my friend Crystal over and we decided to use the truck to drive 4 miles to her boyfriends house.  The truck was a stick shift.  Not a problem.  We decided to work together.  I did the steering and the pedals and she worked the stick.  I would tell her when to shift and we puttered along in 2^nd the whole way there.  It took us about and hour there and an hour back using only dirt roads but we did it and no one found out. 

Shortly after that adventure Crystal and I were spending the night at our friend Brieanne’s house.  Brieanne’s parents worked odd hours leaving us with a little freedom we like to take advantage of.  This one night we sat on the phone with a few boys from our grade who were all staying about 5 miles out of town at a sleepover.  They kept urging us to find a way to get out to them.  Someone, I’m not really sure which one of us it was, threw the idea out to drive out there in Brieanne’s mom’s car.  Around 1 am we had enough courage to try it.  Her mom’s car was a huge red manual that seemed much easier to drive than my dad’s work truck.  We all piled in and since I had a permit it was decided I would drive.  We backed out of the driveway and started down the road.  We made it 2 blocks before someone approached on the road from the opposite direction.  When we drove by I saw that it was a cop car.   I got really scared and turned at the next intersection to head back to the house.  The cop car turned around and started to follow us. Suddenly it flipped its lights on to pull us over.  Crap.  I pulled over and tried to act cool. 

The cop approached us and tapped on the window.  I had no idea where the automatic widow switches were so I just opened the door.  He asked me why he had pulled me over and I said I don’t know.  He said that I had passed him with my bright lights on.  I said, “Oh, ok, I’m sorry”.  I made no move to shut them off because I had no idea what bright lights were.  He said, would you shut them off?  I asked him to show me how.  He reached in and with a quick flip, flipped the brights off.  He then asked us all our names, we told him and he asked us where we were coming from.  I lied and told him that we had all been babysitting a few blocks over and were on our way home.  He asked Crystal what she was drinking and she held up her mountain dew.  Amazingly he told us to drive right home.  I couldn’t believe it.  He let us go.  We drove straight home then started to really freak out.  We had given our names so we were sure he was going to call all of our parents and tell them what had happened.  Maybe he would charge us with a crime.  We held a séance of sorts on the kitchen floor.  We lit candles and prayed that we wouldn’t get arrested.

For the next few weeks every time the phone rang I would jump.  This is it I would think, this is the police calling to tell my parents.  Thankfully, that call never came. I am forever thankful for the officer for realizing we were just young dumb kids trying to drive. 

Cemeteries

By Bridget

I have spent a lot of time in cemeteries.  Most of that time has been in the small rural ones in south central Minnesota, where my dad and maternal grandpa and uncles dug graves and some are now buried or scattered over.

Memorial Day was always spent visiting graveyards.  We would go first to Bath cemetery near Ellendale, MN where there would be an outdoor mass.   Bath, the cemetery for St. Aiden’s church, was close to where my grandma, Mary Ellen O’Leary nee Callahan was from and her parents were buried there.   It was a dark cemetery, surrounded by trees.  There was one tree with a small pool of water in one of its aboveground roots.  My mom called this skunkwater and said it would cure warts.  She said to put the wart in the water and chant “Skunkwater skunkwater oatmeal shorts Barleycorn Barleycorn swallow these warts."    

After the mass was over and we had visited the graves and saw the statue of the Virgin Mary, we would pile into the cars and drive to Newry cemetery.  Newry was the cemetery for St. Mary’s Church, a short drive across the countryside to where my Grandpa O’Leary’s family and many other Irish immigrants settled. 

St. Mary’s church has stained glass windows proudly bearing the inscription that they were donated by O’Learys.  Newry always seemed sunnier and warmer than Bath.  There were more O’Leary’s buried there than Callahans at Bath, and this also made Newry more appealing.  When I was young, the names meant nothing to me, but now there are many more familiar O’Learys and with the arrival of my dad this past October, its first Donnelly.   

The O’Leary graves and O’Leary headstone were near the entrance of the cemetery.   The headstone was large and especially fun to climb, there are countless photos of O’Leary relatives piled on and around this stone.  After visiting the graves, we would run to the back of the cemetery where there was a large altar with statues of Jesus on the cross and the three mourning Marys.  This also needed to be climbed on, various photos taken and daringly jumped off.  Newry was also the best cemetery to find headstones with my name on them. 

Our Grandpa O’Leary began digging graves in 1977. His sons Steve, Tim and Kevin helped him when they were home from their travels and our dad, Tom, started helping  in 1987.  After my grandpa’s heart attack in 1988 Tom took over.  Throughout his 28 years of grave digging he had many helpers.  First there were still the uncles, whenever they were around, then our neighbor, John Grobner, who had also given my parents their farm, then our mom, then various friends and acquaintances who needed the work or happened to be around.  We all had boyfriends who helped out and our high school friend ended up taking over when Tom died.   My brother Danny would dig in the summers when he was off from school and my sisters and I helped fill in mainly, but also dug when that was needed.   I dug with my dad for about 2 months one winter and vowed never again.     

The digging would begin by a funeral home calling our house and whoever answered the phone frantically searching for a piece of paper and pen to write down the funeral home and the date the funeral would be, then making sure we told Dad that the funeral home had called.  There were many instances where that last part was not carried out.  Eventually, Dad would find out the time and cemetery from the funeral homes and what time the grave would be plotted out and the flags left to show where to dig.   

In winter, he would first have to burn the frost from the ground.  This was initially done with many bags of charcoal, but he eventually purchased a large grave-sized burner.  The grave-burning would happen the night before digging, and the digging itself was pleasant once you got deep enough to  have the warm burnt dirt on all sides.   

In the winter, the scorched earth showed the length and width, but in the summer there was a wooden frame that would be put down and spades would slice through the grass and dirt to start.  Large plywood boards were laid to one side of the grave, for the dirt to be thrown on. The sod was removed first in squares and placed discreetly behind the headstone and covered with AstroTurf.  This gave way to the dark heavy topsoil, then eventually the sand or clay.  Some of the topsoil could be thrown into the back of the truck, which was outfitted with a dump body, but most of the topsoil was saved to be thrown back into the grave.  The dirt beneath the topsoil was thrown into the dumpbed and because the grave had grown deeper, throwing the dirt onto the truck was hard.  I was never very good at it and preferred to throw the dirt onto the plywood. The dirt thrown onto the truck would be taken and usually dumped in a remote location at the cemetery or Tom would bring dirt home and fill in the potholes in our driveway.   

Tom (our Dad) digging a grave in St. Mary's cemetary very close to his final resting place. 

While digging you’d often see the vaults of the already deceased.  Our mom would tell us a story of one of our uncles and our grandpa hitting a wooden coffin, and it crumbling and dust tornadoing out from it.  I once hit an old well while digging, but mostly it was bottles and cans. After finishing the grave, the pile of dirt would be covered with AstroTurf and the area swept clean.     

The filling-in part was much easier.  We would arrive at the graveyard and find the vaultman.  He was always in his truck parked either down a dirt road close to the cemetery or in the cemetery off of the main drive.   

We would sit in the car, drinking coffee, eating donuts, doing the crossword puzzle and listening to the public radio station.  Eventually the family would leave the grave site after the service ended.   First the vaultman drove up to the grave site, and then we would follow.  Tom, and I’m sure my grandpa and uncles before him, would help the vaultman lower the coffin into the large cement vault that had been placed in the grave the previous day.   

When my younger brother Timmy was about four, his snowsuit got caught on the coffin lowering pulley, and it wrenched his arm around and ended up with a broken arm.  About a week later, Timmy was in a pillowcase jumping around the house with a broken arm and fell and broke his nose.  I thought of this every time, thereafter, when I watched the vaultman lower the coffin.    

Tom would often fill in the graves by himself or take one of us with him.  One time, my sister Mary and I were filling in with him, and she stabbed me in the ankle with a shovel while trying to get a scoop of dirt to fill in the grave.  After filling in and stomping on the grave to settle the dirt, the sod would be returned in exactly the same place it was removed from.  Then we would water the grave, return the plywood and shovels to the truck, and clean the grave until it looked almost exactly as it had before.  

Most of the graveyards that Tom and our Grandpa dug in were in Freeborn County, where my grandparent’s farm was.  Often on the drive home from seeing my grandparents, we would stop to see how Tom was doing and how soon he’d be home.  In those instances, we’d slowly get out of the car, maybe help, maybe wander around the graveyard.  Once, the day after prom, when I had not slept all night, my Mom drove Timmy, my boyfriend (Jonathan), and I to the graveyard.  I found a shaded spot to sleep, while my uncle Kevin, in only his American flag boxers taught Jonathan how to juggle as he stood in the freshly dug grave.  

Whenever an O'Leary has died, the grave has been dug by many of family members.  My Grandpa died a few days after Christmas, and we all bundled up and visited Tom and the uncles as they dug the grave into the night.  They placed a bottle of Jameson near the bottom of the grave before filling it in to enjoy in the future when they buried my Grandma.  It was my Uncle John’s idea to bury the bottle, but he was unable to enjoy it as he passed away before my Grandma and never got the chance to imbibe. 

The biggest digging party was that for my Dad’s grave.  It was a beautiful, warm October day.  At least fifty family members, friends, and former grave-digging partners of Tom's showed up.  Everyone took a turn in the grave.  The next day at the funeral we had to limit the shovelfuls of dirt mourners threw in, so everyone could get their turn at honoring Dad.  When I tell people about the funeral, they remark that it had never occurred to them to dig their family member’s grave.  I can’t imagine not digging it.

 Our friend Jeff and his brother helping dig Tom's grave.