Ten-Finger Exercises

Going once, going twice

A sizeable crowd turned out today, despite the freezing rain and glare ice on the roads, for the funeral of a local cattle broker and auctioneer. The family did not want a very religious service, but we still had a gospel reading and prayers and the Lord's Prayer. The table at the front of the funeral chapel held a huge bouquet of roses, flanked by his boots and chaps, and cowboy hat. It was done very artistically. I should have had my camera along.

The music they chose was a little unsual, and I was uncomfortable with planning a liturgy around it, but it worked okay. They wanted Debussy's Claire de Lune played on the piano at the beginning of the service as a tribute, because he admired piano music so much. The pianist, however, thought they meant the little ditty that goes, "Au claire de la lune, mon ami Pierot." Fortunately he hadn't been able to find the music for that. So he played "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" instead, and that was okay.

Then after the gospel, which was the passage from John where Jesus says, "In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also."

The song they wanted played then was Brad Paisley's "When I Get Where I'm Going."

It all went well, and a number of people got up and spoke about what great straight shooter he was, a cowboy with a white hat who followed the Cowboy's Code of Honor.

His daughters said that when they were little, he warned them sternly that when they came to the auction grounds with their mother, they were not to wiggle or wave or scratch their noses or they'd buy themselves a cow, and he wouldn't pay for it.