This column first appeared in October 2012.
A few weeks ago, I was contacted by Brigette Jones of the James Whitcomb Riley home in Greenfield. She informed me of a contest known as “Who is reading Riley?” and very kindly asked me to submit a photo of myself, dressed in my Irvington ghost tour guide outfit, for entry into the contest. The “poster boy” and inspiration for the contest is Fairmount native and “Rebel Without a Cause” movie star James Dean, who was a huge fan of Riley. The contest consists of photos of noted Hoosiers reading Riley. The Top Ten photos will be announced at the Riley Festival last weekend. The Top Ten pictures are on display in the James Whitcomb Riley Home. I declined to pose for obvious reasons. (I have a face made for writing.)
However, the query got me to thinking, what is it about Riley that resonates so strongly through the hearts and minds of Hoosiers every autumn? Okay, that may be an easy question for most to answer. But it does beg the question, when was the last time you read Riley? I mean really, really read Riley? I believe the work of James Whitcomb Riley is the inspiration for Halloween today. His words perfectly illustrate the holiday like no one else before or sense. No less an authority than Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens — 1835-1910) considered Riley to be America’s number one humorist after hearing him speak before three thousand people in Boston’s Tremont Temple. Just as I cannot hold a candle to James Dean in the looks department, neither could I measure up to Riley in the literature department. So I won’t even try. I will simply share some of Riley’s prose, just as he wrote it, so that you may better appreciate my point of view when it comes to Riley’s mastery of Hoosier dialect, especially at Halloween time.
From Riley’s masterpiece, “Dreams”; There has always been an inclination, or desire, rather, on my part to believe in the mystic — even as far back as stretches the gum-elastic remembrance of my first “taffy-pullin’” given in honor of my fifth birthday; and the ghost-stories, served by way of ghastly dessert, by our hired girl. In fancy I again live over all the scenes of that eventful night: The dingy kitchen, with its haunting odors of a thousand feasts and wash-days; the old bench-legged stove, with its happy family of skillets, stewpans and round-bellied kettles crooning and blubbering about it. And how we children clustered round the genial hearth, with the warm smiles dying from our faces just as the embers dimmed and died out in the open grate, as with bated breath we listened to how some one’s grandmother had said that her first man went through a graveyard once, one stormy night, “jest to show the neighbors that he wasn’t afeard o’ nothin’,” and how when he was just passing the grave of his first wife “something kind o’ big and white-like, with great big eyes like fire, raised up from behind the headboard, and kind o’ re’ched out for him”; and how he turned and fled, “with that air white thing after him as tight as it could jump, and a hollerin’ ‘wough-yough-yough!’ till you could hear it furder’n you could a bullgine,” and how, at last, just as the brave and daring intruder was clearing two graves and the fence at one despairing leap, the “white thing,” had made a grab at him with its iron claws, and had nicked him so close his second wife was occasioned the onerous duty of affixing another patch in his pantaloons. And in conclusion, our hired girl went on to state that this blood-curdling incident had so wrought upon the feelings of “the man that wasn’t afeard o’ nothin’,” and had given him such a distaste for that particular graveyard, that he never visited it again, and even entered a clause in his will to the effect that he would ever remain an unhappy corpse should his remains be interred in said graveyard.
In the poem, “To An Importunate Ghost” by Riley, the poet, paints the perfect portrait of a perfect Dickensian ghost: “Get gone, thou most uncomfortable ghost! Thou really dost annoy me with thy thin Impalpable transparency of grin; And the vague, shadowy shape of thee almost Hath vext me beyond boundary and coast Of my broad patience. Stay thy chattering chin, And reel the tauntings of thy vain tongue in, Nor tempt me further with thy vaporish boast That I am helpless to combat thee! Well, Have at thee, then! Yet if a doom most dire Thou wouldst escape, flee whilst thou canst! Revile Me not, Miasmic Mist! Rank Air! retire! One instant longer an thou haunt’st me, I’ll Inhale thee, O thou wraith despicable!”
However, without a doubt, it is Riley’s masterpiece, “Little Orphant Annie” that most Hoosier minds drift to when thinking of the Poet. Little Orphant Annie’s come to our house to stay, An’ wash the cups an’ saucers up, an’ brush the crumbs away, An’ shoo the chickens off the porch, an’ dust the hearth, an’ sweep, An’ make the fire, an’ bake the bread, an’ earn her board-an’-keep; An’ all us other childern, when the supper-things is done, We set around the kitchen fire an’ has the mostest fun, A-list’nin’ to the witch-tales ‘at Annie tells about, An’ the Gobble-uns ‘at gits you, Ef you Don’t Watch Out! Wunst they wuz a little boy wouldn’t say his prayers, An’ when he went to bed at night, away up-stairs, His Mammy heerd him holler, an’ his Daddy heerd him bawl, An’ when they turn’t the kivvers down, he wuzn’t there at all! An’ they seeked him in the rafter-room, an’ cubby-hole, an’ press, An’ seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an’ ever’-wheres, I guess; But all they ever found wuz thist his pants an’ roundabout: An’ the Gobble-uns ‘ll git you Ef you Don’t Watch Out!
An’ one time a little girl ‘ud allus laugh an’ grin, An’ make fun of ever’ one, an’ all her blood-an’-kin; An’ wunst, when they was “company,” an’ ole folks wuz there, She mocked ‘em an’ shocked ‘em, an’ said she didn’t care! An’ thist as she kicked her heels, an’ turn’t to run an’ hide, They wuz two great big Black Things a-standin’ by her side, An’ they snatched her through the ceilin’ ‘fore she knowed what she’s about! An’ the Gobble-uns ‘ll git you Ef you Don’t Watch Out! An’ little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue, An’ the lamp-wick sputters, an’ the wind goes woo-oo! An’ you hear the crickets quit, an’ the moon is gray, An’ the lightnin’-bugs in dew is all squenched away, You better mind yer parunts, an’ yer teachurs fond an’ dear, An’ churish them ‘at loves you, an’ dry the orphant’s tear, An’ he’p the pore an’ needy ones ‘at clusters all about, Er the Gobble-uns ‘ll git you Ef you Don’t Watch Out!
James Whitcomb Riley intrigues me: His early life growing up on the Historic National Road, his meteoric rise to the position of America’s foremost poet, his later life in Lockerbie and, of course, his death. I devoted one of the stories in the new book to Mr. Riley and the legends surrounding his death and have spent a few sunny spring days out at his Crown Hill Cemetery Grave. I find it fascinating that Riley visited his future gravesite not long before he died while taking a shortcut in a motor car with a friend. The story goes that while on the leisurely car ride, he decried that if any minister ever “orated” or “funeralized” over him, he would surely arise and “kick the tail-gate” out of his coffin. Riley despised the trappings of death; the abstract idea of undertakers, or the “softly treading hypocrisies of pious mien.” But Riley never feared the graveyard. Dr. William Lyon Phelps told of that while on that shortcut through Crown Hill Cemetery, Mr. Riley remarked that he did not mind going through the place because he expected one day “to go there and not have to come back.”
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
