Fiction @ Cool Coffins Blog

Ladies and Gentleman,  Good afternoon and welcome;

Charlie J. Underwood is my name and custom caskets and coffins are my game. Since  about 1895 my forebears, and now I, have maintained a tradition of building bespoke caskets, coffins, cabinets and boxes for celebrities and tastemakers, world-changers and even dictators and mostly for those beautiful people who just wish to go out in style.

We have even worked with the desperate, the mad and the “original”! Even despots such as Hol Hotta the Gauger have benefited from our custom work. Because if you can’t go out in a blaze of glory you can at least go out in a flash and a puff of smoke. Life maybe short but style is forever…
In those days they used to say that if you can’t have it all you can still go out “under wood”!
SO, how did I become a custom casket, coffin and bespoke cabinet maker?

I came into this business entirely by accident. My great great grandfather, Washington Underwood, journeyed to the Indian subcontinent where he had attempted to forge an empire from an exotic coffee bean given to him by an Ethiopean mystic. During a nasty bout of malaria my grandfather’s heartbeat was irreversibly changed and he could speak only with a stutter.

One afternoon during a fracas with the Governor’s men in Ganjam, Orissa my fathers heart finally gave up the ghost and he met his untimely end.

Drawing his sabre high and clutching his sacred grounds, he fell backward into a well and expired. The remainder of the family were thrown below with feral cats and left to starve.

When the bodies were returned home my blind father, Zedoch Underwood, crafted caskets of exquisite design…a tradition that I continue, nobly and slowly to this very day. A tradition that I now can offer to you.

Eternally Yours,

Charlie Underwood.

Back in ’45, with the Western war over and only a minor fracas with some shrapnel to show for it, and God above, if I`d been an inch taller I would have lost my head altogether, I was motorcycling east through Hungary and Romania with the intent of reaching Persia as quickly as possible. BUT by the time I`d made it to the Black Sea the bloody Americans, AND, the Nazis were on my trail and here’s why…

On entering Poland on foot I had stolen an American Indian 741 motorcycle and, murphys law, close to freedom and the Slovakian border Nazi Officers from Dr. Wachter’s unit in Krakow, ambushed and arrested me.

I thought I was doomed but my luck turned and in the bloody fire fight that followed I found, would you believe it, in the safe of the now bullet riddled Dr. Wachter’s office, a sacred copy of the Zoroastrian Gathas hymns which, Lady Luck smiling down upon me, I knew I could trade with the Persian Shah Mohammed Pahlavi for a very handsome stipend indeed.

I commandeered a leaky bucket of a sailboat tub named the “Tyranena” and endeavoured to cross the Black Sea. Well , that’s another adventure altogether, and to cut a long story short I entered safely, disguised as a Latvian aristocrat into the Persian Court carrying the sacred Gathas tablets, and into the favour of the Shah. It was here in the Crimson Court of the King, that I learnt the sacred recipe of the holy pomegranate and the golden chicken…

To my mind it’s the best chicken recipe in the world and I`ll I share this gift from the gods above here, with you, very soon.

Sincerely yours,

Charlie Underwood.

In late 1882 – ’83 my great great uncle Obadiah Underwood left Montpellier, Vermont under the midnight moon, and blasting through New Hampshire upon his brother Lafayette’s stallion “The Lieutenant”, made haste to Rhode Island where he stowed away upon a merchant vessel heading for the Indian subcontinent. Uncle Sam was getting into all sorts of trouble in a new depression or the “Rich Mans Panic” as it was often called and HE said it was, “All acause o’ them damned devil curs’d trains…And those greedy sons of bitches politicians!”

Obadiah was a blaggard: a tricktser, a womaniser, an alcoholic gambler of ill repute and a self proclaimed expert of many arts but truth be told, he was in fact a master of only two – making caskets and telling lies. From his harlot mother he had also inherited a huge arrogance, a laziness of character and a taste beyond his means for the epicurean.

When the depression hit hard he was in the Saloon Bar with his cronies drinking and playing at cards:
“… no need for a coffin builder of reputation to sully his “workin’ art” with the penniless dead of a hungry, filthy, misguided mob. They aint got no gold in their teeth!”

Of course in those days a man could lose his life over a drap of old rhye and Obadiah’s refusal to make an affordable casket was not to be taken lightly…A specialist could oft be found swinging from the nearest oak if the general consensus judged his work a touch on the expensive side of a little too costly. Still, he was not one to bow to no man’s code nor another’s inferior manufacture or material design -  ‘Badiah, did what he usually had to do;  he upped sticks and left town.

He, after all, and according only to his own testament, had been the lone custom manufacturer of the James family’s greatest outlaw, Jessie Woodson’s casket; and thus would not bring himself to work on the cheap. No matter how poor, lowly or desperate his customers.

Anyway this Obadiah was a superstitious man and he always carried about his person a Smith and Wesson model 3 and his deceased father’s glass eye which he said “could look deep in the future”.

One day he said he looked through the eye and saw a plague of bad fortune in the form of cholera, smallpox, malaria, AND the yellow fever visited upon the children of the European nobility, AND, when the Great Comet appeared in the sky he knew his American days were numbered, and that’s another reason why he stowed away – to make his fortune from the small, white bones and sorrow of the European royalty.

Whilst onboard the merchant vessel he came across the famous Oriental, gold-mining midget Yeffer-San whom he employed as his valet and retainer, for he could not breakfast, abroad alone, in the company of the nobility and offered a cut of the future mercantile for each child’s casket. Yeffer-San in time though, would also come to feature as the perfect casket template for the newly deceased children of the European elite. I`ll be filling you in, as is my business, in a forthcoming post!

Yours Eternally,

Charlie Underwood.

Back in `88 my eccentric great “uncle” the taxidermist Kerrington Quazi-Pots (he had married into the family – obviously) told me a rather amusing bitter-sweet story regarding his late grandfather Gastonbard Farris Pots (the self proclaimed inventor of the Digby Sandwich) and the tragedies that befell him the previous summer. “If only we’d have known you then Charlie, you could have whipped something together tout suite… Something suitable. Something jaunty for the little feller.” We were sitting in the luxuriant English garden of the Bog and Toad in West Witherington. He went on…

Gastonbard Farris had been betrothed to his good lady wife Ethel for 62 years although, it was, eventually, an unhappy marriage because Gaston, after a serious brush with lightning on the moors one night had become wholly asexual; albeit, with a disturbing penchant for both dwarfism and amputation…BUT…anyway..I digress….

Well, tragedy of tragedies Gastonbard had returned one late summer evening from a few pints too many of  “Dabger Best Colostomy” at the Thieves’ Fingers public house to find Ethel as dead as a doornail, face down in the small, murky deep of the gratuitously ornate Koi carp pond at the end of their garish yellow patio. She had had a preponderence for hats and their dainty, delicate tissue filled boxes.

Around her lay the fractured smithereens of several of Gaston’s 350 treasured golden gnomes, just to run sour salty insult into the bitter-sweet injury. Of course with the mixed emotions of his wife’s death and fascinating speudo-amputational destruction of the gnomes Gaston retreated into himself for awhile in search of something he was never quite able to find. Nor should have for that matter. Barry Judd the constables son came and filled it in. The pond; not Gaston’s fragile, egg shell mind that is. He traipsed wet concrete throughout the house as there was no access outside and Gaston didn’t care; besides – he “…weren’t chargin nothin’ and it wont hurt none.”

A few weeks passed and Gaston, lost in the loneliness of the bungalow, and unable to cope turned to drink, nothing too exotic, just his own urine, and conversed day and night with his beloved gnomes – most of which were now missing an appendage or two. Naturally EVERYONE was worried about his physical and mental health so the youngest nephews Froderique and Hughlow, with their bauble clad mother Phregenia Sputtles, took it upon themselves to find a young puppy to keep Uncle Gaston company.

Phregenia drove her white and gold Honda to Buttersley Dogs Home and successfully managed to pick up the worlds only three legged pekinese pug labradoodle whom they imaginatively named Plog…And by god it was an ugly thing; almost ugly enough to scare away water itself! But not quite.
Gaston’s 88th birthday soon came around and the family assembled at his house for the great big cheer up: “….it’s been his worst year ever Hughlow…” Phregenia muttered, “so you just be on your best behaviour…AND DON’T DRINK ANYTHING indoors.” Absent minded to the Nth degree both children had minds like sieves – incapable of holding much at all. ell, nothing important anyway.
Hughlow and Dallas set up their small but inflatable paddling pool in the backyard and while it filled they marched inside for some Digby sandwiches. Gaston appeared to mumbler obscenities during the first quarter of the Liverpool match and both Houston and Dallas were beside themselves with excitement about their SURPRISE and protege; the amazingly ugly puplet Plog. Hopping about and darting to and fro’ like a man on hot coals Hughlow waved his water wings like a troubled hen: “Please,  let me, let me!!”.
“SSshhhh. Not yet Hughlow; no. BEEE QUUIET!” Ephregenia quipped, “There are more Digbies coming.” At this point in time a knock at the door announced the arrival of the neighbours Crecil and Franny. Crecil and Franny had twenty years on Gaston, were twice as unkempt AND well and truly as close to being through the exit in God’s Waiting Room as one could be and retain living breath. They thought the golden gnomes were icons of Beelzebub. But then again, they thought wheelie bins were part of an extra terrestrial conspiracy.

Froderique produced another round of soggy sandwiches alongside a garish orange Tupper of stale looking and fetid pork rinds that resembled a dust rolled pile of elephants toenails at which Gaston finally broke from his torpor; and they tucked in to the tune of another goal from the boys in Red.  “Bloody Communists and Lefties! Churchill knew what were good for ‘em.” he hissed and sank back into his seat, pork rinds about his chops and lapsing back into a “state” of nigh unconsciousness.
“Okay boys; now’s the time…” Ephregenia quietly squawked in exasperation. “Time for the ess, you, are, pee, are, eye , ess, ee. ”

Hughlow leapt to his feet like a man who had sat upon an impromptu hedgehog.

“Yes, Yes!” He shrieked with glee. “Let’s!”

Frederique put down his Digby and nonchalantly rose to his feet with the smug air of a greasy political victor: “But justwhere is Plog?” he enquired, smart-arse that he was.

“Yes where is he boys, where have you hidden him?” Phregenia quizzed, her furrowed brow curling about her hooky, over-made face.

“I…don’t…know…” Hughlow quivered back in almost-unison,  looking into his feet as though the Wayward pup might emerge from them at any given moment. He had been the dogs chief consort and protector throughout these early, innocent, puppy fat days. It was a succulent time of laughter and play, camaraderie – solidarity. They were best chums!

“Well, hurry up and find him. For God’s Sake.”
A search of epic proportions began; upstairs, downstairs, in the cupboards, beneath the sink, the drawers, wardrobes, tallboys and compactums, in the utility room, in fact, everywhere. Amongst Gaston’s collections of crap that he  had been hoarding in every room. Amongst his pickling jars. Amongst the litter. Amongst the mouldy clothes of his deceased  wife. Amongst the dusty crevices of his life. Amongst the dust, that remained, of his wife. But to no avail. Plog had “..vanished into thin air.” according to Froderique. They stood around in the hovel of Gaston’s lounge, dumb, like stupid useless statues to the tune of his oblivious, rhinocerous snore. Phregenia had had enough.

“Come on kids, lets go – we can come back in half an hour I’m sure that hound’s here somewhere – probably buried under Gaston’s crap. ffff…I need a cafe-au-lait.” She looped her snakeskin handbag across one shoulder and, with her long dirty green fingernails, stroked young Hughlow’s scruffy head: “Frody!” He was molding a sandwich into a tacky ball or turnip, cheese and vinegar. “Come ON!” Marching to the front door, her gold heel snared and took castaway old dirty tissue from happier “hatbox” times in Gaston’s life. Out the front they filed like a miniature model army; Phrenegia, Froderique and Hughlow backing up the rear. Froderique threw his cheese ball, like a grenade, over the twisted fence,  into the neighbour’s garden.

“Frody for gods sake! I’ll remove your bloody privileges!”
“Can we have an ice cream?” Hughlow asked, “I`m thirsty?”

Their voices grew more distant and charmingly remote. Like a fading memory, like last year when things were alot better. As though time itself were dissembling. When things were alright and none of these stupid interfering nincompoops had crawled out of the woodwork. When the milk still came in a bottle. When we won the cricket. That’s it. When the cricket was played properly. Well; that is what HE thought; smiling intermittently and chuckling half guiltily into his sleeve; and watched, the clear motionless afternoon moon, and the  soggy white, gently circling, furry body of Plog, in the weeping pool. The tiny fresh pink tongue, like the first dahlias of a spring fresh sprung, and the motionless ebony set button eyes. Very, very slowly Gaston turned off the tap.

————————————————————————————————————————-

“Would you like another?” Kerrington asked and lit his church-warden.
“Don’t mind if I do.”
“Another Quaggles Best?”
“No, I`ll have a Bad Elf this time, yes, a Bad Elf”
“Hahaha” he laughed, “Hahahaha” like a gargling drain and emptied his bowl into the large blue ceramic ashtray, “A good choice my man.”
“Well, a toast to the children Hughlow and Froderique and the old fudder too, good on him I say!”
“Yes, yes” Kerrington laughed as he slipped into the doorway of the saloon, “He died the very next week.  Killed by one of the gnomes in a bizarre bath tub incident…”

————————————————————————————————————————-

The Digby sandwich is a rather unusual sandwich requiring a very few simple ingredients and some rather strange processes. It is not a recipe recommended here by myself, Charlie Underwood, but I will reprint it for your amusement and delectation:

1. Cathedral City cheddar – marinade for as long as you can stand in the tepid juice of turnips.

2. Vinegar.

3. Grate your cheese into two slices of toast and sprinkle liberally with vinegar – add salt petre to taste.

Good morrow everybody,

Last week I came back from my trip into the woods and celebrated with an indulgent feast at the birthday of my distant cousin Belzer Herrison. I had brought back some fine timbers from the heart of the untouched forest – straight and true & free from the curse of knots and checks with the intention of fashioning them into a fine set of shelves to display my late, great uncles collection of ephemera, gewgaws, odds and sods, ‘wossanames’ and what-have-you’s. Belzer had always reminded me of Cyrano or the Monyet Belanda, but his charm was legendary.

We met up at Three Sheets for a few wee drams of Lavagulan’s finest 18 year old Scotch and headed out to meet the rest of the gang at the L’olonnaise Bar and Grill. As we lit out into the street Belzer eulogised about the old days in Moostissoostikwan – he would row the old boat across the water to an island where Shaky Harry would still old style likker: a recipe of raw alcohol, burnt sugar, a little chewing tobacco and a touch of gunpowder. He drank like a fish back then, but couldn’t swim. Belzer’s wife, Victoria was busy meanwhile delivering the liqourice and mint birthday cake she had ordered from Heaven, Custard & Co. in town.

With a rack of the legendary L’olonnaise Pirate ribs, salade couler and pomme frites due on the next wind I set about reacquainting myself with the distant family. What a house of horrors! Falling out of the ugly tree they’d hit every branch on the way down.
Most had the unfortunate blessing of Belzer’s unique cleft chin and hideously dimpled and pocked carrot-nose, the wiry ginger locks and bilious complexion coupled with a personality vacuum they were yet to fill, as had he, with compensating character.

Belzer’s Gran’pa Brigadier “Solly” “Brig” Solomon sat at the head, but he was silent and hadn’t spake a word in months – he`d always been a long faced, miserable old git; even after they took his adenoids out BUT he was thoroughly sour these days: he’d been very ill for months with the dreaded mu ognob lurgy…something about a witchdoctor’s curse in Bzuzu, a rhinocerous and a set of bathroom taps.

That’s not to say the young ones weren’t stupid and recalcitrant as well as bloody ugly; not to say their mouths weren’t working overtime – they bickered and shrieked like gulls about a bag of chips, swore like troopers and upon the food’s arrival fought like scurvy mongrels over each others repasts. I ordered another Lavagulan while Belzer regaled me with more tales of his time in the Carrot Valley. By the time the ribs arrived I was on my fourth glass and Belzer on his sixth. And justly so, the delinquents were in complete uproar.

Suddenly!
The table exploded – the food started to fly.
And that’s when Brigadier Solomon forced himself to his feet like a broken robot and promptly collapsed face first onto his Texas Style Chicken Armadillo’s: alternating layers of bacon and cheese sliced into laminated chicken breasts soaked in the latest chef’s effluent.
Again and Suddenly!
Everything stopped. Silence.
“At last!” I thought to myself as the paramedics lifted the Brig from his dinner “Some peace and quiet.” But for a few whispers the celebrations were over. As Brigadier Solomon rolled by I couldn’t help looking into his empty eyes, frozen with fear, thinking to myself  “…he’s a gonner this time; six foot one by three and a half, white, chrome furniture, with the Union Jack”. Looking askance at the oikish children Belzer whispered into my ear, “It’s been a long time coming Charlie, but the old buzzard’ll probably make it through for another month of misery…’nother whiskey?”
“Yes, why not?” I gazed around at everyone’s half finished meals and said nothing at all: the blaggards at the table next to us had accepted from the waitress and were stuffing into their eager mouths between fits of laughter and plastic glasses of cheap wine  Belzer’s liquorice and mint birthday cake.

Ah, Hello again and greetings!
Apologies to our regular readers for the absence in coffin related news but I have been off in the primeval swamps taking time out to learn the burial and preservation techniques of the Nib-Nab peoples in Gamibya. The Nib-Nabs use the heated blood of the Arachnocampa fungus gnat intravenously blown into the bloodstream through a finely sharpened micro bamboo to preserve their recently deceased and the results are bright green flourescent glowing cadavers which they hang like strange insectoid coccoons from the trees around their camps. It was a very very interesting trip.
I’m wondering if any of my future clients might want a perspex casket and the Nib-Nab treatment?

Cheers,
Charlie Underwood

Back in ’68 I attended a funeral for a friend, as I had hand made an exquisite, pearlescent white casket for his deceased daughter Angelina. I had spent sometime hand crafting a carriage of the finest calibre, purple silk lined – scented and decorated with frangipani, for her passing into a better world.

Her untimely end was a tragedy, an utter tragedy, and that’s a story in itself and one to rival that of Shakespeare’s Juliet and no less sorrowfull – it seemed as though a river of tears were cried on this day…

After the sorrow of the service, I said my goodbyes, made my way back to my car, and journeying home decided to stop for a stiff drink, a highball, or maybe an aged Islay Lagavulin at the Nobody Inn in Diddiscombleigh.

I set my self up in the saloon, ordered a double and was about to light a cuban cigar when I noticed, hanging upon the finial of the chair one of the strangest hats I had ever witnessed. I was about to pick it up when a disheveled and curled up old man came bowling in from the public bar, fixed me with a steely eye, and grinned a sly tombstone filled excuse for a smile revealing as he did, his amber teeth be-streaked with tobacco, tar and a dark, foaming stout.

“Oh, is that your hat?” I asked peevishly…

The Stranger:
“Yea… it is, most certainly, mine…”

Charlie Underwood:
“I could never wear a hat like that. It’s rather strange, is it a…”

The Stranger:
“Ha, Well I gotta mustard yellow broad brim top hat but it ain’t fit for public consumption…”

Charlie Underwood:
“Well I`ll tell you about my old hat…

The Stranger:
“Wait, I’ll tell yer ’bout mine first, you see,

“Once I had a hat for a whole twenty years; a trilby in style, light tanned felt, with white striped band; with a blue feather, a peacocks feather!
I loved that hat `twas my pride and joy I tell ya!

When I bought it I run out inta the road, turned it upside down and pushed out the creases so as it had a nice tall, rounded top, like a kind of derby hat, then threw it on the dust and stamped on it several…ripped the band off…any good hat needs some serious wear and tear, dontcha think ? You have to kick it up and down the road, till it just lays there lookin` all furtive and ready for the wearing….”

I looked down and observed The Stranger’s misshapen boots, they were obviously the Family Boots, passed from father to son and so on, and so on – ad infinitum – well, or so I thought. THEN, he suddenly grabbed my wrist, took hold of my cigar, sucked on it like a drowning man, exhaled a cloud of thick dirty smoke and continued with his story….

“Anyways the salesman well he thought I was as mad as a box of frogs and so did my dear old mother. She HATED it. Hated it with the vengeance of a pygmy! Anyway after around twenty years a-wearing the old treasure she offered me a new wheelbarrow and a hundred pounds for the hat, so figurin’ I could use the barrow and drink the rest I gave in and took the dough – I was fair skint back then I tell you’s.

“…” I couldnt get a word in edgeways…

Anyways, long after the shine o’ the coin had gone from my pocket I was in the attic huntin mice when I discovers she never threw it out and next day I figured to get that hat back out of the attic, out of the dusty old loft. Needless, it was like meeting an old friend from way back.

I sipped my Lagavulin, considered the wasted stump of my cigar and wondered exactly when, or if the stranger had ever, or last encountered a warm bath or shower.

Well, time goes by and she caught me out wearing it around town one day and she threatened to cut it in two, she was on fire about it, especially after the deal with the moolah. I pleaded and pleaded like a convicted man waitin for the gallows, pleaded for the hat`s life; got down on my knees like a preacher. BUT…..

She was ADMANT!
The hat had to go.
“BUT What about Lars?” I asked;

He`d always been one to love that hat, liked the tattered brim and the dogteeth pattern on the lining. I mean it had a hatmaker stamp an’ all from up town in London. Even offered me his favourite sow for it too! Finally after I was yelling like the devil for an hour, cussing and shouting profanities, about saving the hats life we struck ourselves a deal: I didn’t forfeit the money, Lars became the sole beneficiary, took the hat back to his lodgings and everyone was HAPPY, dontcha know.

He drained his handle of stout and unceremoniously dumped it onto the bar, banging it three times like a judge his gavel…
“Nobby…?” He howled like an old dog bayin at the moon; “Nobby..more stout Nobby!”

Few years passed by and I hadn`t seen old Lars for awhile and I`d never come across another hat that I really liked, hats were disappearing. Sometimes I thought it might be the aliens or even the wolves out on Bodmin….but people started worrying about their hair and other crazy modernistic stuff like that. Lars said he was going back to Canada were things were “hunky dory”.

AS I heard it, his mother picked him up from the railroad station…

“Where did you get that disgusting hat?” She asked.

Old tightlipped Lars; he never even gave her the courtesy of an answer.
And, SHE, the sly old fox never said nothing else about it.
No matter – he was gonna wear that hat of mine come rain or shine.

SO winter comes along and with it the evenings drawing in. The snow started in to settling on the top of the mountain and the creek with a thin veil of ice on its surface, so, Shaky Harry brought the medicine round and up from the still, and soon, soon after on the last January weekend Willow George Blackfeet, the half-indian, brought the lumber for the range and the fire. Things were startin’ to look mighty fine..but then the Devil played his hand so to speak.

Well you see, in the winter it was mighty hard to keep a hand steady at the mill and day previous Lars cuts his hand in the small bandsaw at the mill. God did that hurt him bad, badder than a shot wound so he leaves that hat at home thinking he just couldn’t see past the brim, nor adjust it properly one handed, and he sure dint wanta go losing a whole hand `specially not least in the cold season. It was looking just like a piece of old gristle, chewed up and nasty, like a piece of tough fat that even the old dog Byron wouldn’t try an’ eat.

Anyway Lars comes back home that night, expectin’ pork and beans ready on the table and Mama in the rocking chair, BUT , he only smleed the whiff of something queer!

“Oh sweet jesus and son…of…a…bitch; Mother what have you done?” he whispered to the God up in the ceiling and sat right on down and tried to arm himself up with the sharp knife and a spoon.
He was hellish hungry, like a coyote drunk-wild on the trail of a wholesome, one legged turkey.
…there it was, smoking gently, toasting like a piglet, gently, over the fire – the HAT!

He was a proper good ole mate though cause, you know, no matter how damn hungry and famished with the cold he was, he just couldn`t bring himself down to eat it though, not like his sour old Mother, with her lips smacking and tuckin` right in with a big grin on her face. And that’s how I came to get this new ‘un’ see…it was a brand spanker and awful fine back in the day…

…he snapped up the dirty old thing, pulled it down over his ears and passed out, albeit, in a very, casual and dusty way beside the roaring fire…