Before we get to today’s short post, here’s what the business was in the other side of the building housing McClain Furniture Store, founded 1905:
We all thought it was funny and couldn’t quite figure it all out. Maybe Greg would like to enlighten us as to why a furniture store and embalming company would occupy the same building and why there was just an embalming company to begin with, rather than a full fledged funeral home. Care to do so Greg? Enquiring minds want to know. I sure do, anyway.
When we left downtown Cotter, we went down by the White River. It was a really interesting spot, and we spent some time there that late Sunday afternoon.
We took a lot of photos, three of which I’ll show you today, but more next time. This first one is of the three Andrews brothers congregated to share stories about climbing the steep mountain just across the river from where we were on the west side.
Tom, as you can see, “borrowed” my old scooter that Dickie used on the trip as they had a quiet moment together.
However, as was the case the entire trip, in the next photo we see Dickie & Jimmy in a heated discussion – with constantly differing opinions – about where something or other occurred. More about that next time, along the river side.
They were so funny! I don’t think they agreed on one thing. Or maybe just one, at the most.
One last photo before I go today. I know it’s been a long time, so I don’t know if you remember how I started this entire series last November. (See here.) (Yikes, Dee Ann, are you that slow and long-winded in your writing?! Good grief!) Cotter nowadays refers to itself as the trout fishing capital of the USA, and from what we saw and experienced, it sure enough is!
We were down by the river about an hour or so, I suppose, and watched flat boat after flat boat come in off the river loaded down with fish – Rainbow trout, German trout, speckled trout . . . all kinds of trout. And all of them had caught their limits within an hour or two! Honest! Wow!
There are all kinds of cabins, lodges & cabins, rentals, state parks, on & on around Cotter where even a less than avid fisherman can go stay, rent a boat, catch his/her (I LOVE to fish for trout – when I can catch them) trout limit and then have a guide clean them, cook them and serve you and all your guests for either lunch or dinner, depending on how early you get out on the river.
The White River is stocked regularly, and I don’t feel bad for the fish (very much liking fresh fried Rainbow trout!!). Tom is not a fisherman at all, but I would really love to go back up there one of these days and partake of such feasts for two or three day.
I’ll close for today by showing one lady I took a photo of as she showed me one of she and her husband’s limit of trout they had caught over just the hour and a half before!! They came over nearly every weekend, she said, to catch trout to eat back at home fried (and froze the rest). If we had such in the big creek down behind our house here, I would think that I was in trout heaven!! Behold:
Mmmmm, Mmmmm!! Boy, that looks like good eatin’!!
That’s it for today, but there’s plenty more good stuff to come next time, when we resume our Andrews memories tour.
Cheers & many blessings to each of you today! Have a great, safe weekend!
Dee
P. S. It just dawned on me. I think I’ve figured out the answer to my own question for Greg about the embalming company/business. But I want to wait and hear his comment first, and y’all’s, as well, okay?!
Why do YOU think it was an embalming business without being either a casket company or full fledged funeral home? Comment!
Dee
Well, now you have my curiosity up as to what you figured out regarding the embalming-only company. I don’t know that much about the sport, since I am only licensed as a funeral director and not as an embalmer. But I have stayed in a Holiday Inn Express, so that makes me pretty much an expert on all things.
That said, I am less than an expert on the history of embalming in the United States other than it really “took off” during the War of Northern Aggression as so many soldiers on both sides of the Mason Dixon were being killed. Why there was an embalming business next to a furniture business? Can’t say. They don’t use the same chemicals.
These days, though, there are a number of embalmers who do just that. Embalm. Our embalmer (gifted of God, we think) does embalmings for about 20 different mortuaries. I’ve talked with many, many embalmers / funeral directors who used to do their own embalming, but these days outsource it. This became even more popular out here when the AIDS situation became prevalent. People who once did embalmings would rather pay someone else to take the risk. With AIDS, Hepatitis, and MRSA, it’s a potentially dangerous job.
So many back in 19905 the McClains did embalming for more than one mortuary. Or maybe they supplied the chemicals and equipment for embalming to other mortuaries. My guess is in a town the size of Cotter, there was only one mortuary.
For what it’s worth….
The above is NOT my final answer.
After throwing this question out to a co-worker / funeral director as we were trying to find our way to a residence Friday evening to pick up a body, he told me around the turn of the century, funeral directors were called “furnishers” because they furnished everything a family needed for the funeral of a loved one. Because many of them built their own caskets, they also built furniture when the funeral business was slow, and so the relationship between funeral directors and furniture stores was a very close one. He told me this was a part of a class he took on the history and sociology of dying and death in America.
So I will go with Mark’s answer. For $1,000,000. Thank you.
I’m sure Greg has it nailed. But let me tell you about this guy in my home town. It was said he used embalming fluid to preserve meat for sale. (He was a meat cutter, I think, in a grocery store.) Not sure, but I think he got in some trouble!
I would think if one was “dead tired” one could avail themselves of a comfy couch in the Furniture store or if they were really dead tired, well, you know.
Having no answer, I’ll not give one. The fish, though — they sound wonderful. I don’t like fishing, but I like kippers for breakfast and a good bit of trout from time to time. Dee, you can catch them. Tom and I can sit on the bank, read our books, and get ready to get them shortly after they land.
Patrick: I think you should add that you and Tom would be ready to get them shortly after they are CLEANED!
I don’t know about the embalmer and furniture store, Greg and his friends answer sound right on.
I do know that it’s hard to be fresh fish. Mmmm!
Love your posts about the trip!!