Kicking "corpse" in body bag shocks funeral home

What if they thought you were dead--so dead they had zipped you up in a body bag and carted you to a funeral home for embalming--but you were still alive?

Growing up, I remember as a boy all those Edgar Allan Poe movies about premature burial (meaning interment of people they thought had died, but they hadn't really). Instead those supposedly dead men and women still had beating hearts, but for some reason coroners or whoever couldn't detect them. So the poor unfortunate souls were put in coffins and laid to rest in graves.

In the Poe movies, you'd get a ghastly inside glimpse of those buried-alive folks scratching and clawing at the inside of their coffins, breathing what little precious air they had left to breathe, screaming and crying--all to no avail.

Horror upon grisly horrors.

And now a 78-year-old man in Lexington, Mississippi came "within a pea" (as my grandmother used to say) of suffering the same unthinkable fate.

After a coroner pronounced Walter Williams dead a few nights ago, his nephew told ABC affiliate WAPT that he stood there and watched the funeral home people zip Williams up in a body bag.

Whereupon a thought-to-be-dead Mr. Williams was taken to a place that specializes in taking care of the dead.

But just before they began embalming him, someone detected a kicking inside the body bag.

Imagine what the embalmers thought!

"He was not dead, long story short," the funeral home manager said.

So why was the man (shown in the picture accompanying this blog post) pronounced dead in the first place? A coroner surmises that his pacemaker may have shut down temporarily (stopping his heart) when he examined Williams and made the call.

So they put Mr. Williams in that body bag, and somewhere between where he "died" and the funeral home, the pacemaker restarted.

"It was a miraculous moment," said the coroner, who is an elected official and not a medical doctor. "Never in my life have I seen anything like it."

Williams' family members rejoiced, of course, and his story made national news.

Nagging, haunting question: How many others (still alive) have been embalmed and buried?

By the way, click here for a narrator's reading of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Premature Burial."

Rattlesnake gets the best of man of God

When will those snake-handling preachers ever learn?

Another one died a few days ago in backwoods Kentucky after being bitten by a rattlesnake.

He had handled the deadly serpent at his church-- Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name in Middlesboro, Ky.

The angry snake sank its fangs into him during the church service, but preacher Jamie Coots refused medical treatment, declaring that his life was in God’s hands.

He went home and declined quickly.

The rattlesnake’s venom quickly did its thing, and when an ambulance crew arrived and tried to treat him, Coots—gradually losing consciousness—refused their help.

When the medical crew returned to his home about an hour later, the Pentecostal minister was dead.

The snake that bit him on the hand had been handled many times previously, over several months, by Coots and others at the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name. This according to Coots’ son, Cody Coots: "It's been carried hundreds of times, handled all kinds of times but now when it's your time to go, it's just your time to go."

What a painful, horrible way to leave this world—and all because of a verse in the Bible (Mark 16:18) that asserts (some fundamentalist preachers fervently believe) that if you handle deadly serpents, God will protect you from being hurt.

It’s mind boggling that snake-handling preachers—many of them in the Southern Appalachian Mountains—continue tempting the Almighty.

ABC News reported that about poisonous snakes are used in about 125 churches in America every day.

Unbelievable!

On a more positive note, I heard an interesting sermon yesterday. Seems, according to Rob Sweet, teaching pastor at Grace Fellowship Church in Johnson City, Tenn., that all of us are confronted with what he calls an “ever-present gap which leads us to a never-ending pursuit.”

A pursuit of what?

A pursuit toward closing the gap that hinders the joy and fulfillment of our loving and understanding Jesus. The gap is there because of junk or misdeeds we’ve committed in our past. But we have to get beyond all that, forget what lies behind and focus on having a deeper, more meaningful relationship with Jesus.

We need to press on toward the positive. We need to keep striving and pursuing that which is Holy and good and right.

And we don’t need to be handling rattlesnakes to underscore our faith.

Our book due out in a few months

I've blogged about this before but finally I believe it's going to happen.

I'm about to become an author (more accurately, a co-author) of a published book.

Our novel is titled "Fish Springs: Below the Surface" and you can click here for our teaser website.

It's a teaser site because "Fish Springs" won't actually be available on Amazon or in book stores till June 1, 2014.

It's also possible that it'll be made into a TV movie. But more about that in the coming months.

"Fish Springs" (named after the remote mountain community in East Tennessee where my Dad was born and raised) has been a long time coming. A lot of writing, rewriting, writing, rewriting (you get the idea).

It will be published by Ingalls Publishing Group--based in the N.C. High Country. Thank you, Bob and Barbara Ingalls for publishing our novel! Heartfelt appreciation, too, to Ingalls senior editor Judy Geary for taking a diamond in the rough (my opinion) and helping make it sparkle.

So this blog post is just an early shout-out from yours truly and my coauthor, Michael Manuel.

Stay tuned for more information.

Don't shoot a police dog in South Carolina

You better not shoot and kill a police dog in South Carolina.

Not convinced?

Ask the 24-year-old man who recently pleaded guilty in Columbia, S.C., to five counts of attempted murder (on police officers who pursued him for nine hours). He also pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful killing of a police dog.

He escaped going to trial and risking a sentence of life in prison without parole.

But now the dog killer has to do 35 miserable years in prison. They should hold him in his cell on a tight leash.

Seems that during the police pursuit of the gutless, heartless dog killer, Fargo (the police dog) bit him and tried to hold on to him.

Fargo was a tough, determined, fearless dog—devoted to helping protect the public—but even he could not sustain two gunshots.

And what did the thoroughly useless, soulless piece of human flesh say about Fargo when (sniveling) he faced the judge who sentenced him?

“Being bit by a dog, I did freak out and I did shoot at the dog. I just ask that you accept my apology. It was never my intention to go out that night and shoot at officers and have a shootout.”

And then there’s the sad, intriguing story about a dog gunned down at a residence in Rock Hill, S.C., on New Year’s night.

And guess who did the gunning down?

A police officer.

I wasn’t there, so I don’t know exactly what happened.

But it appears to be a he said/they said situation.

The “he” (the police officer) said he responded to a call that evening of some sort of disturbance/loud noise at a private residence.

The officer said he walked around to the back yard because that’s where he thought the loud music was coming from.

In his defense, I’ll bet it was dark back there and the officer was tense.

Two pit bulls charged toward him, he wrote in his report. One of the dogs ran away from him when he began yelling, he wrote, but the other canine charged him, causing him to shoot it twice.

People at the New Year’s Eve party at that house then became upset and started yelling, and the officer became even tenser. He called for backup.

Picture the scene.

Rocky, the 85-pound red nosed, loveable pit bull that had been shot, is yelping and squalling and writhing in pain from his gunshot wounds. He is clinging to life. People are kneeling next to the dog—petting it, whispering words of encouragement for it, praying for it.

And some are downright angry that the dog had been shot in the first place. They put down their champagne and pause in their merriment and give the police the evil eye.

“I think the officer was afraid that he would get bit,” one man there that night said. “He could’ve reacted a whole lot different.”

Family and friends scooped Rocky up and rushed him to a veterinarian in Charlotte. But it was to no avail. Rocky, severely wounded, was too far gone. He had to be euthanized.

His owner and the family are devastated.

How much so?

“I would have taken the bullet for this dog,” said the heartsick owner, who buried Rocky in his backyard. “My dog did the right thing.

“I would just like see him stop shooting animals,” he said about the officer. “I’m sure he’s saved more lives than he’s taken, but this was a life that did not need to be taken.”

Meanwhile, the police say they regret what happened but that the officer had no choice.

An executive officer in the department defends what the officer did that tragic night: “He (the shooter) feels bad about it. We don’t want to (shoot dogs), but our officers don’t want to get hurt deciding if the dogs will bite or not. We don’t let dogs bite us.”

I have a feeling this isn’t the end of this sad dog story. But however it ultimately plays out, that family will never get over having their dog shot in cold blood.

By Rock Hill’s finest, no less.

Rest in peace, Rocky.

Note: Some material from this blog post came from stories published in early January 2014 in The (Rock Hill, S.C.) Herald and The Charlotte Observer.

Jesus and Dirty Harry

Random thoughts about Christmas:

Parking lots incredibly jammed.

Ridiculously long lines in all the stores.

Sales clerks haggard and overworked and tired of answering stupid questions.

Cashiers numb with exhaustion. Sick of ringing people up or dealing with their unswipeable cards.

People everywhere shopping, and when they’re not, they’re eating or punching numbers on a small screen.

Husbands in tow while their wives or girlfriends spend all their money.

Chirpy Salvation Army bell ringers greeting you with “Merry Christmas!”

Fat people everywhere. Fat people eating as they shop or work their phones or talk. So fat, some of them, that they more wobble than walk.

Wide-eyed, bothersome, money-hungry people trying to flag you down from their kiosks in malls.

Massages--$90 for 45 minutes.

Men salivating in Victoria’s Secret.

Knife peddlers.

Fragrance peddlers.

Okay, enough of the dreariness or mundaneness of this special season.

So easy to forget the true meaning, as they say, of Christmas.

Christmas marks the birthday of Jesus, the Son of Man, sent by God, and born in a lowly manger in a smelly stable in Bethlehem, to rescue all of us.

What an unlikely beginning!

Everyone on the planet wanted then, and still craves today, access to God. Jesus, who shared a barn at his birth with horses or camels or whatever other livestock they had 2,000 years ago, is our open access. The Son of Man is the great key to making our life complete and full of joy—not only on this Earth but also in Eternity.

Dirty Harry said “Make my day.”

Jesus said (I’m paraphrasing) “Make my day by coming to me. And in return, I’ll give you the promise of Eternal Life.”

Jesus—the great, stunning, empowered rescuer. The one and only savior of humanity.

A Christmas song captures the magic of his birth and life:

“Fall on your knees.

“Oh hear the angel voices!

“Oh night divine.

Oh night when Christ was born!”

Lest we forget what Christmas is REALLY about.

Merry Christmas, brothers and sisters, daughters and sons, mothers and dads.

Dr. Jacob Mbuga Matovu

We said good-bye a few days ago to my good friend, Jacob Matovu. He fought hard the last few years to stay alive, but finally, on Nov. 16, 2013, could fight no longer.

As he lay dying in Watauga Medical Center in Boone, N.C., I am told he had a priest and his family by his side. He was serenaded by the music of Celine Dion and Reba McIntyre.

Not a bad way to go out of this world.

I had visited him a few days earlier in ICU and he squeezed my hand, mumbling "Hello Larry."

Jacob was from Uganda, Africa. He had taught mass communication at Appalachian State University for 25 years before retiring in 2010.

He and I met in the graduate program at the University of Iowa.

Ironic how it works out.

He went to school and I connected with him in cold, snowy Iowa. I reconnected with him several years ago in cold, snowy Boone.

These are some of the things I remember about Jacob:

1. When I arrived in Iowa in 1981, I knew not a soul in the entire state, save for Ken Starck (previously at the University of South Carolina where I earned a master's degree). Ken, always a good friend/colleague, had become director of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the UI. It was scary and unsettling being way out there in the Midwest--pretty much all alone with no family. And then I happened upon Jacob. If he could live and work in Iowa--so many thousands of miles away from his family and loved ones in Uganda--so could I!

2. Jacob once presented a research paper on African drums as a form of mass communication. It was part of his work toward his Ph.D. I sat there entranced as he spoke about something I knew absolutely nothing about. (I had heard drums beating in Tarzan movies years earlier, but Jacob definitely expanded my understanding of this vital form of communicating on the African continent.)

3. Jacob loved to eat. He shared many meals with my family in nearby Tennessee. My Dad (who passed away in January 2012) had never met anyone from Africa, and he was especially intrigued by Jacob's stories. Dad knew a bit about the vicious Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, and he always wanted to know more. Jacob obliged, and Dad loved it.

4. Jacob once took a group of Appalachian State University students with him for a "study abroad" experience in Uganda. He wanted me very much to join the group and teach journalism in his home country, but I declined, saying: "What on earth would they think of a little white man in Uganda?" Jacob's response: "They would love you, Larry."

5. Jacob loved his family, his homeland of Uganda and his church (St. Luke's Episcopal) in Boone. And that's where he was laid to rest last week--just a few feet from the church's main entrance. It was cold and windy that day, but it seemed somehow fitting. I met him in the cold. We buried him in the cold. In the background, maybe a mile or two away, a marching band played merrily. It was "game day" for the ASU football team. My friend from Uganda would have smiled at the incongruency of saying last words over his burial site while the band played on.

Farewell, Jacob Mbuga Matovu. I will never forget you.

What happens to our time?

I'm retired now (have been for several months) but life keeps me busy. So where does the time go? A chunk of it is gobbled up by shopping.

I'm talking mainly here about shopping at Walmart. Today, I visited a Walmart in Johnson City, Tenn., and confronted, as I always do, a jam-packed parking lot, exasperated, tired fellow shoppers and long lines at the checkout registers. An aside: Why is it that Walmart has a dozen-plus checkout lanes but only two or three of them are active?

Here's an attempt at documenting what you must do to buy $67 worth of groceries at the big box store. Nothing scientific here; just my personal take, based on my shopping excursion today, on getting what you want done at Walmart.

Step-by-step shopping at Walmart.

1. Get in car
2. Start car
3. Drive to Walmart
4. Find parking space (not always easy)
5. Get out of car and lock it
6. Enter store and get shopping basket
7. Take out your list (if you have one) and traverse the store (can be several blocks of walking), and get your needed items
8. Find checkout lane where line seems manageable
9. Roll your cart into that lane and wait, wait, wait… Read trashy tabloids while you wait.
10. Watch others in line ahead of you slumping and moaning and sighing in frustration, waiting for their turn at the checkout register
11. When it’s your turn, extract your items from shopping basket and put them on checkout line conveyor belt
12. Watch tired, miserable checkout person ring each item up and put in bag(s) for you
13. Scan your debit/credit card
14. Choose debit or credit. If debit, enter your secret code. If credit, sign your name. (I just scribble mine. Who cares how sloppy or neat you are?)
15. Hit “Okay” at bottom of read-out counter where you scanned your card.
16. Get your receipt (and some useless coupons for items you'll never, ever buy.)
17. Smile when tired, miserable checkout person says “Thank you and have a nice day.”
18. Put all your bagged items in shopping cart.
19. Roll/push shopping basket to your car in parking lot.
20. Unlock the car
21. Load all your bagged items into your car.
22. Start car and pull out (carefully), exiting crowded parking lot.
23. Return home.
24. Stop car. You'll inevitably have an urge to hit the bathroom!
25. Unload all your bagged items from shopping trip, and try to assure your barking dog that he'll have your attention very soon.
26. Put stuff you bought on shelves or in cabinets or in the refrigerator or wherever…
27. Sit down and say (like George Bush famously did on that aircraft carrier) “Mission accomplished!”
28. And then, of course, you have to cook or otherwise prepare the food items you purchased, do the clean up and throw away leftovers. Days later, you’ll make YET ANOTHER trip to Walmart and repeat steps 1-27 above. Long as you're breathing, steps 1-27 are repeated over and over and over…