The Funeral of Josiah Jones

Michael Gray

It was the year 1902 and Chattanooga’s Main Street was bounded by wooden sidewalks, from Central to Broad. For all of those five blocks, people lined the street two deep. Men and women, young boys and girls alike, stood still, waiting and watching, I don’t know how many, but it sure seemed the whole population of Chattanooga had turned out, the silence broken only by an occasional whisper or the scuffing of child’s foot. But even that stopped when Josiah’s gray horse, rider-less, the boots turned upside down in the stirrups and led by his youngest son marched down the street. The horse’s head jerked nervously testing the bridle and bit, snorting on each twist when it reached the end of his freedom. The anxious horse was followed by a hearse drawn by two black horses and behind that the family of Josiah, some hundred strong came walking, every single one dressed in black. As the family passed the crowd peeled away and followed behind and by the time the procession reached Market Street there were a full five hundred strong, marching silent down the street.

I suppose it should have come as no surprise, the numbers of people that lined the street, Josiah was after all a fiddler of some reputation and had played at dances in county after county, some as far away as the state capital. Many a romance had been launched, weddings planned and truth be told a few babies owed their start to Josiah’s fiddle music. When there was a fiddle throw down it wasn’t considered a contest unless Josiah was there scratching out some old time song. There was only a handful in the whole state who could say they had ever beaten Josiah Jones and amongst those not a one could say they had done it more than once.

It was no surprise either as the hearse reached the corner of Market and Main when a fiddler started playing a slow, mournful, requiem. The player increased the tempo, a child started tapped her feet only to be chastised by her mother, then another and another until the boardwalk pounded with the sound of flatfooting. Even Josiah’s family joined in the revelry, feet beating out the tune in the dusty street. The parade stopped its forward progress in the vicinity of Williams Street and all propriety was lost as the crowd spilled into the street, the fiddler’s pulse increased and the smiles of the people remembering the good times, erased the sadness of Josiah’s passing. Even Dolly, Josiah’s wife held hands with her granddaughter as they innocently swayed in time with the music.

Suddenly the back doors of the hearse flung open, the casket slid out, settling into the middle of the street behind the hearse. The crowd went silent and the fiddle stopped. The casket lid sailed to the side and Josiah Jones himself jumped out, walking over to the fiddle player he reached out and took the instrument from his hands, as if to say let me show you how and as he started into playing the party started again, Josiah himself dancing a jig as he played.

There are some who were there that day who swear that Josiah was just in a coma, that the fiddle music, the dancing, and the crowd woke him up. But there are others, some who I trust, who tell me they weren’t surprised at all, if there is an instrument that can raise the dead, it would be a fiddle.

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