I don't know how many of you remember Hubert Jackson, but he sure was an "odd duck!" Most people have their "hang-ups," but I've never met anyone with a fetish like Hubert's. You see, he was a "Snake Worshiper." When I use this term, I don't mean he sorta liked the company of a couple of garter snakes...He liked ALL SNAKES...even the poisonous kind, and the "more the merrier!" It's been said that he'd been bitten so many times in his life he had actually developed an immunity to most of their poisons.
Hubert lived in Hillside, Kentucky. Hillside is not a town, it's actually little more than a neighborhood....a group of people mostly kin to each other either by blood or by marriage. Most of the people who lived there (and still do) were descendants of descendants of Hillside. When the strip mines moved some of the land around, it swallowed a large portion of Hillside and a lot of the families there simply moved away for one reason or another. This left Hillside as sort of a suburb of Powderly. The unofficial population out there, depending on where you drew the boundaries, was about 50. That meant there were 49 "normal people" and Hubert.
When I knew Hubert (if anyone actually "knew" Hubert) he was by most standards an old man. He always wore Duck Bill bib overalls, leather boots and had snow white shoulder length hair (usually unkempt...no, make that ALWAYS UNKEMPT!) and a long white beard that upon first glance resembled Santa Claus in the "off season." When Hubert came to town, the phones at the dispatcher's office would ring off the wall. Seems like a lot of people in Central City didn't care much for having a guy walking down their street "kissing a snake" while several more snakes crawled in and out of his pockets and under the warmth of the "bib" on his overalls. This included the policemen who refused to get within ten feet of him. They simply escorted him back out of the city limits by following him in their cruiser about twenty five feet behind him.
When ol' Hubert died a few years ago of natural causes brought on by old age, no one would go into his home immediately to retrieve his body because they knew there were snakes crawlin' all over the place. I never heard how they actually got him out or what happened to his house after his death. Now that I've introduced you to Hubert, let's talk about where the Old Morehead Cemetery comes into play.
I'll bet 95% of you reading this know about the Old Morehead Cemetery. In later years some of the kids renamed it the Belle Witch Cemetery (after a famous ghost in Tennessee). The Morehead Cemetery was behind the Old Morehead Church and both were located on Old Highway 62 between Central City and Powderly. Once the new 62 was built, Old 62 was pretty much left to the strip mines. They stripped the land on both sides of the road clear to Powderly and about the only thing left out there was the old church and cemetery. It was very dark and "deserted" and that made it Muhlenberg County's most popular place for "parkers!"
Most of the kids in the newer generation (30 & under) probably don't know too much about "parkers." Shoot, most of 'em have their own places by the time they're seventeen years old. Us "Old Geezers" sure know about "parkers" though. In our heyday, there were three or four popular parking places around town. They were the Old Morehead Cemetery, Devil's Lake and Batsel's Slaughterhouse (talk about a romantic place).
Devil's lake was for the more "rookie" type parkers since it was so close to town. It was usually crowded out there and the police came by pretty often. Since I dated the Sheriff's daughter in high school, I didn't care for Devil's Lake too much. Batsel's Slaughterhouse was out off of Stringtown Road and it's name pretty much describes the business that transpired there. It was pretty tough getting "romantic" with a bunch of cows mooing their last "moo" and pigs squealing all night...not to mention the frequent gun shots. Only "seasoned" parkers went there.
By far, the Old Morehead Cemetery was the most popular parking place. There were gravel roads turning off of gravel roads...lots of places to park and since the elevation was higher out there, getting WLS on the radio was a breeze. Morehead Cemetery was divided into two sections.
Old Graves and Newer Graves. The old graves were in the very back and some of them were actually sarcophaguses above ground. The only time you went to the older section was "on foot" and with lots of friends. It was spookier than heck back there, so we usually reserved that section for holidays like Halloween! It was a lot more romantic up by the newer graves (and a whole lot less scary).
Morehead Cemetery was about a mile from Hillside as a crow flies (or cross-country) from Hillside. In those days there wasn't any public road that connected them (at least that I was aware of) but one could easily walk one of the many paths from one spot to the other.
On a cloudy early summer Friday Night, my girl friend and I decided to go do some "star gazing" out at Morehead Cemetery. When you turned off of the gravel road leading into the new section of the cemetery and go about 100 yards, there was a "turn-around" area to the left. It was perfect for parking because it was gravel and was just large enough to fit a 1960 Chevrolet Impala, which I happened to be driving that night (Thanks Dad & Mom). This particular parking spot was my favorite because it was "buffered" on each side by some honeysuckle that not only offered privacy but also smelled good in the summer. The aroma of these honeysuckle flowers also was repulsive to mosquitoes which was important when you don't have air conditioning in eighty degree heat. I suppose the only "negative" about this spot was that when you pulled in, it was on sort of a "slightly uphill" grade and the grave directly in front of you was always "tended" and always looked freshly dug. Because of the angle the headlights hit it, it always looked "open," even though the topsoil was only about 3" below the surface of the surrounding ground. The great thing about this spot was the fact that other cars couldn't come at you from that direction so you weren't always "troubled" with having to turn on your headlights to let them know you were there.
This particular night, for some reason, I was pretty tired. I was in the mood for a good "neck rub" and listening to WLS. My girl (whom for the sake of innocence will remain unnamed here) was kind enough to rub my neck but she was uneasy about the surroundings, even though we'd been in that same spot several times before. Only thing was, this was summer and the windows were down and we were usually out there in winter with the windows up and the doors locked.
I was thououghly enjoying my "neck rub" and the corresponding music when my girl friend said "I believe I heard something outside." "Nah, you're just imagining things," I assured her, "there's nothin' out there...you don't have to worry about these people, they're dead!" I don't believe this explanation comforted her because she kept saying she heard something. Finally, in exasperation I sat up and reached over to the headlight switch and flipped the lights on!
Remember the scene in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" when the lady was taking a shower at the Bates Motel and ol' Norman Bates came in and began stabbing her....remember the music? That's the sound I heard (along with my date's screaming) when the lights came on and there, about 6' in front of the car stood ol' Hubert Jackson with what looked like a 10' Boa Constrictor wrapped around his neck. He didn't even flinch, he just "squinted" in the glare of the headlights. Apparently he was out collecting some more snakes for his family.
Hubert and I both got a good education that night. I learned how fast I could crank a car, back it up and "get outa Dodge," while Hubert learned how it felt to be pelted with number six gravel! We got out of the cemetery headed back to the main highway and finally back to Central City for a Coke. After we collected our thoughts and settled down, I suggested going out to the "Slaughterhouse" but she wouldn't have it.
That was not my last trip to the Old Morehead Cemetery but it certainly was my most memorable one. When my kids were small, I've told this story to them countless times around a campfire. They never got tired of it and they relished my telling it to some of their new friends.
The road to Morehead is pretty much gone now. You can still get out there from new 62 but I wouldn't attempt it in a new car or in the winter.
The old cemetery still looks pretty much today as it did then but there hasn't been many "new" graves dug out there recently and the "new" section is starting to look like the "old" section. When I was a Scoutmaster several years ago, I took some of the boys out there on Halloween Eve. We even sent some guys out with some "props" to look like ghosts complete with amplified "spook" sounds. It even scared them for a little while but it always scared them more when I would sit around a campfire and tell them the story of Ol' Hubert.
My Granddaughters are getting of age to hear it now.....maybe next year!
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