Legends of the Bootheel Light: Chapter One
by Karen Raine and Peggy Ward
 The following narrative is not a myth or legend but actual history. I was born Karen Sue Burgess in the Bootheel of Missouri, raised in the city of Arbyrd. My father
was Charles Burgess. He had several nicknames.Lots of folks called him Charlie, Sonny, or Jam Up. Charlie was part Cherokee, had black hair and reddish-toned copper skin. His
grandparents lived near the St. Francis River in Missouri’s early days when those who were Indian chose not to say so for fear of having to leave. Charlie Burgess didn’t say much, but when he did, he spoke the truth.
He worked on a farm for Marvin Layne and, later, Marvin’s son Donnis. The Laynes farmed the land where the ghost light appears and lived in a farmhouse nearby. My father plowed the fields all around that area and worked for the Laynes during most of his working years. He said once while he was plowing late at night, the Light lit up on the end of his tractor. Sometimes it would follow in behind his tractor as he was driving it down the road back to the Layne’s farm house at the end of the day.
Before I was born, my mother and father, while newly married, lived in a sharecropper’s house near a bridge out where the light appears. My brother, their first-born son, was born in the house but did not live due to arriving before my father could locate and return with a doctor.
My mother, Dorothy Jane Bell, was also part Indian. Her grandmother, Bertie Lamastus, was half Cherokee and had lived and raised most of her children in the area. Though some may find it hard to believe, my mother was a visionary who foretold her own death. I do not remember my mother, as she died before I was two years old. These events were told to me by several different family members. They say my mother once heard a knock at the door of the little sharecropper’s house out there where they lived one night. She opened it up and there stood my grandfather. She said, “Charles, it’s Chalmer.” Only thing, it was after my grandfather had gotten killed in a car wreck. They say she also had a vision of three caskets overhead in the sky. Two were closed, and the last was open. Not long afterwards, there were three consecutive deaths in our family, the last being my mother’s, who died at the age of twenty-five. She also told of seeing Jesus kneeling in a field out there.
Growing up, my recollections of the light were mostly of the hanging tree. I had heard many hair-raising tales about this tree. When my brother and I were very small, I recall being dropped off near this tree, like Hansel and Gretel, by older fun seekers apparently trying to get their kicks out of scaring us to death.I also have a vague memory of waiting with someone for my father to come pick us up. We were really scared and there was a burnt tree standing in a fence row nearby.
Karen Raine and Peggy Ward write from the Missouri Bootheel. They are co-authors of Legends of the Bootheel Light, a work in progress. Chapter One, above, is by Karen Raine.
Copyright © 2007. Do not reproduce without permission. |