When the lightning strikes

Five vacations ago, the big story in the local papers when we were down here was the fight between Ted Williams' children over what to do with the Splendid Splinter's recently dead body.  Williams' son, John Henry Williams, planned to have it frozen.  His daughter wanted it buried.  Most people in Red Sox Nation were on the daughter's side.  There was plenty of speculation that John Henry had other plans for the body besides saving it until a Dr Frankenstein in the future could bring it back to life,plans that would make John Henry bundles of money.  The word cloning popped up in a lot of conversations.

Sitting in the coffee shop early in the morning, five years ago today, I overheard a couple of old Red Sox fans talking it over and one of the men said:

"I wouldn't want to be John Henry, even if I win in court (He pronounces it cawt), because I don't want to be walking across a field some day when that bolt of lightning comes and finds me.  Because it doesn't matter if you get away with it now.  In time, you always wind up paying for what you done."

Comments

[Ken Muldrew]

So burying a body in a canister of liquid nitrogen is a crime against nature while burying one in an elaborate wooden box isn't? As someone who enjoys woodworking, I'd tend to argue that putting all that fine wood in the ground is much worse (as for the body, who cares? Some people even burn them and then crush up the charred bones).

[Lance]

Ken, John Henry Williams was a terribly unpopular character in Red Sox Nation. A lot of people felt that he was exploiting his father in Ted's last years and they just assumed the exploitation would continue even after Ted's death. If it had been John Henry who wanted a quiet burial in a pretty plot is a cemetery overlooking the sea and his half-sister who wanted the body stuffed and mounted and put on permanent display at Fenway Park many of the people who thought John Henry was out to make a buck on the frozen corpse would have assumed he was out to make a buck selling tickets to the cemetery and sided with the sister anyway.