Friday Mornings, Old Men and Coffee

The discussion had been about cannon, particularly, a Civil War cannon a local resident had in their front yard in a neighborhood nearby. After a somewhat heated discussion of the cannon’s technical details, the conversation had reached a lull, but the silence was broken when the former city councilman spoke.

“We saw a cannon in an attic once,” Frank said, rescuing us from our momentary daydreams. 

“Oh, yeah?” I said taking another slurp of coffee.

It was the weekly meeting of out kitchen cabinet. Presidents had cabinets, why not us? There were five of us ranging in age from seventy-one to ninety-three. We have met at our senior member’s house since the unfortunate demise of his Lincoln automobile in a traffic accident. Conversation covered a myriad of topics, some of which were discussed quite intensely. 

The speaker took a drink of his coffee, cleared his throat, and continued, “It was several years ago now when my wife and I volunteered at the Charleston Annual Home Show to be, huh…what do you call it when you show people around?”

“Docent?”

“Tour guide?”

“Tour guides. That’s what we were? We would show people around when they visited the house. We thought we would go early and get a preview of what we were to show people, and maybe we could see the caretaker. The owner of this South Battery house, like quite a few of the others, lived out of town. Actually, he owned several houses,” the retired civil engineer continued his story. 

“When Joe Riley was mayor he sold rich Yankees on the idea they could own a historic antebellum house in Charleston if they would simply restore it. South of Broad Street went from a near slum to a destination for readers of Travel+Leisure  magazine,” I added.

He continued, slightly perturbed by my interruption, “We did arrive early and found the caretaker. He was very helpful and showed us around and described things in that distinct Charleston accent.  It was either a three or four story house. I don’t remember. It was years ago. I don’t remember if it was the top floor or the attic. But it was probably the top floor since most of the houses near White Point Gardens have relatively flat roofs… It was the top floor. I remember now, because the caretaker unlocked the door to enter a small room. It was obviously not lived-in and probably used for storage. The object in the middle of the room immediately caught my eye.” The speaker paused, took a bite of the pumpkin bread in front of him and followed it with a gulp of coffee. He deftly brushed the crumbs from the corners of his mouth before continuing. 

“Right in the middle of the room was a cannon. Just the barrel, mind you. It must have been seven or eight feet long. I couldn’t believe it. It must have weighed half a ton. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would have a cannon in their house. How would they have gotten it up the stairs?” the former member of the Army Corps of Engineers continued.

“How did they get it up the stairs?” our host wanted to know.

“What about the stairs?” the retired lineman from Boston asked. Occasionally Louie did not hear everything that was said, particularly when the battery was dying in his hearing aid. 

“They didn’t carry the cannon up the stairs,”.  Frank took a deep breath. He let it out slowly.  He took another sip of his coffee, then held the styrofoam cup up indicating to me that he need it refilled.

“Whaddya mean?” Roy, the most rotund of the older men, asked.

“Just a minute! Let Joe get back to the table with my coffee,” Frank said, forking another piece of the pumpkin bread. 

I returned to the table with a steaming cup of coffee for Frank. Frank took a swallow of the steaming hot coffee without flinching. 

“Thanks, Joe. No, it came through the roof!” the engineer said smacking, the table with his hand. 

“Through the roof?” The three said in unison. 

“I think it was about 1865 when Union forces were occupying Charleston. The Confederates by that time were pretty thoroughly beaten, but they were intent on sabotaging all cannons to insure that the North couldn’t use them.  It’s what is known as spiking. You fill the cannon with gunpowder to blow it apart. But, in the case of this cannon, something went wrong. The cannon was blown up in the air and fell through the roof of the house. It’s been there ever since.”

“Well, my Confederate ancestors were successful in one way,” I said.

“How’s that?” Frank wanted to know. 

I kind of smiled and said, “He did keep the Yankees from using that cannon!”

And then the conversation turned to local politics. 

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photo courtesy of Google Maps