Dripping Life April 2

Call it what you want -- sheltering in place, self-quarantine, quarantine, isolation, confinement, separation, etc., and so forth. But it simply comes down to plain ole jail. 

Now, I’ve never been to jail, but I get not going anywhere, looking at the same walls, even seeing the same people, people I love dearly. But going through a pandemic isn’t for sissies, so we make the best of it.

In my world, our family hasn’t been able to find toilet paper at the grocery store, Costco, Wal-Mart or the pharmacy for close to a month. We’re down to four rolls, so we may be switching to Kleenex if we can’t find toilet paper soon.

I also had to cancel my hair appointment this week.

Yes, those are my issues about the pandemic, other than attempting to shield myself and my family from OVID-19, but basically, my problems are few and I realize we’ve been very blessed.

But not all Texans have been so fortunate through the years, which brings me to the little-known story of the 1846 cholera epidemic and a man named Black Peter.

In Victoria, our neighbors in the Coastal Bend, during the year the local post office was established, the town fell victim to a tragic cholera epidemic suffered many deaths. 

The town’s citizens were dying so rapidly, appropriate burials would have been impossible, were it not for by German immigrant named Dillan Mantz Sr., his son Dillan Mantz Jr., and a legendary man, Black Peter. 

According to local lore, no one knew where the tall, strong-as-an-ox, hard-working African American man came from, but it was common knowledge-- Black Peter was a man to be reckoned with. 

As Henry Wolff, Jr., wrote in his August 1, 1981, column in The Victoria Advocate, “when he [Black Peter] came knocking, it was best not to be home. Usually he didn't come calling until a person's number was up and couldn't answer the door anyway. Black Peter dealt in death. He had charge of burying the town's dead, along about the mid-1800s, when Victoria had plenty of dead to bury, what with the cholera epidemic and all. It was also a time when many sick immigrants were coming in from Indianola and dying like flies. Those were good days for Black Peter, until the city ran out of money. Not that he required a whole lot for his services, it being said that he would take care of a corpse for $2.50 and a quart of good whiskey, the latter to drown his sorrow we would presume.”

When it came time to tell Black Peter that he would no longer be paid, G.F. Rogers, a city alderman who was also known as "Eleven Fingers" Rogers, was given the unenviable task of breaking the news. That nickname, by the way, was earned because Rogers had two thumbs on one hand.

Needless to say, Black Peter was none too pleased on hearing his pay was going to be cut. 

How displeased was Peter?

“The next morning,” as Wolff wrote, “Rogers found the corpse of an old man leaning up against the door of his store, and when he opened his front door, the decomposing corpse fell inside.”

After that, somehow, some way, Victorians found a way to pay Black Peter’s regular fee.

Dillan Mantz, Jr., shared his memories about helping his father operate a dump cart to haul the dead to Victoria’s first cemetery, Memorial Square. In describing the tragic cholera outbreak, he said, “people were dying so rapidly, they were being buried in whatever they died on -- bed sheets would simply be tied together at both ends as a death shroud. Bodies would be loaded on carts and hauled to the cemetery to be buried in shallow graves, often four or five to a grave. The burial sheets and blankets were often so rotten, and the graves so shallow, hands, feet and noses were often left poking out of the ground.”

Mantz Jr. claimed he and his dad, at one time, removed 72 bodies from one house. Black Peter was in town at the time and for some years thereafter, but had eventually moved on to New Orleans to do business during one of the yellow fever epidemics. Evidently business had become too dead for him in Victoria, or perhaps we should say not dead enough

For many years after the big man left the area, parents sometimes frightened their children into good behavior by telling them Black Peter would come and get them if they did not behave themselves. 

“While nobody knew much of anything about Black Peter himself,” Wolff wrote, “the name likely comes from the Black Peter in German lore, the devilish companion who accompanied the ghost of old St. Nicholas on his rounds to punish bad little boys and girls at Christmastime. Just the mention of Black Peter was enough for years to scare the daylights out of most any kid in Victoria, not that he was ever a popular figure with adults either. Certainly, he was not someone you would want to find standing by your bed.”

Stay safe. Wash your hands.