"Dead" Son Comes Home Alive

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   Teenagers aggravate their parents in many ways, but a 16-year-old Haynesville, Louisiana youth went above and beyond in driving his to hysterics, and later, apoplexy.

   One evening in early 1922, Marlin Mathis failed to return home. The news accounts do not explain if he ran away, lost himself in the wilds of Corney Bayou, or simply hid himself away to avoid punishment for some misdeed. At any rate, after a few days his parents concluded tragedy had struck the teenager. His father, a Haynesville contractor, and his mother agonized over their missing son.

   A few days after Marlin’s disappearance, his parents saw news reports from Amarillo, Texas about a youth about the same age who had been killed in a railroad accident. Details are vague, but the young man was probably “trainhopping,” jumping on or off of a moving freight train, a common practice of transients and runaways moving across the country.

   Fearing the worst, they telegraphed for details. A description of the body matched the missing son. The parents were told one of the last statements the boy made was that his father was a contractor.

   Mr. and Mrs. Mathis left at once on the train, sure they were going to bring the body of their son home.

   The hours creeped by as the train rumbled across the wide Texas expanse, adding to their anguish. Once in Amarillo, they viewed the body and identified it as their son by “a slight twist to the left in the nose and a mole on the left breast.”

   The body was prepared for shipment to Haynesville and just before the parents were to leave for the train, they received a message that Marlin was at home, “very much alive and in his usual good health.”

   Certainly the Mathis family was relieved, but grief likely turned to anger at the distress and embarrassment young Marlin had created. The ignominy of the matter was furthered when the Associated Press picked up the story, distributing it to hundreds of newspapers across America. The story of the “dead” boy returning home appeared in papers in scores of small towns and large cities.

   We can only speculate on Marlin’s fate when Daddy Mathis returned home from Texas.