June 16, 2002
80-year-old corpse brings life to a small town
By HOLLY HUFFMAN
Eagle Staff Writer
Mojo, whose real name is unknown, will be buried Wednesday in Calvert.
CALVERT — Inside a four-foot pine coffin draped with a baby-blue sheet and standing upright in the corner of the drab back room of Calvert’s only funeral chapel lies a corpse known only as Mojo.
A window made of thin wire allows visitors to see the face of the decaying, frail Mojo, wearing a black bow tie. He appears almost like a Hollywood creation — something Indiana Jones might have stumbled over in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
His cotton-filled eye sockets slant down to the right as if something in the corner of the unairconditioned funeral chapel caught his attention and then froze in time. The toothless grin spreading across his face gives the impression that the short-statured corpse couldn’t be happier standing there in his pale-blue silk tuxedo.
Mojo has been a Calvert resident since he died while passing through the town 80 or so years ago. Over the decades, he eventually mummified as he was shuffled between broom closets and dank basements.
Each time the funeral home changed hands, Mojo went along with everything else, whether the new owners wanted him or not.
“When you bought the funeral home, you got Mojo,” said Frank Hudson, owner of the nearby Calvert Inn. “It’s a package deal. You got your first customer right there.”
But, finally, Mojo will be buried, a kindness that some say should have happened long ago.
Hudson, along with a handful of other residents, is spearheading the effort to finally lay Mojo to rest at 2 p.m. Wednesday. The group is scrambling to gather the $900 they say it will cost.
No one knew Mojo when he was alive, so it’s hard to say what exactly the Rev. Roderick Jackson will talk about during the graveside service at the Chapel Hill Cemetery, which is off Farm Road 1644 North between Calvert and Franklin.
One thing is certain though, Mojo brought some life to this town of 1,426 people northwest of Bryan.
And, recently, he almost brought an investigation.
The State Commission on Funeral Homes inquired about the body Friday morning after being questioned by The Bryan-College Station Eagle the day before, but commission officials quickly investigated and decided no laws were being violated by keeping a corpse at a business. Officials said there are no laws on the books governing burial.
No solid facts about Mojo — whose real name no one knows — are in the books either.
Most Calvert folks can tell visitors stories about the first mortician to own Mojo and how he pulled out Mojo’s coffin for good luck when they gambled. The residents say with certainty that P.T. Barnum was denied his request to purchase Mojo for the circus. Some believe a rumor that Baylor University wanted to study him. A few even swear they saw the 1970s special edition of Ripley’s Believe It or Not in which they say he was featured as the Man Who Turned To Stone.
Fact or fiction? No one really knows. Every tale changes and, predictably, has been exaggerated over time.
Some say he was a hobo, others say a runaway, and most all will tell you he was killed while jumping from a train. Depending on the story teller, his age ranges from young teenager to that of an old man.
But this much is true: He was a teenager. He was black. And he died.
And when his parents, who finally found him in the Calvert funeral home after several months, couldn’t afford to pay the $100 or so to claim his body, the Perry Tindall Funeral Home took custody of him, according to Calvert resident Edith Towns, Tindall’s niece.
For the time being, he now resides in the shabby back room of a storefront funeral chapel operated by the Marlin-based Paul Funeral Home. The Rev. Robert Paul, who owns the business, did not return repeated phone calls.
Towns, 65, said she remembers her uncle and father, who worked together in the mortuary, first taking her to see Mojo when she was about 5 years old. She said she wasn’t frightened by him. To her, he seemed unreal.
“You could go and see it, but they didn’t try to dramatize it,” Towns said, noting that her uncle always treated Mojo with respect. “They didn’t try to make it a publicity stunt.”
When Tindall, who died years ago, sold the funeral home in the 1950s, he detailed in the contract that the new owner would also have to treat Mojo with dignity, she said.
Why her uncle never buried Mojo, Towns said she can’t explain.
“I thought that it should have been done,” she said. “I think he belongs here in Calvert after all these years. He’s just kind of ours.”
Locals quizzed recently were quick to call Mojo one of their own, recanting Mojo tales like cherished memories shared between old friends.
Calvert volunteer firefighter Brent Cain, 32, easily told of his frequent boyhood visits to see Mojo with his Bryan schoolmates who eagerly awaited the “Mojo tour.” At the time, Mojo was stashed in broom closet of Howard Williams Funeral Home, Cain said.
Williams, who Cain described as a tall and intimidating one-armed man, would usher the boys to the closet and hold up the light so they could see Mojo. But as they neared the coffin he dropped the light, leaving the boys in the dark with Mojo, Cain said. As they scrambled from the dark room, they could hear Williams chuckling around the corner.
Gena Cain, owner of MoJoes's Coffee Cart in Calvert, said naming her cart after a local icon has brought her good luck.
“It would all just fit the scene of going to see Mojo,” he said.
So when Cain and his wife, Gena, decided in 2000 to open a coffee stand outside their downtown Calvert Rustique furniture store to increase business in the town known for its antiques, it seemed fitting to name it after his childhood friend.
MoJoe’s Coffee Cart, which is stationed across the street and down one block from the real Mojo, has become somewhat of the town hangout.
“If a museum wanted to grab him and take him, I could see that happening, but there are no museums in Calvert,” Gena Cain said. “I think he definitely should be here.”
When her 5-year-old son asked if he could see Mojo, they obliged and snapped a picture of the smiling boy standing next to the coffin. In the photo, Mojo almost appears to be smiling down on Canyon.
“I’m sad to see him go, but at the same time the story will remain,” Gena Cain said.
But not all of the residents in Calvert are enthralled by Mojo’s plight.
Earlene Carter, who has lived in Calvert for the past 40 years, owns The Red Geranium antique shop just a few stores down from Mojo’s home. Carter said she had heard stories about Mojo for years and customers wandering into her store would often inquire about the mummy. But she always figured that it was an urban legend.
She recently learned he was real and is not thrilled, she said. If the community can come together and bury Mojo now, she questioned, why couldn’t they have done it years ago?
“It doesn’t make Calvert look good,” she said. “It just kind of makes you wonder.”
With her hands clasped together in nervous anticipation, she crept into the chapel Friday morning whispering, “Where’s Mojo?” But she was turned away by Jackson, who told her they had been ordered by the funeral commission to stop allowing folks to view the body.
Ann Cosper, deputy administrator of enforcement for the commission said she was concerned that a funeral home would utilize a chapel knowing that it contained a corpse, but stressed that they had not given the chapel or funeral home any orders. The commission has no jurisdiction over chapels, she said.
“I am amazed that this body has sat there all these years and everybody in town knew it,” Cosper said. “I am absolutely amazed. I am dumbstruck.”
Karol Kowalski, owner of the Wooden Spoon Cafe on Main Street, said she heard about Mojo not long after moving to town 2 1/2 years ago and set out to find him. When she couldn’t — the chapel isn’t open all the time — she figured that it was just a myth.
She said she’s now glad to hear he will finally be laid to rest, but at the same time, sad to seem him go.
“He’s probably the only one in the community whose really stood with us,” she said.
Mojo helped bring folklore to Calvert, she said. After being pushed aside for decades, she hopes that the community will now give him an appropriate sendoff.
When asked, she admits that many people probably think keeping Mojo around for so long is an odd thing to do, and maybe even outright weird. But with an exaggerated roll of her eyes, she gives an easy explanation.
“This is Calvert,” she said.
