Newscoma

It’s easy to find joy in the grasp of what appears to be dying. You have to look, but it’s there. I return to the ghosts of my childhood which Squirrel Queen and I shared with Aunt B. on Saturday, as we not only went to cemeteries but to towns with empty building where once busy streets filled with inhabitants have lost some of the vibrancy that I remember as a child.

There were lessons, not for B. necessarily, but for myself of the death of culture and how subcultures scrap and fight to survive. It’s odd to me that the underlying universe that isn’t normally seen thrives by sheer determination as other bits erode under the pressure of time.

The courthouse in Hickman, KY is one of the most beautiful buildings you will ever see. It sets on a bluff over the Mississippi River in a town that has lost so much hope over recent years. A retaining wall protects what’s left of the town. We hear of ghost towns, and although Hickman isn’t one yet, you can’t help but wonder what is next as you look across the murky water into Missouri. The heat was blistering Saturday and the large acreage of trees over the slow-moving river was a summer haze, blurred our vision.

The heat and the silence reminded me of our own mortality.

Three more friends and acquaintance are unemployed as of Friday when my sister called me with the news. I can’t shake the feeling that we are mourning something bigger than ourselves and I don’t have any answers. When I saw Hickman the next day, I found a lump in my stomach that remains with me two days later.

Quite fittingly, we visited cemeteries and I believe it’s all connected. At Camp Beauregard, we saw a mass grave with one marker. 1,200 soldiers who died from disease and neglect are recognized with one large monument, but it’s the smaller graves that gather your psyche. We believe those spirits protect the dead. We visited the cemetery where my mother is buried where bones have been covered with the dirt of the land for two centuries. I didn’t share her grave with those with me. It’s still private for me.

I saw the names of the ancestors of the  townspeople I still know.

As B. wrote:

We had spent all day touring dead towns and cemeteries.

What’cha gonna do when the State runs dry? Drive back roads watchin’ small towns die.  Honey, pretty baby mine.

And there was the river, that muddy god who lays in between the middle of the country so easy you can almost imagine him sliding his tributaries up Illinois’ shirt and singing softly, “… them men don’t know but the little girls understand.”

I wonder what will become of us and I’m pleased that a few bloggers have decided to visit our little patch in the world and are seeing for themselves that the words I continually write here have weight. If you see it for yourself, then you will know what we do.

I’m speaking of two things now. Our younger people, who decided to stay here when so many left, are now faced with the dilemma that we might not be able to stay. That we will trek to places that have a more solid economy that can support us and our families. What once sustained us with a deep well filled with possibility has now run dry for so many. We look to the past to see the future.

As I said, there are no answers because dead men and women tell no tales.

I wonder if we will be all right. In some ways, it’s beginning to look bleak.

So we visit young dead soldiers who fought in the war who have been gone a 150 years and realize that bleak is generational. We visited cemeteries that hold lynching victims from a time long ago. We saw the lines drawn over what was and what is.

And death is a natural part of life but loss is more than the calling of the bones. Death can wear many coats.

I wait to see what will happen next.

I dreamed last night that I won a consolation prize after being in a contest of a bat whom I named Freddy. I don’t really know what I was competing for but I was very excited about coming in second place. I also have been dreaming a lot about lying in hammocks with people I like. These aren’t intimate sort of dreams, but there more about me just lying with these folks talking about things that interest us.

Dreams are odd.

I also dreamed of a small grocery store that used to be in Hoots called the Leadway. The presentation of my prize of Freddy the Bat was held at this store which has been out of commission for several years.

My grandparents lived about six houses down from this store when I was a kid and we would constantly walk down there to bug the owners and buy Fun Dip. Aww, bag of sugar, how you made my childhood festive.

The Leadway was a dark, small store that was actually quite wonderful. The cash registers were old and made a clack sound that can only be compared to the sound of a zombie duck walking through the house on hard wood floors. It was that kind of sound.

Homer and I would mosey up to the store and hang out with the our Uncle Deanie, who was just about the nicest man you would ever meet. He really was our uncle, but it was about 29 times removed and he usually would play with us while we hit sugar buzzes of astronomical proportions. The store did do deliveries until he sold it to another family, which I always thought was neat. Our mom told us we could not make orders to the store for candy, but every once in awhile, she would give them a call to bring something to the house.

Sometimes, my grandmother would call the Leadway and tell them to charge Homer and I lunch which was always a treat. We thought this was extremely fancy, so we would go to the meat department where they made sandwiches and ask for bologna and cheese on white bread, buy a bag of BBQ corn chips and top it off with a chocolate milk.

Good times and eating for an 8-year-old.

Before my mother died, I asked the owner of the store to order coffee-flavored Breyers ice cream as it was the only thing she could taste that she liked while she was on chemo. They kept it in stock for the duration of her illness.

There are good people here in Hoots.

Alas, chain markets killed the small grocery stores in the area. The Leadway is now a video store.

Well, as usual, my bi-monthly dose of bronchitis is rearing its ugly head. Again.
Ode to joy. (snark.)
Here are a few things I’ve witnessed in the last few days albeit it isn’t as interesting as, oh let’s say, this.
In Hoots, life goes on.

Sheriff deputies are investigating the killing of a goat (I can’t make this stuff up. Goat murder!), a man was arrested over the weekend for showing his naughty bits to the cops while screaming that he knew where they lived and when he got out of jail he was going to kill them (welcome to a long visit in the pokey) and I found out from a lottery dude that sales were through the roof. The grand jury convened, there is a bridal show going on and apparently we have our own mini-hell of an illegal dump that ace reporter Editor Bates is all over.
And there is a lot of earthquake talk going on which I find disconcerting. Do folks know something that the average bear doesn’t or are we just preparing for the apocalypse because not a lot is going on.
I also got to inform an elected democrat that Bill Hobbs is no longer blogging. He smiled. I then said “Now you don’t know what he’s up to.”
He quit smiling.
I’m a realist about these things, you know.
I also heard someone confuse Sanjaya with Sanjay Gupta. (I’m banging my head into a wall as I type this over that little disclosure), I decided the only reasonable thing I could to was throw myself in front of a train or drink a bottle of swill. Squirrelly think he’s a weird choice for Surgeon General (and we bantered about this for hours for some odd and unknown reason), Kate wonders, in the comments, what a surgeon general actually does and I am ambivalent. I guess it’s better than Surgeon General Lou Dobbs.
Now on to your early morning moment of zen:

From Eat Liver