Monday, February 25, 2019

11,569. RUDIMENTS, pt. 607

RUDIMENTS, pt. 607
(ain't nature grand!')
I always liked walking;
I never had a problem
with a good walk.There
was a writer once, I forget
the rest about it, who titled
his book about the game
of golf - 'A Good Walk,
Spoiled.' That was always
pretty simple to understand,
whatever the heck else golf
was about. He hit it pretty
good. Just a bundle of funny-
pants guys jabbering away
while they hit a little ball,
they hoped, into a cup.
Total. Something there is
about golf anyway  -  it's
just like a dumb sport for
business people; as if they
needed this imaginary open
space and particular form
of ritual, with everything
neutralized, so they could
bluster and bloviate over
their silly-ass business
stuff. It's always the same,
even out in the middle of
nowhere. Just west of
Towanda, where the big
Sylvania factory used to
be (for light bulbs, etc.,
manufacture), sure enough
there was the whole shebang,
like it was Boca Raton or
something : some chicken-
scratch country club and
dining-room clubhouse and
restaurant, and a full-deal
18-hole golf course. This,
among local people who'd 
 rather rub the balls of a bull for
entertainment than play 'golf.'
You knew it was just some
usual corporate crap for the
executives posted by Sylvania
to the Towanda plant for a two
year or so stint. They just had
to have their little old golf
course. Funny thing was, there
were seemingly two tiers of
things underway in the area
at all times  -  the generations
of locals and farmers, who
knew each other and whose
families too, if not intertwined
or inter-married somewhere
back there, knew each other
all very well. They kept to
their old ways  -  old trucks
and vehicles and habits and
places and ways of being,
mostly unchanged. That was
the fabric of the carpet of the
local lands. They were the
backbone of the place and the
people you had to get to know 
and learn from. They held the 
keys.  They had  local meaning. 
These corporate drop-ins were
just temporaries, consumers of 
something; even they didn't know
know what it was. They were
from the corporations, what
few of them there were  -  like
Sylvania  -  that would post
people here, for a while, for
corporate reasons. They were
outsiders, different people
doing entirely different things.
They operated, in their ways,
along a whole other track.They
had kids  - curious as it was  - 
in those same bedraggled
local school systems as did
the farm folk, and by their
high school years those kids
fairly-well had been changed
over or engulfed into the
local culture  -  which was
like borderline Ozarks. It
was pretty funny sometimes
to see. Cinderella, and her
pumpkin too, in one fell
swoop.
-
There was always some sort of
in-between world I stayed in. It
kept me out of the fray a little
bit  -  all that stuff I came not
to understand. I still had my 
late evenings, and I had my
books. We'd brought maybe
200 with us. There weren't any
bookcases or anything, it was
all too 'utilitarian' for that, so
they were just nicely piled on
the floor in one section of
one of the rooms. There was
a bunch of rooms, more than
I'd ever had before, ever, and 
three levels of them too! The
problem was we had no money,
nothing to spare  -  it would have
been nice to have thrown some
furniture around and made the
place look homey, but we did OK
with the three rooms we inhabited
and we left the rest just as it went,
as space. So I got lots of, especially
in Winter, personal time to use to
read or try writing and things  -  
nothing I'd want the locals to 
know about, mind you, because
it went too far against the
local grain of how things were
out there. Maybe I could have
built some shelves and stuff,
but I didn't have the yen for 
doing that either. Most people
hung a dead deer head  -  or some
other trophy animal they'd shot  -
for decoration on their walls.
I showed my Mark Twains
and let it go at that. 
-
The guy up the hill to the side
from me was an older guy named 
Jenkins  -  last name, and that was
really the only name I knew him
by. He was some sort of retired
fellow, and drove around in his
truck to here or there so that I'd
occasionally see him passing
along. Nod and a wave stuff.
Sometimes there was wife in 
the truck with him. One day
that first Spring, when the
weather had opened up, things
were blooming, it had gotten
warmer out, and green, I looked
out across the noon field and
there was this girl on a horse.
Just ambling along, slow horse
gait. I'd never seen her before,
and was startled. She waved 
out and slowly ambled over
still on her horse. It seemed
as if she was maybe 30, at 
most, and she started talking
about how she was the Jenkins
girl, the daughter who had 
lived and grown 'over there' -
pointing in the direction of 
the Jenkins place. All of which
I understood right well; I think
here name was Janet. Memory.
She lived somewhere else, but
occasionally still trailered her 
horse over, for a ride around 
the old places. I guess she maybe 
meant the horse  remembered 
them too  -  but I didn't ask. It 
was pretty cool. The thing I did get
to realize after a while was how
all these people I'd get to meet, like
her, they all had their own local
stories about and from this place
and the local area, and it all
stretched back  - way before me,
and I had no inclusion in any
of it. Being an interloper is odd.
Not much else transpired; none
of that deep digging about 'who
are you, where'd you move from, 
what do you do?' etc. For which
I was glad; not having to go
over all that stuff. We saw her
maybe 5 or 6 more times that
first Summer, and then I never
remember seeing her again.
-
It was weird; what made it so,
was that this was all new to me,
and us. Once that first Winter
melted away, we began seeing 
the ground, the dirt, and the vistas
that, all Winter, had mostly just
been a white blur. Remember, we
came in with the first of that year,
January, and so by April, when
things were clearing up, we were
still seeing things for the first time.
That covered the surprise of just
suddenly seeing a horse and rider
in the open field where before
there'd been nothing. It was a
real surprise  -  all of this. One
of the surprises, with all the
snow melt, was how heavy and
swift with energy the little creeks
and rivulets had become. They
immediately went into a full
'stream' mode, running heavy,
and with gurgling noises that
we'd hear all the time. By
mid-Summer that was all back
down to a trickle, but at least
we knew about it. There were
all of a sudden as well, a billion
bugs and flies, everywhere. It
was as if all these things I'd
never given a thought to had
suddenly arisen to life to smack
me in my forgetfulness. Bugs
were legion. Our rear-yard grass,
I can't tell you, was, of a sudden,
profuse with huge blue-black
bodied flies  -  to the extent that
each step through the grass rose
500 of them up. Totally in truth.
We figured they were just all
and at once, in the bright new
sunlight, warming up from fly
larvae to real life, or whatever
flies do. They do make noise.
Real buzz noise. Times thousands.
And then, maybe by the first of
or mid June, they were gone.
That strange nightmare had 
passed  -  while we still really
had no idea what we would do
for the rest of the summer if 
they hadn't disappeared. Then 
there were 'face-bugs,' as the
locals called them  -  sort of
like gnats, but more too like
black dust. Evidently attracted
to breath and vapor, they hovered
in swarms at a person's face. You
could swat them away, yes, but
they came back. They never did
really leave and seemed a constant
there  -  much like that hoar-frost
snow thing all Winter, in the air.
One replaced the other. There
were ground bugs, gigantic beetles
and things, Mantises, and then,in all
the waters and ponds, newts and
whatever that pre-frog-frog thing is
called. Salamanders? It looks like
a bullet. Then it grows into legs, 
lizardy legs, and then various 
shapes happen and it becomes 
whatever it was they (it) each
were meant to be. We had 
croakers, bullfrogs, and pond 
noises of some real mystery all
through the night. A big, exciting
time of year each year too, about
the second week maybe, of March,
was the new sound of the 'peepers'.
They made a racket, evenings, etc.
They're tiny little tree frogs that
awaken and climb the tree trucks
upward  -  making a cicada-like
noise that is heard constantly,
day after day. It's the most 
welcome, fresh sign of Spring
you'd ever imagine and, up there,
could just set the heart to soaring.
The thing about them, I learned
from the farmers, was that they
froze three times, and then Spring 
was here. It never failed. Once
you began hearing them, there 
were three more little frost-nights
coming, whether that took two 
weeks or three days. Then they
were gone too. No more noise,
and the weather changed. Never
failed. Ain't Nature grand!






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