RUDIMENTS, pt. 886
(bring me Neriam Todd)
I had a grand old time living
while I did in the same town
where Mark Twain is buried,
and I'd spend some long periods
of time, at his gravesite, just
taking it in. Elmira's also the
hometown of Hal Roach - who's
also buried there, not far off
from Clemens. Hal Roach's
name doesn't mean much now,
but one time he was a big deal
in early Hollywood - comedy,
and shorts, and 'Hal Roach
Studios.' I didn't know if anyone
else knew about or cared about
this stuff, but I did. It seems
as if the thick honey of life
snags most people in its dense
and not-so-viscous membrane,
while I like to float and dash.
I get around, like Beach Boys
stuff? This whole 'Mark Twain in
Elmira,' dead though it be, thing
was a leading floor show to which
I kept buying flaming tickets:
-
Mark Twain's mother told him,
"People born to be hanged are safe
in water." That's pretty startling,
like me saying a person can only
be hit by a train once. It's true,
but what the heck. His mother
said that to him after the episode
where he dove off a riverboat
to retrieve his hat, but swam
so far downstream that the town
suspected he was dead (Hannibal,
Missouri), and began firing
cannons over the water to coax
his body to the surface and he
comes in a'walking home, all
wet and dryin' off. At 14, he got
caught dancing naked by two
anonymous girls as he rehearsed
for his part as 'bear' in a playlet
to be performed at one of his
older sister's parties. In a bedroom
he thought unoccupied except for
himself and a slave named Sandy,
he did 'handsprings' and got down
on all fours, snarling (naked),
while the girls were hiding
behind a screen, themselves
only partially dressed, until
Sandy told a joke that flushed
out the laughter that gave them
away. Sam (Mark Twain) was
mortified for weeks, possibly
decades. 'I never guessed those
girls out, nor wanting to either.'
He wrote that near the end of
his life, reminiscing the scene.
-
Totally off-the wall stuff, yes,
but I really enjoy all that. And,
in his youth, there really was
a young slave he kept company
with, named 'Black John.' They
could fish and live in the open
air all they wanted. There's just
so much cool stuff to relate:
He watched his father's autopsy,
secretly, through a keyhole; and
another time, when one of the
less popular boys accepted a
taunt to dive into a 'muddy
creek' and stay underwater the
'longest,' it was Sam who drew
the straw that made it his job
to dive and catch hold of the
lifeless wrist that confirmed
the worst : the kid was dead.
-
There was a town drunk, in
and out of the local jail, that
young Sam took pity on and
gave him matches so he could
smoke. The man lit his pipe, and
the jail cell too, and burned to
death in ten minutes. A 'hundred
nights of dreams,' Twain said,
'followed in which I saw his
appealing face as I had seen it
in the pathetic reality, pressed
against the window-bars, with
the red hell glowing behind him.'
Those are but a few of the very
vivid ancestral-type vapors that
had lingered behind. To me they
all represented another time and
a semblance of place-construction
where I better sought to live. It
was hard to explain. Blood ran
different back then; people were
frank and people were real. it took
about 3 generations for the genetic
traits of 'bullshit' and 'fake' to
be incorporated into the human
system, and - now - here we
are. The biggest decision here
for many people now comes down
to whether to put up some piece
of crap plastic blow-up on their
freaking Christmas lawn : 'Well,
gee Brianna, should it be Mrs.
Claus? Or Snoopy?' Then they
drive down to their local AOAA
store, and pay a hundred and thirty
bucks for it. ('Assholes One And
All' is the store for kicks!). You
can't jump-start a fool; they're
always running.
-
We live now with lights, and we
live the false and the inauthentic;
we live with lies and directed
deceits; we fall for fat and wasted;
we ran our kids on regiment and
their own destruction. I always
use Mark Twain's dark side as
proof of man's better nature. Young
Sam saw a slaveholder throw a piece
of burning iron into the face of a
slave, as a punishment for doing
something awkwardly. 'It bounded
from the man's skull,' he wrote
later, and he was dead in an hour.'
I mostly found that everything
Mark Twain ended up portraying in
Huck Finn had a basis in his own
reality. He and his world were
imbued with things we can no
longer fathom or understand, and
they were part and parcel of the
world of everyday that folks of
1840 just lived with, in ways
that now seem without meaning
to us. 'While playing on a river
island, his gang was terrified
as the remains of an assassinated
slave named Neriam Todd rose
out of the water. Weeks before,
Todd had run off and made it to
the island. Tom Blankenship's
(Sam's best boyhood friend)
older brother found him and,
disdaining the award, fed him
for a few weeks, until bounty
hunters heard a rumor and
sailed to the island. Todd had
drowned trying to flee The
bounty hunters mutilated his
body and left him there to
drift in the river. He ran
aground where children
could find him, and they did.
-
Over from the Twain gravesite,
there are one or two rolling
cemetery hills that the local,
kids and parents used for
sledding and riding, back then,
those aluminum snow-bowl
things, sleds and the rest. Not
yet had plastic infested that
past-time too. These were more
like large metal hubcaps then
anything else, and on good
snowpack, and these hillocks,
kids could get up some good
speed - provided they didn't
crash smack into some person's
gravestone and smite their
skull open. Seen that done too.
There's be, on some days, 30
or 40 kids, and parents, massed
up, sliding and sledding, and
not a one of them - taken up
as they were in their snow-play
moment - gave a second's care
to old Mark Twain's grave, all
caught up as they were in their
snow-blitz of fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment