12,937. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,101

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,101

(permafrost and eskimo pie)

Nothing was ever a pistol

to my head, in fact I could

fairly well move about freely,

and I always stayed busy. My

life was never much idle. Oh,

maybe I always kept these little

mental lists, of things that would

help me later on in life. It was

a sort of personal IOU list of

what return I'd be getting as

my life wound down. I had

always been idiosyncratic to 

a fault, and that was a lot of

my problem. Back at Columbia

Crossroads,when I was taking

care of that schoolhouse for two

years, there was a 5th grade

teacher guy there, I forget his

name now, but it was something

like Chuck, O'Neil or O'Brien.
(I just remembered, two days
later! His name was Guy Hall).

It didn't matter. He'd always be

going on to me about his, what

he called, photographic memory.

I could picture what he meant,

but that wasn't what he meant,

nor what a 'photographic' memory

was about (joke)  -  he'd explain

how, even all through college, all he

had to do was look at something,

a page or a chart, anything, and

he'd have total recall of it, at

all times, upon demand  - and I

figured, for his sake, that came in

handy with pornography? If I 

had to hear it once, I heard it 

30 times, all about his total 

recall and his photographic

memory (as I recall. Ha). I

used to rationalize the whole

thing away and just think he

was full of himself and that

all life was, in essence, was a

sort of photographic memory, 

for all of us, anyway  -  maybe 

some details get lost, but they're

never that important. To him,

none of that cosmic-brain stuff

mattered; it just meant, he said,

he got through everything easily,

never much had to study, and,

as a teacher, could recall names

and faces and lists and grades all

all that, with no sweat. Yeah, big

deal, and what a dumb, stupid

proclaimer of nothing I'd think 

he was. I also told him I figured

he would have gotten a better deal

and probably made more money too,

if he'd become a detective or some

other sort of cop-sleuth, instead of

wasting it all on  a bunch of bratty

5th grade farm kids. I was always

trying to be pithy, and show him

up, in a way, since he seemed not

to think too much of maintenance

people in farm-clothes always

dragging a mop or pail around.

I could sense his disdain, so I

took him up on it. Over at my

little farmhouse, one year, I was

raising two pigs, real porkers, and

they were always busting out of

the electric fence and pen. Their

hides and hefts were so thick that

my feeble little electric current

didn't even bother their coarse

bristle  -  they'd just oink with

the shock and break through the

fence anyway. I'd find them all over

different parts of the field, and

I then always had the darnedest 

time getting them back in. It usually 

ended up that I'd grab one of the

big prod-sticks I had around, made

for the purpose of herding pigs, and 

start slamming them on their rears 

and backs with it (this sounds crueler 

than it actually was). Then they'd

move, maybe 30 feet at a time,

nose-down, squealing, but at, still,

their own pace, to, sort of, the area

I'd wanted them, and then back

into the repaired-anew fencing. They

were, by this time, real big pork

chops on the hoof, no more the

two little piglets I'd brought home

in the back of my VW. So anyway,

I told this whiz-kid photo-memory

guy about the problem one day as

we were talking (seemed all he

ever did, a lot, was talk to me, an

endless blue streak, mostly after

his classes were done and I'd be

in his classroom, sweeping or

straightening for the next day and

he'd be there doing papers or

reading tests or something). So,

he said, 'Let me come over and

see this fence problem, maybe I

can help. I grew up on a farm out

by Mansfield, and we did a lot of

fencing.' (He meant fence-mending, 

not the sword and duelling sport, 

and these local area teachers

most all came out of Mansfield

Teachers College, which was

about 30 miles west. It was kind 

of the local go-to school if you

didn't want to farm like your daddy

had done). So I figured, what the

heck, and he came on over : Liked

the place, walked around a lot,

talked always too, and then we got

to the porkers, and the barnyard 

area, and the fencing. He starts to

handle the posts; prodding, seeing

how secure they were in the ground,

how taut the wires, and all that. It

was, maybe, mid-February, still

quite cold, and it never really

'warmed up' there until about late 

April, end of it anyway, or the

beginning of May. He, and his

photographic memory, suddenly

seemed pretty useless  -  a 5th

grade teacher in his shirt and

tie, yanking on around two pigs

and a sty. I sensed not much was

going to come of it. He quickly

gave up, and said, 'Well, yeah,

looks like trouble, but we can't

do anything here until the thaw.

Right now, this is all perma-frost,

like 6 inches or more down.' I

shrugged and just let it all go.

It was fencing and wiring that

were the problems, not the 

damned fenceposts, Mr. Wizard!

And he was acting like it was

the Yukon or some Alaska tundra.

Permafrost! Jeez.

-

I remember that almost perfectly.

Even down to his pheasants on the

tie he wore, and that new-style,

1972 maybe, Dodge pickup he

was driving. It was a new design

and didn't much look like the

previous older ones, which a

lot of the farmers around were

still driving. He used light blue

ink too, when he wrote in his

ledger books, and his handwriting

looked, surprisingly, feminine;

back-slanted and gaudy, with

loops and swirls and all that. They

hadn't invented smiley faces yet,

but if they had he'd have probably

had them in his periods at the end

of each paragraph. Permafrost!

Didja ever?