RUDIMENTS, pt. 1.308
(emperor of nothing, pt. TEN)
Meeting strangers has never been
much of a problem for me. So this
was, the entire thing, no big deal.
The human informality of such
meetings and encounters are what
make them simple and easy, for me.
What kills these sorts of meetings
is when, instead of all that informality,
you get the usual fancy-people doing
their role-playing and appointed,
expected behaviors and all the junk
that goes with it. In those scenes
you know immediately that nothing
is real and it's all in the crapper -
the participants are either just trying
to one-up you, and get one over on
you with their superiority and puffery
over who they 'think' they are. I'm
not the sort that ever needs to be
impressed. (By the way, it always
'impressed' me that one of the root
causes of both the American Revolution
and later the War of 1812 too was when
the British were 'impressing' American
sailors and seamen (We didn't really
have a Navy yet then). The British
sea-craft were boarding ships and
taking Americans from those ships
and 'impressing' them immediately
into the British Navy, however that
got done. It was much the same on
land too, because householders, in
pre-Revolution days, were forced to
take in British soldiers - board and
feed them upon demand, for as long
as they chose. Some part of making
that unlawful is written into the Bill
of Rights, and the Constitution too,
but I forget the wording or the actual
paragraphs. Pretty cool though. That's
when you KNOW you're impressed!).
-
This Jack Stove fellow was much to my
style and liking - bare-bones, not any
pretense, and there was a fine sense of
reality about him. Those were things I
liked - a man who uses a plain, old
can opener. Who mixes his eggs with
a simple fork. The one thing that kept
gnawing at me was his choice-selection
of bourbon. He must know things; he
had to get 'out' to go buy that, as well
as regular groceries, supplies, and even
the beer he drank. So I knew he wasn't
'walled-in,' as it were. He had his ways
in and out. He stayed on my mind, his
entire little 'scene' for any number of
days. As it turned out, I found out by
re-telling some of the story to my friend
Bob, they knew each other! Hunting
club buddies! Beaver Pond Hunting
Club, Yulan, NY! (Right next to
Narrowsburg). I got to hear the old
dog stories again. Bob had a 'bird-
flusher' (the dog who rushed the
pheasant or quail up and out from
the brush they were hiding in), and
this guy's dog was a 'bird-pointer'.
The 'pointer' froze in place and
signaled the location of the birds.
I didn't much care about any of that,
but I heard again. One or the other of
those two types of dogs also 'retrieves'
the dead bird after it's been shot. In
its mouth, gently, without chewing or
maiming the otherwise dead bird. (??)
I never got much sense out of that either.
I was so determined to keep calling
this fellow Jack Stove that even after
Bob had told me his real name it never
registered. I'll have to get it again soon.
-
You get to wondering, too, or at least
I did, about how 'old' a guy can get to
be, and still do the hillbilly thing. I
hope I can do it until I'm 90, but, hell
I won't, and I know it. All of a sudden
everything's falling apart on me, and
I've always been in real good health,
except for the neglect I gave to most
everything. This fellow, Jack - and
even this Bob guy, who's in his mid-80's
by the way, seem both pretty stunning
in the long-lived category. But Jack,
with that entire hillbilly side to
himself, was more remarkable. I
thought back again to my earlier days,
reading Huck Finn. (An annotated
and unexpurgated version). I easily
visualized This Jack person as a
perfect image of 'Pap', Huck's
crazy, rather off-key, father. Not
a mimic of each other, Pap and
Jack, no, but the essential qualities
were about the same - a rawness
that mixed with a strange energy-
rooted anger expressed in odd
ways. I hoped Jack would have a
better ending-up than Pap did.
-
And then another conflict arose in
the image of this guy crying over a
barn-fire full of farm animals expiring
and the overly simple way all these
hunter guys thought nothing of massacring
animals and birds, in their natural place,
not even roped and stalled in a barn.
In my head the 'conflict' alarm
again went off. Whatever to do
about that?
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