RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,345
(all the colors of the glories of god)
Over time I've met a few people
who did nothing much but sit
around reading. Mostly it was
Elmira College or, more certainly,
Cornell University, types - the here
or there professors of this or that,
who studied deeply and stayed put.
It kind of goes with that territory that
one harbors that intense book-drive.
In the varied farm-country environments
I went through, it was, by contrast, rare
to see any book, except maybe the Bible
or any of the attached religious tomes
that tailed along with it. Not even the
usual 'pulp' fiction things of serial
writers or what are now also called
'airport' fiction (it was funny to me
when, in reading something, I came
across a lesson about how what we
now call 'airport' reads (quick and
easy, for the flight and the waiting),
had previously been called 'railway'
reads, for the same reasons).
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Whenever I found myself reading,
which happened enough even in the
country ('Ruritania' as I referred to it),
it usually rolled me right over into
putting down the book and going over
to writing. The two seemed to go, for
me, together - one (writing) cancelling
out the other (reading). It sometimes
got tough. That old tax-office room
with the two pianos came in handy,
in the fairer-weather months, as a
sitting room and writing area. We
kept it closed off and separate in
the cold months, heating being the
primary concern, but once the weather
changed, here too we took advantage
fully. I liked it. It looked out over the
area of the two ponds, where we had
ducks and geese always flopping
around.
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One of the older local guys and his
wife came around one day and asked
if we'd be interested in accepting their
geese and ducks (maybe it was 10, or
12), since they'd grown old and tired
(the people) and no longer wanted to
feed nor tend them. They wanted to add
them to our little flock. We said sure. The
only problem turned out to be the corralling
and collecting of these animals - they old
guy had a rowboat, into which he and I went,
and all these recalcitrant and resisting water
fowl fought us the entire time. None of them
wanted to be rounded up. It was a two-hour,
crazy nightmare, in a 'pond' which wasn't all
that large but which kept us occupied, in the
boat for quite some time. The old guy was
a bit crazy over this whole endeavor; intent
and determined that it get done. It was fairly
hot out too, and I feared he'd have a stroke
or a seizure. Quite the scene! We did finally
get it all done (he'd stuffed the animals in
canvas bags, a few to a bag, for the simple,
few minute, ride to out place, where they
were released and ran right to the water,
no problem). The two little flocks merged
nicely. We had them for quite some time,
until - eventually - one by one, a silver
fox managed to keep picking them off.
The neighboring farmer, Warren, prizing
the fox tail, came by a few times to shoot
the fox, which always kept its distance, and
he did after some time, manage to kill the
fox, which was sunning itself that day on
a noontime and sun-baked tree stump,
asleep. In no time, Warren had it dead.
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There seemed always to be something
crazy of that nature going on or about to
be going on. Guys in their pickup trucks
with rifle-racks in the rear window, would
drive along, slowly, to pick off gophers or
groundhogs, or whatever ground animal
they could shoot at. Errant deer too, at
any time. Farmers got an exception to the
usual hunting-season rules. If they claimed
that deer on their property were ruining or
eating their crops, they could shoot them.
It often just became an un-regulated sport.
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I never knew that much about country
living but I was a fast learner. Tee shirts,
short hair, jeans, and boots. Boots were
ever important; with all the cow and
animal slop around they were a necessity.
I never saw a 'real' farmer in shoes or
sneakers. Even the implements and the
machinery sales guys wore that get-up.
Never once, on either side of 1972, did
I ever see one of those Brooklyn-Cowboy
types parading about to look more like
fashions plates than dirt and plop farmers.
They'd have been laughed out of court.
All that Ralph Lauren rugged-look
fashion stuff started much later. Same
went for the females, even in those
nascent days of the liberation movement.
I never saw a bra-less farm lady traipsing
about proclaiming her 'liberty'. It was all
nose to the grindstone stuff. Work, always.
It was a few years later, in Elmira, when
'Our Bodies, Our Selves' was published
and got around, that females began all
that stuff; but Elmira wasn't farmland
anyway, so it didn't count.
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What was funny about that old farm
couple with the ducks and geese was,
also (much like the party-line phone
thing), how they even knew we had a
pond there with our own small flock
of waterfowl. They said they were
'just driving by' one day, when they
saw our two ponds and thought of
merging theirs and ours. Maybe that
was so, but we always wondered about
their claim, and how all-of-a-sudden
forward they were to come by and
suggest it. He was known - the guy -
as a crank and a loudmouth of sorts
too. We were surprised but feigned a
happiness and joy as much as we could,
to have been picked out. Many other
people had ponds and ducks. Why
then, us?
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Lots of incidentals like that got all
tired up together. Columbia Crossroads
wasn't much, but it had its own, regular,
cross-section of the sorts of oddities you'd
find anywhere. The richest family around,
and with the biggest farm, belonged to the
old patriarch Lorton Mattocks. He was in
his 80's by then, but he had a ruling son
who had already taken over the running
of things. This son, probably in his mid
forties, was an influential guy too in the
running of the local schools and the
Board of Ed. I got mixed in with them
during that period of time (after Elmira's
flood), when I needed a stopgap, local
jump (the Elmira printshop I worked
at closed up for a year and a little more).
After an interview, that school-board
hired me for some local duties nearby
in the Springfield Elementary School.
Maintenance, janitor stuff, keeping
the Winter heating systems going, and,
for the Summers, stripping the floors,
re-waxing, and then painting and
repairing all classrooms and offices.
It was OK, but boring as all get-out. I
shirked a lot, and they local assistance
people kept sending me welfare guys
on whom I foisted a lot of the work.
It was fun, however, to watch, as
Autumn approached, how the brilliant
blaze of the nearby hills and the
distant Mt. Pisgah took on all
the colors of the glories of God.
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