Stuck In New Jersey

Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer

My family traces it’s American roots back to a single ship that sailed up the Hudson river in 1625. That wooden vessel, Eendracht, served as the form of transportation for a small group of Walloon Calvinists, including our forebears, Joris and Catalina Rapelje. The following year they welcomed their a child into the world, the first female Christian to be born in New Netherland, the name of that land that is now home to it’s better known urban center, New York City. That child, Sarah Rapelje would at the tender age of 14, marry one Hans Hansen Bergen, one of two brothers who arrived on an English vessel named The Hopewell and the rest, as they say, is history.

Our own daughter was given her name in remembrance and it has popped up in the family bible over the centuries, doubtless in numerous other families of her lineage given that she has an estimated million descendants living in the United States. The Bergen name line, given to the most densely populated county in nation, Bergen County, New Jersey, died out at the battle of Chancellorsville when Sydney, the only son of a Princeton blacksmith, fell dead on the field of battle in the early Spring of 1863. It is through his sister’s line that our family traces it’s nae changes- the Vorhees, and Eges, Van Nests and Van Dorens, names that still exist on the street signs of my hometown, named after that leaky craft that managed the Atlantic crossing in the earliest years of the 17th century, Hopewell.

Whenever I return to New Jersey I am surrounded by the haunting presence of names I’ve heard in a thousand stories over the years. I recall bits and pieces of some, others in vivid detail and my father, God bless him, has managed to keep the histories and genealogies straight and in several comprehensive volumes of notes and papers that wind backward through time yellowing as they go, brittle reminders of who we were and where we came from. I have always taken exception to the common claim of American history buffs that we are all immigrants. I beg to differ. Many who arrived on these shores did not come to a country at all, but to a wild and inhospitable land that was sparsely populated and from those empty filed and old growth forests they cut and cleared a new world in the most literal sense, as colonists.

My family founded places with the old Dutch names like Breukelen and Beverwijck that eventually became the immigrant magnets of the following centuries once the hard work was done. Colonist, unlike those who follow, bring their culture and social customs with them. They did not move into wikiups and learn Algonquin, rather they named every stream a kill and plowed up the rich black earth in huge blocks as they had in Holland, erecting their stout square houses with glass windows along the edges and fought for their new found independence with sweat and blood.

The day after Christmas my teenage daughter and I headed back to New Jersey to visit my father, sister, and the friends we’d left behind when we moved to New Hampshire more than a decade ago. The first leg of the drive was fun and light and she brought along a couple of games she’d gotten for Christmas, boxes of cards with moral dilemmas and logic quizzes. She’d read out loud as I drove south along the Connecticut River Valley covered in snow like some Currier and Ives print, and I answered her. She would chime in with her take and before long we’d crossed into Vermont, then into the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts and then into New York. I consider myself fortunate to have been able to maintain a good relationship with my daughter well into her teen years and I believe that it has a great deal to do with the choices we made ten years ago.

To be able to be a present father, to live and work in the same place where we can all interact and keep up with each other daily in a way I was never able to in our former life has created bonds between us that are rock solid. We do not suffer each other as so many modern families appear to do in public, but to really enjoy each other’s company and to share our interests with enthusiasm. The conversation never flagged as we made our way further south into the stomping grounds of Rip Van Winkle and the hulking edifices of 19th century penal institutions that dot the Hudson Valley, rising along it’s flank like warnings to the twin streams of traffic heading towards or fleeing the New York City metroplex.

We entered New Jersey via 287 at the top of the state, guarded it would appear by a Shinto temple at the top of big gray cliffs. Almost immediately I was struck by the same phenomenon I have written about in the past when I’ve taken this route back home. Along the sides of the highway at regular intervals, jammed up under the metal guardrails and piled in humps along the median strip were the carcasses of untold deer. It was striking after living in New Hampshire and having seen a living deer only after a hard worked stalk through the woodlots, or a glimpse of one crossing an open field at a distance.

New Jersey, it would appear, is over run by the species and so many are struck by the tens of thousands of trucks and cars that zip back and forth in their race to get wherever it is that they all go. Some were fresh kills partially hided at the end of a long red smear from the center lane to their final resting place in the breakdown lane and others desiccated hanks of fur poked through with sun bleached bones that indicate the type of habitual neglect required by the State employees assigned to maintain the roads and highways. There were, along the corridor between the rotting bedrock cliffs of Mahwah and the Wanaque Reservoir there was a rotted deer corpse every hundred yards, many of them tagged with flash orange spray paint, the State’s way of saying “yeah, we know about this one” without actually doing anything about it.

It would be comical if it weren’t indicative of a much bigger problem than the aesthetic. Clustered around each set of moldering remains were drifts of paper and plastic litter. The tree lines along the highways were festooned with the stuff, as if it were an organized program of waste disposal. I remember when I was still a child in New Jersey, how litter was considered a blight and how anyone who dared to toss so much as a cigarette butt out of a car window was chided for their actions. Public service announcements featuring weeping Indians and sad eagles looked on with forlorn gazes as a single paper cup or discarded napkin was tossed at their feet and how now, fifty years and countless hundreds of millions of dollars later it appears as if it were a joke on another, more gullible generation of do-gooders.

From the first mile marker at the top of the state until we reached our destination it was the only thing I could see once it caught my attention. It gave the appearance that there was a concerted effort on the part of the entire population to throw away as much garbage as they could manage onto every piece of road in the state.

I have written in the past that my reasons for leaving New Jersey were not simply economic, though that too played a role. More than that it was a decision based on how it felt to live in a place I had always loved deeply only to see it degraded in such a way as to be barely recognizable. The pain it caused me was as deep as the loss I’d suffered when my own Mother had passed away because so much of my identity, I believe, was tied up in the red soil of my hometown. New Jersey wasn’t a part of me so much as I was a part of it and at the end I felt every bit as unessential and disregarded as those rotting deer strewn along the margins unnoticed.

Well I saw you last night down on the avenue
Your face was in the shadows but I knew that it was you
You were standin’ in the doorway out of the rain
You didn’t answer when I called out your name
You just turned and then you looked away
Like just another stranger waitin’ to get blown away

Point blank, right between the eyes
Point blank, right between the pretty lies you fell
Point blank, shot right through the heart

The first full day after we’d arrived I took my daughter and her oldest friend to a wrestling match in Freehold. Her friend had joined the team at the beginning of the season and was the only girl on an all boys team. My daughter knew that I wasn’t a big fan of girls playing against males, but her friend is a natural athlete and for a girl her age about a half head taller than most of the boys on her team so I kept my opinion to myself and drove them out to the meet. It had been quite a while since I’d gone east of the Route 1 Corridor that separates the foothills of western New Jersey from the Atlantic coastal plains of the eastern half of the state.

When I was very young my parents had moved us out of Hopewell to Hightstown where my father could hop on the commuter bus to NYC every morning. We lived in what they once called garden apartments and could now be accurately described as a tenement. I don’t think I ever realized just how far down the socio-economic ladder our family lived, I was only a child and I never went hungry or worried about having a roof over my head, but driving past our old residence it was crystal clear that we existed just above the poverty line, at least by current standards, and yet both my parents worked full time.

The further east we went the more I noticed the changes not only to the landscape, the endless fields of my memories now wide parking lots fronting endless strings of strip malls and auto dealerships, chain restaurants and sprawling garden centers. All along the edges of these were the abandoned houses and imploding barns of what once was the Garden State. The field where I found my first arrowhead in 1967 was now a four lane spur to the New Jersey Turnpike, the churches all having given way to mosques and Hindu temples.

By the time we’d driven into Freehold, the eternal stomping ground of every Springsteen song ever written, it was clear that a wholesale replacement of the population had taken place. I saw nothing but the stoic faces of Meso-Americans walking, riding bikes, driving pick-up trucks and pushing carriages accompanied by squads of orbiting toddlers. All the old shoe stores and florist shops were now home to check cashing establishments and bodegas, every sign in Spanish.

The old mansions that lined the main street had all been converted into a mish-mash of fortune tellers and immigration law offices, and on every street corner were clusters of chunky Hispanic men in work clothes peering into every passing truck, hoping for a day’s work. The high school and the families and students participating in the wrestling tournament were almost exclusively heritage Americans. Whatever sport the majority population played out this way, it certainly wasn’t wrestling. My daughter’s friend won her match against a varsity boy that stood just over six foot tall and while my daughter assured her friend that she’d remember winning this match for a long time, I added that the boy she beat was likely to remember his defeat even longer.

After the match my sister and I left the girls since they wanted to watch the rest of the event play out and had a ride home from another family. I drove back towards Princeton past the same forlorn consumer outlets and myriad nail salons and bodegas that seem to have filled every former bean filed and woodlot of my youth. I stopped by Twin Rivers, the nation’s first intentional commuter community where my parents bought a townhouse- a nice word for an apartment with a mortgage- in 1970. I remembered the neighborhood very differently than it appeared today, it’s sprawling field behind our residence was now much smaller and crowded with a vast middle school, the pavement and drives all broken and cracked, the once small sapling that had been wired to sticks forty feet high and bigger around than my arms could reach if I tried.

We walked past our old place and it looked so unassuming, so sad that it brought a wave of nostalgia over me. The same brick patio my father had laid in the tiny back yard were still there although the little fish pond was long gone. We didn’t talk much as we strolled around the building and then returned to the car, but I could almost hear the sounds of that time so far in my past, the kids on bicycles and the pop-up ball games we once played. The day was mild and even with the sunlight and soft breezes there wasn’t anything to draw the children outdoors and the entire development, with the exception of the cars, looked abandoned.

We drove back through Hightstown and I pointed out the places where I’d caught a huge snapping turtle, painted a landscape on New Year’s Day in 1979 and other meaningless moments from a life that had disappeared a long, long time ago. We stopped at The Princetonian Diner on Route 1, the same establishment where my father had waited tables at night when I was just an infant, earning whatever extra he could manage for his young family. I ordered pork roll and eggs and my sister filled me in on what had been going on with our father’s treatment since his diagnoses almost a year ago.

Eventually we came around to the important part of the conversation, how to get them both up to New Hampshire for good, where we could look after each other and where she could finally begin to get on with her own life rather than act as his caretaker and we both shared about as much as we could without breaking down in public. It felt cathartic to say the words out loud to someone who shared such an intimate bond as family blood, to lay out the old baggage before making a map of the path forward and eventually we drained the last of our coffee and headed out to look for arrowheads in the fields of Hopewell.

The soil of the Hopewell Valley is the deep red of old rust, the precambrian shale that made up the ancient wetlands that ran the length of the Atlantic plain. The early arrivals named the mountain after the unique soil, Sourland, for the taste of it, that slightly citrus flavor the Dutch called Sauer Landt, where everything you planted came up fast and green and grew like crazy long before there were fertilizers and herbicides. I knew every single ancient site along that flank and had picked up thousands of artifacts over the years and walking that field, alive with recently sprouted winter rye brought me back in time in a way that visiting my old homes hadn’t quite managed.

How many thousands of hours had I spent over the course of my life strolling back and forth along the rows with my head down, eyes focused on the slightest deviation of color that signified something out of place, the amber yellow of jasper, the olive patina of argillite, the glistening sheen of black jasper and the brilliant white of quartz crystal. We talked more than we looked and the ground sodden from weeks of rain clung to our boots as we walked. Eventually we headed back to the car and after we got in I drove us up to Highland Cemetery to visit the graves of my mother and the all the other relatives we’d laid to rest, and the ones they’d buried before us.

My cousin, God bless him, had placed funeral blankets on all of them and as we walked we said their names out loud and connected each to the other with the stories we’d been told and memorized ourselves over the years; William and Dennis, Rena and Chet, Emily, Sarah, Harry and Helen. There were the old ones, the Eges and Van Nests, Vorhees and Van Dorens and the ones that tied us to them that had come much later, Postels and Morans and each granite face on every stone gave up the smallest of details, the date of arrival and then of departure.

I do not fall into the the melancholy of cemeteries when I visit because so much of my history with that place is tied to sledding down it’s enormous hill or necking with a girls at the top where the only thing you see at night is the sparkling gems of the village below rather than the countless tombstones of the departed. I’ve painted as many landscapes from the top of that parcel as I have carried caskets to their final resting place and so the feelings I associate with it are warm and uplifting even as I realized it was the last place I saw so many people I loved completely for the last time ever.

A few flags were still fluttering above the graves of men I knew only by reputation, some of whom were never returned except in memory. Whatever remained of their earthly bodies had long ago been interred on distant battlegrounds, grown over I suppose with whatever grew there before they died. In reality none of them were here at all, I suppose but live within us for as long as we retain our ability to recall their existence. The blocks of weathered stone were simply reminders, like the chips of flint and river cobbles pecked smooth by human hands in the distant past. We finally got our fill of what had passed long ago and we returned to the car silently and headed back to Princeton as the Sun set in the west.

I sat with my father for a long time that evening, we talked as we always do, and incessant riffing back and forth through time and places, about authors and films, local events and recent obituaries. Our speaking patterns and tone reflect each other as I imagine any other father and son might, but ours is so well-worn and practiced it flowed like the river, pausing to roil the surface above some hidden tension you couldn’t quite make out, and then it softened once again and rolled on to something new. In the background there was the sound of music as there has always been, Mozart and Copeland, Glass and Baker.

We’d pause now and then to sip from our glasses, there’d be the soft sound of pages rustling as he looked for passage I’d enjoy and an undercurrent of laughter that raised it’s head now and again as it had a thousand times before. My love for him is something I rarely speak about, but it drives me as powerfully as any other force I have ever known, the need to impress him with my knowledge, to show him how independent I am even as I hang on his every word, no different than I did when I was a child. I’ve thought so often about how difficult it must have been for them back then, teenage parents in a world without a safety net beyond the love of their family, living hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck without ever letting on to me how precarious the entire structure of their marriage really was.

They did whatever they had to do, worked as many hours as the day would allow to manage the paltry incomes provided by delivering mail or waiting tables. Even in the spare moments of leisure, those Sunday afternoons following church services, my mother would iron his shirts while I played with blocks at her feet, the hissing sound of the steam, the scent of the starch she sprinkled from the glass cola bottle she mixed it in serving as a comfort rather than a chore.

What they lacked in material possessions they made up for in time and attention and while we never took vacations to far away places, we haunted museums and galleries at Princeton, attended free concerts at the Choir College, or picnicked at Washington’s Crossing. Being with my father as I have become rusty with age never fails to turn me into a child again, the sound of his voice an echo of my own as we retrace all the steps that have led us to this final haul towards the summit. I dread the drives back south, but I never regret them for a second once I see his face and I know he feels the same way.

The next morning I made plans to have breakfast with my oldest friend in the world, James. We parted ways in the Fall of 1978, his path took him to Rutgers, mine to Brooklyn and then on to Ft. Bragg, but we remained in touch throughout our lifetimes. We grew up together and did all the things we shouldn’t have done as well as a few that have served us well over the years. There was a connection when we were younger, in music and humor, in place and in time and though we traveled widely divergent paths, we have managed to return to each other often enough so that the fondness we had as boys never flagged as adults.

He is a grandfather now, retired from a career in corrections for the State of New Jersey- “If they ever knew some of the things we’d done my life could have gone another way,” he told me over pancakes and sausage, smiling. I smiled back looking into the face of a sixty year old man who’s eyes looked no different than they had at eighteen. We shared stories about the past year since we’d last got together, I gave him some syrup and a Hopewell Farms baseball cap and asked the waitress to take a photo for each of us before we left. He told me that there were standing orders at his house to admit me should I ever show up on his doorstep and I told him I’d feel cheated if he ever needed something and didn’t call me immediately.

We stood in the parking lot under the slate gray sky at the edge of Trenton and hugged each other good-bye and both of us drove off, in opposite directions, but for as long as we both live, travelling the same path. Driving back to Princeton after breakfast I looked at all the old haunts where we’d been for such a big part of our lives and saw the change that had overtaken the stomping grounds of my youth.

The ash trees were down everywhere, all but extinct in New Jersey since the arrival of the emerald ash borer that came with the Pottery Barn wave of the 90’s, massive columns as big as those at the Parthenon shattered and fallen everywhere, ignored it seemed by the homeowners and property managers who couldn’t begin to keep up with the genocide of the species as swift and ubiquitous as the emergent nail salons and urgent care centers that has sprung up in their place. Along every road with more than two lanes there were masses of strip malls, half of them vacant and pleading for occupancy with tattered flags and sun-bleached foam core signs, their parking lots half empty, the lights out inside.

And where there were spaces between them there remained the last small ruins of decayed post-war bungalows and mid-century ranchers that once housed the Baby Boomers in their infancy, the pride of returning battle scarred vets reduced to waterlogged wrecks sinking under the weight of their own obsolescence and returning to the soil from which they’d sprung.

Do you say your prayers little darling, do you go to bed at night
Praying that tomorrow everything will be alright
But tomorrows fall in number, in number one by one
You wake up and you’re dying, you don’t even know what from

Well they shot you point-blank
You been shot in the back, baby, point-blank
You been fooled this time, little girl, that’s a fact
Right between the eyes, baby, point-blank
Right between the pretty lies that they tell

My daughter stayed with her friend’s family in Hopewell old friends of ours who had graciously offered me one of the houses on the big property they serviced as caretakers. Their employer is one of the wealthiest men in the State and he has slowly and methodically bought up all the available properties in my old hometown, including the one we owned before we moved. The improvements that have been made are hardly noticeable and the results have left a small corner of the world looking as it did before we left and for that I am deeply grateful. I had the big old farmhouse to myself, it’s occupants residing in Costa Rica for the winter and so I had a quiet place to reflect between the meals and the reunions, a big old bed to catch up on sleep and a comfortable chair with a good reading light to crack some books I’d been given for Christmas.

Out back I could see the sweeping lawn that ran down to Beden’s Brook, the old Indian sites converted into a quarter of a million dollar bent-grass croquet court. I was glad that someone had the sense to preserve it even if their generational wealth was only a temporary firewall against what was coming. Even here, looking up into the forest of Crusher Ridge, the boulder strewn escarpment that separated my old place from where James grew up you could see all the dead ash trees leaning over the remaining oaks, widow makers and silvered columns that looked like ruins from another civilization.

There were deer everywhere on the sweeping lawns out front, their heads down to rye grass, oblivious to the steady stream of cars that drove in and out of the village at all hours. It was as quiet as a church in that house but I never felt lonely even though every inch of the place felt haunted, not by disembodied spirits of past generations, but by the teaming memories of a place I was still connected to even though I’d left it so long ago. Maybe there is something to the old sayings about blood and soil, maybe you can’t go home again, but neither can you ever really leave.

Once I dreamed we were together again, baby, you and me
Back home in those old clubs, the way we used to be
We were standing at the bar and it was hard to hear
The band was playing loud and you were shouting something in my ear
You pulled my jacket off as the drummer counted four
You grabbed my hand and pulled me out on the floor
Just stood there and held me and you started dancing slow
And as I pulled you tighter I swore I’d never let you go

Something, something, something. That’s how everything I write these days sounds to my ears, just old words lined up telling some story that’s already over before I even get warmed up. I am an old man now, another relic like the ones I used to find when I was a kid, but even though my time is passed I have something worth telling if the right person has an ear for it. We came together again for a final meal at my father’s house and it was wonderful. After we’d eaten we played a game where you get to pull a word out of the dictionary and everyone gets a shot at defining it, or coming up with it’s etymology and no matter how many words I think I know I am stumped every bit as much as I ever was since we first began playing it in the distant mist of long ago.

We laughed and drank and it was sweeter than anything you could imagine, to be where you are loved and where you love everyone back and all those memories swirling around the room even as we were making new ones. You give up so much in life as you move through it, but even more clings to you in hidden places and unseen ways, things that rather than burden you down lift you up to new heights. All the old sadness and loss from other times fade away in the vibrant light of the recollection of happier ones. My mother isn’t really lost me the way I thought she was when she passed away, but shows up in the way my daughter takes on the world with fearless defiance.

My laugh starts to sound like the one my father had when he was younger and no one can tell the difference between my son and I on the phone no matter how many times they try and figure it out. For all of the old fallen world there is something that comes up in it’s shadows that is alive and growing if you just look at it in the right light and the following day I drove back out of town and headed north along the Millstone River where my ancestors first traveled into the region. The churches all fly the rainbow flag now and while there are fewer of them than in the days when I was young, there are now Islamic temples and Sikh shrines popping up all over the old land that was once Dutch, then English, then American and now whatever it has become.

As I got closer to my destination the houses and old neighborhoods featured the deflated skins of so many Santas and elves and reindeer and angels, crumpled in dissolute heaps on dirty little lawns where they’d remain until they were policed up by tired fathers after work, or left to rot away until springtime returned. Everywhere I noticed there were fences and gates, block walls and chain link dividers around every dwelling in a way that made the whole of central Jersey look like a series of Indian forts from another century.

This new phenomenon, the walling off of each parcel of land, every apartment and dwelling had become a landmark of the place and the time. Gone were the low hedges and flowering bushes that offered a view both in and out of each parcel, replaced with unmistakable fortifications that showed the divisions which existed even where it could never be spoken of out loud. Every few houses sported the lawn signs proclaiming “Hate Has No Home Here” in half a dozen languages and alphabets, talisman against the very people the fences and walls were erected to keep out.

I wondered how many of those homeowners had really thought about their message of inclusion, their subtle genuflection before the shibboleths of our time that stood in stark contrast to the subtler message the palisaded property lines conveyed to anyone with eyes to see.

I arrived at my destination thirty minutes early and sat in the car quietly waiting for noon, the time we had arranged to meet. The place where I had parked behind the house offered not only a beautiful view- if it weren’t for the other cars parked nearby it could have been a century ago- but a relaxing silence punctuated only by the soft susurrus of a gentle rain. At noon the cell phone rang and I told the caller I would be in momentarily, so I collected my things and walked up to the back porch and knocked. My first glimpse of Stucky completed a picture I’d had in my mind for years.

I offered my hand to him and before I could react he pulled me in with a hug, and I tried my best to return the gesture. He is much taller than I am and his embrace swallowed me as if I were a child. His voice was burnished by a thousand cigars until it virtually glowed with with warmth and his eyes shown brightly. I hesitate to describe him except in general terms, but if Mark Twain and Sam Elliot were to merge in a single Identity, it would produce a man that looked exactly like the one I was standing next to.

He welcomed me into his home and placed some offerings on his kitchen table while we exchanged the pleasantries and eventually moved into a butler’s pantry adjacent to the dining room. The details of the home I will leave to him to describe at another time, but it was as if the inside of the home had also been drawn back into the past that I’d seen outdoors. Every detail stood out and it was both comfortable and inspiring to sit in a place so filled with quality craftsmanship from a time so far behind us. The conversation took off immediately and continued throughout our lunch- he had been gracious enough to have provided some calzones and German beer as well as a tiramisu for desert although for all of our conversation we both barely touched the food, delicious though it was.

He took me on a tour, we settled back again where we’d started out and never once during the hours that passed by did it ever flag. I felt as if we had known each other for a lifetime and I hope that he shared the same impression. We covered so many topics that we’d both wanted to discuss in person, from our families and health to the wonderful opportunity that had been afforded to us to meet on The Burning Platform. I won’t enumerate all the wonderful things each of us had to say about the many contributors that made it such an important part of both our lives, but I told him all about the get together in July, who had surprised me and who had been exactly as I imagined and he told me about the wonderful people who had reached out to him in his time of crisis and how they had buoyed him up and carried him through an exceedingly difficult time.

I let him know that although the gift of meats that I had brought along were my own, they were made possible by the generous contribution of Yojimbo who’d sent me enough money to make the trip possible knowing who I was going to be visiting when I arrived. He told me how a single comment I had once made about his Castles essay had given him the push to write even more and I felt blessed to have even been remembered as a part of his journey to be the kind of writer he’s turned out to be. We both spoke highly of Jim- thanks again for everything in this New Year, Admin, none of this would be possible without your generosity and uncommon talent for speaking the truth- and for TMWNN who has served as a combination of TBP’s armed forces and security services these many years.

And while his anonymity is respected, it would be unforgivable not to credit him with having saved the site numerous times as well as his humble and undeniable humanity in dealing with people exactly as they are. We both observed about the quality of the people attracted to the site as well as the dearth of trolls and ankle-biters while keeping in memory some of the ones that did make an appearance and who kept things salty along the way. I wish that I could fill in more gaps, but I never asked permission to recount the conversation in writing except in the most general terms and it was, after all, personal.

There was one single detail I feel I must share because it meant so much to me and because I will never forget it. In the last few moments before I had to leave and make my way back to Princeton Stucky told me a story about his parents arrival in the United States, how they had come here as refugees from another war in another time and how difficult that had been for them, but that as soon as it was possible his father made a singular purchase to make himself feel at home. The American custom of drinking beer from cans didn’t sit right with him so he purchased a beer stein, manufactured as it reads on the bottom in Western Germany.

It was a beautiful bone gray mug with a tapered moth and decorated with a field of blue diamonds and German herald, lions facing one another across a sigil with a family name beneath it. I felt as if I were handling an artifact of some historic event I had only read about, which is true in a way, and as he spoke I could hear the pride he felt not only in his parents story, but in his own. I was honored to handle it and as he finished telling me about it I offered it back to him and he smiled at me.

“I want you to have it,” he said. I suddenly felt as if I had been given some kind of true blessing, something of such significance and meaning to a man I respected as much as I did and it was humbling. I don’t remember what kind of thanks I offered but it will never approximate how I feel about that moment and I will treasure it and tell that story to whoever will listen as long as I have it.

We said our farewells and looking at him I thought about all the things I have ever said about physiognomy and saw in him just how accurate that method of judgement is in fixing a bead on someone you’ve never met before. I thought I knew Stucky, but looking into his face that afternoon I saw true human kindness and fraternity. We may have only just met, but I feel like we’ve known each other for as long as I can remember.

Driving back in the falling light of the late afternoon my mind went back over all things we’d discussed, all the things that we never got around to and considered myself singularly lucky in having finally met someone I admired and respected in the flesh. Most people talk poorly about the people one meets on the Internet but my experience has been quite different. Had it not been for Jim and TBP I would probably never have written another word and if I hadn’t I would never have had the good fortune to have met so many great people and to have made so many good friends.

I certainly would have felt more isolated and cut off from the world that is changing around me, that has always been in flux and will always change. I can’t keep the changes from coming, but I no longer have to feel alone as they alter the landscape of my past. This is a new year with new opportunities and if we keep our eyes open and listen for the voices inside of us to do what is right, seek the truth wherever it leads, and encourage others to do the things they never imagined something good can come out of the experience every time.

The last night before we returned to the farm my father gave me a gift. When I opened it I saw what looked like a framed page of something I had written a long time ago. The cursive looked like the way I used to write before I began to use a computer but there was something in the words that was familiar to me in another way I couldn’t quite place. As I read the sentences one after another I began to choke up as it was what I have long considered to be one of the most beautiful passages ever written, the closing paragraph of The Great Gatsby by another former resident of Princeton, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I wondered when I had copied it and how my father had come by it when he explained to me that he had an acquaintance who worked at the Firestone Library on campus and how he had taken out the last page of the original handwritten manuscript to make a copy for my father to give to me as a gift. The conclusion of our trip was in its own way an almost perfect literary form of its own. I ended my visit in the same way I had started it.

Where I thought I’d see only ghosts I encountered life and in looking for evidence of the past the future opened it’s door on a new year. And so after saying my goodbyes the following morning with hugs and handshakes I drove back to the farm, to my wife and children and left the past behind me even as the future rose to meet me somewhere up ahead. And while we live in another place there is a part of me that will always be stuck in New Jersey.

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the Moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island that flowered here once for Dutch sailors’ eyes- a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the ones that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory and enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate with his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there brooding on the old unknown world I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther….and one fine morning—-

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

-----------------------------------------------------
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal

-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
Click to visit the TBP Store for Great TBP Merchandise

182
Leave a Reply

avatar
  Subscribe  
Notify of
Thank you for shating...
Thank you for shating...

I was hoping.

M G
M G

Was me…thanks!

M G
M G

I was thinking of this post yesterday for many reasons; how your mythical tale of a journey has played such a poignant role framing the emotional events during the days that followed.

Thanks for this, HSF. It has probably been written of by the Muses; it is that well-plotted.

I’ve purchased Mr. Thistle’s book and Mr. Gore’s book and wonder when we shall get the opportunity to purchase your book?

Ghost

I was wondering if Stucky would like to see this again right now?

Ivan
Ivan

the sight of springsteen made me want to vomit…didn’t read the missive as a result

part of my family too is from the Garden State

who’d want that loudmouth douchebag representing them in any way shape or form kind of like deziro and meathead

frauds all of them

Hardscrabble Farmer
Hardscrabble Farmer

Maybe next time.

Mygirl...maybe

HSF: You write so poignantly and with a kindness and a great sadness. In some respects you remind me of Steinbeck. A great read, thank you.

Allfather
Allfather

I agree. HSF’s writing has the melancholy of Steinbeck. Yet, better and more sophisticated.

Brilliant!

Chinook 60
Chinook 60

Any Brevoorts in your ancestery from 1660 on?

Ghost

I’m glad I didn’t add my favorite song from that album.

I admit to being somewhat torn when I hear Springsteen’s music. It was powerful music and we absorbed “Born in the USA” and all that entailed.

Then, we discovered he didn’t really like the USA and we were conflicted.

It was all part of being the Class of 1980.

flash
flash

One can respect the art regardless the persuasion or politics of the artist. Springsteen is one of the greatest Americana folk lyricists to ever live. Believe it.

Just a few monuments to Americana.

Nebraska
Ghost of Tom Joad
From the River
Greetings from Ashbury Park

From the Monongahela valley
To the Mesabi iron range
To the coal mines of Appalachia
The story’s always the same
Seven hundred tons of metal a day
Now sir you tell me the world’s changed
Once I made you rich enough
Rich enough to forget my name

Touching read HF… You hit all the soft spots.
Glad to hear news of Stuck… a big man with an even bigger heart …. not surprised at all.

A. R. Wasem
A. R. Wasem

Bruce doesn’t “hold a candle” to Dylan. Also glad to hear that Stuckmeister is ok. Kudos on the post. Best for ’20 to all TBPers.

StackingStock
StackingStock

Could have used this underated band and song.

(EC)
(EC)

sharing

M G
M G

Maybe I meant skating. Or seating.

Dutchman
Dutchman
TS

Wonderful. Wonderful. Wonderful.
Nothing says Master Craftsman like clear unadorned clean lines and from-the-heart sincerity.
What a way to start a new year; nostalgia, hope, recognition of fellowship and the company of dear friends and loved ones.
Once again, I am justified in my esteem of your writing and in my opinion of your character.
Happy New Year, Farmer.

BB

It was wonderful .I wish I could write like Hardfarmer. I don’t go to New Jersey often but the last time I did I ended up in Jersey City. I was the only white face I ever saw.I got out as soon as I could.There has been almost a total replacement of the white population in parts of that state. It’s to bad . It is a beautiful place in some parts.
Glad Stucky is doing ok. I wish I could have been there just to hear all the stories. Glad to hear Yumbo is still out there and I hope doing ok. I would tell you guys about my family but it would take longer then I have .Death comes and has no mercy. I still have my mom bless her dear soul. All we can do is carry on the best we can and make good use of the time we have been granted . God Bless to all .

Hardscrabble Farmer
Hardscrabble Farmer

Your name came up as well and in the nicest way.

Travel safe this year my friend and if you are ever in the area, feel free to drop in.

M G
M G

I always wondered if anyone other than yo and I called you.

Ghost

BB? And, I promise I won’t sick Paula on you. She was disappointed because I told her if you didn’t pay for lunch/dinner, I would pay her back if you agreed to meet her.

See? All safe and above board. And above the table.

I did wonder if Yo and I were the only ones…

M G
M G

Well?

Manic Hispanic (EC)
Manic Hispanic (EC)

I recall a time when HF said he wished he could write like you, Beebs. Sometimes, the phrase ‘the feeling is mutual’ applies. I wonder if Paula is thinking of me?

M G
M G

Do you remember when Beebs put his # here for someone to call? Well…I called and Yo called. Anyone else?

I thought it a powerful example of reaching through the matrix into meatspace.

M G
M G

That was pretty nice prose yourself.

The Modern Chronicler
The Modern Chronicler

A beautiful essay. Glad you met somebody from TBP and that the meeting was so very much worth it.

Thanks to Jim for this website and to all those whose comments have consistently added value over the years.

As for NJ: much of it is absolutely beautiful. It’s unfortunate some of the ways things are done leave more than a bit to be desired. But as any other place, while not perfect, it has many, many wonderful things.

nkit
nkit

I truly enjoyed that, HF. An excellent piece of writing. We are fortunate to have you (and others) writing such wonderful articles.

I could relate to your meeting with Stucky as one of my better friends and I met in much the same fashion, and he’s like a brother ten years later.

Thanks much for your contributions.

TN Patriot
TN Patriot

HSF – What a beautiful story of the past, present and future. I certainly hope you are able to move your sister and Father closer so you can continue making memories with him and letting him make memories with your children. This weekend marks 20 years since my father passed. There are many times each year I think of him and all of the things he taught me over the years.

Glad you got to spend time with Stucky and reacquaint yourself with some you met face-to-face for the first time.

Thank you for sharing.

M G
M G

I 2nd that…

overthecliff
overthecliff

HSF, that was good.

Bilco

My goodness what a great write.One of your finest….

e.d. ott
e.d. ott

NJ, the garbage State, best seen through a rear view mirror.

P.S.
I live here, but not for long.
Like I’ve told two out of my three kids NJ is a good place to be from. Leave, change your home of record, and don’t bother going back. They won’t miss you and the feeling is mutual.

QQQBall
QQQBall

Hey Jim,

Change the date on your thermometer. 🙂 Happy New Year

Justinvog

Write My Paper – EssayErudite.com

Looking for an expert to write my paper for you? You are at the right place.
Providing superior writing service appears to be our main specialization and passion.
Our website is the best destination for every English-speaking student who calls for assistance when handling his or her daily academic tasks.

write my paper

Write My Paper – https://essayerudite.com/write-my-paper/

thesis writer
do my essay
dissertation writing service
college writing services
buy essay

Uncola

Thank you for that profoundly poignant, and very personal, piece.

There’s so much I would like to say that I don’t know where to start. Therefore, I may answer in kind with my own stand-alone post sometime. Just not sure when.

For now, though, I’ll share a few random thoughts here and there and into the ethersphere:

– Of all that I’ve written, some of the most satisfying words were about my hometown. There must be something to genetic memory that energizes feelings of nostalgia and the sense of belonging to a certain place.

– Many new readers here may not know that Stucky’s moniker was once “Stuck in New Jersey”.

– I remember the “Castles” article.

– The prose in this piece was very eloquently woven; although EC may be offended at the Hispanic mentions.

– For me, it often seems time stands still in cemeteries and at funerals. And the taste of that timelessness is bittersweet indeed.

– I’ve wrestled since I was a wee lad and I’m glad we didn’t compete against girls back then. It would have been confusing.

– Regarding Daughters: my mom was a fearless spirit who had a very close relationship with her Dad, my Grandfather, who actually, at one time, delivered milk by horse and buggy in what is now a larger U.S. city. And, in the years before she died, my Mom gave me a poem. It was this one:

I Had A Father That Talked with Me

by Hilda Bigelow

I had a father who talked with me-
Allowed me the right to disagree,
To question- and always answered me,
As well as he could- and truthfully.
He talked of adventures; horrors of war;
Of life, its meaning; what love was for;
How each would always need to strive
To improve the world to keep it alive.
Stressed the duty we owe one another
To be aware each man is a brother.
Words for laughter he also spoke
A silly song or a happy joke.
Time runs along, some say I’m wise
That I look at life with seeing eyes.
My heart is happy, my mind is free,
I had a father who talked with me.

SeeBee
SeeBee

I was enthralled from the get-go. But your visit with Stucky was a wonderful surprise! It almost put me over the edge emotionally. There are some very fine folk on this blog. Thank you for sharing such heartfelt insights. I may even go visit my old neighborhood tomorrow.

gstnprfvjs
Anonymous
Anonymous

Meseroles of Greenpoint ancestor here saying hi.
First farm in Brooklyn.
We may be related.

Davido
Davido

Hard Scrabble Farmer, your writing always reminds me of the best in America. Strength, and fundamental reliable goodness.

ottomatik
ottomatik

Well done and Thank You. Hints of Admins drop of of college struck me.

DinCO
DinCO

Truly a wonderful story; a tribute to the brotherhood / sisterhood that is The Burning Platform. I have really enjoyed reading so many of the stories and comments posted here over the years that I have been in the background. Thank you to all the authors and commentators that have made this site what it has become through the years. THANK YOU to JQ for creating it and creating a forum such as this for those to come here and create this online community, vast as it is. I hope everyone has a fantastic 2020 and continues to create memories such as these.

WestcoastDeplorable
WestcoastDeplorable

Just excellent, HSF. I feel like I was right there with you and met Stucky myself. Your description of him fits my mind’s eye of how I imagined he might look. And then there’s BB…..
Happy New Year!

None Ya Biz
None Ya Biz

I am not one to entertain long post. This could have been broken up into a serial. However, having said that, the part that I did read brought back poignant memories of finding swimming holes, squirrel hunting and testing out my new .22 caliber western style pistol and not to mention M80s. In my opinion the most awesome firework ever! Never let the past deter where you want to be today. Innocence is fine but reality demands complete attention.

BYW. I can’t stand sluce crapstein…

Hardscrabble Farmer
Hardscrabble Farmer

It was too long, I should have broken it up but I was excited to tell the story and got carried away.

I’m not much of a Springsteen guy either, but the song and the experience matched up in so many ways I couldn’t not include it.

DinCO
DinCO

HSF – It was a great story as you told it.

None Ya Biz
None Ya Biz

Amen! I should be more forgiving of my trespasses. I pray to God to let me be but for some reason I can never get pass it. HSF, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt you are one of the good guys. Glory to the maker of all things and all men. What I can’t understand is why God chose to save us all not just Hebrews.

HSF, I hope to see you on your next summer hoe down! Unless it all goes to HeII. With all my best. None Ya Biz!

Unreconstructed
Unreconstructed

It was too long only for those with short attention spans. That was some good writing. In this fast paced world we live in it’s good to sometimes slow down and smell the roses. Thank you.

mark
mark

Farmer,

Raised in Edison, class of 67 from Middlesex County Voc Tech (all boys – a Lord of the Rings High School if there ever was one) on Easton Avenue in New Brunswick.

We have never had a class reunion…to get enough attendees now they’d have to hold it in Rahway State prison, and various graveyards.

Left early on for the South where the culture and the weather suited my nature and my clothes. (Shades of Harry Nelson in Everybody’s Talking At Me).

The central Jersey of my mostly all American boyhood in the 50′ & 60’s has been transformed into a human bee hive of seedy strip malls, business signs is strange languages, caustic bumper to bumper traffic, and far too many rude people…who are taxed into submission, basically disarmed, and are a funnel point for the ongoing 3rd world invasion.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading about your time trip. It sent me on many flashbacks to where I misspent much of my misspent yout. Smooth flowing poetic piece.

I always associated this song with Jersey in my rear view mirror…and me never looking back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AzEY6ZqkuE

Chubby Bubbles
Chubby Bubbles

My only experience in New Jersey was visiting a college friend. We went to a popular beach with pine trees, and then to a strip-mall-y pizza place where Harry Chapin played for a crowd of about 40. I still have an autographed menu somewhere, I think. Just found out he partnered with Bill Ayers in some world-hunger thing.

(EC)
(EC)

I wanted to post that song but it seemed a bit off topic (and yet germane) so I let it slide. It’s a great song, though.

Paula Pleaser (EC)
Paula Pleaser (EC)

Haven’t forgotten you Lager, I recall Ed and Stubbs also, although I mention the broads more often because, women.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Never thought for a minute that you did.
You remember things about people.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
Me too, but not nearly as well.
But, I still giggle when remembering the Blatz tag.

Paulita
Paulita

And the broads mention you too Taco Tico

Is on the bathroom wall at the Gainesville truck stop…

Men’s room AND women’s AND both

(EC)
(EC)
M G
M G

Girlie, I missed this visit… I think this was the day we got the news from Stucky things took a wrong turn.

(EC)
(EC)

So we take a trip with HF that begins like all good stories, innocently. For us, I mean.

Then we enter New Jersey, the land of ghosts and dead relatives symbolized by deer carcasses and fallen trees once majestic and imposing. The old fields are now paved over and covered with strip malls symbolized by the trash that covers the dead deer and falling trees. Human trash covers the old, now buried residents.

We meet HF’s father and we meet his old best friend. We visit the graveyard and the muddy fields of youth. Cue up the Boss’ Glory Days. Boys don’t hit home runs any more, now they lose wrestling matches to girls. Wont be telling that story in a bar 20 years later.

Like the movie Quest for Fire, HF travels the distance from New Hampshire to New Jersey to re-light his lamp. His father, the keeper of the flame, who has annotated and corroborated every descendant of that fateful ship, gives HF his own light, a passage in HF’s hand that has warmed the old man all these years. Proving that no son need try to impress his father, the old man sings That’s My Boy to himself everyday.

It may be that HF is destined to collect tribute from the land; arrowheads, tomahawks and even beer steins to add to his collection of family records. Man made fire is not allowed to consume HF’s writings, and his handwriting also reappears after many years like a treasure stored up by the father – time cannot erase it easily anymore than it can erase the street signs. His own stories adding to those of ships and battles and green lights up ahead upon life’s road. The road like a scroll unfolding before him and an invitation to – eat, Marc.

Then HF turns into Ron Popeil and gives us even more for the price of admission: There are plenty of worthless immigrants taking the place of the colonists but surely the lord would not destroy New Jersey if one good immigrant could be found there. Amidst the Styrofoam signs and box car architecture of the strip malls, we find a craftsman style home that beats HF’s now diminished stomping grounds. And so we find Stucky, the human redemption of New Jersey.

The immigrant to redeem all immigrants living in a place that redeems the Garbage State; a class act in a class joint, Stucky towers above the scion of the colonists. He too has stories and food to share with HF. Yet, Stucky is not ungrateful for the welcome his family got in the new land, he offers a sacrifice to the colonists that established this land in freedom, a personal treasure like a peace-pipe, albeit a beer stein. Thus, through his son, Poppa Stuck sacrifices, gives a tithe, to the colonists in gratitude for their hard work.

Hardscrabble Farmer
Hardscrabble Farmer

Wow.

That was better than the story.

(EC)
(EC)

Thank you for taking the trip and being our eyes and ears. Your stories tend towards deep meanings which permit my gleanings.

M G
M G

Gleanings? Isn’t that what Ruth did to whatshisname’s field?

TS

Boaz. Her future husband. Resulting in her grandson Jesse, the father of David, ultimately leading to Jesus.

Ghost

So, EC is suggesting he is like Ruth? or Boaz?

TS

Well, Boaz was an older fella, so…

(EC)
(EC)
(EC)
(EC)

Glean – collect gradually and bit by bit.

Notice the symbolism in the father passing the records and the writing to the son. And later, Stuck, who took care of his father until the old man passed, passes the beer stein to HF. In both instances, HF is receiving the torch to run his part of the marathon.

The piece sounds more like Pirsig traveling with his son and reflecting on things he believed he’d forgotten.

HF is covering ground his ancestors covered, anticipating by the memorial of the dead and capped by the dead deer, his fate like that of the Indians whose only mark are arrowheads and the fate of the colonists whose mark has been covered but not obliterated by the shabby buildings.

Ghost

But when Ruth “gleaned” from Moab, she had to do so at his feet (which we know sometimes means something else, such as David having Bathsheba wash his feet and Solomon showing up a while later).

I actually washed the feet of the kids in Sunday School one time. It was something new and interesting to do.

I got a lot out of it, supposedly. They got clean feet and snacks. I sometimes wonder if any of those kids think of me without laughing. The preacher’s granddaughter (a freaking Miss Teen Oklahoma!) told me at her high school graduation that she never heard “the taking God’s name in vain” commandment without thinking of the day all the kids started shouting out all the swear words they’d ever heard and a couple they shouldn’t ever have heard. She said she never told her mother because I asked her not to. She was five and already a little angel.

Jesus wept, I heard. That must mean he laughed. Perhaps, old friend, He laughs at me.

(EC)
(EC)

You can really massacre a bible story. Give me a 341.

Tree Mike
Tree Mike

Ha!!! Not many people got that! Graduated Lackland early Sept. ’69.

M G
M G

He means he wants a 341 for EXCELLENCE! I was a RED ROPE.
comment image

And that lady pinning my “rope” on was Captain (Major) Debra Meeks. I wonder if the USAF paid her reparations for her court-martial?

TS

Excelente Comunicador –
And this is also worth the price of admission.

M G
M G

1…2…300!

M G
M G

Is why I liked you in spite of you. Haha.

I just hope Stucky got the rock I sent him.

bigfoot
bigfoot

The simplest thing I can think to say to HF and EC is just to thank them for offering themselves up, and because they did it not just for the hell of it, as so much is done these days. Having lived and having become profound, they rather must express it just as a mushroom must express itself as a fruiting body even as its mycelium lies beneath and connects every plant with another. But where will these two express it, this profundity? Here in this lowly place? Isn’t that some sort of miracle? Like the mycelium spreading beneath every living thing, spreading and making life possible and even sweet?

Lao Tzu, Witter Bynner translation

54

‘Since true foundation cannot fail
But holds as good as new,
Many a worshipful son shall hail
A father who lived true.’
Realized in one man, fitness has its rise;
Realized in a family, fitness multiplies;
Realized in a village, fitness gathers weight;
Realized in a country, fitness becomes great;
Realized in the world, fitness fills the skies.
And thus the fitness of one man
You find in the family he began,
You find in the village that accrued,
You find in the country that ensued,
You find in the world’s whole multitude.
How do I know this integrity?
Because it could all begin in me.

Ghost

mycelium

that’s a funny word

(EC)
(EC)

Sorta like hymen, why isn’t it hywomen?

Gryffyn
Gryffyn

“Mycelium Running” a book by Paul Stamets, will blow your mind with his stories about mushrooms. For example, mushroom mycelia hook up with tree roots and trade minerals for tree sap.

Ghost

Is why I noticed it… believe it or not, I did a paper on that…

(EC)
(EC)

It’s just writing, or as someone smart put it, reaching across time and space…

Hardscrabble Farmer
Hardscrabble Farmer

I’ll try it later.

Ghost

Look, TS and I are on a quest for hundred comment marker medallions to put in our war chest. It might seem like a pathetic sort of thing to ask of someone who just traveled a bazillion miles to deliver hope, love and fellowship to the big lumberjack looking dude we’ve all been Stuck here on TBP with for years.

But, you know me…

Some jerkwad stepped in (am highly suspicious of gryffendor, though a slitheren might have crawled through) and grabbed the FIRST HSF nugget of the new year and did not even say… (We rate the hundred bangers by author… Admin hundred bangers are worth the most but yours come in second most days. Uncola’s wax and wane, depending upon whether he gets on ZH. Stucky’s are a special award, especially now that he’s on Sabbatical with Ms. Freud.

So, since I know you read them all, eventually, would you MARK number 100 MARC so that those of us with nothing better to do can know who the varmit is who stole our thunder. Especially if that varmit tries to do it again.

Thanks. Great writing and great living. In my version, the dog will be with me.

So, if you would be so kind? And, if not? Well, dagnabbit my daddy would say! there’s more’n one way to skin a rabbit.

(He said that a lot, but really? There’s just the one best way, don’t you think?)

Hardscrabble Farmer
Hardscrabble Farmer

I have no idea.

My favorite five or six essays haven’t got a hundred comments combined. It isn’t really about the comments- although I really appreciate them and love hearing other people’s stories when they share them- it’s that at least somebody gets something out of it besides myself. I write them because it helps me remember where I’ve been and what I’ve seen and how to make some kind of sense of it all. And I like the way words look when you put them together in the right order, like someone else said above, if you do it the right way it paints a picture.

But thanks for caring, it made my day.

Ghost

Mostly, it was a tease, but I really hoped someone was keeping track.

Someone is supposed to be writing all of this down in a great big BOOK somewhere.

When I worked for the USAF one of my managers was a really decent man whose son was a cancer survivor whose physical body was so damaged by the treatment he would never live a normal life. They traveled to various churches to share the message that Trevor’s survival was a miracle.

I tried to stand by him a lot, figuring since God was watching him and his amazing son a lot, I might get a little sidling credit in that big BOOK.

So… same principle, but on a blog.

Mary Christine

Sometimes people don’t know what to say. They just enjoy the essay and are left with no words, or have thoughts that they just don’t know how to articulate.

You know, the fleeting and random thoughts that come up as you read through it.

Here is one of mine: You can drink cheap, crappy beer out of bottles or cans but a truly good beer should be drunk out of a frosty mug (not the German way, of course). I’m sure you found a place of honor for that stein.

(EC)
(EC)

That’s what a good conversation does, as somebody said below, it provokes ideas you never had before. Since he is a former entertainer, HF once again has an audience in thrall. Some folks get a lot out of it and some folks only want to hear about Trump.

Bigfoot really got inspired by the message about the state of the country; how and where it all began, while Ivan wanted more Trump adulation and less Glory Days.

How we gonna Make America Great Again if you don’t know what great was, ya idiot, what say we erase all the colonist’s names from the road signs and replace them with Trump family names?

DinCO
DinCO

Please keep writing and sharing them, HSF. There are, and have been, many of us through the years that read and really enjoy them. They are priceless. Most of us just aren’t as eloquent as you in our writings (trust me on this)

(EC)
(EC)

Nice comment, very nice!

Uncrossed
Uncrossed

Amidst some minor acerbity, and in a slightly less than sardonic tone, El Coyote approached the line of indignation but did not cross; in spite of any potential aggrievement over perceptions of worthless immigrants. And, on the way, astute observations, and humor, prevailed. Is this heaven? No. It’s the internet.

Anonymous
Anonymous

It sure ain’t Memorex.

Ghost

Coyote and Barrio Boy: A tale of two species

One day Coyote was hungry because the mestizo and the corn people from the northern kingdom had burned all the forests to plant corn and raise pigs. The corn people put poison onto the ground so that nothing except corn could ever grow there.

The pigs have been in control ever since and since no one ever bothered to learn to speak pig fluently except a very few very skilled hog callers, the mestizo and the corn people learned to live in industrial containment lots, which they called cities.

So, Coyote was trotting through the forest looking for a morsel of food and came upon a little anchor baby named Alejandro. Now, Coyote was very hungry and even though he was small, even for a coyote, he knew he could kill and eat that anchor baby and become one of the corn people himself. He decided to visit the corn people.

Coyote decided to dress up as a burro and pretend to be lost. He tricked a Gordita into sharing her corn bread and they both got so drunk on the fire water and ate so many corn tortillas coyote thought he might shit himself to death and the Gordita turned out to be a vato! Coyote swore he would never become one of the corn people. He grabbed the little anchor baby and headed for L.A.

Not too long after that, the mestizo got fat on corn as well and began to invite more pigs in to set up more industrial containment lots sponsored by Monsieur Santo, a “safe” herbicide and pesticide company completely unregulated in many parts of the world.

Since nothing else could grow there no animals except the mestizo and the corn people lived there and they got so fat and drunk they let the pigs take over. A man named George wrote a legend numbered one nine eight four in the way of the corn people.

Coyote and Barrio Boy avoid cities, although they don’t mind a little fire water or suds, as long as they were not made by the pigs for the corn people.

The end.

I realized El Coyote might seem to be indignant, but I think the little critter is wiser than even I give him credit for…

In fact, I think there might be a good opportunity for him to teach a few of us on TBP what terms we need to avoid.

I suggest he take my story above and give it a good “moral of the story” like most of those old legends have associated with them and help all of his friends here avoid insulting a beaner like him by accident.

Here’s the New Year’s Challenge, El Coyote…

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/worst-slur-mexican-americans-still-mystery-some-n959616

Take this article and condense it to postable length…

I will provide the editing and the chart to assist TBPers avoid insulting you or any beaners like you.

Now, EC… you know what I mean. You and I both know I’m still somewhat enamored by the Latino label, having been smitten with a crush on a Cuban long before I knew he was a saltwater beaner.

But, we gotta know what to not say…

(EC)
(EC)

Never call a man’s anything “little”. I’m not sure there is a line to cross, us Mexicans love to name-call and to ridicule our own failures. Like the songs says – don’t cry, sing! (no llore, cante!)

TS

As you say, Sir Coyote-a-lot.

M G
M G

I see you sneaking around.

(EC)
(EC)

Small minded beaners might be offended but the beanerati have bigger fish to fry.

Ghost

Speaking of bigger fish? I managed to gain 15 pounds of the 70-or so I dropped. Almost all of it in just two spots! I might be at least CC eligible again!

(EC)
(EC)

Coyote and Biscuit Boy:

Now the crackers and the corn people from the northern kingdom had burned all the forests to plant corn and raise pigs. The corn people put poison onto the ground so that nothing except corn could ever grow there.

Not too long after that, the crackers got fat on corn as well and began to raise more pigs and set up more industrial containment lots sponsored by Monsieur Santo, a “safe” herbicide and pesticide company completely unregulated in many parts of the world.
Since nothing else could grow there no animals except the crackers and the corn people lived there and they got so fat and drunk they let the pigs take over.

The pigs have been in control ever since because no one had ever bothered to learn to speak porker fluently except a very few very skilled hog callers. The crackers and the corn people began to live in industrial containment lots, which they called cities.

One day Coyote was trotting through the forest looking for a bit of food, he came upon a little cracker baby named Nabisco. Now, Coyote was very hungry and even though he knew he could kill and eat that cracker baby and become one of the corn people himself, he decided to visit the corn people.

Coyote decided to dress up as a burro and pretend to be lost. He tricked a corn woman into sharing her corn liqour and they both got so drunk on the fire water and ate so many ears of corn that Coyote thought he might shit himself to death and the corn woman turned out to be a red rope! Coyote swore he would never become one of the corn people. He grabbed the little cracker baby and headed for L.A.

Coyote and the cracker baby, now known as Biscuit Boy, avoid cities, although they don’t mind a little corn liqour or fire water as long as they were not made by the pigs for the corn people.

The end.

Ghost

I’m posting that… it needs a moral of the story.

I laughed out loud. Is it just me or is cracker baby as a white slur on me is a priceless volley for anchor baby.

Touche, Monsier Coyote!

and, if nobody says it aloud? “as long as they were not made by the pigs for the corn people” is worth of some sort of prize.

Or at least a post… I’ve got a great illustration, I think.

EL Coyote
EL Coyote

Then the corn woman decided to get Biscuit boy back. She disguised herself as an eagle and flew to LA. When she spotted him, she quickly grabbed him and flew off. Coyote ran after them and called the brown snake out. Senor snake, he said, the eagle is giving flying rides, I already flew with her and you should not miss it. Senor snake hurried out calling to the eagle, take me!
The eagle could not resist the sight of a tasty brown snake. She flew down and dropped Biscuit Boy. Senor snake was impressed at the sight above the trees and began to sing the traditional snake song -Off we go into the wild blue yonder..The corn lady remembered she had been a red rope once and being touched by the snake’s song, she landed and stood at attention. Senor snake went back into his burrow.

M G
M G

I found the biscuit boy story again! Yeah!

ottomatik
ottomatik

It was one of your top comments I have ever had the pleasure of reading.

ottomatik
ottomatik

That was for EC, it got lost in a blizzard of comments, it was great commentary.

(EC)
(EC)

Check out any analysis I’ve done of HF’s stories, they are inspiring and I get a lot out of them.

Ghost

and certainly he should check out the coyote and cracker baby story above.

Gryffyn
Gryffyn

Great analysis, El Coyote. It’s like getting an instant replay from another viewpoint. You hit some points that I did not perceive on first reading. Marc writes in depth and you have to go back. This was one of his best stories and you responded in kind. Cheers and keep on keeping’ on.

Gayle
Gayle

Thanks for a great read. Beautiful prose as usual, and the reflections are like many I experience when I dip back into my past habitats or enjoy the occasional fellowship of a beloved relative or companion from long ago, everything tinged with bittersweet.

Thank you for taking time and effort to connect with Stucky. Tribal elders meet.

M G
M G

I am waiting for Stucky to respond

Won’t be a dry eye in the joint.

Ghost

Well, Stucky has two or three days before I submit my plagiarized version of hsf’s visit, substituting my own companion of choice, a big white dog named Jacob.

And, if Stucky pops in? I’ve gained some of that weight that literally melted off* and can easily claim CC bragging rights again!

There’s always HOPE! Always.

By the way? About boob size and why it matters?

comment image

*shudder at pounds melting off. When a phony ad suggests you will enjoy watching the pounds melt off? Check out deep tissue necrosis. Not enjoyable at all. For anyone who’s seen it.

gdwhsvycqo
M G
M G

“New Jersey wasn’t a part of me so much as I was a part of it and at the end I felt every bit as unessential and disregarded as those rotting deer strewn along the margins unnoticed.”

Please tell me you found a publisher for you book or at least an agent.

Ghost

Lie, if you must.

TS

Most people don’t have a clue just how cut-throat the publishing business is. So many times I ran into the Catch-22 syndrome – if you have no publisher interest, agents are hesitant to look at your work. No agent, publishers are hesitant to look at your work, unless they think it’s an automatic best-seller. Even with a great summary, some low-level editor makes or breaks. They are notoriously fickle and inconsistent. And subsidy publishers (you pay for the privilege) seldom are worth it.
You can never discount luck, of course, but that is a poor foundation to plan upon.
I know my books are probably not New York Times best-sellers, but they are solid, entertaining and decently written. I figure I write at least as well as at least half of the authors I’ve read in my lifetime. A few thousand people liked them enough to buy the one completed series, and the other novels.
Sigh. Unfortunately, Amazon ended up being the only viable option if I wanted to get my material out there. And that is fraught with it’s own set of problems. When a person self-publishes, you better have a lot of time and determination, because the learning-curve is pretty steep at first. For me, I do it all, except for the covers. And the last one, a western I wrote for my dad titled ‘Los Piños’, I even did the cover myself. Very satisfying to be so in control, but that means you better have your shit together.
And, last, the marketing. It will increase sales, but it also adds up damn quick.
Sigh. It’s a very difficult business. A person better be able to handle a lot of rejection. Otherwise, it’s best not to start. And money better be one of the least of reasons why you write.
I would love to see Marc’s book published. I hope he persists, because he is truly a remarkable writer.

Ghost

I realized that most of the books I edited were for college professors whose work was published by various “University Press” establishments set up to service the peer review industry set up by other Academic Snobs who think theirs don’t stink.

Now, some of the fiction writers I worked with were fun to work with and those romance writers of the 80s and 90s? Holy Smokers were those some business minded women. I look back now and realize, gulp, there were an awful lot of men writing women’s fiction, very, very sucSEXfully.

Yoji is correct about how damaging pornography is to small children. It plants knowledge of something for which they can have no understanding until the damage has been done to their psyches.

I helped with two of the big writing seminars OU held in the 1990s. I was a bit sickened by the extent writers would go to sell a book to any publisher. (I am not suggesting prostitution… I am suggesting worse; selling their writing gifts to the porn industry. Someone has to come up with those bad plots.)

But, the thing is? The more racy the plots became, the more books sold.

Listen, would you like to “co-author” an essay about this? I’ve told EC a half-dozen times I am at [email protected] as a gmail account I use for a facebook account I rarely use but keep because I plan to inform them the moment I have a clue what anyone should do. When I said they trust me enough to hand me a bit of green to plant some rock seeds wherever I want to plant them, I mean they don’t want to hear about it unless I have a nice old picture to show them. Preferably one with mules or cows. Or proof my father took it.

There’s that Willis Jeep he bought with that big check he got from Uncle Sam for being a POW for 4 years and 3 months! It was definitely taken by him! Jake Fisher’s little grocery store by the railroad depot. On the “wrong” side of the tracks.

So, look this one over carefully and realize I’m a block off the old chip.

comment image

I could show this on my community page and 500 people would “like” it.

Ghost

Here’s my idea to ANYONE willing to take this on and send it to Admin or to me for editing and submitting.

This article is written for and by a feminist RAG. It is profoundly a LIE and should be completely revised by someone with a more conservative mindset.

https://pictorial.jezebel.com/the-sweet-savage-sexual-revolution-that-set-the-romanc-1789687801

Shit… I’m just going to post this as a post and see if there are ANY takers. This is an idea whose time needs to come… I bumped into this doing my followup to the abortion debate that was disrupted by he whom I will not name.

So, now I’m writing the piece because it is going to be so offensive, I wouldn’t want anyone without my shitdodging and flingback experience here to attempt it.

Watch out, girls… I’m wading in! I’m this woman’s daughter and while I wish I could say we posed for this picture? I suspect we were bitching about something. Dad had a way of catching people in their “natural” state.

This was Eureka Springs, Arkansas. For her birthday. We saw The Passion of Christ in 1990s. Is the only time my father stayed overnight in Arkansas. But it was Mom’s 70th. (we age well… fine wine and all that)

comment image

(EC)
(EC)

Check out the tits on Martha!

Ghost

Oh, for Christ’s sake! That is my mother there! She probably heard you! Look at the look on her face. Haha… the woman who came to see me in Oklahoma and I hauled her out to the freaking panhandle to see a “real” Indian reservation with buffalo and it was sad (mid to late 80s before A Nation at Risk was published). On the way back I stopped at one of the signs near the McAlester exit (Fed prison) and asked her to get out and pose like a hitchhiker.

She had no clue how to do so, but after a lifetime of training by my father, she gave it a shot. If it hadn’t been for all the freaking semi-trucks whizzing by I would have gotten one of me.

comment image

Oh, well… there’s always NEXT trip.

Warholio (EC)
Warholio (EC)
Mary Christine

Go for it, Maggie. Btw, that bot that is advertising ED meds seems to be infecting other posts. I think it might have been the title I chose.

Ghost

Well, think of the “bots” as little bugs that follow each other around and literally drop egglets here and there, landing on keywords that associate with whatever “realm” of keywords and symbology that particular algorithm has accumulated. Somehow, horny goat weed became associated with motherhood and whalah, the Erectile Dysfunction plague of 2020 on TBP has begun and somewhere, a masked man with no name desperately seeks a way to do the impossible for TBP Admin: block an annoyance without restricting any real person, anonymous or simply a lurker crossing blogs in the night, from contributing to Quinn’s search for the truth while offending as many as possible.

Think Emperor Leto in God Emperor Dune.

(EC)
(EC)

voila’

Ghost

Around here it is whalah.

Think about this. Tell me what I was thinking to you.

(EC)
(EC)

around here it is ‘walla’ – I was just being a spell nazi.

DinCO
DinCO

Start using a browser like Brave – it automatically ad blocks all that crap, and sites load faster, too. (it took me a moment to realize what the heck you were talking about..)

Ghost

Sorry… I was in a bit of a research loop this morning. Have you ever started reading something and suddenly it seems like you JUST read the article? Supposedly, it happens because the information travels via multiple routes on nerve synapses and sometimes, one little information (brain bot) iota reaches the processing center first, making it seem like the other iotas that follow are repetitive when they are just tardy.

All of those little advertisements to help improve writing (and there really are programming tools for writers but if you can’t figure out what your hero needs to do just send someone in the damn door with a gun and force that indecisive SOB to prove he is a true hero and not just a protagonist.

Thanks for the advice… I just got back online a couple days ago. Our modem got fried and the hillbilly cable guy only brought one and had to order one from the company and since that was right after Christmas, it took him almost a week to get another.

We almost went off grid completely. It was an awesome New Year’s in the Doomstead!

Ghost

I’m going to put it out there and see if anyone notices that Epstein did not kill himself.

DinCO
DinCO

Nice jeep. [The other stuff is good, too!] Purely random info (but you did bring up jeeps) – we plow with a 1952 jeep with a completely custom plow that someone in the area pieced together decades ago. The jeep started as a military M-38 (24 volt) that was converted down to 12v a long time ago, although the guys in the garage 15 miles down the road know the guy that did the conversion. Small town stuff.

Your stories are interesting, too. 🙂

Ghost

Thanks. I wish he’d kept that Jeep. It was traded for that 59 Ford Fairlane the month I was born (December 1961). Then, he drove that car until it literally could not be fixed again or patched up even with plywood over the rear floorboards. When I said he should have been buried in it I meant it.

M G re Whosie Susie
M G re Whosie Susie

How is TBP’s Dentist without Borders?

Avalon
Avalon

Great story, thanks for taking us on your trip with you. I LOVE that you got to meet Stuck. He is such a nice guy… you both are!

Not Sure

Wonderful, timely story to me as I am turning 60 and trying to rethink my life, as I’m shifting from the potential I once had to the reflective state I find myself in. My memories, as yours have shown, become the foundation of the rest of my life, if anybody is interested in listening to them.

As I read, I wondered how your mobility is since the accident, maybe it’s not a part of your life you want to dwell on, it I would like to know of how complete of a recovery you have experienced, if only to offer my thanks to God for His watching over you.

I was surprised to hear of your visit with Stucky in mid story, he has been a rare voice in posts (or maybe I’ve not had as much time to spend at TBP as I had in the past), but was very happy that it was you who had the good fortune to visit with him; no one else could have offered so much in your description of Stucky’s essence as you have. Thanks.

Back to work, blessings to all and thanks for such a touching story.

TS

Stucky –
You show a strength and heart that I doubt you fully realize. I will continue, as I’m sure so many here will do, to pray for you and your loved ones. I know I’m not one of the elders of the tribe, and not one of those closest to you, but I sincerely wish that I could actually do what Marc did, and visit. If nothing else, your situation – and HF’s visit – emphasizes just how important it is to simply reach out to whomever we are able to touch. Blessings and strength.

M G
M G

My son calls it meeting in meat space.

yahsure
yahsure

Nice article. Things change and not always for the better. The empty strip mall are everywhere. New “immigrants” just don’t have that proud to be here vibe. The schools don’t talk about it either.

Steve C.

HSF – What a delightful read. You literally paint a picture with words.

I was especially touched by the fact that you are still able to see and visit with your dad. I lost mine over forty years ago.

What I wouldn’t give to sit down and visit with him just once more. Alas, I am older than he was when he passed. To let him know that his son inherited and has delighted in his sense of humor and writing abilities and to laugh with him at the good spelling abilities of my mom that I unfortunately did not.

Even after all these years there is a picture of my dad and I standing arm-in-arm in front of the fireplace in the home that I grew up in right here next to me at the computer as I write this. I was about ten or eleven in that picture.

To once again look into his cool grey eyes and to hear his laugh that always came so easy to him is something I can only imagine. I am so happy for you that you can still avail yourself of this wonderful gift.

My fiftieth high school reunion is coming up this year and you couldn’t drag me back up to Long Island with a bulldozer to go. From what I have heard, and I try not to hear it, Baldwin has changed a lot since I grew up there. I have no desire to see it now. It is still alive and as it was in the 1950’s and 60’s in my mind from one microsecond to next and that’s how I want to remember it.

Your visit with Stucky is also a wonderful reminder of this special ‘Big Family’ that Jim has created and maintains for us and how grateful I am to him for it.

Nicely done HSF.

SeeBee
SeeBee

It changed because you left. I see it all over NY. Neighborhoods are mere memories. Because everyone left. To the burbs or warmer climes. But….I also see resurgence. Not the same, but ember from the ashes.

Steve C.

It changed because you left.

You give me more credit than I am due. I can assure you that I had nothing to do with it changing. It was just time for me to go. Time to leave the nest.

From Baldwin I moved around Long Island for a short while (Hempstead, Syosset, Levittown). I spent a year in New Jersey (Metuchin), and six months in Connecticut before heading to Buffalo, NY for a dozen years. I moved to Texas from Buffalo. Texas has been my home for the past 33 years.

Baldwin, NY didn’t change because I left. I’m not even sure what you meant by that. In fact, I doubt it noticed my humble departure. It changed because time and events change things.

I just prefer to remember it as it was when I grew up in it.

SeeBee
SeeBee
DinCO
DinCO

Similar to how I feel about Albuquerque at this point, except that I was there for the 50 years and watched it change. It was a much nicer place, too, when I what a kid growing up there.

M G
M G

Thanks… others are praying too.

TS

MAGGIE!!!!!
Someone hit 100 and never claimed it. I came back in after dealing with some horses for awhile, and here it was at 100 comments. I assumed the worst; that you had beaten me to the punch. But NO. It was a blind unaware one-hundredster. Does that count? Maybe THIS should be 100 because I realize the import.
Whadda think?
100???????

Ghost

I’m on it… dammit… I call FOWL. Vulture level Fowl. Foul Fowl.

Ghost

Did you see my cool strategic mission designed, planned and perfectly executed in an early morning blitzkrieg of 400?

You were like France. Just laid there and took it.

Ghost

TS? Was your Maginot Line overrun?

TS

I actually did just literally lay there and take it. Here’s my comment when I first got up this morning, nursing my first cup of coffee.

LOL.
I knew I was handing it to you when I commented last night before going to bed. It wasn’t planned largesse but the time difference almost guaranteed it. I had to really look to find this; it dropped several pages down by this AM.
I have to admit; your flanking move is definitely innovative. Not sure how ethical, but very effective.
Congrats!
Even if no one sees this.

And here was Uncola’s comment right afterwards.
lol 400+ comments as TS and Mags raced ’til the final bell. Yes, indeed. Free forums fan festive fun and frivolous fecundity.

Ghost

Ethical? I suppose you are telling me there are TBP ethics? I know there’s a moral authority in the preacher man but do we have an ethics monitor as well?

TS

I bust out laughing at that. The only ethics on TBP are the effective ones. You know, the strategies that net 400?
Of course, if I had to nominate an ethics monitor I would be thinking Ethos de Comportamiento.
What say, Dog? Gonna be the conscience of the Platform? 🙂

Ghost

He might have to give up his day job as spelling nazi.

TS

True. That is his first calling.

Ghost

no answer to that one… I wanted to regurgitate this to the top to thank Marc again for keeping us all in the loop.

It must seem surreal and I have added the hardscrambled egg farmer to the prayer list. I don’t pray rosary prayers. I play the piano and share the videos of my playing, mistakes and all, to a small group who claim they love to hear me play even with all the missed notes and, EGAD, terrible singing I engage in once in a while.

They do the praying.

Ghost

farts starts with an f

TS

Mags, I don’t know what to say. That’s pretty profound.

Warholio (EC)
Warholio (EC)

I coulda been somebody if I had stuck with HF, I coulda been a contender. It was you Maggie, you said, it wasn’t my night.

Ghost

You are still a contender. Where’s the final draft of “Coyote and Biscuit Boy?”

(EC)
(EC)

Up above.

Ghost

Good.

Ghost

I came to clarify
If it were not for me, you could have been Marlon Brando?

Old Timer
Old Timer

Great read and right from the heart Hard Farmer, I really don’t want to say anything more, just a hat tip and well done.

Chubby Bubbles
Chubby Bubbles

One of the best things I have read here at TPB.

[needs some grammar/spell check, though.. teaming/teeming, it’s/its, etc. If you want a reviewer, I can help as I am sure many here could.]

Will share with some folks including our builder, from an old Dutch family. The changes are hard to bear.

Ghost

You and Mrs. Freud should write something together if she’s able to respond to questions at least with a nod… I discovered that Poppa Grooch could tell me a lot even when he couldn’t speak.

Ghost

You did beautifully Stuck.

Big Dick
Big Dick

I remember my miserable time in NJ, in my winter of entering the Army. Ft Dix was like an a$$hole smelly and full of $hit. It probably was the worst place, plus the surrounding area, I have ever visited in my life. I got pneumonia there in basic training and was recycled back for another 8 weeks in hell, before being sent to Vietnam. From your discussion the state has fallen even deeper into the toilet of existence. Evidence is clear, beyond your description of the current day world, when you see political ads for that wonderful native Joe Biden and his family. He represents everything worthless in the world, and he is the living image of his state. I will never want go back there, or revisit any of the other illegal immigrant slimeland of the east coast. Your story touched me deeply, sadly bringing back many memories of painful days, and new level of disgust of the garbage in our government from the east

Miles Long
Miles Long

Dammit man… I’ve from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonopah. I’ve been stuck (oh lord) in Lodi again. I’ve been to Spain & Spokane. I’ve even seen goats fucking in the marketplace, but I’ve never been stuck in Joisey. That night in jail & those 4 days in a coma dont count. Glad you made it out.

The area along the Delaware south of the Water Gap down to about Belvedere was still OK about 20 years ago, except for the taxes, but I haven’t been back since. I understand the Farmer’s sadness. Eastern PA & the Poconos is about the same these days. Hoping the southern & western parts of Virginia either joins WV or splits away from the cretinous cocksuckers in NoVA & Richmond, but maybe I should have moved to TN when the last house sold. We’ll see. I’m too tired to fix another house & am getting too old & grumpy for all of this other shit.

Soup

Thanks for the warm, sad-happy, melancholy story. I think this touches and connects to of all of us, in one way or the other.

A side note to HSF-I have a bleeding heart liberal older sister that lives just up the road from you in Newport, NH. I’m visiting her this Tuesday (Jan. 7) for a week. I’ll need some time away from listening to NPR on her radio all the day long. Any chance of me being able to visit you and your farm to see your hard scrabblin’ work, maybe buy some of your syrup or meats? I’ve appreciated all your posts, and look forward to them when you do. Not suckin’ up, just trying to support a fellow like minded individual. How to get in touch with you?

Warholio (EC)
Warholio (EC)

Sup, Soup, how’s sales? I think HF listens to NPR also.

TS

I wonder how many will get that obscure reference.

Ghost
Hardscrabble Farmer
Hardscrabble Farmer

I emceed a gig with Soupy and a guy named Pat Paulsen at this great little venue in Michigan called the Historic Holly Hotel back in the early 90’s. Good food, shitty lodging. It was like working with the legends of my childhood. I wrote one of the best bits of my life that week because of their encouragement but I never saw either of them again. What a weird little road I traveled.

I don’t know if I would have ever thought of them again if you hadn’t brought it up. Thanks, for the second time today.

Ghost

Well, thank you too.

And that doesn’t surprise me. My Dad had a theory* and if you’ve had time to read any of his little commentaries/essays/articles/??? you will realize I come by my rambling weaving of words quite naturally from growing up in the shadow of giant Cypress and Elms while listening to man who not only liked to talk and write but who had a lot to say.

In 2005, I took him to visit his oldest friend Leonard Adams. This image of them elicits comments about the Last of the Mohicans. It is all about perspective.

comment image

You should hear the recordings of them talking!

I just heard on the news more bombs and rockets are being launched. If something does happen and we have, at some point, to re-evaluate our placements, my placement is at your disposal. And that includes friends who you vouch for. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

*Some people are psychic magnets, Dad thought. He thought they can actually pull thoughts and ideas from the atmosphere and for some reason, he said, those people come together. Some sort of psychic window on a spectrum we cannot comprehend, but which somehow connects us anyway.

Dad and I talked a great deal about mathematical theory and what-ifs… and if there’s some way to revise history the way we think it should, could, or would have been written if the Author and the Finisher was just me. Or Thee. Or even EC.

What would Jesus do is just a decision step that is completely unnecessary. The only question a thinking person should ask is What should I do? The answer to that question is this: I should do the right thing, based on the information available to me. And that is the best any of us can do.

So, for whatever reason, Mr. Birchall, took my very young and frightened 19-year-old father under his wing and taught him all the survival tricks he could pass along at Osaka before getting shipped of to labor camp. He said every time he was in a real terrible situation throughout the rest of his life he would pause and say “What would Leonard Birchall do?”

When my son went to Christian School and had to wear religious themed T-shirts for casual wear, my father saw the What Would Jesus Do slogan and howled with laughter. Howled. And of course, I knew why. And now, you do too. Because I grew up wondering “What would Leonard Birchall do?” and the first time I heard WWJD I laughed too.

Dad’s first night in an actual prison instead of hospital ship was spent with the Savior of Ceylon, Leonard Birchall. They freaking wrote one another letters. That guy in the overalls sitting by that old still convincing half the people at the county fair that he really WAS drunk was personal friends with the FREAKING Savior of Ceylon.

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/air-commodore-leonard-birchall.html

He said Birchall taught him more in those two days in that cell about how to communicate with code and how to hide things and how to figure out which guards were just going through the motions.

So, Red Newton’s grandchildren have been found. Letters have been exchanged. We shall see what God has in store.

M G
M G

So, was this you at the improv?

comment image

Hardscrabble Farmer
Hardscrabble Farmer

If you don’t stop by I’ll be disappointed.

[email protected]

Let me know when you are in town.

Bram
Bram

I live in northwest NJ where the rot hasn’t set in that badly yet. But I sure do look forward to escaping. Maybe New Hampshire if you can hold off the Massholes for a few more years. If not, rural PA.

Bram
Bram

And yes – there are deer everywhere! If you plant young tress in your yard without fencing it off, they will be eaten to the ground in a week – or else the bark stripped off by a buck in the fall. After any snowfall, I can see there tracks all over the yards up and down the neighborhood.
No rifle hunting, no hunting in most state parks. Unless you own a fair amount of land or know some farmers, tough to find places to hunt. Twice I’ve crashed brand-new cars into herds of deer running across a highway. I don’t even notice the carcasses any more. The state and towns pretty much let the turkey vultures take care of the clean-up.

Vixen Vic
Vixen Vic

I’m glad Maureen is doing better. You’re such a great guy, Stucky.

Vixen Vic
Vixen Vic

I’m late reading this. Just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed it.

Warrenbrugh

Discover more from The Burning Platform

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading