Infant Son

When I lived back across town, I used to jog down a little country road to get to the park. At the bottom of the hill on this road was a small stream with a two lane bridge. I've always been a water nut, after having grown up on a farm with a small creek running through it, and am not able to pass over a stream without at least a casual glance to see if the water's clear, muddy, any fish, how deep, etc. I'd been running across this bridge for month's, maybe even a year and never noticed anything other than a narrow clear water stream running over some rocks and moss. This day the covering of trees aligned their branches just right and allowed a shaft of sunlight straight down on something as I passed, and it caught my eye. It appeared to be a partially covered license plate, nothing of terrible interest, although I did slow to see if I could make out the year. What I saw stopped me in my tracks.

INFANT

That's no license plate, I thought. Later that day I came back with some boots on to cut through the brush surrounding the creek on either side of the bridge. Dropping into the creek somewhat abruptly, I almost landed on the object. It was a stone. Cut stone, almost immediately recognizable as a head stone. I didn't really do anything for a while. I just stood there wondering how the hell a child's tombstone wound up in a creek bed. The bridge behind me had scary looking graffiti under it. Maybe this was some sick satanic thing, I thought. Maybe this was where the child was buried?! No, it couldn't ever have been anything but a creek bed. Someone had thrown this off the bridge, perhaps stolen as a prank, then discarded. I had to repatriate it. I began digging and soon found that the stone extended deeply into the creek bed. It took perhaps five minutes of digging to even get the stone loose enough to rock in its bed. Another couple of minutes to get it to move, slowly, sliding up out of the muck. The part of the stone that lay beneath the water and mud was blackish green with algae, but words could be made out.

INFANT
SON OF
MR. & MRS..
B. F.
GILLENTINE
1918

I felt a strong wave of sadness pass over me. A nameless infant. A son. Was he the only son? The only child? Did Mr. and Mrs. B. F. Gillentine still live, and if they did, did they lay at night, just before sleep, wondering what sort of son he would have made?

I cleaned up the stone that night and made some internet inquiries into the name. The closest I could ever come - and I thought I had hit it on the head - was a Benjamin Franklin Gillentine in far West, Texas, hundreds of miles from the Dallas area where I live. I got him on the phone, a very old man, somewhat gruff and either not comprehending what I was asking, or simply thinking I was trying to sell him something. In short, I gave up, and put the stone in my garage, where it's been for nearly ten years. Perhaps I'll restart the search for a relative, a grave, a cemetery. In the intervening years, the internet has burgeoned, and perhaps more genealogical information is there now to help me find a resting place for the stone.

1918 was the year of the Great Flu Epidemic. It swept through Texas as well as the rest of the world, killing the young and old alike. I found a guy through the local library who tracked all the headstones in all the cemeteries in Arlington, Texas, and he couldn't find the name. He said there was dozens if not hundreds of nameless infant graves from that year.




It's a sad thing to have lying around the house, and I feel a little like a vandal myself, just having it here, like the remnants of some bad Halloween prank. And it may in fact be just that.

I'll try again. This headstone belongs somewhere. My daughter suggested we just take it to one of the little country cemeteries around here, but that doesn't seem right, either, like taking a child to the park and leaving him there. I'd rather have the stone here.

Later

Waterman, Illinois, June 28th, 1878

My dad, a successful commercial designer of some note, decided he wanted to be a farmer when he hit 40.I don't think the term midlife crisis existed back then, but I'm sure this act of vocational insanity on his part qualified as such. I was about 6 years old, and saw our move from comfortable middle class suburban Batavia, Illinois to the little farm town of Waterman as an enormous adventure. The farm had been a steal, and we soon found out why. Situated on 140 acres, the farm house was so dilapidated that the previous owners had kept chickens in the living room, which was sectioned off from the rest of the house with chicken wire and plywood. Rat holes were covered with old license plates. The original deed on the farm had been signed with an indian tribe, the Shabonna Indians, in 1865. It was the oldest building I'd ever set foot in. Dad immediately started spending every free weekend moments dragging us kids out for "work weekends" trying to get the house habitable, which, to his credit, he eventually did, making something of a local landmark of the place. In the process, he tore into walls - ancient pre-sheetrock lat and plaster walls, and discovered what I considered to be some of the greatest wonders of my young life.
Once upon a time, when people still actually used razor blades, when they changed them, they would slip the old blade into a slot at the back of a recessed medicine cabinet. If you see an old medicine cabinet, look for this slot at the back. It's just the size of an old double edged razor blade. When dad tore into the bathroom wall, a torrent of ancient razor blades came pouring out. These were startling, but not much in the way of collectibles. This was not all that came out of the walls, however. Here's a list, as best I can remember:

1 - One woman's high button "greave" shoe, with perhaps a dozen buttons running up the side. Shrivelled from age, it was still impossibly small by modern standards, and yet black, clearly an adult woman's shoe.

2 - Corn cobs. This as a complete mystery to us. At first we thought that rats had taken the ears of corn into the walls, depositing the cobs. We later learned from an old neighbor that people used to put cobs in the walls as primitive insulation.

3- A letter (copy below) dated June 28th, 1978. This floored me as a child, like taking a time machine back to the time of Civil War. The edges had been nibbled off by rats, so many of the words are missing, but the general meaning comes through shining across the decades. A young woman is not going to a dance, and most certainly going nowhere with "Georgie". In fact, she's not even going to be at church on Sunday, but safely at home. Poor Georgie. Was this a letter sent and received, secreted in a wall, or written and never mailed.


Etta, I love you across time, feel your pain, think about you sitting at home at the farm house hating on Georgie, but probably really wishing you were at the dance. Thanks for sharing your house with me, a hundred years later.

Later.

Regarding bicycles, pedestrians, and what happens when the twain do meet.

Short blog post before I piss off anymore bicyclists on Twitter. This path I’m talking about is a long very nice concrete two lane job running something like 18 linear miles along the Trinity River in Arlington, Texas. It’s a “multi-use” path, and is clearly marked as such throughout. It is also clearly marked with signs as follows:

· Speed limit 20 mph.
· Announce “Passing on left” when passing
· Bicycles yield to pedestrians.

As you can see, the warnings are mostly pointed at cyclists. Not many of us run fast enough to pass anything other than turtles and snakes. I’m pretty sure the world record 100 meter dash is not much above 20 mph, so that’s pretty much for bikes, too.
Now, the real problem lies in this whole “multi-use” business. Because of this, you have a range of users from high end cyclists on 2 thousand dollar bikes and competition dress to mother’s walking their toddlers. Not a good recipe for sharing. Having said this, though, for right or wrong, the signs say cyclists yield to pedestrians. Not “when appropriate” or “when I feel like it”, but in all cases. Are there jerky inconsiderate (mostly just clueless) pedestrians? Sure. They just tend to be outnumbered by bicyclists bent on pushing the speed limit, riding two across (in your lane coming at you) and not announcing anything except “Look out!” at the pedestrians when they get in their way.

The cyclists need their own path. That’s the real solution. But unless and until, as long as there is no enforcement out there, it’s actually dangerous to be a pedestrian. The difference is this: a pedestrian is not going to cause a pedestrian collision. Bicylces can not only cause these with peds, but also with other cyclists. I’ve seen two cyclists bitch each other out for not minding lanes. This is a pretty serpentine path. Cyclists sometimes don’t anticipate what might be around the next bend. On foot, that’s not a problem. At 19.9 mph on a bike, it can literally be a life or death situation.

So, at any rate, here’s what happened today.

I am running in my lane headed eastward. A woman jogger with child in a jog stroller in front of her is about to pass me in the oncoming, opposite lane. At this moment, a cyclist at or near 20 mph approaches in my lane from behind me. I don’t hear him, but see the woman jogger’s eyes go huge. The cyclist yells something at her while, at speed, passing BETWEEN US, in both our lanes, yielding to neither of us, not announcing his pass, not touching his brakes. If I had stumbled and fallen to my left, it would have thrown him into her path, her child’s stroller, at a speed easily high enough to kill the child. I was freaking furious. He didn’t slow down at all, but actually had the gall to call some kind of admonishment back AT US for not making way for him! If I’d been a cop, that guy would never sit on a bicycle again.

I have a theory. I was actually a cyclist too, up until I started running about 9 years ago. You don’t go to school, read books, take classes and tests to become a bicylclist like we do when we learn to drive a car. So, our dad pushes us down the driveway, let’s go, and the whole rest of the body of our bicylcle instruction is self taught. Kids don’t know about stop signs, yield signs. Ever see a kid on a bike stop at a stop sign? And a lot of that is because this sort of loose self taught, non regulated method for learning doesn’t have anything to do with the rules of the road. Most of us were too busy jumping sidewalks, hedges, sprinklers, whatever, to avoid stop signs. So, there we are, 20, 30 years later, gear strapped on, climbing onto our 2 thousand dollar bikes, with the same attitudes we had riding the neighborhood as kids.

So, yes, pedestrians can be jerks on the park path, too. The difference is that they don’t have any where near as much potential to do great physical harm. And there are a great many very good cyclists whom I pass every day. We say Hi to each other and sometimes even stop to talk.

This is not about all bicyclists. Neither is it about pedestrians. It’s about rules and safety. It is about jerks, and they can be on foot, in cars, on bikes, in planes, everywhere.

Why I Hate Aphorisms

Well, I really don’t hate them. I mean, what’s to hate about “A conceited person never gets anywhere because he thinks he is already there.” Or “A winner never quits -- a quitter never wins.” An aphorism is defined by Webster as: 1 : a concise statement of a principle, or 2 : a terse formulation of a truth or sentiment. They’re the sort of thing that slowly puts a wry smile on your face, or evokes a knowing nod, or a wistful sigh. And I just hate them. They always hit me as trite, contrived, sappy, corny, any of a host of negative reactions, but that’s not really my beef with them. Here, then, is a list of things I find irritating about aphorisms:

1. They really aren’t very original. When was the last time you heard one that was truly unique? For me, about 30 years ago.

2. They’re usually just a reformulation of something that you already know. Sort of a “preaching to the choir” thing. When was the last time you really had your mind, life strategy, attitude changed by an aphorism? I mean REALLY changed?

3. They tend to be things that we don’t so much follow as simply find comforting, reassuring, calming. We feel better about ourselves not for acting in response to them but in sharing them with others, as if we are the wise old sages.

4. We tend to feel better about ourselves not by following the wisdom in them, but by SHARING the wisdom with others. I watched a 5 or 6 tweet long “dueling aphorisms” episode on Twitter a few weeks ago, one aphorism evoking an “Oh, that’s a good one! Here’s another one?” like the two tweeters were passing along old family recipes.

5. They are just saccharine. I have really only ever felt truly nailed in the forehead by about 2 aphorisms, and this was because they were truly unique, truly wise, and hit me at exactly the right moment.

6. They are too clever, too contrived.

7. They don’t represent how we actually communicate. I mean, did Kahlil Gibran really speak this way? Wife: “Kahlil, honey, what do you want for supper?” answer: ;” A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.”

8. They all tend to sound like your high school basketball coach. At least they sound like my high school basketball coach.

9. They can take the place of original thought, insight, experience, wisdom. On Twitter, at any rate, I would much rather hear what YOU have to say, and not Rumi. (Whoever he is.)

10. There’s an air of condescension, arrogance about them. If you really spoke like this to other people, you’d be branded as a tool. Even just repeating them for others implies that you are doling out wisdom from a place superior to others.

I would love to be at a dinner party where Kahlil Gibran, Winston Churchill, and M Scott Peck all happened to be at the same table. Can you imagine the aphorism showdown? It reminds me of the scene from “Tombstone” where the Doc Holiday character and the Johnny Ringo character start trading quips in Latin while others look on in awe. This may be how people write, but it’s not how they speak, at least not where I live. And even if it is how they write, they better be pretty damn wise to get away with it. I notice from looking at some of the famous aphorism websites that there seem to be certain criteria for doling out this wisdom:

· Being dead appears to give you a bully pulpit. Gives a sort of timeless wisdom aspect to them. Also protects us from copyright infringement.

· Being obscure lends an air of mystery and wisdom. If it weren’t for his aphorisms, most of us would probably think Kahlil Gibran was one of the convicted 9-11 terrorists.

· Being a world leader, religious icon, famous person is a distinct advantage. If you are nobody, you ought to be pretty damn wise before expecting to get quoted.

· Coming from another culture appears to give a boost. Adds to the air of mystery, I guess. There's a distinct bias towards Eastern knowledge, I find. From Persia to China. I often wonder how well these are even being translated.

· Coming from another era seems important. Most of these come from at least the last century.

But, really my problem with aphorisms is this: I suspect that we don’t intend to share wisdom, brighten someone’s day, make the world a better place, etc. at all, so much as we are really just wanting people to think “You know, he’s a pretty savvy guy.” It’s not about the message, it’s about us. We say we are trying to brighten another’s day, but I suspect we are just trying to brighten our own in the good old fashioned way – through hubris. They say “ I am sage. I am well read. I know who Jonas Salk is.”

Here, then, are some of my favorites, and why

· Dense, oblique: “A reasonable man adapts himself to suit his environment. An unreasonable man persists in attempting to adapt his environment to suit himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” G B Shaw. This one makes my head hurt.

· “As the fly bangs against the window attempting freedom while the door stands open, so we bang against death ignoring heaven.” Doug Horton. The absolute impenetrable nature of this one is topped only by the fact that I have absolutely no idea who Dough Horton is. But my life has been changed forever.

· “"Begin at the beginning," the King said gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."” Lewis Carrol. Truly oblique.

· “Education is civil defense against media fallout.” Marshall McLuhan. Double-U Tee Eff?

I will end this, then, with my favorite aphorism by Voltaire, whom I have now managed to suggest to you that I have read, or at least know who the hell he was, by quoting him: “A witty saying proves nothing.”

Later.