Three Hundred Words

The Surrealism of the Grotesque

2012-01-29T03:40:00.006-06:00

On February 24, 1852, the mood in Moscow was one of joyful abandon. It was Maslenitsa, the last week of licentiousness before the sacrificial severity of the Great Lent began. Red-cheeked boys threw snowballs at passing sleighs. Neighbors carried trays of sweet buttery pancakes to the beggars in the alleys. Men and women laughed heartily at the ridiculous costumes of the masqueraders on their way to the countless parties around town. There was dancing and music and drink to be had in surplus.

But inside the Talyzin mansion on Nikitsky Boulevard, an emaciated and pale-faced Nikolai sat in the dark as a sign of contradiction. The deliverance of Russia, his Russia, he saw was beyond his reach. All he could do to assist now in its redemption was to cure his own filthy soul, and he’d gotten a head start. He’d barely eaten a bite since he made confession and received the Eucharist the week before. His stomach, always a problem for him throughout his life, now crowed like a rooster. He rarely slept, waking himself to recite delirious prayers of reparation.

“You are on the right path,” Father Matvey Konstantinovsky, his spiritual advisor had told him, “but it is your ideas, your imagination, your… your writing, Nikolai, that is the source of your gravest offenses. You must renounce everything you’ve ever done.”

Dead Souls was planned to be only the first book of Nikolai Gogol’s version of the Divine Comedy. Book II, his Purgatorio, the product of the last ten years of his life, he incinerated page by page in his fireplace that night.

It was not to be his only act of destruction. Nine days later, his doctors were shocked to feel his backbone through his belly as they unsuccessfully tried to save him from his “holy anorexia.”

A Convenient Indignation

2012-01-28T04:49:00.004-06:00

In the late spring of 1915, all of Europe was gripped with fear. In Russia, the Germans had broken the lines and were advancing through Poland. In Belgium, poison gas had been deployed by the Kaiser’s forces for the first time against the French, with horribly devastating effects. And in England, they were calculating the days until they ran out of food, suffering under the third month of a complete submarine blockade of their ports. As the lamps went out across Europe, America remained rigidly neutral, at least officially, but behind the scenes the players continued to make their plays.

Two men stood in the Yellow Drawing Room of Buckingham Palace in whispered conversation. One was the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, and the other was an American envoy with no particular title except “Colonel” House.

“Tell me, Colonel,” Sir Edward spoke through a haze of smoke, “what will the Americans do if the Germans sink an ocean liner with American passengers aboard?”

Colonel House replied slowly, with a hint of East Texas drawl, “A flame of indignation would sweep across America…”

From a window on the East Façade overlooking the Mall, King George turned and addressed Colonel House.

“Suppose it was the Lusitania?”

“I think that would be enough to carry us into the war.”

Just four hours later, the RMS Lusitania was sunk by German submarine U-20, eleven miles from the coast of Ireland. 1,200 persons drowned; 195 of them Americans. One of the largest ships ever built, it went down in only eighteen minutes.

It took almost two more years, but America finally did enter the war on April 4, 1917. Absent in the government findings of the incident was that the “ocean liner” Lusitania was carrying over six million rounds of contraband ammunitions and explosives.

Breaking News: Stories to Resume Tomorrow!

2012-01-26T23:12:00.002-06:00

In the meantime, another thanks goes out to Dan Pegg for "following" !

I Missed a Welcome!

2012-01-20T16:20:00.002-06:00

Thanks to Fazmyn for "following" and sorry I missed you for a week!

Hoşgeldiniz!

2011-12-18T18:57:00.001-06:00

...to bıdı bıdı and thanks for signing on!

See You All Next Year

2011-12-16T22:33:00.000-06:00

I've had a lot of problems with Word documents, internet connections, etc. over the past few weeks and I haven't been able to compose the several stories that I had planned before the end of the month. So I'll leave you with the timeless bit by Stephen Colbert to last through Christmas and into the New Year. Godspeed to 2011, hopefully we'll see each other in a better 2012!

A Violation of the Exclusion Act

2011-12-04T04:12:00.003-06:00

His father had kept bees, and his father before him, and his before him. Tradition spoke of his ancestors pulling honey from trees for years untold before the first Portuguese sailors had even sighted Brazil. He was well-known by the biologists at the university in Rio Claro. He was their local expert.

So it was nothing out of the ordinary when he was seen walking around the experimental sector of the agricultural research facility on October 15, 1957. Everyone who’d seen him simply assumed he’d been invited to observe the apiary while the lead scientist was away. Several of the staff had even waved to him as they passed by and no one said a word when he began to open the hives.

Dr. Warwick Kerr returned a few days later and noticed a stack of metal-screened frames propped against an outbuilding nearby his experiments. He recognized immediately what they were, he’d built them himself, but he didn’t at first understand why they were there. They should have been in the...

Dr. Kerr quickly pulled on his hood and rushed to the hives. Each one that he opened revealed the same shocking fact. They were half-emptied and the queens were gone. All of them.

“Damn...”

The unnamed local bee-keeper didn’t realize what he was doing when he removed the “excluders” that kept the queens confined to their hives. He was right in his knowledge that it was too early in the season to keep the queens and drones from entering the upper “supers” but it might have been better had he been less generous in applying his knowledge.

Off in the jungles of southeastern Brazil, twenty-six swarms of African honeybees were spreading out, finding new homes in trees and caves and barns. It wasn’t long before the first casualties appeared.

OCCUPY Pittsburgh!

2011-11-06T01:27:00.004-05:00

Since the federal government assumed the obligations of all state liabilities the nation was faltering under the weight of crushing debt. It seemed there was no easy way out of it. Austerity was proposed but it wouldn’t be enough. A new tax had to be enacted and it would be met with resistance.

The first protests were by just a handful of malcontents. They claimed the new tax was unreasonable, that it placed undue burdens on the working man while the money-men sitting behind their desks at the mega-corporations in the east didn’t miss a meal. It almost seemed like a deliberate plan to ruin small businesses, a conspiracy, especially since the big ones were fully supportive of it.

The movement grew organically. Those with any axe to grind against big government or big money filtered in and joined the phenomenon. Secession was a hot topic among the protestors. Foreign revolutions were pointed to as models for the next stage of the movement. Posters and flyers advocating the cause dotted billboards and newspapers ran threatening letters of opposition. The authorities, outnumbered, were powerless to stem the tide of revolt; any figures that tried to assert their authority were answered with violence.

When the radicals exercised their right to freedom of assembly in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, their numbers had reached 7,000; significant considering that the population of the town was only 1,000 at the time. Several buildings were burnt. Finally, the President had to act.

Around October 23, 1794, a contingent of militia (larger than the army that had defeated the British just a few years earlier) entered western Pennsylvania and began to quell the Whiskey Rebellion. Those arrested for resisting America’s first internal direct tax on its populace were all eventually pardoned but the precedent of federal sovereignty had been established.

A Gentleman's Agreement

2011-10-31T04:08:00.004-05:00

The President was beyond frustrated and he vented to his old Chancellor.

“I’m tired, Franz. I’m 85 years old and you know I didn’t even want to be here. I’m missing my retirement and instead what am I dealing with? We’ve suffered to keep this land together since the end of the war and we’ve never been able to form a consensus in the government – not once! All I’ve done is use Article 48 to bypass the representatives in order enact the most basic of legislation. And when they manage to somehow find enough agreement to try and nullify the laws, I simply dismiss the government and call for new elections! What’s the point of even pretending that we have a Constitution?

“Since you were forced to resign the Chancellorship, I’ve been miserable. The American banks calling in their loans, hyperinflation, six million unemployed, spending cuts, higher taxes... The economy? I don’t remotely understand it and frankly I have no desire to!”

Franz consolingly frowned at his old friend.

“There is a way; a way to peace. I have secured a gentleman’s agreement with the leader of the majority party. But there is one condition...”

It has been said that a person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it. Paul von Hindenburg appointed a man to the Chancellorship in order to placate him and avoid the continued deterioration of the Weimar Republic. He inadvertently placed his nation on its fated path because a year later he was dead, and the man he legally appointed used his unique power to merge the office of Chancellor with the vacant office of President.

Neville Chamberlain also made a gentleman’s agreement with Adolf Hitler on September 29, 1938 naively intended, as before, to achieve a “peace for our time.”

The Megalithic Magician

2011-10-16T04:32:00.003-05:00

Edward stopped his work when the frogs quit their night-chorus. Someone was prowling about. Outside the walls surrounding his property two teenage boys crept through a grove of palms:

“I’m tellin’ you Johnny, that stone floated like a balloon, right over his head.”

“Okay, but if mama finds out I sneaked out on a school night again, I’m done for.”

“Come on, you chicken; boost me up...”

A few minutes later, the two boys peered wide-eyed over the top of an 8’ coral wall. By the light of the moon, they saw a short man in coveralls standing motionless before an intricate stone machine.

“What’s that thing?” Johnny whispered.

“I don’t know. Keep it down ‘for he hears us.”

The man didn’t move for a long time and Johnny grew impatient.

“He ain’t doin’ nothin’, I’ve gotta’ go... hey... is he singin’?”

A low chant echoed through the night as the man finally broke his trance. He raised his hands into the orans position and slowly repeated a single word over and over.

“Mag-net-ismi...”

Suddenly the wheels on the machine came to life and began to turn. A shower of sparks erupted from it and a boulder beside the man shakily lifted into the air. But just as quickly as it happened, it ended. The machine went still, the rock dropped, and the man violently turned towards the boys.

“Who’s there?!” he shouted.

The boys didn’t stop running until they reached their beds.

Satisfied that he was alone again, Edward matter-of-factly went back to his block and tackle.

On December 4, 1951, after 32 years of solitary work, Edward Leedskalnin hung a sign on his front door: “Going to the hospital.” Three days later he met his end, but the mystery and legend of his Coral Castle was just beginning.

Mabuhay!

2011-10-14T21:02:00.001-05:00

Welcome and thanks for the "follow" to YADU KARU!

"... or the goose gets it!"

2011-10-08T06:00:00.003-05:00

A small group sat on a bench by the door of Callahan’s General Store, waiting for it to open.

“We ought to just snatch one from Town Lake,” Captain James said.

Lori shook her head, “Look, the press is already on our side, we don’t need to add a crime to whatever publicity we get.”

Mother Nature added quickly, “But there definitely has to be some kind of consequence, right? Like when those Vietnam protesters out in Berkeley threatened to burn the puppies if no one listened, right?”

The bells on the door jangled and an employee poked her head out.

“Good morning, folks!”

Diana replied with a warm smile, “Can you show us where you keep your swans?”

A few days later on May 6, 1988, the officers from the newly-formed Street People’s Advisory Council met on the banks of Barton Creek in Central Austin, Texas. About a hundred supporters were there, along with representatives from most of the major press outlets.

A man was listing his grievances behind a microphone but the attention of the reporters kept being drawn towards the bird honking away inside a parakeet cage.

“...and these are our ten demands: First, a public meeting with the mayor...”

A journalist from the Statesman leaned over to Lori, “What happened to the swan?”

Lori blushed.

“We only had $17... Who knew swans cost so much? We had to improvise...”

As the speaker wrapped up, “Either these demands are met...“, another homeless man came swimming up from the creek. He removed a Bowie knife from his mouth and yelled out, “...or the goose gets it!”

Homer the goose didn’t “get it” though, this time or the next. And his perpetual reprieves soon made Homer one of the celebrity-faces of homeless advocacy across the nation and the world.

Сардэчна запрашаем і дзякуй

2011-10-04T20:14:00.001-05:00

Dimitri Bashko, the latest and bravest to "follow" here!

Sensical Nonsense!

2011-10-04T07:36:00.001-05:00

Welcome and thaks for the "follow" to alix-black!

The Cosmic Conspiracy

2011-10-03T04:25:00.006-05:00

Trudy Truelove. That was truly her name. What a name. She was Jim’s girl, in Roswell on July 2nd, 1947, anyway.

The couple reclined in the bed of Jim’s pickup some 35 miles north of town, giggling and kissing. A collection of empty beer bottles lay on the ground and bits of clothing were hanging randomly about; a shirt draped over the tailgate, a sock balancing on the mirror, a bra clinging precariously to a branch above them.

On the horizon, lightning flashed.

Trudy sat up and inhaled the ozone as the wind suddenly whooshed down from the sky.

“Jim, we better get the tent up before the weather sets in.”

Jim grunted and gently pulled at Trudy’s wrist, inviting her to lie back down.

“Sweetie, I’m serious!”

With a smiling sigh, Jim got to his feet. A long groan of thunder echoed through the hills and a streak of light unexpectedly caught his eye.

“Look at that!”

Trudy looked up just in time to see a fiery disk whiz overhead at a tremendous speed. A loud clap accompanied its disappearance over the ridge a mile or so away.

The lovers quickly dressed and sped off to investigate the crash-site of the flying saucer.

What followed proved to be a tangled web of deceit, fraud, and cover-ups. The government tends to be the usual suspect in these types of cases, but in this particular case the web was especially spun by the “witnesses.” (This version of) the story of Jim Ragsdale and the stories of nearly every single participant in what has become the colossus of all conspiracy theories don’t hold up to competing and contrary facts.

But that has never stopped man from believing, once he’s set his mind to it... or if there’s a dollar to be made.

And "Gunk" Makes Three!

2011-09-28T08:28:00.002-05:00

Welcome and thanks for the "follow" to caseofdisappearingtiregunk!

Welcome to Choco Mumbo Jumbo

2011-09-27T05:35:00.002-05:00

Thanks for the "follow" to Prixie and her muse, who, together, are happy with chocolate, sleep, chocolate, writing and chocolate :) It's been a few weeks but I hope to once again have more time for a few new tales this weekend!

Welcome and Thanks!

2011-09-15T21:51:00.001-05:00

Glad to have you "following," Hossain!

The Box Trick

2011-09-03T05:27:00.004-05:00

Henry stood outside of his rented Richmond home staring at the approaching wagon. He’d had time to consider this moment for some time but now that it was upon him, his mind drew blank. The tears that had left their tracks on his cheeks were gone and his mouth was dry and numb, unable to form the words he’d wanted to say even if the words had come.

He stepped out into the road as the wagon passed slowly by. In the back, covered with a canvas awning, sat a pregnant woman and three children, all in chains and crying. Henry reached out and grasped the woman’s hand and walked beside them until the pace of the wagon quickened. He remained motionless in the middle of the street as the faces peering back at him grew smaller and smaller.

“Out of the way, slave!”

Henry narrowly avoided the second wagon coming from behind and he felt the hot breath of the horse team on his neck. He looked up blankly at the driver. It was the Methodist minister who’d purchased his wife of twelve years, along with their children, for work in the swamps of North Carolina. The minister leaned over and spoke down to him calmly.

“Don’t pout; you’re permitted to find another wife...”

Twenty-five years later, Henry was living the good life. He’d become a successful author, speaker, and showman in England – as a magician. He worked hard to refine his act and the crowds that came to see him as the “African Prince” had their favorite tricks and would call them out to him at each show. But Henry Brown’s best trick, he’d only performed once – on March 23, 1849, when he stuffed himself into a 3’ x 2’ box and express-mailed himself to freedom in Philadelphia.

Howdy Howdy

2011-08-31T23:17:00.002-05:00

to Dr. Rob Rob, welcome and thanks for the "follow!" (This guy knows his coffee).

The Abduction

2011-08-29T03:44:00.004-05:00

“Where did your father go?”

“I don’t know,” said Francisco.

As the three unkempt little children turned to go back into the church on August 13, 1917, a man in a crisp suit stepped from a portico and lit a cigarette. They must have passed right by him when they came out and now he was blocking the doorway. The children pretended not to notice him but even with their heads turned away they couldn’t escape his gaze. They felt it on their backs as they crept tentatively back down the stairs.

Before reaching the bottom, they heard the clopping of hooves on the street. The horse whinnied as the driver pulled back stiffly on the reins, stopping the carriage right in front of them.

The man in the suit was suddenly standing right behind them.

“Come on, children! I’ll give you a ride,” he said in an unconvincingly friendly voice.

“We can’t, we've an appointment and my father is walking us,” Francisco said bravely, carefully backing away.

“Yes, your father’s asked me to take you. Let’s go! You don’t want to keep the lady waiting!”

The children hesitated but when the man picked up Francisco and plopped him in the front seat, the two girls reluctantly climbed in. As the man hopped on, the driver cracked the whip and the horse bolted ahead. The carriage turned onto the main road leading out of town.

Francisco cried out, “This isn’t the way! Where are you taking us?”

The man leaned over and whispered in the boy’s ear.

“I’m going to boil you all in oil...”

Arturo Santos, mayor of the Ourém Municipality in Portugal, would release the three children of Fatima the next day, after unsuccessfully trying to scare them into recanting their tale of visions of a heavenly lady.

Welcome Again!

2011-08-24T17:45:00.002-05:00

SAMULI16 has rashly decided to "follow" here - Thanks! More to come this weekend!

Jason is here

2011-08-18T07:48:00.003-05:00

Thanks for the "follow!" I don't know why new "followers" tend to arrive here in threes but you are the third, sir, welcome!

Another New Face!

2011-08-13T19:53:00.001-05:00

Welcome to The Other Faces, thanks for "following!"

Son of the Dragon

2011-08-13T00:31:00.004-05:00

His heart matched the tumultuous times into which he was born, for it had the blood of a Dragon coursing through it. Every two minutes, a black and venomous fluid oiled its way through his body and returned to the heart, more hateful and fouler than when it left. It poisoned him and sustained him. He fed on death.

As a child, his heart had not yet grown dark and he absorbed all the duties of a Christian knight. Wladislaus was taught by his father to trust in no man. At the age of thirteen he learned the truth of that lesson: that “no man” included his father. He was sent along with his younger brother to Adrianople as hostages to the Sultan in return for Turkish support of his father’s ambitions.

But he wasn’t a willing guest and he refused to accept his role. In chains, he watched the traitorous conversion of his brother to Islam. In prison, he learned of his father’s betrayal by his boyar allies and his subsequent murder by the Hungarian king. These things pained him infinitely more than the daily beatings and torture he accepted from his hosts.

He’d prayed for peace but none came. Only more hate. He longed for good but found none anywhere in his life and his hatred extended for having just been born. “Trust no man” became “trust no one.” Only “he” would ever again be the arbiter of justice, of good: his good. He remembered every face, every place, and every name that would someday pay at his hand for their treachery.

And then, around December 2, 1448, just after his seventeenth birthday, the door opened to his sunless cell and he was freed. The story of the remade Wladislaus - Vlad the Impaler, Dracula - would begin.

How do, Becca?

2011-08-11T16:44:00.001-05:00

Girl Met Dog. Thanks for the "follow!"

The Right Stuff

2011-08-01T06:22:00.004-05:00

First, the characters...

The resin came by U.S. Mail from Lufkin, drawn from the piney woods of east Texas. The rubber came by ship from the Philippines, tapped at a plantation in Mindanao. The calcium carbonate came by train from a limestone quarry in Ontario, Canada. These ingredients all came together at a manufacturing plant in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin and left again in a cardboard box in the back of an eighteen-wheeler.

A thrilling beginning to our tale...

The semi unloaded the box at a distribution center in Orlando, Florida, and there it sat for several weeks before being loaded onto another smaller truck. That truck drove east for an hour through the gator-filled swamps and delivered the box to a small hardware store in Titusville. The box was opened there and the innocuous contents placed upon a shelf.

The plot thickens...

A handyman working at Merritt Island soon stopped into the store and put a few of the items from the box into his basket. When he came back to work, he tossed them into the janitor’s closet. There they sat until a young supply clerk came along with his clipboard. He took one of the items and dropped it into a toolbox which he then loaded onto a jeep that was driven out to a lone tower, its base shrouded in steam. On April 11, 1970, the mundane little item began another journey, this one a long and nearly disastrous one.

...and then it twists...

NASA still lists duct tape on the inventory sheets of every space-flight made. However, the instruction manual states that it’s to be used to restrain someone suffering from severe psychosis, not to jerry-rig a carbon-dioxide filter to save the lives of three freezing, oxygen-deprived astronauts aboard a crippled Apollo 13 lunar command module.

The Great Race of Mercy

2011-07-25T04:01:00.004-05:00

At first, Doctor Welch was sure it was tonsillitis. No one else in any of the surrounding villages was displaying any symptoms: fever; sore throat; exhaustion. But by the next morning, the two-year old child was dead.

Upper respiratory infections started to appear in more children over the next month. It would last from a few days to a few weeks and disappear. But then another child died. His mother wouldn’t allow an autopsy despite the massive swelling on his neck.

When a third child died a few weeks later, and then a fourth, Doctor Welch was finally able to confirm what he’d feared worst. The grayish lesions on the throat and nasal membranes pointed only to one thing.

A lot of far-reaching events occurred on February 2, 1925: a 6.2 earthquake rocked the northeastern seaboard from Quebec to Virginia; the French government met to renew its suppression of the Vatican Embassy; crowds packed theatres to see the first feature-length stop-motion film, “The Lost World”; and the American delegation to the League of Nations prepared its speech to propose action on the worldwide opium trade. All of these happenings would impact upon millions of people around the globe for many years to come. But in tiny Nome, Alaska, population 1,500, they were just waiting on the mail. With temperatures across Alaska dipping down to −70 °F that were accompanied by blizzards and hurricane-force winds though, it wasn’t likely to arrive at their isolated village in time.

At 5:30 am, Doctor Welch’s heart skipped at the sound of barking dogs on Front Street.

The relay team of 20 mushers and 150 sled-dogs had heroically covered 627 miles in just 127 hours to bring the first batch of antitoxin from Fairbanks to Nome via the Iditarod Trail, narrowly averting a diphtheria epidemic.

The Rival at the Revival

2011-07-24T04:40:00.003-05:00

“New York? So what brings you to Iowa, Mr. Hull?”

“On my way west, Reverend, I hear there’s gold for everyone. Thought I’d stop in and see my sister before I strike it rich. I didn’t expect to find a revival going on here.”

“Watch that ‘root of all evil...’ Hmmm, New York... I know a good Methodist preacher there by the name of Titus Sinks. You don’t happen to know...”

“Let me stop you there, Reverend,” George said, holding his hand up firmly.

“I take it you’re not a church-going man, Mr. Hull?”

“No, Reverend, I’m not.”

“Shoulda’ guessed... New York after all... you ever even opened a bible, Mr. Hull?”

“Oh, yes indeed I have, Reverend.”

“And what did you find there?”

“I don’t want to offend, but mostly a load of superstition... sprinkled with some good advice here and there, I’ll grant you!”

“Superstition?! Good advice?! Why, every word is the word of God!”

“Now surely you don’t believe that, Reverend... I mean... every word?”

“Every word the truth!”

“Talking snakes? Two of every animal? Even the part about... giants?”

“I assume you’re referring to Genesis, Mr. Hull, chapter six, verse four: There were giants in the earth in those days... yes, yes I do. I’m sure it’ll eventually be proven, even to atheists like you.”

George believed him. Not about the bible, but he believed that the reverend believed. That he really believed. And the gears started turning in his head.

On October 16, 1869, workers digging a well in Cardiff, New York came upon an amazing discovery. The petrified remains of a ten-foot-tall man – a giant! The Cardiff Giant. And despite the laughing dismissal of every scientist who examined the gypsum carving, George Hull still collected over $30,000 in viewing fees from the unwavering public.

Duck on a Rock

2011-07-23T05:55:00.003-05:00

James was under pressure. He’d only just begun as phys-ed director at the YMCA Training Academy in Springfield and the head of his department had already put him under deadline. He sat on a bench outside of the gymnasium watching the cold December rain soak the soccer fields in a nasty mud.

Two weeks. Two weeks to come up with some “distraction” to keep his students in shape during the winter months. Something fair for all the players. Something that won’t take up too much room. He turned and glanced into the gym to see his bloody-nosed students wrestling on the hardwood floors. Something not too rough.

The rain began to let up and James took a walk across campus. Stopping at a pond, he watched a little duck swim up and jump onto a rock to shake out his feathers. James laughed to himself as he remembered the game he used to play as a child back in Canada. Some passing teenagers noticed the bird and started throwing pebbles at it, trying to be the first to knock it off his perch. But all the boys’ hard-thrown pebbles were missing their mark and the duck nestled down and tucked his head under his wing.

James walked over to the boys. “Put a little more loft on your shots, fellas. Softer, with more loft.”

One of the boys tried out the advice and the stone followed a high arching path before it found its mark and the duck let out a startled quack as it plunged back into the water.

“Hey, I think you’re onto something, mister!”

On January 20, 1892, James Naismith nervously oversaw his Duck on a Rock inspired “distraction” played out for the first time - basketball. The peach baskets would eventually be replaced with iron rims.

The Water Carrier

2011-07-17T03:43:00.003-05:00

He’d been running for an hour and a half; through the dirt and rocks and clouds of biting flies; across creeks and up hills. Crowds blocking his dusty track often delayed him and more than once he leapt the writhing bodies of fallen men. His throat parched and his legs cramping, he entered the town of Pikermi. A small inn by the roadside caught his eye and he ran straight into its open door.

An old woman was there to greet him with oranges in her hand and escorted him to a soft chair by the window. He kept a close eye on the events taking place outside and savored every pulpy gulp during his short respite. He rose to continue his run but a gentleman, smelling faintly of musk, stepped in front of him and blocked his way. He was holding a glass.

“Take this, son, and the gods will carry you to Athens.”

He swallowed it in one long draw and warmth spread out from his navel until it reached the tips of his toes. He was off again and he could hear the shouts of “Hellene!” behind him as he followed the road out of town.

When he reached Athens, he was greeted by royalty in celebration of Greece’s victory over the world. The King offered to grant him whatever he asked for. He asked for a new donkey cart to carry his water when he returned home.

Spyridon Louis’ time of 2:58:50 in the first Olympic marathon in 1896 wasn’t spectacular by today’s standards. It didn’t even hold up when two extra miles were added to the marathon on May 27, 1921. What makes it truly incredible is when you take into account the other stops Spyridon made along the way for beer, milk, and eggs.

Life IS Beautiful

2011-07-08T19:33:00.001-05:00

Welcome and thanks to the newest "follower" here!

The Making of a State

2011-07-03T06:29:00.005-05:00

On March 27, 1776, Father Fuster entered the temporary chapel at the presidio of San Diego and began preparing for Mass. A little reliquary holding some bone chips of Saint Didacus rattled against his chest as he moved, bequeathed to him by Father Jayme whose death was still horrifically fresh in his mind.

Working his way to the sacristy he was surprised by a human shape concealed in the shadows. His knees buckled and he reached out to brace himself on the altar but the altar cloth slipped off and he frantically reeled it through his hands as he landed hard on his back.

The figure slowly rose from his hiding place and revealed himself, a young naked man with long, filthy black hair. He was bone-thin and his eyes were sunken into the hollows almost to the point of disappearing.

“Carlos,” the priest gasped.

“I’m tired of running, Father. I turn myself in to you.”

“...But are you sorry, Carlos?”

Carlos had been on the run for five months since he’d led the revolt of some 600 Kumeyaay Indian warriors that looted and burned the Mission San Diego de Alcala in the Spanish colony of California. Miraculously, only two of the eleven people present died in the attack, one of them a Franciscan friar: Father Luis Jayme. At the time of the incident, there were only 170 Spanish soldiers in all of California. If the settlement had fallen, it was possible that the entire colony would have been abandoned.

Another smaller event also occurred which put a close to the incident. Father Fuster not only forgave Carlos and offered him sanctuary in the church but obtained pardon from the Governor for all involved; likely a vital reason San Diego became the nexus for all that California would later become.

Where Xu Fu Flew To

2011-06-27T03:03:00.002-05:00

On January 11, 210 BC, an escort of the Emperor’s guards accompanied Xu Fu as he disembarked and walked up the docks. The guard’s expressions were as uninviting as the thousands of black banners flying over every building in the city.

There’s no reason he won’t believe you again... compose yourself lest you fumble.

China was unified for the first time. But the legalism inflicted upon the population left many longing for the good old days of constant war. The state’s supremacy over the individual was raised so that people lived in fear of saying the wrong thing, thinking the wrong thought, of their cart length being an inch short of the standard.

As they approached the palace, they passed two gangs of prisoners en route to execution. Xu Fu recognized several of them as court advisors from his last visit and asked one of the guards what they’d done.

“They failed. Three times the Emperor asked them to find eternal life... some others are illegal philosophers, and the rest were hiding history books in their homes.”

A few minutes later, Xu Fu found himself at audience with Qin Shi Huang, a man mad with the quest for immortality.

“Nine years ago, I sent you over the sea to find the immortal grass. Five years later you returned and said you needed craftsmen to retrieve it. I gave you forty ships and sent you off again. You’ve returned now with what news?”

Xu Fu licked his dry lips.

“My Emperor, this time the immortals there placed a great dragon in the sea, blocking the way. I will need many more men, archers... We are very close!"

Of course, Xu Fu had no intention of coming back a third time. He and his flotilla would start a new history in Japan.

Two Bills and a Pile of Bones

2011-06-26T03:54:00.004-05:00

Bill had made a name for himself; several of them actually; a few of them profane but still complimentary in a backhanded way. Many knew him by “Medicine” ever since he saved the life of a young Indian girl by biting off her rattlesnake-poisoned finger.

He was a scout and one of the best. Like most scouts living in the wilds and wearing buckskins, his was life was a mystery to those who employed him yet he’d earned his share of respect. Colonel Custer made comment that he was "perfect in horsemanship, fearless in manner, a splendid hunter” but he also added that he was “as modest and unassuming as he was brave." This last compliment evidently pushed the limits of truth because Bill was anything but modest when it came to his good name.

One of his names was “Buffalo” and there was a rival claimant in town. By coincidence his name was Bill also but the argument was only over who could continue to use the “Buffalo” moniker.

So, sometime around the 17th of August, 1867, the two met on the field of battle in Logan County, Kansas to settle the argument. Eight hours later, the score was in: 69 kills for the newcomer Bill Cody, 48 for Bill Comstock. Honorably, Bill went back to being “Medicine” Bill and didn’t claim the title of “Buffalo” again.

“Buffalo” Bill Cody proudly carried his title for another fifty years, racking up his kill-count into the thousands.

On the other hand, Bill Comstock didn’t have to live with his defeat very long. A year later he died the typical ugly death of a scout, his dead body used as a shield against the attacking Indians.

The American Bison, and the Plains Indians who depended upon them, wouldn’t fare so well either.

Welcome to Alicia

2011-06-19T18:49:00.001-05:00

the newest A-musing follower!

"Nickie Hugh"

2011-06-13T05:06:00.004-05:00

As morning broke in the little parish of Borgue in the south of Scotland, Hugh climbed down from the loft in the barn and walked stiffly past his house and down to the creek. The dirty wig on his head was backwards and his shirt was covered in little patches he’d cut from his trousers.

When he reached the brook, Hugh knelt down and removed his hair-piece and held it under the water until he’d recited the Lord’s Prayer ten times. Lifting the sopping wig onto a branch, Hugh sat down cross-legged and stared. At first the water poured out of the woolen strands in a thick stream and Hugh’s eyes remained transfixed on the sparkling braid. Soon the stream slowed to a steady drip but Hugh’s gaze didn’t move. It remained focused on a point of air a few inches below the wig.

He sat like a statue for two hours, eyes unmoving, until the wig was completely dry and the silence was finally broken by his mother’s voice.

“Hugh, what are you doing?”

Hugh didn’t answer, didn’t turn around, but ever-so-slightly began to rock back and forth.

“Hugh, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

Hugh stood and turned to see his mother with a young woman.

“This is Nickie, Hugh,” his mother said.

“Nickie Hugh,” he repeated and turned his head swiftly away.

"No, Hugh, Nickie Mitchell," she corrected but Hugh was already on his way back to the creek where he began arranging pebbles into neat little stacks.

“Nickie Hugh.”

There was no term yet for Hugh Blair’s behavior on this July 4, 1745, but the court records detailing the challenge and invalidation of his arranged marriage to Nickie Mitchell due to mental incapacity would later be used to document the earliest identified case of autism.

Welcome to a Random Follower

2011-06-11T19:56:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Jillian from Random Ramblings!

Miracle Mike

2011-06-11T02:32:00.004-05:00

Mike lived like a rock star. However, since it was 1947 and rock and roll hadn’t yet arrived, Mike was a bit ahead of his time. Traveling the country, drawing crowds, living out of hotel rooms, making absurdly easy money. But Mike was pushing the envelope every day. He’d been on the road for eighteen months and inevitably the road began to take its toll. He put on weight. The stubble on his neck was a premature grey. And the unfortunate incontinence...

Late one evening, in a dirty Phoenix hotel room (sometime around March 15, though we’ll never know the exact date because of the ensuing cover-up), Mike’s breathing became labored. Panic set in and he began flailing furiously, desperate for a gulp of air. His manager, Lloyd was in the bed next to him and leaped to his feet at the commotion. Lloyd had been through this a few times before and knew exactly what to do. Unfortunately, when he reached for the medical bag that he always kept on the nightstand, it wasn’t there. He’d left it at the show. Without it, there was nothing he could do to clear the blockage in Mike’s throat. The Heimlich Maneuver hadn’t yet arrived either...

That night, Mike would share the same fate of so many others that lived the fast life, cheating death, until it would finally catch up to them. And he would become an early part of an oddly long list of celebrities (Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, John Belushi, Anna Nicole Smith, and David Carradine to name but a few) whose lives ended tragically and suddenly in a hotel room. But that is where Mike’s similarity with mega-stars ends...

Mike’s stage name was “Miracle Mike.” He was a chicken and his miracle was that he had no head.

Welcome to Anthony O.

2011-06-10T20:52:00.002-05:00

Thanks for the "follow," a new tale is immanent!

Howdy to Charlene

2011-05-23T21:39:00.001-05:00

And thanks for the "follow" from writing. mine. join me.

The Boston Molassacre

2011-05-22T04:58:00.005-05:00

On January 15, 1919, Bridget Clougherty was in the kitchen of her North End, Boston home mixing cookie dough. She called to her son upstairs.

“I’m out of syrup! Sneak over and bring me back a cup!”

Stephen had been unemployed for months and spent most of his days helping his mother around the house. He dawdled in bed for a few minutes before getting up and found her impatiently tapping her foot at the bottom of the stairs. She was holding out a wooden mug and he took it from her without a word. Dragging his feet he turned towards the distilling company on the banks of the River Charles.

As the police station came into view from behind the massive storage tank, Stephen was startled by a loud rumbling. He’d never served in the war but he was fairly sure it was the sound of a machine gun. Instinctively, he wheeled around and began running home, calling out to his mother on the way.

Bridget heard the yelling and felt the house shake. She poked her head out the kitchen window and gasped. Her son was running towards her and screaming out, “Shootout at the police station!” Behind him was a massive wave. He never knew what hit him. In a split second he was submerged and pounded against the cobblestones below.

A moment later, the Clougherty house was ripped from its foundation and pushed down Copps Hill Terrace before it finally flipped over and crumbled beneath the thick brown tide.

It wasn’t a shootout and it wasn’t a tidal wave from the river. The echo that Stephen heard before he perished was the sound of the rivets bursting from the leaky tank that held 2,300,000 gallons of molasses. The 35 mph 10’ wave killed 21 unsuspecting people.

"This Thing of Ours"

2011-05-21T02:57:00.003-05:00

Two detectives sat on a bench near the cathedral in New Orleans pretending to read their newspapers. Jackson Square was crowded with people out for their morning strolls before the blazing sun came out to chase them all back inside on this July 5th, 1881. Occasionally, one of the detectives would glance up and check for a signal from the umbrella vender.

“Would ya’ listen, Patty,” O’Hara said, “all these smelly dagos here speaking their gibberish...”

Patrick grunted, “Aye, it’s gettin’ so you wouldn’t even know we was in America.”

They both sighed and went back to pretending to read their papers.

O’Hara leaned back and said, “Y’know, not all these guineas is degenerate, the trouble is tellin’ the good ones from the...”

Patrick cut him off with a nudge to the ribs. Their informant, the umbrella man, was wildly flapping a big white parasol open and closed.

Walking towards the pair was a short, heavy-set man with a thick beard and a distinctive Panama hat. His gait was casual, giving time for several young men to walk along with him for a minute before he dispatched them on some other business.

He’d passed by the policemen and his back was to them when O’Hara called out.

“Giuseppe!”

Half a dozen men turned around. The man in the panama hat, though he stutter-stepped, did not.

“Hey, Giuseppe!”

The man stopped and angled his downturned head back at the officers.

“Is Vincenzo... And I no speak English.”

It would be two more months and a trip to New York City before Giuseppe Esposito’s identity could be verified by two Italian gendarmes. The accused murderer of more than a dozen men in Palermo was deported back to Italy but it was already too late. The Cosa Nostra had established itself in America.

Where Theories Begin

2011-05-16T06:06:00.003-05:00

Like the ridiculously great number of men who’ve gone on to leave their mark on the world, Bernhard was born sickly. The doctors who cared for him throughout his youth told him he wouldn’t have a long life. So much for prophecy: he died at age 93, having lived, without hyperbole, one of the most remarkable lives ever lived.

And he lived relentlessly.

When Hitler’s army invaded the Netherlands, he was there, rallying the guards at the Royal Palace and firing at the German planes. Forced to flee to England with his wife, Juliana, he continued the fight, first in the war-planning councils and then in fighters and bombers over occupied territory. Before the war was over, he had been appointed Supreme-Commander in the Dutch Armed Forces without having ever received any formal military training. And during the rebuilding of the Netherlands, he stood in the spotlight as the orchestrator of the new economy.

It didn’t end there. He founded Rotary International. He began the World Wildlife Fund. He would sit at the board of directors of over three hundred corporations. Ian Fleming took note that Bernhard drank his martinis shaken, not stirred.

Because such a life would have been incomplete without scandal, Bernhard found himself at the center of more than a few, including such messy topics as illegitimate children, bribe-taking, and international assassinations.

But there remains one event that ensured his eternal notoriety.

On May 31, 1953, Bernhard stood up from behind a long table in the conference room of a new hotel in Arnhem, the Netherlands, and pronounced the meeting closed. Before each guest departed, they personally shook his hand and promised to meet again the following year. This annual gathering brought about by Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld would come to be known as The Bilderberger Group.

John Frum America

2011-05-15T04:45:00.003-05:00

The New Hebrides Condominium had been under joint French-British rule for twenty-five years. The old ways were disappearing fast. Whatever traditional customs that the colonial governments didn’t prohibit, the Presbyterian missionaries made sure to anathematize.

This was why, on February 15, 1931, the tribal elders called a meeting of all the men on the island of Tanna. Chief Nikiau was the speaker.

“We have had a vision tonight, a vision of God. He came out of the volcano and spoke to us. He told us that we must stop following the white man’s ways,” he warned, “or we will disappear into the ocean like the sun. First, throw away their money, their francs and pounds!”

A tense silence engulfed the gathering as he paused.

“...throw away their clothes...”

A murmur began to roll through the crowd of several thousand.

“We must take our children from their schools and quit their churches! We must return to our customs! We must drink kava and worship the magic stones and bring back our dances!”

Shouts erupted as a spark of pride glowed in the natives and Chief Nikiau delivered the final message.

“God told us that he would send us a savior and his name will be John. John Frum! He will deliver to us all that we are lacking!”

This return to tradition of the natives of New Hebrides struggled for over a decade. And then something unexpected happened.

Several thousand American soldiers arrived in New Hebrides. Among them was one with some slightly progressive ideas. He was only there for a short time but when he spoke to the locals he introduced himself as John from America.

All they remembered was “John from.” A bonanza of American goods followed the army and the most memorable of the cargo cults was born.

Welcome Che!

2011-05-10T20:47:00.001-05:00

Bucking the trend, a "follower" enlists here after I actually post a story :) Thanks to From Kafka to Kindergarten!

Blood

2011-05-09T05:29:00.004-05:00

All of his seventy-seven years were reflected in Talbot’s wrinkled jowls. “Please! No more gifts for my wife, parson, she might get used it! Now, is this your nephew you’ve promised to my daughter?”

“Indeed! And I’ve brought along a few close friends, I hope there’s room at the table...”

“Of course! Now come in, let me’ missus’ take care of these young men while we go down to the basement and take a peek at what I promised ye?”

“Again, I don’t want to impose but would ye mind if my friends came along also?”

On May 9, 1671, the group descended into a basement below Talbot Edward’s apartment. They’d met only a month before when Talbot had taken the parson in to treat his wife for a bout of dizziness and they’d hit it off immediately. Now Talbot was about to give a free tour of his workplace.

As he opened wide the heavy door at the bottom of the staircase, Talbot felt the smash of a wooden mallet against the back of his head. He crumpled to the floor and heard the door slam behind him.

“Parson!” he screamed.

“No parson here,” came the reply as a sack was slipped over his head. “Blood is my name. I believe the King is familiar with my work...”

After the long con, Thomas Blood and his companions almost escaped with the Crown Jewels. Almost, except for the surprise arrival of Talbot’s son. Blood and his gang were arrested after a desperate struggle. The trip to his prison cell was short, just a few stories up from where the crime occurred in the Tower of London.

Oddly enough, King Charles II not only pardoned the “bravo” but gave him a plot of land that entitled him to £500 a year.

An Oath by Night

2011-05-01T02:21:00.003-05:00

Grace lifted her head from a dead sleep and shook her husband’s shoulder, “Cal, I heard something...”

John opened his eyes and remained motionless, listening in the dark. Footsteps on the lower stairs brought an abnormal sickness to his stomach. They suddenly stopped at the first landing and there was a heavy silence.

“Son!”

Grace reached out and lit a kerosene lamp that illuminated a clock on her bedside table.

“That’s your father, Cal! It’s two-thirty!

John snapped out of bed, pulling on a robe as he walked into a pair of waiting slippers.

“Son!” came the voice again.

He took the lamp from Grace and walked down the hallway towards his father who was now almost at the top of the stairs. A crisp yellow paper was in his trembling hand.

Grace watched from the bedroom door as John took the paper and read it. And reread it. She noticed a pronounced slump in his posture as he gave the paper back and slowly turned. His father made his way back down to the sitting room.

“Cal...”

John took a few hesitant steps and stopped. He seemed to be staring right through her, the color gone from his face. But he suddenly straightened up and leaned over the railing, calling down to his father.

“Dad, do you still have notary powers?”

When President Warren Harding unexpectedly died in San Francisco on the evening of August 2, 1923, it took seven hours for the news to reach the Vice President in his primitive Vermont farmhouse. John Calvin Coolidge, Sr. administered the Oath of Office to his son by lamplight with his wife and chauffeur as witnesses.

Asked later how he knew that he had the power to swear his son into office, the father replied, “I didn’t know I didn’t.”

Never Get to Work Too Early

2011-04-24T03:48:00.004-05:00

Jasper was a man of action. It was in his blood. From sunup to sundown he was doing. It was how he’d managed to build a business and keep it successful for almost forty-five years. And he’d done it with his own inimitable flair. He fancied himself in the light of Moore County’s other most famous resident, Davy Crockett.

But Jasper was bad with numbers. Smartly, he always made sure to keep close by him assistants who weren’t burdened with that handicap. Lem, his favorite nephew, had most recently stepped into the role of bookkeeper as Jasper gradually began to relinquish the daily duties of his business. Still, at the age of sixty, Jasper was always there to greet the first employees arriving for work.

On one typical morning, Jasper was alone at his office doing the weekly paperwork. Some of the reports he needed weren’t at his desk so he got up to retrieve them from the safe. Leaning over the dial his eyes glossed over.

“Blast...”

For ten minutes, the dial clicked left and right as Jasper tried every possible combination but never came the sound of the bolts.

“Tarnation...”

Jasper checked his pocket watch. Still another half hour before Lem arrives. He kicked with all his might against the lock. Somewhere wrapped within the hollow thud of boot against steel was a crunching sound, his big toe shattering into tiny pieces.

“Confound it!”

Precisely thirty minutes later, Lem arrived.

“You okay, Uncle Jack?”

Jasper never saw a doctor.

The blood poisoning set in rapidly.

On October 9th, 1910, Jasper opened his eyes and requested, “One last drink, please.” Jasper “Jack” Daniels, master distiller, passed later in the night.

There are several lessons to be learned from this tale but only one of them is a first cause.

The Avatar

2011-04-23T05:24:00.003-05:00

Little Sathya was a happy and extroverted child. He loved candy and he was chubby. He loved to dance and to sing and to pray. And he loved being generous, especially to the numberless poor that surrounded his village of Puttaparthi in steamy southern India. All of the villagers loved him back. The cowherds and the beggars, the young and the old, the wise and the feeble-minded, his parents grew perturbed at the flow of visitors to the door.

Despite his popularity, Sathya was still just another boy. He’d done nothing remarkable and nothing remarkable had happened to him in his thirteen years. Nothing, that is, until sunset on March 8, 1940.

Sathya was walking with some friends along the crest of Serpent Hill when he suddenly shrieked in pain. His friends turned to find him hopping up and down, holding his foot.

“A black scorpion stung my toe!” Sathya screamed before an abrupt faint took him to the ground.

Some of his friends ran for help while those remaining searched and searched for the culprit. They never found it. It had simply vanished. None had seen the scorpion, none but Sathya.

Over the next two months, Sathya’s parents desperately sought a cure for his newly strange behavior. A line of physicians and exorcists could offer no results. He stopped eating. The once active and boisterous child had become still and silent. His comatose-like meditations were broken only by spontaneous hymns of Sanskrit poetry, a language which he’d never been taught. His recitations of Hindu verse proved flawless and encyclopedic.

When his father became frightened at the boy’s materialization of objects from thin air, he raised a stick to him, “Who are you?!”

“I am Sai Baba,” he answered.

Sai Baba would later reveal himself to his followers as God-incarnate.

My Theory Stands

2011-04-12T13:51:00.001-05:00

"Not" writing for a weekend continues to garner more "followers" than when I post regularly. Thanks and welcome to SixWordFractal!

Forty-Seven Days

2011-04-03T04:20:00.005-05:00

Sam turned his one good ear towards the woman, “Run that by me again, miss."

It was a crowded day and rather noisy for the Museum of Modern Art. A group of school children was moving by, so Genevieve had to lean in close to the security guard for him to hear. “It’s the one down at the end!”

Sam stared off into the ether and Genevieve wasn’t sure if he’d heard her this time either. She began again, “I said it’s...”

“I heard you,” Sam said, suddenly coming back to the moment, “I ain’t deaf.” He still didn’t move from his place along the wall.

She was a New Yorker and fairly accustomed to rudeness but Genevieve reddened and raised her hands at her sides.

“Well?”

The old guard gave a slight whine and looked at his watch.

"All right, it’s gettin’ on my lunch break anyway. It’s right by the cafeteria you say, right?”

She nodded and maneuvered her way down the hall. The line for the cafeteria was long and it stretched out past the sign that read “The Last Works of Henri Matisse.” On the wall near the cash registers was a painted cut-out of a sailboat. She went up to it and held up a catalog.

Sam squinted at the catalog and then at the painting and then back at the catalog again. “You the artist?” he asked.

Genevieve Habert reddened for the second time, “No, but...”

“I can’t imagine we’d make that kind of mistake here. See, we can’t be responsible for the printers, miss. ‘Sides, how do you know what’s up and what’s down?”

It was December 4, 1961, and Henri Matisse’s “Le Bateau” had been hanging upside down for forty-seven days and not a single soul, including Matisse’s own son, had noticed.

Pushed

2011-03-27T05:47:00.004-05:00

Malachi sat back in his worn recliner and closed his eyes. He held his breath and felt the irregular beat of his heart pounding through his head. Perspiration beaded on every corner of his angular face as he rubbed his eyes and then his temples. He could still hear the words of the young Bishop: “Don’t come to me with your nonsense, Father. No one believes in the devil anymore.”

He let his hands slip slowly down his face to his neck where they found a knotted chain and fingered it for a short time, tracing its linked ridges to the large crucifix lying across his sternum. He cupped his hands over it and despite his exhaustion found a bit of solace and mechanically formed a prayer.

His lungs whistled as he drew in a sharp breath and reached for the water on the table beside him. The back of his shaking hand racked the glass and sent it toppling to the floor, splashing several pages of the manuscript he’d been working on.

He clicked his tongue and brushed the water from the papers. The ink smeared over the working title at the top of the page, Primacy: How the Institutional Roman Catholic Church became a Creature of the New World Order.

“Oh, dear.”

With some effort, he got to his feet and started for the kitchen to find a towel. Without warning, he toppled forward and his head splintered against the coffee table. The lamp crashed next to him and the room went black.

He woke only once from his coma to whisper to a bedside confidant, “I felt something push me but no one was there...” Father Malachi Martin, one of the most controversial figures of the modern Catholic Church, died several days later on July 27, 1999.

A Neverending Story

2011-03-21T05:13:00.005-05:00

On the morning of April 18th, 1985, Clarence opened his eyes and found himself again in familiar surroundings: the county jail. He was fifty-two years old, not a young man anymore; it was getting more and more difficult to recover from his binges. His head was splitting and... how many drinks had he had last night? “Ten?” he asked himself, “Twelve?”

He pushed himself up and found a soft coil on the edge of the mattress to sit on. As he stared at the peeling grey floor and rubbed his stinging neck, bits and pieces slowly returned until his heart suddenly jumped and he stumbled forward against the metal bars.

“Officer! Hey, officer!”

The deputy looked up from a newspaper and raised his eyebrows.

“My car... “

“Your car? Your car?”

Insult flashed across Clarence’s face. “... I was in a little Chevy, is it still, uh, drivable?”

The deputy shook his head and threw the paper down. “Your concern is touching, but yeah, it’s a miracle that the girl in the Mustang you T-boned is okay.”

“Oh... right... the girl.”

“Besides,” the deputy added, “I don’t think your temporary license is going to survive this one. This is your fifth D.U.I. and the laws have tightened up a bit since your last one. Better make your phone call now that you’re sober.”

Sometimes, one life can be the beginning of change. And sometimes, one death. Clarence wasn’t that one life, but Cari Lightner, the thirteen year old girl walking to a church carnival that he mowed down while driving drunk five years previously was that one death. Outraged at the light sentence that Clarence Busch received for her daughter’s slaughter, Candice Lightner began a relentless push for tougher laws combating drunk driving that culminated in the formation of M.A.D.D.

Welcome x 2

2011-03-16T07:24:00.001-05:00

to Ungern and Roger! Thanks for adding me to your "follows."

Epidemic

2011-03-14T03:38:00.004-05:00

Scattered outbreaks had been occurring for some time. In England. America. Mexico. The contagions always remained relatively contained but now, something was in the air and the winds were carrying it across the continent. On February 16, 1848, two railroad workers sneezed and fell dead at the feet of a squad of Royal Guards in the streets of Paris. A week later, King Louis Philippe abdicated his throne and in the next, the Second Republic was declared in France.

In March, signs began to appear elsewhere, especially among the urban poor and unemployed, among the waves of immigrants as they wandered searchingly for cures across the invisible borders of the German States, Denmark, Schleswig, Hungary, and the Habsburg Empire. Natural disasters heightened the anxiety of the increasingly unsettled world as hurricanes struck North America and earthquakes shook New Zealand.

As 1848 progressed, cases appeared in more and more nations. Switzerland, Poland, Wallachia, Ireland, and Belgium all diagnosed incidents of the spreading fever. Death by the thousands followed in its wake. Even across the oceans and far away from the hosts in Europe, Brazil and India were forced to put quarantines in place.

But it seemed that as quickly and as violently as it had come, it suddenly disappeared. By the end of the year, although some places continued to experience outbreaks until as late as 1852, the dead were all wrapped and buried; the epidemic that swept across the globe had ended and the faces of the affected states remained relatively unchanged.

No one has yet to give a precise definition to what happened to the world in 1848. Some called it democracy, others liberalism, some nationalism or socialism. Idealism. Freedom. Whatever one names it though, the revolutions stemmed from frustration: and wherever that grows in abundance, it becomes infectious.

Another Maniac Aboard

2011-03-03T18:20:00.004-06:00

Welcome and thanks to the newest "follower" AriaManiac. Off to Mardi Gras this week but will be back writing again next weekend!

The Carpet Weavers

2011-02-28T05:24:00.003-06:00

Zari’s first impressions of the city left her imagination vastly disappointed. Her face was pressed hard against the window of the careening van and the fires and rubble passed by like blurs in the early dawn hour. Gangs of men wielding clubs and machine guns turned their suspicious eyes toward the sound of the honking transport. She still didn’t understand why she’d been summoned except that it had something to do with her expertise.

The driver eyed her disdainfully through the rear view mirror. He spoke to the man sitting next to him as if she wasn’t there.

“Are you sure she is the right one? Her name is Saborjhian, nothing but a lowly thread painter.”

“Her family has been making rugs for 2,000 years,” was the response, “they may have started out lowly but they’ve since come out of the desert. There is no mistake...”

The van made an abrupt turn down an alley. It screeched to a halt and the door flew open. She was grabbed by the arm and hustled into a dimly-lit warehouse. Inside were at least a dozen frightened women and several men, guns on their hips, and scattered across the floor were bags spilling over with long thin strips of paper.

“Zari,” the man still gripping her arm said, “you are to handle and recreate these bits as if they were priceless Persian rugs.”

He led her to a loom where a project had been started. Within a few minutes she’d already connected several strips: “SEP 19” formed before her eyes.

All the shredded documents recovered from the gutted Embassy were soon rewoven by the superbly skilled professionals, revealing to the new theocracy the tale of chaotic activity by American diplomats before they were taken hostage during the initial stages of the Iranian Revolution.

Three More Welcomes

2011-02-25T23:10:00.001-06:00

Thanks for the new "follows" from Europa, Quachell, and TH2. A fresh story forthcoming!

Howdy Zach!

2011-02-19T16:54:00.000-06:00

Thanks for another "follow" from the Cynical Optimist!

Beinecke MS 408

2011-02-13T03:57:00.004-06:00

Wilfrid’s dedication had been unquestionable in striking at the threads of the Russian yoke and his subversive activities in the name of a free Poland eventually got him exiled to Siberia. His daring escape, after which he found his way to London, proved only to cement his convictions. He and a group of ex-patriot nationalists founded the Society of Friends for a Free Russia and sent both moral and financial support behind the lines.

With the passing of each of his fellow comrades though, he found his passions subtly growing weaker. He could never abandon his cause but it was time for younger blood to take his place. He slowly disassociated himself from the day to day plotting and scheming until eventually he found himself “settled down” and he looked forward to a quieter life. An acquaintance recommended he get into the book business.

So it was, fourteen years later, he found himself sitting in his shop looking over the thirty antiquated volumes he’d secretly purchased from the Jesuits of Villa Mondragone in Italy. There were some rare ones; some in French, most in Latin. He might make enough on them to open a second shop in New York.

But there was one he kept coming back to. It was hand-scripted on vellum, filled with lavish illustrations of... what, he couldn’t tell. Impossible plants. Cosmological charts. Parades of bathing women. What was most confounding though was the language. Despite having become an authority on old manuscripts, he could make no sense of it. Unexpectedly, he’d stumbled upon a new passion, and like the old one, it would dominate his every waking moment.

Experts today are no closer to unlocking the secrets of the mysterious 600 year old “Voynich Manuscript” than Wilfrid Voynich was when he died on March 19, 1930.

Hello Irwan!

2011-02-12T00:38:00.000-06:00

Thanks for the "follow" and the link!

A Literary Voyage

2011-02-06T02:08:00.006-06:00

The Bachelor Frigate set sail from the island of Guam on March 22, 1710, and in its wake were two smaller ships loaded with supplies. The Englishman in command of the little fleet had just pulled off a spectacular coup. On the run from the Spanish navy in a stolen ship sorely in need of repairs and his crew starving for rations and medical treatment, the Captain snuck right under their noses – not just for a brave moment but for eleven whole days. A simple letter explaining that he was a great friend to the Spanish despite his government’s position, capped with a not-so-subtle hint of the power of his cannons, had garnered him an open-armed welcome. He’d even dined at the Governor’s mansion while graciously accepting gifts of valuable cloth and slaves. It was this latter part that probably landed the Governor a four year jail term after the investigation was completed.

Privateers. Most nations at one time or another have employed them during times of hostility: men whose patriotism is kindled by personal profit. During peacetime they’re called pirates, and the captain of the fleet was one of the best at his job. Ordinarily, this might have been enough to land him a paragraph in the history books.

Upon his return to England though, the Captain added to his legacy with a book about his experiences sailing ‘round the world, making fools of the Spanish, and it sold like limes in a scurvy-ward. However, this literary jaunt of Woodes Rogers was just the tip of the iceberg. For among the crew that sailed out of Guam that day was a pair of men whose lives would inspire two of the classics of western literature: Alexander Selkirk and Simon Hatley, respectively remembered as Robinson Crusoe and the Ancient Mariner.

Welcome to Mandy!

2011-02-01T19:05:00.001-06:00

...and thanks for "following!"

Twenty Paintings

2011-01-31T02:52:00.005-06:00

William walked about the factory expressionless, glancing here and glancing there. Occasionally he’d stop for a moment in front of a painting hanging on a wall and stare. Albert would notice this and move close behind him, peering over his shoulder, waiting for a word. But William would just sigh and move on again, spinning a watch chain around his finger until it tightened and spun back outward, not saying a thing.

Finally William spoke, but only to Albert’s frustration.

“So this is where you’ve made your fortune, eh? What is it again you make here?”

Albert squinted at his friend, “An antiseptic... for infants... Say, William, enough about that. What about my collection?”

William, still spinning his watch, looked his old classmate in the eyes. He’d heard that Albert had become a stubborn and proud man since they’d been children, slow to forgive or forget. And knowing full well that Albert had put himself through medical school on earnings hard-fought-for in the boxing ring, he hesitantly said, “Would the word dilettante offend you?”

Albert flushed a little and pushed his glasses higher up the bridge of his nose. “Only if it came from someone other than you, William. Teach me what I need to know.”

William responded without hesitation, “I’ll need to go to Paris...”

The twenty paintings that William Glackens returned to Philadelphia with at first produced no emotion in Albert. But the more and more he studied them and the more and more he read about them, a little spark began to burn.

When Albert Barnes rolled through a stop sign and was broadsided by a truck on July 24, 1951, his private collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Early Modern artwork was unparalleled.

Though historically priceless, the collection today is estimated to be worth thirty billion dollars.

Once Upon a Time

2011-01-23T04:24:00.003-06:00

“...that’s how all the good ones begin.”

Jacob laughed, “Is that right? Then please, continue...”

“Once upon a time,” Henriette began again, and Jacob sat enthralled as she relayed a tale filled with wicked stepmothers and princes and magical beasts. She’d just finished with the accustomed “and they lived the rest of their days in peace” when the pharmacist returned from the back of the shop with a small bag.

“Here you are, Jacob, I hope my daughter hasn’t been trying your patience with her stories.”

“Quite the contrary, sir,” Jacob replied with a hint of excitement, “Where on earth does she learn all these tales?”

“This is the only pharmacy around. Every peasant with a hole in his pocket eventually finds his way in here, and as you can tell, little Henriette is anything but shy. Now be sure your mama gets this and I pray she gets back on her feet soon. Just... just pay me when you can, Jacob, I know you and your brother have a lot on your plate since your papa died.”

As Jacob departed, he swung the door open wide, revealing his brother Wilhelm waiting quietly outside. He glanced in at Henriette as the door began its arc and took a second longer look before it closed again.

“Sorry to take so long,” Jacob explained, “but the girl in there told me a most fabulous story...”

The orphans were to make success stories of their own lives and become well-known among their countrymen, as linguists and for the massive dictionary they produced. And before Jacob died on September 20, 1863, he paid the pharamacist his debt. Wilhelm, on the other hand, married young Henriette Wild, who grew to be the greatest source of what truly made the pair world-famous, as the Brothers Grimm.

Thanks for another "follow"

2011-01-20T20:17:00.001-06:00

...to Richard, glad to have you here!

The Peacock Angel

2011-01-17T03:44:00.005-06:00

The cloud on the horizon could have been mistaken for nothing more than an approaching squall. Jalil focused absently up on it as he chanted his morning hymns.

"How often two executioners came upon me as the morning sun arose. O poor man, stand up and bear witness...”

The cloud grew wilder and Jalil could tell that indeed a storm was coming but not one that would bring rain. He hurried the last of his song.

“... unto the grave of time, and the Last Day."

Jalil ran barefooted through the little village of white-clay houses and up the rocky slope towards the shrine where the Sheik lived. He found him praying before an exquisite peacock engraved onto an ancient stone. Panting, he slowed when he saw him and approached with his head lowered.

The Sheik didn’t move, nor open his eyes, but spoke with softness in his voice that was natural to his position, “Why so excited, young man?”

“The invaders are here,” Jalil whispered.

The Sheik didn’t react. Jalil anxiously rocked back and forth on his heels, making several unsuccessful attempts at speaking. He arched his neck out the door towards the rising sun. The dust cloud was palpable now and he could hear the murmured voices of his villagers below.

“Why do you worry?”

Jalil jumped.

“We’ve weathered invaders for six thousand years; do you think that now that we live under the age of Melek Taus we will be forsaken? Go, welcome them...”

The 101st Airborne Division made its way west of Mosul on April 17, 2003, several weeks into Operation Iraqi Freedom. One soldier could be heard yelling among the din of the transports, pointing out a lone figure approaching from the slope of a small hillside village, “Yazidis... them’s the devil-worshippers in these parts.”

Estropeado Español

2011-01-16T03:11:00.004-06:00

Rarely do letters of recommendation carry the purpose of destiny that the two held by the young private did on September 26, 1575. Folded neatly into fours and bound with a thin silk strand, he kept them tucked into his doublet covering the two thimble-sized pink scars on his breast. His left hand, irreparably maimed, reached up and patted them reflexively every few minutes to make sure that they were still there. The few paragraphs of flourished script marked upon those papers, he knew, would determine the course of the rest of his life.

One was signed by Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, the Duque de Sessa, and the second by none other than the hero of Lepanto, Don Juan de Austria. With them, King Philip of Spain would grant him the merced so necessary for his promotion to a Captaincy in the Spanish army. An illustrious past behind him, a long and likely distinguished career now lay before.

The letters were never to reach their destination. This fact however did not hinder their purpose; they were still indeed to alter the life of the holder, just not in the way that he had expected.

Only a few miles from the Spanish coast, the ship carrying the letter-bearer was surprised by a small fleet of Turks. Those few Christian soldiers who survived the short battle were bound to be galley-slaves for the remainder of their short tortured lives, lost to the memory of Europe forever. But when the royal letters of recommendation were found on one prisoner, the pirates knew they had a special prize worthy of a hefty ransom.

The letters not only spared his life, they set him on a new path. In the five years that Miguel de Cervantes spent as prisoner awaiting ransom, he began to write.

And Thanks Yet Again X 3...

2011-01-12T18:31:00.002-06:00

...to the several new "followers" here, megds, lana, and "anonymous." There's been more welcomes recently than stories - shall be remedied soon!

Welcome Alana :)

2011-01-07T06:44:00.003-06:00

...from A Big Bowl of Life, thanks for "following." On a little vacation right now, will be back writing next weekend!

Welcome to Jan!

2011-01-04T14:48:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year and thanks for following!!!

Parvulus enim natus est nobis. Filius datus est nobis.

2010-12-25T01:36:00.002-06:00

Merry Christmas to men of goodwill. See you again next year!

Suicide by State

2010-12-19T21:39:00.003-06:00

The usual suspects were rounded up; the Dutch, the Irish, the Spanish, the French, especially those French papists. Even the king himself wasn’t beyond reproach in the search for a scapegoat. No “other” was excluded in the frenzied hunts that ensued, no questions asked. But all the arrests and beatings and mob executions still produced no answers. And then came along a young watchmaker, conveniently of French parentage, who appeared to fit the bill.

Flames were still burning across four-fifths of the wind-licked city when Sir Henry Keeling, the Lord Chief Justice, entered his chambers and stared down the deformed little simpleton in chains awaiting him.

“Prisoner, you admitted yesterday to having set the fire at Westminster. Considering that Westminster has been untouched by the flames, your recantation is probably wise,” the lord said tiredly.

“Oui, my lord, I was confused in my, uh, my hatred for your peoples. It was on Pudding Lane that I threw the first fireball... through an open window at the bakery, I threw three...”

“But man, the building you described to the jury this morning had no open window where you say it was, not open because there was not even a window...”

“My lord, your own investigators have determined that building is most likely where it all started, how could I be expected to remember all the details of that exciting night? I am guilty and I await your just punishment.”

Sir Henry Keeling sighed. Hopefully with his death, this talk of plots and conspiracies will die with him.

Robert Hubert, a “Confessing Sam,” was hung and his body torn apart by a mob, his confession having overridden all the facts of his innocence. He hadn’t even arrived in England until September 4th, 1666, two days after the Great Fire of London began.

A Patently Riveting Tale

2010-12-12T23:15:00.003-06:00

In a cavern (in a canyon), excavating for a mine, lived a miner. A “forty-niner.” He had no daughter cooking his meals for him though, for with the scant dust that he’d scraped over the past dozen years, he’d barely been able to keep his accustomed one pair of pants in patches let alone support a family. His darling daughter, along with his wife, had packed it in and moved back to Nantucket where they were doing fairly well for themselves running a bed and breakfast called “Clementine’s,” named after the horse they rode in on. By 1860 he packed it in too and disappeared into the foothills of history, never making a penny of royalties on the songs that were later written about him.

In the twelve years he spent prospecting, the miner had gone through roughly 23 pairs of cotton trousers, 7 canvas dungarees, 16 hemp overalls, one silk bear costume (don’t ask), and 4,273 spools of thread sewing back the seams torn along the crotches and pockets during his daily digging. By the time he’d quit, he’d resorted to simply roaming through the hills au naturel. They left that part out of the song.

On May 20th, 1873, exactly thirteen years after the miner wandered away (a typically unlucky thirteen for him but thirteen Indian-head-up-lucky-penny-type years for the miners who’d kept their patched pants on and stuck around), the cries of Tarnation! and Darned-Blast-It! and even the occasional @#$%^&*!!! gradually began to fade as fewer and fewer button-flies ripped at the seams. For on that day, Levi Loeb, the San Francisco dry-goods dealer and Jacob Davis, a Reno tailor, received word that their joint patent for adding metal rivets to strengthen denim “waist overalls” had been approved. Blue Jeans had arrived for the working man.

Oh, Clementine!

phoenicopteris ruber plasticus

2010-12-03T07:57:00.004-06:00

Yellow is for cowards and jaundiced babies. Blue is for mea culpas, and green for the over-satisfied, too fat and happy to try anything bold. Black and white, well that pair is constantly trying to break out of their rule-following but in the end they’re only hiding behind words. And always making you pick a side. Orange? Really, it can’t even find a word to rhyme with.

Red is a dangerous rival. Blood. Passion and fire, but red tends to be the livid instigator. And red quickly turns to grey once the deed is done. “Twenty-five to life.” Clink. Tom Robbins hit the woodpecker on the head when he gave all his outlaws red hair.

The closest is purple. But even purple is too snobbish, only the king is allowed to wear it, everyone else is stealing from the crown. Besides, purple is Thursday’s color and Thursday hasn’t been the same since Friday ditched it for Saturday (and an occasional affair with Sunday).

There was only one color that a great sculptor could have possibly applied to his masterpiece. A color that symbolized whimsy and gregariousness (and that’s asking a lot, Gregary was a pretty creative guy). A color that put candy in cotton and yum in gum. The color of brave lemonades and startling grapefruits. Of the best panthers, diamonds, and bumbling inspectors. Shrimp, salmon, and waking eyes. Elvis’s Cadillac, healthy newborns, and the baby-sitter’s lipstick. The perfect steak. Floyd would have been second-rate without it.

When Don Featherstone mixed pink with flamingo sometime in 1957 (for romance’s sake, let’s say Valentine’s Day), the suburbanites of south Florida took to it like odalists to a Grecian urn. (Though that still doesn’t explain why Polish shopkeepers from Pottsville to Parma in the snowy north still can’t restock them fast enough).

His Father's Son

2010-11-22T01:26:00.003-06:00

On May 8, 1757, a sickly boy was born into the world. His father named him Edward, after himself.

Edward stayed sickly but stayed alive, his six siblings all dying in infancy. Too frail to attend classes, his father employed tutors to make sure he kept up. And when at nine years old he was well enough to go off to grammar school, his mother died and he was brought back home. Edward shed no tears, she’d always been neglectful, but now it was just he and his father in the seclusion of that damp and drafty South London mansion.

He was sent off to live in a boarding house.

“Your Aunt Kitty will see to your upbringing,” he said as he closed the carriage door, “don’t disappoint me, Edward.”

He didn’t. He studied voraciously and with an appetite for reading that surprised even him. At fifteen, his father deemed him ready for Oxford. But after an unprofitable 14 months, he was back at his father’s house, expelled from college because of a religious conversion.

“I’ve arranged for you to study in Switzerland with a Reformed pastor,” his father fumed, “He’ll see to it that you abandon your disgraceful Romishness.” An additional threatened disinheritance produced in him a sudden reconversion to the faith of his father.

When he fell in love and considered marriage, his father disapproved and he abandoned her.

When his father joined the militia, Edward did too.

He even followed his father into Parliament.

When Edward Gibbon completed his unsurpassed magnum opus, he laid ruinous cause upon the shoulders of a distant and domineering power: organized religion. Perhaps if he had been healthier at the end of his unhappy life, he may have also recognized the long shadow of a distant and domineering power in his own.

Greyfriars Bobby

2010-11-20T02:36:00.002-06:00

A rectangle of red clay marked the freshly filled grave at Greyfriar’s Kirkyard. There was no headstone. Its tubercular occupant was a night-watchman of the Edinburg police, a man of simple means with no family. Very few people even knew him. His schedule permitted little contact with the average citizen; off to sleep as the rest of the city was just beginning to stir and back to work again as they retired. Except for his coworkers, John Gray’s main contacts with society were the drunks and thieves and ladies of the night. He did have one friend though. His name was Bobby and they’d grown quite close during their two years together.

Bobby wasn’t at the funeral; he hadn’t even known that his friend was dead, just that he didn’t come home one morning. So when he strolled through the gates of the churchyard and found the newly-dug plot he knew instinctively who lay six feet below. But the knowledge didn’t lessen his confusion and he struggled to understand. He’d noticed the cough shortly after it began but as the wheezing became a normal part of John’s respiration, Bobby grew used to it and soon forgot about it. He lay down on the soft bed of clay and fell asleep, dreaming about his best friend in the world.

How long he’d been asleep he didn’t know, but he bolted at the loud commands of the caretaker and hid himself in the woods. When he thought it was safe, he returned again, circled, and lay back down on the grave.

For three days, the caretaker chased Bobby away. And then it dawned on him. Greyfriars Bobby was John Gray’s dog. Bobby would spend the next fourteen years at his deceased master’s graveside until he too finally expired on January 14, 1872.

Welcome to Mary!

2010-11-19T03:57:00.000-06:00

Thanks for "following"!

The Ordeal of Change

2010-11-14T04:51:00.005-06:00

Carl drifted around. After spending his young adulthood as witness to man’s worst brutality, he found himself alone, trying to construct a set of values that might let him slowly re-approach civilized society again without that feeling of abnormality he couldn’t shake. Everywhere he saw hopeful people looking to the future that he’d helped shape. At 21, all he could look to was his past.

On January 6, 1946, he found some temporary work on San Francisco’s Embarcadero. At the lunch-whistle he walked the docks, looking angry, past the familiar whiskered-men smoking cigarettes and conversing in low secretive voices. He rounded a crate and came upon a longshoreman perched on a stack of pallets reading a book. He stood staring at him for a few minutes before the man looked up.

“What are you looking for?”

The question put Carl off balance. It was a simple question but the meaning hadn’t really sunk in before now. “I don’t really have an answer... maybe some action.”

“If you’ve just come back from the war, you’ve seen what men of action do. They make the train run on time but you don’t necessarily want a ride on it. Pascal said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he doesn’t know how to stay quietly in his room. Thirty minutes of introspection will answer almost every question you have, son. It’s what I do with my lunchtime every day. Most people don’t want answers though because answers don’t bring present happiness. People pray for their daily illusions as they do for their daily bread.”

Shortly, Carl moved on again as so many anomie-burdened returning soldiers had before. But the longshoreman-philosopher, Eric Hoffer, stayed on the docks for another twenty years of lunchtimes, completing four books of insightful observations on human nature.

Completing His Degree

2010-10-31T05:48:00.003-05:00

Edmund’s return to school, to post-graduate studies, was like a class reunion for him. So many of his friends from Oxford had already preceded him but he was especially glad to find Gregory. It was his letters that had been so instrumental in his deciding to come. Edmund already had two degrees and a dazzling career before him with both support and funding from the government. But at Gregory’s urging, he gave it all up. After a few days of reacquainting, catching up on their lives since they last parted, they got down to business.

Though the “English College” was technically in France, at Douai, the students there were all English, Irish, and Welsh. Not popular with the neighboring community, Edmund and his companions kept mostly hidden, immersing themselves in their studies as few ever had before. Before long, his courses took him on a virtual tour of Europe: Rome, Brünn, Geneva, Milan, and finally Prague where he finished his schooling. His résumé was filled with honors and degrees and proofs of excellence. It was time for him to go home.

To England.

It had been a decade.

A friend met him in London and found him a place to stay. He’d move around a lot after that and it was often hard to track him down. He did a bit of writing and performed some of the small expected functions taken on after his years of study. But as lettered as Edmund was, there was still one more paper he waited for.

He got it on November 20, 1581 at Westminster Hall. That paper read, “Campion, Seditious Jesuit.” The guilty verdict was pronounced, for the treasonous crime of being a priest, and Edmund Campion thanked God. His last graduation ceremony came eleven days later by hanging, drawing, and quartering.

A Binding Contract

2010-10-24T05:46:00.009-05:00

Theresa waved a telegram in the air as she met Lawrence at the entrance of a little theater on 46^th street. His arms were pressing a binder full of papers to his chest.

“Is that what I think it is?” Lawrence asked.

“I daresay we’ve enacted a coup, Mr. Langner,” Theresa answered in a mock secretive whisper.

“They’ve signed?” he yelled back, raising his hands into the air and letting the binder fall. “But how? They could command a ransom and the best we offered was a third of what they normally take!”

“Well, first off,” Theresa replied seriously, “they truly believe in the importance of what we’re trying to accomplish in releasing these non-commercial works to the public. Also, there are two additional clauses...”

Lawrence squinted.

“The first one says they don’t work summers.”

“Ever?”

“Ever.”

“Okay. And the other?”

900 miles west of Broadway, in an undeveloped and verdant area of Wisconsin, Lynn waved a crisp white paper in the air as Alfred approached.

“Is that what I think it is?” he asked, smiling.

“Telegram for Mr. Lunt! Shall I read it? The Theater Guild... etcetera ...promising scripts, controversial topics... ah, here it is: No appearances during the summer months... aaand... never to appear in separate plays but to always be cast together!”

“Never apart, then?”

“Never.”

They took their contract as binding as they took their marriage, which lasted 55 years. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, the most revered acting team of American theater, spent every breathing minute together: on stage, radio, film, television, and at their Ten Chimneys estate; in love with acting and abundantly more so with each other. When Anastasia aired on March 17, 1967, it was the first time in 39 years that Lynn appeared publicly without her retired husband at her side.

Papusza

2010-10-17T06:17:00.003-05:00

She grew up like all others in her kumpania, moving from one place to the next. She was taught to be loyal only to her families and to never trust the gadjikano. Never. She was never to learn their ways lest she become unclean. She was cautioned that her place in the world was only right where she was, wherever she was. This was their way and had always been.

The beatings that she took from her parents when they caught her learning to read and write were meant to educate her.

“Read! Write!” they yelled in Polish, as they burned a book they found hidden in her chest, for there were indeed no words in Romani for those foreign concepts.

Still, secretly, she did learn to read and to write and those foreign skills only served to give her a deeper identity with her people. She wrote poems of lament and struggle that spoke for Gypsies like none before. Her husband accompanied her on the harp as she sang songs of nostos, a return to a home that never existed.

Her special talents made her believe that it really was possible to live in both worlds, the Rom and the Gadjo, as she attracted more and more notoriety through her song.

But she was wrong.

As her kumpania had warned her, she was betrayed and her own writings were twisted and used against her people as rationale for forced resettlement during Socialist Poland’s Great Halt to “the Gypsy problem.”

Bronisława Wajs spent eight months in a mental institution recovering from her ensuing erasure from Gypsy society. The mention of her name forbidden, the next generation of gypsy children grew up having never heard of their greatest voice. She lived a hermit life until her death on February 8, 1987.

An "Embraceable" Indulgence

2010-10-03T03:10:00.003-05:00

Gina arrived before the sun rose over Tokyo on August 29, 1960, but she was already too late. A line of people stretched around three corners of the city block. Her jaw dropped a little as a small groan escaped it and sneaked its way into the ear of a little child clinging to her arm.

“Mama...”

She didn’t hear her daughter at first, her attention wrapped in a cloak of disappointment at the possibility of another opportunity missed.

“Mama?” the child asked, a little louder, a little sadder.

Gina turned away from the file of sleepy-eyed parents that was still steadily growing. It was to be a long walk home on their fourth failed attempt. But when she looked down at her arm, the child was gone. She wheeled around to see her standing at the end of the line. On her face was a pleading expression.

“Oh, mama,” she whispered tearfully, “We must try! I’m the only one who doesn’t have one yet... and it helps me to learn about other cultures too...”

Her heart sank as she beheld her poor child, how could she say no again? Bending down, she framed the girl’s face and forced a smile.

“Lucky for us, I have a few sardines wrapped up in my bag. Today, we will stand in this line as long as it takes to buy one!”

An elderly man standing nearby slowly turned towards the now happy and hopeful mother and child.

“Pardon me for overhearing, but this line isn’t to buy, they’ve already sold out. It’s for a lottery ticket for a chance to buy when the next delivery arrives.”

As the revelation sunk in, a teenage girl peddled lithely by on a bicycle, a little black golliwog clinging to her handlebars.

“Dakkochan!” the child screamed.

Welcome!

2010-09-29T16:30:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Bebellakitty for "folowing"! I've been sidelined for a few weeks but will pick up again this weekend!

Beyond the Black Stump

2010-09-06T02:47:00.003-05:00

Seven weeks. That’s how long it had been since Rod had a soda. Buffalo blood had gotten him through the dehydration of the first two days and since then, sandy water. It wasn’t so bad though, he’d been in rough spots before. He’d have preferred the company of a woman rather than his two dogs but such was his predicament. Keeping them from the crocs that sunk his boat seemed to occupy half his time.

140 miles. That’s how close the nearest outpost was. Rod knew it was far, not how far, but far enough for him to know that he wasn’t getting soda anytime soon. Or anything with sugar. Anything sweet. He leaned back against the base of a skinny gum tree and watched the bees hovering over the small tins of water he’d filled for the dogs.

Eleven bees. That’s how many made up the tiny pile by his bare feet. Each one of them was missing at least one leg. While staring tediously at the insects trying to steal a drink from the tins, Rod had had an epiphany. Pinching another bee against the ground, he picked up a long string he’d carefully extracted from his t-shirt and making a loop, slowly fed it around a splayed leg and pulled it taut. The bee buzzed clumsily off as he let go, dragging the string across the ground.

“Aha!” Rod blurted, “Sweet honey at last!”

And then he heard the unmistakable sound of cowbells.

Twice famous. That’s what Rodney Ansell became. The first time as the inspiration for Crocodile Dundee after the story of his rescue in the Australian Outback became international news. The second time on August 3, 1999, when broke, addicted to amphetamines, and on the run, he was shot and killed after murdering a policeman.

Le Pétomane

2010-08-29T01:59:00.003-05:00

Joseph bowed one last time and disappeared behind the falling curtains. The ebullient roar of the audience echoed down the narrow halls backstage as he made his way to his dressing-room in the Moulin Rouge. Can-Can girls blew kisses at him as they brushed past in a rush and between them he caught the eyes of two tall, unsmiling gentlemen in brown suits blocking his door.

Distracted by the sight of the surly pair, Joseph didn’t notice the skirt trailing along the floor behind one of the dancing girls and he slipped on it. He caught himself before he went completely to the ground and on one knee looked up to see the way to his room cleared. The light was low inside, but reflected in the corner of the mirror, he saw a gaunt figure in an overcoat, a thick grey beard overflowing its collar. One of the guards motioned him inside.

Slowly, Joseph crept into his room, his eyes focused intently on the man in the mirror. Electricity rolled down his spine as the draft of the door swinging shut behind him chilled the sweat on the back of his neck. The spectre stepped from the shadows.

“Your majesty!” shouted Joseph.

“SHHH! Don’t reveal me,” King Leopold II pleaded, “It was quite an effort to sneak in here unseen, just to experience firsthand Europe’s most famous celebrity.”

“My show? You’ve seen my act?”

The King grabbed Joseph’s hand and shook it vigorously.

“I did, and I wanted to tell you in person how much I enjoy your fartistry.”

A soft knock at the door signaled the King it was time to sneak away. And as the monarch departed that evening on December 16, 1892, Joseph Pujol, the “Fartomatic,” saluted him by exhaling Belgium’s national anthem through his trousers.

A Slow Boat in China

2010-08-23T03:32:00.003-05:00

The sound of gunfire and exploding bombs all around should have made his point for him. Nevertheless, Captain Hughes still labored to the end. Some reporters and the last of the Embassy staff had straggled aboard that afternoon but there was still room left for more. He removed his hat and looked over the heads of the small group of foreigners at a city silhouetted in the orange glow of ten thousand fires.

“Time’s up,” he shouted, “Who’s coming?”

“This is our home! These people are... friends. We can’t leave,” replied one spectacled man, a professor at the University.

“No matter how honorable your intentions, sir, the Nips said they’re not going to recognize any International Safety Zone. It’s only safe for you onboard. Once we sail out...”

A second man in the group spoke up in a heavy German accent; a white band was wrapped tightly around his arm, emblazoned with a red swastika.

“I think I speak for us all, and for the two dozen others still at the hospitals and missions here, that we believe once the Japanese have conquered the city, peace and prosperity will quickly be implemented.”

A bomb exploded in the Yangtze just two hundred yards away, sending a plume of brown water that almost reached the ship. The Captain whirled his way across the gangplank and hopped aboard, “Cast off!” He turned to the group again as black smoke gushed from the stack and the ship groaned away, “We’ll be back within a week!”

Three days later, on December 12, 1937, the USS Panay was sunk by Japanese dive-bombers while at anchor miles from the action. Those few foreigners who stayed behind would survive to tell the world of the atrocities of the ensuing seven weeks, now known as the Rape of Nanking.

The Ruler's Ruler

2010-08-22T02:19:00.004-05:00

“And this circle?”

Pavel Melnikov leaned over the Tsar’s shoulder and looked at the red-penciled loop below his finger.

“That, I believe, is the forest owned by the son of the Duke that, uh... he is a great supporter of you, your majesty... it would benefit his lumber interests to not have to move his mills the several miles toward the, um, more direct lay of the tracks.”

Tsar Nicholas tapped his finger on the circle and shook his head, which had turned a shade redder. He looked disapprovingly at Pavel.

“Right turns, left turns... loops! Pavel, I’ve asked you to build a railroad, not a panoramic tour of Russia. Your plans here add hundreds of miles to the route; this is what you learned from the Americans during your observations there?”

The Tsar pushed his chair back from the desk and agitatedly began opening and closing drawers until he found what he was looking for. Leaning forward again over the plans, he placed one end of a ruler on Moscow, and the other end he slid into place right over St. Petersburg. With a charcoal pencil, he traced a thick and heavy black line from one city to the other. Then he rose and handed the ruler to the ashen-faced Pavel and broke the pencil, dropping the pieces into a wastebasket.

“You will construct it like this,” he said without turning around on his way out of the office on February 1, 1842.

Ten years later, the Moscow-St. Petersburg railway opened and the trains ran on time. The power of autocracy prevailed, even if thousands of serfs gave their lives working from sunrise to sunset seven days a week to do it. To this day, it runs the 404 miles in a line as a straight as a ruler.

The Flaw in the System

2010-08-02T02:11:00.005-05:00

“What about this one? It was supposed to arrive today.”

Leyte Gulf was one of the world’s busiest harbors in 1945 and on the last day of July, over 1,500 merchant vessels and auxiliary ships had arrived, repaired, resupplied, and departed in the preceding thirty-one days. A complicated chain of responsibility kept the logs filled: One controlling ship lay anchored at the mouth of the 400 square-mile gulf and identified every vessel that passed. Dispatches were sent to the Port Director, Tacloban. Copies were then forwarded to the Commander, Philippine Sea Frontier, an office staffed by seven hundred personnel who saw to the details of every movement. The Philippine Sea Frontier, however, was by practice not responsible for combat ships.

An Ensign leaned over the logbook and shook his head.

“Guam should never have sent us this ETA. Here... read the last sentence on the last page.”

He handed a clipboard to the Yeoman.

“...it says: arrival reports shall not be made for combatant ships... how do we know they’re overdue?” the Yeoman asked.

“Ah,” said the officer, “we don’t. That’s the point... I think. They’ve all got their own commands to report to, and that covers us. When the West Virginia appeared out of the fog yesterday, not even the Rear-Admiral knew it was coming. We’re paper-navy. Besides, you’re not busy enough?”

Meanwhile, 550 miles to the east, the crew of the overdue cruiser was entering its second horrific night fighting off sharks, dehydration, and madness in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Sunk by a Japanese submarine, only 317 of the original 1,196 sailors that had just delivered the enriched uranium to Tinian survived to be accidentally rescued three days later.

Another 600 miles further east in Guam, the Yeoman there erased the USS Indianapolis from his board.

A.E.I.O.U.

2010-07-04T02:54:00.004-05:00

A menagerie of colorful tents had been erected in Sienna’s Piazza del Campo in anticipation of the infanta’s arrival. Frederick was excited. He was thirty-seven and just entering his prime. As King of Germany, he held onto a small but vital grip on Europe. Now it was time to consolidate his imminent authority. The vibrant eighteen-year-old that would arrive any minute was the key to it. He’d never met her but her considerable dowry would release him from his debt and the prospect of many years of children brought thoughts of real certitude.

A horn sounded. She’d arrived! Frederick nearly fell into the Fonte Gaia as he whirled to take his first glimpse into the future.

It was a large entourage that made its way from a shady alley on the west side of the plaza, much larger than he’d expected, obviously very costly. He snapped his tongue in disapproval.

“They’ll have to go, after the wedding,” he whispered to his aide.

When the princess gingerly stepped from her carriage, Frederick tried hard to conceal his concern.

“She’s very beautiful, indeed... but her hips... she seems rather thin, will she withstand bearing my heirs?”

Despite the differences between them, differences which occupied every nook of their mismatched lives, Frederick III and Eleanor of Portugal were married on March 16, 1452, and three days later, crowned Holy Roman Emperor and Empress. Eleanor would prove more than able in producing children and Frederick’s dreams became cemented in history – so that by the end of his life, he saw fit to inscribe on all the buildings in his empire the motto, “Alles Erdreich ist Oesterreich untertan.”

The Habsburg dynasty would endure into the 20th century, though more likely because of its other motto: "Let others wage wars, but you, happy Austria, shall marry."

"Strike the tent"

2010-07-03T03:03:00.004-05:00

What four years of war couldn’t do, nature was accomplishing in similar time. His heart, never once questioned, was now on the edge of surrender; its beats were numbered and the old General was the only one who knew it. True to character, he mentioned it to no one. Instead, he decided on one last trip, on the pretense of a much-needed rest but in actuality to say his farewells.

He rode south from Lexington, Virginia, greeted by family and friends and former brothers-in-arms at each stop, as well as by tens of thousands of well-wishers, admirers, and curious who knew in advance his every move in ways that his opponents had never been able to ascertain.

Early spring found him in Augusta, Georgia. For the entirety of that afternoon, the sixty-three-year-old warmly greeted the throngs of visitors in the lobby of his hotel. Among the crowds, children were especially abundant, pressing personalized cards and bouquets of japonica into hands. One boy in particular though, a thirteen-year-old who’d wormed his way to the old man’s side, caught his attention.

“What’s your name son?”

“Thomas, sir... I’m from Virginia...” He fell silent and stared in wonder at the model of the man he hoped one day to become.

The General winked a sad, tired eye at Thomas and put a hand on the boy’s back, forcing him to straighten his posture.

“Walk tall then,” he said, “you’re doubly blessed.” And the boy was shoved aside by the next group of strangers bearing gifts.

Seven months later, October 12, 1870, the General passed quietly into eternity after waking from sleep and issuing his final order. And forty-three years afterward, Thomas, better known as Woodrow Wilson, was sworn in as the 28th President. He never forgot his brief meeting with Robert E. Lee.

The New Imperialism

2010-06-26T23:47:00.005-05:00

“What’s that thing, mommy?”

Anthony’s mother bent softly over his shoulder and pointed to a little wooden sign hanging on the door of the cage.

“Let’s read the words, Anthony. You should be able to sound it out and I think you might recognize it once you do.”

Anthony squinted at the letters.

“Or... or, ang... uh... Hey!” Anthony’s face lit up, “Momma, it’s an orangutan! Just like in my alphabet book!”

His mother tossled his curly brown hair and kissed him on the cheek. She was beaming too.

“Very good, Anthony! You are so smart. Now, let’s see what else it tells us about him. He’s from Malaysia and his name means “man of the forest." He’s considered to be the most intelligent of all primates. Not half as smart as my little man I bet, though.”

It was October 8, 1906; a few scant years into the new century, a century that promised new hope for new man. A century that showed signs of mankind shedding the last vestiges of its superstitious past and embracing the new sciences; the evolved would take control and guide the masses into a brave new future. Important bedrock work had been done in Europe in the last century, but now the future of scientific racism was unfolding in the United States, especially under the guidance of forward-thinking men like Madison Grant.

The pair moved leisurely through the monkey exhibit at the Bronx Zoo and stopped at another little sign.

“What does this one say, Anthony? “

“It says... Oh-Ta, Ben-Ga, mommy. That was easy, Ota Benga. But he’s not a monkey."

“No, Anthony,” his mother whispered, pulling the boy away from the small, dark man behind the fence. “But he’s not like us, Anthony. He’s a savage. But maybe with our help...”

Happy Father's Day

2010-06-20T01:54:00.002-05:00

Back to writing again next week.

A Gun in the First Act Always Goes Off in the Third

2010-05-23T05:44:00.004-05:00

The youth football played in South Central Los Angeles wasn’t just a game. It was a matter of survival, a refuge keeping the kids off the streets and out of the gangs for at least one day a week. And if a kid was lucky, it was a way out.

It had been for Kermit. Growing up in Watts in the 50’s, he’d found on the gridiron a release for his anger. He was allowed to run and hit and tackle at will. And he did it like no one else. But at the age of twelve he let his short-temper surface during a game and his father made sure to end it right there. Coming out of the stands he yanked Kermit off the field. “You’re embarrassing me... Sit down until you can control yourself!”

Kermit behaved after that; well enough to escape South Central through a scholarship to UCLA. Ten successful years in the pros followed.

---

He often returned to the stage of his youth, going to football games around the city. On September 21, 1974, one particular game jogged his memory clearly. As Kermit watched from the stands, an eight-year-old boy, the most obviously-talented boy on the field, was letting all of his rage go, just as Kermit had done years before. As the boy was dragged kicking off the field, Kermit thought of himself and said “somebody needs to help that boy.” But Kermit wasn’t that “somebody.”

---

Kermit recognized the defendant at last when the trial began.

“Oh my God...”

It was Tiequon Cox, the eight-year-old footballer from a decade earlier whom Kermit thought someone needed to help. Now it was too late. And it was too late to help Kermit Alexander’s mother, sister, and nephews too; victims of the gangland murder-for-hire gone wrong.

and it turned upon the point of a lance

2010-05-16T23:59:00.004-05:00

Adhemar rolled over and coughed dryly. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust around the gleaming torchlight before he recognized the figure standing over him. He sat up in a cloud of dust and ran his fingers upward through his beard.

“Oh... it’s you. Is there movement?” The words barely escaped his parched throat.

“No, your Excellency,” the page replied, “it’s a miracle, come see!”

With much difficulty, Adhemar got to his feet and limped to the window. Outside was the Basilica of Saint Peter and at its entrance a large crowd was illuminated by a hundred fiercely burning torches. At the open doors, a skinny man, naked except for a tattered shirt, stood facing the crowd, holding something above his head.

“Who is that? What’s he got there?” Adhemar asked.

“It’s that visionary,” said the page, “He’s found the spear!”

At these words, color appeared in Adhemar’s face where none had been for weeks.

“Nonsense!” he screamed. “Damn that peasant. And damn those stupid enough to believe him. Our men need food and water and what does he do? He gives them...”

Adhemar de Monteil, Bishop of Puy-en-Velay and Papal Legate, caught his breath as he looked back down at the crowd. It had almost doubled in size. Every man was kneeling.

“He gives them... hope... yes, so be it. Hope.” He leaned out the window and bellowed, “Deus Vult!”

The object that Peter Bartholomew dug up on June 14, 1098 wasn’t even a spear; it was the cap to a standard. But it was close enough for the starving Franks. Abandoned by the Greeks, barricaded behind the walls of Antioch and on the brink of disaster, they rallied with their new relic of Longinus to scatter the superior Muslim armies, ensuring continuance of the First Crusade.

The National Movement for Abolishing Theatre Queues

2010-05-15T05:11:00.004-05:00

About twenty kilometers west of London, in the little village of Stoke Poges, Eleanor closed the gate at St. Giles cemetery and shuffled down a rutted path. She’d just placed a little wreath on the marker of her deceased husband. He’d died during the Great War. Not in the war, just coincidentally during it; a heart attack while reading a Times story about the overthrow of the Russian Tsar. Eleanor always blamed the communists for his death and considered him a “wartime casualty,” even though the War Office consistently refused her demands for benefits.

With this thought on her mind she returned home to start a kettle for a cup of tea. Waiting for the water to boil, she turned on her crystal radio and plugged in the earpiece. A discussion of Gray’s “Elegy” was just concluding, one of her favorite pieces. But after just a moment, a familiar voice broke in.

“We interrupt this program with breaking news... There’s been a demonstration by the unemployed in London... The crowd has now passed along Whitehall and, at the suggestion of Mr Popplebury, Secretary of the National Movement for Abolishing Theatre Queues, is preparing to demolish the Houses of Parliament with trench mortars...”

Eleanor gasped, “Bolshevists! I knew this day would come!”

“...and the clock tower has just fallen to the ground...”

Before tuning out and rushing over to break the news to her neighbors, she heard the announcer mention that since there was no more Big Ben, Greenwich Time would instead now be obtained from Edinburgh on Uncle Leslie’s repeating watch.

If Eleanor, and a million other British listeners, had listened a little more attentively and trusted the new media a little less, the January 16, 1926 national panic caused by Father Ronald Knox’s burlesque broadcast might not have happened.

A Field Test on the Pedernales

2010-05-09T02:55:00.003-05:00

By June 7th, 1844, the reputation of the Rangers had already been established. Deadly. The Comanche raiders who had slaughtered and raped their way north into Central Texas from the no-man’s lands of the Rio Grande certainly knew of it. And they knew that their return to Mexico would not go unchallenged by those stone-faced Anglos.

The Comanche though, had established their own reputation. Fearless in battle, lethal with the bow, they were arguably the finest horsemen to have ever lived. They’d developed flawless tactics that drew wasted fire from their enemies, enabling them to swoop down upon them with overwhelming force as they dismounted to slowly reload. So, when the scouts peered over the flinty ridge along the Pedernales River and saw only fifteen Rangers circling a campfire, they raced back to their camp to tell of the advantage.

Before those scouts even mounted their horses, Captain John Coffee Hays had already begun speaking softly to his men.

“I reckon’ you all saw that... probably have a little war dance tonight and attack when the sun comes up. Now, they’ll be seventy-five... at least. And they’ll try to draw us apart; don’t let ‘em. Wait ‘til they form up. We stay mounted. Now get some sleep.”

The next morning unfolded as predicted, and when the Rangers fired their single-shot rifles, the Indians confidently advanced with a terrifying cry. Facing five to one odds on open ground, not a single lawman should have been left alive. But the Rangers had some five to one odds of their own. For the first time, the new Colt Paterson 5-shot-revolver was used in the field; “one bullet for every finger.” Fifty-three Comanches fell in those violent fifteen minutes while the Rangers suffered only four casualties.

A new era in American/Indian relations was dawning.

And if you believe that...

2010-05-03T03:32:00.003-05:00

As the two beat-cops strolled by, George adjusted the carnation on his breast and checked his watch. 11:30 a.m. on March 1, 1928. He had an hour and a half until they returned.

Ten minutes later, a handsome young couple came strolling across the bridge. The man was pointing as they walked, the woman nervously nodding her head. George greeted them with a warm smile. “Ah, I see you’ve brought the little miss!”

He bowed deeply and took the lady’s hand and pressed it to his lips. He addressed her in a tone of deep respect, “Madam, it’s an honor to have met you. You should not only be proud of your husband for the hard bargain he commanded of me, but proud of the future he’s ensured you and the wee one you’ll soon be bringing into this wonderful land of opportunity by the purchase he’s made. Your folks back in County Cork... well, just imagine what they’ll say when they hear that just three days off the boat, you’ve become real property owners! I congratulate you and sincerely welcome you to America!”

With an unquestionably confused look upon her face, the woman put a finger to her chin and she made movement to reply but George had already turned away, his broad arm coiling around her husband’s back. She stood there with her mouth agape as she watched her husband hand over nearly all of the money they’d brought with them.

The young immigrants would find out from the beat-cops later that day that they could not set up their toll-booth as planned. And George C. Parker would later that year begin a life sentence at Sing Sing prison after three decades of selling the Brooklyn Bridge, in addition to Madison Square Garden and the Statue of Liberty.

The First National Bank

2010-04-26T05:25:00.004-05:00

Michael Gray sat with his boys on a soft patch of clover staring back at the newly-finished cabin. It was built on a fine spot below the Animas Mountains, surrounded by endless grasses, and only a day’s-ride to the lucrative silver mines out west. After years as a Texas Ranger, he was looking forward to a more relaxed life ranching and prospecting in the New Mexico Territory.

“Daddy,” his son Dixie asked, “you think more settlers will be coming?”

Michael slid his hand across the Colt in his belt. “I reckon," he mused, "once we push out the last redskin, like in Texas. I might imagine a little town growing here. The grocery and post office would fit in nicely by those oaks... maybe a schoolhouse down by the creek.

Dixie liked the idea of founding a new town. “We’ll need a proper bank, too,” he said, “to manage all the money we’ll be bringing in... won’t have to ride all the way to Tombstone anymore.”

Michael Gray wouldn’t be around to see his daydreams come to life. On August 23, 1881, nineteen-year-old Dixie was murdered by bandits on his way to Tombstone and soon after, Michael sold the ranch.

The reign of the western cattle barons would then begin at the Gray Ranch. The schools, post offices and grocery stores would come and go. After eighty years, with both the land and the cattle-companies bankrupt, Dixie Gray’s dream of a bank would come true too, though not quite in the way he envisioned.

Today’s Gray Ranch is itself a bank, a grass bank, the first of its kind. Through unique environmental agreements, it leases out its 500 square miles of pristine pastureland to independent ranchers, preserving a way of life by preventing grazing land from ever becoming exhausted again.