Blog Post for Monday 3/28/11 – 19 degrees at 6:15 am OK, it’s getting colder?
Not the same bucket.
A dimly remembered childhood memory. No I take that back. I remember it VERY well.
Brattleboro Vermont. 12,045 in the 2000 census. This would have been 1960 or so. Probably less than that at that moment in time
I was 7. Maybe 8 years old.
A trip downtown with Mom. Probably a Saturday.
No doubt a trip to my favorite place on earth other than the movie theater.
The Brattleboro Free Library. Now the Brookes Memorial Library (Since 1967)
See that marvelous stone stairway? My (the childrens) entrance was to the left, under those stairs. Right. The childrens library was in the basement.
No worries for me. First of all in the entrance way there was a huge rock with a fossil footprint. What boy doesn’t like dinosaurs? I spent a lot of time looking at that prehistoric footprint and thinking about what made it.
And secondly, there were books inside. Loved books then, love them now.
But that is not what this story is about.
Either on the way in or on the way away in the car we passed a boy sitting with legs out and a bucket in between them.
He was in the middle of a busy (for Bratttleboro Vermont on a Saturday) street. I will guess it was Main Street. Turns into Route 9 out of town.
He was crying blood into the bucket. His face was a mass of red. He was sobbing (I can still hear it) and bleeding and the glimpse I saw put fear into me like none I had ever known.
I know I peppered Mom with questions. Why? How come? What? Won’t someone help him?
Mom was an unflappable Irish Catholic. You may know type. Her hair could be fully engulfed in flame, both legs broken with bones protruding, in the middle of a category 5 hurricane and she would claim to be “Just fine” and offer breakfast.
She pushed off my queries effortlessly. Minimized the incident. We drove away.
To this day I wonder what the deal was. I have thought about it now and then and I do remember this.
It was the first time that I was clearly put off by an adult. I was purposely misdirected and something was kept from me.
It would not be the last time.
It put a component in me that resides there to this day.
Don’t lie to me. I know when you are.
It sets my teeth on edge to think about it. And it explains why I am enraged when petty bureaucratic oafs try to hide things, like how dangerous fracking is or how much money they squandered on the Casey Hotel renovation only to decide the wrecking ball was the best choice.
A bucket of blood and a boy. Very odd.
-30-
The Rant D’Jour is about good old American ingenuity against which our enemies do not stand a chance.
You have to love good old American ingenuity. When Osama and his band of demented henchmen…more
