Journal Entries
Hypatia: NaJoPoMo 14/30
Posted Nov 14, 2011
Everyone has heard of Stonehenge. Most people have heard of Woodhenge. But few people have heard of Brickhenge, let alone seen it. To the handful of folks here who have heard the story before, I apologize, but there will be an update at the end.
To set the scene, once upon a time there was an old rundown apartment building directly across from the library. It was small, containing only six apartments, four at the front and two at the rear. These were very low-rent places and so attracted the chronically unemployed. I won’t go into all of the problems we had with the tenants over the years, but they were considerable. We finally became so frustrated that we purchased the building and bulldozed it down. It is now a parking lot.
At one point three of the front apartments were occupied by members of the same family, BH1 in apartment 1, his mother and brother (BH2) in apartment 2, and two cousins (BHs3&4) in apartment 3. Apartment 4 was occupied by the girlfriend and infant daughter of BH1. The two rear apartments contained chums of the cousins. It was one harmonious hillbilly haven.
The slumlord lived across town and sometimes gave BH1 and 2 odd jobs, paid under the table, naturally. Well, one afternoon I had to go out front for something and noticed the guys unloading some bricks from an old radio flyer red wagon. It turns out that Slumlord had convinced them to disassemble an old barbecue in his back yard and take the bricks in lieu of money. I didn’t think much of it since they were known scroungers, making the rounds of the dumpsters in town, including mine.
A few days later BH1 came into the library and made a bee line for the history section. He couldn’t find what he wanted and wound up in my office as usual, needing assistance. It seems he was interested in Stonehenge. Naturally he couldn’t spell it and wouldn’t have found information on it anyway because he was looking in the American history section, but I digress. I was pleased that he actually wanted to read about something other than guns, gun dogs and vampires. I found him a book with lots of photographs and drawings and sent him on his way.
You can imagine my astonishment a few days later when I carried a sweet little old lady’s books to her car for her (it’s a small town and we do things like that) and noticed BHs 1,2, 3,& 4 constructing an eerily familiar-looking circle in front of the apartment building. BH1, referring to his library book, was in charge of placement and the others were setting up the bricks.
I had to go across the street and watch. I couldn’t help myself. I learned that the original intent had been to construct a pyramid, only they didn’t have enough bricks. So, since what they wanted was to create a ‘power spot’ where they could meditate and absorb ‘vibrations’, they decided on a magic circle. Surprisingly, they did a fair job, and it was clearly recognizable. I dubbed it Brickhenge, which they loved, not realizing I was making fun of them.
Brickhenge remained in place for several weeks. Due to the scarcity of bricks, it wasn’t a large circle. There was only room for one of them at a time to sit inside it and vibrate. Mom even gave it a try now and then. She had so much trouble getting up from the ground that they brought out one of those old chrome and plastic kitchen dinette chairs popular in the 50s for her to sit in. Eventually all of them started using the chair instead of sitting on the ground. It had to be rebuilt twice, due to kids kicking the bricks over. My staff and I thoroughly enjoyed peering out the windows at them, pointing our fingers and guffawing. The residents of the apartment became Brickhengers and have remained so to us until this day.
The most serious (and one of the most amusing) incidents happened shortly before the final demise of Brickhenge. BH1 and Girlfriend got into an argument because she wanted to feed the baby inside the circle, which he was occupying, deep in meditation. He hit her and twisted her arm badly enough to sprain it. She called the police and had him ceremoniously hauled off to jail. I say ceremoniously because he insisted on being handcuffed inside the circle, saying that the vibrations would make the police believe him instead of Girlfriend. As soon as the police car left, Mom, foregoing the chair, dropped to her knees inside the circle and prayed for his deliverance.
While BH1 was in the slammer, (none of them could afford bail), Slumlord came over and reclaimed the bricks. My chief source of entertainment was gone. Brickhenge was no more. Not long afterward, the apartment was no more. I stood at the window in triumph watching the bulldozers do their job.
Sadly Girlfriend was killed in an automobile accident a year or so later, after the two had split up. The baby was put into care, which was clearly the best thing for the poor little thing. BH1 was so distressed over losing the baby that he tried unsuccessfully to get her back two or three times. He did secure visitation rights, which was better than nothing. So, he decided to write a play about the evils of the Division of Family Services. (He had written a play about Viet Nam earlier and secured permission to put it on at one of the city parks on Independence Day, complete with parade, but that’s another story entirely.) The play was finished but to my knowledge has never been performed. He wasn’t able to round up any actors. I suggested, out of the goodness of my heart, that he write a one man show instead and perform it himself.
Mom still comes in to use the computer lab. She chats with men in prison a lot. Her online name is Sexy Angel. If any of you are ever in prison and are contacted by Sexy Angel, please run as fast as your chains and manacles will allow.
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Latest reply: Nov 14, 2011
Hypatia: NaJoPoMo 13/30
Posted Nov 13, 2011
I have a library patron who is convinced that there is this mysterious number of bad things that have to happen every day, so whenever you hear emergency vehicle sirens you should be happy that one of these bad things has just happened to someone else, thus reducing the probability that something bad will happen to you. I mean, he isn't sure what the number of preordained bad things is every day, so the siren could signal there's nothing for me to worry about until tomorrow, when he's likely to come into the library again, expounding upon another of his theories.
Sometimes he wants information, too. This is the same guy who phoned me many years ago and asked me what color his dog was. Damnit Jim, I'm a librarian, not a magician. I can't see through phone lines to ascertain the length of your hair, the color of your dog or whether or not your pyjamas have feet. But people expect an answer when they phone me, so I told him his dog was blond. "I thought so!" he responded excitedly, and he has held me in quite high esteem ever since.
He is so convinced of my mystical powers that he once came in person to ask me to help him lift a voodoo curse. Yes folks, I am indeed talking about one of the original Brickhengers.
I'll stop here and save the retelling and update of the Brickhenger saga until tomorrow.
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Latest reply: Nov 13, 2011
Hypatia: NaJoPoMo 12/30
Posted Nov 13, 2011
We had an interesting speaker today for our Ladies Circle Tea at the library. Her name is Lisa Livingston-Martin and she has written a book titled "Civil War Ghosts of Southwest Missouri". Most of the stories included took place locally, which naturally makes them more interesting to those of us who have longstanding family ties to the area.
We are old friends and were shooting the bull after most of the guests left when the topic turned to historians in general and Civil War historians in particular. It is so frustrating that the halls of academia are lined with experts who have absolutely no interest in anything that happened west of the Mississippi during the Civil War. They just don't think any of it is important.
Well, it was important to the families living here who lost absolutely everything as a result of the war and it's aftermath. This isn't going to be a history lesson. I'm too tired and no one here is interested. But I will give you one small fact to illustrate my point. In April 1861 the population of my county (Jasper County) was a little over 6000. At the end of the war there were less than 50 and every single one of those was a woman or child. There were no men, no livestock, no homes, no businesses. So don't tell me nothing happened here that was of any importance.
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Latest reply: Nov 13, 2011
Hypatia: NaJoPoMo 11/30
Posted Nov 11, 2011
We had an author talk yesterday evening at the library. I won't bore you with the details other than to say that I learned something interesting that is appropriate to share since this is Veteran's Day.
The name of the book is "Soldier's Heart: A Tale of Love and Conflict in Civil War Missouri" and was written by Jeremy Webb Rusk, a lovely man and a descendant of the Webbs who founded Little DooDah. It is one of those non-fiction novels that give catalogers fits.
The interesting bit is the title. During the Civil War period the term 'soldier's heart' referred to what we call PTSD.
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Latest reply: Nov 11, 2011
Hypatia: NaJoPoMo 10/30
Posted Nov 10, 2011
We all have defining moments in our lives. This morning an old friend and I were discussing the early 60s and the civil rights movement. I started telling her the story of a visit I made to my uncle and his family in Georgia during the summer of 1964, a visit that became one of my defining moments. I began and then stopped and changed the subject. In order to honestly tell this story, I have to be blunt, crude and politically incorrect. It would be almost impossible for me to write up a truthful account of things I witnessed, remarks made and conclusions drawn without being moderated.
So, you ask, why not write up a sanitized version? Thing is, the events weren’t sanitized. If they had been, they wouldn’t have made such an impression. I’ve made attempts in the past to relate a whitewashed account, but it loses so much. It’s sad that our society is more concerned with not offending the sensibilities of people who weren’t there than in telling the truth. How can we make people understand events that shaped history if we are aren’t allowed to describe them warts and all?
I had a completely different sort of defining moment many years later and even farther south. There’s no way I could accurately relate those events either without calling attention to people who were performing humanitarian acts that happened to also be illegal. I’ve made more than one attempt to fictionalize this particular story, but it never suits me. Turning it into fiction seems ti trivialize it somehow.
It’s frustrating to have stories you consider important that you aren’t able to tell, things that make you the person you are, that shape your attitudes and beliefs that you know you’ll never divulge. Sometimes I feel isolated inside my own head, knowing that so many memories will die with me because I don’t have the courage to bring them out into the light.
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Latest reply: Nov 10, 2011
Hypatia
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