Hey,
For some reason this machine printed today's swell blog on my visit to the Museum of Tragedy in American History WAY DOWN ON 14 DEC, 2006! So go down a little ways and you can see it.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Monday, January 8, 2007
The Second Last Look.
Long ago when I was a kid I had some pet rabbits. I raised them as part of a 4H
project. I had so hoped to be a cattle baron someday. Such was not to be. We lived in town, and my pleas fell on deaf ears. No, you may not have cows. So: I had to make do with plastic cattle, horses, and a mule, which I lined up and would play with long after I should have moved on to something else. Please don't tell anyone.
I got the rabbits - and from a smoke-colored doe and an amber-gold buck I raised a number of litters, which ended up being taken as pets by other kids,
and some I sold to various heartless dutchmen who fattened and ate them.
The buck, whose name was Buck, was quite a rabbit. He ended up weighing in at 14 lbs - an impressive heft. As I mentioned, he was an honey-colored, blocky beast and tame, too. Often times I would bring him into the house, and it was nothing to get him to make his dung onto a pie-plate, so long as it was set in a corner . He was way-up-big, as they say, had big, padded feet, a set a nuts like a Chester White Boar. Most of his days were spent taking naps and twitching his nose. At night he was active, would thump his foot LOUDLY whenever startled and seemingly vanish into thin air, only to reappear in another room or from under the davenport. I remember he was curious about TV. He would slowly hop up, stare and sniff the screen, illumned in the blue-white light, you could see the veins in his ears, like an X-ray. Maybe he thought those things on TV were real, just behind a window.
Mr. Buck lived to a very advanced age, surviving into my high-school years, long after I had abandoned 4-H and my plastic herd. The only problem I ever had with him was once he had a boil on his lower jaw, which we lanced and swabbed with iodine. He didn't care much for the procedure and what with his kicking, clawing, kangaroid feet neither did I. Clawed the hell out of one of my arms. He had to eat soft food only for a couple weeks after that episode, but he made a full recovery.
When he got old and died, I wrapped him in a t-shirt and buried him in the back yard, with the last cup of his grain, he died right on time, made a crucifix out of sticks and set it up over him.
The next day I kinda missed him, dug him up for a second last-look, petted him a few times, buried him again. I really hated to see him go!
Years passed. I was in college, living in a dormitory. My roommate had a Playboy magazine, which I had a look at.
Then as now, I read text really, really fast, and words that are interesting will catch my eye. While perusing that issue I noticed there was an interview with Marlon Brando, the famous entertainer. The word 'rabbit' sort of hopped out- and I read an anecdote that said he, too, had once lived in Nebraska, and had a pet rabbit as a child, buried it, and then dug it up for another final look. Wow, I thought, that's different.
And Hugh Heffner, the publisher of Playboy, I have been told he is from Nebraska. And there is a rabbit logo on every one of those magazines he sells. My Dad once saw him on TV and growled "Look at that pipe-suckin pimp."
I figure in the next life, about every ten-thousand years or so, Messers Brando, Heffner and myself will wander to the same spot. And I will bring up this anecdote, and the connections inherent in it that bind the three of us together in such a special way.
There will be embarrassed silence, I suppose. And then we will go our separate ways, and do whatever there is to do in eternity. And then we will wander to a like spot again. We will have forgotten whatever the hell it is/was we have/had in common, until I figure it out and bring it up again. Repeat. Ad infinitum.
project. I had so hoped to be a cattle baron someday. Such was not to be. We lived in town, and my pleas fell on deaf ears. No, you may not have cows. So: I had to make do with plastic cattle, horses, and a mule, which I lined up and would play with long after I should have moved on to something else. Please don't tell anyone.
I got the rabbits - and from a smoke-colored doe and an amber-gold buck I raised a number of litters, which ended up being taken as pets by other kids,
and some I sold to various heartless dutchmen who fattened and ate them.
The buck, whose name was Buck, was quite a rabbit. He ended up weighing in at 14 lbs - an impressive heft. As I mentioned, he was an honey-colored, blocky beast and tame, too. Often times I would bring him into the house, and it was nothing to get him to make his dung onto a pie-plate, so long as it was set in a corner . He was way-up-big, as they say, had big, padded feet, a set a nuts like a Chester White Boar. Most of his days were spent taking naps and twitching his nose. At night he was active, would thump his foot LOUDLY whenever startled and seemingly vanish into thin air, only to reappear in another room or from under the davenport. I remember he was curious about TV. He would slowly hop up, stare and sniff the screen, illumned in the blue-white light, you could see the veins in his ears, like an X-ray. Maybe he thought those things on TV were real, just behind a window.
Mr. Buck lived to a very advanced age, surviving into my high-school years, long after I had abandoned 4-H and my plastic herd. The only problem I ever had with him was once he had a boil on his lower jaw, which we lanced and swabbed with iodine. He didn't care much for the procedure and what with his kicking, clawing, kangaroid feet neither did I. Clawed the hell out of one of my arms. He had to eat soft food only for a couple weeks after that episode, but he made a full recovery.
When he got old and died, I wrapped him in a t-shirt and buried him in the back yard, with the last cup of his grain, he died right on time, made a crucifix out of sticks and set it up over him.
The next day I kinda missed him, dug him up for a second last-look, petted him a few times, buried him again. I really hated to see him go!
Years passed. I was in college, living in a dormitory. My roommate had a Playboy magazine, which I had a look at.
Then as now, I read text really, really fast, and words that are interesting will catch my eye. While perusing that issue I noticed there was an interview with Marlon Brando, the famous entertainer. The word 'rabbit' sort of hopped out- and I read an anecdote that said he, too, had once lived in Nebraska, and had a pet rabbit as a child, buried it, and then dug it up for another final look. Wow, I thought, that's different.
And Hugh Heffner, the publisher of Playboy, I have been told he is from Nebraska. And there is a rabbit logo on every one of those magazines he sells. My Dad once saw him on TV and growled "Look at that pipe-suckin pimp."
I figure in the next life, about every ten-thousand years or so, Messers Brando, Heffner and myself will wander to the same spot. And I will bring up this anecdote, and the connections inherent in it that bind the three of us together in such a special way.
There will be embarrassed silence, I suppose. And then we will go our separate ways, and do whatever there is to do in eternity. And then we will wander to a like spot again. We will have forgotten whatever the hell it is/was we have/had in common, until I figure it out and bring it up again. Repeat. Ad infinitum.
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