Leatherlips Curse

Time for the Annual Muirfield Memorial PGA Golf Tournament in my neck of the woods. It is said that Jack Nicklaus built his course on Wyandot Indian burial grounds, and that the tournament is cursed by Chief Leatherlips. It is certainly peculiar that every year, golfers and spectators are drenched with pounding rain. Could it be that Central Ohio just gets a lot of rain this time of year? Possibly. 

  

Leatherlips

Wyandot warrior 

There were signal trees,

bent, tied as sapling maples,

marking the sacred burial ground

of the Wyandot.

They grew into silent curled trunks,

respected by the Sells brothers

and their settlers;

words were their bond.

Two hundred years later:

no one remembers.

The chief sings a valedictory chant,

song of the living dead,

laughs as he calls wind from the Scioto,

rain to avenge his people.

Strident golfers run for cover

in shiny Range Rovers;

spectators under umbrellas

watch torrents of answered prayer. 

tk/May 2014



Masterfully read by R.A.D. Stainforth... 

Mad in January...

Lots of people go mad in January. Not as many as in May, of course. Nor June. But January is your third most common month for madness. 

― Karen Joy Fowler, Sarah Canary 

January Barn 
Dublin, Ohio

limpid gray

Scotio River today, Dublin, Ohio

Smile O voluptuous cool-breath'd earth! 

Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! 
Earth of departed sunset―earth of the mountains misty-topt! 
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue! 
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river! 
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake! 
Far-swooping elbow'd earth―rich apple-blossom'd earth! 
Smile, for your lover comes.

― Walt Whitman

Dublin Crew

click to embiggen

One of my favorite things to see, in my neck of the woods, is the Dublin Crew kids rowing on the Scioto.  They practice on the river, and travel to out-of-town regattas.  I love the precision of the team, the graceful way the shells skim over the water.  The cox sits in the stern, facing the rowers, steers the boat, and coordinates the power and rhythm. If I had to choose, I would definitely be the cox.

The etymology of the word "regatta" is debated.  Some say it is derived from the Italian "riga", line, for the starting line, and others consider it derived from the Latin "aurigare", to race.

This kind of competitive rowing has been around for eons, first noted in Egyptian inscriptions in 1430 BC. The first known "modern" racing began with competition among professional watermen that provided ferry and taxi service on the River Thames.

Doggett's Coat and Badge by Thomas Rowlandson

photos by Lisa Aurand

Are rivers male or female?

 rain-swollen Scioto River, March 2012, Dublin, Ohio
(click to embiggen)

Is there a difference between a boy river and a girl river? Are there guidelines for determining the gender of a river? The English language has no masculine or feminine articles, our nouns are neuter. But some genderizing in the river naming department is going on, like “Old Man River” for the mighty Mississippi. 

Many times if a river is rushing, powerful, dangerous, it is thought of as male.  On the other hand, if it is a gentle, curvaceous, easy on the eyes, it is considered female.  In this case, most would agree, the lovely Scioto definitely qualifies as female. 

Things aren’t always this simple. There are no cut-and-dry rules about river names and genders. Names vary by characteristics, culture, geography, and history. Many river names have no gender, like the Nile, at 4,130 miles, generally considered the world’s longest river.

The next time you encounter a river, ask a local if it is male or female. The answer might surprise you with interesting culture of the history of the river or region. Just one of those random things I like to think about...

No man ever steps in the same river twice, 

for it's not the same river and he's not the same man. 

― Heraclitus 

paper-thin, paper-frail

from my Abandoned Ohio photos, Dublin
click to embiggen

Here's what's not beautiful about it: from here, you can't see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. 


You can see how fake it all is. It's not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It's a paper town. I mean, look at it, Q: look at all those culs-de-sacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.

― John Green, Paper Towns

everything there is to be known

Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge 

and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, 

you will suddenly know everything there is to be known. ― A.A. Milne

Scioto River view from the Dublin bridge 
Dublin, Ohio

frayed and flaky around the edges

I always wondered, though, what the fathers felt as they drove up the street they used to drive down every night, and whether they really saw their former houses, whether they noticed how things got frayed and flaky around the edges now that they were gone. 

I wondered it again as I pulled up to the house I’d grown up in. It was, I noticed, looking even more Joad-like than usual. Neither my mother nor the dread life partner, Tanya, was much into yard work, and so the lawn was littered with drifts of dead brown leaves. The gravel on the driveway was as thin as an old man’s hair combed across an age-spotted scalp, and as I parked I could make out the faint glitter of old metal from behind the little toolshed. 

We used to park our bikes in there. Tanya had “cleaned” it by dragging all the old bikes, from tricycles to discarded ten-speeds, out behind the shed, and leaving them there to rust. “Think of it as found art,” my mother had urged us when Josh complained that the bike pile made us look like trailer trash. I wonder if my father ever drove by, if he knew about my mother and her new situation, if he thought about us at all, or whether he was content to have his three children out there in the world, all grown up, and strangers.

--Jennifer Weiner, Good in Bed

click to embiggen

images: abandoned farm, Dublin, Ohio

Because someone has to remember...

“I like places like this," he announced.

I like old places too," Josh said, "but what's to like about a place like this?"

The king spread his arms wide. "What do you see?"

Josh made a face. "Junk. Rusted tractor, broken plow, old bike."

Ah...but I see a tractor that was once used to till these fields. I see the plow it once pulled. I see a bicycle carefully placed out of harm's way under a table."

Josh slowly turned again, looking at the items once more.

And I see these things and I wonder at the life of the person who carefully stored the precious tractor and plow in the barn out of the weather, and placed their bike under a homemade table."

Why do you wonder?" Josh asked. "Why is it even important?"

Because someone has to remember," Gilgamesh snapped, suddenly irritated. "Some one has to remember the human who rode the bike and drove the tractor, the person who tilled the fields, who was born and lived and died, who loved and laughed and cried, the person who shivered in the cold and sweated in the sun." He walked around the barn again, touching each item, until his palm were red with rust." It is only when no one remembers, that you are truely lost. That is the true death.”   


--Michael Scott, The Sorceress

click to embiggen

For more in my series Abandoned America, click on the label at the end of this post.
Images: abandoned farm, Dublin, Ohio

jack-of-all-trades

You find a way

through the plumbing

carve coal out of steam

cut a trench by osmosis

knock on wood

dig in your heels

every once in a while

you make sounds

like a locksmith

it's not easy to stay

use household words

take out the trash

but I'd like to sew

buttons on

someday

Tess Kincaid

September, 2011

reading: the inimitable R.A.D. Stainforth, Black Dogs
photo:  abandoned farm, Dublin, Ohio


To join Magpie Tales creative writing group click here.

abandoned america iv

The Barn and the Down


It stood in the sunset sky
Like the straight-backed down,
Many a time - the barn
At the edge of the town,

So hug and dark that it seemed
It was the hill
Till the gable's precipice proved
it impossible.

The great down in the west
Grew into sight,
A barn stored full to the ridge
With black of night;

And the barn fell to a barn
Or even less
Before critical eyes and its own
Late mightiness.

But far down and near barn and I
Since then have smiled,
Having seen my new cautiousness
By itself beguiled

To disdain what seemed the barn
Till a few steps changed
It past all doubt to the down;
So the barn was avenged.


Edward Thomas

click to embiggen

abandoned america iii

Nails

Aliens would render us useless

if they sucked all our nails

with some powerful magnet

like a big vacuum sweeping

up bobby pins

we would be a mess

without our carpet tacks

and gutter spikes

penny size brads

hammered down with the gusto

and sweat of a nation's brawn

a rapture of galvanized proportions

they'd leave the buns and beehives

of our landscape

in disheveled heaps, raped

uncoiffed bedrooms and barns

bad hair days scattered

across America

Tess Kincaid

nails, abandoned barn, Dublin, Ohio
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Recorded by the talented R.A.D. Stainforth.  Check out his excellent blog, Black Dogs.

abandoned america ii

abandoned barn, Dublin, Ohio, July 2011
click to embiggen

Tall nettles cover up, as they have done
These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough
Long worn out, and the roller made of stone:
Only the elm butt tops, the nettles now.

This corner of the farmyard I like most:
As well as any bloom upon a flower
I like the dust on the nettles, never lost
Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.


Edward Thomas  1878-1917

Thanks to R.A.D. Stainforth for this lovely poem.

cornhenge

This strange field of 109 eight foot tall concrete ears of corn is one of the landmarks in Dublin, Ohio, my neck of the woods.  It was created in 1994 as a tribute to our agricultural heritage, and also a memorial to Sam Frantz, who farmed this site from 1935 to 1963.  Frantz was well-known for his hybridization of corn seeds and worked with the Ohio State University on hybridization projects.

The artist brought in by the Dublin Arts Council for this project was Malcolm Cochran, who created three different molds to fashion the larger-than-life-sized concrete ears.  

The field of giant corn is somewhat of a local joke, often referred to as "Cornhenge".  Personally, I like it best in the winter, in lovely monochrome against the snow.  As much as I love art, I can't say our tax dollars spent on inedible corn were used wisely.  We are, however, included in the quirky and eccentric American landmarks at Roadside America.

The Curse of Chief Leatherlips

Wyandot warrior

It's Leatherlips season again at Willow Manor. Native American Wyandot Chief Leatherlips was executed 201 years ago, June 1, 1810, on the banks of the Scioto River, in the general vicinity of Willow Manor. 

This chief was called "Leatherlips" because he was known to be trustworthy; his word was his bond. He was friendly with white settlers in and around Dublin, Ohio, including the early resident Sells brothers, and was a local fixture at their new Black Horse Tavern. 

Leatherlips' Wyandot people relocated to Northwest Ohio, and were plagued by many mishaps, including disease. They blamed Leatherlips for their turn of unfortunate luck, returning to Dublin to escort him to their northern encampment. When he refused, his fellow Wyandots accused Leatherlips of witchcraft, and pronounced the sentence of death, executing him by tomahawk. 

This time of year is also our local Muirfield Memorial PGA Golf Tournament. It is said that Jack Nicklaus built his course on sacred Wyandot Indian burial grounds, and that the tournament is cursed by Chief Leatherlips. It is certainly peculiar that every year, golfers and spectators are drenched with torrents of rain. Could it be that Central Ohio just gets a lot of rain this time of year? Possibly.

dam post

O'Shaughnessy Dam, taken from the west side of the Scioto River, Dublin, Ohio, May 2011

My regular readers know I live in a ramshackle limestone and cedar house built in 1927 on four acres along the Scioto River, named "Willow Manor" by the original owners. The Scioto (pronounced SY-oh-toh or SY-oh-tah) is over 230 miles long and rises in Auglaize County, passes through Columbus, Ohio, where it picks up its largest tributary, the Olentangy River, meeting the Ohio River at Portsmouth.

Willow Manor is situated down stream from the dam, so at certain dryer seasons of the year, the Scioto is relatively shallow. This time of year, it runs full and deep, making a lovely rushing sound, swollen from the spring rains.  I miss the summer jars of tadpoles, crawdads and frogs the kids would collect and deposit in their rooms.  I should go down and find a crawdad or two, for old time's sake.

Three miles north of Willow Manor is the O'Shaughnessy Dam, which forms the O'Shaughnessy Reservoir, a major source of drinking water for Columbus. It was completed in 1925 under the supervision of Jerry O'Shaughnessy, for whom the dam was named.  At the time, the reservoir was described as the finest inland waterway in the United States, covering a surface of 845 acres.  I hope Mr. O'Shaughnessy's structure hold's tight for many years to come, since I don't fancy riding Willow Manor down the Ohio to the Mississippi any time soon.