Different Slants

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story: www.differentslants.com/?p=355

© October 11, 2014

She called me her Eagle. I called her my Swan.

We collected many of those ceramic birds at yard sales and flea markets, over the years. Now they have all flown away, somewhere. We remaining two old birds have shed so much besides feathers. All the chicks are also gone. Feeling weightless is so freeing, but we now seek a smaller nest.

Our exploration of the possible has gradually taught us about seeing life, land, rivers, shores, some buildings abandoned and some buildings preserved. And how we learned to perceive people differently, as well.

Not so surprising to us, but nevertheless causing a stark loneliness was a confirmation of our assumption that in so many small places with red-painted farms, “The People of the Book” have run out of pages.

Amid the rolling, waving endlessly undulating acres of corn and wheat as we drive along in the dust and sunlight, in my imagination I can hear some of those brittle Biblical parchment pages rustling in retreat. Blue and white-fringed tallit sailing across the sky like Judean magic carpets, David’s Star imprinted on them like a shield, and like us, seeking a place to land.

Small towns are so similar. Sparse houses on the edges, occasional abandoned farms, collapsed peaked roofs, tilting silos, tractors parked among rusting cars and alert skinny dogs, watching us go by. Buildings seem to be hunkering down awaiting another fierce blizzard to complete their isolation.

First 65 miles per hour, then 50, 35, 25, local cop in local colors hidden in the shadow behind a billboard. Like a cat ready to catch a mouse, if anyone ignores his town’s rules. Ahead, a blinking red light appears: Civilization

Streets are wider, sometimes the former pavement bricks peeking through, maybe remembering clattering metal-shod hooves and horses clomping and snorting one hundred years before

Person here, person there, no leashes on their retrievers, grocery store windows white paper “On Sale!” signs curling at their corners. Big trees, shadowing the street, towering Civil War monuments commanding attention in the town square. Faded names of their long dead soldier boys chipped into the stone. But mostly, the Big City urgent electric hum is missing. Overwhelmingly, there is silence

Exception: Vibrant hardware stores endure like brick fortresses against the elements. Powerful snow blowers chained outside with their yawning metal mouths hungry for snow. Serious men in checked jackets within, a gathering of the strong and prepared. Men who know about tools, men who know about guns, confident men who can fix the broken pieces within small towns.

Drug stores now rare, but bar after bar after bar serving: Rhinelander, Schlitz, Budweiser and Leinenkugel beers. A glowing neon Prussian barbershop quartet signs buzzing in windows thru the night. Motorcycles like Roman chariots stand fiercely lined up outside. Hank Williams, Patsy Cline and old Johnny Cash playing in the colorful jukeboxes, great dead singers rumbling and twanging, long since immortal in many small towns.

Dime store closed, cleaners closed, shoe store closed, but Brats and hamburgers are still sizzling in hot grease in a smokey diner. People hunched over stools inhaling the soul-satisfying black coffee perfume. A real diner. A single guy in a stained white apron cooking and waiting on seven people; he knows everybody and their troubles and they all know him. Comfort food and comfort, both served up together at small town prices.

But what could I, “The liberal urban maverick”, possibly talk about with the sturdy contemplative men in the diner? My wife can talk to flowers and they’d smile at her. But then, everybody likes her. Norwegian charm, I guess.

“Hell”, I’d say “I’d vote for Abe Lincoln again in a hot second, dead or not. Be better’n what we got up there now, right??”

More recent than that, I’d tell the guys I’m a writer and then I’d keep silent and listen. That might make them safely dismiss me as that strange new fella, and that would be fine. Talkers like listeners and I expect that, eventually, I’d be quietly popular.

Religion? Frankly, here’s the thing: Endlessly burning bushes, rumbling dark clouds above Mount Sinai, water flowing from tapped rocks in the desert and Manna from Heaven aside, in Wisconsin, dark-eyed and olive-complected guys like me are one half of one per cent of everybody else across that state. So…well…I guess, we can always talk about corn and cheese, right? And I cheer “Go Badgers!!” What the hell is a badger??

But, maybe I’m all wrong. Maybe Plato, kale and foreign films are the constant rage of discussion in those time frozen diners. Maybe I’m just a paranoid Jew. Probably. But this is one thing I’m sure of. I’ve been in tiny diners coast-to-coast, blended into the woodwork and always left with a “Thanks!” and a smile from the busy guy behind the counter.

But if my car was stuck in a blizzard, or my car’s tire was flat when I left any of those small town diners, the number of men jumping up to rescue me from whatever may come would have to form a line, because so many are ready to look out for strangers in real trouble, because each of them knows it could always be one of them stranded or in serious trouble.

In Downtown Chicago, at State and Madison, I could die from hunger before anyone came to help me. I’ve been in both situations in places I’ve never been before, across the American countryside. Strangers step up and money’s never an issue. Give me those small town, blue-collar, Christian Republicans anytime who actually believe in The Golden Rule. It never fails to stun me

Many a main drag movie theater marquee with random black letters hanging askew, dusty posters on the locked glass doors showing now ancient movies as “Coming soon!”  Sometimes reborn as evangelical churches, some still whirring on as movie theaters with intoxicating buttery pop corn luring in the locals at half the price of the Big City’s cold popcorn. Usually a young girl standing behind the counter smiling, cheerful and chubby and damn happy to have a job.

Presbyterian Church, Methodist Church, Pentecostal Church, Catholic Church, Lutheran Church, Baptist Church. Each with saintly white letters neatly inserted inside of a black glass display case promising such an incredible range of things God will do for you, If you will only believe.

While we roamed up the hills and down into the dales, we pulled over to the side of the top of a hill to watch fat, round ”closely resembling soft flying bowling ball” Geese gliding in formation over a mirrored lake reflecting both the creatures and clouds.

Then landing in perfect order, all with their wings stretched out like horizontal feathered kites as they sailed sequentially onto the smooth lake with hardly a ripple. Really something to see, the stunning image still lingering

My stately swan and I, we believe there is a place for us where we too can hunker down in the winter reading through our boxes of unread books, wandering along rivers with a blanket and a picnic lunch, cooking for each other.

Watching a licking fire consume a log on a night when doing that is better than a movie, our un-raked leaves swirling outside, listening to hunting cats hungrily mewing. A place where people smile when they pass us on a street, even for no reason, where changing seasons are welcome–not like our Big City’s dreading each snowfall and fearing ice-storm commuter paralysis.

We muse that long past being aflutter, how out of uncountable people suspiciously cluttering Metropolitan streets and rushing about their busy millions, that we somehow chanced upon each other. We have quietly decided that our seeking a last firm branch where two old birds can perch together and be happy, can’t be such an impossible quest.

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