Pit Cooked, JMN, photo. (c) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.
If you’re gonna put this in the newspaper, hon, I want you to get it right. My name is Garnet Belle — Belle with an ‘e.’ I was a Brumbacher before I married Montgomery Clyde Hatch. My granddaddy Willibald Urqhardt Brumbacher was mayor of the town when they built the railroad.
Monty and I had thirty-two years of bliss before his accident. Our children are Longhorn Clyde Hatch, Juneau Clyde Hatch, and Trojan Clyde Hatch. Yes, people ask about the names. “Clyde” was a family name, you see. Declan Clyde, Monty’s granddad, came from Humpty Doo, Australia with his brother Maynard. It’s on the road to Darwin from the Cackadoodle Park. Declan and Maynard bought land between here and Calvin for sorghum and hogs.
Longhorn, Juneau, and Trojan are donating seven acres to Stag City to honor their Daddy on the tenth anniversary of his passing. They want a piece of the Hatch Estate to be made into a recreational facility for our youth. It’ll be named the Montgomery Clyde Hatch Antique Playtime Palisade. The thinking is, our children need exposure to the pastimes of the past.
Sure, they’ve got their football and baseball and softball and basketball and volleyball and weightlifting and track-and-field and cross-country and wrestling and tennis and golf and what have you. But what are they supposed to do in their spare time? An idle body is Cupid’s playground. We want the MCHAPP to show our youth how their ancestors distracted themselves with innocent pastimes like mud pies and whittlin’ and rock-skippin’ and mumblety-peg and fart-lightin’….
Repeat what, darlin’?
(Stag Country, Copyright (c) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
Shed Down by the River
Fireplace, JMN, photo. (c) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.
From the street it’s nondescript: long and low, homely brickwork giving way to corrugated metal, no windows. Flat, pedestrian, a second-rate, seedy, industrial-looking structure on a humble side of town.
Patio and doorways are on the opposite side facing inward to a landscaped city block. Walled and fenced. Graveled islands pocked with blooming sage and firebush. You pass through a high brick arch that Arturo Rodriguez built. He and wife Andrea were the first residents of the original cabin that‘s a rectangular ramble now. Andy would dandle my infant son on her jolly lap: “Let me see that fat baby!”
Inside, it’s a crepuscular cocoon, a Bohemian man-cave — rustic opulence, high ceilings, tile floors, monumental fireplace, a skylight over the easel.
A river runs nearby. I call it the Mighty Wadi Loopy.
I was the only foreigner in my class at the University of Barcelona. Three things there impressed me:
(1) Well-off Spaniards lived modestly compared to their U.S. counterparts. Their apartments nestled in old buildings that gave no external hint of luxury. Men wore the same blazer all week long. The Catalan haute bourgeoisie eschewed conspicuous consumption.
I’ll mention (2) and (3) another time.
My shed has a shoddy, disreputable face. You wouldn’t know it harbors a recluse of proud, lower-middle-class rank.
(C) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.