-Eugene Baldwin's – The Genehouse Chronicles

July 29, 2014

I know gluttony is a sin. You try eating a reasonable portion of Farmer Orville’s organic blackberries. I dare you. I’ve been eating four pounds of berries a week for weeks. I’m smarter, sleeker and my hair has grown (looking at reflection in computer screen) . . . no, no hair.

Today, a single blackberry bush yielded a pound of succulence in five minutes. I will take the berries home and soak them, refrigerate them, and then tonight I’ll eat them, two at a time, placing the berries on the tongue and compressing until the berry eyes explode in the Big Mouth Bang.

So it was quick pick, and a sit under the carport, with Orville and Reba the farm dog, who now has her own wading pool next to her hidey hole in the tigerlillys. One of the barn cats climbed in my lap and Reba tried to nuzzle the cat away, and the air was balmy and the sun shone.

Orville (he wore a polo shirt which read “Grandpa: everyday hero”) and I talked about bees, chickens, the poor people of Alton, women, earthworms, Indians, the nutjob fat kid, Kim Jong-un declaring war on the U.S.,  and biologists—and the soul. I’m a charter heathen; I’m not concerned about the soul, but Orville is.

My friend decries the use of pesticides (“them young farmers use it because real farmin is too dang much work”), mows around clover patches so the bees so have nectar. A teenage kid and his mom came to pick berries and the kid saw the chickens and called hens roosters, and roosters hens, and Orville rolled his eyes. “They got them I-Pads they always lookin at and they’re stupid—no other word for it.” Continue reading →

July 25, 2014

“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority.”

Our youth also have grease—on their hair, their pimply foreheads, their armpits, and other greasy areas that dare not be named. Our youth are walking grease pits. Good news: grease can now be converted to dinero, bucks, cabbage, green. Enough cabbage to put up with them and their teenagerly hijinks? You be the judge.

“They show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room.”

Yes, they do; yes, they don’t. But the less they exercise, the less time they spend in standing, the more time they spend building their reserves of fat and grease. Buy a warehouse of Fritos and Blue Bunny Ice Cream and plop the kiddies in overstuffed La-Z-Boy recliners* and prepare to reap your rewards. Continue reading →

July 21, 2014

We were playing Indian Ball on the field behind North Junior High School. I hit a long fly over the head of my friend Mike. He turned and ran to the arc of the ball. He was barefoot. He stopped running and collapsed into the heavy grass. We ran out to where he laid, his labored breaths a gritty wheeze. And we saw a geyser of blood pumping out of his right foot. He had stepped on broken glass; the sole of the foot was sliced open and flapping.

I yanked off my white tee shirt and tied it around Mike’s foot, and we carried him to a car and drove to Alton Memorial. Mike was okay, but he need three or so inches of stitches; we thought he looked like Frankenstein’s monster. I stood watching the sewing, forgetting I was bare-chested. A doctor tossed me my bloodied shirt, by now crusted and stiff and rust-red, and I pulled it on, my “red badge of courage” causing some looks in the emergency room waiting area. Continue reading →

July 20, 2014

I spent the fourth of July at Farmer B.’s place in the country, gorging on his famous pulled pork and other goodies, enjoying a spectacular neighborhood fireworks display and talking with family and friends. My highlight of the day was me playing with Farmer B.’s three granddaughters, Marley and the twins, Piper and Peyton.

The girls’ dad Corey had brought a paper bag stuffed with cracker snaps, those teardrop-shaped wrapped fireworks that you step on or throw to the ground and they give off a satisfying bang. I may have tossed a few cracker snaps. Certainly I sat on one, the crack of my ass making a popping sound. Most satisfying.

And then I had an epiphany. It came while Marley stood by me on the pergola at sunset and threw down the last of the cracker snaps. Marley is four. Compared to a tiny cracker snap she is a giant.

Relative giant-bang-explosion smaller than a crumb! Yes! Dark matter within that bang! Yes! OMG! Continue reading →

July 19, 2014

I had a grilled chicken sandwich (on wheat toast) and mustard potato salad and ten pickle slices for lunch at the Clifton Country Inn, above Genehouse. Emma, the youngest of the three Pretty Sisters, was my waitress. She had read my two Alton Telegraph pieces from yesterday and she said she liked them. That in itself is a miracle, as Emma is barely 20 and her generation isn’t exactly known for reading.

Her fingernails were painted with glow-in-the-dark green. Imagine standing out in the inky blackness and suddenly seeing ten dancing green things coming at you. Pause as I imagine this, and following behind the fingertips, lovely, blond Emma emerging from the dark.

A couple at another table ordered their food from Barbie, Pretty Sister 2. The man, Mark, called for a bacon cheeseburger on a sliced glazed doughnut. I kid you not. The crowd oohed. This was Mark’s second helping of the exotic concoction; he wasn’t on a thrill ride; he was in for the taste. Continue reading →

July 17, 2014

They trotted on spindly legs out of the south forest late in the afternoon, crossing the low road and coming up into my yard, below the finch feeder. They munched on wild violets and the leavings of tomatoes and strawberries, which I toss out for the birds but I have never observed a bird eat a strawberry top.

I have seen groundhogs, No-Tail the squirrel, a chipmunk and a feral yellow cat chowing down on fruit, and now, these two, slender young women, dappled and delicate. This was their first outing without their mother.

Deer are ubiquitous. Every time I write about them, readers respond with deer observations of their own. But after a year at Genehouse, a cycle, for me deer stand in for death. One of “my” fawns from last year was shot and killed and dragged itself back into my yard and expired, and I watched turkey vultures and crows, over two weeks, render the darling into a skeleton. Continue reading →

July 11, 2014

Okay, this is a confession. My excellent neighbor, Sister Irene, after laughing hysterically at my story, encouraged me to write this, AND since she has the woman’s perspective, I now tell the jury what a bad boy I was, and plea for forgiveness and for time served.

In 1968, I appeared in a slew of productions at Monticello College, an all-girls institution. I and six other boys lived on campus, at the north end, away from the hundreds of girls at the south end. Our sole purpose was to be in plays. Five of the seven boys were gay. You see where I’m going?

The set designer, Professor G., was the first hippie Alton/Godfrey ever saw. He and his wife R. and their baby lived in a small house at the north end. I would spend a lot of time in that house. And, since I was also helping build sets late at night, G. gave me my own key to Hathaway Hall, which housed the theater, an Olympic-size swimming pool, a scene shop, a ballet studio and offices.

I had no shortage of help, as boys from Alton were desperate to mix with Monty girls. Monty girls had a certain reputation, which local boys hoped would pan out. Had I wanted, I could have had a crew of 400.

One night, Professor G. asked me to rummage through props stored in the basement, under the stage, and weed out pieces which had no future. I had never been in the basement. Continue reading →

July 5, 2014

120-year-old game show host Alex Trebek adjusts his signature grey toupee, the music theme from “Jeopardy” blaring in his hearing aids. He turns to the contestants. “Here is our first clue: ‘Last Call.’” The contestants and the audience begin to weep. Contestant 1 rings in and says tearfully, “What was beer, Alex.”

Imagine baseball without beer. Then only heroin users would able to tolerate the somnolent national pastime. Imagine child rearing without beer. Patricide and matricide would be hobbies. Imagine Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Mondays . . . without beer. There’d be nothing to do except remember dead soldiers, visit Revolutionary War sites, work and kill yourself. The ghost of John Lennon: “Imagine no cold brewskies/You can do it if you’re dry.”

That’s right, Bunky, global warming means no beer. Continue reading →

July 4, 2014

A star died in the constellation Taurus, in the Crab Nebula, one of only three star deaths ever recorded in the Milky Way. It glowed brightly for weeks, obliterating Venus, the Grandmother and the Grandfather star, in different Indian cultures. The “death” would be seen for years.

How do we know this? A Chinese astronomer witnessed the event and wrote it down.  A New Mexican potter painted an image of the supernova on a pot. Missourian petroglyphs depicted the event.  In Chaco Canyon, an enormous mural was created, showing the night sky on the date of the explosion, the mural representing the crescent moon, the death star and a human hand. And a city, whose population would swell to as many as 50,000 inhabitants, began to be built.

The thousand or so people living in small village of thatched huts, just south of the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, witnessed the event. Their response, to what must have seemed like a sign from the gods, was to build, over the next decades, the City of the Sun. We call it Cahokia Mounds. Continue reading →