Monday, October 31, 2005
The Mystery of the Abe Lincoln Bookend
Last Friday, the electric briefly shut off, making the room dark & wiping out the first few sentences of what was going to be a couple of Halloween paragraphs about scary music. A little while later, after the power was back on, as I was headed out the door on an errand, there was a terrible crash of something falling & breaking. I came back in to see what it was. The plaster Abraham Lincoln bookend was in pieces on the floor. It was unrepairable, Abe's head totally smashed. The bookend was modeled on the Daniel Chester French Lincoln Memorial sculpture. I bought it at a flea market many years ago to remind me of my father, who had the same bookend but of heavier, better quality. I don't know what happened to it after he died; it was only thing of his I coveted for a keepssake. I had the unsettling feeling of having experienced an omen of some kind. First the power outage, now this.I can't write dad's biography here, except to say he had personal integrity, loved historical reenactment, enjoyed being the center of attention, worked hard on what mattered to him, & cultivated the reputation of a guy who didn't like leaving jobs undone. But in fact he didn't finish plenty. Like raising me, his youngest of three sons, for instance; I lost him to his avocations before I reached puberty. He went & unexpectedly died at Disney Epcot when I was in my mid-thirties, just as we were starting to listen to each other, & about six years before I needed his advice & practical help in a big way. He was competitive. He was an excellent leader up to a certain level, but would then resist climbing to the next. He could have been a company V.P., a County Freeholder, an author of learned articles & books on Revolutionary War ordinance. He must have been aware of this, his tendency for lateral movement. But he worked best with smaller teams, sleeves rolled up. His favorite job was his final one, Supervisor of Buildings & Grounds at Morristown National Park, where he could assign the job of riding the lawn tractor, or do it himself if he wanted to get out the office for awhile. That was dad. & if he was angry enough at me to smash that bookend, what was he angry about? Any number of matters in which I disappoint him every day, mostly procrastination. Procrastination especially annoyed him.
I can almost exactly work through the series of events that made the bookend fall & break. Early last week I moved the bookend from the window sill to the radiator in front with the intention of cleaning the sill. I was distracted by something & it didn't get done. Forgot about it. When the lights went out I walked over to raise the shades & catch what was left of fading daylight. In doing that, I nudged the padding on top of the radiator. The bookend went halfway over the end & a slight breeze or vibrations did the rest. Bye bye Abe.
Yeah, right.
So how can I placate dad's spirit, if that's what it is? I can't, really. But I did clean the windowsill & replace the busted Lincoln bookend with a framed photo of my Nana, his mother, promoted from a place in the other room guarding boxes of books, records, journals & WFMU air check tapes. If dad has my number, Nana surely has his.
Labels: growing up
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"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
That was a nice piece. I'm looking around my room, now, and definitely going to rearrange some pictures. :=)
This really is a nice reflective piece.Sad story, reminds me of the year I gave away the family home.
Sunflower
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Sunflower
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