Monday, November 19, 2018

Pamphleteer





















"I knew someone who made them, Mrs. Lottie Trude, a retired lady who created folk art in what they the call "primitive" style - handiwork from that kind of red earth you find in Clay County, up and across the Missouri River delta, North of Kansas City but not quite as far as Liberty.

She lived on an old plot there, over run with blue jays and katy-dids and adorned by a few walnut trees, along with a small garden flanked by a shack built around the time of the Great War. A compact house sat up the grade by a gravel drive with an approach framed between two ancient Peonies, and inside a screened porch she used for storage is where her art was displayed.

"Her work included many iconic figures, from Aunt Jemima to Orphan Annie, the Empire State Building, and Teddy Roosevelt to recollections of the New Deal. It was an early 20th century history from a humorous, small town perspective, a private museum of Americana, alongside entire little families made out of clay - little people no more than 6 inches high, incredibly life like and so expressive of good common folks, you might say, with many elderly among them."

"If not for the meager means, then their countenances bore the time so well, carved features, wrinkled and intricate on the surface denoting age, if not wisdom, each dressed smartly and ready for the out of doors - shirts and skirts, pants, bibs and bodices - hats, too - all stitched by hand."

"Their delicate faces, carefully fashioned from tiny crab apples, grew features more life like as they dried, the hair, rescued from a mockingbird's nest, or plain, dry grass, home to the roly polys and chigger bugs, close by the Widow's nest, plaited in place and once as lively as the artist's high pitched voice was amused - but for her drawl, one which was as wide as the West Texas plains she hailed from - lending it a laconic mood, like wind easing on a rocking chair, musical and sanguine, pulled and worked from the cracks and fissures in the deep, sun baked clay."

"Go on?" An interlocutory tone from his imperturbable host, gracious, yet firm. This despite the surprise his unannounced visit had caused.

"Well, sir, I've been beatin' that riff for awhile. Thought of takin' up some periods, a hyphen or two, maybe, but it's a lot to carry for a fella that travels light, ready to fight or run, unless one makes a practice of speakin' out of turn ... I stand guilty, as accused ... "

"... actually, your honor, it was your lady friend's comment that drew me, the confident air, succinct yet bearing hope both at once, a combination I find unbearable to resist, yet, some offhand sanctity has ... caused me ... to avoid further comment."

He paused, and seeing no bidding to go further, carried on despite it.

"... although it's never restrained me from circlin' back in order to see the effect of my raids, in order to apprise or amend, of course. I am, first and foremost, a pamphleteer."

"What are rules for, if not made to be broken?"






a sheet of sheer ice
suddenly makes everything still
Lake Mallalieu








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