Blessing of the Cornfields!
6.14.24
Morning drive through the mists of Still Pond. Few enjoy a commute like mine. But it’s an important time not to think of them. And not to think of the many. As the lone white tail buck becomes lightning over the knee-high corn and bolts over the road in front of me as the wild turkey does its wild things so ugly in the shadow of the open woods. As the cows and their calves graze on dewy grass down in the holler of their pasture by the old pine cabin. And the horses flick their tales tall dark silhouettes against blinding orange sky. And the sign at the beginning of town tells me S L O W D O W N. 27 in a 25. So I let it have its way as the water opens up and I crawl toward great bay. And the blue and grey shimmer is too beautiful to pass so I pause. And walk. And there no more than 40 feet before me the great bald eagle resting on the sand. And it’s taken flight and I arrive to the shore and see its white head and white tail resting on a branch high above the creeping tide. And raising my hand to shield the glaring east a great blue heron dips his head in jewel water. And I bow mine to my majestic friends and retreat on sandy beach. And there’s my cottage restaurant ahead and I roll passed it next to blue blooming hydrangea and beach pine. And standing on the deck my eyes hovering over dappled water the Piedmont hills rising above the mist against a barely blue white sky and I could mistake them for the Caribbean mountains of Tortola or Jost Van Dyke but I don’t because those views aren’t mine. Mine are catfish bay and snakehead ponds. And I’ll keep them. But what’s been left inside this restaurant I’ll give away. Or chuck clunk clank clunk into the giant dumpster angled toward the front door. Greasy everything mold and heavy wet air too wet—thankful, in a way—for particles of dust. So they collect instead in sticky corners like digested pellets of the past. I’m creating a new past. Because when I’m finished with this place and I mean truly finished no one will remember what came before it. Not really. They won’t speak of crispy brussels sprouts drowned in maple siracha and parmesan and balsamic reduction and roasted garlic cream. Not that I’m trying to erase the past. But when the future is written strong and thick we say goodbye to things without saying goodbye. They vanish. Poof. Like chalkboard specials. But the sweet and concentrated scent of pink degreaser pulls me back. Then through it the stench of dirty vegetable oil. Soy and corn. Pulling me toward the fryers sitting in the middle of the dining room. Yellow and brown grease like gelatin caked to the sides. And set into it bits of burnt potato French fry. And it’s a funny thing to replace past with past. I’ll bring in the 19th-century dry sink. And the oil paintings of the bay. And the old spongeware and fine china. And the old old farm tables. If it’s old enough it’s new again. But never these fryers never these sandwich refrigerators encrusted with syrup and dried shredded lettuce never these particle board cabinets with linoleum countertops. I’m bringing back the good things of the Great Before but I’m letting the bad things stay. Like racism and asbestos. And I’d like to say as if hoecakes have anything to do with any of that. But corn has always had great conflict. So in fire I divide it the bad from the good. I keep the smoke of burning oak and let it waft over the batter. And I let the heat caramelize but never burn. A delightful exterior crunch. And warm and soft inside. And I put it on the plates that someone has long forgotten and I try to remember them who ate from them what they ate and where they ate it and in wintertime when I return to my kitchen for breakfast from my office warmed by the wood burning stove and my little girls run to me Papa! and my wife offers a good morning kiss and they smell the fire on me and whenever they smell fire they think of me on cold winter mornings and everyone always smelled of fire not too long ago the women and men and children. And they cooked with pots and pans forged in fire by the hand of someone they knew and they knelt by the fire to swing the cauldron over the coals they raked. Fire dance. Ballet. Le geste du feu. The gesture of fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. And in the red-hot coals the past glows. But until then I have a greasy mess to clean. A bar to tear down. A soda gun attached to rubber lines that run through the floor and along the basement ceiling toward Ursula protruding from black molded cinderblock with her tentacles of flavors: Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, Lemonade, Dr. Pepper, Root Beer. Yes before the fire burns before I resurrect the beauty in the forgotten things I must contend with the things my beloved corn has turned into: drywall and high fructose corn syrup and the plastic it flows through. So I tear it all down to pieces. And I’ll build it back up.
Sing, O Song of Hiawatha,
Of the happy days that followed,
In the land of the Ojibways,
In the pleasant land and peaceful!
Sing the mysteries of Mondamin,
Sing the Blessing of the Cornfields!
(Excerpt from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry W. Longfellow)
Blessed cornfields ... Hiawatha! When a young child I could recite the early lines; the early morning of America had caught our mother's imagination when she was a child in the first years of 20thC Britain. The 1855 Longfellow had inspired the European composers, famously Dvořák 'New World', 1893, and shortly before mother's early days a mixed-race Englishman Coleridge-Taylor. His Song was played all over the world but he never received a penny ... so it goes.
I was fortunate 50y ago to see the flash of paddles across the shining water further north from you on a long lake into the old wilderness, and very memorably wonder at a new birch-bark canoe.
The whole piece is a song! Lovely.