From abbyfg@tezcat.com Wed May 3 14:57:15 2000 Article: 2020 of tezcat.chat Path: tezcat.com!tezcat.com!not-for-mail From: abbyfg@tezcat.com (Abby Franquemont-Guillory) Newsgroups: tezcat.chat Subject: Re: On the hatching of geese Date: 26 Apr 1995 17:11:32 -0500 Organization: t e z c a t . c o m - Wicker Park (Chicago) 312-850-0112 Lines: 83 Message-ID: <3nmgek$cg5@xochi.tezcat.com> References: <3nkfku$5lt@huitzilo.tezcat.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: xochi.tezcat.com Keywords: Canadian Geese, Catfur, Barbarian. When I was a little girl, I lived on a farm that was owned by an aged New England farmer named Charlie. One year, before I was born I think it was, a Canada gosling was injured or sick or for some reason couldn't make its migration... and so Charlie took it in and cared for it and nursed it back to health. He named it Sam the Goose, and Sam never went away. I can remember very clearly being three and four, and going for walks -- Charlie, in his nineties, and Sam, a big fat goose who didn't do much flying, walked about the same speed as I did. There would be these little processions, Charlie out in front with his cane, me second pulling my little red wagon, and Sam waddling along behind. Sam used to like to sun herself in the road in front of the farmhouse (turned out she was a female goose, which Charlie hadn't known when he named her Sam -- I think it would have made a difference to him). "Get outta that road, Sam!" Charlie would holler, "Or you're gonna be nothing but grease spots and feathers!" Old New England farmers were a crusty sort -- why, I could tell you some stories about Charlie and his cronies... like the time he was watching the soccer match, having put some money on the one team, and the ref made a call Charlie didn't like, so he walked up to him at the end of the game, and, um, maybe I better not tell that story. Well anyway. Sure enough, one summer Sam was out sunning herself in the middle of Sugar Road, and Charlie's prediction came true. This has always been a point of contention in my family -- my father says what happened is that he got up to go milk the cows, and there was Sam dead in the road.... but I say, and so does my cousin Megan (we have the exact same memory of the whole thing) that she and I were sitting on the bench out in front of the woodshed looking at Sam, when we heard a car noise and we both got up and started yelling at Sam to get out of the road. Then this big blue van driven by a guy with a bushy black beard went by, hit Sam, and kept going. My father says Megan was actually on Long Island at the time, and I was still asleep. Charlie died not too much later, so he can't shed much light on the subject. Anyway, I guess that was the first End of an Era moment in my life, 'cause it just wasn't the same going for those walks without Sam. Then Charlie had a stroke and was in the hospital for a while before he died, and you know, I can remember going to see him there with tubes in his nose and he said something to me, in a voice barely able to whisper, and though I can see the whole scene clearly in my mind, I've never been able to remember what it was that he said. At the funeral, there were all these old ladies who didn't want me to look in the coffin, but finally Charlie's son Bud told them off. Bud had lost several fingers running his sawmill down at the end of Sugar Road, and he always gave me chewing gum. He picked me up and let me look in the coffin, and then I felt a whole lot better. Sad, but better because it all made more sense. We had to move out after Charlie died, and they sold all the cows and I don't know what ever happened to the cats that lived in the barn. There was no more climbing around in the hayloft or making our own ice cream after that, and I really missed the chickens. We had to give the dog to my uncle, and we moved to Peru a little while later. I guess Canada geese always make me think through that whole progression of things in a sudden flash -- kind of a montage of earliest memories, a sense of sadness, wondering how one goes from walking along the road with a wagon and a Canada goose and someone who'd lived thirty times longer than I had but who always had stuff to talk about with me. I went back by there once when I was ten or so, drove by with my parents and my sister (hey, it's her twentieth birthday today!), and the barn was all dilapidated and falling down and no one lived in the farmhouse anymore. I've got Charlie's old fishing cap, and the fishing license he had clipped to the brim the last year he was alive, with the description of him on it: Height: 5'8" Weight: 175 Hair: White Eyes: Blue Date of Birth: 1878... I'm glad I got to know him. I don't think a day goes by without me thinking about him, and hoping he'd be proud of me these days. -- ______________________________________________________________________________ Abby Franquemont-Guillory | Infamous Devil's Advocate abbyfg@xochi.tezcat.com |"Dammit, Jim, I'm a geekgirl, not a newsadmin news@tezcat.com | -- um, I'll get right on it." __________________Administrative Staff, Tezcatlipoca Inc._____________________