waldopaper

Old Jew  

Civil war, such as you just passed through, naturally engenders feelings of animosity, hatred and revenge.

N. B. Forrest, 1865

Shenandoah Valley, 1895   

Old Henry was drunk as a hootie owl and demented as a belfry bat screaming out of a Harrisburg clocktower like some parrot rifle blast at  Edelweiss or something in the fine crystal next to ein shot glass now empty. Here comes old mutti Dilger, dodging all the waiters and clattering them up as usual.  Heil, he should know them all by now.  Morse pebble goddammit another whiskey boy und glass shot fur old man Dilger. Schnell boy.  Macht schnell!  Forbear the sauce Henry.  Always happy to take your free train ride, but you had enough.  Enough? You silly old grandmother Dilger.  We had enough at the battle.  And that was even before you shot the bishop in two. Daisies.  That’s what they are.  Dixie Daisy.  Whatever happened to that girl.  Ach Granny Dilger always wants to talk about girls in the middle of a goddam war.  Henry you pitiful Hessian puppy.  The war is over.   We buried old Jew last year.  Und his verdammt old lost cause with him. Tombstone macht der shadow on your green.   

There are no quotes in this story because all conversation is overheard from another lifetime.  Who is talking? Hubert Dilger and Jubal Early are real, and so is the US Civil War.  George Pullman was real too, and demented Henry purchased several of his cars and converted them to crowded cafes renowned for their lager beer, corned beef and cabbage.  There were girls from the theatre too, but that’s another story.   This story is about a man and flowers and a crowded cafe.  Dementia is something we are all born with… first as we make incomplete connections… and then as they begin to unravel.  A disorder of the process, it is, thousands of years before Zarathustra’s puzzlement over the stars in their courses.  The dining car rocked gently on the Shenandoah Valley line scarcely disturbing the cut glass and cigar smoke. Compostmodern writers are not paid by the line like Dickens.  They now reduce reuse and recycle with their thumbs, left to own devices as obtuse as Melville.  

So emoticons veil your disorder, Shenandoah!