1911

Wisteria blooms now, even across from the Dollar General. Spring is relentless. Unstoppable. Reasonable in a perfect attendance record since before books existed.

And the wisteria blooms–it always does, even across from the Dollar General. There’s a lot of dollar stores in the country, crumbs from the glittering metropolis, Wall Street mocking us, seeing how far we’ll submit to survive, but we’re relentless, too. And we’ve got the hanging gardens of Rustburg to look at as the doors spit us out. Purple and pink and yellow and even white. White wisteria? It must be a variety from Japan. Most of it is like the dollar store (from China). But it’s beautiful.

The flowers hang in the trees, by the mailboxes, down by the railroad tracks, everywhere. Be careful, you’ll get drunk on the scent.

One hint of it on the breeze, and you’ll know how it’s the future and distant past all stirred together, and you’ll stop and stare at nothing in particular, intoxicated. Or at least I do.

All that summer might be and spring should be, wafting on the promise of 1911.

1911. That number keeps popping up. It’s a pistol, a good one. Colt makes ‘em. So does Springfield Armory. They’ve an elegance about them, clean lines, a weight, gravitas, something a Glock or an HK could never understand in its plastic functionality.

Grok, the AI program, says the 1911 was put into heavy use in WWI. Grok also said of 1911 that it’s the vintage of Encyclopedia Britannica to get if you’d like a time capsule of a stable era, something before the War and the other War and Korea and Vietnam and Artificial Intelligence and the Edit Wars of Wikipedia. (Funny to ask a computer it’s better.)

eBay wants a lot for old books.

“There’s a book sale up at the square, going on till Saturday” a pal said Monday. So I went.

God bless Jim.

1911. That’s what leapt from the yellowed pages and crumbling leather that stained my hands. Could it be? And it was. I crouched near the shelf like a catcher guarding the plate. Complete except the index book. One shy of 29 volumes. That’ll work. Don’t take my books. This is nerd warfare.

The manager helped me to the car with two boxes. I went home, and put them on the new shelves. What are these like? A few ghosts leapt off the pages, eloquent, telling me a story of a rich man who traveled and explored, wrote some truth, but made the rest up, got found out, the sky fell, and then, brokenhearted and alone, went back to wandering. What a movie it could be! Oh wait. They didn’t have movies.

The pages crackle, thin, real.

I filled my boots with dirt yesterday joining friends on their excavation project, and smell like moly grease now from helping on the farm. I like real, and keep forgetting it. The season reminds me in a thousand ways.

I checked the crackly pages. The 1911 .45 caliber isn’t in there. WWI hasn’t happened yet in those books sitting quiet on the shelf. (Don’t tell them. It would break their heart.)

Lots happens, and sometimes I forget what to look at, where to aim, and what’s solid in our whirlwind of glaring blue light and inescapable screens.

But the wisteria will always return with a purple vision and a scent to remind us what might be, real.

Don’t miss it.

–Josh