SOS Gab & Eti 1.6

Etidorpha called me over last weekend to check out the new chicken coop that
Gabriel had recently built from salvaged barn siding. I felt bad about it,
the clucker coop was nifty a’right, but I had to take her to task for Gabriel
abusing historic artifacts. I could make out the faded outline of a large
“R”, suspecting, once again, Gabriel raiding another Rock City siding. They
swore all up and down it was not true. The Dr. Pepper sign door, held in
place with a hefty gob of rusty bailing wire, looked a bit vintage as well.

Despite the correspondence course in historic preservation (ICSHC) Gab still
tends to think that his daily surroundings are normal. Sometimes it is just
too difficult to see the history around us. The stubborn coot can’t bring
himself easy to the concept of him and Eti actually live in an historic theme
park. I keep telling them that the increased bus traffic is from middle-class
tourists who, because they are so accustomed to indoor plumbing, pay good
money to go on a day-trip outside the city with the opportunity to spot out
the single occupancy structures that dot their rural landscape. Tourism is
one reason why SOS is so important to our local economy. Gab tells me it’s
only the Japanese scouting out the good corn land. I keep telling him to move
the unit out behind the wood shed before someone gets an idea to use it.

He says he is trying to get the Commonwealth to put up a roadside marker, one
of those cast aluminum things declaring an historic event happened here. He
wants to know who in their right mind would agree to spend taxpayer’s money
to put up a roadside marker if there is nothing near the road to mark. Seems
if you get a marker the county policy is you get a streetlight as well in
order to keep the Saturday night socialites from running over the marker.
Chinville is an enlightnened community.

Then we got into an argument about if something can be historic or not if
there is no road next to it. Gab says that there is nothing in America worth
giving a gnats gonads for that is not within fifteen feet of a road. People
just don’t want to walk very far any more to see old useless things so they
curve the roads around to meet them. Why experience the past if you can’t
drive up to it? I gave up early on this one considering he’s been in fifteen
more states than I have. Sort of a competition and a sore point between us,
which only got exacerbated when he said he wanted to put a bunch of “BEEN
THERE” stickers all over the historic port-o-san. I had to convince him it
would be tampering with authenticity. The clincher was when I told him Disney
would sue. He plans to save his stickers for the flat bed.

To be continued..... friends from Maine.

Copyright 1997 Ken Follett
[log in to unmask]