OFF THE PAGE WITH RAYMOND ATKINS

OFF THE PAGE WITH RAYMOND ATKINS

Metaphorically Speaking

I am home from my travels and sitting here on my deck watching the River of Atkins flow to the Coosa and eventually to the sea. It used to be named the Etowah, and I live just south of it, but I took the notion to rename it, so that is what I did. As you know, renaming bodies of water has become all the rage in recent days, and I didn’t want to miss out. I haven’t heard back from Rand-McNally yet, or Google, but it has only been a few days since I let them know, and I’m sure they will go along. It’s just a little river, after all, barely a blue squiggle on the map.

If you read this column much you know I spent the last two months in Italy, and now that I am back I find I am going to have to adjust. No, it’s not what you think. Admittedly the day-to-day reality of life in America changed for the worse while I was gone, and things are not what they used to be, and there are folks out there who think that is just great, although maybe not quite as many as there were in January. But you know, things are never what they used to be. I am old enough to remember the chaos of the Sixties, which was replaced by the chaos of the Seventies, which was replaced by the chaos of the Eighties, and on and on until the current bedlam. It will all eventually resolve itself into some semblance of a new normal, and we will each adjust to that as best we can, and then it will begin again.

But what I want to share with you is how much my time in Italy changed me. My wife and I visited some pretty awesome places during our visit, but most of our time was spent in an old villa in a little mountain town in Tuscany you have probably never heard of before, called Sassetta. The town is mostly inside of the remains of a castle wall that dates to 1100 AD, a castle that was built according to legend on the spot where a dragon was killed by the founder of the town. I am guessing he build this edifice to perhaps to protect against future dragonly incursions if the dragon had a brother. The newest home in the village is probably 200 years old. There are three separate roads leading to the place, each steeper and more winding than the last. 350 souls make their homes there, and their lives. It is a magical place.

I will miss rising in the mornings to a cold stone house and stoking the stove while the coffee brews. I will miss sitting on my little balcony as the fog drifts over the mountain valley watching the thirteen or so children of the town walk to the little school, chattering in Italian and sounding like children everywhere. I will miss the ageless and timeless little lady across the way splitting her firewood for the day. I will miss walking to the little bottega every morning with my shopping bag to buy a piece of fruit or a few slices of prosciutto and a loaf of fresh bread, still warm. I will miss my cup of cappuccino in the afternoon at the osteria surrounded by townsfolk who don’t understand what I am saying but who understand me nonetheless. I will miss the old guy in the next villa who went from frowning at me to nodding, to smiling, to the occasional grudging buongiorno. I will miss navigating the narrow cobblestone streets that were built for horses and carts but which must now accommodate cars. I will miss the hour and the half-hour being chimed from the belltower of the 16th century church across the plaza. These are just a few of the many images I brought home with me, and they comfort me.

If I ever decide to relocate from my longtime home on the banks of the Atkins, it will be to Sassetta, or to a town just like it. In Sassetta, the scale of life is smaller, and the pace of life is slower, and both of these facets just seemed to plug into my consciousness and take root. In America, at least in my own life, and maybe in yours as well, the days are built around faster and bigger, and newer and better, but faster and newer and bigger and better aren’t always enough. Sometimes we all just need to take a breath, slow down, and have a glass of good wine.

An incident from my childhood came to my mind as I was writing this, an incident that taught me early on that we are not all equal, and that the powerful are always at work behind the scenes. My father was career military, so when I was a child I lived on a succession of military bases, and in those days it was expected by all parents and especially by my sainted mother that children should leave the house right after their bowl of breakfast cereal and not return until just before dark. Those were different times, and actually it may have been a law, but whatever the reason, that is what we did.

Sometime around 1964 I lived on a SAC base in Northern Michigan. For those of you unfamiliar with the terminology, SAC stands for Strategic Air Command, and it was from these scattered and usually remote bases that the B-52s rumbled into the night with their nuclear cargoes as they kept constant patrol against incursions from our mortal enemies at that time, China and especially the Soviet Union.

It was there that my two buddies and I discovered the magic of the base dump, and it was a life changer for three eight-year-old boys. As a side note, if you ever want to see ACTUAL government waste, go back in time to a 1960s-era military base and look in the dump. Anyway, we dragged stuff out of that dump for a week—plywood, rope, tools, window panes, furniture, tools—and with these materials we built what may have been the greatest treehouse ever. Well, it seemed like it to us, anyway.

One day we were just hanging out in our great treehouse loving life when along came our arch enemy, Marty Tingley. He was two or three years older than us and a bully on top of that, and at one time or another he had pounded each of us, so we had reason to dislike him. Marty demanded to come up into our treehouse, but we had pulled up the ladder (a great aluminum one fresh from the dump) when we saw him coming and refused him. This was all a long time ago, you understand, and my memory is hazy sometimes, but in the interest of full disclosure I need to admit that rocks may have been thrown at that point, in both directions. Yes, I realize that was the passive voice, but ignore that and stay with me here.

The next day after breakfast we arrived at our treehouse, and to our dismay it had been totally destroyed, and all of our hard work lay in piles on the ground. Marty Tingley and some of his rough buddies had slunk out in the night, and if they could not enjoy the treehouse, then no one could. My buddies and I complained to our fathers, but they were mere sergeants, and Marty Tingley was a general’s son, so we received no justice. Well, that is not quite true. We three were punished for stealing from the dump and for fighting. As far as I know, Marty walked away clean, although I like to think that he at least had to forgo dessert that night.

As a postscript to this incident, at the next rotation one of my buddy’s dads was sent to Korea, another, who was up for promotion, waited two more years for that stripe and sewed it on in Saigon, and my father was sent to a remote radar site up on the DEW line in northern Alaska to bond with the polar bears for a year. To be clear, they may have been sent to these remote postings anyway, but I have always found the timing to be a bit suspect.

So that is my little homily. The powerful have always been in charge of our lives, and the only things protecting us from total subjugation have been the laws of our nation and the framework of our government. Now both of these protections are seemingly at risk. If you don’t see this, please take another look. The signs are there. The foxes are in charge of the henhouse. They seem intent upon appropriating the eggs, eating the chickens, and then, just like Marty Tingley all those years ago, burning down the henhouse so no one else can have it.

Rocks may need to be thrown. Metaphorically speaking, of course.