Tag Archives: Dr. Dolittle

Hazardous Doin’s

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The cicadas are droning.

The frogs are singing an ominous bass line.

In the distance a tree toad is trilling for attention to be paid.

The fountain in the (black) lagoon is gurgling.

I might as well be in the jungles of India.

And, I am.

I am avidly lost in Gordon Casserley’s 1921 adventure tale; THE ELEPHANT GOD. The protagonist has just been attacked by a strategically-placed cobra, his slippers have been deliberately baited with a krait, his breakfast has been poisoned, and he’s now trapped in a courtyard with a mad elephant. He has eluded every threat thus far, but what might be next?

I am a true “Jeffty” who will always be five years old (100 points if you know that reference). I’m goggle-eyed and slack-jawed, unaware as my wife Janie pads in silently and whispers like thunder; “Are you awake?”

I gasp…..

….oh no……

…I shriek and suck all the air out of this quiet Hollywood/Mt. Vernon neighborhood in Central Kentucky.

My head snaps up out of the book and out of India, whiplashing my life before my eyes (that’s gonna ache…where’s the Naproxen?)

Reading is dangerous!

Who’d a’thunk?

Reading is dangerous. I’ve lived in that perilous valley since Dick and Jane, since Doctor Dolittle, since Bartholomew Cubbins’ Oobleck. At least, that’s what the news cycle and the Kentucky State Legislature has been telling me.

Oobleck…sounds like something that might have escaped from a Chinese wet market. Hugh Lofting’s colonial depictions of non-white races are clearly offensive in the 21st century, though the kindness and respect he grants animals, and his objections to fox-hunting ameliorate my frown a mite. Dick and Jane’s relationship with Spot…grooming for bestiality? Cultivating a species prejudice against cats?

Dangerous stuff indeed.

I don’t know how I survived all this indoctrination.

I’ve read voraciously my whole life. Hell, I read at red lights.

I’ve read Jack Kerouac, Herbert Huncke, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Hunter Thompson, Paul Bowles, and Abby Hoffman. I’ve never done drugs, been drunk at the Derby, been arrested, or shot my wife. I have thought freely and fiercely, questioned authority, and sought the next right thing to do.

I’ve read Harper Lee and learned the value of standing on another man’s porch and looking out at the world as he sees it…and sought the next right thing to do.

I’ve read H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe and learned that behind some doors lie madness…which is clearly not the next right thing to do.

I’ve read Clair Bee and Wilfred McCormick and still cannot hit a curve ball…but I have a better idea of the next right thing to do.

I’ve read Edgar Lee Masters, Sherwood Anderson, Dylan Thomas, and Davis Grubb. I know that so many of us with widely varying competences are most often searching for the next right thing to do.

…the next right thing to do…

Surely that’s a worthy quest. Yes?

Even at the cost of a rude misstep or two, or an awkward or offensive moment, or a challenge to our beliefs…

…or even a hair-whitening scare from a stealthy-footed Janie.

Life Under the Hedge

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Janie and I live under a hedge.

No, we’re not hobbits…though it’s a tempting notion.

No, we’re not delusional…I’m pretty sure.

No, we truly live under a hedge.

20 years ago, we built a brick wall behind our house. By design, it has missing bricks in a pattern that enables you see through it. It has a mighty trellis on top of it and an iron gate with a heron silhouette.

When it was completed, on the guidance of the wall’s designer (our friend, Sanford Pollack), we planted trumpet vine next to the wall. We didn’t quite follow Sandy’s guidance as faithfully as perhaps we should have. His suggestion to plant one vine was utterly disregarded. It looked so puny. So…we planted six.

As the vines grew and became one, we threaded it into the wall itself and eventually, into the trellis. We removed any trace of green below the trellis, but let the vine run amok above.

The result?

Today, under the trellis, the vines are two-to-five-inch-in-diameter woody snakes entwining the bricks. They resemble Hugh Lofting’s line drawings of trees in his “Dr. Dolittle” books or the various dancing trees in Fleischer cartoons. Those squiggly sequoias support the hedge above the trellis.

The hedge is about 30 feet long and ranges from four-to-seven feet high above the trellis, reaching a peak of about 13 feet above the ground, and is quite impenetrable. It is dense, green, and celebrates each summer with hundreds of clumps of butter-yellow and orange-red trumpet blossoms. I’m told it was Thomas Jefferson’s favorite garden plant. I share his opinion except when I’m combating the hedge’s myriad “volunteers” that insinuate themselves everywhere at the rate of several inches per day.

I love living under the hedge despite the constant battle with its efforts of expansion.

– It’s positioned on the weather side of the house and garden. Its mass offers at least the illusion of some natural defense against natural assaults.

– When cirrus-eyed poets from pre-drone days rhapsodize about “How many colors of blue make up the sky?” and speculate on eyes watching us “make love well” from above, I’m happier with the illusion of privacy the hedge offers.

– In winter when the vines are denuded of their foliage, I’m encouraged when the hedge becomes a chattering condo for tiny nesting birds, though the heron gate beneath suffers the indignity of the resulting guano rain.

Yes, I love living under the hedge, and weirdly enough, despite my determined eradication of its invasive offspring, I think the hedge patronizes me and thinks me to be of some interest.

Otherwise, why would it speak to me?

(Cue the theme from “The Twilight Zone”)