This morning, I got up early to at least finish the monologue I started at the park on Sunday, on an evening that was too distractingly beautiful to get any work done. Here's a first draft, too long, but basically what I was going for.
God Speed, Abner Blackstone!
1908. A small town in Missouri. The Mayor addresses his constituents on a festive day.
THE MAYOR
Thank you. Thank you. You are too kind. Citizens of Squaw Valley! I am overjoyed to preside over this ceremony as we bid farewell and bon voyage to our own Abner Blackstone, as he prepares to undertake his historic voyage...to the moon!
Now, as your mayor, I have spoken to each of our esteemed townspeople in regards to this historic day. And I know that when you cogitate on Abner's "undertaking," as some of you so practically put it, that your breasts teem with all manner of hopes and fears. Is it even possible, most of you wonder, for man to loose himself from his earthly shackles and swim in the distant, grey seas of the moon? I can only answer this question with another question: It is 1908...why are we not standing on the moon this very moment?
Why is Squaw Valley not already celebrating its first year as the moon's first colony, learning how to plant moon corn from its crafty, heathen natives while making plans to steal away their fair-skinned brides for our pleasure? We've already conquered this continent by means of locomotive—why have we not already brought the moon under our yoke with Abner's majestic cannon schooner?
I am convinced that even our newest and most stubbornly illiterate townspeople know the story of Abner Blackstone's struggles over the past decade. One could imagine it was only yesterday that Abner abandoned his lucrative position as the town's Indian killer so that he might build the world's first flying machine. We told him he was insane! We told him he was foolish! We told him that a bath once in a while might be a good idea. All true. But this same man had his eyes fixed firmly on the future, and however insane, foolish and pungently perfumed he might have been, he was also a visionary, like Eli Whitney, or the founders of the Ku Klux Klan. He had no time for our eartly concerns when he preparing to be our very own Daedalus.
Well we all remember his long nights stubbornly affixing feathers to the flapping steel wings of his air machines with great slatherings of glue. Clearly we can picture his giant Indian rubber sling shot up at Hendricks' field, high above the town. "It won't work," people shouted! "The metal is too heavy! No matter how many chicken feathers you glue to it, your machine will sink like a stone." Do you remember saying that, Silas? And you, Mildred?
And right you were. One after the other, as we all pick-nicked in the grass in anticipation of being a witness to history, one after the other his machines barely stayed airborne an inch or two past the edge of the cliff before plummeting to the Earth. And the men would wipe their hands off on their trousers and take the long path down to the bottom of the valley to extract Abner from his rapidly growing pile of twisted metal and feathers. As he recuperated, and tried to become accustomed to his new prosthetic limbs, he would read news-paper accounts of his rivals, the demonic Wright boys of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and he would roundly curse them.
What a dark day it was when the news-papers announced that some weeks before, the Wright Brothers had achieved their goal, and snatched Abner's dream away from him. Abner went into a sort of retirement for the past three years, secluding himself in the bell tower of First Presbyterian Church and throwing feces at anyone who tried to get him to come down. I gave the order that the stair-way to the tower be boarded up, and as far as we can tell, Abner survived on a diet of raw pigeon and rainwater. More feathers for his flying machines, some of us mused.
Little did we know that Abner was plotting his next move. Up in that tower, he was reading and re-reading a book by Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon. Before I knew what was happening, our Abner had thrown himself from the bell tower, and, after he had been forceably hosed down, but before his newest leg fracture had even healed, he was busy building this masterpiece you see before me now: the largest cannon in the world, and inside it, the decommisioned whaling schooner The Merry Gentleman.
Minutes from now, once I am finished my long-winded speech—you know me, Roscoe! It's my nature!—our Abner will climb up the cannon, strap himself to the helm of The Merry Gentleman, after which Doris Montague of the Social Club for Ladies of High Birth will have the pleasure of lighting the fuse that will ignite the 400 pounds of gunpowder at thebase of the cannon.
There are those of you who will say—pessimistically, by my reckoning—that Abner's wooden cannon-schooner will simply blow into a thousand pieces, driving shards of wooden splinters and Abner's bones through the bodies of us, the rapt spectators. Some of you will say, while we're in the habit of such negative imagining, that, for that matter, four hundred pounds of gunpowder will blow apart the cannon itself, and maybe that it wasn't such a good idea to let all the children sit at the front to get a good view.
To those people, those who would hunt down dreams and shoot them in their sleep like so many Cherokees, I say "Poppycock!" Because I can clearly see in my mind's eye Abner Blackstone, of Squaw Valley, Missouri riding his cannon-schooner through the trade winds of space, harpoon at the ready in case of star-monsters, singing a merry song. I see him landing on the surface of the moon, and after stopping to wave to those of us who are watching with our telescopes, proceeding with his mission of subjugating the heathen Moonmen and putting them to work. I know that I'm not the only one who has paid in advance for my very own perfectly legal moon-slave! Doris here has already fashioned a wardrobe for hers, made of red velvet to cover his godless nakedness.
So, for those of you who scoff at dreams, take a step back and unfurl your umbrellas, while those of us armed with hope gather round to wish Abner adieu on his historic mission. On behalf of the town of Squaw Valley, I wish you Godspeed, Abner Blackstone! When you get back we will enjoy your moon cheese with wine and crackers!
Copyright ©2008 Jeff S.
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