Pool_1

>> Lightening Rod <<

( Young Sumner, the suburbs, 1958 ) GlenView. Where's the view - let alone the glen? You wonder. Are there rustic name kits? Need a road name? Get the kit. Let's see, Chestnut Street, Lake Drive, Gallows Road? Ouch, gallows? That must mean what it says. But notice, there's no trace of a chestnut tree around here, and certainly no lake - maybe a back yard kiddy pool. Something like a gallows is more likely to have its history filed in a drawer somewhere than a disappearing lake that took up, in developers' eyes, potential development space. Whimsy or history, its all gone Consider the alternative, some kid drowning in a pond, pockets laden with wet chestnuts gathered on his way home from today's hanging. What kind of pastoral scene would that be? Nah. Names mean nothing. But the symbolism, it's in the meaninglessness. Suburbs and rural America are not about deep themes. They are about prettiness and tranquility - at least, outward appearances of prettiness and tranquility. God only knows how many whips fly and chains shackle in shade pulled bedrooms. Nobody knows? That's not it. Nobody cares. But nobody is a relative term. How many decimal places does that zero have? Our story lives in the far decimal places truncated by the data gobblers. Does one little boy's interest in a neighbor's behavior count? Maybe in the bigger scheme, not. Hard to know. He knows what he sees and hears at home. Home is truth. Home is what grounds. What he's taught, is. At home he learns truths, indefectible, with no shadings. And yet, in that other house.. that next one just down the road.. men