A Quiet Walk in The Old Northside

It was very quiet when I woke this morning, that's unusual in the city. There were no clanging dumpster lids, no cars charging toward the center of town, people off to work as though they can't wait to get there, when in reality they didn't leave in time because they most likely didn't want to go at all. Today is Memorial Day and many of the city's workers have the day off, hence the quiet. In fact, it appears that even the drug dealers and prostitutes that parade past my building in constant motion seem to have the morning off. They are not yelling at passing cars simply because there are so few of them.

For me, a morning person, it seemed like the perfect time to take advantage of the quiet for a stroll through the neighborhood just to the east of me. If I walk just a block over the neighborhood changes from one that looks a bit blighted to one that is beautifully cared for and is filled with interesting sights to drink in. So, at half past seven this morning I put my shoes on and took a walk through the Old Northside. It's an area that gives me a taste of another world, so unlike the one that I live it.

Here's why I like to move a block over: across the street from my apartment is another apartment building, it is waiting for rehab, all of it's former tenants have had to find other places to live, some of them moved into my building and have been very quiet neighbors, though some are not quick to speak to you in the parking lot or at the mailbox, I try to remind myself that I'm a country boy and you wave at every car that goes by and you speak to each person that you meet. I suppose they have their reasons for shutting out the world. I can look across the street and see a small lawn area that used to be Derek's Garden, (check the archives here and you can read about his garden,) I have a feeling that if Derek were to come back to his former home he would be sickened by the sight of his garden. The grass is tall enough now that only a few inches of the tops of the park benches are visible. His hedge of Rose of Sharon is haphazard and the weeds have taken over his flower beds to the point that there really aren't flower beds anymore, they have been choked by the grass gone to seed. And yet, one block over to the east things improve and two blocks over it becomes another world, a world of beauty and charm.

On Park Avenue I met a woman who was out doing what I was doing, drinking in the quiet and the beauty of the new day. I greeted her with a good morning, nearly whispered as if we were somewhere sacred, actually I suppose we were, there is enough stained glass in the neighborhood that one could nearly call it church, but instead I would rather think of it as God's cathedral. She whispered the reply and I felt that she was feeling the same way, surrounded by the holy. There were only a few people visible around and they were walking as though they were walking through a museum, foot steps not to be heard for fear of interrupting another's view of Van Gogh's field of poppies or iris. In fact on this quiet street the gardens are running over with iris and the kinds that win awards at flower shows. I was especially taken in by one whose massive blooms were the color of a school bus. Another was the shade of peach that reminded me of bridesmaids dresses, complete with a ruffled edge. Another was the bearer of a breathtaking complimentary color scheme, pale yellow over light lavender. A hedge of mock orange bore one last bloom, the rest of the petals on the grass and sidewalk looking like the last of the snows.

The old houses on Park and Alabama truly look as though they don't belong in my neighborhood. They are classic examples of, well, classic styles of architecture and each has a tad bit of lawn and flower beds that continue to break forth in glorious bloom. But the most beautiful thing of all in this morning walk was the quiet, even the man overhead running the vacuum on what would now be called his exterior living room, (you know, a balcony with some nice furniture on it?) looks embarrassed that he has broken the quiet. He nods a greeting though and I appreciate that.

Since I work in a flower shop I might appreciate the flowers more than others, I don't know that for sure, but maybe I do. When I walk through neighborhoods such as this one and I see such sophisticated blossoms I want to pull up a chair and see what they know, they look as though they could carry on lofty conversations about the architecture, the well educated children of the area or the current state of affairs that the hellebores is having with the coral belles, speaking of them as though they were spatting neighbors. Yet, they only speak with their glory saying nothing bad about anyone around them. Maybe it's because they know the weeds are three blocks over bending to the ground in the strong winds. And quiet doesn't have the same respect on my street as it does on theirs.

Time Does Fly

While some believe that time flies when you are having a good time, let's face it, time really does it's best flying as you grow older, good time being had or not. When you are a kid a ride of any distance in the car brings the thought to mind and then of course to lips, “are we there yet?” When you're a kid time and distance mean very little to you. As a kid there are exceptions to all things. When you are young and you are playing outside after dinner you suddenly have a sense of time when you see the sun fall behind the neighbor's house, you know that before long it will drop below the horizon and the street lights will come on and then you will have to go in and do the things that go with the end of the day and then you recognize time, it's time to go to bed, ready or not.

As we age the concept of time changes, as teens we feel like time is our ocean and we can play in its surf forever. The fact that the street lights have come on doesn't mean that we have to put our bikes in the garage and go in for the night. In fact, when we get closer to our twenties we think of sunset as the real beginning of our day, the time when we don't have to think about school, we can visit with friends, tuck away into our private space and put the bear buds on our iPod in and forget the world as we drift away in that infinite sea of time.

Yet, as we grow older time moves faster. In fact, I have heard our lives compared to rolls of toilet paper, the closer you get to the end the quicker the tube rolls. I think that is fairly accurate. It feels to me some days that I have no more shaved and brushed my teeth until I'm back in front of the mirror the next morning looking at my puffy eyes all over again.

All of this thought on the relativity of time stems from my thinking today of how things move so quickly for some and so slowly for others as I look the second anniversary of my father's death in the face. For me it often seems as though he died just a month or so ago and then there are times when I feel like it has been a pair of years. Today, it has felt like both.

I visited the unit that Pop was in at Methodist Hospital this evening. I do so every now and then, I drop off a note of encouragement to patients and their families. I sign them with the nickname that my father gave me, he being the only one allowed to use it. When you are in the hospital or a health care residence of any kind, time passes so slowly and there are times that you want it to go faster and times you are glad that it doesn't. Having someone leave a card on your tray table while you're napping helps to pass time in a good way.

Pop and I had a rough start, to say otherwise would be stretching the truth dangerously thin. We had a smooth finish though and for that I am so very grateful. I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have had more time with him, what wisdom would I have heard or seen? I think I would have learned more about the things he did for others, quietly and at the right time.


That isn't how it worked out though and it's then that I think about the wisdom of King Solomon when he said, “to everything there is a time and a season to every purpose under heaven.” There is too, a time to put your bike away when the street lights come on and then later you realize that there is a time to answer the call to go to, “that house not made with hands.”

Time does fly.

The Mother and Child Reunion

The school that my mother attended from first through twelfth grade is also the school where I attended first through sixth grade. By the time I started there it was no longer a high school, just a grade school. Because my mother was twenty when I was born, everything monumental in our lives seems to be based on twenty, go figure. In 1946 my mother started first grade at Union School, in 1966 I started there. (My father attended school there for the later part of his education.) He and Mom graduated in 1958 and I graduated in 1978, Union being part of a consolidated school system, you can say in essence that we graduated from the same school.

Since I graduated in 1978 the math I learned at Union will back me up when I say that this year I’ve been out of school for thirty years. I attended my 20-year class reunion and noticed that the gathering of the large class of over 300 had drifted into smaller clusters of people chatting and visiting, these groups were made up of the ones who went to elementary school together. My class from Union did the same thing as the former students of Hopewell, Needham, Webb, Northwood and Southside. Makes sense really, these are people who have shared a lengthy history. After all, we signed one another’s yearbooks and field trip permission slips for a lot of years. I often thought that I was Mrs. Brown; I did her report card signing duties for a long time. I think it’s okay to tell that now.

When I thought about the groups that gathered at our last reunion I thought about how we should have a reunion of the classmates from grade school. Union has an alumni association and each year they have a dinner at the school where each of the classes join together to reconnect, even though some of them just visited at Wal-Mart the night before. They visit and recall the good old days. Even though Union ceased to be a high school in the mid 1960s I thought it would be a good time to gather my class from the ‘70s and enjoy a visit as a part of the larger group of alums.

Remember the math thing earlier? If a student who graduated from high school in 1978 is celebrating his 30th anniversary of the event and his mother graduated twenty years prior, how many years has she been out of high school and what year did she graduate? (Trust me, this story problem, as we used to call them, is a lot easier to figure out than the ones that started with, “if a train leaving Boston…”) Yes, your 3rd grade math lesson at the feet of Mrs. Bridges, shod in sensible shoes of course, has worked! Mom has been out of school since 1958 and that was 50 years ago. My mother’s class was seated at a special table for the honor and a substantial showing from her class of 20 were there. Though there are three who were attending in spirit only as they have gone on to better seating heavenward, my father one of them. It was neat to see this long table covered in the school colors, blue and gold, surrounded by a group of people who haven’t wandered very far from home or has failed to be like family for one another. The women in the group have a Christmas get together each year and the entire class tries to do something together each summer. My mom acts as cruise director in a way, and they thank her for keeping them connected.

I could see that my mother was proud and I understand the pride that she was feeling, she was with some of the people that she has the longest shared history with short of her family. She has known many of these people since she was six years old and now sixty two years later, they are all seated at a long table visiting like it was a family Thanksgiving dinner and they hadn’t seen one another in ages.

I felt some of the same pride; I enjoyed listening to those in my group share where their lives had taken them and where they were at now, some told of where they hope to be heading. I was a bit surprised that two in the class had gone back to school, one of them missing that evening to attend her capping ceremony as a nurse.

It was a good evening, knowing that in many ways this gymnasium full of people share a common interest, celebrate a shared history and hold an old brick building full of memories in such high esteem.
So, it was a good reunion for my mom and dad’s class of 1958 and my class of 1978. Since it was on Mother’s Day weekend I like to think of it as, “The Mother and Child Reunion.”

A Bit of a Walk on the Wilde Side

Lately I've been walking through the neighborhood to the east of mine, grand old homes that have been reclaimed and restored, somewhat the Indianapolis equivalent to Cherokee Circle in Louisville and I'm sure there are neighborhoods in other cities that have the same feel to them. The houses are colorful because they are the subjects of studies of the residents who researched the kinds of colors that were used in the home's original period. I dare not say during the Victorian period because I don't think that they are all of that period, in fact, some are new construction. They are colorful though, mostly muted tones, not the colors of the Grand Dames of San Francisco this is Indiana after all. Most of these homes are very well landscaped, some the victims of over growth, a sign that the inhabitant has probably been there for a while.

Yesterday afternoon I went for a walk and went a little further than I have been going. Because the weather was nice there were others walking, many pushing the modern scaled down version of prams, some with small children on foot. Some were working in their flowerbeds, others sitting on their porches on wicker furniture, wooden porch swings and some were perched on limestone rails around their porches talking to neighbors. On one porch a little one was offering a fresh daffodil to the neighbor, a little Norman Rockwellesque.

This urban neighborhood was alive with residents taking in the beautiful day; many of them I am sure took no real notice of what was going on around them. I hope that they were so entrenched in their work and relaxation that they can use those reasons for their excuse to fail to return my nod or greetings, my little waves to children in fenced yards were always acknowledge though.

My attention was drawn to two trees on one block, one in the lawn of a neglected Tudor, the tree was obviously dead and had been for several years, in fact the over grown garden had many things in bloom, scarlet tulips, radiant daffodils, while there were was beauty in the yard, the large dead tree drew the most attention, looking very out of place. The attention getter in the lawn was the overgrown vine that hid the house, the dead tree and the "come hither," beauty of the bright flowers; the combination gave the residence a feeling of having been pulled from the pages of a fairytale. Surely an evil woman lived here that hated children.

The other tree that I saw was in the corner of a lawn with impeccably manicured grass, the edges of the flowerbeds were surely cut by the hand of a well-trained surgeon. Grape hyacinths in the front, daffodils in the middle and tulips in the back, all standing at attention and looking as though they feared the wind because moving from formation would be forbidden. The lawn had a black wrought iron fence, contemporary to match the Neo-Federalist style home that it surrounded, while the lawn has the feel of being the home of stoic tin soldiers, the residents seem to be the opposite. Both men greeted me while they worked in the yard only a couple of days earlier, even being so gracious as to cut the electricity to their power tools so that I could hear their greeting. (Not everyone in this neighborhood speaks when spoken to.) The tree in the corner of the lawn looked to be a Bradford Pear that was losing its blossoms probably from a short brisk wind. The petals from the tree covered items on the ground, a lawn ornament, a little hard to identify because of the blossom shower.

As I ambled toward home I thought about how beautiful the lawn was and the contrast between the two houses that aren't far apart. The two places made me think of Oscar Wilde's fairy tale, The Selfish Giant. In a nutshell, the giant while away on a seven year visit with his friend the Cornish ogre runs out of anything to say and returns home to find his garden in full bloom and filled with happy children at play. He runs them out of his garden and posts a no trespassing sign. The children miss the garden and the happiness that they knew there. The satisfied giant has a change of heart when winter, the north wind and hail move into his garden and won't leave. After several years of living in the winter when spring and summer has come to everyone else he hears the song of a bird on his window sill and looks out to see a small place in his garden where there is spring, spring has come because the children have broken a small place through his garden wall. He breaks down the wall for the children and spring takes over. The trees blossom where the children climb and there is beauty again. There is one child who cannot reach the branches of the tree and so cannot climb it, the tree stands covered in snow, spring has not come to it, the giant sets the boy in the tree and it blooms. The giant invites the children to continue to play in his garden, but notices that the boy that he aided does not return, the children do not know him or know where he has gone.

From here I defer to Mr. Wilde:

"One winter morning the giant looked out of his window as he was dressing. He did not hate the winter now, for he knew that it was merely the spring asleep and that the flowers were resting.

Suddenly he rubbed his eyes in wonder, and looked and looked. It certainly was a marvelous sight. In the farthest corner of the garden was a tree quite covered with lovely white blossoms. Its branches were all golden, and silver fruit hung down from them, and underneath it stood the little boy he had loved.

Downstairs ran the giant in great joy, and out into the garden. He hastened across the grass and came near to the child. And when he came quite close his face red with anger, and he said, 'Who hath dared to wound thee?' For on the palms of the child's hands were the prints of two nails, and the prints of two nails were on the little feet.

'Who hath dared to wound thee?' cried the giant; 'tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him.

''Nay!' answered the child; 'but these are the wounds of love.

''Who are thou?' said the giant, and a strange awe fell on him and he knelt before the little child.

And the child smiled on the giant, and said to him, 'You let me play once in your garden, today you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.

'And when the children ran in that afternoon, they found the giant lying dead under the tree, all covered with white blossoms."

How fortunate I am to have gone for a springtime walk, somewhat a bit of a walk on the Wilde side.

Miss Otis Regrets

I had the experience again the other night that I have had repeated times now. It seems to be a fixture in the gay community according to my gay friends, but I feel pretty sure that the, "straight" folks have the same problem. (I hate the term straight used this way, but homo and heterosexual sounds so clinical.)

I was supposed to meet someone for the first time the other night, I've chatted with him on line a little and I've spoken to him on the phone at length. A very pleasant person and it appeared that we would be the kind who could sit and talk for a good while about any number of subjects. Like I've warned before though, don't get me started on quantum physics, it's just not smart to get me started. (I have no idea what quantum physics is.) I have been told though, that I'm easy to talk to and can talk about a lot of different subjects in an intelligent manner. I take that as a compliment. I've said before, "I read, therefore I am." It's nice to be able to just sit down and carry on a conversation and if the two people can talk about nearly anything short of quantum physics, well, all the nicer. I like to learn this way, it's nice to know where another has traveled, what foods they like, what their opinion is on a movie or what kind of jelly they find to be the best. Of course, "if it's Smuckers, it's got to be good."

Strong friendships can start this way, friendships that last a lifetime. We begin friendships by finding a common ground and often times that common ground can be something as simple as loneliness. I suppose it would be safe to say that loneliness can be one of the driving forces in establishing friendships. If you can find someone to talk to, then the loneliness can ebb. It always feels good to know that you are doing something about the problem of being lonely. When there is someone that you can share with, and someone can share with you, how can that be a bad thing? After all, bearing one another's burdens is supposed to be a good Christian thing to do.

There is a hitch to all of this, if you make plans to meet someone for the first time then it makes all of the talking and friendship building and burden bearing a lot easier if you follow through and show up. I can think of no lonelier feeling in the world than to be stood up.

I have told some friends over the past few years when I have been stood up, they are very quick to tell me that being stood up is all about the other person, it isn't about me. I know what they are saying, they are trying to tell me that it isn't because of anything that I said or did, it's all the other person's problem. "Their insecurities," is what one friend of mine called it. I don't know that everyone who has stood me up did so because of his or her insecurities. Let's face it; sometimes meeting new people is just plain hard. I don't argue that, and I understand it completely. I just want to point out that being stood up isn't all about the other person. It's about me as well, now I've been drug unwillingly into it. Now it's about that feeling in the pit of my stomach that makes me feel like I some how failed the other person. It's the running through the archives of my mind and replaying the conversation tapes. Did I say something that offended the other person and didn't know it? Did they keep it to themselves to protect me?

I have had the situation where when I called one guy's hand on his standing me up he said that I should have called to remind him. We had seen each other at a mutual friend's party and had touched base about time and place. When I talked to him later and he said, "You should have called me to remind me," I simply said, "you need a secretary, I waited an hour and a half at the restaurant and I ate alone.” He didn’t need to know because I didn’t want to say it or to give him the satisfaction that his being the third one in as many months helped me sink into a weeklong depression.

Some say that in this day and age that it’s just simple to forget things because there are so many distractions. There is a great deal of truth to that when you consider how many people are reading e mail and text messaging constantly, to the point that they can’t drive without the phone pressed to their ear. I often wonder how they can have so much to say to so many and how did they do it before they had these modern conveniences? I managed to make a phone call every now and then from a phone tethered to the wall before I had e mail and a cell phone, I still use the darned thing on a fairly regular basis, and I never use it while driving, the cord is too short. I have never sent a text message, I don’t even speak the language, and I think schools offer Text Messaging as a Second Language now.

So, just for the record, it is still considered good manners to call and say, I know that we had plans together this afternoon, I regret that I’m not able to make it.” Miss Manners says that an explanation is not necessary and that the recipient of the news has no right to ask for an explanation either, I can see her point. It is so much friendlier than leaving someone with a whistling kettle on the burner and fresh biscuits on the plate while the Royal Dulton is laid out on the table by the sofa. It should go without saying now that I really appreciate Bette Midler’s rendition of Miss Otis Regrets even more now than I ever did.

It's an Honor Just to be Nominated, Thank You

You may think of this ether way you want to, you are allowed to think that the speech that I've been writing is either way to late or way to early. I want to be prepared and I want to have it memorized when the time comes for me to deliver it.

It's here, on my blog, that I want to polish the speech and share my thoughts behind it. The speech is for my appearance at the Academy Awards. When I am asked to attend and I'm sitting in one of those red velvet seats after having walked the red carpet and being stopped by Joan Rivers for a brief chat, I want to be prepared if they call my name for whatever accolade they wish to bestow upon me, I think that it's important to be prepared for moments in life such as this one. You just never know when it could happen to you and wouldn't you be most embarrassed if you where not prepared and you had to do your speech impromptu? Not everyone thinks fast on their feet.

When I approach the podium, statuette in hand, I'm not going to hold it in the air like I'm a drum major, I'm going to clutch it to my breast like Elizabeth Taylor did when she won Best Actress for Butterfield 8. The award deserves that kind of respect, it is a highly coveted award; the media gives it more coverage than the Nobel Peace Prize. When the crowd ceases it's applause and they have taken their seats, my acceptance speech will be one that will shock the academy as it will surely be the briefest one that has ever been given, the TV network won't know what to do with the extra time.

The speech goes like this: "it's an honor to be nominated, thank you." And then I would be led off of the stage by one of those blonds clad in a cheesy, slinky dress to the wings where I would be photographed for the papers and US magazine; then I would walk off to wherever it is the winners go, probably back to my seat. The speech is simple and yet it says it all. Now, there is a great thing about this speech, it is so versatile that it is unbelievable. This same speech is written in such a way that win or lose it can be delivered. If I don't win the golden idol for movie success and I'm being shoved out the stage door in the back of the theater, where the lesser known reporters and photographers ask me to make a very brief statement, I can say, "it's an honor to be nominated, thank you. " Then I'll dash off to my waiting yellow cab, if you lose do you leave in the same limo that you came in? For some reason I don't think that you do, you either leave in a taxi and return to the hotel to collect your things and leave down trodden for home or you pile into a Yugo with a bunch of the other losers and you head to a small diner where you look as though you were the inspiration for Hopper's famous paining, "The Nigh Hawks," only in tuxedos and evening gowns.

I really don't think that the dynamics behind the Academy Awards fit every aspect of life, I'm glad that they don't. You just scratched didn't you? You're wondering how I just took that left turn from the paragraph above to where I am now. Humor me. I point this out because in life I don't think that there should be a Best Actor or Actress category, though there are those who are working overtime to achieve that award. There are those who work so hard at giving life instruction, often on subjects that they aren't prepared to give advice on, so I suggest no Best Director Awards either. I think that there are surely other categories that the Academy has that don't fit as life Oscars either.

There are two, however, that I think are surely the only awards necessary. If we were to all vie for either of these titles there would be no choice but to expand the number of awards given for them. The Academy would be overwhelmed at the number of nominations and it would be impossible to chose who could possibly win the golden trophy, the only answer would to be give more than one. The categories of which I speak are the only life award that the Academy could apply to our daily lives; this of course is my opinion. I think the real awards should be given to the Best Supporting Actors and Actresses. Isn't that our hearts desire, really? Isn't that why we are here, to encourage and support one another? I'll be the first one to say that it's an award that couldn't possibly be won every year. There are times that we are only able to qualify as Best Supported Actors and Actresses, we couldn’t be much help to anyone that year, we couldn't get past our own pain and heartaches to be a support to others, we could only be supported.
There is just one problem with this category; I really don't see how it can work. I really want to see the Academy abolish this category as well. I'm sure that this takes you aback after I have touted it so heartily. There is a major flaw in the concept of Best Supporting Actor and Actress. While Shakespeare may have said that all of life's a stage, I think that we fail to realize the chink in this situation's armor, life really isn‘t a stage. We shouldn’t be actors, we should simply be ourselves and confess that we have a need to love and be loved; that we are in a position to help and support, but only because we have that same need for ourselves. We don't need to act as though we have a God shaped vacuum in our lives, we have one, we have a real need for someone/something to believe in, we have an inner drive to exercise faith...in something.
For the most part, I see that for myself, I put too much effort into being an actor, pretending to be someone that I'm not in hopes that the makeup and the costume will hide who I really am. While I don't want to be the one that points this out, I've noticed that there are very few on life's stage that aren't doing the same thing, it's just our nature. We don't want to admit that we are frail and fragile and that we need to be assisted by the supporters and we don't often see that when we are who we really are, we are the supporters and encouragers for others, being real makes it easier.

All that said though, isn't it a wonderful thing to visualize ourselves at the podium and giving our speech, "It's an honor to be nominated, thank you."

Spring, Cemeteries and Victory: No, really.

One of my favorite places to take a walk is a cemetery, you see, most of the time when you walk in the cemetery there isn’t a soul to bother you. (Bad pun, but true.) I have walked some very well known cemeteries in Indiana and Kentucky and there are some that I would like to take a stroll in, but haven’t yet. Then there are some places that feel like cemeteries that really aren’t, I’m going to make an effort to not talk about those.

I have walked in obscure country cemeteries that I just happened upon while out walking, some of them when I was out for a drive. I have snooped around in the Nast Chapel Cemetery, I have some ancestors buried there. I have walked in the Deer Cemetery and I have combed the Harris Cemetery where my father is buried. All of them have a charm of their own, if a cemetery can have a charm, and I do believe that they can, I believe that they do.

There have been walks through much larger graveyards, I have walked through Our Lady of Peace, St. Joseph’s and Concordia in Indianapolis, I have walked through Forest Lawn where some of my friends are interred. I enjoy walking through Greenlawn in Franklin, Indiana, an old cemetery with giant trees and gravestones that are unique and amazing for the period of time that they were erected. My great grandparents, grandparents, a third cousin and several friends are planted there.

Two of my favorite cemeteries are Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis, I believe that at one time it was considered the fifth largest in the country, Arlington being the nations largest, Crown Hill may still be number 5. I think my absolute favorite is in Louisville, Kentucky known as Cave Hill.

Cave Hill isn’t a cemetery really, you don’t notice the graves because of the beauty that surrounds them, there are awesome trees, magnolias, dogwood and redbud for spring viewing and when the autumn colors come the area is second only to the New England area, and I can only judge that comparison to pictures as I’ve never been to New England in the autumn. There are stones with bronze sculptures that are amazing, headstones that have stained glass encased in them, older stones of limestone and marble that are intricately carved to look like angels, tree stumps covered with ivy and many have amazing flowers chiseled into them. There is a great pond that is home to many swan, thousands of birds of many varieties, speaking of birds, I have had the unique experience of leaving a special memorial at the grave of Colonel Harlan Sanders, the famous fried chicken magnate. I left a small red and white stripe box with a few chicken bones in it. Since I’m sure that he has contributed to my cholesterol reading it only seemed like the thing to do. There are other notables, many of Kentuckian-only-knowledge and some people very famous from history, not only purveyors of chicken.

Crown Hill in Indianapolis is one of the places where I have stomped the most, so I know it better of course. Not quite the arboretum that Cave Hill, though Crown Hill boasts some 400 different varieties of trees. There are many Hoosier native sons buried here of course, President Benjamin Harrison, a stack of early history vice presidents, the man who invented the Gatlin gun is there just outside of the national cemetery section of the graveyard, the irony isn’t lost on me. The man who laid out the mile square section of Indianapolis, aka downtown; his monument has a map of the city on it, he is also famous for laying out the original, “downtown” area of Washington DC. There are doctors, lawyers and race car drivers, wife beaters, knaves and scoundrels. There are people who have their epitaphs in their native languages and of course, I can’t read them. There are the good citizens of the city and the man who played Uncle Remus in Song of the South is laid to rest there, not too terribly far from John Dillinger, famous gangster.
The high-light and if you have been there, you will see that the previous statement is a pun, there is a place known as Crown Hill and that poet James Whitcomb Riley’s grave is there, at the highest point in the city. On a clear day you can truly, “see forever” from this city landmark. At one time this hill was known as Strawberry Hill and it was known as a great spot for a picnic, actually, I have picnicked there myself.

From this lofty point in the city the downtown skyline is impressive, it’s clean and fresh looking and all the trees between the hill and the central city makes it look like the city is floating on a green cloud. From this point in the city it looks like there are no drug dealers or prostitutes or panhandlers in my neighborhood, from this point it gives the illusion that there is no urban blight. Crown Hill gives a view of a fresh and clean place to live, just a mile or so out, just don’t look down over the hill to the west where one is quickly jolted back to reality.

Thoughts and signs of spring make me want to go for a walk in Crown Hill or some little country cemetery because of the signs of life there, the blankets of dandelions, the cushions of violets, the green grass, and usually there is lots of it. I’ve been thinking about going for a walk lately, maybe to happen upon some busy robins on the ground or some squirrels dancing about in the tree branches, in the season of Easter, it’s easy to think on spring, to think about new beginnings, those tulips planted next to headstones, the magnolia trees in Cave Hill covered in pink and white blossoms, delicate dogwood flowers that bear the blood stains of the nails of Christ, per legend. The verse that comes to mind so often when I walk through cemeteries, as beautiful as they are is, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55)

The answer is simple, it isn’t here, the Victor over death has risen, just as he said.