Spring is in the air and I’m a bit on overload. Thinking. Always thinking. Reading. Absorbing a 24/7 news feed that can be frightening these days. Exhausting, too.
I tried to ignore cable news after the election, which is next to impossible without a change of address to some secluded ramshackle shack along a cold, clear, drinkable spring creek. You know the drill. Living off the grid. No modern devices or distractions. Quiet introspection. But what good does that do? And where, exactly, does it lead?
I’ll begin this week with brief mention of two books I’ve read since I last appeared in this space. Then I’ll circle back to a topic introduced a couple of weeks ago, when I trolled for reader insight about a gruesome scene I happened upon many decades ago in Turners Falls.
For those who missed it, I told of a mass dog grave uncovered by a Montague DPW bucket-loader operator cutting into a steep, sandy escarpment along the eastern edge of the old Montague landfill dump near Judd Wire. I was sitting in my dump truck, awaiting a load of sandy fill as I watched the scene unfolded. Although I did ask around for information at the time, no one seemed to have a clue why it was there.
Keep that image in mind as we switch gears to a brief discussion of the two recently-published books I read. Most recently, Adam Plunkett’s biography, Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetry. Before that, Brian VanDeMark’s Kent State: An American Tragedy. Both got good reviews in The New Yorker magazine.
I’m not a Frost fanatic or poetry reader; just knew there was an Amherst connection and figured why not take a closer look? I now know a lot more about the celebrated New England poet, who, according to Plunkett and biographers before him, had his warts. To be expected of artists, no?
I struggled with Plunkett’s analyses of poetry style, rhythm, and form, focusing instead on the autodidactic poet’s idiosyncrasies, his family life and path to literary immortality. Worth the read.
Before that, I breezed through Brian VanDeMark’s Kent State, examining the unfortunate May 4, 1970 crowd-control fiasco I remember well. On that dreadful day, I was a rebellious 16-year-old nearing the end of my junior year at South Deerfield’s Frontier Regional School. The previous summer I had wandered about sopping wet in the fabled Woodstock music festival’s rain and red-tinted mud.
I guess I was biased and had long ago passed personal judgment on Kent State. In my mind, I could find no justification for Ohio National Guardsmen who killed four and wounded nine unarmed students protesting the Vietnam War. It viewed it as an unjustifiable overreaction, but was curious what this new biographer had to say about it a half-century later.
I almost didn’t follow through on my purchase when I looked into VanDeMark and found his Texas pedigree and current faculty status at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Did I really need Kent State analysis by a Texas scholar teaching at a military college? I hesitated and swiped.
In retrospect, I’d say VanDeMark tried to play it fair but, in setting the stage, overstated the dangers presented by radical Sixties activists. Plus, I found him a little too supportive of the weary, inadequately trained, weekend-warrior Guardsmen who pulled the trigger, not to mention the commanding officers. Some of the soldiers faced criminal charges and were acquitted.
As I read, I couldn’t help but wonder if we’re not headed toward another similar occurrence in these hair-trigger times of deep political divides and animosity. In my day, there were plenty of right-leaning, love-it-or-leave-it citizens who unequivocally defended the Kent State Guardsmen. Reactionary supporters of Pres. Richard Nixon and Alabama segregationist Gov. George Wallace were congratulatory, willing to proclaim deadly force against hippie malingerers as long overdue.
Do you think today’s neo-Nazis, KKK, Christian nationalists, Proud Boys, and other hard-right-wing activists think any differently? I’d honestly say these gun-toting, 21-century vigilantes are even more hateful and violent, answering calls for action armed, dangerous, and with bad intentions.
But let’s not get carried away with that. Back to that mass doggie grave on the sandy plain south of Turnpike Road. I knew the furry body parts cascading down the steep sandbank and dangling from the bucket loading my truck were primarily dogs. Roadkill? Veterinary burial place? Something else? Mum was the word when I made inquiries.
Now, nearly 50 years later, thanks to my media query, I’m confident we have the answer. It came via email from a professional Montague woman and longtime resident. There is no need to name her. She’s lived in Montague for at least 50 years.
Rather than paraphrase what she had to say, I’ll present it as it arrived last week in my inbox:
“I’m wondering if this is the same place I went to with my two children seeking our beloved missing dog about 1977. Pretty sure it is. Met the dog officer there and gave him a full description of our unusual buff-colored blue-eyed husky. A beautiful, gentle dog. The officer denied seeing him and pointed to outside kennels holding a few dogs before going back inside. Ours was not there.
“As we were leaving, we heard a familiar howl coming from another outbuilding on the property. Entering, we found our dog tied up in this empty barn, hastily freed him and left the property. Looking back, I wish I had confronted the situation more, but the energy was not comfortable. I still get chills wondering what fate was in store for our pet in that strange place!”
So, there you have it. I do believe we have our answer. That pathetic mass grave we accidentally exposed was on the old Montague dog pound site. Some such places marched to a different drummer back then, when stray dogs were captured, held briefly, and likely shot. Someone I asked that day at the town yard had to know, but decided to play dumb. Why open a smelly can of rotting worms?
Had my source not recognized the plaintive howl emanating from that out-of-the-way barn, I may have seen decomposed body parts of her family’s “unusual buff-colored husky” dangling from the bucket or tumbling down the steep, unstable, sandy escarpment supplying me with fill.
Now it’s history – the dog officer likely dead and gone. Who knows? He may have hated dogs – and loved his job.